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Vaniver comments on Open thread, Dec. 21 - Dec. 27, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion

2 Post author: MrMind 21 December 2015 07:56AM

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Comment author: Vaniver 22 December 2015 02:40:38PM *  2 points [-]

I calculate about 128 for the average IQ of a survey respondent who provides one and I suspect that nonresponse means the actual average is closer to 124 or so. (Thus I agree with you that there is a significant gap between the average Nobel laureate and the average LWer.)

I think the right way to look at LW's intellectual endowment is that it's very similar to a top technical college, like Harvey Mudd. There are a handful of professor/postdoc/TA types running around, but as a whole the group skews very young (graph here, 40 is 90th percentile) and so even when people are extraordinarily clever they don't necessarily have the accomplishments or the breadth for that to be obvious. (And because of how IQ distributions work, especially truncated ones with a threshold, we should expect most people to be close to the threshold.)

Comment author: IlyaShpitser 22 December 2015 02:58:06PM *  3 points [-]

I agree with this. I think looking at a typical LWer as a typical undergrad at Harvey Mudd is a good model. (This is not a slur, btw, Harvey Mudd is great).

Comment author: Kaj_Sotala 22 December 2015 03:41:23PM 1 point [-]