If you clear away all the noise arising from the fact that this interaction constitutes a clash of tribal factions...
Pei seems to conflate the possibility...
I’m finding these dialogues worthwhile for (so far) lowering my respect for “mainstream” AI researchers...
and so on.
I think it’d be great if SIAI would not lath on the most favourable and least informative interpretation of any disagreement, in precisely the way how e.g. any community around free energy devices does. It’d be also great if Luke allowed for the possibility that Wang (and most other people whom are more intelligent, better educated, and more experienced than Luke) are actually correct, and Luke is completely wrong (or not even wrong).
I think it’d be great if SIAI would not lath on the most favourable and least informative interpretation of any disagreement
The SIAI hasn’t seemed to lath on any interpretations. The quote you make and all the interpretations you disagree with here have been done by commenters from the internet that aren’t SIAI affiliated. The main thing Luke does that is a disservice to Wang is to post this conversation publicly, thereby embarrassing the guy and lowering his reputation among anyone who finds the reasoning expressed to be poor. But the conversation was supposed to be public and done with Wang’s foreknowledge—presumably the arguments he used he actually wants to be associated with.
It’d be also great if Luke allowed for the possibility that Wang (and most other people whom are more intelligent, better educated, and more experienced than Luke) are actually correct, and Luke is completely wrong (or not even wrong).
As Grognor said (in the quote you made) this particular conversation served to significantly lower the perceived likelyhood that those things are correct. And this could become a real problem if it happens too often. Being exposed to too many bad arguments for a position can serve to bias the reader in the opposite direction to what has been argued. We need to find representatives from “mainstream AI researchers” that don’t make the kind of simple errors of reasoning that we see here. Presumably they exist?
When there is any use of domain specific knowledge and expertise, without a zillion citations for elementary facts, you see “simple errors of reasoning” whereas everyone else sees “you are a clueless dilettante”. Wang is a far more intelligent person than Luke, sorry, the world is unjust and there is nothing Luke or Eliezer can do about their relatively low intelligence compared to people in the field. Lack of education on top of the lower intelligence doesn’t help at all.
edit: I stand by it. I don’t find either Eliezer or Luke to be particularly smart; smarter than average blogger, for sure, but not genuises. I by the way score very high on IQ tests. I can judge not just by accomplishments but simply because I can actually evaluate the difficulty of the work, and, well, they never did anything that’s too difficult for IQ of 120 , maybe 125 . If there is one thing that makes LessWrong a cult, it is the high-confidence belief that the gurus are smartest, or among the smartest people on Earth.
Not sure about the real or perceived intelligence level, but speaking the same language as your partner in a discussion certainly helps. Having reasonable credentials, while not essential, does not hurt, either.
Oh, and my experience is that arguing with wedrifid is futile, just to warn you.
Oh, and my experience is that arguing with wedrifid is futile, just to warn you.
I don’t have any cached assessment of personal experience with arguing with shminux. In my evaluation of how his arguments with other people play out I have concluded that people can often mitigate some of the epistemic damage shminux does while trying to advocate his agenda. It is barely worth even considering that the reason to refute the specific positions shminux takes is anything to do with attempting to change shminux’s mind or directly influence his behavior—that would indeed be futile.
Replying directly to that sort of sniping would be appropriate even if the relevance were limited purely to being a follow up to the personal remark. However, in this case the more significant relevance is:
shminux has been the dominant player on this thread (and a significant player in most recent threads that are relevant). He has a very clear position that he used this conversation to express.
Wedrifid refuted a couple of points that shminux tried to make and, if I recall, was one of the people who answered a rhetorical question of shminux’s with a literal answer—which represents strong opposition to a point shminux wants to be accepted to the degree of being considered obvious.
The meaning conveyed by the quoted sentence from shminux is not limited to being specifically about stopping semianonymous from arguing with wedrifid. (After all, I don’t want the semianonymous account to argue with me and on the purely denotative level I would agree with that recommendation.)
Shminux conveying the connotation “wedrifid is irrational and should be ignored” is a way to encourage others to discount any refutations or contradictory opinions that wedrifid may have made or will make to shminux. In fact it is one of the strongest moves shminux has available to him in the context, for the purpose of countering opposition to his beliefs.
Instead of people taking shminux seriously and discounting anything wedrifid has said in reply I (completely unsurprisingly) think people would be better off taking wedrifid seriously and taking a closer look at just how irrefutable shminux’s advocacy actually is. After all, there is more than one reason why shminux would personally find arguing with wedrifid futile. Not all of them require shminux being right.
Wang is a far more intelligent person than Luke, sorry, the world is unjust and there is nothing Luke or Eliezer can do about their relatively low intelligence compared to people in the field.
This is both petty and ridiculous—to the extent that Wang’s work output can be considered representative of intelligence. Please do not move the discussion to evaluations of pure intelligence. I have no desire to insult the guy but raw intelligence is not the area where you should set up a comparison here.
more intelligent, better educated, and more experienced
2 of these 3 seems to be clearly the case. I’m unsure how you are getting more intelligent. Your point may be valid completely without the intelligence bit in that intelligent people can easily be deeply mistaken about areas they don’t have much education, and one sees that not that infrequently. I’m am however curious how you are making the intelligence determination in question.
I’m unsure how you are not. Every single proxy for intelligence indicates a fairly dramatic gap in intelligence in favour of Wang. Of course for politeness sake we assume that they would be at least equally intelligent, and for phyg sake that Luke would be more intelligent, but it is simply very, very, very unlikely.
Accomplishments of all kinds, the position, the likelihood that Wang has actually managed to move from effectively lower class (third world) to upper class (but I didn’t look up where he’s from, yet), etc.
What proxies do you think would indicate Luke is more intelligent? I can’t seem to think of any.
Accomplishments of all kinds, the position, the likelihood that Wang has actually managed to move from effectively lower class (third world) to upper class (but I didn’t look up where he’s from, yet), etc.
Wang is accomplished to the point where one can immediately see it simply from glancing at his CV. However, accomplishments are only a rough measure of intelligence. By some metrics, Conscientiousness is a better predictor of success than raw intelligence, and by many metrics it is at least as good a predictor. Relying on academic success as a metric of intelligence isn’t that reliable unless one is doing something like comparing the very top in a field. This also makes little sense given that Luke isn’t a member of academia.
The claim about the third world is puzzling- Wang is Chinese (a fact that I would think would be obvious from his name, and took me two seconds to verify by looking at his CV) and China has never been considered third world, but rather was (when the term made more sense) second world. Moreover, this isn’t just an argument over the meaning of words- China’s GDP per a capita_per_capita), average education level, average literacy level[1], or almost any other metric you choose is far higher than that of most countries classically considered to be in the third world.
Wang is also older than Luke. Wang finished his undergraduate degree in 1983, so he’s approximately in his early fifties now. Pei Wang has therefore had far more time to accomplish things. So simply lining up their accomplishment levels doesn’t work. (Although Wang clearly does have some accomplishments at a fairly young age, such as his thesis being selected for an Outstanding Dissertation Award by his university.)
What proxies do you think would indicate Luke is more intelligent? I can’t seem to think of any.
I’m not sure why this question is being asked. I’m not aware of any either but it really doesn’t have much to do with the matter at hand. You’ve claimed not just that Wang is likely to be more intelligent but that “Every single proxy for intelligence indicates a fairly dramatic gap in intelligence”- that requires a lot more than simply not having any obvious pointers for Luke to be smarter. Overall, I’m deeply unconvinced that either one is more intelligent. This isn’t an issue of Luke being more intelligent. This is an issue of very little data in general.
[1] Some of the entries in that list are measured with different metrics, so this isn’t a perfect comparison.
Wang is also older than Luke. Wang finished his undergraduate degree in 1983, so he’s approximately in his early fifties now. Pei Wang has therefore had far more time to accomplish things.
And, it must be noted, more time to crystallize intuitions formed based off the common sense from yesteryear.
That isn’t relevant for the immediate issue of intelligence evaluation. It may be relevant to the general point at hand, but it sounds worryingly like a fully general counterargument.
That isn’t relevant for the immediate issue of intelligence evaluation.
It was a tangent of general interest to the progress of science. It could have been made purely as a relevant-to-intelligence-evaluation point if it were expanded by pointing to the well understood relationship of fluid and crystallized intelligence as they change over time.
It may be relevant to the general point at hand, but it sounds worryingly like a fully general counterargument.
It is merely something that tempers the degree to which the fully general argument “This person is more experienced and has collected more prestige therefore he is right” should be given weight. It would become a ‘fully general counterargument’ when people started using “nah, she’s old” in a general context. When used specifically when evaluating the strength of the evidence indicated by prestige it is simply one of the relevant factors under consideration.
There is a world of difference between a minor point of general relevance to the evaluation of a specific kind of evidence and a “fully general counter-argument”. The abuse of the former would be required for the latter charge to be justified—and that isn’t the case here.
There is very little data on Luke and that is a proxy for Luke being less intelligent, dramatically so. It is instrumental to Luke’s goals to provide such data. On the second world or third world that is irrelevant semantics.
edit: and as rather strong evidence that Luke is approximately as intelligent as the least intelligent version of Luke that can look the same to us, it suffices to cite normal distribution of intelligence.
That reply essentially ignores almost every comment I made. I’m particularly curious whether you are in agreement that Pei Wang isn’t from a third world country? Does that cause any update at all for your estimates?
There is very little data on Luke and that is a proxy for Luke being less intelligent, dramatically so.
Also, if we go back in time 20 years, so that Pei Wang would be about the same age Luke is now, do you think you’d have an accomplishment list for Pei Wang that was substantially longer than Luke’s current one? If so, how does that impact your claim?
I apologise for my unawareness that you call China second world. It is still the case that it is very difficult to move from China to US.
Also, if we go back in time 20 years, so that Pei Wang would be about the same age Luke is now, do you think you’d have an accomplishment list for Pei Wang that was substantially longer than Luke’s current one? If so, how does that impact your claim?
If we move back 20 years, it is 1992, and Pei Wang has already been a lecturer in China then moved to Indiana University. Length of the accomplishment list is a poor proxy, difficulty is important. As I explained in the edit, you shouldn’t forget about Bell’s curve. No evidence for intelligence is good evidence of absence, on the IQ>100 side of normal distribution.
As I explained in the edit, you shouldn’t forget about Bell’s curve. No evidence for intelligence is good evidence of absence, on the IQ>100 side of normal distribution.
Ah, that’s what you meant by the other remark. In that case, this isn’t backing up claimed prior proxies and is a new argument. Let’s be clear on that. So how valid is this? I don’t think this is a good argument at all. Anyone who has read what Luke has to say or interacted with Luke can tell pretty strongly that Luke is on the right side of the Bell curve. Sure, if I pick a random person the chance that they are as smart as Pei Wang is tiny, but that’s not the case here.
It is still the case that it is very difficult to move from China to US
There are a lot of Chinese academics who come to the United States. So what do you mean by very difficult?
If we move back 20 years, it is 1992, and Pei Wang has already been a lecturer in China then moved to Indiana University.
He doesn’t have his PhD at that point. He gets that at Indiana. I can’t tell precisely from his CV what he means by lecturer, but at least in the US it often means a position primarily given for teaching rather than research. Given that he didn’t have a doctorate at the time, it is very likely that it means something similar, what we might call an adjunct here. That it isn’t a very good demonstration of intelligence at all. Luke has in his time run a popular blog that has been praised for its clarity and good writing. And you still haven’t addressed the issue that Luke was never trying to go into academia.
Ah, that’s what you meant by the other remark. In that case, this isn’t backing up claimed prior proxies and is a new argument.
New to you. Not new to me. Should not have been new to you either. Study and train to reduce communication overhead.
Sorry if my point was unclear. The point is that this is a new argument in this discussion. That means it isn’t one of the proxies listed earlier, so bringing it up isn’t relevant to the discussion of those proxies. To use an analogy, someone could assert that the moon is made of rock and that their primary reason for thinking so is that Cthulhu said so. If when pressed on this, they point out that this is backed up by other evidence, this doesn’t make revelation from Cthulhu turn into a better argument than it already was.
Exercise for you: calculate expected IQ of someone whom you know to have IQ>x .
This isn’t a claim that his IQ as estimated is greater than x+ epsilon, since we can’t measure any epsilon > 0. If you prefer, the point is that his writings and work demonstrate an IQ that is on the right end of the Bell curve by a non-trivial amount.
There are a lot of Chinese academics who come to the United States. So what do you mean by very difficult?
Those born higher up social ladder don’t understand it is hard to climb below them too.
That doesn’t answer the question in any useful way especially because we don’t know where Pei Wang’s original social status was. The question is whether his coming to the US for graduate school is strongly indicative of intelligence to the point where you can use it as a proxy that asserts that Wang is “dramatically” more intelligent than Luke. Without more information or specification, this is a weak argument.
My point is that this bell curve shouldn’t be a new argument, it should be the first step in your reasoning and if it was not, you must have been going in the other direction. You seem to be now doing the same with the original social status.
I think I have sufficiently answered your question: I find Wang’s writings and accomplishments to require significantly higher intelligence (at minimum) than Luke’s, and I started with normal distribution as the prior (as everyone should). In any game of wits with no massive disparity in training in favour of Luke, I would bet on Wang.
New to you. Not new to me. Should not have been new to you either. Study and train to reduce communication overhead.
The strength of your position is not commensurate with your level of condescension here. In fact, you seem to be just trying to find excuses to back up your earlier unjustified insults—that isn’t something that JoshuaZ training and studying would help you with.
I fail to see how the suggestion that Wang is much smarter than Luke is an insult—unless Luke believes that there can’t be a person much smarter than him.
I try not to assume narcissist personality disorder. Most people have IQ around 100 and are perfectly comfortable with the notion that accomplished PhD is smarter than they are. Most smart people, also, are perfectly comfortable with the notion that someone significantly more accomplished is probably smarter than they are. Some people have NPD and have operating assumption ‘I am the smartest person in the world’ but they are a minority across entire spectrum of intelligence. There are also cultural differences.
Most people have IQ around 100 and are perfectly comfortable with the notion that accomplished PhD is smarter than they are.
How have you measured their level of comfort with the idea? Do you often tell such people that when they disagree with such an accomplished PhD, that the accomplished PhD is smarter than them? And do they tend to be appreciative of you saying that?
Outside of politically motivated issues (e.g. global warming), most people tend to generally not disagree with accomplished scientists on the topics within that scientist’s area of expertise and accomplishment, and to treat the more accomplished person as source of wisdom rather than as opponent in a debate. It is furthermore my honest opinion that Wang is more intelligent than Luke, and it is also the opinion that most reasonable people would share, and Luke must understand this.
Replying in a second comment to the parts you edited in (to keep conversation flow clear and also so you see this remark):
On the second world or third world that is irrelevant semantics.
I outlined precisely why this wasn’t just a semantic issue. China and most Chinese citizens are pretty well off and they have access to a decent education system. This isn’t a semantic issue. A moderately smart random Chinese citizen has pretty decent chances at success.
and as rather strong evidence that Luke is approximately as intelligent as the least intelligent version of Luke that can look the same to us, it suffices to cite normal distribution of intelligence.
I don’t understand this comment. I can’t parse it in any way that makes sense. Can you expand/clarify on this remark? Also, is this to be understood as a new argument for a dramatic intelligence gap and not an attempt to address the previously listed proxies?
If accomplishments is the only proxy you use to evaluate their relative intelligence, then it would have been all-around better if you had said “more accomplished” rather than “more intelligent”, as it’s more precise, less controversial, and doesn’t confuse fact with inference.
If you wanted to present the inference, then present it as an inference.
e.g. “more accomplished (and thus I conclude more intelligent)” would have been vastly better than what you did, which was to just present your conclusion in a manner that would inevitably bait others to dispute it/take offense against it.
It is clear that you just don’t want to hear opinion more intelligent without qualifiers that allow you to disregard this opinion immediately, and you are being obtuse.
Trust me, it’s quite easier to disregard an accusation/insult when you do not include an explicit chain of reasoning. It’s harder to not respond to, because it mentally tags you as just ‘enemy’, but for the same reason it’s easier to disregard.
As for “being obtuse”, don’t confuse civility with obtuseness. I knew you for what you are. I knew that the trolling and the flamebaiting is what you attempted to do, So I knew that any attempts to direct you towards a more productive means of discussion wouldn’t be heeded by you, as they were counterproductive to your true goals.
But nonetheless, my suggestion has the benefit of explicitly pinpointing the failure in your postings, to be hopefully heeded by any others that are more honest at seeking to make an actual argument, not just troll people.
It is not accusation or insult. It is the case though that the people in question (Luke, Eliezer) need to assume the possibility that people they are talking to are more intelligent than they are—something that is clearly more probable than not given available evidence—and they seem not to.
I don’t see how that would be relevant to the issue at hand, and thus, why they “need to assume [this] possibility”. Whether they assume the people they talk to can be more intelligent than them or not, so long as they engage them on an even intellectual ground (e.g. trading civil letters of argumentation), is simply irrelevant.
and so on.
I think it’d be great if SIAI would not lath on the most favourable and least informative interpretation of any disagreement, in precisely the way how e.g. any community around free energy devices does. It’d be also great if Luke allowed for the possibility that Wang (and most other people whom are more intelligent, better educated, and more experienced than Luke) are actually correct, and Luke is completely wrong (or not even wrong).
The SIAI hasn’t seemed to lath on any interpretations. The quote you make and all the interpretations you disagree with here have been done by commenters from the internet that aren’t SIAI affiliated. The main thing Luke does that is a disservice to Wang is to post this conversation publicly, thereby embarrassing the guy and lowering his reputation among anyone who finds the reasoning expressed to be poor. But the conversation was supposed to be public and done with Wang’s foreknowledge—presumably the arguments he used he actually wants to be associated with.
As Grognor said (in the quote you made) this particular conversation served to significantly lower the perceived likelyhood that those things are correct. And this could become a real problem if it happens too often. Being exposed to too many bad arguments for a position can serve to bias the reader in the opposite direction to what has been argued. We need to find representatives from “mainstream AI researchers” that don’t make the kind of simple errors of reasoning that we see here. Presumably they exist?
When there is any use of domain specific knowledge and expertise, without a zillion citations for elementary facts, you see “simple errors of reasoning” whereas everyone else sees “you are a clueless dilettante”. Wang is a far more intelligent person than Luke, sorry, the world is unjust and there is nothing Luke or Eliezer can do about their relatively low intelligence compared to people in the field. Lack of education on top of the lower intelligence doesn’t help at all.
edit: I stand by it. I don’t find either Eliezer or Luke to be particularly smart; smarter than average blogger, for sure, but not genuises. I by the way score very high on IQ tests. I can judge not just by accomplishments but simply because I can actually evaluate the difficulty of the work, and, well, they never did anything that’s too difficult for IQ of 120 , maybe 125 . If there is one thing that makes LessWrong a cult, it is the high-confidence belief that the gurus are smartest, or among the smartest people on Earth.
Not sure about the real or perceived intelligence level, but speaking the same language as your partner in a discussion certainly helps. Having reasonable credentials, while not essential, does not hurt, either.
Oh, and my experience is that arguing with wedrifid is futile, just to warn you.
I don’t have any cached assessment of personal experience with arguing with shminux. In my evaluation of how his arguments with other people play out I have concluded that people can often mitigate some of the epistemic damage shminux does while trying to advocate his agenda. It is barely worth even considering that the reason to refute the specific positions shminux takes is anything to do with attempting to change shminux’s mind or directly influence his behavior—that would indeed be futile.
Upvoted for illustrating my point nicely. Thank you!
How is this relevant? semianonymous doesn’t seem to be in any risk of sinking some utility into an argument with shminux.
Replying directly to that sort of sniping would be appropriate even if the relevance were limited purely to being a follow up to the personal remark. However, in this case the more significant relevance is:
shminux has been the dominant player on this thread (and a significant player in most recent threads that are relevant). He has a very clear position that he used this conversation to express.
Wedrifid refuted a couple of points that shminux tried to make and, if I recall, was one of the people who answered a rhetorical question of shminux’s with a literal answer—which represents strong opposition to a point shminux wants to be accepted to the degree of being considered obvious.
The meaning conveyed by the quoted sentence from shminux is not limited to being specifically about stopping semianonymous from arguing with wedrifid. (After all, I don’t want the semianonymous account to argue with me and on the purely denotative level I would agree with that recommendation.)
Shminux conveying the connotation “wedrifid is irrational and should be ignored” is a way to encourage others to discount any refutations or contradictory opinions that wedrifid may have made or will make to shminux. In fact it is one of the strongest moves shminux has available to him in the context, for the purpose of countering opposition to his beliefs.
Instead of people taking shminux seriously and discounting anything wedrifid has said in reply I (completely unsurprisingly) think people would be better off taking wedrifid seriously and taking a closer look at just how irrefutable shminux’s advocacy actually is. After all, there is more than one reason why shminux would personally find arguing with wedrifid futile. Not all of them require shminux being right.
I guess that makes sense. It seems a bit weird, but so it goes.
This is both petty and ridiculous—to the extent that Wang’s work output can be considered representative of intelligence. Please do not move the discussion to evaluations of pure intelligence. I have no desire to insult the guy but raw intelligence is not the area where you should set up a comparison here.
Are you even serious?
2 of these 3 seems to be clearly the case. I’m unsure how you are getting more intelligent. Your point may be valid completely without the intelligence bit in that intelligent people can easily be deeply mistaken about areas they don’t have much education, and one sees that not that infrequently. I’m am however curious how you are making the intelligence determination in question.
I’m unsure how you are not. Every single proxy for intelligence indicates a fairly dramatic gap in intelligence in favour of Wang. Of course for politeness sake we assume that they would be at least equally intelligent, and for phyg sake that Luke would be more intelligent, but it is simply very, very, very unlikely.
Can you state explicitly what proxies you are using here that you think indicate a dramatic gap?
Accomplishments of all kinds, the position, the likelihood that Wang has actually managed to move from effectively lower class (third world) to upper class (but I didn’t look up where he’s from, yet), etc.
What proxies do you think would indicate Luke is more intelligent? I can’t seem to think of any.
Wang is accomplished to the point where one can immediately see it simply from glancing at his CV. However, accomplishments are only a rough measure of intelligence. By some metrics, Conscientiousness is a better predictor of success than raw intelligence, and by many metrics it is at least as good a predictor. Relying on academic success as a metric of intelligence isn’t that reliable unless one is doing something like comparing the very top in a field. This also makes little sense given that Luke isn’t a member of academia.
The claim about the third world is puzzling- Wang is Chinese (a fact that I would think would be obvious from his name, and took me two seconds to verify by looking at his CV) and China has never been considered third world, but rather was (when the term made more sense) second world. Moreover, this isn’t just an argument over the meaning of words- China’s GDP per a capita_per_capita), average education level, average literacy level[1], or almost any other metric you choose is far higher than that of most countries classically considered to be in the third world.
Wang is also older than Luke. Wang finished his undergraduate degree in 1983, so he’s approximately in his early fifties now. Pei Wang has therefore had far more time to accomplish things. So simply lining up their accomplishment levels doesn’t work. (Although Wang clearly does have some accomplishments at a fairly young age, such as his thesis being selected for an Outstanding Dissertation Award by his university.)
I’m not sure why this question is being asked. I’m not aware of any either but it really doesn’t have much to do with the matter at hand. You’ve claimed not just that Wang is likely to be more intelligent but that “Every single proxy for intelligence indicates a fairly dramatic gap in intelligence”- that requires a lot more than simply not having any obvious pointers for Luke to be smarter. Overall, I’m deeply unconvinced that either one is more intelligent. This isn’t an issue of Luke being more intelligent. This is an issue of very little data in general.
[1] Some of the entries in that list are measured with different metrics, so this isn’t a perfect comparison.
And, it must be noted, more time to crystallize intuitions formed based off the common sense from yesteryear.
That isn’t relevant for the immediate issue of intelligence evaluation. It may be relevant to the general point at hand, but it sounds worryingly like a fully general counterargument.
It was a tangent of general interest to the progress of science. It could have been made purely as a relevant-to-intelligence-evaluation point if it were expanded by pointing to the well understood relationship of fluid and crystallized intelligence as they change over time.
It is merely something that tempers the degree to which the fully general argument “This person is more experienced and has collected more prestige therefore he is right” should be given weight. It would become a ‘fully general counterargument’ when people started using “nah, she’s old” in a general context. When used specifically when evaluating the strength of the evidence indicated by prestige it is simply one of the relevant factors under consideration.
There is a world of difference between a minor point of general relevance to the evaluation of a specific kind of evidence and a “fully general counter-argument”. The abuse of the former would be required for the latter charge to be justified—and that isn’t the case here.
Good point.
There is very little data on Luke and that is a proxy for Luke being less intelligent, dramatically so. It is instrumental to Luke’s goals to provide such data. On the second world or third world that is irrelevant semantics.
edit: and as rather strong evidence that Luke is approximately as intelligent as the least intelligent version of Luke that can look the same to us, it suffices to cite normal distribution of intelligence.
That reply essentially ignores almost every comment I made. I’m particularly curious whether you are in agreement that Pei Wang isn’t from a third world country? Does that cause any update at all for your estimates?
Also, if we go back in time 20 years, so that Pei Wang would be about the same age Luke is now, do you think you’d have an accomplishment list for Pei Wang that was substantially longer than Luke’s current one? If so, how does that impact your claim?
I apologise for my unawareness that you call China second world. It is still the case that it is very difficult to move from China to US.
If we move back 20 years, it is 1992, and Pei Wang has already been a lecturer in China then moved to Indiana University. Length of the accomplishment list is a poor proxy, difficulty is important. As I explained in the edit, you shouldn’t forget about Bell’s curve. No evidence for intelligence is good evidence of absence, on the IQ>100 side of normal distribution.
Ah, that’s what you meant by the other remark. In that case, this isn’t backing up claimed prior proxies and is a new argument. Let’s be clear on that. So how valid is this? I don’t think this is a good argument at all. Anyone who has read what Luke has to say or interacted with Luke can tell pretty strongly that Luke is on the right side of the Bell curve. Sure, if I pick a random person the chance that they are as smart as Pei Wang is tiny, but that’s not the case here.
There are a lot of Chinese academics who come to the United States. So what do you mean by very difficult?
He doesn’t have his PhD at that point. He gets that at Indiana. I can’t tell precisely from his CV what he means by lecturer, but at least in the US it often means a position primarily given for teaching rather than research. Given that he didn’t have a doctorate at the time, it is very likely that it means something similar, what we might call an adjunct here. That it isn’t a very good demonstration of intelligence at all. Luke has in his time run a popular blog that has been praised for its clarity and good writing. And you still haven’t addressed the issue that Luke was never trying to go into academia.
New to you. Not new to me. Should not have been new to you either. Study and train to reduce communication overhead.
Exercise for you: find formula for distribution of IQ of someone whom you know to have IQ>x . (I mean, find variance and other properties).
Those born higher up social ladder don’t understand it is hard to climb below them too.
Sorry if my point was unclear. The point is that this is a new argument in this discussion. That means it isn’t one of the proxies listed earlier, so bringing it up isn’t relevant to the discussion of those proxies. To use an analogy, someone could assert that the moon is made of rock and that their primary reason for thinking so is that Cthulhu said so. If when pressed on this, they point out that this is backed up by other evidence, this doesn’t make revelation from Cthulhu turn into a better argument than it already was.
This isn’t a claim that his IQ as estimated is greater than x+ epsilon, since we can’t measure any epsilon > 0. If you prefer, the point is that his writings and work demonstrate an IQ that is on the right end of the Bell curve by a non-trivial amount.
That doesn’t answer the question in any useful way especially because we don’t know where Pei Wang’s original social status was. The question is whether his coming to the US for graduate school is strongly indicative of intelligence to the point where you can use it as a proxy that asserts that Wang is “dramatically” more intelligent than Luke. Without more information or specification, this is a weak argument.
My point is that this bell curve shouldn’t be a new argument, it should be the first step in your reasoning and if it was not, you must have been going in the other direction. You seem to be now doing the same with the original social status.
I think I have sufficiently answered your question: I find Wang’s writings and accomplishments to require significantly higher intelligence (at minimum) than Luke’s, and I started with normal distribution as the prior (as everyone should). In any game of wits with no massive disparity in training in favour of Luke, I would bet on Wang.
The strength of your position is not commensurate with your level of condescension here. In fact, you seem to be just trying to find excuses to back up your earlier unjustified insults—that isn’t something that JoshuaZ training and studying would help you with.
I fail to see how the suggestion that Wang is much smarter than Luke is an insult—unless Luke believes that there can’t be a person much smarter than him.
If you stand by this statement as written, I’m at a loss for what your starting assumptions about social interactions even look like.
Conversely, if you only meant it as rhetorical hyperbole, would you mind glossing it with your actual meaning?
I try not to assume narcissist personality disorder. Most people have IQ around 100 and are perfectly comfortable with the notion that accomplished PhD is smarter than they are. Most smart people, also, are perfectly comfortable with the notion that someone significantly more accomplished is probably smarter than they are. Some people have NPD and have operating assumption ‘I am the smartest person in the world’ but they are a minority across entire spectrum of intelligence. There are also cultural differences.
How have you measured their level of comfort with the idea? Do you often tell such people that when they disagree with such an accomplished PhD, that the accomplished PhD is smarter than them? And do they tend to be appreciative of you saying that?
Outside of politically motivated issues (e.g. global warming), most people tend to generally not disagree with accomplished scientists on the topics within that scientist’s area of expertise and accomplishment, and to treat the more accomplished person as source of wisdom rather than as opponent in a debate. It is furthermore my honest opinion that Wang is more intelligent than Luke, and it is also the opinion that most reasonable people would share, and Luke must understand this.
I have to imagine that either you derive a heroic amount of pleasure from feeding trolls, or you place a remarkably low value on signal/noise ratio.
The signal being what exactly?
Replying in a second comment to the parts you edited in (to keep conversation flow clear and also so you see this remark):
I outlined precisely why this wasn’t just a semantic issue. China and most Chinese citizens are pretty well off and they have access to a decent education system. This isn’t a semantic issue. A moderately smart random Chinese citizen has pretty decent chances at success.
I don’t understand this comment. I can’t parse it in any way that makes sense. Can you expand/clarify on this remark? Also, is this to be understood as a new argument for a dramatic intelligence gap and not an attempt to address the previously listed proxies?
If accomplishments is the only proxy you use to evaluate their relative intelligence, then it would have been all-around better if you had said “more accomplished” rather than “more intelligent”, as it’s more precise, less controversial, and doesn’t confuse fact with inference.
It also does not present valid inference. Ideally, you’re right but in practice people do not make the inferences they do not like.
If you wanted to present the inference, then present it as an inference.
e.g. “more accomplished (and thus I conclude more intelligent)” would have been vastly better than what you did, which was to just present your conclusion in a manner that would inevitably bait others to dispute it/take offense against it.
It is clear that you just don’t want to hear opinion more intelligent without qualifiers that allow you to disregard this opinion immediately, and you are being obtuse.
Trust me, it’s quite easier to disregard an accusation/insult when you do not include an explicit chain of reasoning. It’s harder to not respond to, because it mentally tags you as just ‘enemy’, but for the same reason it’s easier to disregard.
As for “being obtuse”, don’t confuse civility with obtuseness. I knew you for what you are. I knew that the trolling and the flamebaiting is what you attempted to do, So I knew that any attempts to direct you towards a more productive means of discussion wouldn’t be heeded by you, as they were counterproductive to your true goals.
But nonetheless, my suggestion has the benefit of explicitly pinpointing the failure in your postings, to be hopefully heeded by any others that are more honest at seeking to make an actual argument, not just troll people.
It is not accusation or insult. It is the case though that the people in question (Luke, Eliezer) need to assume the possibility that people they are talking to are more intelligent than they are—something that is clearly more probable than not given available evidence—and they seem not to.
I don’t see how that would be relevant to the issue at hand, and thus, why they “need to assume [this] possibility”. Whether they assume the people they talk to can be more intelligent than them or not, so long as they engage them on an even intellectual ground (e.g. trading civil letters of argumentation), is simply irrelevant.