"Highly intelligent" but...

[bonfireoftheverities]

It's quite common to read about someone who is said to be very intelligent yet still fell for genderwoo. How do you reconcile smart people saying and believing such stupid things?

Beliefs in all sorts of seemingly obviously untrue things are perfectly compatible with intelligence. Beliefs are often motivated by emotion, upbringing and culture rather than by intellectual thought, and are not easily overridden by intelligence.

I think there are different types of intelligence. Falling for gender woo means people are not critical thinkers IMO, nor do they have common sense, at all.

Oh my goodness, yes.

I can think of someone that describes perfectly. And they are constantly wanging on about genderwoo without ever entirely committing to a position. It's very clearly all about the intellectual argument and knob halo polishing rather than any actual belief.

Sometimes being intelligent just makes you better at being wrong. Look at Newton. Maybe the greatest mind the world has ever seen, and dedicated years of his life to some right shit.

A former boss of mine - not a scientist, but someone with absupposedly well-rounded education - once asked me whether a penguin was a mammal because 'they have 2 legs'.

My guess is it’s a few things together:

1. elite bubble (isolated from real-world harms and implications)
2. elite bubble (social status depends on views and virtue, especially progressive-coded)
3. elite bubble (university ideological monoculture)
4. smart people find it easier to rationalise away objections, used to abstruseness being rewarded
5. autism / social isolation overlap
6. US political polarisation meant all left of centre slide into woke. (Perhaps also tied to decline in religiosity over same period)
7. maybe elite over-production? Lots of smart underemployed people seeking meaning?

They have their own sphere which they understand well. They believe the experts in other fields, assuming they are equally qualified.

Thus my boss can be exceptionally wide read and intelligent yet believes that DSDs are far commoner than most people think and that some people are born in the wrong body. The trans lobbyists- mermaids, stonewall- say it and they are the experts.
In his case it also connects with being liberal in terms of Gay rights, so predisposed to believe Stonewall and position himself in antithesis to those who are more broadly conservative. (Church field).

I think the reason academics are getting mentioned is that they account for quite a few of the supposedly intelligent people mentioned by the OP. They have also been significantly responsible for teaching and promulgating this stuff. A minority of academics have spoken out and the consequences for them have not been great. Look at the way Kathleen Stock was treated. Not many GC academics at Sussex or in UCU, it would seem. UCU has been particularly vociferous about this under Jo Grady’s leadership. The union reps in my department were all gender woo proponents and I didn’t even get a reply when I wrote to one expressing concerns about the lack of support for Stock. So, no, not all academics — but too many of them.

I had one who'd got a degree in a biological subject and a very well known and sought out expert in animals categorically told me that for ovulation to occur in any species a male had to be present.

When he left we all looked at each other astounded and then burst out laughing.

I would question whether all of them really believe the genderwoo, or simply put up a successful pretence of doing so?

DS works in an industry where admitting to being GC would probably kill his career prospects.
Over the last few years he has given the impression of being an 'ally' without ever doing anything to support this view. Basically the assumption about him has been that 'if you're not openly against us, you're presumably with us'.
He swerves any discussion/involvement in the issues and rants and offloads to me and his partner instead!

This decision has been based on an intelligent evaluation of the situation, and the fact that he needs to work to pay his bills.

He is relieved by the SC judgement and wants to find his tribe within the broader industry he workings in (the arts). They ARE there, but just take some finding...

I made a very similar observation in a thread I started this afternoon (A spectrum of stupidity).

I think this is why Helen Joyce and Kathleen Stock are so good at speaking and writing about this issue, precisely because they don't get bogged down in trying to be clever-clever with the biology. HJ uses her excellent knowledge of mathematics and logic and KS uses her deep understanding of philosophy. Of course people who have bought into the genderwoo will still say "What does Helen Joyce know about gender? She's a mathematician and a journalist," while spouting utter nonsense about the issue.

Good to see Bhogal already linked.

Re: elites, Matt Goodwin’s essay is helpful, as is the Aeon essay on epistemic bubbles and echo chambers and Endre Begby on ‘evidential preemption’.

(I hope to return with links when I am not on a train with intermittent 3G at best. )

Did they think it was a biscuit? (They would have been right!)

No. A mammal. I think.

Woosh!

I don’t think it’s necessarily about intelligence or otherwise. It’s a quasi religious belief.

One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool.

George Orwell, Notes on Nationalism. Obviously writing about something else, (the purpose of American troops in WW2 being to crush an English revolution) and “ordinary people” can be foolish too, but a good point.

Look to the quiet ones, is the advice I've had. The majority are very careful on this subject.