Szilard may have been the wisest guy in the room, but he was no Einstein in terms of physics ability, and in a slightly different timeline where MAD broke down his “wisdom” could easily have lead him to be “the smartest guy in the room” on a much larger scale. In terms of something like general intelligence (though I’m reluctant to identify it with ‘g’) Einstein wasn’t really that astounding either. Hands down the best physicist ever and possibly the best metaphysicist, but low-average for a theoretical physicist in terms of math ability and academic politics (hence the patent office). Without some more academically skilled geniuses like Planck noticing the quality of his work and drawing attention to it, which was by no means a sure thing, he could have died in obscurity. As an author and a political/ethical philosopher, he was surely better than most theoretical physicists, but not obviously better than many other theoretical physicists who turn their attention to those domains. A few famous people, for instance Feynman and Von Neumann, do seem to have astounding general abilities but this doesn’t make their contributions to science comparable to his, while most people with astounding IQ scores don’t seem very accomplished or wise at all, even after regression to the mean in both measurement and recognition is taken into account.
Of the pitfalls of intelligence that Eliezer mentions, I worry most about the second, third, fourth, and sixth as applied to him and to Robin and about the second and fifth as applied to myself. However, far and away the greatest pitfall of intelligence seems to me to be the way in which it makes “we evolved to predict Other Minds by putting ourselves in their shoes, asking what we would do in their situations; for that which was to be predicted, was similar to the predictor.” a counterproductive strategy. Worse still, this strategy is advocated as both functional and normative by all cultural institutions, and information that could be used to modify it is somewhat suppressed.
Other problems of the highly intelligent seem to include nativity, for whatever reason, possibly a result of the childlikeness that encourages the absorption of information, especially explicit information. Likewise, one tends to find overreaction to explicit social norms. Social indoctrination of all sorts is calibrated to match a the typical mean of reaction of the population in shifting behavioral patterns to be more socially beneficial. However, acculturation also depends on the absorption of implicit norms, a process that is less accelerated by ‘g’. As a result, explicit rules frequently override implicit ones for highly intelligent people in a manner which disfavors them, especially in social and competitive contexts (and most especially where it is important to quickly create admiration, envy or trust). A prominent example is the economic effect of drinking. http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~cook/movabletype/archives/2006/09/drink_to_succes.htmlhttp://www.reason.org/news/alcohol_use_091406.shtmlhttp://papers.nber.org/papers/w12529
Szilard may have been the wisest guy in the room, but he was no Einstein in terms of physics ability, and in a slightly different timeline where MAD broke down his “wisdom” could easily have lead him to be “the smartest guy in the room” on a much larger scale. In terms of something like general intelligence (though I’m reluctant to identify it with ‘g’) Einstein wasn’t really that astounding either. Hands down the best physicist ever and possibly the best metaphysicist, but low-average for a theoretical physicist in terms of math ability and academic politics (hence the patent office). Without some more academically skilled geniuses like Planck noticing the quality of his work and drawing attention to it, which was by no means a sure thing, he could have died in obscurity. As an author and a political/ethical philosopher, he was surely better than most theoretical physicists, but not obviously better than many other theoretical physicists who turn their attention to those domains. A few famous people, for instance Feynman and Von Neumann, do seem to have astounding general abilities but this doesn’t make their contributions to science comparable to his, while most people with astounding IQ scores don’t seem very accomplished or wise at all, even after regression to the mean in both measurement and recognition is taken into account.
Of the pitfalls of intelligence that Eliezer mentions, I worry most about the second, third, fourth, and sixth as applied to him and to Robin and about the second and fifth as applied to myself. However, far and away the greatest pitfall of intelligence seems to me to be the way in which it makes “we evolved to predict Other Minds by putting ourselves in their shoes, asking what we would do in their situations; for that which was to be predicted, was similar to the predictor.” a counterproductive strategy. Worse still, this strategy is advocated as both functional and normative by all cultural institutions, and information that could be used to modify it is somewhat suppressed.
Other problems of the highly intelligent seem to include nativity, for whatever reason, possibly a result of the childlikeness that encourages the absorption of information, especially explicit information. Likewise, one tends to find overreaction to explicit social norms. Social indoctrination of all sorts is calibrated to match a the typical mean of reaction of the population in shifting behavioral patterns to be more socially beneficial. However, acculturation also depends on the absorption of implicit norms, a process that is less accelerated by ‘g’. As a result, explicit rules frequently override implicit ones for highly intelligent people in a manner which disfavors them, especially in social and competitive contexts (and most especially where it is important to quickly create admiration, envy or trust). A prominent example is the economic effect of drinking. http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~cook/movabletype/archives/2006/09/drink_to_succes.html http://www.reason.org/news/alcohol_use_091406.shtml http://papers.nber.org/papers/w12529