I’ve noticed that I cannot tell, from casual conversation, whether someone is intelligent in the IQ sense.
I can’t really do anything except to state this as a claim: I think a few minutes of conversation with anyone almost always gives me significant information about their intelligence in an IQ sense. That is, I couldn’t tell you the exact number, and probably not even reliably predict it with an error of less than 20 (maybe more), but nonetheless, I know significantly more than zero. Like, if I talked to 9 people evenly spaced within [70, 130], I’m pretty confident that I’d get most of them into the correct half.
This does not translate into and kind of disagreement wrt to GPT’s texts seeming normal if I just skim them. Or to Robin Hanson’s thesis.
I think a few minutes of conversation with anyone almost always gives me significant information about their intelligence in an IQ sense.
Out of curiosity, what do you base this on? Is there anything specific you’re looking for? Particular patterns of thought/logic or something more superficial? Not trying to be disparaging, just interested.
I often greatly moderate the way I speak depending on circumstance. I’m looking for the best means of communication, not to impress anyone with vocabulary. Sometimes sounding like the smart one in the room is detrimental, or sounds like condescension. In practice this means I’m often speaking in a way that someone might categorize as ‘not high intelligence.’
I also think that since language and communication are a product of one’s environment, they aren’t necessarily good indicators of intelligence. Simple example: I often see people think that immigrants are not smart because they can’t speak English well—never mind that the person might speak 2-3 other languages fluently and have an engineering degree. People often assume those who use a lot of slang are not smart, but that doesn’t really mean anything other than they are using the best mode of communication within their community/area.
Personally I also like to throw in profanity to keep people on their toes. I don’t want people to get an accurate read on me; but that’s probably also just me being a paranoiac. So then I guess also: how do you know people aren’t giving you false data on purpose?
Strong enough language barriers make all but the last one mostly useless, but for fluent English speakers, I can tell if they can:
Point out things I didn’t see yet about things I’ve been thinking about for a while, or build models in any domain that’s new to them.
Notice what I’m feeling before I do, and make inferences about how to act.
Pick up on new-to-them concepts I’m using and apply them to new situations in real time.
Explain things to me clearly and simply that I didn’t understand or know about before, responsively to dynamic queries, without extraneous material that I didn’t ask about.
Explain multi-level causal models or do verbal recursive reasoning at all.
Explain anything, ever, even at a single level.
Tell a story.
Directly articulate their feelings, preferences, or thoughts, verbally or nonverbally.
Interact with physical objects, keep track of what’s physically going on in the room and who’s in it.
These are very roughly in descending order of intelligence level necessary.
I can’t really do anything except to state this as a claim: I think a few minutes of conversation with anyone almost always gives me significant information about their intelligence in an IQ sense. That is, I couldn’t tell you the exact number, and probably not even reliably predict it with an error of less than 20 (maybe more), but nonetheless, I know significantly more than zero. Like, if I talked to 9 people evenly spaced within [70, 130], I’m pretty confident that I’d get most of them into the correct half.
This does not translate into and kind of disagreement wrt to GPT’s texts seeming normal if I just skim them. Or to Robin Hanson’s thesis.
Note also this related question that I asked and that had some good discussion:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/KFWA9dMFAnic56Zt3/how-good-is-a-human-s-gut-judgement-at-guessing-someone-s-iq
Out of curiosity, what do you base this on? Is there anything specific you’re looking for? Particular patterns of thought/logic or something more superficial? Not trying to be disparaging, just interested.
I often greatly moderate the way I speak depending on circumstance. I’m looking for the best means of communication, not to impress anyone with vocabulary. Sometimes sounding like the smart one in the room is detrimental, or sounds like condescension. In practice this means I’m often speaking in a way that someone might categorize as ‘not high intelligence.’
I also think that since language and communication are a product of one’s environment, they aren’t necessarily good indicators of intelligence. Simple example: I often see people think that immigrants are not smart because they can’t speak English well—never mind that the person might speak 2-3 other languages fluently and have an engineering degree. People often assume those who use a lot of slang are not smart, but that doesn’t really mean anything other than they are using the best mode of communication within their community/area.
Personally I also like to throw in profanity to keep people on their toes. I don’t want people to get an accurate read on me; but that’s probably also just me being a paranoiac. So then I guess also: how do you know people aren’t giving you false data on purpose?
Strong enough language barriers make all but the last one mostly useless, but for fluent English speakers, I can tell if they can:
Point out things I didn’t see yet about things I’ve been thinking about for a while, or build models in any domain that’s new to them.
Notice what I’m feeling before I do, and make inferences about how to act.
Pick up on new-to-them concepts I’m using and apply them to new situations in real time.
Explain things to me clearly and simply that I didn’t understand or know about before, responsively to dynamic queries, without extraneous material that I didn’t ask about.
Explain multi-level causal models or do verbal recursive reasoning at all.
Explain anything, ever, even at a single level.
Tell a story.
Directly articulate their feelings, preferences, or thoughts, verbally or nonverbally.
Interact with physical objects, keep track of what’s physically going on in the room and who’s in it.
These are very roughly in descending order of intelligence level necessary.
Interesting. Thanks!