Ishaan comments on Open thread, June 20 - June 26, 2016 - Less Wrong

6 Post author: Elo 21 June 2016 02:45AM

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Comment author: Evan_Gaensbauer 24 June 2016 10:12:59AM 2 points [-]

I've wondered this too. In particular, for several years, at least among people I know, people have constantly questioned the level of rationality in our community, particularly our 'instrumental rationality'. This is summed up by the question: "if you're so smart, why aren't you rich?" That is, if rationalists are so rational, why aren't they leveraging their high IQs and their supposed rationality skills to perform in the top percentages and all sorts of metrics of coveted success? Even by self-reports, such as the LW survey(s). However, I've thought of a contrapositive question: "if you're stupid, why aren't you poor?" I.e., while rationalists might not all be peak-happiness millionaires or whatever, we might also ask the question about what the rates of (socially perceived) failure are, and how they compare to other cohorts, communities, reference classes, etc.

You're the first person I've seen to pose this question. There might have been others, though.

Comment author: Ishaan 30 June 2016 11:09:51PM *  1 point [-]

We don't want "are you rich, do you smoke" because the selection effect (we are rich because we were born upper middle class, and we're not powerful because powerful people have better things to do than explore the internet until they land on odd forums).

Otherwise the value of an idea is judged by the types of people who happen to stumble upon them.

What we want is "After being exposed to the ideas, did you get richer", "did you quite smoking", etc. Before after.

why aren't they leveraging their high IQs

IQ is just another selection effect confound to control for. Priors say there is absolutely no way rationality training will alter your IQ (and besides the IQ data is mostly from standardized test scores taken in high school anyhow) If high IQ people land up here that just means high IQ people crawl the internet more and stick around more.

Comment author: SquirrelInHell 06 July 2016 05:21:34AM 0 points [-]

What we want is "After being exposed to the ideas, did you get richer", "did you quite smoking", etc. Before after.

Thanks for being sane.