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idlewire comments on My Childhood Death Spiral - Less Wrong
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You wouldn't give up one IQ point for say 10 million dollars? It would be a painful decision, but I'm convinced I could have a much better effect on the world with a massive financial head start at only the slightest detriment of my intelligence. A large enough sum of money would afford me the chance to stop working and study and research the rest of my life, probably leading me to be more intelligent in the long run. Right now, I have to waste away my time with a superior level of intelligence just pay for food, shelter and student loans.
Agreed. A lot of what we call intelligence is really speed - both in the short run (how long it takes you to add two numbers in your head, for instance) and in the longer run (how long it takes you to accomplish your ambitious projects). Ten million dollars would free up so much time and let you fake so much long-term speed that it would almost certainly be a gain if you got it for one IQ point. Not that anyone's actually offering this trade.
Humans loose one point of IQ all the time and don't notice it. Cognitive decline with ageing, getting hit on the head, some medical conditions ect. Loosing 5 or 10 is however pretty noticeable.
I suspect even moderate sleep deprivation or a mild headache can (temporarily) impair your cognitive abilities by more than 5 IQ points.
I suspect you are right and if I recall correctly the sleep deprivation -> IQ loss relationship has even been quantized!
When I was in highschool, I tried to do physics 'olympiads'. The issue was, they were 2 hours from where I lived, and started 9am, and were marathon style (five frigging hours for 5..10 hard problems). So that's waking up 6:30, quickly having breakfast, then public transportation for 2 hours being wobbled around in train, subway, bus, and another train. I didn't do too great on those even though I did ace harder problems normally (e.g. in school). I think eating chocolate to make yourself more awake or drinking strong tea also did not work for me at all; later when I started working in software development I had enough time to see that this only impairs my performance further.
That depends to where in testing I would lose it (or actually, doesn't depend because 10 millions is such a huge sum). If it just makes me think a little slower then who the hell cares, i'll save more time by having 10 millions. Likewise, as we gradually get dumber, having 10 millions allows to spend time working on important stuff while younger, so the iq-hours spend on the work may be larger.