army1987 comments on Einstein's Superpowers - Less Wrong

30 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 30 May 2008 06:40AM

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

Comments (92)

Sort By: Old

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

Comment author: whowhowho 11 March 2013 08:10:07PM -1 points [-]

Nearly there: you can't predict backward from success to raw (non domain specific) ability, for just the same reason you can't predict forward from high IQ to success in arbitrary field.

Comment author: [deleted] 12 March 2013 12:37:48PM 1 point [-]

They're not the same, but they do correlate (which is why it's not pointless to define g in the first place); now, due to regression to the mean, someone better at theoretical physics than 99.999999% of the population (and no, I don't think that's too many 9s) is likely not also better at general intelligence than 99.999999% of the population -- but I very strongly doubt that the correct number of 9s is less than half that many. (Anyway, I'm not sure it'd make sense to define g precisely enough to tell whether someone's 1 in 10^6 or 1 in 10^9.)