As a fellow 16-year-old (there really seem to be a lot of us popping up around here recently), I concur. With that said, rationality skills are difficult for anyone to learn, because the human brain did not evolve to be rational, but rather to succeed socially. I would add that a good deal of rationality potential is ingrained in those who find themselves attracted to LW at a young age, particularly since surveys have shown that LW users tend to have a higher incidence rate of Asperger Syndrome, the symptoms of which include social awkwardness. This suggests to me that rational thinking comes more easily to people with certain personality types, which is arguably genetic. As a single data point, I suppose I’ll add that I myself have been diagnosed with Asperger’s when I was younger, although with how trigger-happy American doctors are with their diagnoses these days, that’s not really saying much.
That’s an interesting correlation, but I’m curious about the causal link: is it that a certain type of neural architecture causes both predisposition to rationality and asperger’s, or the social awkwardness added on to the neural architecture creates the predisposition—i.e. I’m curious to see how much being social affects rationality. I shall need to look into this more closely.
I think that at least part of the reason us diagnosed autistic/Asperger’s people are more prevalent on LessWrong is that those of us diagnosed as children spend a lot of time with adults who think that something’s wrong with our mental processes, often without telling us why.
I know that I picked up on this, and then when I heard about cognitive biases, I jumped to the conclusion “These are what’s wrong with me, but if I read more about them, then I can try and correct for them.” Then, I looked up cognitive biases, found the Overcoming Bias blog, decided it was more economics than I could handle, and then I ended up here, because it had less real-world economics.
Test: See if more LWs were incorrectly given a psychiatric diagnosis as children than members of the general population were.
We could try and get Yvain to include this question in next year’s survey, which is the best obvious way to get an unbiased sample. However, it does involve waiting months for data, so if you’re in a hurry, you could poll the forums now.
As a fellow 16-year-old (there really seem to be a lot of us popping up around here recently), I concur. With that said, rationality skills are difficult for anyone to learn, because the human brain did not evolve to be rational, but rather to succeed socially. I would add that a good deal of rationality potential is ingrained in those who find themselves attracted to LW at a young age, particularly since surveys have shown that LW users tend to have a higher incidence rate of Asperger Syndrome, the symptoms of which include social awkwardness. This suggests to me that rational thinking comes more easily to people with certain personality types, which is arguably genetic. As a single data point, I suppose I’ll add that I myself have been diagnosed with Asperger’s when I was younger, although with how trigger-happy American doctors are with their diagnoses these days, that’s not really saying much.
That’s an interesting correlation, but I’m curious about the causal link: is it that a certain type of neural architecture causes both predisposition to rationality and asperger’s, or the social awkwardness added on to the neural architecture creates the predisposition—i.e. I’m curious to see how much being social affects rationality. I shall need to look into this more closely.
On the subject of potential causal linkages:
I think that at least part of the reason us diagnosed autistic/Asperger’s people are more prevalent on LessWrong is that those of us diagnosed as children spend a lot of time with adults who think that something’s wrong with our mental processes, often without telling us why.
I know that I picked up on this, and then when I heard about cognitive biases, I jumped to the conclusion “These are what’s wrong with me, but if I read more about them, then I can try and correct for them.” Then, I looked up cognitive biases, found the Overcoming Bias blog, decided it was more economics than I could handle, and then I ended up here, because it had less real-world economics.
Test: See if more LWs were incorrectly given a psychiatric diagnosis as children than members of the general population were.
Sounds useful. A survey, perhaps, or maybe a poll?
We could try and get Yvain to include this question in next year’s survey, which is the best obvious way to get an unbiased sample. However, it does involve waiting months for data, so if you’re in a hurry, you could poll the forums now.