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komponisto comments on Less Wrong: Open Thread, September 2010 - Less Wrong
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This is where you commit the fundamental attribution error.
I don't actually think this has been written about much here, but 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.
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).
Probably not literally, in light of your clarification. However, I nevertheless suspect that your responses in this thread do tend to indicate that you would probably not be particularly suited to being (for example) EY's apprentice -- because I suspect there's a certain...docility that someone in that position would need, which you don't seem to possess. Of course that's a matter of temperament more than intelligence.
I'm missing something here, I guess. What fraction of people who, as a matter of routine, speak of "complexity" as a viable problem-attack method, and are also very intelligent? If it's small, then it's appropriate to say, as I suggested, that it's strong evidence, even as it might be outweighed by something else in this case. Either way, I'm just not seeing how I'm, per the FEA, failing to account for some special situational justification for what Marcello did.
Well, I do admit to having experienced disenchantment upon learning where the average person is on analytical capability (Let's not forget where I live...) Still, I don't think teaching math would prove it to me. As I say here ad infinitum, I just don't find it hard to explain topics I understand -- I just trace back to the nepocu (nearest point of common understanding), correct their misconceptions, and work back from there. So in all my experience with explaining math to people who e.g. didn't complete high school, I've never had any difficulty.
For the past five years I've helped out with math in a 4th grade class in a poorer school district, and I've never gotten frustrated at a student's stupidity -- I just teach whatever they didn't catch in class, and fix the misunderstanding relatively quickly. (I don't know if the age group breaks the criteria you gave).
Eh, I wasn't proposing otherwise -- I've embarassed myself here far too many times to be regarded as someone that group would want to work with in person. Still, I can be perplexed at what skills they regard as rare.