[camehere3saydis]

> It's not a moral judgment or a be-all-and-end-all of a person's value.

But it is, even though it actually means nothing at all. Let me try and explain.

Our society prides itself on being both rational and egalitarian at the same time. Its most basic ideological paradigm basically says: "everyone is equal". Of course, that is a meaningless statement - people themselves are not quantities to be measured and compared; "everyone is equal" is just a shorthand for "everyone is just as much a human being as everyone else, regardless of the physical characteristics of their body, and deserves to be treated with equal dignity, because every person has a human mind."

Now imagine a trait, "intelligence", which basically says "this person has more mind than that person". This is in contradiction with the premise of equality; in the rationalist paradigm, this is more or less equivalent to saying "this person is inherently superior than that person". So either differences in intelligence do not exist and intelligence is a meaningless signifier (perhaps a performative role ascribed by particular situations)... or rational egalitarianism is in contradiction with itself (and therefore factually wrong by the rules of its own logic).

Either option is enough of a bummer that a normal person would be driven to ignore the matter entirely. Hence, the taboo.

[chrisseaton]

> this is more or less equivalent to saying "this person is inherently superior than that person"

Strong disagree. Intelligence is not a more valuable attribute than any other.

Concrete example: there's no point being a more intelligent officer in the Army if you aren't able to physically get yourself to the fight in time and someone else who's less intelligent but is more fit is there on time to have an impact.

[camehere3saydis]

>a more intelligent person is inherently superior

I also disagree with this statement.

>a "more intelligent" person is defined as "having more consciousness" which, in a system that ascribes value to humanity and consciousness, is equivalent to saying that a more intelligent person is "more of a person", and therefore inherently "superior in value"

This is what I meant. Do you still disagree with this statement?

And, well... should I make my posts more detailed or less, considering they fail to communicate the idea? Or should I go back to just saying nothing?

[threatofrain]

This definition of "rational" strangely excludes values such as reliability, endurance, initiative, charm, beauty, or leadership. But when has it ever been the case in any society for people to simply bow down to geniuses? Hasn't intelligence often taken a backseat to charm and beauty?

Intelligence is but one value competing in an ecology of values.

[camehere3saydis]

I'm not trying to redefine rationality. I'm referring to [Rationalism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationalism), a system of values which is fundamental to the modern Western world, and trying to point out that it is inherently flawed and essentially self-contradictory exactly because its hinges on notions like "rationality" and "intelligence" but in practice anyone is free to redefine those to whatever suits the situation.

I'm not trying to put "intelligence" or "geniuses" on a pedestal, though I would argue they're already being put there by our culture's norms. If they were really so important, wouldn't people be a lot more outraged about faulty definitions and fallacious reasoning?

Instead, we get sarcastic variants of the "well, ackshyually" meme any time anyone insists that correct reasoning is a prerequisite for a meaningful conversation, and indeed colloquial language doesn't really optimize for the use case of honest, unambiguous representations of reality

[_y5hn]

After someone died, it's ok to revere a person. Generally, it's unhealthy to put alive people on pedestals too.