But I don’t know about LW/EA in general—I doubt most of them have “mathematical minds”.
Within the LW cluster I’ve seen a lot of focus on precision. It’s not uncommon for people in the community to miss the main points that I’m trying to make in favor of focusing on a single sentence that I wrote that seems wrong. I have seldom had this experience in conversation with people outside of the LW cluster: my conversation partners outside of the LW cluster generally hold my view: that it’s inevitably the case that one will say some things things that are wrong, and that it’s best to focus on the main points that someone is trying to make.
Really? Math geeks/LW/EA are the creme de la creme, the ultimate intellectual elite? I haven’t noticed. “Normal” people certainly don’t have great thinking skills. But there is a very large number of smart and highly successful people who are outside of your reference class. They greatly outnumber the math/LW/EA crowd.
By “generally” I meant “most people,” not “for a fixed person” – i.e. I don’t necessarily disagree with you.
Separately, I believe that a large fraction of transferable human capital is in fact in elite math and physics, but that’s a long conversation. My impression is that good physicists do use the style of thinking that I just learned. In the case of elite mathematicians, I think it would take like 5 years of getting up to speed with real world stuff before their strength as thinkers started to come out vividly.
Within the LW cluster I’ve seen a lot of focus on precision. It’s not uncommon for people in the community to miss the main points that I’m trying to make in favor of focusing on a single sentence that I wrote that seems wrong. I have seldom had this experience in conversation with people outside of the LW cluster: my conversation partners outside of the LW cluster generally hold my view: that it’s inevitably the case that one will say some things things that are wrong, and that it’s best to focus on the main points that someone is trying to make.
By “generally” I meant “most people,” not “for a fixed person” – i.e. I don’t necessarily disagree with you.
Separately, I believe that a large fraction of transferable human capital is in fact in elite math and physics, but that’s a long conversation. My impression is that good physicists do use the style of thinking that I just learned. In the case of elite mathematicians, I think it would take like 5 years of getting up to speed with real world stuff before their strength as thinkers started to come out vividly.