James_Miller comments on The Correct Contrarian Cluster - Less Wrong

38 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 21 December 2009 10:01PM

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Comment author: komponisto 22 December 2009 03:26:57AM *  28 points [-]

Along with 99% of humanity my IQ isn't high enough for me to ever understand the math behind quantum physics

This may be a tangential point, but I need to say this somewhere: claims like this are quite likely false. (Notice how rarely they're accompanied by justification.)

Quantum mechanics is new (in the scheme of things). So, of course, we see right now that the only people who understand it are very smart people: the ones who first thought of it and their students and associates. But that doesn't mean that no one else can understand it; it just hasn't had time to trickle down into everyone's general education yet.

300 years ago, you could have replaced "quantum" by "classical" in that sentence, and it would have seemed reasonable: at that time, only a few dozen people in the world understood the differential and integral calculus. Yet now this kind of mathematics is taught regularly to hordes of IQ 110 college freshmen, and (I expect) is considered elementary and routine by a majority of LW readers. Taking an Outside View approach here, I don't see any reason not to expect that the same trend will continue into the future, with quantum mechanics eventually being considered a grade-school subject (even without recourse to transhumanist solutions such as intelligence enhancement, which will immediately come to the minds of many readers).

Going back further, once upon a time literacy was an elite skill. Now we take it for granted, but how much do you really think our IQs have improved in the last couple thousand years?

And let's not forget that even now, we already know that the fundamental mathematical ideas behind quantum mechanics are actually quite simpler than you would have thought from listening to physicists -- little more than linear algebra over complex vector spaces.

Comment author: James_Miller 22 December 2009 03:52:52AM 9 points [-]

You should look at the SAT math test to get an estimate of the percentage of Americans for which "linear algebra over complex vector spaces" can ever be simple.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 22 December 2009 06:11:11PM 5 points [-]

I don't disagree, but keep in mind that these people went through horrible learning processes to get there.

Comment author: komponisto 22 December 2009 04:04:40AM *  1 point [-]

I simply refer you again to my comment above. It applies to linear algebra as much as quantum mechanics.

Comment author: komponisto 22 December 2009 06:53:59AM *  0 points [-]

Comments edited for clarification.