Rationality Quotes April 2014

elharo

Another month has passed and here is a new rationality quotes thread. The usual rules are:

Please post all quotes separately, so that they can be upvoted or downvoted separately. (If they are strongly related, reply to your own comments. If strongly ordered, then go ahead and post them together.)
Do not quote yourself.
Do not quote from Less Wrong itself, HPMoR, Eliezer Yudkowsky, or Robin Hanson. If you'd like to revive an old quote from one of those sources, please do so here.
No more than 5 quotes per person per monthly thread, please.

And one new rule:

Provide sufficient information (URL, title, date, page number, etc.) to enable a reader to find the place where you read the quote, or its original source if available. Do not quote with only a name.

Another month has passed and here is a new rationality quotes thread. The usual rules are:

Please post all quotes separately, so that they can be upvoted or downvoted separately. (If they are strongly related, reply to your own comments. If strongly ordered, then go ahead and post them together.)
Do not quote yourself.
Do not quote from Less Wrong itself, HPMoR, Eliezer Yudkowsky, or Robin Hanson. If you'd like to revive an old quote from one of those sources, please do so here.
No more than 5 quotes per person per monthly thread, please.

And one new rule:

Provide sufficient information (URL, title, date, page number, etc.) to enable a reader to find the place where you read the quote, or its original source if available. Do not quote with only a name.

Or do Math People not exist as a natural category?

I'd be ever so interested in the answer to this question. It seems really obvious that some people are good at maths and some people aren't.

But it's also really obvious that some people like sprouts. And it turns out as far as I'm aware that it's possible to like sprouts for both genetic and environmental reasons. I'd love to know the causes of mathematical ability. Especially since it seems to be possible to be both 'clever' and 'bad at maths'. Does anyone know what the latest thinking on it is?

My recent experiences trying to design IQ tests tell me that that's both innate and very trainable. In fact I'd now trust the sort of test that asks you how to spell or define randomly chosen words much more than the Raven's type tests. It's really hard to fake good speling, whereas the pattern tests are probably just telling you whether you once spent half an hour looking closely at the wallpaper. Which is exactly the reverse of the belief that I started with.

Related: some people believe that programming talent is very innate and people can be sharply separated into those who can and cannot learn to write code. Previously on LW here, and I think there was an earlier more substantive post but I can't find it now. See also this. Gwern collected some further evidence and counterevidence.

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Rationality Quotes April 2014

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Rationality Quotes April 2014

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