komponisto comments on For progress to be by accumulation and not by random walk, read great books - Less Wrong

35 Post author: MichaelVassar 02 March 2010 08:11AM

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Comment author: komponisto 27 April 2015 07:52:04PM *  0 points [-]

What I was originally addressing, however, was komponisto's assertion that "high IQ" is merely "high processing speed and copious amounts of RAM", which I denied, pointing out that "high processing speed and copious amounts of RAM" alone would surely not have been enough to invent calculus,

This shows that you didn't understand what I was arguing, because you are in fact agreeing with me.

The structure of my argument was:

(1) People say that high IQ is the reason Newton invented calculus.

(2) However, high IQ is just high processing speed and copious amounts of RAM.

(3) High processing speed and copious amounts of RAM don't themselves suffice to invent calculus.

(4) Therefore, "high IQ" is not a good explanation of why Newton invented calculus.

Comment author: dxu 27 April 2015 11:02:37PM *  0 points [-]

I understood what you were saying; I just disagreed with your definition of "high IQ". Put another way: I modus tollens'd your modus ponens.

EDIT: It turns out that Quill_McGee already expressed what I was trying too, and probably better than I could have myself. So yeah--what he/she said.

Comment author: Quill_McGee 27 April 2015 10:37:52PM *  0 points [-]

Whereas, if I am interpreting them correctly, what they are saying is

(1) People say that high IQ is the reason Newton invented calculus.

(2) High processing speed and copious amounts of RAM don't themselves suffice to invent calculus.

(3) Therefore, "High processing speed and copious amounts of RAM" is not a good description of high IQ.

Personally, I'd say that 'high IQ' is probably most useful when just used to refer to whatever it is that enables people to do stuff like invent calculus, and that 'working memory' already suffices for RAM, and that there probably should be a term for 'high processing speed' but I do not know what it is/should be.

EDIT: that is, I think that Newton scored well along some metric which did immensely increase his chances of inventing calculus, which does extend beyond RAM and processing speed, which I would nonetheless refer to as 'high IQ'

tabooing IQ would almost certainly be helpful here.

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