Intelligent People Do not Make Better Ethical Decisions

This is my own thread based on Sklansky's most recent post about various religions effecting someone's ability to reason.
I pointed out that most of the horrible crimes such as the Holocaust, Slavery, various genocides and Christ's murder were legal and meticulously planned in many cases by the intelligentsia of the day.
This pulls back the curtain on the idea that the society's most intelligent will make better ethical decisions. I am not saying stupid, uneducated people would be superior. I am merely saying that there isn't a correlation between intelligence and ethics.
Intelligent people, for one thing, are much more likely to be able to rationalize, lie more efficiently and fool themselves and others. GW Bush without Karl Rove and Cheney would be nowhere. An idiot like him could not possibly pull off the things he's done without the help of intelligent people.
Point is, even geniuses are flawed psychologicaly. Without the proper emotional and mental maturity, ethical decisions will be poor at best. A supreme court justice ultimately makes ethical decisions...

g

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Point is, even geniuses are flawed psychologicaly. Without the proper emotional and mental maturity, ethical decisions will be poor at best. A supreme court justice ultimately makes ethical decisions...

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I think you may be being biased by your opinions of ethics and what is ethical, as well as the creation of and reasons for following contemporary moral codes.

The fact is its all relative and you might be wrong and the intelligent people you're refering to might, in some instances, be right.

Do you think its ethical to allow people with genetic mental health problems to have children?

Before I answer your question--answer my examples.
Were slavery and the holocaust right?

Not in my opinion right now.

I don't disagree with some of Hitler's early ideas about only letting healthy people reproduce, he just got a bit carried away and had some poor information on what counted as a genetic dysfuntion.

I think that if less intelligent people got into power they would make propotionately worse decisions.

Being simple doesn't give a person more appreciation of ethics, it just makes them easier to train.

[garion888]

In these two lines...

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This is my own thread based on Sklansky's most recent post about various religions effecting someone's ability to reason.
I pointed out that most of the horrible crimes such as the Holocaust, Slavery, various genocides and Christ's murder were legal and meticulously planned in many cases by the intelligentsia of the day.


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...you seem to be inferring that intelligience and religiousness are mutually exclusive. I do not think this is the case. I think that the people who planned and perpetrated those acts were not without religion and they were very intelligient. If I was looking for a horrendous act to use as an example, I would look for something planned and perpetrated by agnostics or atheists. Then I could note the defect of agnostics/atheists in making ethical decisions and know that the defect didn't come from religious ideas but instead from a merely intelligent source...

You are right about GWBasic though. He could not be where he is without the help of intelligient people.

J

[ QUOTE ]
This is my own thread based on Sklansky's most recent post about various religions effecting someone's ability to reason.
I pointed out that most of the horrible crimes such as the Holocaust, Slavery, various genocides and Christ's murder were legal and meticulously planned in many cases by the intelligentsia of the day.
This pulls back the curtain on the idea that the society's most intelligent will make better ethical decisions. I am not saying stupid, uneducated people would be superior. I am merely saying that there isn't a correlation between intelligence and ethics.
Intelligent people, for one thing, are much more likely to be able to rationalize, lie more efficiently and fool themselves and others. GW Bush without Karl Rove and Cheney would be nowhere. An idiot like him could not possibly pull off the things he's done without the help of intelligent people.
Point is, even geniuses are flawed psychologicaly. Without the proper emotional and mental maturity, ethical decisions will be poor at best. A supreme court justice ultimately makes ethical decisions...

g

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I think when Sklansky says intelligent people he means those near the very top; those smart enough to not be religious. The Holocaust and U.S. slavery were perpetrated by Christians, and therefore they wouldn't be in the elite intelligence class that Sklansky refers to. I'm not saying I totally agree with Sklansky, but those examples, I believe, actually affirm his stance.

The Soviet Union was anti-religious/atheistic.
Were they better decision makers/more ethical as you theorize?
Someone with a better understanding of history then me needs to step in here. I believe my point is still valid but am curious to hear more.

g

[imported_luckyme]

[ QUOTE ]
This pulls back the curtain on the idea that the society's most intelligent will make better ethical decisions. I am not saying stupid, uneducated people would be superior.

[/ QUOTE ] [ QUOTE ]
The Soviet Union was anti-religious/atheistic.
Were they better decision makes/more ethical as you theorize?
Someone with a better understanding of history then me needs to step in here. I believe my point is still valid but am curious to hear more.

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It's hard to hit a moving target. You started out on intelligence and ethics , and then threw in some religion and group politics. You're saying that all people would be equally ethical in their decisions? ( that roughly follows from your - intelligent ones don't make better nor will stupid ones). What does the soviet union have to do with that, or any other political example. The odds of a political group being in the top 20% of intelligence is quite small, it's not a field that attracts intelligence it's field that attracts powermongers.

Decisions made by a group don't equate to decisions made by an individual, partly because the group gets pulled toward the lowest common denominator, partly because the some of the gang can be pretty sick bastards but they offer something the group needs ( a specific voting block, serious money, the right friends, etc). by the time you get to the top you have tied in with Fredo, Sonny and Luca Brassi.

So group examples don’t work well. Individually perhaps we could look at the crime rate among the top 10% of intelligence and the bottom 10%, or some measure of individual action ( I’d want other conditions in place before I used the crime rate example).

Maybe you could clarify/simplify your claim.

Thanks, luckyme

Well you make an interesting point. I have heard that some of the neocons are particularly intelligent people, at a level of genius IQ. I think the same is reported of someone like Henry Kissenger.
It is true that politics will more than likely attract powermongers. Many of these power mongers are also extremely intelligent by typical standards--i would guess top 10 percent.
But we could look into that more.
The fact is, I don't see these intelligent people making more ethical decisions or even better policy decisions, etc. than your average joe in the top 50% of intelligence would make.
There is a base level of intelligence one would need simply in order to understand certain political/ethical situations. After that, I would argue that psychological stability and emotional maturity would more than make up for any gaps in intelligence.
Unfortunately, it is difficult if not impossible to test for these important qualities and intelligence will more often than not be overvalued.

g

[Darryl_P]

I agree with your OP and I'd say a good example is Jon von Neumann and his role in the first and only use of the atomic bomb for military purposes, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians and permanently damaging the health of millions more.

Was that ethical?

I think even Sklansky would concede that von Neumann was more intelligent than himself, which automatically means he must have been among the top 3 smartest men in the world.