Philosophy

I haven't read deeply enough into EI yet to get into the psychopath issue, but e.g. this and others seem to suggest that not only do psychopaths have wobbly EI scores depending on whether they want to participate or not, but that those tests are not good to begin with, reflecting more whether someone is willing to give the socially acceptable answer, or dare to (admit to being) different. In either case, I was thinking before more along the lines of an "emotional health" than actual processing ability, so I guess I was wrong about the definition of EI, though it's nonetheless interesting (to me:-) to see how central that issue apparently is.

Even so, "Power" is defined as the ability to do work. IQ has given us nuclear technology, which unlike EI grants us a power that we never had before - the ability to end human habitation on this (or any specific) planet. Thus IQ can be misused as well. EI grants people power too, but either way it's up to the (ab)user to decide how they want to use their power, regardless of its source. And if EI really has caused more harm & suffering than IQ, then that is all the more evidence that it is more powerful.

But perhaps this is all a false dichotomy - if IQ and EI are components of a vector, then is IQ the amplitude and EI is the orientation? So like, IQ makes a gun but EI is the one who decides who the weapon gets pointed at - maybe even back at ourselves? Importantly, IQ is societally cumulative, so before we made the gun, we still had access to a knife, and before that a rock, and before that our fists. But maybe EI is societally cumulative as well? That part I'm not certain about, except so many people lack it (but then again so many lack IQ as well:-), that it seems more difficult to preserve and pass on between generations.

Which might not be true except locally in our history - i.e. with the recent (in historical timescales) advent of the internet, knowledge (IQ) became much more readily available, but now that we are in the mis-information era, that may no longer be true moving forward. "Secret knowledge", like that vaccines actually work and help you live for nearly a hundred years, rather than being witchcraft among peoples who if they live to be thirty may be considered "elderly" (bc who wants an aging worker class slave, possibly actually learning things and as a result getting "uppity"). Perhaps EI has always been more along those lines - some things work well, others don't, and the truth being buried amidst the misinformation, hence (safe-)guarded and preserved by fewer people within each population? I dunno, that's getting too theoretical, but I found the thought interesting at least:-).

In any case, whether my analogy with a vector is way off base or not - perhaps it is too specific and it is rather more like IQ and EI are simply different routes to Power, the ability to change things via different methods - anyway, it does seem that any discussion of IQ lacks something crucial if it does not also include EI as well.