Friendliness vs. Intelligence ... which is more important?

Tom the slowbro

In my first days on Smogon forums it appears that absolutely everyone here is super-intelligent (except me of course), but in this particular forum I have seen some unfriendliness. (Given the unfriendliness toward me was mostly my fault for making bad posts.) I am NOT faulting Smogon forums or any members in the slightest; obviously in a new culture like this I have to get used to certain things if I want to stick around.

But this particular forum is not the intended topic of this thread. This got me thinking a bit; in general is friendliness or intelligence more important to the world, or would they be about the same amount important? Or do you think something else is more important?

Personally I think they are both extremely important. I think if either one went away, we'd be neck-deep in cow dung.
 
I prefer the term "charisma", but whatevs. It depends completely on your objective; I think we need a little of both to survive the "big bad" world. :P
 
I see 0_0 I really do come from a different world than some of the people here.

Like I said I think they're both very important in the grand scheme of things, but in terms of the standard I hold myself to ... If I do something dumb that usually doesn't bother me at all. If I am rude to someone ... X_X <-me

Thank you for not turning this thread into a flame/troll thread.
 
You have two kinds of forums; ones filled with dicks and ones filled with rubes.

I don't think intelligence is really a factor.
 
Yeah, they are both really important. I know of a lot of nice people who are dumb as hell, and if they could run the world it would go to shit...but then there are people who are all brains and also huge assholes. But on average I would say people that are intelligent tend to be nicer anyways. But that's my opinion I guess, I live in a city full of mean rednecks, what can I say? :P
 
both seem like they are important but on different levels of analysis - friendliness (or interpersonal skill) is more important for the success of a given individual but intelligence is more important for the success of a species.

if you are a total dick and cannot communicate effectively with those around you, the chance you'll get a good job, wife or husband --> family, or friends is lower. it is probably the case that intelligence can make up for douchebaggery up to a certain point; however, once you get to a certain level of intelligence, how well you can promote your intelligence and your other qualities seems to have a much bigger role in your success. but for the success of the human race as a whole, where one person fails, someone else will probably make the same discovery (relativity priority dispute?). even if the discoveries aren't made at the same time, they'll probably be made at very similar moments in history simply due to the constantly increasing body of human knowledge. this means the success of a given individual is not very important as long as you can guarantee that someone will succeed. and the factor that guarantees that is the high average intelligence of the human race; out of so many members, there's got to be someone who is smart enough and nice enough to (a) be able to make the discovery and (b) live with the conditions necessary to make that possible.

just the thoughts of a college kid who thinks he has learned something about the world.

p.s. did you guys know the unabomber got accepted into harvard at age 16 and was the youngest professor in uc berkeley history? i just learned that yesterday when i read wikipedia for 6 hours while sick in bed
 
Given the two extremes, the anti-social lone genius is more likely to kill a bunch of people than the airheaded socialite.

Friendliness is a positively associated value. It is difficult to use true affability in a way that can harm others.
Intelligence is a neutrally associated value. It can either do immense good or immense harm, and is largely dependent on the motives of the intelligent person where the application of that intelligence ends up.

The only time friendliness gets into dangerous territory is when it comes at the expense of truthfulness. Then you end up being friendly for its own sake to people who, in general, do not offer the same courtesy back.
 
Choose 3+ from the following:

[ ] Confidence
[ ] Competence
[ ] Charisma
[ ] Integrity
[ ] Empathy

And given the opportunity, you will be successful.

All of the above are really just applied intelligence/friendliness; both are broad and meaningless per se.
 
Intelligence is absolutely worthless if you don't have the social skills to back it up. You can't help anyone without them.
 
If mommy animals weren't friendly to their babies then they would just abandon them.
If we didn't have intelligent people, well, imagine if we had none of the inventions from the past 10,000 years.

Thanks for all the responses, by the way :) It is really fun for me to learn about people different from me, and it's safe to say that a lot of the people at Smogon are different from me.

Smogon is such an interesting group of people. I hope people take that as a compliment because it is. Heck, it would be a great project for a freakin anthropologist to come study Smogon. Like I'm sure there are correlations between the kinds of people here and the fact they can do great Pokemon work.

(By the way, this is off-topic, but if anyone is interested in why the hell I posted that dead song thing, it's because people seemed cruel in my first topic in this forum, so I guessed that something cruel might go over well. I couldn't have been more wrong.)
 
We already had a paleontologist test the breaking points of a substantial part of our userbase, but he ended up finding a native women he fell in love with and was banished forever by our members
 
Deck Knight said:
Given the two extremes, the anti-social lone genius is more likely to kill a bunch of people than the airheaded socialite.

Friendliness is a positively associated value. It is difficult to use true affability in a way that can harm others.
Intelligence is a neutrally associated value. It can either do immense good or immense harm, and is largely dependent on the motives of the intelligent person where the application of that intelligence ends up.

The only time friendliness gets into dangerous territory is when it comes at the expense of truthfulness. Then you end up being friendly for its own sake to people who, in general, do not offer the same courtesy back.
Click to expand...


Palpatine used friendliness to harm others.
 
THE_IRON_KENYAN said:
We already had a paleontologist test the breaking points of a substantial part of our userbase, but he ended up finding a native women he fell in love with and was banished forever by our members
Click to expand...

:)

Not all cultural anthropologists study primitives, by the way. I bet there really are anthrodudes that study Internet groups. If there aren't there should be.
 
undisputed said:
coming from my experience, you need to build your rep before you can afford to be unlikable. if you post intelligently and nicely you will gain respect as a "good user" and then youll get some leeway. users who start out mean will be deemed jerks and lowered to the same level as Suspect Discussion Thread posters. Intelligence is important but you can be relatively dumb/uninformed and people will help you out. if youre a douche bag but know a lot, no one will care about you and youll likely be banned
Click to expand...

I wasn't going to post again in this thread but then I saw this post (that I don't fully understand). In my case I know 100% as a fact that I started out posting nicely, and I think it's at least a semi-intelligent and potentially interesting thing to hear stories of other Smogon members who don't battle competitively.

But this is my good-bye post :( Have a wonderful life Smogon people, and keep up the excellent Pokemon work. Thanks to the many people here who have been kind to me (including the people who have posted in this thread).
 
Honestly, the reason you got such a harsh response is because you were new to the forums and posted in aforum. aforum is a very harsh place. It's just the culture that has come up around it, and previously in firebot and cong. Other places like wifi and uncharted may not be as harsh (imo).
 
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