Does intelligence and education correlate with being a good person?

[noname223]

I read an article that says no according to empirical evidence.

It was the article that led me to post this infamous poll that destroyed my legacy on here forever. I chickened out and deleted the poll because it made me look like a psychopath. I got ratioed. I am not good at doing damage control for still talking about it.

You know I met this extremely educated quantum physics professor that still haunts me. I really admired him. I had the feeling he was an extremely good person. But I have the feeling this wasn't caused by the fact by his intelligence.

I often have a notion in my mind what I would like to be like. I would like to be more like him. And less like me. It hurt he considered me a polar opposite to him.

I think maybe my thinking is skewed. I would like to be this highly reflected and self-aware guy that often shares funny and thought provoking thoughts.
And I would like to be a good human being.

Maybe I am nothing of all of that. Maybe intelligence has nothing to do with being self-aware. It doesn't correlate from what I have read. I dated this very gifted woman and she wasn't self-aware at all. I think in my thinking I have a lot of false positives. I often think worse about myself than other people think of me. In my mind that feels like hyper self-awareness. But maybe that's just self-loathing. I think I have bad traites though.

I think intelligence has the potential to do good. But maybe many people are abusing it. I could imagine even a majority of people is abusing it in some way or the other. CEOs, politicians, achieving career goals. Maybe other character traites are more decisive. But when I look at Musk, Thiel and other billionaires I think they don't do much good with what they have.

 

[daruino]

There is a distinction made between IQ and EQ. I think this explains how highly intelligent people can still be corrupt and those of lower/average intelligence can also be very good people.

I think to be a "good" person there's some role of having to reflect on your actions and mentalize how others feel. I think it's self explanatory that intelligence would be necessary for that. On the other hand; my friend has a brother with a major intellectual disability. He is very kind, and i would say a good person. Truly, always very sweet, helpful, and empathetic. He can definitely tell if someone is feeling off and will do something to try to make them feel better. But: this is someone who cannot count to 10.

Ultimately I would say multiple factors are involved- difficult to see a correlation with just intelligence.

 

[Always-in-trouble]

I read an article that says no according to empirical evidence.

It was the article that led me to post this infamous poll that destroyed my legacy on here forever. I chickened out and deleted the poll because it made me look like a psychopath. I got ratioed. I am not good at doing damage control for still talking about it.

You know I met this extremely educated quantum physics professor that still haunts me. I really admired him. I had the feeling he was an extremely good person. But I have the feeling this wasn't caused by the fact by his intelligence.

I often have a notion in my mind what I would like to be like. I would like to be more like him. And less like me. It hurt he considered me a polar opposite to him.

I think maybe my thinking is skewed. I would like to be this highly reflected and self-aware guy that often shares funny and thought provoking thoughts.
And I would like to be a good human being.

Maybe I am nothing of all of that. Maybe intelligence has nothing to do with being self-aware. It doesn't correlate from what I have read. I dated this very gifted woman and she wasn't self-aware at all. I think in my thinking I have a lot of false positives. I often think worse about myself than other people think of me. In my mind that feels like hyper self-awareness. But maybe that's just self-loathing. I think I have bad traites though.

I think intelligence has the potential to do good. But maybe many people are abusing it. I could imagine even a majority of people is abusing it in some way or the other. CEOs, politicians, achieving career goals. Maybe other character traites are more decisive. But when I look at Musk, Thiel and other billionaires I think they don't do much good with what they have.

It couldn't have bad been that bad if mods did not did anything about that poll, could have been just a poor presentation of your question to which people jumped to conclusions. You seem to regret it heavily whatever it was so it should be fine
.

 

[noname223]

It couldn't have bad been that bad if mods did not did anything about that poll, could have been just a poor presentation of your question to which people jumped to conclusions. You seem to regret it heavily whatever it was so it should be fine
.

This is in some ways a joke. I think it wasn't that bad. But I worry too much about what other people think of me and deleted it.

 

[slowlydying2mrrw]

Look up Mengele's research on DNA and General Ishii's medical studies of live autopsies and the medical breakthroughs they discovered for humanity.

 

[Hvergelmir]

Does intelligence and education correlate with being a good person?

I think so, up to a point.
Intelligence and education correlates with comfort and abundance, and with that it's much easier to be good. (Very broadly speaking.)

But when I look at Musk, Thiel and other billionaires I think they don't do much good with what they have.

Musk and Thiel don't seem to have exceptional intelligence or education.
When we do look at actual geniuses in the Mensa statistics, we also see that Mensa members are quite diverse, in terms of their professional accomplishments.

I think it's a mistake to read too much into the behaviors of a few super rich individuals. Musk and Thiel are in no way representative of intelligent or highly educated individuals, at large.

I think it wasn't that bad. But I worry too much about what other people think of me and deleted it.

You're making me very curious about what that poll was about.

 

[noname223]

You're making me very curious about what that poll was about.

I read an article where a researched elaborated on dark triad traites. And he gave one example they make experiments where participants could be mean without being observed. He gave an example which wasn't well defined in my opinion. Would you rather crush a bug or clean a dirty toilet? My take was it depends on the context variables. Is it a really dirty public toilet? And is the bug maybe vermin. But I had the opinion I could see myself crushing the bug under certain conditions. And I got ratioed for it. Lol. And deleted it when realizing that.

 

[Pluto]

 

[OnceTheHappiestMan]

The problem is that for this question it is easy to fall down on the semantic well of what does good mean, and how it is subjective or at least heavily culturally influenced, and so on, you know the kind of arguments that remove all the fun of discussions.

But anyway, I'd say that for educated people it should be easier to be seen as good, but not necessarily be, as they know better what is expected of them to be perceived as such.

Intelligent people per se, I'm not so sure, the only mensa member I know personally is not particularly god, nor bad, a flawed person as any of us (and a great friend). Actually not a few intelligent people usually have some social traits that makes them be perceived as weird and untrustful because of that.

But again I'm repeating myself and saying that goodness is a perception instead of an intrinsic property of humans... and I have just seen that @Pluto has just said exactly the same thing in a much concise, elegant and funny way, making my message irrelevant .

 

[Forever Sleep]

I don't think there's necessarily much correlation. I've known people I consider to be good and not so great who had varying levels of intelligence/ education.

One of the best, kindest people I've known was really embarassed about his lack of education. That doesn't mean he wasn't intelligent though. It's more that his life didn't pan out that way.

I suppose it depends what you call 'good' too. Giving to charity is good. But then, people who've perpetrated the most terrible crimes have given to charity as a kind of smoke screen or maybe, out of guilt.

It's interesting why we value people though. Like- your professor. Why was he so good in your eyes? Did he nurture talent? Was he kind to people? Generous with his time and knowledge? But then, he knowingly or unknowingly caused you to doubt yourself. Is that a kind, good action?

It's funny, what we admire. A family member admires other strong women but to me, they come across as borderline harsh/ callous. I also think you can be strong without being overly assertive.

I think it partly depends how much respect we have for one another. It's that I find that tends to influence more how kind we are to one another. I've come across highly intelligent people who assumed they were better than everyone else- so- treated others poorly. Others though, who valued everyone. I think it's far more to do with our personality- rather than how clever we are.