private_messaging comments on 2013 Survey Results - Less Wrong

74 Post author: Yvain 19 January 2014 02:51AM

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Comment author: private_messaging 22 January 2014 05:38:01PM 1 point [-]

Conversion is a very tricky matter, because the correlation is much less than 1 ( 0.369 in the survey, apparently).

With correlation less than 1, regression towards the mean comes into play, so the predicted IQ from perfect SAT is actually not that high (someone posted coefficients in a parallel discussion), and predicted SAT from very high IQ is likewise not that awesome.

The reason the figures seem rather strange, is that they imply some kind of extreme filtering by IQ here. The negative correlation between time here and IQ suggest that the content is not acting as much of a filter, or is acting as a filter in the opposite direction.

Comment author: Vaniver 22 January 2014 06:38:44PM 0 points [-]

The negative correlation between time here and IQ suggest that the content is not acting as much of a filter, or is acting as a filter in the opposite direction.

Well, alternatively old-timers feel it's more important to accurately estimate their IQ, and new-comers feel it's more important to be impressive. There also might not be an effect that needs explaining: I haven't looked at a scatterplot of IQ by time in community or karma yet for this year; last year, there were a handful of low-karma people who reported massive IQs, and once you removed those outliers the correlation mostly vanished.

Comment author: private_messaging 22 January 2014 08:02:05PM 0 points [-]

You still need to explain how the population ended up so extremely filtered.

Without the rest of the survey, one might imagine that various unusual beliefs here are something that's only very smart people can see as correct and so only very smart people agree and join, but the survey has shown that said unusual beliefs weren't correlated with self reported IQ or SAT score.