Modern moral scolds are obsessed with even small age gaps (even when both people are full-ass adults), but an area that’s far more important than this is verbal intelligence. I know I’ve written about cognitive inequality before — which does matter far more in any relationship than any age gap — but verbal intelligence matters a whole hell of a lot as a subset of that.

My verbal intelligence is off-the-charts high. I know this and know I could easily out-debate or just pummel any normal person in an argument. I try to avoid using this for evil but have accidentally done so in the past. (An old girlfriend told me, “There’s no way I can argue with you. You just know too much and are too fast.”*) I don’t use this to bully anyone and try to deliberately pause and listen and just shut up. But the point is that I could easily dominate all but about maybe 0.00001% of the population in any verbal or written contest if I put even a moment’s thought into it.

Why don’t the age gap obsessives care about this? Those like me could (if we wished) hold huge power over anyone of any age with a capability like that.

The easy and mostly-correct answer is age is more obvious and quantifiable than verbal intelligence so it’s easy to obsess over, while less-quantifiable but more-relevant factors are ignored.

*I did give her space to argue after that. It was a fair statement.

Austin Airport almost gave us the worst air disaster in decades yesterday. These planes were less than 75 feet from each other, literally landing and taking off at the same time, one on top of the other. pic.twitter.com/KJbgD3IwiN

— Levi (@Levijameshere) February 5, 2023

Damn that was close. If I remember right, most (perhaps all?) ACAS Resolution Advisories (alarms) are inhibited on or close to the ground so this was all ATC at fault here.

When you think about it, it’s really an odd idea that all software should be made in a way that even the stupidest dumbass alive can use it without effort.

There has to be a better way.