“How intelligent LW users are, as a population” … not so much. What insight would we get from discussing it more?
We talk about our issues with akrasia because lots of LW users think that they (and others) achieve a lot less than they could because of akrasia and that a better understanding of akrasia might help to fix this. What comparable “issues with intelligence” do we have?
What comparable “issues with intelligence” do we have?
How would we know, unless we compared notes?
Maybe we could achieve a lot more if we found better ways to leverage the advantages and avoid the disadvantages of high intelligence. Found careers and social contexts where it was a greater advantage, and avoided those where it was less of an advantage, or a handicap. Found ways to deal with education institutions geared to the common denominator.
If nothing else, it might be an interesting to discuss why people get so weird about intelligence, per this thread. There wouldn’t be a question about having a similar discussion for any other generally useful ability.
But none of these things is a matter of talking about how clever we are; they’re about talking about what to do with our cleverness. The thing a bunch of people are skeptical about the value of is yet another attempt to quantify exactly how smart LW’s population is (according to some particular numerical measure of some particular kinds of smartness), which is not at all the same thing.
“Intelligence” is an interesting topic.
“How intelligent LW users are, as a population” … not so much. What insight would we get from discussing it more?
We talk about our issues with akrasia because lots of LW users think that they (and others) achieve a lot less than they could because of akrasia and that a better understanding of akrasia might help to fix this. What comparable “issues with intelligence” do we have?
How would we know, unless we compared notes?
Maybe we could achieve a lot more if we found better ways to leverage the advantages and avoid the disadvantages of high intelligence. Found careers and social contexts where it was a greater advantage, and avoided those where it was less of an advantage, or a handicap. Found ways to deal with education institutions geared to the common denominator.
If nothing else, it might be an interesting to discuss why people get so weird about intelligence, per this thread. There wouldn’t be a question about having a similar discussion for any other generally useful ability.
But none of these things is a matter of talking about how clever we are; they’re about talking about what to do with our cleverness. The thing a bunch of people are skeptical about the value of is yet another attempt to quantify exactly how smart LW’s population is (according to some particular numerical measure of some particular kinds of smartness), which is not at all the same thing.