[keiferski]

Here’s a simpler way to put it: intelligence and social cooperation are not the same thing. Being good at math or science doesn’t mean you understand how to organize complex political groups, and never has.

People tend to think their special gift is what the world needs, and academically-minded smart people (by that I mean people that define their self-worth by intelligence level) are no different.

[rsaarelm]

Yes, because you need to spend a lot of time doing social organization and thinking about it to get very good at it, just like you need to spend a lot of time doing math or science and thinking about it to get very good at it. And then you need to pick up patterns, respond well to unexpected situations and come up with creative solutions on top of that, which requires intelligence. If you look at the people who are the best at doing complex political organization, they'll probably all have above-average intelligence.

[keiferski]

I don’t agree at all. Charismatic leaders tend to have both “in born” talent and experience gained over time. It’s not something that comes from sitting in a room and thinking about how to be a good leader.

Sure, some level of intelligence is required, which may be above average. But that is a necessary requirement, not a sufficient one. Raw intelligence is only useful to a certain extent here, and exceeding certain limits may actually be detrimental.

[arethuza]

When it comes to "charismatic leaders" I like this quote from Frank Herbert:

"“I wrote the Dune series because I had this idea that charismatic leaders ought to come with a warning label on their forehead: "May be dangerous to your health." One of the most dangerous presidents we had in this century was John Kennedy because people said "Yes Sir Mr. Charismatic Leader what do we do next?" and we wound up in Vietnam. And I think probably the most valuable president of this century was Richard Nixon. Because he taught us to distrust government and he did it by example.”

Edit: Maybe what we really need to worry about is an AI developing charisma....

[marcosdumay]

> Edit: Maybe what we really need to worry about is an AI developing charisma....

That is the most immediate worry, by a wide margin. It seems to be dangerously charismatic even before it got any recognizable amount of "intelligence".

[keiferski]

Not really a good example, honestly. Kennedy’s involvement in Vietnam was the culmination of the previous two decades of events (Korean War, Cuban Missile Crisis, Taiwan standoff, etc.), and not just a crusade he charismatically fooled everyone into joining. If anything, had Nixon won in 1960 (and defeated Kennedy), it’s possible that the war would have escalated more quickly.

[arethuza]

Yeah - I really meant to only copy the first part of the quote - I agree that it is a bit unfair to Kennedy who I think did as much as anyone to stop the Cuban Missile Crisis becoming a hot war.

[rsaarelm]

Someone with IQ 160 might have trouble empathizing with what IQ 100 people find convincing or compelling and not do that well with an average IQ 100 population. What if they were dealing with an average IQ 145 population that might be much closer to being on the same wavelength with them to begin with and tried to do social coordination now?

[keiferski]

I guess it’s possible, but again I don’t think empathy and intelligence are correlated. Extremely intelligent people don’t seem any better at navigating the social spheres of high-intelligence spaces than regular people do in regular social spaces. If anything, they’re worse.

All of this is just an overvaluation of intelligence, in my opinion, and largely comes from arrogance.

[nradov]

Intelligence isn't even particularly helpful in making good decisions, or predicting the outcomes of those decisions (often unintended outcomes).