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All of BronecianFlyreme's Comments + Replies

Historical mathematicians exhibit a birth order effect too

Is the premise that while the effect of birth order on mean intelligence is small, we can see it magnified among our community members and in great mathematicians because each group is likely far more intelligent than average?

I recall reading this https://putanumonit.com/2015/11/10/003-soccer1/, which demonstrates that small mean differences will have outsized effects on groups comprised by the distributions' tails.

4Eli Tyre7y

Not a premise, but a plausible hypothesis, I think. If you select very strongly for intelligence, you're going to tend to select for first borns, since those correlate. But my guess is that isn't all that's happening, because the effect size is smaller for the Mathematicians than for LessWrongers. Rationalists are pretty smart, but these are some of the most brilliant people who have ever lived. It seems like there might be an additional trend, amongst rationalists, towards being first born, even after accounting for high intelligence. [edit: or maybe the first born effect isn't mediated by intelligence at all.]

Thomas C. Schelling's "Strategy of Conflict"

BronecianFlyreme11y10

Interestingly, it seems to me like the most convenient solution to this problem would be to find some way to make yourself incapable of not nuking anyone who built I nuke. I don't think it's really feasible, but I thought it was worth mentioning just because it matches the article so closely

0Richard_Kennaway11y

I'm sure all extortionists would find it very convenient to be able to say to their victims while breaking their legs, "It's you that's doing this, not me!" And to have the courts accept that as a valid defence, and jail the victim for committing assault on themselves. But the fact is, we cannot conduct brain surgery on ourselves to excise our responsibility. Is it an ability to be desired?

2013 Less Wrong Census/Survey

BronecianFlyreme11y290

Surveyed! And for the first time, too. This survey was pretty interesting and definitely not what I expected