Swimmer963 comments on The problem with too many rational memes - Less Wrong

80 Post author: Swimmer963 19 January 2012 12:56AM

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Comment author: Swimmer963 19 January 2012 02:41:02AM *  2 points [-]

In your LW articles, you come off as both charismatic and intelligent.

I think my intelligence is above average (general population average, not LW average), but that's not at all the same thing as being intelligent enough to be a good physicist...although I think that may not be my true rejection, and I'm going to try and spend some more time finding out what my true rejection is.

Also, LW is an entirely written forum and I'm very confident in writing, and have a lot of experience. I'm not as good a public speaker: I don't have as much practice, and there's the added challenge of not having time to sit staring at a screen for five minutes trying to decide if my argument is phrased unclearly and I need to fix it. So stuff comes out a lot less elegantly when I'm saying it to people, and I tend to say "um" and "uh" a lot, or sound a bit incoherent because my brain isn't running at the same rate as my mouth.

Comment author: Luke_A_Somers 19 January 2012 05:50:35PM 2 points [-]

You can be a very good experimental physicist if you're creative enough to devise good experiments, careful enough to implement them well, and persistent enough to then carry them out. Intelligence helps in the first two stages, but being an ace at math is not required.

Comment author: beriukay 20 January 2012 08:20:25AM 1 point [-]

I'm not sure if you'd want to pay money for negative reinforcement, but I've been thinking about trying out something like the Buzzword to help with my verbal tics.