Intelligence: Micro vs. Macro Perspectives

So, here's the thing—some smart people are straight-up villains, but let's be real, not every bad person out there has a high IQ. I wouldn't go so far as to say there’s a direct cause-and-effect link between being evil and being brilliant. Honestly, you've got plenty of folks who are just plain malicious or even a bit dim, but they lack the actual mental horsepower to pull off anything sophisticated. And look, we really need to stop treating high intelligence like it's some kind of monster under the bed. At the end of the day, what actually makes someone a solid member of society—or even just a decent human being on a spiritual level—isn't just their brainpower. It's their heart, their grit, their temperament, all that stuff. Plus, if we're talking about "intelligence," we have to remember it isn't just one single thing. You can have a killer or a master manipulator who is terrifyingly good at logical reasoning, yet they might be completely bankrupt when it comes to emotional intelligence or understanding themselves. There are layers to this, you know?

analogwalker8 said:So, here's the thing—some smart people are straight-up villains, but let's be real, not every bad person out there has a high IQ. I wouldn't go so far as to say there’s a direct cause-and-effect link between being evil and being brilliant. Honestly, you've got plenty of folks who are just plain malicious or even a bit dim, but they lack the actual mental horsepower to pull off anything sophisticated. And look, we really need to stop treating high intelligence like it's some kind of monster under the bed. At the end of the day, what actually makes someone a solid member of society—or even just a decent human being on a spiritual level—isn't just their brainpower. It's their heart, their grit, their temperament, all that stuff. Plus, if we're talking about "intelligence," we have to remember it isn't just one single thing. You can have a killer or a master manipulator who is terrifyingly good at logical reasoning, yet they might be completely bankrupt when it comes to emotional intelligence or understanding themselves. There are layers to this, you know?

I don't know, man. I feel like the whole art of manipulation actually relies on having high emotional and intrapersonal intelligence. Empathy—which is probably what you’re getting at here—and EQ are two completely different, independent gears in the machine. They aren't the same thing.

goldenjackal6 said:I don't know, man. I feel like the whole art of manipulation actually relies on having high emotional and intrapersonal intelligence. Empathy—which is probably what you’re getting at here—and EQ are two completely different, independent gears in the machine. They aren't the same thing.

Yeah, you hit the nail on the head there. Like, take a psychopath, for instance—they can be master manipulators because they can step right into someone else's shoes without actually *feeling* what that person is going through. It's a weird distinction. And as for intrapersonal intelligence? From what I gather, that's more about being inward-looking, doing that deep soul-searching and self-reflection stuff. That sounds way more like something a monk or a philosopher would do than some shady manipulator. I don't think those types have much time for looking in the mirror—or maybe their emotions just aren't part of the equation, so they can easily tell themselves, "Yeah, what I'm doing is bad, but hey, it's necessary to get ahead in this crazy society," or whatever excuse helps them win the fight.

At the end of the day, the main thing is that being highly intelligent doesn't automatically mean someone is "good" or "bad" when you look at them as a whole person. If we just judge based on IQ, it feels a bit too much like we're treating people like nothing more than programmed machines.

Nancy Lee84 said:I'll admit, I only catch bits and pieces of what you're saying.

Was that "srategiya" a typo or just a side effect of whatever I was rambling about?
🙂

A slip of the pen.
I actually laughed out loud and grabbed my head like, "Nooo... this is going to turn out the exact opposite of what I intended!"
My bad, definitely just a typo.

Jacob Cooper5 said:There are people out there with above-average intelligence who do nothing but cause massive damage to society.
Just look at some of the infamous criminals:
Edmund Kemper: IQ 145, serial killer, necrophile
Charlene Gallego: IQ 160, involved in serial killings and keeping sex slaves alongside her husband
Jeffrey Dahmer: IQ 145, serial killer, necrophile, cannibal
Ted Bundy IQ 135: serial rapist and brutal murderer

Now, these are just examples from the extreme end of the spectrum—but there are plenty of others who find success in high-society jobs while being absolutely devastating to everyone around them.

The whole thing about measuring intelligence relies on standardized testing, and honestly... that’s where the potential problem lies.
Those tests basically boil down to a mathematical principle of problem-solving. It's almost as if they were designed for a computer.
But even with computers, you have to feed them every single parameter involved in a situation to actually solve it. That’s impossible for humans because recognizing all the variables and their complex interactions during a process requires something much deeper than just computational efficiency.
What we *can* do is make the best possible use of the information available to us. I really think that should be the deciding factor when evaluating true intelligence.
The criminals I mentioned didn't grow up in some isolated jungle, cut off from information. Their intelligence should have been more than enough to connect their actions to the actual meaning and consequences within their own environment. The "meaning" here is that you're doing things that make people miserable—and the consequence is that unhappy people become prone to aggression and all sorts of socially destructive deviations that spread like a disease through your community. And let's be real... do you really think you'll be spared once that sickness starts spreading?

Wouldn't it make more sense to evaluate intelligence through both micro and macro perspectives? It's hard for me to accept that someone can be "above average" in intelligence if that intellect doesn't include the basic math of multiplying misery—creating an unhappy society where your own risk of becoming a victim of violence increases.

What do you guys think?

Personally, I think you're totally swinging and missing with that "macro perspective" argument.
Intelligence doesn't necessarily have anything to do with ethics or psychopathology.

Henry Sanchez2 said:Personally, I think you're totally swinging and missing with that "macro perspective" argument.
Intelligence doesn't necessarily have anything to do with ethics or psychopathology.

Look, ethics isn't just some abstract concept for philosophy professors to argue about in ivory towers—it's practical. It's survival. Humans survived because of intelligence, unlike other species that just rely on raw biology. We don't have thick fur to shield us from an American winter, we aren't fast enough to outrun predators, and we definitely don't have the teeth or the sheer strength to go toe-to-toe with a grizzly. Our edge? Intelligence. It allows us to band together and build complex, organized systems.
And a system works best when the people inside it actually feel like they're getting something out of the deal.
Sure, nobody is ever 100% happy, but you can judge how stable a society is by how satisfied the majority feels.
Where you see a massive, dissatisfied majority, that's where you find the rot—the corruption. Corruption is a systemic killer because it bleeds resources dry through petty individual greed while the entire structure starts to crumble under its own weight.
In a way, ethics is both the cause and the result of a functioning system. The basic idea of "don't screw over your neighbor, help them instead" is the bedrock upon which our laws are built, creating a justice system that eventually protects you from the bad actors.
To see things from that vantage point, you need real intelligence. I’d call it "forest-level" intelligence—because you have to look at the woods, not just the individual trees...