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it takes intelligence to decieve, but it doesn't necessarily follow that the more intelligent you are the more you will lie, neither does it mean the more you lie the more intelligent you must be, lying is just one of many thousands of social strategies that must be mastered to ensure success.

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it takes intelligence to decieve, but it doesn't necessarily follow that the more intelligent you are the more you will lie, neither does it mean the more you lie the more intelligent you must be, lying is just one of many thousands of social strategies that must be mastered to ensure success.

At first I didn't agree (or simply did not want to believe) the idea that intelligence leads to deceitfulness.

But then I remembered reading somewhere that the more creative a person is, the more likely they are to lie.

And creativity has always been associated with intelligence.

This is a rather sad realization.

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I don't dispute that intelligence and deceit are linked, in fact my sentence proclaimed precisely that, however I know some dumb ass liars too and believe me they are pretty far from being what you might call 'good at life'.

There are tons of other skills and strategies that an organism must employ to truly excel at whatever it is they are trying to achieve.

Deciet is one, creativity is another, there are things we have no conscious control over too like how efficiently we move around, the list is endless.

lying can bring success and it can bring failure, there are so many variables in the average human interaction that to claim that mastering deceit = mastering the world is just silly.

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Sure guys, I'm friendly...

In a gaming environment that would only work if the other player wasn't a bandit.

Funny though :D

Lying equals success? But what about the dumbshits that lie and end up failing?

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Hello there

It takes intelligence to deceive, but it takes more intelligence to realise that one is capable of wrong and actively act against that notion.

In life and in game it's far easier to be an arse, but it takes *the better man" to rise above the simple ways.

This is why I may KoS but i'm not a bandit.

Discuss.

rgds

LoK

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It may take intelligence to deceive, but it takes a psychopath to deceive all of the time.

Edited by disorder
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Interesting thoughts. my view on this is that the evil shall inherit the earth, not the meek. like in DayZ the evil inherited it and the evil perpetuates itself. orlok i think what you mean is "morality" rather than intelligence, and those "better men" (or animals in this sense) remove themselves from the evolutionary process by disobeying this fundamental aspect in favor of social constructs on morality which are only possible to have themselves through advanced language and thereby advanced thinking. Too much thinking beyond what is natural is inhibits if you catch my drift

Humans are just another animal, a twig from a branch on the tree of life, we have extraordinary brains and these have elevated us to the top of the food chain, for now. Deception has played a part but only a tiny part in that journey, your insistence on attributing the superiority of our species to our ability to tell good lies is daft, opposable thumbs have played a far greater role, the anatomy of our larynx must take more credit than our undoubted ability to use it to spout bullshit.

'Evil' is an artificial construct, there is not really any such thing. It is a way for our species to try to describe things we feel are not good. Nature doesn't know the difference between right and wrong, good or evil etc and nature will not only inherit the earth, nature already has it.

Morality? again a human invention, nature has no sense of morality, nature is neutral, the only force that shapes the success or failure of a species is natural selsction driven by environmental change.

'Life' has existed on this ball of rock we call earth for many billions of years, 'humans' as we recognise them have occupied it for a few hundred thousand years, a blink of an eye. For example the dinosaurs were here for 10,000 times as long as we have been here and they have completely disappeared. We too will give way eventually to species better suited to whatever changes this planet may go through.

And Nature in it's cold, uncaring way won't even notice.

Aside from that, our species is a social and cooperative animal, our success has been driven by our ability to work together. Examples - hunting, agriculture, civilisation have all occurred thanks to our ability to work together and find a natural balance between what the individual needs and what is best for the group. And for cooperation to have a chance there needs to be trust or the delicate social systems begin to crumble. Deceit is the enemy of trust, we need deceit but we need honesty and truth to counter balance this and keep the system working.

Edited by wabbit
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Taken from wikipedia: "Psychopathy is a personality disorder that has been variously described as characterized by shallow emotions (in particular reduced fear), stress tolerance, lacking empathy, coldheartedness, egocentricity, superficial charm, manipulativeness, irresponsibility, impulsivity, criminality, antisocial behaviors such as lacking guilt and living a parasitic lifestyle."

I would argue that everything on that list (apart from impulsivity and parasitic lifestyles) is an advantage to that person, unless he/she is caught red-handed, doing something people don't like others doing. They all enable an individual to take advantage of others far more easily and with sufficient intelligence they can do so without the other party realising that they are doing so. This is probably why people in high positions have many, if not all of those traits.

To tie in in what wabbit said:

As long as the majority of humans is trusting and co-operative society continues to function and the 'psychopath' is allowed to take advantage of his 'abilities'. If everyone was a psychopath, many things wouldn't work. But in one sense, we do need 'psychopaths' to make use of others to achieve something, because if they don't no-one else will.

Edited by Oompa
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Taken from wikipedia: "Psychopathy is a personality disorder that has been variously described as characterized by shallow emotions (in particular reduced fear), stress tolerance, lacking empathy, coldheartedness, egocentricity, superficial charm, manipulativeness, irresponsibility, impulsivity, criminality, antisocial behaviors such as lacking guilt and living a parasitic lifestyle."

I would argue that everything on that list (apart from impulsivity and parasitic lifestyles) is an advantage to that person, unless he/she is caught red-handed, doing something people don't like others doing. They all enable an individual to take advantage of others far more easily and with sufficient intelligence they can do so without the other party realising that they are doing so. This is probably why people in high positions have many, if not all of those traits.

Of course in the civilised world as it is now with it's rules and regulations, those individuals who have fewer scruples and zero empathy have a clear advantage over those whose hands are tied by the fact that there are certain strategies they won't employ.

however, the civilised world is a recent invention, what about the hundreds of thousands of years where our species was shaped, when humans were pitted against each other and nature with no rules at all? (a world like that represented in DayZ?).

If psycho/sociopaths were better suited to survival under those circumstances then we would all be psychopaths now, but we aren't.

Edited by wabbit
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I haven't said it is the only thing that attributes to our superiority at all, there are many factors. It's just one recognizable factor. This thread is about that factor, not the others. I don't personally insist that "the superiority of our species depends on telling good lies" either - that is how you are phrasing it.

You should re-red the article to understand that in saying this you are agreeing with the article. Yes, the movement of the larynx in humans that enabled more refined speech was a massive step in our evolution. And with language came far deeper forms of deception i.e. higher intelligence. That's part of what the article is saying.

Of course that is true but I am using the word here to both to describe those who deceive and also to paraphrase the bible, also built on social moral constructs, to mock the idea of the meek inheriting the earth. Most what the bible teaches is evil is in fact part of nature. You wrote about this force of nature a lot, which is the same force that drives deception in all beasts from insects right up to humans.

It's odd how you've angrily presumed I am insisting that only "lying" (not even deception) was the only force driving our evolution, when I recognize the many forces, but then you proceed to yourself state that only one force drives NATURAL SELECTION? You can't be serious? Further, you suggest that only force is environmental change? That's just absurd and barely related to natural selection in this context. There are many factors in the natural selection of humans. Humans and indeed other animals have spread over many continents and face different environments but they nevertheless operate within the same laws of natural selection therein. TLDR? There are many factors in natural selection and environmental change is barely relevant to that topic. Or are you saying the ending of the Ice Age or even the development of the modern continents is more important to our species development than language and thereby deception? If so, I would agree with this painfully obvious point, but ask you to either stay on topic or keep yourself to yourself.

^^ sociopath, i'm outta here

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I haven't said it is the only thing that attributes to our superiority at all, there are many factors. It's just one recognizable factor. This thread is about that factor, not the others. I don't personally insist that "the superiority of our species depends on telling good lies" either - that is how you are phrasing it.

You should re-red the article to understand that in saying this you are agreeing with the article. Yes, the movement of the larynx in humans that enabled more refined speech was a massive step in our evolution. And with language came far deeper forms of deception i.e. higher intelligence. That's part of what the article is saying.

Of course that is true but I am using the word here to both to describe those who deceive and also to paraphrase the bible, also built on social moral constructs, to mock the idea of the meek inheriting the earth. Most what the bible teaches is evil is in fact part of nature. You wrote about this force of nature a lot, which is the same force that drives deception in all beasts from insects right up to humans.

It's odd how you've angrily presumed I am insisting that only "lying" (not even deception) was the only force driving our evolution, when I recognize the many forces, but then you proceed to yourself state that only one force drives NATURAL SELECTION? You can't be serious? Further, you suggest that only force is environmental change? That's just absurd and barely related to natural selection in this context. There are many factors in the natural selection of humans. Humans and indeed other animals have spread over many continents and face different environments but they nevertheless operate within the same laws of natural selection therein. TLDR? There are many factors in natural selection and environmental change is barely relevant to that topic. Or are you saying the ending of the Ice Age or even the development of the modern continents is more important to our species development than language and thereby deception? If so, I would agree with this painfully obvious point, but ask you to either stay on topic or keep yourself to yourself.

''The Most Deceitful Players Are The Most Intelligent And Would Survive Best''

lmao, sounds like a sociopath on the verge of a breakdown trying to rationalise his own defective mind to me.

Edited by Rastamaus

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Excuse me but I am a student of child psychology at a prestigious university and very happy in my life. I enjoy study in the area of human evolution, no matter how dark it is and would like to discuss the matter here since I notice people talking about this sort of thing often here. The thread title is what the article is directly implying.

that's why you created a new forum persona to open this thread, i'm not fooled mate, you are broken

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