Grant comments on Rationality Quotes August 2013 - Less Wrong

7 Post author: Vaniver 02 August 2013 08:59PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (733)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: gwern 05 August 2013 07:45:55PM *  11 points [-]

I chose Ramanujan as my example because mathematics is extremely meritocratic, as proven by how he went from poor/middle-class Indian on the verge of starving to England on the strength of his correspondence & papers. If there really were countless such people, we would see many many examples of starving farmers banging out some impressive proofs and achieving levels of fame somewhat comparable to Einstein; hence the reference class of peasant-Einsteins must be very small since we see so few people using sheer brainpower to become famous like Ramanujan.

(Or we could simply point out that with average IQs in the 70s and 80s, average mathematician IQs closer to 140s - or 4 standard deviations away, even in a population of billions we still would only expect a small handful of Ramanujans - consistent with the evidence. Gould, of course, being a Marxist who denies any intelligence, would not agree.)

Comment author: Grant 06 August 2013 04:42:26PM *  6 points [-]

I think a better term might be 'meritocratic', and not 'democratic'. Unless mathematicians vote on mathematics?

Comment author: gwern 06 August 2013 09:50:54PM 3 points [-]

Well, it is also democratic in the sense that what convinces the mathematical community is what matters, and there's no 'President of Mathematics' or 'Academie de la Mathematique' laying down the rules, but yes, 'meritocratic' is closer to what I meant.

Comment author: [deleted] 11 August 2013 03:15:44PM 0 points [-]

Well, “democratic” strongly suggests a majority vote, and it's not like something that convinces 54% of the mathematicians who read it ‘wins’.