Because I hung out with some top academic people, I know what actual genius is like.
Incidentally, when I talk about people being “very smart” I don’t mean “as measured by IQ.” As I mentioned lots of times before, I think IQ is a very poor measure of math smarts, and a very poor measure of generalized smarts at the top end. Intelligence is too heterogeneous, and too high dimensional. But there is such as thing as being “very smart,” it’s just a multidimensional thing.
So in this case, I just don’t think there is a lot of info in the data. I much prefer looking at what people have done as a proxy for their smarts. “If you are so smart, where are all your revolutionary papers?” This also correctly adjusts for people who actually are very smart, but who bury their talents (and so their hypothetical smarts are not super interesting to talk about).
I’ve already had this discussion with someone else, about another topic: I pointed out that statistically, lottery winners end up not happier than they were before winning. He said that he knew how to spend them well to be effectively much happier. In our discussion, you have some insight that from my perspective are biased, but from your point of view are not. Unfortunately, your data rely on uncommunicable evidence, so we should just disagree and call it a day.
But the situation is not as hopeless as it seems. Try to find some people at the top of their game, and hang out with them for a bit. Honestly, if you think “Mr. Average Less Wrong” and Ed Witten are playing in the same stadium, you are being a bit myopic. But this is the kind of thing more info can help with. You say you can’t use my info (and don’t want to take my word for it), but you can generate your own if you care.
Because I hung out with some top academic people, I know what actual genius is like.
Incidentally, when I talk about people being “very smart” I don’t mean “as measured by IQ.” As I mentioned lots of times before, I think IQ is a very poor measure of math smarts, and a very poor measure of generalized smarts at the top end. Intelligence is too heterogeneous, and too high dimensional. But there is such as thing as being “very smart,” it’s just a multidimensional thing.
So in this case, I just don’t think there is a lot of info in the data. I much prefer looking at what people have done as a proxy for their smarts. “If you are so smart, where are all your revolutionary papers?” This also correctly adjusts for people who actually are very smart, but who bury their talents (and so their hypothetical smarts are not super interesting to talk about).
I’ve already had this discussion with someone else, about another topic: I pointed out that statistically, lottery winners end up not happier than they were before winning. He said that he knew how to spend them well to be effectively much happier.
In our discussion, you have some insight that from my perspective are biased, but from your point of view are not. Unfortunately, your data rely on uncommunicable evidence, so we should just disagree and call it a day.
Lottery winners do end up happier.
Thanks, I updated!
Well, you don’t have to agree if you don’t want.
But the situation is not as hopeless as it seems. Try to find some people at the top of their game, and hang out with them for a bit. Honestly, if you think “Mr. Average Less Wrong” and Ed Witten are playing in the same stadium, you are being a bit myopic. But this is the kind of thing more info can help with. You say you can’t use my info (and don’t want to take my word for it), but you can generate your own if you care.
Will do! We’ll see how it pans out :D