• Due to ongoing issues caused by Search, it has been temporarily disabled
  • Please excuse the mess, we're moving the furniture and restructuring the forum categories
  • You may need to edit your signatures.

    When we moved to Xenfora some of the signature options didn't come over. In the old software signatures were limited by a character limit, on Xenfora there are more options and there is a character number and number of lines limit. I've set maximum number of lines to 4 and unlimited characters.

Does it require intelligence to be a skeptic?

William Parcher

Show me the monkey!
Joined
Jul 26, 2005
Messages
26,854
I think it does. You need to know things about the topic in order to have skepticism about it. Smart people make the best skeptics.
 
Well...

Depending on the definition of intelligence I guess.

For example, a person of IQ 69 can't learn how to tie their shoes, IQ 70 and above can.

But...

I can recall a program where American children were taught critical thinking skills at a very young age (junior primary IIRC) and gained remarkable insights into the world as a result.

This will show the age of what I'm remembering, it's my best recollection of a bit of critical thinking from a very young girl that came out of the program.

Howard Cosell tells us that pine needles are nutritious.
He also tells us that Twinkies smell like pine needles.
Are we supposed to conclude that Twinkies are nutritious?
(Because that conclusion can not be drawn from those premises.)

I hope I'm remembering the details correctly.

I assumed at the time, that the girl must be responding to advertising for Twinkies, and it was many years later that I found out what Twinkies are.

(And Howard Cosell was a famous sports journalist at the time, so I'm guessing he was hired to advertise Twinkies.)

So... if really young children can learn critical thinking skills, and apply them to the world around them, it may not take a lot of intelligence.

Perhaps it just requires exposure to the toolset?

Note, in my youth, students were actively taught not to think, or reason, or criticise anything. We were taught to shut-up, memorise and obey.

So my early education was a full-on fight from day one.

Very fortunately, I had a friendly school librarian (in primary school) and she had friends who worked in the local public library. So I was able to get an education despite the schools' best efforts. (Primary school was a series of battles, High School was a full-on war.)

:)
 
I don't think you need enormous intellect, or intelligence about everything to do an intelligent thing, but more or less by definition doing something intelligent is not a stupid act. So yes, I think it requires at least a modicum, at least occasionally, of intelligence to approach an issue intelligently, but I also think saying so is not saying very much.
 
I think it does. You need to know things about the topic in order to have skepticism about it. Smart people make the best skeptics.


I would disagree. First off, "knowing things" is not synonymous with being intelligent. Moreover, skepticism is more about knowing how to assess the reliability of information. I don't know all that much about sub-atomic particle physics, but I can still reach "skeptically sound" conclusions about cold fusion.

Skepticism is a process, not an intelligence measure.
 
I think it does. You need to know things about the topic in order to have skepticism about it. Smart people make the best skeptics.

Here's the flip-side to this statement:

I worked as a salesman in a high-end toy store for 14 years. I found my sales-manipulation skills worked better on educated people than on "Joe Sixpack". Smart people are often easier to deceive than less-smart people because, because they often don't have good BS filters. Less-than-smart people usually have over-developed BS filters that require creativity to manipulate.

Where you are right, in your perception of the slower set, is that these over-developed BS filters take the place of reason, and knowledge. This leaves them immune to facts. Their information must travel through a narrow path of "trusted" sources, and this path does not extend into deep or serious thinking skills.

But the fact is that smart-people can be manipulated into believing crazy things with the right buzzwords, presented in the right format, by sources who appeal to their intellectual egos. A prime example of this is Robert Kennedy Jr. A highly educated man who is deep in the woo. In the same way the less-smart people are obtuse to reason, his ego and intellect blind him from basic, big-picture facts.

IMO, a good skeptic frequently questions their own intelligence more than anything else.
 
Yes.
At least, you have to be able to simultaneously hold the the old and the new concept/data in your mind and compare them from various angles.
This is generally a very difficult task for people of very low IQ.
 
If 'intelligence' means 'critical thinking', then, yes.
But it doesn't. They are separate skills. And while intelligence is innate, skepticism is learned.

arthwollipot said:
And your definition of 'smart'?
Since the OP uses it interchangebly with 'intelligence' I'll go by the dictionary definition, which is:-
"having or showing a high degree of mental ability : intelligent, bright".​

It's not always used in that sense though.

Why a high IQ doesn't mean you're smart
IQ tests are very good at measuring certain mental faculties, he says, including logic, abstract reasoning, learning ability and working-memory capacity - how much information you can hold in mind.

But the tests fall down when it comes to measuring those abilities crucial to making good judgements in real-life situations. That's because they are unable to assess things such as a person's ability to critically weigh up information, or whether an individual can override the intuitive cognitive biases that can lead us astray...

In a study of 360 Pittsburgh residents aged between 18 and 88, her team found that, regardless of differences in intelligence, those who displayed better rational-thinking skills suffered significantly fewer negative events in their lives...

Andrew Parker, now with the Rand Corporation in Pittsburgh, and Baruch Fischhoff at Carnegie Mellon found a similar association among adolescents. Those who scored higher on a test of decision-making competence drank less, took fewer drugs and engaged in less risky behaviour overall... This suggests that rational thinking may be more important than intelligence for positive life experiences, Fischhoff says.
 
This is why I take with a grain of sand pretty much anything making declarative statements about "intelligence". I'm not sure it even has a clear and useful definition at this point.
 
I think being an effective skeptic requires a certain level of scientific and statistical literacy, which in turn requires a certain level of intelligence. Without that literacy, the best a skeptic can often do is accept the expert consensus. That's especially problematic today, because so much of what is promulgated as the expert consensus is tainted by political orthodoxy.
 
Here's the flip-side to this statement:

I worked as a salesman in a high-end toy store for 14 years. I found my sales-manipulation skills worked better on educated people than on "Joe Sixpack". Smart people are often easier to deceive than less-smart people because, because they often don't have good BS filters. Less-than-smart people usually have over-developed BS filters that require creativity to manipulate.

Where you are right, in your perception of the slower set, is that these over-developed BS filters take the place of reason, and knowledge. This leaves them immune to facts. Their information must travel through a narrow path of "trusted" sources, and this path does not extend into deep or serious thinking skills.

But the fact is that smart-people can be manipulated into believing crazy things with the right buzzwords, presented in the right format, by sources who appeal to their intellectual egos. A prime example of this is Robert Kennedy Jr. A highly educated man who is deep in the woo. In the same way the less-smart people are obtuse to reason, his ego and intellect blind him from basic, big-picture facts.

IMO, a good skeptic frequently questions their own intelligence more than anything else.

Whilst I broadly agree with the point you are making, we should be careful about making sweeping generalisations. It could just be that the relatively uneducated person who left school at sixteen, has less disposable income to spend on 'luxury' goods, whereas the seemingly 'smart' (read = educated) person might just not care if the toy you are flogging turns out to have a one-day novelty value for the kids as what is worth $1 to the poor, is a cent to the richer person.

In addition, there is the concept of empathy, which may or may not be related to being easily manipulated. It is possible that some people bought the toys you were offering because they felt sorry for you and your obvious sales pitch. I once made the mistake of equating gullibility with class (read = education level; well-spokeness; well-dressed/heeled) so I was pleasantly disabused of this notion when I once went around local pubs to raise money for striking journalists (NUJ). The sheer number of ordinary 'common people' who put their hands in their pocket with nary a murmur or a second thought, was truly touching, especially when one assumes that these were people hwo had struggles with bills, housing and employment, etc. I was diffidently expecting people to tell me to '**** off and tell those lazy bastards to get back to work!' so moral learned: kindness and empathy is not correlated with wealth, intelligence or level of education.
 
Here's the flip-side to this statement:

I worked as a salesman in a high-end toy store for 14 years. I found my sales-manipulation skills worked better on educated people than on "Joe Sixpack". Smart people are often easier to deceive than less-smart people because, because they often don't have good BS filters. Less-than-smart people usually have over-developed BS filters that require creativity to manipulate.

Where you are right, in your perception of the slower set, is that these over-developed BS filters take the place of reason, and knowledge. This leaves them immune to facts. Their information must travel through a narrow path of "trusted" sources, and this path does not extend into deep or serious thinking skills.

But the fact is that smart-people can be manipulated into believing crazy things with the right buzzwords, presented in the right format, by sources who appeal to their intellectual egos. A prime example of this is Robert Kennedy Jr. A highly educated man who is deep in the woo. In the same way the less-smart people are obtuse to reason, his ego and intellect blind him from basic, big-picture facts.

IMO, a good skeptic frequently questions their own intelligence more than anything else.

I read a paper some years back showing how smart people can be fooled because, amongst some other reasons, they think they are too smart to be fooled. Consider the heyday of parapsychology research where we can find video of physicists positing a 6th force to explain sleight of hand tricks.
So far even google scholar can only find a few papers with just abstracts available and no meat, even with unpaywall.
 
Whilst I broadly agree with the point you are making, we should be careful about making sweeping generalisations. It could just be that the relatively uneducated person who left school at sixteen, has less disposable income to spend on 'luxury' goods, whereas the seemingly 'smart' (read = educated) person might just not care if the toy you are flogging turns out to have a one-day novelty value for the kids as what is worth $1 to the poor, is a cent to the richer person.

In addition, there is the concept of empathy, which may or may not be related to being easily manipulated. It is possible that some people bought the toys you were offering because they felt sorry for you and your obvious sales pitch. I once made the mistake of equating gullibility with class (read = education level; well-spokeness; well-dressed/heeled) so I was pleasantly disabused of this notion when I once went around local pubs to raise money for striking journalists (NUJ). The sheer number of ordinary 'common people' who put their hands in their pocket with nary a murmur or a second thought, was truly touching, especially when one assumes that these were people hwo had struggles with bills, housing and employment, etc. I was diffidently expecting people to tell me to '**** off and tell those lazy bastards to get back to work!' so moral learned: kindness and empathy is not correlated with wealth, intelligence or level of education.

A bit of a correlation of your first point, I think, is how often we hear crackpot schemes and pursuits advocated because supposedly smart and rich sponsors have signed on and thrown in funding. If a scheme promises enormous payouts in return for an investment of tax deductible pocket change, you can afford to be careless and to abandon skepticism.

Of course it can get complicated, as Axxman suggests, because if you base your opinion on what someone supposedly smart and savvy supports, that can be pretty stupid, so round and round we go.
 
I don't think you have to be particularly "smart", whatever that means, to be a skeptic. But it helps. You'd be a better skeptic if you have a lot of data in your memory, and can manipulate it well, and provide a more detailed analysis. But I think it's pretty easy for a lower watt bulb to have a powerful BS detector, even if he doesn't know the Latin phrases and fifty cent words to describe why it's BS.
 
I am not even sure if it is to do with having a lot of data in your memory. Schools can teach 'critical thinking', logic and how to spot fake news and disinformation. IMV the true path to scepticism is via the school of life. So, come teenage years, there is a light bulb moment, 'Hey, they lied to me. Father Christmas isn't real. England isn't the only country in the world. Superman is ridiculous, with his "truth, justice and the American way", as he flies through the air eliminating the baddies.'

All those years you savoured your comics and tv shows and then you see behind the veil as it were, and as one moment of so-called 'truth' turns out to be a lie, then one begins to question everything. It's no coincidence that the great rebels of our day, Rimbaud, Icarus, Extinction Rebellion, CND, Jobs not Bombs, let's go to San Franscisco, etcetera, are the young generation, exhilarated in discovering that they world isn't what it was claimed to be and they lied about going to hell if you did x y or z.


I recall an amusing moment when I was at the cinema, when a group of kids behind me started shouting out sarcastic comments at the screenplay. I realised that the ring leader was...my own 14-year-old kid. Of course, I didn't mortify him by letting him know I was there!
 
Yeah, and we all know people with street smarts who can see right through a hustle. True skeptics by any measure, sophisticated or not.
 
I'm sure there's some lower bound but there is no evidence to my knowledge that smarter people are better sceptics. There is evidence that smarter and better educated skeptics are better rationalizers of false beliefs though.
 
I used to provide construction reports for low-rent litigations. Never ceased to amaze me how transparent the ruses were, both with very smart and successful customers getting fleeced, and the adversary's expert transparently lying. I mean, the smell of the bull **** was choking.

There was one binding arbitration where our adversary gave detailed testimony about a structural foundation crack 3/4" wide. That's serious. The engineer he hired as an expert provided pictures which, sure enough, showed a monster wide gap (the pics were admitted into evidence on the fly and were not previously disclosed during discovery. All parties agreed to allow them in anyway). I was panicking, trying to figure out how I had missed this. By comparing two different pictures, I was able to show (using their own submissions) that the engineer staged the lighting to create a long shadow that appeard to be a wide gap. The arbitrator agreed and my client won on that point, with the adversary's expert's opinions rejected rather harshly.

I joked with the attorney afterwards about how they could have thought such a slapstick vaudeville routine would have worked. He said the brazenness was what fools everyone (and he reminded me that I was initially questioning my own findings when I saw the pics), and that a lot of people simply don't have their radar tuned in to being blatantly scammed, and that lack of critical thinking was what was keeping our kids in college.
 
Being "intelligent" and "smart" doesn't mean you can't believe crap. It should be pointed out, more often than it is, that very "smart" "intelligent" people are very good at rationlizing, justifying belief in utter nonsense and bluntly the more "smart" "intelligent" you are the better such people are at such rationlization.
 
...snip.. and that a lot of people simply don't have their radar tuned in to being blatantly scammed, and that lack of critical thinking was what was keeping our kids in college.

Randi used to say that the frauds managed to fool scientist during the 60s and 70s because scientists were not used to their experiments lying to them.
 
I used to provide construction reports for low-rent litigations. Never ceased to amaze me how transparent the ruses were, both with very smart and successful customers getting fleeced, and the adversary's expert transparently lying. I mean, the smell of the bull **** was choking.

There was one binding arbitration where our adversary gave detailed testimony about a structural foundation crack 3/4" wide. That's serious. The engineer he hired as an expert provided pictures which, sure enough, showed a monster wide gap (the pics were admitted into evidence on the fly and were not previously disclosed during discovery. All parties agreed to allow them in anyway). I was panicking, trying to figure out how I had missed this. By comparing two different pictures, I was able to show (using their own submissions) that the engineer staged the lighting to create a long shadow that appeard to be a wide gap. The arbitrator agreed and my client won on that point, with the adversary's expert's opinions rejected rather harshly.

I joked with the attorney afterwards about how they could have thought such a slapstick vaudeville routine would have worked. He said the brazenness was what fools everyone (and he reminded me that I was initially questioning my own findings when I saw the pics), and that a lot of people simply don't have their radar tuned in to being blatantly scammed, and that lack of critical thinking was what was keeping our kids in college.


Randi used to say that the frauds managed to fool scientist during the 60s and 70s because scientists were not used to their experiments lying to them.


"Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."
 
I don't think you have to be particularly "smart", whatever that means, to be a skeptic.

I'm guided by without question the two smartest blokes I ever met.

One is a theoretical neuroscientist who's led research teams across Europe and Australia.

The other makes guys like Dr Adequate look like first-graders in maths. He's a Saffer who moved to NZ and made national news as the Human Computer. He has about eight degrees.

They are both staunch christians.

Your comment about street smarts is a lot more like it.
 
Well...

(snip)
This will show the age of what I'm remembering, it's my best recollection of a bit of critical thinking from a very young girl that came out of the program.



I hope I'm remembering the details correctly.

I assumed at the time, that the girl must be responding to advertising for Twinkies, and it was many years later that I found out what Twinkies are.

(And Howard Cosell was a famous sports journalist at the time, so I'm guessing he was hired to advertise Twinkies.)
(snip)

Possibly Euell Gibbons, not Cosell. Gibbons was a natural-foods enthusiast who did TV ads for Grape-Nuts that began, "Did you ever eat a pine tree? Many parts ARE edible."
 
Whilst I broadly agree with the point you are making, we should be careful about making sweeping generalisations. It could just be that the relatively uneducated person who left school at sixteen, has less disposable income to spend on 'luxury' goods, whereas the seemingly 'smart' (read = educated) person might just not care if the toy you are flogging turns out to have a one-day novelty value for the kids as what is worth $1 to the poor, is a cent to the richer person.

And here you are making sweeping generalizations.

At the time I lived and worked in Carmel, California. Education does not always equal wealth. Two of my wealthiest customers, Steve Jobs, and Lindsey Buckingham, were college dropouts. My "educated" customers (doctors, lawyers, architects) tended to be the ones who were less likely to waste money, and tended to buy thoughtful toys such as puzzles, board games, and stuff from the science table.

In addition, there is the concept of empathy, which may or may not be related to being easily manipulated. It is possible that some people bought the toys you were offering because they felt sorry for you and your obvious sales pitch. I once made the mistake of equating gullibility with class (read = education level; well-spokeness; well-dressed/heeled) so I was pleasantly disabused of this notion when I once went around local pubs to raise money for striking journalists (NUJ). The sheer number of ordinary 'common people' who put their hands in their pocket with nary a murmur or a second thought, was truly touching, especially when one assumes that these were people hwo had struggles with bills, housing and employment, etc. I was diffidently expecting people to tell me to '**** off and tell those lazy bastards to get back to work!' so moral learned: kindness and empathy is not correlated with wealth, intelligence or level of education.

I ran the hobby department. I sold LGB garden railroad items which started at $150 and ran up to $1500. Nobody needs a huge model train. Nobody bought one because they felt sorry for me. They bought them because they were (at the time) the best, and most unique model railroad option. It was like selling Ferraris.

I should also point out that at this time, I attended monthly UFO meetings at the local metaphysical bookstore. There were between 12 and 20 people attending these meetings, I was one of three who did not have a college education. Members ran the range from comptrollers, real estate agents, insurance claims adjusters, artists, and office workers. I was eventually asked to leave because I had the nerve to ask for some kind of physical evidence.
 
Last edited:
And here you are making sweeping generalizations.

At the time I lived and worked in Carmel, California. Education does not always equal wealth. Two of my wealthiest customers, Steve Jobs, and Lindsey Buckingham, were college dropouts. My "educated" customers (doctors, lawyers, architects) tended to be the ones who were less likely to waste money, and tended to buy thoughtful toys such as puzzles, board games, and stuff from the science table.
The difference does seem to be that higher education leads to more curiosity, more questions, more seeking, deeper play.



I ran the hobby department. I sold LGB garden railroad items which started at $150 and ran up to $1500. Nobody needs a huge model train. Nobody bought one because they felt sorry for me. They bought them because they were (at the time) the best, and most unique model railroad option. It was like selling Ferraris.

I should also point out that at this time, I attended monthly UFO meetings at the local metaphysical bookstore. There were between 12 and 20 people attending these meetings, I was one of three who did not have a college education. Members ran the range from comptrollers, real estate agents, insurance claims adjusters, artists, and office workers. I was eventually asked to leave because I had the nerve to ask for some kind of physical evidence.
A witch!!! BURN!!
 
Back
Top Bottom