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Aswad -> RE: Dinosaurs (8/16/2012 4:16:50 PM)
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The two approaches measure different things, and in different ways. IQ measures a vague quantity in a statistical manner. MHC is an exact quantity that reveals the order of complexity of thought a person is capable of, which is not an age normalized metric, or even a normalized metric in any other sense. It is objective capability, organized into a hierarchy based on the complexity of tasks. In it, each level is necessary but insufficient to complete tasks of the next higher order of complexity. In the computational sense, you could of course emulate a higher level, but humans are- as you point out- poor computers. We have limited memory and a modern laptop is able to perform on the order of one hundred million level 0 tasks in the time it takes a human to perform any task whatsoever. The problem being we don't perform less complex tasks any faster than more complex tasks, as a rule. Either we can perform them as is, or we need pen and paper and structured work to break down the more complex task to a less complex series of tasks. Intuition cannot be emulated, as far as I know. Novelty is the gray area between the known and the intuited.
In ethics, any child of a certain age can grasp why it is wrong to steal the other kids' toys. They might not have the moral fortitude to resist the temptation, but they get it pretty early on, if raised well. However, even most adults have trouble doing more complex ethics without policies and guidelines to show them how to effectively behave ethically in a global perspective. If one is capable of a certain order of complexity, however, choosing the right brands of clothing to correctly influence the economic development in a region so that it ceases to cause another region to have an increased reliance on fossil fuels... well... that becomes as obvious as not stealing candy from a baby.
It has been explained to me over the years that- and I'm only now starting to slowly accept it- if you tell an average person to take your money and set out to put you on the moon within a decade or two without hiring any labor more complex than assembly and machining, then they will supposedly be at a loss as to where to even begin to solve the task. I find that difficult to relate to. As far as I'm concerned, it should be a perfectly feasible proposition if your wallet is big enough, and I would simply be happy to have a so interesting project to work on and be looking forward to taking your hand for that great leap onto the lunar surface before we head back. I might be concerned about the time table, and would wonder why you didn't pick the more cost effective and speedy route of hiring professionals, but I wouldn't have questions about whether we would actually get there and safely.
Given this dawning acceptance of such a seemingly strange state of affairs, I also find it particularly troubling that some people do not seem to get that I am a babbling idiot with next to no knowledge of anything, a slow mind, a poor memory and abysmal skills. It seems part of this is because I'm able to get that certain things should be obvious, even though I'm not up to figuring them out, and because I have scratched the surface of enough fields to get a sense of how infinitesmal my knowledge is and what potential humans can have. According to certain professionals, I have an acute self insight, and part of that is knowing that when you don't have enough peers to double check your reasoning, you are prone to making mistakes and getting lost in dead end thinking. This makes it extraordinarily difficult for me to trust myself, because I keep hearing how I'm supposed to be smarter than most, which just leads to that scary place where I have ideas that throw any semblance of common sense out the window and find myself with few to no people to double check those ideas, while being unable to find the flaws in them myself.
Which is fine when it comes to stuff like global politics, of which I am blissfully ignorant. I'm fine with a cabin in the woods and a hunting permit. It's also fine when it comes to things like religion, where most of my ideas do not come into conflict with the law, and none of them come into conflict with observable evidence. It's troubling, but still fine, when it comes to me pondering the wisdom of universal voting rights. I'm not a politician, not in a position to change the system, not of a mind that government has the task of mothering its citizens, and pretty much a live and let live liberal individualist. No problem.
It's not quite as fine when it comes to stuff like consent and kink.
There, the buck stops with me.
And sometimes the conclusions I arrive at are at odds with the conclusions others have arrived at. And I still can't find the flaws, or the people that can find them for me. Or the possibilities I come up with are downright wrong to pursue, but then I can't seem to figure out why, except that there's a consensus in a particular direction, partly based on a demonstrably flawed foundation. Worse yet: how far do I trust myself and allow myself to make judgments on behalf of a girl that's willing to leave it all to me, but who can't see how thin the ice is where I'm at, or even grasp a fraction of what I could do with her already-given consent without her being able to see what I'm doing and where we're going?
For that matter, just to dance close to the edge of the TOS without jumping across, how do I grade the difference between the ability to consent of a girl of- say- eighteen, and one of- say- thirty, when I can see neither of them have the capacity for what I would consider informed consent by my own standard? I know I can do more with a girl that has less baggage, more remaining capacity for adaptation and a brain that isn't anywhere near set in its ways yet. But I also know that means the damage I can do, intentionally or not, is that much greater. And the importance of making the right choices is similarly higher.
Give me an eager pet of less than 24 years of age, and I may well be able to show you a whole new meaning of pet, and one that is happy about it. But is it right? Can I trust myself with that? I've dabbled enough in psychiatry to know how to take a mind apart and reassemble it in ways it will not end up on its own, and in many cases would not be possible for a randomly chosen pdoc to rearrange back to a normal configuration without incurring collateral damages to the psyche that I would consider unacceptable. Even if consent is present at every point along the way, though, if the wrong person decides the outcome is pathological by the statistically defined standards of normality, then force will be brought to bear to place that person in the hands of precisely a randomly chosen pdoc to "reconstruct" in a destructive and empirical fashion with the sole purpose of making them able to be alone and survive that way. And the latter process would take place without- indeed against- consent, with force and restraint if necessary, and possibly drugs.
For that matter, how do you treat consent when you're able to change what a person will consent to without them ever revoking it at any point along the way?
I'm not losing sleep over it, but I'm certainly not automatically comfortable with the idea, which I realize has absolutely nothing to do with dinosaurs.
Gah, a piece of fuckmeat is so much simpler...
IWYW,
— Aswad.
ETA: Yes, I'm rambling incoherently with no rhyme or reason. The first paragraph was the answer/reply.
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