Yes, indeed!
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.
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 ti...
Just a reminder that the July 12th Overcoming Bias / Less Wrong meetup in Santa Clara, CA @7pm will feature Robin Hanson, Michael Vassar, and the Singularity Institute summer interns. This meetup will also take place in a larger house - there should be plenty of room to mingle.