Intellectual Snobbery - Why?

[thegingerone]

I find intellectual snobbery extremely comical in the arena of public forums because its often vicious and unnecessary. I also think that what gets held up as intellectual snobbery is often quite off base. Being right is not intellectual snobbery. Having a large vocabulary is not intellectual snobbery. The term becomes a crutch for those who are insecure. Some of the people you are going to meet on a forum are going to be smarter or more educated than you, learn to deal with it. On the other hand, putting someone down because their knowledge of some obscure arena of popular culture is not as deep as yours is ludicrous. It does not mean you're smarter than them and gives you no right to insult someone's intelligence.

 

[Smokej]

Erm... I wouldn't disagree with you if you said "many", but I'm going to need a citation to accept your claim of "the majority". In my post-graduate research in Individual Difference and Testing, the sense I've gotten has been that general intelligence is quite controversial, though no doubt there is still an old guard who hold onto the notion simply because it's what they grew up with. As for why it's controversial, see your next sentence.

Because i'm currently not involved in academic research on the very recent issues on intelligence, i can only outline the current consensus in the extended postgraduate training in developmental and cognitive psychology for teachers in higher schools here in Germany, so the following might appear maybe a little conservative and german/austrian-centric.

Most of the educational instructions and standardized tests in accordance with the current intelligence theories are based on hierarchical structure models. On a further note, standardized tests have no real history in german education but after OECD studies they became a kind of big deal. The most recognized model besides the "Erlanger Schule" (Eysenk, et al) here is the "Berliner Intelligenzstrukturmodell" (based on Jäger 1984 and the expansion of this model) which is a factorial theory that tries to combine competing models.

Spoiler: click for spoiler, model only in german language, sorry

It is multimodal and incorporates contents (like capacity, processing speed, creativity and memory retention) and operational modalities (figural-pictorial, verbal and numerical). But all of those components are part of a general intelligence, which is not closed in itself but open for other operational and contentual units.

Critique on intelligence theories and concepts are numerous, but those with the most recognition in the public here are from philosophers and/or sociologists (Adorno for example), not so much those of the psychological or neurological communities.

Agreed. The question is, what else does it correlate with? What things (that don't also correlate with scholastic achievement) correlate with an IQ test?

General Intelligence as measured here in intelligence tests has a correlation from about r=.50 up to r=.70 with educational sucess (Süß, 1996) I think those numbers are in accordance with those determined in the USA. Furthermore general intelligence is viewed as a similar good predicator for sucess in your job career as is job experience. (i've taken the numbers out of the handouts for teachers i had at home at the moment, but i can look for more recent ones at work)

It's entirely possible that there is no such thing as general intelligence, and that the construct people call general intelligence is nothing more than "the ability to do well in school", which as you pointed out is a lot more than simply being intelligent- it includes a lot of adaptability to a rather specific set of social circumstances that don't really exist anywhere else in the world. I know of no counter-evidence to the proposal that "general intelligence" is nothing more than high working memory and a willingness to follow a set of behaviors that teachers associate with being a "good student". OTOH, given how complex cognition is and how vastly different the sorts of thinking that goes into different subjects are, I find Multiple Intelligences theory to be quite plausible. Why would we assume that the brain has a single attribute that reflects on one's ability to learn differential calculus and pick up Spanish to an equal degree? I'm well aware that MI theory has its own issues, but it seems so much more reasonable than putting all your eggs in one basket.

The MI theory is a viable alternative but as i see it the main issue with for example Gardners MI theory is that some of those abilities do not correspondend with what is measurable in an adequate way as well as what has greater value for the majority of students regarding their employability and further education. (i know that this is a real dilemma especially because i teach the arts and social sciences, and it would be a disgrace to humanity, if intelligence and education would only come down to what is measurable and from greater value in the society, but this is how it is today...)

For example take intrapersonal, interpersonal or musical ability and show me one viable model to measure those or furthermore to grade those in a fair way. Or regarding the social value take athletic(kinesthetic) ability and try to shape a modern society where most people can make a living out of such an ability. As it stands now, those abilities that are closely linked to general intelligence (and especially the testing of it), logical-mathematical and linguistic ability, are those that our education system and most advanced jobs are focused on.

 

[McMullen]

Just reading around the internet today, forums and the like, and something has begun to rankle me in the most unpleasant ways possible.

And that is intellectual snobbery.

Always with the attacks on the implied intellect of people, always with the posturing, always with the snide ad hominem comments.

And since it's cathartic to discuss terrible things, I wanted to know what you fellers think about it.

So, intellectual snobbery, has it happened to you? Do you do it? Why does it happen? and so on.

I'm curious about what your definition of intellectual snobbery is. If you think it is when a person tries to pretend they're better than others because they know more or are able to figure things out faster, then yes it's disgusting.

If you think it's when someone corrects somebody who's saying something demonstrably wrong, then I would strongly disagree.

So I'm wondering what your definition is and if you might provide some examples.