http://evonomics.com/economist-says-higher-iq-people-are-nicer-and-more-cooperative/

As is often the case with both science and the media we end up deriving from it, the findings are data. Data is interesting. But data does not produce its own conclusions. And here, the conclusions are .. at best, confused.

Articles such as this one may inadvertently reinforce reinforce lethal biases and models of humanity and relation, and this damage is exaggerated wildly by the ‘added authority’ of ‘published research’.

The problem is: data isn’t interpretation, and this interpretation is woefully misfounded. The authority is thus misplaced, and our entire worldview is thus falsely redirected in a way that damages, rather than extends our understanding, intelligence, humanity and potential.

My position is this: it is not »merely that more intelligent people are necessarily more kind or generous, which may or may not prove out on more careful and intelligent analysis — rather, it is that intelligent people (not ‘smart’, »intelligent) are aware of a feature of reality that analysts misframe at the first move. Intelligent people realize that there is not really any such thing »as an individual. And so, rather than doing a bunch of math about discrete players, they are aware of something every organism on Earth understands:

We »invent each other in relation. This is the ‘active creative’ position, rather than the ‘passive-speculative’ profiteer. For the intelligent person, the possibility of »relational profit always outweighs the test-token that the researchers are depending upon for their analytical purchase. So, essentially, the intelligent people »are playing an entirely different game. A game that has nothing to do with static identities, roles, or rewards. An invention. A composition. Where the ‘frameworks’ serve, primarily, to inform us how to warp, transform, or leverage them… to experience actual humanity, actual relation, and actual presence in and as living beings on Earth.

This is one fundamental difference in play, whether or not the idea that ‘intelligent people are more kind’ proves out…

By the way, notice that the Author’s title is a lot more interesting than this media piece: Hive Mind: How Your Nation’s IQ Matters So Much More Than Your Own

Think carefully about what he is saying: our cohort’s intelligence matters. Probably more than our own… which means that if we want a chance to even understand what intelligence is or may be, we must establish cohorts that do not attack it on sight, counterfeit it for profit and domination, or simply make it impossible to discover.

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“The game has just two players, each making one choice. They can’t see each other, and they never know who they’re actually playing; in most cases, they’re just facing a computer terminal. First, Player 1 starts with $5; he then decides how much of his money (if any!) to send to Player 2 and how much to keep for himself. If some of the money is sent over, the money sent magically triples in value. So if Player 1 sent over $2, Player 2 now has $6. Player 2 now gets to decide how much money to return to Player 1; she can return nothing and keep all $6, she can return all $6 and keep nothing for herself, or she can do something in between. Since McCabe and coauthors invented this experiment, it’s been run numerous times: most players return just about the amount that Player 1 sent over—in other words, the average person is trustworthy, but no philanthropist.

Most people are interested in the question of “Who reciprocates? Who is trustworthy?” But here we’re interested not in Player 2 but in Player 1: Who’s the biggest sucker? Who takes the chance on sending money over—without a formal contract, without being able to even see the other person? Wouldn’t we expect players with lower IQ scores to naively send over cash, in the hope that Player 2 will be generous? Wouldn’t we expect a higher-IQ Player 1 to figure out that Player 2 has no incentive to be kind? We might, but in fact, Rustichini found just the opposite: the higher-IQ students in truck-driving school sent over more money than their classmates with lower IQs. So smarter players are more likely to start off by playing nice.”