I feel like poker players are a very intelligent group of people overall and that the type of players who frequent forums like this one ought to be an even more level headed and realistic group of logical thinkers. So I thought it would be interesting to toss out a list of questions that are similar to (some of them identical) the ones I put on FB recently just to stir up some ****spa and because i thought it was extreemely interesting to see how various people answered these questions.
This is just a very simple little list. No essay answers or story problems and no math. Just quick little questions that assess, if not an actual level of intelligence, at least the degree to which you agree or don't agree with, well,.. ME.

Please feel free to PM the answers to these if you want to, and skip any questions you don't want to answer.

I will go into more depth about what my motivation for posting this was after I get some input.

I am not saying which position I take on any of this stuff but let's just say I believe in being extremely open minded, just not so open minded that your brain falls out.
And I am a romantic person by nature but try to think logically and romanticize matters of fact.

I would love it if you took the time to shoot back some answers to these if you aren't too scared about your reputation and/or pissing in someone's cheerios.

SO, HERE WE GO;

IN YOUR OPINION:

1) Is the electoral college useful and efficient or is it an antiquated relic that has outlived it's reasons for existing in the first place?

2) Do you think that voting for the president of the US is a useful pursuit or is it a waste of your time? (I don't mean to ask if you think you have a morale obligation to vote and I hope you can set aside any ideas about being able to say you voted as adding value to the activity itself. I am asking from a practical perspective, if you had time to either cast your vote for the Next President of the US or run some kind of errand that would take ~ the same amount of time, which is a better use of your time?) Also realize I am speaking specifically about voting for the President. Assume you have absolutely no opinion on any of the local issues from wherever you live but you are only really interested in who gets elected into the White House. Would you make the time in a busy schedule to cast a vote for just the President.

3) Do you believe that the country you live in is the "best country in the world?"

4) If we had the technology to use some sort of temporal teleportation machine to snatch Bruce Lee out of history while he was in his physical prime and we took him from his place in time into the modern day world with MMA as more or less a mainstream sport, do you believe that Bruce Lee would be able to hold his own against some of the best fighters in his weight class in, say, the Ultimate Fighting Championship?
(Let's say that he has a couple months to train and prepare but he has to use his own methods and train only techniques and the style of fighting he would have used in his time period? Or, you could look at it another way. If you took the best fighter in the UFC today at Bruce Lee's weight and you sent the fighter back in time to challenge Bruce Lee to an MMA "title fight" of some sort, would Bruce Lee be able to win or at least be a worthy adversary or do you think that Bruce Lee would have no real chance at beating a modern day MMA fighter??

5) What would happen to Stu Ungers bankroll if we were able to use the Bruce Lee time travel method to pull him out of his peek and into the modern day poker landscape?
Could Stu Ungar, at his very best, beat the medium stakes or even high stakes NLH online games of today?

6) Does "Free Will" exist in the way it is usually thought of? Does the universe work in a predetermined manner and are we all just puppets tied to the strings of heredity and nurture? Are human beings inexorably controlled by the laws of cause and effect or is there something like a will that is free that allows people to act in ways that defy their nature and rise above the programming of nature and nurture? Can we act against our own self interest in a real way? Or can human beings only do whatever it is that they were always predestined to do?

Is there "real Free will?" Or is there only the "Delusion of Free Will?"

7) Are unions good for the free market or are they bad for our economy just in general and/or on balance?

8) Do you think that affirmative action is a useful, fair, correct, and responsible way to handle our current state of affairs? Should members of cultures who have historically gotten the short end of the stick and who are, even today, still suffering from the unfair treatment of their eldest living relatives and recent ancestors be given a bit of help in modern society? Should the deck be stacked in favor of the people today who come out of socio economic situations traditionally discriminated against?
For example, should there be quotas and necessary "diversity hires" and/or government subsidies that give employers incentives to, well.. scratch that.. very simply; On the subject of affirmative action.. Does America do too much, not enough, and is it done in a reasonably defensible way?

9) Do you believe that gender is a social construct or do you believe there is a biological basis for male and female sexes?

10) Would you think that blind people probably hear better than sighted people?

11) Are smaller and less athletic men typically more intelligent than bigger more athletic ones?

12) Should Marijuana be illegal? Legal for medical? Every bit as legal as tobacco and alcohol?

13) Do you believe that marijuana is a "gateway drug" that makes it more likely that you do heroine at some point in the future if you smoke it now?

14) Do you think that being a vegan is a morally superior choice when compared with more common and more traditional diets?

15) If you knew for a fact that your ceasing to eat meat for the rest of your entire life would lead to exactly zero animals being saved and have no measurable, in fact no actual affect on the planet..the same number of animals die if you do or don't eat meat on the same number of farms with the same number of EVERY THING.. would you feel like you have no reason to not eat meat and, at least at the point you discover that you can have no harmful or positive impact on the world with regard to your meat consumption would you feel morally "off the hook" or would you still feel responsible for the torture of and killing of factory farmed animals?

16) Do you think it is a noble and worthwhile pursuit to try and keep foreign people out of your country so that there are more and better jobs for you and your friends, family, and countrymen? Or do you think that your geographical neighbors should have just as much right to the things you have in the country you were born in?

17) Are women able to do everything that men are able to do?

18) Do you find it at least believable or maybe even likely that there would be a correlation between liberal values and high IQ? Would you buy that studies have shown that the higher your IQ the less racist and sexist and bigoted your views tend to be? And that the lower your IQ the more likely you are to be more conservative? Would those results be believable? Shocking? or obvious to you?

19) Do you think it is likely that IQ is at least somewhat predictable based on race? That, if it were put to the test and studied, you would be likely to find a genetic basis for intelligence and that some races and ethnicity would probably score higher on IQ tests and other good measurements for general levels of intelligence? Or do you think that it is very likely that all races, ethnic backgrounds, and nations of origins would test out equally with no meaningful correlation between one and the other race or races? (BTW: I am not even implying what those hypothetical differences might be. I'm just asking if you think it is likely the case that some races have higher IQ's than others on average or that there is almost certainly no measurable difference of mathematical significance?

20) Do you think psychics are real? Would you guess that some people have measurable levels of some kind of ESP or 6th sense type ability? Or is that all 100% BS?

21) Should psychodelic drugs be illegal? Legal in cases where there is a medical benefit? Fully legalized in so far as there is no harm done or risk placed on others?

22) Do you have a religion that you believe is definitely true, i mean to ask if you believe everything about the doctrine that you consider the doctrine of your sect/denomination, etc..?

23) would you describe yourself as republican, democrat, libertarian, leaning right, left leaning, or none of the above?

24) do you believe IQ and school performance are highly correlated, slightly correlated, not at all correlated, or even have a reverse correlation?

25) Are religious people typically more, less, or equally morale and "good" in their interactions with others and their values?

I'm super excited to read the responses to these.

No.

I'm looking forward to the responses. Good minds here.
Still very useful and fairer than the alternatives. A bulwark against various vices, including toxic cultures, illegal immigrants and their offspring.

Individually, a terrible use of time. But the nature of much of what we do in groups is that individuals do irrational things individually to improve group (and hence their) outcomes. For example, the sanest life for an intelligent person is one of clever theft.

I do not know the answer. I believe strongly that free will exists. If the universe is preset through all time, the apparent lack of free will does not mean what our models or emotions say it means; it's a failure of thinking/extremely incomplete for people to feel trapped in a preset universe.

They are the essentially the same thing.

Unions are bad in the modern economy.
No. We are individuals. To each according to his need, from each according to his abilities. The sacred cow assumption of the left is that lack of equality of outcome proves lack of equality of opportunity. That is clearly an insane view of the world.

The US is a highly socially mobile society where economic success flows to the capable. In 2017, the fact that more white people are capable than black people (and more Asians capable/economically useful than white people) probably has little to do with history and a lot to do with culture. In 1975, the opposite was probably true.

It does not produce the desired outcomes. It is pointless. You can't force someone to be economically useful. You can't train the stupid or people from dysfunctional cultures to be more than average economically useful.

There's obviously a strong biological basis for gender. It's also partly a social construct. The latter does not mean it needs to be removed or deconstructed. IMO, biological and social gender interplay together in extremely healthy ways for society, and are desirable. It's a minimax type solution to the problem of individual vs healthy constructs socials. Laws, rule following, hygiene, politeness, respect for property, personal grooming, the concept of the innocence of childhood, how we treat children, and the freedom/protection of children are also similar social constructs. Many of those things probably affect people who disagree with the social construct, probably more than gender-confused people are by gender roles in society. Gender deconstruction is basically an outpouring of the gay and feminist lobby's victim politics.
They would have greater awareness. They would have brains more attuned to processing auditory information, which in a sense means better hearing (they are aware of more they hear and can extract more useful information from it). But in terms of raw ability, no.

Between racial groups, we know this to be true. Within racial groups, who knows? I think intelligence is probably correlated with health more than anything. Exercise is good for the brain in many ways. I'd learn toward healthier men with better functioning hormones being more intelligent, all things considered. But I don't think there's a clear cut answer absent hard data.

no, no and no.

It's definitely a gateway drug. Heroine is an extreme example, but for lesser drugs than heroine, it definitely serves as a gateway. It lowers inhibitions, removes the stigma and fear around drugs, puts one more in the company of people who are likely to use harder drugs and thus offer them, and creates a dual-path dealer network (a larger base of a less-hard drug influences the availability of dealers and connections for moving harder drugs).

There's no question it's a gateway drug. It's a scientific fact that there's a strong correlation between the two, and multiple sufficient strong causative links make the correlation stick. Scientists who argue that there's no conclusive proof because of underlying shared causes, are cucks.

Yes, without question.
Once the moral side is gone, only ickiness is left. Which is strong. The reason people don't eat other dead humans is ickiness, not morality.

Yes, it's highly noble and highly moral. Not that immigration isn't great (it is), but it needs to be controlled to people who can make a positive contribution, and capped.
In terms of rights and the morality of mass immigration/no borders, this video ends that debate. And it does it with gumballs.



Violently enforced geographical boundaries which particular groups of culturally similar people protect and defend and control who enters (countries) are the best thing that has ever happened to this world. They have:

- Created amazing cultural and racial diversity, one of the things that makes this world wonderful
- Enabled progress of all kinds
- Created wealth concentration leading to technological and philosophical and cultural and artistic advancement
- Allowed thousands of petri dishes of ideas, philosophies and cultural practices to exist simultaneously, creating a rich tapestry of ideas from which all of humanity could learn the best ones.

Anyone who doesn't believe in defending and maintaining borders is a ****wit who hates diversity and progress.

No.

Yes. The meaner forms of xenophobia and sexism are manifestations of low IQ. The (irrational) belief that "all people are like me, basically good and basically functional" becomes increasingly irrationally held as your become more intelligent (the intelligent see intelligence and possibility in others that doesn't exist). Finally, polite society is highly liberal, as are colleges; college attendance is correlated with IQ. So the more intelligent are more likey to receive a liberal indoctrination than a conservative one. So it's plausible.
No, because most studies are bull**** and merely reflect the prevailing bias in academia.
They would be believable, but I would expect them to be wrong.

I would expect IQ to be correlated strong with libertarian beliefs, because a) the libertarian view of the world is the logical consequence of modern morality and economics, and b) it's not widely taught. Thus truth seekers will end up libertarian, which is on the "conservative" side of the spectrum.

Yes. White people crush black people on all measures of intellectual (verbal, math, spacial, conceptual juggling, pattern recognition) intelligence by any test or criteria devised.

I say intellectual to separate it from emotional and kinesthetic, etc intelligence.

Jews crush whites. East Asian are a bit above whites.

There is clearly an enormous difference in measured cognitive ability between blacks and whites. The cause of that is a separate issue.

It's all 100% BS, and it's not close.

Not legal.

No.

Libertarian if I must label it. But I'm really someone who wants minimax solutions to the set of social problems we must solve as a group. I think humans, and in particular leftists, are horrible at accurately understanding the fragility of the values they hold dear.

So I'm for universal health care, for universal free education in cultures where it's a positive (but limited to the set of people for whom it's economically and socially beneficial for society at large, which is somewhere well below current college numbers), against big government.

They're well correlated.

They're more moral.

Me too. Nice set of questions.

All drugs should be legal.

@ Toothsayer

Is it possible that IQ tests are not measures of innate intelligence but are affected by cultural upbringing?

If certain individuals were born into disadvantaged socioeconomic cultures, wouldn't this affect their IQ score, or any standardized test performance?

I know that my question seems like it is liberal-bent, I am just playing devils-advocate to your points.

It appears that Africans score lower when comparing across the nations, which can be used as an argument in favor of there being racial differences in intelligence. But the liberal counterpoint is that members from third-world countries are victims of the same type of colonial exploitation that blacks have faced in the U.S., making the results of their IQ tests useless since they are at such a strong cultural disadvantage.

I find the topic fascinating, so if you care to expand on the topic I would be interested to read it.

2,5,10,14,15,17,20, and 24 are not really debatable. The better answer is a 99% shot at least.

Voting: Macaskill makes a fairly good point re: national elections in that they're an excellent example of how people stop thinking of risk/reward when something becomes unlikely enough. Even if something is 'basically never ever ever' going to happen (i.e your vote making a difference), it's possible for there to be a payoff large enough to make it worth it. If you have strong political conviction then I think it's worth it in a practical sense.

Personally, and this is probably what you were trying to avoid, but I think it's worth it because we're incredibly lucky to live in the system we do, and I don't think it's as stable as most people assume. So I view it as the least I can do to contribute to the (hopeful) continuance by being an informed voter. I should probably get on that.

Ungar He'd get crushed, maybe he'd be able to get up to speed in a relatively short amount of time, but whether he could be a winner would (imo) depend on his tilt control and drug usage.

Affirmative Action I wish I had a stronger opinion, it seems so complex. Like many political and/or economic debates, I can see (some of) the basic pros and cons and have no idea how much research I'd need to do to have an opinion I hold in any esteem. I think that at least 80% of the people who have strong opinions on these things are either oversimplifying things or are acutely aware that their opinion is 'just an opinion' and isn't a strong indication of what the actual answer is.

Veganism and moral superiority Without a doubt

Psychics BS

Religious (are they more moral?) I think this one's probably changing over time. 50 years ago maybe, because a larger % of the non-religious were people rejecting the moral structures around them (I found that hard to word). As more people ditch religion and there's a greater focus (amongst said people) on adopting morality based on merit, I think it will swing in the other direction because the non-religious won't have as many prejudices handed to them by their religion.

I thought the rest of your post (re: immigration) was good food for thought bar the 'anyone who doesn't agree with me is a ****wit who hates progress and diversity', but I found this video disappointing.

It doesn't address the morality at all, he pulls the standard argument that we can't even make a meaningful dent so why try (don't agree with this one), and arbitrarily asserts that we're actually hurting by letting in the ones who might actually make a difference.

'Let's help them over there', yeah, we're doing that? You know, that whole thing where the % of people living in extreme poverty has been reduced so drastically by aid and charities amongst many other efforts?

It's not like we can either allow immigrants or help people remotely. And if there was an argument to end the discussion on morality of immigration that video certainly wasn't that - it was a glorified powerpoint presentation which did nothing but show how small the % of people we can take in is.

If you have the wrong opinion on those, you're probably an idiot, or at best you spend a lot of time around idiots and haven't thought things through much. Sprinkling questions where the answer is certain among questions where it isn't is a great way to assess how seriously you should take their other opinions.

You believe in psychics, or that women can do everything men can? If so, nothing you say about the rest of the uncertain topics means anything.

They're a great set of questions imo. We're all too sciency here to be wrong on the key ones, though.

1) The electoral college is the methodology in which multiple differences are merged within a geographic base. Specifically ,South Carolina is able to make its presence felt on the quality of its presentation as apposed to being overwhelmed by population numbers of such a state as California.

The US Senate is based upon the same reasoning (2 senators for state) whereas the House of Representatives is proportional to population.

There is always the frightening possibility that rule by one section or state becomes possible and in the political arena this can lead to autocracy.

2) Yes , important .

3) I like it; I can also find good qualities in other countries and peoples ; no need to be in contention in the absolute.

4) Meaningless

5) Again meaningless, not even cute.

6) "Free will" is not some organ which we are looking for but not sure as to where it is but a state of being in futuristic man. Man lives within his gender, country,race, clan, geography, etc.. and in this he carries forth the characters of this very internal and external milieu. In that sense he appears determined.

Man is more than the above natures and moves in the direction that all he sees around and within him he is leaving and in a sense he frees himself from the cosmos; not as if what he lives within is crass but his development raise to higher existence, bringing forth the best of his previous natures.

Just as a knight takes the oath of "knighthood" and goes out and slays the demons of the earthly man is involved in the gaining his freedom and in this he is ensconced within "freehood", the oath of free men , that to which he will gain.

The undercurrent is that man cannot "love" unless he does this freely for anything else is coercion and one cannot love if coerced.

To bring it within the proper realm the commandment "thou shalt not kill", if followed within submission is an example of a lack of freedom . This same commandment can live within the human being, within the free, if by bringing it into his nature and finds reasonable consideration to "not kill" , done without coercion.

It should be apparent that all the rules and regulations come from others, on the whole, and one doesn't have to create the Decalogue in order to follow it, within freedom, as a knight of "freehood".

Man is a limited being and lives within various qualities of "free" and "determined". an interesting realm where he is not "free" is his digestive/metabolic system to which he knows very little and therefore would find it hard to manifest "freehood' here. Likewise his rhythmic system (cardiac and respiratory rhythms) is pretty much hidden though it can be affected somewhat.

Man is clearest in his thinking which of course is related to the nervous system and is is here that "freehood' begins for the moral realm arises. He doesn't leave the moral but through his thinking or spiritual activity he can send his moral commandment to his metabolic/digestive
/muscular system and work the earth (build a bridge, write a book,...) all of which will carry his moral tone; man as a moral tone poem.

I will repeat again, only within recurrent lives can man move into the "free"; you don't have to know of reincarnation and karma to reason to this for if one "intellects for one life", so to speak ,then you must consider that you are aware only of the demiurge, and good luck to that. Not trying to be condemnatory here, just hoping for the artistic within reason.

finis, too tired

It's stupid, but systematic first past the post is a much bigger problem.

It's a waste of time, but it's less than 5 minutes in and out for me and on a path I always drive, so I just do it.

No

I've never studied Bruce Lee, but the evolution of MMA makes it pretty likely that any old-timer just gets crushed the vast majority of the time, so a favorite to go 0-10 against the top 10. Has he even heard of BJJ?

Maybe he could learn, but he's getting crushed when he first sits down.

non-supernatural free will makes no sense.

In the current implementation, public sector unions suck and private-sector ones are fairly neutral (with both significantly good and bad effects).

No, and the current functional implementation (hire enough minorities, even if they suck, so you don't get sued for the appearance of bias) is terrible. If there's a fixable problem, it's in early education, because there's not much doubt that minority schools are actually **** these days in terms of resources and quality of teachers. Efforts should go there, and (as long as they're ****) a small boost in college admissions to reflect that a slightly worse resume from a **** school system shows more underlying talent than is nominally apparent, but after that point, sink or swim.

A confused gender identity is literally incomprehensible to me. I mean I know people say they have it, but I have no ability to relate to their mental state to even have an opinion on whether or not it's "real" or if it's the functional equivalent of hearing voices. I have no idea.

Obviously XX and XY chromosomes primarily determine gender across human populations and many animal populations, and it's clear that animal genders and gender roles are distinguishable and aren't a product of social learning, so the full ****** version of "gender is always and only a social construct" is clearly just wrong.

I have no idea. I'm sure they're better at using sound cues for things normal people see though.

In-race, and most everything else being equal, this seems unlikely.

Legal. I think most usage is bad, but creating a black market and locking people up for it is a complete disaster on every level.

Probably. Illegal marijuana almost definitely just by association with criminals. My guess is legal marijuana is a weak gateway (far, far less of a gateway than giving a random a "legit" one-time opioid prescription). Obviously the vast majority of college kids who use marijuana don't move on to heroin, and in some who do marijuana isn't causal anyway.

Yes

If they're getting slaughtered anyway, I wouldn't feel responsible. At that point I'm morally equivalent to a hyena scavenging a corpse, which is fine.

Yes. If we changed to a policy of literally anybody welcome, no checks at all, we'd be unrecognizable in no time.

Most things, sure. Everything, obviously not. How is this even a question?

I'd expect the correlation to go that way.

There are obvious gigantic differences- sub-saharan africans have huge overlap with above-average US downies, for example. How much of that is known, indisputable factors that have almost nothing to do with the individuals (malnourishment, disease burden, etc), how much of it is purely post-birth culture being ****tier than the environment allows it to be (intelligence being more or less valued and nourished, etc), and how much is genetic capability isn't nearly as easy to answer.

There's no reason to believe that cultural valuation of intelligence is equal across groups (it is obvious to me that it just isn't), and adult achievement is going to be impacted by that, but separating *that* from underlying genetics is a total *****. You have groups like the Igbo who kill it mingled with groups who can't score room temperature. There's no reason to believe the genetic factor is 0, but I also haven't seen any clear evidence that it (as a first-order effect) is the primary driver of currently observed differences. Comparing worldwide differences, I'd say environment>culture>genetics in order of importance.


Nonsense

Legal, same thinking as marijuana.

God no

Civil and social libertarian, left and right have gone completely delusionally insane so there's no place to go on that spectrum, maybe you could call me slightly left-leaning using definitions from 50 years ago. Or since this is P, Thrasymachus was right and US society has completely rolled over and accepted- practically begged for- corporate rape.

Clearly correlated

In the modern US, less. That can and has varied by time and place I'm sure.

the actual electors are no longer useful or efficient but the overall concept is still effective. whether it's preferable to a more direct national democracy is a different question (and I think it is). the USA was founded with a heavy emphasis on states rights; it's essentially a part of the country's DNA, so the question's a bit futile

Depends how busy, I guess. I'd say 80% of motivation of voting stems from moral obligation (a sort of respect for the veterans that fought for such freedoms). the other 20% is because I like to treat the vote as going 'on record' with myself (which usually ends in me using a write-in). approximately 0% of my reason for voting is to influence the election's outcome.


sure, why not.

I don't know a lot about Bruce Lee or MMA odds but I'm guessing the MMA guy is a -1000 or more favorite

this is a slight cop out but because so much of online poker is self-discipline and not using a bunch of cocaine, I'm going to say no chance.

I don't think about the difference much. but I do tend to think our actions are dictated by the atoms in the universe

in a true free market they are probably fine but as constructed public unions are pretty toxic. basically negotiating for demands that are unfundable in reality. puts the well-being of the members at risk as well as the financial stability of the state.

No, I don't. focus 100% on promoting positive early education environments (this is where blatant disparities lie. ****ty schools are a terrible handicap). I I agree with TomCowley in that a small amount of AA at the collegiate level to overcome these disadvantages is justified.

both, of course

yes. it's one less sense for the brain to process, so I would assume there's more brainpower available for the hearing portion. Also, 'practice makes perfect'; it's a lot easier to notice the subtleties when you are processing them daily. but I think the raw capacities for a person born blind are probably equal to a person with full sight.

probably slightly. more time spent on learned intelligence.

yes, every bit as legal as tobacco and alcohol

yes, but only marginally. plus, there's something to be said for branding marijuana as 'ok' and harder drugs as 'very bad'. when you brand both as illegal and 'very bad' it blurs the line.

YES

I would feel morally off the hook. as is, I feel morally bad but still eat meat.

I'm a bit unsure on the morality but in practice I'm Team USA. reason 1: I think restricted immigration is good for the home country (when the home country has higher standard of living) and probably for the emigrating country. talent drains are a real thing and the west has a habit of cherry picking the best and brightest. reason 2: I'm biased. I generally act in my family and friends best interests before strangers and I (less dramatically) do the same with the USA compared to other countries.

obviously not. and men aren't able to do everything women can do. having said that I think a lot of men have a bad habit of underestimating women.

obviously the definition of 'liberal values' needs elaboration. but I think classical liberalism (strong regard for free speech, appreciation for the free market, etc.) is strongly correlated with high IQ. being able to explain exactly why free speech is such a fantastic privilege is indicative of above average IQ.

obviously there's data that suggests IQ variation among races, but I haven't spent a lot of time researching it. certainly there's environmental factors that at least somewhat confound the data. I will say it's pretty gross when the results are extrapolated for *real* racist motivations (A person is a person and deserves to be treated equally and with respect). I think most people who are interested in the IQ discussion have positive intentions but there's no denying that hateful racists love trumpeting IQ data.

of course it's BS.

lightly illegal, not encouraged

no way

libertarian/none of the above. generally for a limited government, personal freedoms, secure country. in favor of significant social safety nets so long as they are properly incentivized (for example, our country is ****ing fat and that causes a billion health complications. I like the idea of universal healthcare but people need to practice healthier lifestyles if they want society to pay for them)

highly correlated

more moral

after thinking about this some more, I'd switch my answer. size/athleticism is obviously correlated with good looks which are correlated with intelligence. the genetic correlations, along with the social benefits probably outweigh the hypothetical need for smaller/less athletic people to focus more on intelligence.

I haven't answered any questions because I'm enjoying this thread immensely and don't want to (poli)tard it up. It's a great set of questions.

1) It's still useful.
2) Useful and necessary
3) Greatest/most important state actor (most likely in history) for sure. It's even quite possibly the most benevolent super power in history. But best "to live in" is a different question.
4) He'd have no chance.
5) Unger would lose due to lack of mental discipline in today's much tighter games although he'd rapidly acquire the technical skills to exist.
6) There is limited free will.
7) Not opposed to unions philosophically. They are necessary to balance market power in a lot of instances. A lot of American unions however are too powerful and self-destructive.
8) The level of affirmative action could be too high in certain places but yes, I do believe it's a socially beneficial thing do to make sure there is a critical mass (5% is probably enough? Maybe even less) of every race in just about every industry. It ensures social cohesion and maximizes communication.
9) This isn't in dispute. There is some biological basis with how men and women respond to stimuli chemically. But yes, a lot of what we perceive to be gender is social. I'd say more social than biological when it comes to most stereotypes.
10) This is a dumb question. As a factual matter, yeah, they do hear better.
11) No.
12) Legal
13) Yes, but I think anything could be a gateway drug, alcohol and pain killers included. If you start seeking that numbness in your life, then it's natural to seek stronger and stronger downers.
14) No. Veganism is stupid
15) Responsible
16) Not as much right but it's economically beneficial to have immigrants.
17) Intellectually, yeah, although on the outliers (genius level) you'll have a lot fewer women. Physically, nobody really disputes women are weaker.
18) Conservatism is correlated with low IQ as a factual matter, but only by a small amount. It has to do with social economic classes with conditions that predispose people to both low IQ and conservatism. (think poor Appalachian people having no opportunity to train IQ related tasks while being steeped in... conservatism)
19) Same response as last question.
20) 99.9% BS. I do believe, as descendants of animals, some people did inherit some kind of ESPish ability to detect danger (think Spidey sense, except not nearly as crazy). Rather than thinking of it as ESP, I think of it as unconscious processing of information that we no longer consciously register as stimuli.
21) Yes
22) Question is dumb because even the most religious people, except maybe the Pope or whoever heads the church, would say they disagree with some doctrine.
23) GOP center right.
24) Threshold. Highly correlated to about 125 then above that it's work ethic. Threshold is higher in highly specialized fields obviously.
25) I have to say yes. Religion has been used to justify some incredible atrocities but its impact has generally been positive. To put forward a different argument, I think of religions as belief systems and believe the surviving religions (for the most part, in current forms) are net positive/moral influences on society. I worship at the churches of democracy (polling stations and rallies) and capitalism (Amazon.com and banks).

[/QUOTE]

There's just no possible way he could hold his own. Lee was the GOAT in his discipline. It's the same as challenging a master chef to a fight with an MMA pro. MMA is the GTO of fighting - it can't be beaten in theory. There are also countless videos online of "kung fu masters" going head to head with MMA pros - they never last more than 10 seconds.

i.e.



There's no way in hell. The knowledge gap between Unger's peek and the guys today would be laughable. PIO/CREV etc didn't exist back then.

IMO free will does not exist. The illusion of free will might. I posted a thread here a while ago explaining why. Refer to Sam Harris lecture etc.

Well you have male and you have female but then you have A LOT of people who biologically have male/female genitals but their hormones don't reflect their junk, essentially. I know someone who is female, appears to be a very obvious looking lesbian, but she's actually only attracted to straight women. She knows she should have been born as a male but has been stuck with the female junk. Now we could just throw every instance of this happening out the window and write them off as anomalies, or we could entertain the idea of gender being, at least in some cases, a spectrum.

Without looking into it, one would think so. Certainly this is what I've heard - that the available sense will compensate for the one that's lacking.

Probably not. It would take pretty extreme filtration of our sample size to say it is/isn't.

Of course it should be legal. You probably shouldn't be allowed to drive while still high or operate heavy machinery, but this is basic safety stuff and applies to alcohol too. It's mind blowing to me that it's still widely illegal. I think it's the sort of thing humanity will look back on in 500 years and laugh, like what were we thinking?

Yeah I guess if you do it you're probably more likely to "try" molly, cocaine, etc. I don't think that applies to heroine. But remember simply trying heroine is harmless and there's a big difference between trying something once and becoming dependent upon it. I'd be interested to see whether alcohol or marijuana was a more likely gateway drug to a heroine dependency.

No, lol. But it's funny because as soon as you admit to being "morally superior" to someone, in a way this opens a paradox by increasing your vanity to a point where it counteracts any superiority you'd gained to begin with.

Obv not.

I'm honored you put your two cents in on this at all but I have to admit, I don't know what you mean?

"The better answer is a 99% shot at least"?

I really don't agree with the 2, 5, 10, 14, etc.. not being debatable.

I have had plenty of debates with people on some of those topics.

Like number two, for instance,
Non-Voter: I'm not going to play along and pretend that my vote does anything at all. I don't like either of these two, the deck was stacked to begin with, the person with the most connections gets the nomination and then it's a popularity contest. Oh, and, even if I didn't feel like that, my vote has so nearly a zero % chance of changing or meaning anything at all that the time I would have spent voting would have been better spent doing literally any other thing. Maybe including trying to talk people into voting the direction I would vote.

VOTER: What If everyone thought like that, then no one would vote. Real cool!

NV: No, if fewer people were voting then the likelyhood of my vote meaning something would increase and people who "think like me" would start voting. I'm surprised the thing doesn't reach some sort of equilibrium right around the point where your odds of changing something are just extremely unlikely. We could lose half the voters in the country and still not be anywhere near that.

VOTER: Well, if you don't vote you have no right to complain about it.

NV: Why? Because it sounds catchy? Where is the logic in that?

V: I'm just saying, if you don't vote you've got no right to complain about any of it.

NV: Why? I mean, yeah, you already parroted that but why would attempting to affect something you could never affect in a million years give you the right to complain or visa versa? You were bitching about the weather yesterday and I didn't see you trying to fix it.

V: That's different and you know it.]

NV: No, I don't know it. Please explain.

V: You have a civic duty to vote.

NV: Why do you vote?

V: All the reasons I just said.

NV: Yeah but you're a smart guy. You know better than to believe in free will, you are not overly romantic about sports figures and realize that Bruce Lee was likely not the most amazing fighter to ever live. Why are you so romantic about this one thing? Why do you REALLY vote??

V: Let's get a taco..

2,5, 10, 14, etc..

5) number five not debatable? Yeah, I would agree with that. But I was and am very much interested in what kinds of things people over romanticize and how they spill over from one idea to another and I have def heard people say that Bruce Lee would be the boss of modern MMA if he were alive and in his prime. The Stu Unger thing doesn't seem more of a stretch than that.

10) Losing your vision would CLEARLY NOT magically give you better hearing. I'm a hearing specialist for whatever it's worth. And I can tell you these senses are not linked in any physiological way
that said,
lots of people seem to believe that losing one sense makes others better. I think it's PROBABLY but only probably B.S. but I wouldn't be so surprised to see in some study that there is evidence to show that people who lose one sense end up training their other senses and being better with them.
14) "God said Kill and Eat" and "The Bible is pretty clear that the animals are for us."
it's a religious argument but it's an argument.


So, anyway I did have some questions in here where I was just looking for hyper romantic notions and/or completely illogical ones and looking for the connections.

I have a theory.

I think that people have different types of brains.

I believe their may be some number of "basic brain types" or something like that. I developed this idea talking with ex girlfriends, ex-wife, some of my friends, and especially very recently with all the Trump stuff talking with Friends of mine who seem totally normal, reasonably intelligent, and have fully functional brains to the best of my knowledge but they seem to be able to lie to themselves.

Same with my Fiance'. She seems able to hold two mutually exclusive pieces of info with no problems at all. Well, the cognitive dissonance doesnt seem to cause any trouble.

So I am trying to develop a theory. I'd like to see if a lot lot lot more poker players are less romantic, more realistic, and more logical, and more liberal. I assumed that would be and it does seem to be going that way.

I thought maybe there would be a correlation between thinking things like "Blacks are bad" and "Bruce Lee would kill anyone alive". And a correlation between smart people and liberal views.

Now I have another desire that popped up but I don't wanna derail my own thread.

I would love to get a lot lot more data points and I enjoy the reading these so please keep it going all.

I'm going to tell you where I'm going with this all in some better detail in a few days or so.

L8r

I think this is pretty clearly what the 'yes' respondents meant. obviously blind people aren't born with better ears. I'm actually surprised that it's not accepted truth in your field that blind people have trained themselves to hear better.

ya it's an argument that wouldn't pass 9th grade philosophy

sorting brains into types is wildly unscientific. 'less romantic + more logical + more realistic + liberal' could be met with ten other likely combinations (I'd say I'm pretty 'romantic', logical, and maybe liberal?)


also, would you mind defining 'liberal views'



btw, good thread

Regarding voting, you disregard the pernicious effect of a lazy/dispirited voting culture. If you tend to vote and support it then people like you will be more likely to tend to vote. Look at Bush, 2000. Trump. A handful of less-lazy college idiots in key spots, and Clinton would have been president, a very different result. The cynicism and weak theories you offer in your post (if fewer vote, votes mean more, therefore it's self limiting), miss the real effects. I think you're building nice-looking structures built on intellectual sand.
This is the sign of a healthy brain. Since our brains cannot capture reality properly, nor can they synthesize all the roles we must play, dual belief systems are not only useful but necessary for many things. I probably have 20 different opinions on some topics.

You're really comparing fast flexible brains with dopey linear young male brains when you say some people can have multiple competing ideas and other people find it uncomfortable/wrong. The linear young male brains are inferior at most tasks that matter.
You're asking in SMP, not poker players. I see no reason poker players would be special, beyond being amoral, slightly detached young males.
There would be if it wasn't for libertarians, who are smarter than all. The libertarian Republicans even out the silly religious republicans and make them equal with Democrats in intelligence.
I'm enjoying the empiricism of all this.

Most question garbage, some interesting.

Most very obvious and only asked because they have political drama attached (IQ among races etc)

I dont know the reasons for its existence, but if your question is whether its a good model, it certainly isnt.

To me it depends on who is running. It seems as if its mostly a waste of time.

Im not a fan of comparissons. But Im sure most people who believe that dont do a lot to make it even better.

They both would deffinitely need some training and knowledge of the current metas. But given some time, I wouldnt be surprised to see both competing at the highest levels. Stu might suck at online poker tho.

Not a huge fan of this question. Certainly you are a result of your environment, whether that leads to determinism, I dont care.

What do you mean by free market and our economy?

Your questions are complicated. Even if I were to assume I know what you mean, I couldnt formulate a straight answer as you cant answer on unions with answering on the underlying systems, which again have systems underlying and so on and forth.

Yes, depending on what you mean by fair. But yes.

My bold. Yes.

What does discrimination mean? My company is on the 2nd floor, only steps. I cant hire a wheelchair farer. Is that discrimination?

Its kind of complicated, because I am the free market. The incentives would be given by the state. Which isnt the free market. Unless you come up with something where a ******ed person beats a normal person, you wont hire that ******ed person. I think you might want to consider changing the system if you want to include all those that are discriminated. Because our system(s) discriminate(s).

Both...

Yes.

What?

No one should have power over your body, besides you. Whatever you do to it, should be your decision.

No...

Depends on your morals and how the animals get treated. In todays modern society, usually yes.

I dont have morals or principles for other people. So, the answer is yes, if I was vegan for moral reasons, Id stay a vegan even if you tell me you torture an extra cow each year just for me.

Its like going to a German who rejected the Nazis and saying: "Cool story bro, still 50 million people died."

I dont like the idea of borders. And I hope you are gratefull each day that you were born into circumstances that didnt make you leave your homeland.

I dont think its possible for a woman to impregnate other women, so no.

If one answer is yes, so are the others. Same with no. The results would be believable but not obvious. Btw, I differentiate between IQ and Intelligence, it would be a lot more obvious if we would talk about Intelligence.

Yes.

No.

I havent met one, neither do I posses such skills. However, there are things such as evolution, so I wouldnt rule it out either.

See Nr. 12.

No. But I highly doubt you get any answer of substance from someone whos answer is yes, given how you formulated your question.

None of the above.

Correlated, somewhat.

~Equally.

1. Not qualified to answer. Haven't researched it much and haven't thought about it much. Don't really care either. I have, however, spent plenty of time thinking about how leadership would be appointed in an optimized society and I believe it is far, far, far, far different from the current method.

2. No, I think the difference between presidential candidates is vastly overstated, and I also think it's very difficult to predict how presidents will perform, thus as someone who has not spent decades studying U.S. politics, geopolitical relations, economy, military, cultural sentiment, and other areas under the purview of the president, I don't think my vote matters at all.

3. No. "Best country" is a stupid descriptor anyway. Too many distinct variables get smudged together with a term like that.

4. No clue, don't care.

5. I'd gladly play Stu HU and would be hesitant to stake him for a regular old live 2/5 game. I'll also gladly play anyone HU who disagrees with this because it means they don't understand poker as well as I do.

6. I don't think free will exists, but I'd be absolutely delighted to be proven wrong. I think humans are just complex algorithms that could theoretically be figured out and thus predicted. Obviously we can't do that right now so the mystique of some guy being good at something or the excitement of some guy doing something unexpected is more dramatic now because it is rooted in the unknown.

7. I'm not qualified to answer this. I'd guess it's relatively efficient — worthwhile unions have stuck around, useless ones get eroded away. Things change, of course, and so too will the state of unions. And there might be slight inefficiencies here and there. That's how I view most societal structures.

8. No clue. I'd guess it's close to efficient much like unions — there are enough forces acting on all sides of the argument and eventually a natural equilibrium is reached.


By the way, a lot of these questions aren't good for poker players. A lot of them are geared towards someone who has a PhD in sociology, or physics, or knows a lot about MMA, etc. Poker players like me are just degenerates who can perform basic algebra.


9. I dunno man. At least in this version of the universe, and this version of Earth, two sets of reproductive organs seems pretty useful for making copies of genomes; from that we get slightly different biological makeups for men and women; from there we get slightly different cultural permutations for men and women; from there a bunch of dolts **** everything up because of the Dunning Kruger effect and start being misogynistic or overly feminist.

10. That's the rumor anyway.

11. I'd actually guess that athletic people are smarter than non-athletes because they a) have more structure in their life to keep them driven, b) have a healthier body which creates a healthier mindspace, and c) are taught the virtues of ambition, hard work, and problem solving. Could be wrong. Most smart people I know at least enjoy a morning run. Lots of fat nerds think they're way smarter than they are because they have to latch on to that aspect of their personality since they don't have looks going for them. Again, these are questions for sociologists, not set miners.

12. Currently, marijuana should probably be more legal than alcohol and tobacco. In a utopia people wouldn't use drugs, so eventually the answer will be: Legality won't matter, people will just be smart enough to realize it's a suboptimal activity and won't do it.

13. Nah not really with the advent of the internet.

14. I dunno, veganism feels more like a fashion trend than anything. Life is a conquest for resources.

15. I mean it's already similar to a pissing the ocean type thing. Minimizing cognitive dissonance is what's at stake here. I eat the amount of meat and type of meat that minimizes my cognitive dissonance.

16. I don't think it's noble but I also don't think it's ignoble. Things are how they are and market forces will sort things out.

17. Obviously not. The opposite applies as well.

18. I don't think high IQ = liberal views, but I would agree that high IQ = less bigoted views. Making broad, sweeping, hateful, emotionally charged statements (a.k.a. bigotry) is an inherently low IQ thing to do for a lot of reasons.

19. Yeah sure, but it doesn't have to do with any phrenology. Say you had an island full of white people that had poor resources and dumb cultural ideas, and then an island full of black people that had excellent resources and great cultural ideas, I'd gladly take the IQ of a black person over a white person in that example.

20. No, they're just results oriented guessers and deceivers who prey on the dull imaginations of morons. Might be wrong, but our best scientific theories right now imply that this stuff is all fantastical voodoo crap.

21. In an optimized society, everything would be legal and people would just be smart and cooperative enough to not do stupid ****. In our current society? Probably should be illegal— but double check with a sociologist.

22. No of course not. To believe one ape on this floating rock has figured out the magical doctrine of the universe is absolutely ****ing ridiculous. Anyone who thinks they know it all or have some system of knowing it all is a lunatic (and I'd love to play them HU along with Stu)

23. None of the above, applying generic, platitudinous descriptors to oneself is as low IQ / low quality as it gets.

24. Highly correlated.

25. Less virtuous, mostly because they're generally dumber but also because being brainwashed by religion skews one's ability to lucidly think through ethical decisions

Don't know enough about it but if it's done OK this long.............

Those who are regular voters are certainly more civic minded and involved than those who aren't. Going to vote is a good thing.

What does this mean? Is 'best country in the world' the same as 'USA#1!!!!' or do you mean overall in some sense. If it's the latter I think it's at least in the running.


I'd suppose that he trained using killing blows and you've allowed him HIS style. That's 'finger through the eyeball' stuff. I wouldn't want to fight him.[/quote]

Does Stu get to use all of the software those players do?

Unknown.[/quote]

That union membership has shrunk so significantly ought to mean that they're bad on balance.[/quote]

The way is was originally sold to us, yes. What it's turned into, no.[/quote]

Wow, is this what things have come to in some circles?[/quote]

IDK. But there's an incredible story of a local woman born w/o arms. She goes to the supermarket on her own, gets stuff off of the shelves and can actually use her toes w/ great dexterity to be able to pay w/ cash or cc. If she could do that then sure, but I wouldn't be surprised to find that it's not 'hear better' than 'interpret what you hear better.'

Never gave this one a thought and, if this is a thing, lol.

Yes.[/quote]

Yes, but only in the sense that it is likely to put you in contact w/ those who will offer it. More temptation, more falling for it.[/quote]

There weren't any damn vegans when we got going, were there? If you didn't help spear animals you starved. Hell w/ the damn vegans.[/quote]

I'd keep eating meat.[/quote]

[quote[16) Do you think it is a noble and worthwhile pursuit to try and keep foreign people out of your country so that there are more and better jobs for you and your friends, family, and countrymen? Or do you think that your geographical neighbors should have just as much right to the things you have in the country you were born in?[/quote]

They've got the same right to 'things' as everybody else does and can make the things themselves if they put in the effort.[/quote]

Taken the way it's asked, yes. There's always some cherry picking in this type of question: 'Can a woman firefighter carry as much dead weight as a male' sort of thing. The answer is, yes, some women can but you're question is much too broad.[/quote]

Dershewitz said that Ted Cruz was his most brilliant student.[/quote]

I'll take w/e the evidence proves. AFAIK, this topic is so radioactive that no scientist that values their reputation will go near it. If it turned out that there IS a difference, and that scientist publishes, his life will be turned upside down.[/quote]

Not me but that hasn't stopped me from allowing mom to spend $150 on one of the charlatans on the Boardwalk in A.C. in order to put a curse on her sister-in-law. True story.[/quote]

I'm for legalizing the less deadly drugs. I'd keep a fringe drug like Angel Dust illegal but I'd expect that hardly anybody would use it w/ all of the other drugs being legal.[/quote]

No.

I laugh at them all.[/quote]

Who wouldn't assume highly correlated?[/quote]

[quote[25) Are religious people typically more, less, or equally morale and "good" in their interactions with others and their values?[/quote]

This is the toughest question and would make a great thread. There's really 'some of this' and 'some of that' regarding the interactions/values.

[/QUOTE]

[sez Howard]

Howard nails it. Now he just has to nail that 17-year old school girl next door (if there is one).