datadataeverywhere comments on Jul 12 Bay Area meetup - Hanson, Vassar, Yudkowsky - Less Wrong

7 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 11 July 2009 09:13PM

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Comment author: rhollerith_dot_com 12 July 2009 09:48:38PM 0 points [-]

Well that sounds interesting. And fairly terrifying too, given that I'm somewhat shy.

Only two standard deviations above the human average... sounds like you're talking about IQ?

I am talking about IQ. Parenthetically, an IQ 2 standard deviations above the mean is by definition an IQ of 130 which is right about the average for professional computer programmers and some engineering occupations. (Scientific occupations tend to average around 140.)

Comment author: datadataeverywhere 23 September 2010 02:48:31AM 4 points [-]

Not to dispute the veracity of that claim, but that I find terrifying. I work almost exclusively with scientists, programmers and engineers, and the idea that on average they make up the top 2% of the population in terms of (whatever it is that is measured by) IQ... If that's true I have to work much harder to stretch downward what I think of as "normal" human intellect.

Comment author: komponisto 23 September 2010 02:56:42AM *  5 points [-]

Yes, indeed!

As I said recently:

there is a tendency among high-IQ folks to underestimate how rare their abilities are. The way they do this is not by underestimating their own cognitive skills, but instead by overestimating those of most people.

In other words, what it feels like to be a genius is not that you're really smart, but rather that everyone else is really dumb.

Comment author: datadataeverywhere 23 September 2010 03:08:23AM 0 points [-]

To respond to part of that comment

I would expect that both you and Will would see the light on this if you spent some more time probing the thought processes of people of "normal" intelligence in detail, e.g. by teaching them mathematics (in a setting where they were obliged to seriously attempt to learn it, such as a college course; and where you were an authority figure, such as the instructor of such a course).

I might be pretty strongly wired not to get this concept, because I spent several semesters teaching in college, and most of the time when someone can't seem to "get it", I just assume that this isn't what they're good at, but they must be great at something else.

Despite this, I'm still skeptical. I'm not sure that I will ever get over that, but I can try to modify my behavior to circumvent that overestimation.

Comment author: AdeleneDawner 23 September 2010 12:30:16PM 0 points [-]

Most people aren't good at most things, though, so that's actually the situation that counts as normal, even if most people do have specializations that they're good at (which may or may not be the case).

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