- Intelligence is negatively correlated with materialism
- Intelligent people get paid more for doing work that requires I but less for having an unpleasant job (given equal pay, would you rather be a programmer or a garbage collector?)
- Intelligence is negatively correlated with other abilities (brain areas specialized in reasoning can't be specialized in social skills, energy spent on the brain can't be spent on the immune system)
- Intelligence is negatively correlated with mental health (Less Intelligent people don't notice or understand problems more intelligent ones do – ignorance is bliss; the things that make one intelligent also make one less stable – the genes that make one less intelligent haven't died out because evolution hasn't progressed that far yet but because the brain designs intelligent people have are buggy.
Maybe the person you're replying to was thinking of the philosophical metaphysical concept of materialism, i.e. opposed to idealism. But your usage seems correct to me, it's that the word has multiple meanings.
Are you suggesting that genetics have nothing to do with Intelligence? AFAIK it isn't much but I find it hard to believe that it's nothing. Our genes make us smarter than other animals, why shouldn't they make a difference between humans?
Also I just listed all possibilities that came to my mind, whether I think they're likely or not.
I believe that was sarcasm, mocking that kind of very vocal people who like to argue that intelligence, gender and race are purely a social construct and have no physical foundation. Extreme offense is usually taken when someone attempts to correlate intelligence with race.
Very few people argue that intelligence is a "social construct", though the position taken by scientists and philosophers in the area is that race and gender are "social constructs"; that doesn't make them not real, though - but it does mean they're only about as real as money. A kind of objectivity obtained through many subjectivities.
But if you don't know that, intelligence being correlated with ethnicity is a plausible hypothesis. We shouldn't take offense when someone who doesn't know the data tries to correlate intelligence ethnicity purely because they are interested in biology. Which is of course probably not the motivation of most people who claim there's a correlation.
If genetics played a roll in intelligence don't you think we'd see some intellectual differences between groups of genetically similar people(i.e. races), like we do with physical characteristics? Some races of people are taller than others on average, and some races are more resistant to certain diseases. Obviously we don't see differences like this when it comes to cognitive ability though.
Different ethnicities have different physical characteristics because they are adapted to different environments. Being able to efficiently use sunlight is useful in high altitudes, being able to tolerate heat and intensive sunlight is useful near the equator. Intelligence is useful everywhere.
- Intelligence is not correlated with salary
- Intelligence is negatively correlated with materialism
- Intelligent people get paid more for doing work that requires I but less for having an unpleasant job (given equal pay, would you rather be a programmer or a garbage collector?)
- Intelligence is negatively correlated with other abilities (brain areas specialized in reasoning can't be specialized in social skills, energy spent on the brain can't be spent on the immune system)
- Intelligence is negatively correlated with mental health (Less Intelligent people don't notice or understand problems more intelligent ones do – ignorance is bliss; the things that make one intelligent also make one less stable – the genes that make one less intelligent haven't died out because evolution hasn't progressed that far yet but because the brain designs intelligent people have are buggy.