Preliminary Thoughts on the Low-Intelligence/Gamma Overlap

Hondius after Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Two Fools Dancing, 1642, engraving

Social relations are ubiquitous, so things to post about always turn up. Like a Gamma pattern variant on a comment page that crystalized a few things. The plan was to spin up a quick post, but thinking about it brought up a lot of related set-up and observations. So instead of one short post, a few connected ones. Gammas actually do have a social value outside specific task performance and unintentional comedy. Their transparent dishonesty, emotional incongruence, and self-perceptual blindness motivate other to do better. Note the for others. The compulsive nature of Gamma social pathology makes engaging with them pointless. But their total lack of situational awareness makes them glowing real-time examples.

Alfred George Stevens, Truth Tearing the Tongue of Falsehood, between1857–1875, plaster, Dorset Museum, Dorchester

The initial flash was a variation on the usual Gamma pattern. The typical online wall-o-text archetype is generally coded midwit. Their repetitive misconceptions correlate to low-moderately above-average intelligence - around a 110-130 IQ. The introduction posts explained how the SSH systematized my internalized social reads. But I obviously didn’t go through every informal cluster I could think of right away. What happens is when old familiarities comes up, profile characteristics come to mind. This time, it was a sub-midwit pattern, where similar pathologies play out with less surface coherence. Or identifiable positive goal. This will set up some preliminaries and plans before meeting … Li'l Turdling. Then we can all bask in the informative light of its actual social utility.

Note on names. It is important to protect the innocent. This pigeon is being treated as male for the sake of analysis because of the Gamma communication pattern. But all there is to go on are some dull-witted text boxes. It would be presumptuous to assume a real gender on such flimsy evidence. “It” serves two purposes. Not inadvertently mis-gendering, and correctly identifying status level in the eyes of those disdaining its weird shuck and jive routine. And any researcher knows it’s dangerous to personify a specimen. As for “Li'l Turdling”, the adjective and suffix capture said status, while the root noun metaphorically adds the dunk-and-bob cycle of a persistent floater. Operating in truth is personally essential.

Tl,dr. Gammas fall into different patterns. The Judas-type is well known, but apart from festering resentment, doesn’t fit online that well.

It is generally true that living lies around quality people becomes psychically corrosive.

Carl Bloch, The Last Supper, late 19th century

It’s become apparent that Gammas offer nothing to a non-task specific social group of moderate status or higher. The Judas example - like any example - limits the pattern in a specific form. Put aside the issue of Jesus’ foreknowledge. Think applicably for human experience. This is the stealth deceiver that surprises with their animus at an inopportune time. Online Gammas are different. There is no personal relationship built up over time to betray. Or not exactly. The online Gamma often has amassed tremendous hatred over a long obsession, but the other person has no idea who they are. In any case, they weren’t an accepted insider. There are no prior expectations. Just the sudden appearance of an asshole that seems inexplicable the first time it happens. The result is quick rejection or hostility from just about everyone else. It’s fascinating to watch the collective dislike coalesce. And it takes masochist-tier low self-worth to fixate on people that openly want nothing to do with you.

Ironically, toxically low self-worth is a quality that rules out much social value. But it also rules in behavior that seems aberrant to the point of mental illness. It’s especially cruel that delusion and denial make the low self-worth impossible to address. The conditioned belief that [projecting a transparent facade] = [anything positive at all, really] means it can’t even be consciously admitted. Effectively making it a subconscious driver. So the behavioral “tonic” perpetuates the problem.

The online environment offers a different contextual Gamma formula from the Judas type.

There’s a lot going on here. It does seem insane because it’s socially aberrant to the point of inexplicability, and without any apparent benefit. If this was a Band post, they could be brought together in one huge piece. That isn’t suitable for a sub. Or for the topic. Social observations happen with flash insights that resolves or complicate over time. Pretty much the cognitive equivalent of a short post with follow ups.

Gamma differs from other ranks because it’s defined by dishonesty. Constant pretense without the claimed ability or experience. Acting as if they are something and somewhere other than what and where they obviously are. Both are important - self and situational awareness should be complementary. And because lying is definitional and not tactical, there’s not much path to stop. A psychologically healthy liar will be quieted in the face of growing awareness of their deceptions. Either because of shame or awareness the game is up and desire to save some face. This suggests that on a deep level, the Gamma is aware of its loathsomeness. Otherwise there wouldn’t be so much effort to mask its nature with an ironically-transparent first appearance. Or sensitivity at a hint of being seen through while intruding in places it knows it’s disliked. As the distortion becomes more obvious, the identity threat intensifies, and the response is a redoubling down spiral that has to be terminated be someone else.

It’s demented. There is no place for unrecondite liars in healthy communities, regardless whether intentional. Socially, obnoxious low-status intruders are beneath contempt and should be shunned and banned. People confused by clown world dogmas need to realize there is no need to sully themselves with response. Their intent isn’t honest communication. And their presence lowers the appeal of the group. Ridicule and rejection in the service of choosier social parameters maintains your own status. Definitional liars that can’t stop are a different story for the analyst though. The observer interaction effects that mess up a lot of experimentation go poof. The compulsive pathology can be demonstrated in real time, as it dutifully does what it’s told it will do before the crowd. At that point, low status becomes obvious to even the least abstract-minded.

High status socialization is another poorly-understood topic that will get a post.

Eugène Gaujean, after a design by Albert Lynch, Echoes of bon ton and of the life of fashion in 1850, 1887, full-color print, Brown University Library

Other profiles can take a little more time to fully suss out, given internet comment brevity. Gammas can’t do brevity, so a single encounter provides abundant material. Even when they know that’s what’s happening. It sounds crazy, until something like Li'l Turdling is unintentionally pointing out links between intelligence and the SSH. The traits are generally orthogonal – intelligence relates to performance level and what social hierarchies are open, not core profile. It helps pick up patterns, but that’s external. It seems that the higher status profiles – Alpha, Sigma, high Bravos – would tend to be brighter relatively, just because of the bigger demands on them. But there isn’t the sort of correlation that’s predictive. It’s why I haven’t SSH and thinking posts haven’t come together on the Band.

A situation where intelligence shapes consistent profile manifestation is a point of overlap. And that brought up all the contextuals.

• How do you assess rough intelligence online?

• Internet sites and social hierarchies

• High status socialization patterns

• Social pathology patterns

• Situational ranks

And so forth. Too much for one sub.

Beatrix Potter, The Tale of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle, “Presently she came to a spring, bubbling out from the hill-side”. Project Gutenberg eBook, 2005, based on the 1986 Penguin Books impression. First published Frederick Warne & Co., 1905

Questions of motivation become inevitable one the landscape is systematized. The impulse to act like an asshole to a stranger is specific enough to suggest possibilities. Sigma Game is explicitly uninterested in speculation on why profiles act as they do. This is sensible given the tendency for tiresome dolts to blather myopic theorizings. I avoid those topics in my own comments there. But this isn’t Sigma Game. The size difference is enough to make comparisons pointless, so I don’t have to deal with a public stage for manic capering. Or a large conversation to disrupt. Gammas get told all the time to launch their own sites if they have something to contribute. They never do, because they know they have no value to attract any one. Hence parasite. But the advice isn’t just rhetoric. It’s nice to set topics and not have to conform to someone else’s house rules [note to Gammas - high status people understand house rules. If they find them disagreeable, they go elsewhere. Or start their own house}. A small and intelligent readership is literally infinitely different from screaming into the void.

Obviously any speculation on behavior has to start with awareness that no one can know the heart. It’s self-evidently ridiculous to assume personal intent, especially online. One of those intelligence-assessing shortcuts I use to decide whether someone is worth a reply. Cognitive ceilings are intrinsic comprehension limits. They have nothing to do with lack of information. You can’t educate somebody into processing breadth that their system doesn’t possess. This means they will always be wrong past a certain point. Too many pieces to handle at once. What we can judge are the fruits – the objective and observable things that someone does. Behavior patterns trace out personality and character. What emerges – SSH and general personality – indicates true goals, whether admitted or not. A mixture of goal and profile is a type. And that’s getting close to patterns of intentionality.

To repeat, this is not proof of motive. Starting out with the knowledge that the heart is out of reach short-circuits any urge to play mind-reader. What is does is offer more reason why anyone with an inkling of self-respect should quash them quickly.

Benozzo, The Expulsion of the Devils from Arezzo, Scenes from the Life of St Francis, 1452, fresco, San Francesco, Montefalco

Obsessive focus on others without commensurate self-awareness makes low-status inevitable. Healthy people avoid things they dislike because they have positives to occupy them. The seething Gamma, meanwhile, is driven to stalk and study their imaginary tormentor. Entire fantasy worlds can be constructed before the first encounter. Oblivious high-status people are imagined into the cause of initial obsession and spiraling emotion. So when the burning inadequacy reaches the point where it compels action, the emotional incontinence is already on low boil. It’s why they become weirdly personal when triggered, bringing up distorted external non sequiturs. Stupidity and wrath blur the lines between their hallucinations and reality. To the high-status person, it’s like becoming aware of a tick for the first time. It’s why the collapse into atavism seems like psychosis.

That’s the plan. Some good topics for these-length posts. Wrap with a preliminary - how to assess “intelligence” online because it’s quick and relatively explainable. It’s also what led to the initial observation but not directly related to SSH, so getting it out of the way is practical.

It’s easier to assess anything in person, because the non-verbal reveals so much. Without direct experience, it’s limited to communication patterns. Why Gamma prolixity is an analyst’s friend. So what to look for. Band readers know that I spend a lot of time on levels or orders of thought and knowledge creation. It’s the only way to align with truth in a clown world built of incoherent materialism and word magic. On a basic applicable level, just think of it as form and content. The content is the raw material of a comment or post. The form covers organizational and other meta-patterns in that content and its contextual relations. Both reflect cognitive processes through individual and social filters.

My personal read-and-react familiarities are content level. A collection of individual experiences each with a usable outcome. The SSH is form level. Day presumable complied a similar set of observations but realized that the anecdotal consistencies weren’t just shortcuts. They formed a consistent and comprehensive pattern. It’s higher order understanding that clarifies future experiences.

Leonardo da Vinci, Vitruvian Man, around 1492, pen, ink and wash on paper, Gallerie dell'Accademia

Content is easy to assess. Does it say things that make sense? What about logic and honesty? Self-presentation? Do they use rhetoric to avoid or obfuscate? On an interactive level, how’s the reading comprehension? Can they form a cogent reply to a statement? Are their topics relevant? Can they evolve thinking through social processes? Is the way they come off consistent with what they claim to be? It’s too much to elaborate on, but everyone is familiar with deciding whether content is insightful and sincere to some extent. We’re basically looking for signs of logical information processing and articulation, memory, and situational awareness. Stuff absent from Li'l Turdling to the point that it seemed cognitively pre-AI bot-tier. This puts the midwit Gamma posture out of reach. Hence the different pattern.

Alfred George Stevens, Valour and Cowardice, around 1860, Nottingham City Museums & Galleries. Cast by Sir Charles Holroyd from Stevens’ original clay models for the Wellington monument in St Paul's Cathedral

Form is subtler. Online communication limits it to one medium and mode of presentation, mercifully ruling out the endless breadth of the topic. Sigma Game comments don’t even allow images. In this limited case, form gives more information individually and socially. How it’s presented relates to moron detection in two ways…

1.       Ability to understand and engage with the overall context of a post or site

2.       Ability to understand and engage with the specific context of comment

What they miss is that intelligence is as obvious as height. Someone pathologically compulsive and out of their depth intellectually can’t help but misalign contextually. And how they do can then be assessed for what it reveals about their actual social goals. This is where the SSH comes in. Context in an interactive site is a social hierarchy. The ability to understand that will affect performance. And social performance determines status.

Next time, we’ll meet Li'l Turdling, see how the assessment fits the example, and set up the other related topics.

Lilly Martin Spencer, Truth Unveiling Falsehood, 1869