= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Kindly comments on 2012 Survey Results - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (640)
Well, I don't see the difference either, but I'm still not entirely sure what about this hypothesis seems unreasonable to you, so I was hoping this reformulation would help.
The reasoning behind it is as follows: I figure a generic discussion board on the Internet has roughly the same IQ distribution as Reddit. If LW has a high average IQ, but so does Reddit, then presumably these are both due to the selection effect of "someone who posts on an online discussion board". So to see if LW is genuinely smarter, we should be comparing it to Reddit, not to the Normal(100,15) distribution.
I would be shocked if that were true. Even after having grown stupendously, Reddit is still better than most discussion boards I happen to read.
Okay, fair enough. I don't actually have much experience with Reddit.
I still think it's a reasonable reference class. For one thing, LW runs on Reddit-based code. In particular, I would say that being significantly smarter than Reddit is a good cutoff for the feeling of smugness to start kicking in.