Hacker News Reader

Comment by hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm | Hacker News Reader

[flagged]

Think of it as social intelligence if the term “emotional” bothers you.

Solitary intelligence, in the wild, is just a different beast from tracking the exponential complexity of a social system. Everything we see—in biology, psychology and artificial intelligence—indicates that while these functions seem to share resources (you can't be an emotionally-intelligent idiot), they are distinct, with folks (and animals) possessing a lot of one and little of the other being observed, and their handicaps resulting from the lacking part being observeable, too,

If i get your point based on your answers: "intelligence" cannot be divided into categories. If you are intelligent, you can be trained to do whatever skill you want, its just a matter of being taught or exposed to the probelm. So it does not make sense for it to have its own category. So if you train intelligent people to be social, they will be social, its just software.

What i have seen: people can perform outstandingly well on classical intelligence without almost being taught. Think about mathematics or logic. But when you get into social/emotional territory, then it has a bigger correlation with how you were taught or your experienced when you where a small kid (but its not 100% causal). So in that sense its not the same thing.

Now, if you are unconfortable by calling it "intelligence", feel free to call it "skills". For me its the same thing as a football player having spacial awareness of the field. Sure, they have to be trained, but it is some "skill" that some people have an easier time using and improving.

Why not? I know people who are very good at feeling other people’s emotions but very poor at analyzing them.

In kids you can see it all the time - like a kid started crying because he sees others cry, but if you ask them why they cry - the explanation is always ridiculous.

But even some adults are like that, interpreting your own or even others emotions is both a skill and a talent.

>In kids you can see it all the time - like a kid started crying because he sees others cry, but if you ask them why they cry - the explanation is always ridiculous.

That's just called empathy.

Their point is that empathy is a (very useful) emotional response. It doesn't give you a correct model of the other persons mind.

Why can’t it be both? We have dedicated neural circuitry to mirroring others’ emotions, and pheromones that directly signal emotions between individuals.

It just isn't both. Emotional intelligence isn't mirroring others' emotions or smelling their pheromones, it is using the mind to actually understand rationally what is going through someone else's. It's how you can know what an octopus is thinking despite not having the neural circuitry to mirror its emotions or pick up its chemical signatures.

> It's how you can know what an octopus is thinking

You mean, it’s how you can assign anthropomorphised assumptions to the octopus. There’s a world difference between having semi reliable predictive power and actually knowing something.

Yes, exactly how you assign those assumptions to humans despite having no way of actually knowing that they have rich internal lives comparable to your own. It is the ability to simulate a mind foreign to your own and anticipate how it would respond to circumstances.

We don’t have to assume with humans. We can introspect our emotions and discuss them with others. Though we can’t be precise, we can understand and distinguish concepts like shame vs humiliation which appear to be (effectively) universal to the human experience.

That is a world apart from seeing an octopus react to something and assuming that anything resembling emotions are involved at all.

> We can introspect our emotions and discuss them with others.

And theory of mind is how you can know what someone is thinking without them telling you.

Because we have prior knowledge to rely on.

As opposed to built in neural pathways or pheromone responses.

I think your description would be perfect in describing a psychopath - i.e. someone who can rationalize and think about other beings logically, without actually being able to subconsciously empathize.

Not all people like that at all. Some people really do feel emotions of others before being able to rationalize it.

> Some people really do feel emotions of others before being able to rationalize it.

Yeah, they are called empaths. That's empathy. Rationalizing is another process, which can be done faster with high emotional/social intelligence.

> psychopath - i.e. someone who can rationalize and think about other beings logically, without actually being able to subconsciously empathize.

Exactly. Low on empathy but high on intelligence - psychopath. Low on emotional intelligence but high on empathy - empath. Low on both - unfeeling idiot. High on both - a warm kind person.

No, a psychopath is someone who can't empathize. Theory of mind has nothing to do with empathy. The overwhelming majority of people are capable of both, but they are two distinct skills.

Having met many extremely intelligent people who struggle to understand the emotional state and responses of those around them, hell yeah I think it's a distinct category.

what you're describing is a mental deficiency or illness. Being able to understand emotional state should be considered normal human behavior.

Doing math, or telling a joke, or catching a ball, or carrying a tune are all normal human behaviors. People's skills at any of them vary, and we don't refer to those with lower skill levels in that category as mentally deficient or ill.

I was thinking about what i said and regret it, it was a mistake.

> People's skills at any of them vary

exactly

We know that emotional intelligence, in the sense of Machiavellian intelligence, is really just completely normal intelligence.

The only ways that comprehending emotions wouldn't belong in its own category of intelligence would be if everyone were equally capable of deducing the emotional state of others, or that performing such deduction is not something intellectual, or that such deduction is strictly a consequence of existing intellectual categories.

>The only ways that comprehending emotions wouldn't belong in its own category of intelligence would be if everyone were equally capable of deducing the emotional state of others

Not every skill gets a whole category of intelligence.

>that such deduction is strictly a consequence of existing intellectual categories

Yes.

>Yes.

The fact that you don't list these says a lot about how much you know on this topic.

Someone could be extremely proficient in disciplines that are associated with 'raw' intelligence, and yet utterly fail at theory of mind. Anyone that has been in a college campus probably has seen examples e.g, Classmate might click instantly with real analysis but will routinely perplexed about why their girlfriend is mad, or why they are seen as abrasive.

To be clear, in my experience it wasn't even a case of being on the spectrum or other neurodivergence. They simply had a bad model of other people's thoughts and emotions. Of course this isn't DnD, I've met people a order of magnitude smarter than me in the usual academics and with a deeper understanding of people.

You might not like the terminology, but it's a real thing and can be independent from what we usually call intelligence.

you thinking selling doesn't take emotional intelligence?

Consider a computer with a cpu and gpu. The CPU is a general purpose computer. It can do literally anything. Including software rendering. But the GPU is purpose designed for graphics so it will be much more efficient at the job. These days the GPU is also a general purpose computer so it could in theory do anythign the CPU does too, but for many things again it will be less efficient.

It's the same with emotional intelligence. The brain has dedicated circuitry for understanding other people. You can reason it through abstractly but it will be less efficient. You can also solve problems about natural science with the emotional reasoning part of the brain. Ever heard the expression "the atom wants a full shell of electrons"? That's empathy.

No, it is more like software. You either grow up around others, socialise and train your intuition or you don't. To believe there is special circuitry really goes deep into the pseudoscience territory.

Emotions are just another abstract concept.

You are correct that training is necessary, but that isn't the knockout blow you think it is. It goes for many of the specialized tasks (e.g. visual processing, auditory processing, motor skills, spatial awareness) done in the brain. You are born with the potential for these things but they have to be used or they will wilt.

As for where in the brain it happens it does seem to be a little spread out, but the superior temporal sulcus has an important role.

An interesting semi-related story is that taxi drivers in London take a very hard test called The Knowledge requiring them to memorize a huge amount of city layout. Studying for this produces measurable changes in the brain, leading to an enlarged posterior hippocampus. That it consistently leads to changes of the same type across many individuals clearly indicates that the brain is allocating resources to the relevant circuitry when this learning takes place.

There are many other ways to learn about the brains specialized processing such as looking what happens when various parts of the brain get damaged, or by putting people in scanners when they perform certain tasks.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_temporal_sulcus

You're the only person here invoking "special circuitry". All intelligence is a mix of both learned and biological factors.

Plus one of the big ways we evaluate the intelligence of other species is trying to see if they have theory of mind, which is intrinsically linked to social intelligence.

Edit: Ah, the person you replied to also invoked special circuitry.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com