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A Citation to Asimov

bookandsword.com

57 pointsspeckx21 comments

In a moment of weakness, I joined a high-IQ group (Triple Nine Society). The whole mailing list was just people having the same political arguments that were on the rest of social media, just with a bigger vocabulary.

A sense of superiority due to status (including race, wealth, etc), and ability, is a stepping stone on the way to lessening the worth, and so humanity, of others.

Doesn't that conclusion make you feel somewhat superior to people who don't share it? If not, shouldn't it?

Not if it's an observation.

Why wouldn't you feel superior to people less observant than yourself? Does a more observant person not have a greater worth, all else equal?

To be clear, do you think everyone has equal worth, from the greatest ecologist or humanitarian to the most vegetative coma patient? If so you are being consistent. But that seems to limit value to self-worth, and ignore value to others.

I might misunderstand your comment since English is not my mother tongue, but worth regarding what? If you need a poem, an engineer might be worthless; if I need a bridge, I wouldn’t call a poet.

The greatest ecologist and the patient in coma have the same worth as in “both have the same right to live, to be happy, etc.”.

No. As an educator (HS Maths) in order to effectively both educe and induce understanding it's never about feeling superior. That feeling is so very obstructive to a student's willingness to listen and perhaps more importantly to the deeper intrinsic satisfaction I get when a student says "OH! I get it!"

That's a really interesting question. I guess I can't judge myself without bias, and I've most often been told I'm too hard on myself. So again the answer would be no.

I was a HS math teacher too. When a student gets to "OH! I get it!", I think that they feel superior to themselves a minute ago, and to also to their buddy who doesn't get it yet, and those things are not really separable. And both feelings act as positive motivation, along with the intrinsic joy of understanding. You can ask them to indulge the later and ignore the former, but not with an expectation of success.

Some of my best students were motivated by their competitiveness with someone else in the class.

Yes. Exactly.

It's human nature. We just love to belong to a group of people and think it's the bestest group of people ever.

Thanks to that we have a pretty advanced society, unlike any other being on the planet. And we also have ethnic cleansings, religious prosecution, terrorism... Also unlike any other being on the planet.

Chimps do a kind of ethnic cleansing.

Animals have cliques, fight, go to war, the only reason Man stands out, is because he is good at making better weapons.

Something I find really ironic is when people will declare superior and inferior types of humans, then in the same breath relate it to evo-psych or animal behaviors.

Like if any of us are superior, why can't we reason past what chimps are doing in their evolutionary local maxima?

In order for us to be superior to anything, we need to be able to use logic to move past animalistic behaviors.

->It's human nature. We just love to belong to a group of people and think it's the bestest group of people ever.

And this is also where Human conflict originates from. Any conflict of any kind. Bestest group decides being right is no longer enough, the other side must also be made to lose. A smaller group feels marginalized, they recruit and reach to grab power. Rest of humanity is horrified and organizes against it. Peace is restored, we sign treaties and build monuments. And then the cycle repeats.

All that to say, humans are fundamentally flawed but kind of magical beings given we have survived all cycles for over 2 million years now

I agree that a sense of belonging is a foundational need for humans.

I disagree that the fulfillment of this need must beget violence.

If as a culture we de-emphasized dominion over others, de-emphasized reward and punishment, and instead emphasized respect to oneself and others, there would be a lot less violence.

// I became uncomfortably aware that Mensans, however high their paper IQ might be, were likely to be as irrational as anyone else.

This reminds me of Asimov persuading his own children not to have children because he decided that population growth was an issue.

Reading I, Asimov as a kid immediately converted me from a Southern Baptist to humanist/atheist.

I'm sad that atheist discourse has moved away from Vonnegut/Sagan/Le Guin-style humanism. Starting with Hitchens, prominent intellectuals seem like they hate God more than they believe in people.

Are there any current writers or public figures that have taken up the human-loving atheism of my youth?

> Are there any current writers or public figures that have taken up the human-loving atheism of my youth?

Many. Kim Stanley Robinson for instance.

Asimov appeared to feel uncomfortable with those who thought they were better than others because of their Mensa status, and some he states were typically right-wing. I am entirely unclear though how the claimed racist ideology of John Campbell Jr is related.

> I miss Isaac Asimov, and I miss the America that created him.

An America with a typically right-wing Mensa bias (and likely upper class society)? That's the America that the author misses?

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