MugaSofer comments on The genie knows, but doesn't care - Less Wrong

54 Post author: RobbBB 06 September 2013 06:42AM

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

Article Navigation

Comments (515)
Tags: friendly seed genie superintelligence preference optimization process intelligence ai language

Comments (515)

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

Comment author: MugaSofer 11 September 2013 05:00:32PM 0 points [-]

plenty of people who get duped by anti-vaxxers are of above average IQ

But less than half of them, I'll wager. This is clearly an abuse of averages.

Comment author: private_messaging 11 September 2013 05:34:30PM *  6 points [-]

I wouldn't wager too much money on that one. http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/114/1/187.abstract .

Results. Undervaccinated children tended to be black, to have a younger mother who was not married and did not have a college degree, to live in a household near the poverty level, and to live in a central city. Unvaccinated children tended to be white, to have a mother who was married and had a college degree, to live in a household with an annual income exceeding $75 000, and to have parents who expressed concerns regarding the safety of vaccines and indicated that medical doctors have little influence over vaccination decisions for their children.

And in any case the point is that any correlation between IQ and not being prone to getting duped like this is not perfect enough to deem anything particularly unlikely.

Comment author: MugaSofer 12 September 2013 03:40:32PM *  1 point [-]

Hmm. Yeah, that's hardly conclusive, but I think I was actually failing to update there. Now that you mention it, I seem to recall that both conspiracy theorists and cult victims skew toward higher IQ. I was clearly quite overconfident there.

And in any case the point is that any correlation between IQ and not being prone to getting duped like this is not perfect enough to deem anything particularly unlikely.

Wasn't the point that

intelligent, rational people with money on the line and an obvious right answer

wasn't enough, actually? That seems like a much stronger claim than "it's really hard to fool high-IQ people".

Comment author: Nornagest 11 September 2013 05:45:55PM *  1 point [-]

I imagine that says more about the demographics of the general New Age belief cluster than it does about any special IQ-based appeal of vaccination skepticism.

There probably are some scams or virulent memes that prey on insecurities strongly correlated with high IQ, though. I can't think of anything specific offhand, but the fringes of geek culture are probably one of the better places to start looking.

Comment author: private_messaging 11 September 2013 05:50:28PM *  2 points [-]

Well, the way I see it, outside of very high IQ in combination with education that is multiple topics of biochemistry, effects of intelligence are small and are easily dwarfed by things like those demographical correlations.

There probably are some scams or virulent memes that prey on insecurities specific to high-IQ people, though. I can't think of anything specific offhand

Free energy scams. Hydrinos, cold fusion, magnetic generators, perpetual motion, you name it. edit: or in the medicine, counter intuitive stuff like sitting in an old uranium mine inhaling radon, then having so much radon progeny plate-out it sets nuclear material smuggling alarms off. Naturalistic fallacy stuff in general.

Comment author: Gurkenglas 11 September 2013 07:21:37PM *  0 points [-]

Cryonics. ducks and runs

Edit: It was a joke. Sorryyyyyy

Comment author: MugaSofer 12 September 2013 03:44:26PM 0 points [-]

That is more persuasive to high IQ people, but, I think, only insofar as intelligence allows one to gain better rationality skills. And if we're including that, there are plenty of other, facetious examples that come into play.

Also: ha ha. How hilarious. I would love to see why you class cryonics as a scam, but sadly I'm fairly certain it would be one of the standard mistakes.

Powered by Reddit Powered by Reddit