I think much of this list is more about left-brained versus right-brained, than intelligence per se. A lot of these green flags are rationalist-coded.
(And yes, I know the left and right halves of the brain don't literally control logic and emotion! Also, I think it's a mistake to entirely reject one's emotions in favour of cold hard logic - there's a balance to be struck.)
First, I think two people can reasonably disagree on whether a dispute is verbal or substantive, and the one who assumes it’s verbal should not always get the presumption of correctness (nor status for calling out that it is verbal). I think calling out a verbal dispute as a verbal dispute should only earn us someone’s respect if we do so paying attention to whether it is in fact verbal. This is a minor quibble, though, and maybe you agree, but just didn’t mention it? But I find it fairly common in spaces that reward trying to “deflate” problems (particularly rationalist spaces and, sometimes, philosophy spaces) that people try to treat disputes which (I think, anyway) are substantive as verbal. Maybe less common than people treating verbal disputes as substantive outside of such spaces, but should still be cautioned against.
Second, I’m not sure if these are per se signs of *intelligence* as opposed to signs of *epistemic virtue*. Epistemic virtue is easier to develop with intelligence, definitely, so these traits are some evidence of intelligence, but they are not really what I’d look for first if trying to evaluate someone’s intelligence (as opposed to their breadth of knowledge or speed of solving arithmetic problems). But maybe when saying “intellect” you meant “epistemic virtue” and not “intelligence,” in which case, that’s fine.
> disagreement at hand is about a definition, and not necessarily very substantive
The part after the "and" is certainly true. But on the first half: Ppl often dismiss discussions with "that's just semantics!" when the very problem the discussion is encountering is ill-defined and/or polysemous terms. It's smart to identify that and instead of dismissing, stop and agree on meanings for use in the discussion.
I find it interesting that the values reflected in green flags (e.g. skepticism) are important for *research*, while values reflected in red flags (e.g. decisiveness) are important for *disseminating knowledge*, which of course all good researcher needs to be able to do both.
1. ability to reason about things ceteris paribus, instead of arguments that go sideways from multiple moving variables
2. ability to separate the quality of a decision from its outcome.
i'm a bit more sympathetic to anecdotes, after all a large part of social life is just telling friends what happened in *your* life
I think much of this list is more about left-brained versus right-brained, than intelligence per se. A lot of these green flags are rationalist-coded.
(And yes, I know the left and right halves of the brain don't literally control logic and emotion! Also, I think it's a mistake to entirely reject one's emotions in favour of cold hard logic - there's a balance to be struck.)
Two comments:
First, I think two people can reasonably disagree on whether a dispute is verbal or substantive, and the one who assumes it’s verbal should not always get the presumption of correctness (nor status for calling out that it is verbal). I think calling out a verbal dispute as a verbal dispute should only earn us someone’s respect if we do so paying attention to whether it is in fact verbal. This is a minor quibble, though, and maybe you agree, but just didn’t mention it? But I find it fairly common in spaces that reward trying to “deflate” problems (particularly rationalist spaces and, sometimes, philosophy spaces) that people try to treat disputes which (I think, anyway) are substantive as verbal. Maybe less common than people treating verbal disputes as substantive outside of such spaces, but should still be cautioned against.
Second, I’m not sure if these are per se signs of *intelligence* as opposed to signs of *epistemic virtue*. Epistemic virtue is easier to develop with intelligence, definitely, so these traits are some evidence of intelligence, but they are not really what I’d look for first if trying to evaluate someone’s intelligence (as opposed to their breadth of knowledge or speed of solving arithmetic problems). But maybe when saying “intellect” you meant “epistemic virtue” and not “intelligence,” in which case, that’s fine.
> disagreement at hand is about a definition, and not necessarily very substantive
The part after the "and" is certainly true. But on the first half: Ppl often dismiss discussions with "that's just semantics!" when the very problem the discussion is encountering is ill-defined and/or polysemous terms. It's smart to identify that and instead of dismissing, stop and agree on meanings for use in the discussion.
I find it interesting that the values reflected in green flags (e.g. skepticism) are important for *research*, while values reflected in red flags (e.g. decisiveness) are important for *disseminating knowledge*, which of course all good researcher needs to be able to do both.