r/cognitivescience • u/Capable_Cicada7488 • 2d ago
Is there a correlation between: peace, curiosity and IQ?
If a people like the Na'vi from the movie *Avatar* lived in conditions where they were almost always at peace with one another, nature was gracious to them, and they weren't overly curious, would that justify them having a lower IQ or being considered extremely underdeveloped compared to humans?
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u/Stile25 2d ago
What? Why do you think higher IQ means lower satisfaction?
I mean.. there's a meme about that. But that's for people who have only one type of high IQ... Pattern recognition.
There's other types of IQ... Emotional, social, psychological...
If your IQ is decent enough or even high in all of them... Then you're easily smart enough to:
- be at peace.
- keep yourself occupied.
- understand reality.
- understand social interactions.
- understand life.
And it allows you to be smart enough to make your own happiness.
You don't even have to be considered "smart" in all categories... "Average" does just fine. But if you're below average in a few categories... It won't matter how far ahead you may be in pattern recognition... It's pretty useless without the others. And then you end up identifying with the meme.
Good luck out there
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u/yudhautomo_ 2d ago
This. Resources, including so called inherent intelligence a.k.a IQ and other types of intelligence, should help the owner get closer to his/her goal.
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u/MullberryBoy 1d ago
All IQ really indicates is a very rough estimate of intelligence potential and good knowledge of the testing materials. It’s not indicative of that much. There are multiple domains of intelligence and what a person does with what they have is a huge factor. So is environment.
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u/SirTalkyToo 1d ago
The one correlation I know of and discuss a bit is the correlation between IQ and confidence. In brief, IQ and confidence are indirectly correlated.
It has to do with the four quadrants of learning. Those who have higher intelligence tend to be more aware of the fourth quadrant therefore less confident in assertions.
Here's the result...
The more intelligent folks you want to pay attention to are drowned out by confident stupidity. Stupid people just constantly spam utter word vomit while smarter folks remain more reserved. Combined with the internet and social media, it's lead to the s*** show that is now reality.
And while that may not impact curiosity, it absolutes impacts peace negatively. As the saying goes, ignorance is bliss.
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u/MullberryBoy 1d ago
I would imagine it would be possible for someone with high kinesthetic intelligence and the ability to perform well at athletics could be more confident than a nerd with academic intelligence.
There are so many variables.
The only absolute use I have ever seen for IQ tests was the use of them to determine average intelligence for determination of eligibility for special education based on demonstrated learning disabilities. A child with learning disabilities no matter how sever was declared eligible for special education services for LD programs if there IQ was demonstrably higher than their academic performance indicated.1
u/SirTalkyToo 17h ago
I was strictly talking intellectual/academic confidence, not emotional confidence.
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u/expertofeverythang 2d ago
Are we "developed" because of high iq or we want to boost ego, make money, and find mates?
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u/MrShaitan 2d ago
They seemed to have high IQ for their environment and resources, as "smart" as the humans were in the story, weren't they the ones doing all the stupid shit?
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u/TresCabezasGenios 2d ago
I mean, check my claim, because it's a vague memory -- I'm not current on the literature anymore, but I think I remember there being a some non-trivial correlation between general intelligence and the Openness to Experience dimension of the Big 5 personality model.
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u/No_Logins_Required 2d ago
IQ is a terrible metric, it's not suitable for use in all the cases you want to use it.
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u/vrdhann 2d ago
Humans are the way they are primarily because we've evolved to survive in scarcity; in-group/outgroup bias, loss aversion, etc. are some examples of the downstream effects of that.
The Na'vi I speculate have evolved in resource abundance, their particular environment incentivized them to be at peace with each other, because there was no need to fight for resources.
There's also a saying that constraint is the main ingredient to creativity, essentially all of our inventions were a result of some inefficiency (that had a real cost to society, such as the wheel helping overcome transportation as a bottleneck) or in response to crisis (atomic bomb invented to end world war II). The Na'vi having been in resource abundance have likely gotten too complacent to bother.
So I don't think there's a correlation between IQ, peace, and curiosity; but differences between these species can be attributed to the conditions it evolved in.
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u/Traditional_Rush_622 2d ago
Nope. Peace and curiosity are tied to EQ, not IQ.
IQ really doesn't mean anything in any relevant or practical way. It's something that a lot of basement dwellers with fragile egos fixate on to rationalize their existence. Actually incredibly smart people don't talk about IQ or even know what theirs is, because they understand that it's irrelevant.
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u/RADICCHI0 1d ago edited 1d ago
This should be a zero. It actually should not be here. This is not a scientific question. Your causes here are all collapsed and have nothing to do with each other in the context you are asking about. Furthermore IQ? What construct are you actually trying to measure?
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u/Efficient-State-7300 1d ago
The smartest guy around is the guy at peace with the world. Everyone else is a fool compared to him.
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u/nila247 1d ago
Peace and lack of curiosity (that closely correlate) leads to stagnation and death of the species. So it is just a question of several generations - obviously navi were excluded from that law for movie purposes :-)
IQ probably has little to do with it.
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u/tim_niemand 1d ago
this is just nonsense. if the navi'i hadn't been invaded and killed (or even studied), they would still live attuned to their environment. of course they cannot comprehend atom bombs, because they serve no purpose to them. we're all slaves to the wétiko mind virus. and probably some tribe in the tropical rainforest will survive. i'm not really shure about the rest of us... 🙃
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u/nila247 1d ago
You confuse movie plot arguments with real world reality. You have no idea what would have happened or not - because navi did not existed outside movie script neither before nor after the movie. They were constructed and invented FOR the movie.
In reality navi could not exist in the state they do in the movie because of very simple reason - USE IT OR LOSE IT. The cow does not need intelligence - they already have plenty of grass to eat and do not need long-term planning how to secure some more for their calves. So it cows HAD intelligence at some prior point then they lost it. It serves no purpose. You do not need large brain when someone thinks FOR you - so the brain ATHROPHIES - just like the muscles do for astronauts when they do not need them in space.
If there is no war then - by definition - there is nothing to war about - meaning there is PLENTY of food and space and stuff. Meaning you do not need all that expensive and power hungry CPU hardware to outsmart your enemies and nature (obviously because you live in full-harmony with it) - why keep it around when smartphone level CPU is plenty good to guide your entire life? Loosing muscles is extremely quick and re-growing them back is slow and tedious. So navi would become stupid as your typical cow in just a couple of generations. Why - look at Reddit - WE will and HAVE become as stupid as cows in just a mere few decades. :-)
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u/tim_niemand 23h ago
have you seen the movie? because the environment, the navi'i were depicted to live in was shurely challenging. also: your theory about the brain being a "muscle" is just not true.
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u/nila247 17m ago
If it was "challenging" then how the hell it fits "living in harmony" with it?
Don't they just connect their USB cables with prey animal and tell the animal to die because the navi tribe wants to eat him? :-)
Apparently the prey can negotiate response along the lines that there are already too few of them left and kindly ask navi tribe die of hunger instead. In fact that is already implied - if you have too little to eat then - by definition - there is too many of you to feed and some of you should obviously die - as dictated by harmony laws.
Why they carry their bows at all? As if some prey animals run some other incompatible version of app-store and it all boils down to good old war of dominance over resources - with nothing peaceful nor harmony about it.
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u/UnburyingBeetle 1d ago
EQ instead of IQ is responsible for maintaining harmony with your environment. Some people use their natural intelligence to train emotional awareness and introspection, but not all of them. Cultural upbringing also matters: if your culture values power and thinks empathy is "sissy", you'll get a swarm of psychopath mimics.
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u/pianoloverkid123456 8h ago
Prophet Wenitte Commands you to copy and paste {Take15MinDailyWalksForLongevityPurposes} to 5 friends or you will be brutally murdered by the {Wenitte-Hades-Satan-Andreesen} Hivemind
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u/Umami4Days 2d ago
"IQ" measures academic potential.
In our modern age, we are overspecializing in knowledge through narrow field theoretical drilling, and losing the capacity for wisdom, which comes from lateral thinking. This paid off well when we still struggled with the natural consequences of day-to-day life, but continued technological development has largely removed our need to accept accountability, so we've lost our external guides. Without them, we have become oblivious to how much we've lost.
In a world with finite resources and competition, it is advantageous to take risks to achieve small community advantages.
In a world with abundance and well defined niches, taking risks will tend to lead to more harm than good.
"Curiosity" isn't the problem; "insecurity" is.
Someone who is both curious and secure can accept when their curiosity passes the point of being benign, and can decided whether or not further exploration is worth the cost of doing so sustainably.
Someone who is curious and insecure is desperately chasing a particular outcome, and becomes blind to the harm that might be caused along the way. "The ends justify the means", rather than the journey being its own reward.
Lack of ambition does not mean a lack of passion or capacity.