In response to Competent Elites
Comment author: sk2 27 September 2008 09:59:04PM 0 points [-]

It would be interesting to see some intelligence metrics of: 1. CEOs of big companies 2. CEOs of startups 3. College Professors 5. Computer Programmers 6. Doctors 7. Chemical Engineers

And decide if the CEOs you are talking about are more intelligent (IQ measure) than all the other groups mentioned above. If the mean IQ of CEOs is not more than the mean IQ of say Doctors, then yes, it is legitimate for people to feel that the CEOs don't deserve to be where they are and feel a bit bitter about it. I don't think a story depicting say a neurosurgeon being happy, healthy, lively, tall (who cares?) and rich is unpalatable to the 'masses'. What bugs people is to know that some guy whose competence is not apparent, who is a CEO, has a private jet.

I don't understand why it's something you should 'fix'.

In response to comment by sk2 on Competent Elites
Comment author: JDM 02 June 2013 03:12:39AM 0 points [-]

IQ isn't good enough. It's not the only talent required to lead. People have to want to work for you and see your vision. I believe leadership ability and charisma should reasonably be considered aspects of intelligence, but they're not the type that would show up on an IQ test.

In response to Competent Elites
Comment author: Christopher_Monsour 27 September 2008 03:52:09AM 4 points [-]

Eliezer, thanks for sharpening the point for me. Still, I'm used to your posts catalyzing so much insight that this one continues to strike me as remarkably banal, even naive. I'm probably missing something. Do all that many educated people really think that CEOs of mid-to-upper-level corporations and hedge-fund managers are not generally more intelligent than average?

Equally importantly, the question that this point raises but doesn't address at all: do you think that intelligence dominates driving force behind ascension through corporate hierarchies? My instinct is to think that you've got to be smart to succeed, but you've also got to have a certain kind of power-loving personality, and be charismatic, and have at least a few other qualities.

To put it another way, when you say, "There's another world out there, richer in more than money," that's obviously true; but isn't it just as obvious that plenty of people with that kind of riches aren't in business, government, or the power-focused professions?

Comment author: JDM 02 June 2013 02:50:59AM 0 points [-]

Are people skills, charisma, and leadership not at least partially an aspect of intelligence?

Comment author: lavalamp 20 January 2013 11:04:43PM *  12 points [-]

I was homeschooled. I have pretty mixed feelings on whether this was a good thing or not. Kawoomba asked, so here:

Pros:

  • No bullies

  • Teaches you how to teach yourself

  • No PE/sports

  • Go to college early

Cons:

  • Go to college early

  • Limited contact with others left me pretty socially inept.

  • No resources (chemistry experiments, etc)

  • After Algebra II, you're on your own.

  • With Saxon math books.

  • No sense of position among one's peers, no sense of why one might go to college, higher learning, etc. I'm maybe +1 S.D. appearance and +3? S.D. IQ but had no idea until much much later.

  • History books tend to be extremely biased (America is a christian nation, gosh darn it) (but my parents somehow mostly avoided this)

  • Biology books tend to be completely wrong because you have to lie a lot when you don't believe evolution (I'm still pissed about this)

  • Science/astronomy books tend to have wrong sections because you have to lie a lot when you believe the earth is 6000 years old

Of these problems, most of the really bad ones seem easy to prevent if you're aware of them. I expect I could do a really awesome job of homeschooling myself and a really terrible job of homeschooling a more normal person.

I really hated school as a kid. My best guess is that a public school with a good gifted program would have been an improvement, but one without would have been worse than what I experienced.

Comment author: JDM 01 June 2013 03:34:54PM 0 points [-]

This may be only anecdotal evidence, but I would consider being bullied for a bit a positive net influence in my life for a couple reasons:

  • I have always been somewhat arrogant. While being bullied did not decrease said arrogance, or even immediately result in any changes, when I looked back and saw how people treating me made me feel, it became somewhat of a motivator to mask some of my arrogance to spare others feelings. As knowing the right people can make a large difference in various opportunities, I feel some opportunities I have received had I not learned to mask said arrogance.

  • Eventually you learn to deal with it. While bullying to the extreme someone kills themself is clearly bad, and in other cases it can seriously damage people's psyches, for others "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger". I learned that while there are some people you can "make" like you by acting differently, some people are just shitty people and not worth your time. There's a balance between the social benefits of people liking you and the stress of ping too far to being a people pleaser.

This is far from an advocation of bullying, but without it those lessons would have been much harder to come by.

I feel the social benefits, even accepting the risk that bullying could happen and have a significantly negative influence, outweigh a lot of the benefits of homeschooling. I would most likely take an approach similar to my own parents'. I went to a public school, and when I came home I had a library of thousands of books to browse and read from. I still was able to get the benefits of being able to teach myself, but without the loss of social interaction (even parentally provided social interaction doesn't match up, in my opinion, as the people you're interacting with will likely be far less varied in nature).

Comment author: Emily 29 May 2013 08:27:42AM 0 points [-]

If you sit there awkwardly in the corner sober while everyone else is having a good time, the judgement is very real. It's just not entirely for the reason you think.

Yeah, not surprising. That doesn't sound like it adds fun for anyone. (I have been in that situation a few times, but never by choice.)

Comment author: JDM 01 June 2013 03:08:12AM 0 points [-]

I wasn't the most social person when I started hanging out with the fraternity I ended up joining, so I did some of that at first, even when I did drink. It took some time to get out of my shell a little. I have since improved with that, indicated by the fact that I was voted to be president, with the main job of being the "face" of the house. I do my best to help people who are in that role become more involved, whether they choose to drink or not, because I was in a similar role my first year. Some people, and it does generally seem to be the non-drinkers, resist that, and they mostly end up not coming back. Drinking is far from all we do, but it's one of the ways we relax and get to know people, so people not being social to at least some extent do end up treated differently.

My recommendation if you don't drink and go to social situations where people do is to simply have a good time. Be social, smile, feel free to be a little animated, and you'll be alright. There are plenty of nights where people drink where I choose not to (often because I'm broke), and while some nights I will have alcohol handed to me because I don't have a cup in my hand, for the most part people don't know if I'm drinking or not. (Unless I do a 12 foot beer bong of wine. Then they can tell.) If you don't make things awkward, most people won't either, and the ones who do will be handled by others.

Comment author: Zack_M_Davis 06 January 2010 09:26:09PM 0 points [-]

Not that they weren't good stories, and not that I expect fiction authors to do their own basic research, but I wouldn't say they're about the Friendly AI problem.

Comment author: JDM 24 May 2013 06:58:43PM 0 points [-]

It is most certainly not an academic look at the concept, but that doesn't mean he didn't play a role in bringing the concept to the public eye. It doesn't have to be a scientific paper to have a real influence on the idea.

Comment author: Elithrion 07 March 2013 07:56:57PM 8 points [-]

Although this may not be for everyone, I'd recommend listening to audiobooks. The main advantage is that you can easily listen to them while walking or taking public transport, while cooking, while exercising, etc., which I personally find makes these activities a lot less boring.

I've also found that my personal rate of reading is faster with audiobooks (using RockBox with an mp3 player to speed up playback to 3-3.5x) than with normal reading, at something like ~450 words/min or ~1.3 pages/min. Most of the speed increase comes from me being really slow at reading normally due to getting distracted, focusing too much on thinking through one part, or just forgetting to read quickly, but still.

Comment author: JDM 23 May 2013 10:06:56PM 1 point [-]

I've found the opposite. I will occasionally listen to audiobooks while driving or working out, but even with accelerated audio I read 2-3 times faster than audio can do.

Also, reading allows control of the pace. Certain sections are denser than others, and with a book you can slow down through those parts without losing pace on the filler.

Comment author: Emily 10 March 2013 02:41:32PM 12 points [-]

Can you find nicer friends? No one has ever been weird about the fact that I don't really drink. (If anyone tried to be weird about it, I think I would claim there was alcoholism in my family - there's not, as far as I know. And not be friends with them.)

Comment author: JDM 23 May 2013 09:11:47PM *  2 points [-]

Without outright asking or commenting, people can still subconsciously judge, especially in certain situations or social groups.

For example, I am the president of my chapter of my fraternity. Some people interested don't drink. While for the most part people look past the not drinking, there are some activities or events where drinking is common. We have had some non-drinkers still enjoy themselves, but some have been scared away as a result of said activities.

I think an equal precursor to the idea of being judged for not drinking is how you handle being around others who are. If you can still enjoy yourself without the alcohol, in a lot of cases being judged for it is in your imagination. If you sit there awkwardly in the corner sober while everyone else is having a good time, the judgement is very real. It's just not entirely for the reason you think.

Comment author: Kaj_Sotala 16 October 2007 11:16:36AM 1 point [-]

So, since the topic came up, I'll repeat the question I posed back in the "suggested posts" thread, but didn't (at least to my notice) receive any reply to:

How careful one should be to avoid generalization from fictional evidence? When writing about artificial intelligence, for instance, would it be acceptable to mention Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect as a fictional example of an AI whose "morality programming" breaks down when conditions shift to ones its designer had not thought about (not in a "see, it's happened before" sense but in a "here's one way of how it could happen")? Or would it be better to avoid fictional examples entirely and stick purely to the facts?

Comment author: JDM 06 November 2012 06:07:41PM 0 points [-]

It should depend on the level of the formality of the writing. In a strictly academic paper, it should probably be avoided completely. If the paper is slightly less formal, it may be acceptable, but the author should take care to specify that it is a work of fiction, that it is a theoretical example and not evidence, and what scope of the example is applicable to the discussion. This should be combined with actual evidence supporting the possibility and relevance of the example.

Comment author: fool_hill 10 June 2010 06:20:11PM 4 points [-]

i don't know why we prefer to hold on to our intuitions. your claim, that " we persist on holding onto them exactly because we do not know how they work" has not been proven, as far as I can tell, and seems unlikely. I also don't know why our own results seem sharper than what we learn from the outside [although about this later point, i bet there's some story about lack of trust in homo hypocritus societies or something] .

As somebody who fits into the "new to the site" category, I enjoyed your article.

Comment author: JDM 05 November 2012 01:18:55PM 0 points [-]

I think it's a combination of not understanding the process with a lifetime of experience where's it's far more right than wrong (Even for younger people, if they have 10-15 years of instinctive behavior being rewarded on some level, it's hard to accept there are situations it doesn't work as well). Combine that with the tendency of positive outcomes to be more memorable than others, and it's not too difficult to understand why people trust their intuition as much as they do.

your claim, that " we persist on holding onto them exactly because we do not know how they work" has not been proven, as far as I can tell, and seems unlikely.

It may not be the only reason, but an accurate understanding of how intuitions work would make it easier to rely less on it in situations it's not as we'll equipped for, just as an understanding of different biases makes it easier to fight them in our own thought processes.

Comment author: JDM 04 November 2012 11:54:37PM 4 points [-]

I wandered onto this site, read an article, read some interesting discussion on it, and decided to take the survey. The survey had some interesting discussion and I enjoyed the extra credit, which I did the majority of, with an exception of the IQ test I couldn't get to work right and will do later. I enjoyed the discussion I read, though, and decided this would be an interesting site to read more on. I don't know yet how much discussion I'll contribute, but when I see an interesting discussion I'm sure I'll join in.

I don't have too much to say about myself. I'm a college student majoring in computer science, and I'd like to do work in artificial intelligence eventually, although I'm nowhere near experienced enough yet to be able to have real discussion about it.

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