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RichardKennaway comments on [link] Speed is the New Intelligence - Less Wrong Discussion
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Comments (17)
Imagine casting a "speed ×100" spell on a dumb person. Would that make them a smart person? No.
On the other hand, if we would cast a "speed ×2" spell on a smart person, it would appear to make them smarter. They would be able to solve difficult problems in half the time, right?
So... there seems to be some connection, but also a difference. Speed can make you more productive, and productivity is a signal of intelligence. But if you make systematic mistakes in thinking, you will only be making them faster.
Because they already are thinking. If you are already thinking at near 100% of your capacity, telling you "think more" is not going to help. The right advice in that situation could be "instead of thinking without experimenting, try thinking and experimenting". But one should give that advice only to people who are already thinking.
The Law of the Minimum seems metaphorically relevant. "Growth is controlled not by the total amount of resources available, but by the scarcest resource."
Intelligence, speed, time, energy, charisma, money, able-bodiedness, a like-minded community, etc.: any of these may be someone's limiting factor.
On the other hand, sometimes one resource can trade off for another. There are a lot of examples of this in computational complexity where one can use up less memory if one is willing to use a slower algorithm or if one is willing to use more memory one can get more speed. These aren't the only examples.