You're looking at Less Wrong's discussion board. This includes all posts, including those that haven't been promoted to the front page yet. For more information, see About Less Wrong.

Vaniver comments on Open thread, Nov. 02 - Nov. 08, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion

4 Post author: MrMind 02 November 2015 10:07AM

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

Comments (194)

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

Comment author: IlyaShpitser 04 November 2015 07:11:34PM *  2 points [-]

IQ is not like height. Height is a fairly objective physical measurement that is directly relevant for basketball because of the game setup. IQ is the result of a projection of an extremely high dimensional space into a single number that is not directly relevant for mathematics (people do mathematics in an extremely heterogeneous way). Erdos, Ramanujan, and Groethendieck were all top notch and were all very very different from each other. Erdos I think couldn't tie his shoes. Ramanujan was an Indian peasant. Groethendieck wasn't exactly a high functioning individual.

A better analogy would be if a basketball coach cared about "hit points" (determined by whatever methods doctors use, slatestar would know more).

Comment author: Vaniver 04 November 2015 09:08:58PM 7 points [-]

Ramanujan was an Indian peasant.

Ramanujan was a Brahmin. "Peasant' isn't quite appropriate.

Comment author: Lumifer 04 November 2015 10:19:05PM 2 points [-]

"Peasant" is also technically wrong since neither he nor his parents tilled the soil (his father was a clerk).