Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

Imagine an EQ-valuing society instead.



We have a society that, more than literally anything else, values the ability to understand, and manipulate, emotions. Why would we need to imagine that?


What you are saying, is just proving the point that we are NOT focusing on EQ. On the contrary, politicians and public figures are benefiting from emotional manipulation and understanding of human emotion of those who aren't as aware of that.

Focusing on EQ as a society, would mean that individuals would get better at understanding the said manipulations. In my opinion resulting in a society that is less driven by emotional impulses and more on the actual collective well-being and problem solving.

A ton of of issues on the social level could be solved, if people had a better understanding of which parts of their beliefs are based on emotions and if those emotions are worth listening to.


> Focusing on EQ as a society, would mean that individuals would get better at understanding the said manipulations.

No, it wouldn’t, just as valuing IQ doesn’t mean people get more intelligent.

Society valuing innate traits doesn’t particularly make them more common (indeed, in a society were material success is inversely correlated with fertility, it may do the opposite); what it does is it gives the people with those traits more power and privilege.


Doesn't the Flynn effect state that our IQ-valuing society is producing higher-IQ people?


For a while. And then the Flynn effect reversed somewhere between 1990-2000. (Not, again, that I agree that our society actually does value IQ more than EQ, but…)


You must live in a part of the world where political and emotional manipulation is somehow lacking.


It definitely seems unlikely for there to be any part of the world where this isn't the case.

As a tangent, I'm slowly being convinced that the majority of these recent months old accounts with <100 karma are either intentionally trolling, are kids, or somehow using an LLM to write the responses. Or all of the above.


Yes exactly! That's one of the Qs I mentioned in my comment the last time this dupe substack blog post was submitted! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35881691

> "OK but there are a lot of IQs. One is your traditional Academic IQ. Another one is your Social IQ like your rizz level. Another one is your Financial IQ which is the number of your net worth. Finally, there is your Height IQ which is your number of feet and inches or meters of tallness."




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: