shminux comments on Rationality & Low-IQ People - Less Wrong

17 Post author: kokotajlod 02 February 2014 03:11PM

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

Comments (107)

You are viewing a single comment's thread.

Comment author: shminux 02 February 2014 11:40:17PM *  8 points [-]

This post is to raise a question about the demographics of rationality: Is rationality something that can appeal to low-IQ people as well?

This question is best answered if you look from the other direction: do people 10-15 IQ points higher than you benefit more from "rationality" than you do?

Comment author: pianoforte611 05 February 2014 12:32:15AM 1 point [-]

Yes they do (Scott H. Young is way smarter than me and he has developed a method of soaking up really complicated ideas in a matter of weeks or days).

I don't think this is a useful question though, there is no reason to think that the gains in ability to utilize LW-style rationality are linear. I think its more likely that there is some threshold level of intelligence that is needed to make use of the techniques then the gains get smaller. Other skills are similar - calculus, basketball (where the property is height rather than intelligence), physics etc.