[Link] FreakoStats and CEV

Filipe

I would like to point you guys to the blog FreakoStats, by Garth Zietsman, who according to his profile, "Scored an IQ of 185 on the Mega27 and has a degree in psychology and statistics and 25 years experience in psychometrics and statistics." The main concept discussed there is "The Smart Vote", whose essence, in the author’s words, is as follows:

"If there is no difference of opinion by intelligence then reason is not relevant in deciding between them and none of the opinions being considered is more correct than any of the others. However if opinions do differ systematically with intelligence then relatively more correct or better alternatives probably do exist, and that they are those relatively more favoured by the more intelligent. Statistical differences in the independent opinions of people of different intellectual ability point to the most reasonable responses to controversies”

Many of his posts are based on the choice of relevant, if controversial, topics , and his analysis of the direction and the proportionality of which an opinion on it is related to intelligence, as measured by IQ scores.

An obvious objection would be that smart people would have in many cases common interests, and this could bias the results simply to their interests, in detriment to the interests of the less smart.

Zietsman answers it with the statistical fact that people many times don’t vote selfishly, and that he can (and will) control for some of their interests anyway:

"My first response is that this isn’t always a factor. Political research shows that people frequently don’t vote their narrow selfish interests e.g. the elderly are less likely to vote for social security than the young and women are less likely to support abortion on demand than men. However there are enough cases where narrow interests obviously do play a role for it to be taken seriously. Fortunately this possibility can be dealt with by controlling for interest differences. For example we could control for class when looking at musical taste, income when looking at welfare, age when looking at social security policy, race when looking at affirmative action, etc."

This seems somewhat related to the notorious concept of Coherent Extrapolation Volition (CEV) of humankind. To have a clue of the direction it might take, I believe it is a nice idea to look at the opinion of the smarter (“if we knew more, thought faster, […]”), corrected for selfish interests (“[…]were more the people we wished we were, had grown up farther together[…]”), specially bearing in mind that most results tend to converge (“[…]where our wishes cohere rather than interfere; extrapolated as we wish that extrapolated[…]”).

There are analyses on issues such as Abortion, Free Speech ,Capital Punishment and Corporal Punishments on Children ,Immigration, Gay Rights and many more. The results look good to me personally, and I wouldn't be surprised if they pleased many here too.

"If there is no difference of opinion by intelligence then reason is not relevant in deciding between them and none of the opinions being considered is more correct than any of the others. However if opinions do differ systematically with intelligence then relatively more correct or better alternatives probably do exist, and that they are those relatively more favoured by the more intelligent. Statistical differences in the independent opinions of people of different intellectual ability point to the most reasonable responses to controversies”

An obvious objection would be that smart people would have in many cases common interests, and this could bias the results simply to their interests, in detriment to the interests of the less smart.

Zietsman answers it with the statistical fact that people many times don’t vote selfishly, and that he can (and will) control for some of their interests anyway:

"My first response is that this isn’t always a factor. Political research shows that people frequently don’t vote their narrow selfish interests e.g. the elderly are less likely to vote for social security than the young and women are less likely to support abortion on demand than men. However there are enough cases where narrow interests obviously do play a role for it to be taken seriously. Fortunately this possibility can be dealt with by controlling for interest differences. For example we could control for class when looking at musical taste, income when looking at welfare, age when looking at social security policy, race when looking at affirmative action, etc."

If they are contrarians for contrarianism's sake, why would I take them into consideration?

I'm just informing you of your audience on LW! Not saying they are right. :)

But I am saying that intelligent people, like to show off their intelligence, this is very obvious on LessWrong. It is no less obvious when you pick up a newspaper or talk at the water cooler about politics. Intelligent people are contrarians. Having different opinions from less intelligent individuals is a great way to distinguish yourself form them. Intellectual fashion seems very much a real phenomena.

High-Iq circles are not monolithic: there are many groups they are be part of, on which different ideas would be 'tribal markers'.

Actually they are. Nearly all of them are university educated or move in social circles among people who are, which is overseen my academia, which does have a left wing bias, because a left-wing bias is self-serving to them. If you check out the GSS you will see education strongly correlating with "leftist" views. Naturally not everyone with a university degree in the US agrees with the ethical consensus of academia, but not every member of the Communist party in the old USSR was a real communist either.

This reminds me if you made a anonymous poll of high IQ people living in the USSR in the 1920s, what do you think their position would on the future prospects of Bolshevik rule? Also what do you think of their policy opinions? The ignorant peasant of 1920s Russia had one great advantage over the well educated and on average much more intelligent teacher, engineer or student. Controlling for class, I'm still pretty sure that those of above average intelligence favoured the Bolsheviks in 1920s Russia compared to their dimmer fellow countrymen.

Smart people are smart enough to know what they need to say, which may or may not be the right answer. They answer and vote in a way that makes them feel morally superior, that makes them feel better than someone else so that they seem higher status. Stupid people just say whatever they happen to be familiar with, which may or may not be the right answer. In a traditional society the default answer has the advantage of being a tested answer. Such a society wasn't designed, it grew.

This reminds me if you made a anonymous poll of high IQ people living in the USSR in the 1920s, what do you think their position would on the future prospects of Bolshevik rule? Also what do you think of their policy opinions? The ignorant peasant of 1920s Russia had one great advantage over the well educated and on average much more intelligent teacher, engineer or student. Controlling for class, I'm still pretty sure that those of above average intelligence favoured the Bolsheviks in 1920s Russia compared to their dimmer fellow countrymen.

You have to consider the alternatives. I'll take the Bolsheviks' side over the Tsars any day.

7Oligopsony14y

Local coloring aside, intelligent people in the early twentieth century wanted modernization, morons wanted their country to be King Shit, and everyone wanted crass material wealth. Did the Bolsheviks not deliver? (This applies almost as well to most other major modernizing revolutions, now that I think of it.)