Even for those of IQ 160 there is a huge difference between interacting with people whose average IQ is 130, and interacting with the general population.
This does not mean they will experience group bonding with those people.
Further, supposing IQ 160 is one-in-X in the world, it’s one-in-X/10, or even X/50, in academia. Shifting the average has all kinds of effects on thin tails.
Okay, but you’ve got to consider that the students are broken up into different classes and the classes only contain something like 30 students each, depending, and they’re broken up into levels (that correspond more or less to how many years they’ve spent in college). So if a rare person is 1 in 1000 in the wild, and they’re 1 in 100 in a school, and a school has 10,000 students...
10,000 \ 4 levels = 2,500 possible students who might get classes at your level (25 people like you)
The 25 people like you will be divided between 83 different classes if the class size is 30 each.
So you’ve got about a 30% chance that there’s somebody like you is in a given class. Now, since there are 28 other students in each class (aside from you and them), what’s the chance you’ll actually identify each other out of the crowd? After that, what’s the chance you’ll have anything in common? Maybe you won’t like their personality. Maybe they’re shy and never say anything. Maybe you sit on opposite ends of the room and never talk. There are a lot of factors influencing whether you might meet someone and whether you figure out if they’re compatible.
If you are 1 in 100 and take 6 classes per semester, you may have an opportunity to meet 4 people like yourself in class each year. An opportunity to meet a total of 16 people like you over the course of your four year college career would actually be pretty crappy odds, especially considering all of the other factors.
Ok; now do the same calculation for the world outside academia, making similar assumptions—no going up to every random person on the street and asking what their IQ is, if you please. You can’t do any better than maximising your odds; showing that the odds are still bad is unpersuasive, you have to show that they are the same as, or worse than, the alternative course of action.
you have to show that they are the same as, or worse than, the alternative course of action.
No I don’t. That WOULD be the way to go IF the argument was “Academia is a better place to meet people than on the street.” But that wasn’t the disagreement. My original suggestion was “If your IQ is high enough, it can be really hard to find people to bond with.” the counterargument was “Academia is a playground (implying that it’s a solution, not just that it’s better.)” and my rebuttal was “Academia is not a solution to this problem.” Don’t straw man me.
All I had to do is explain why academia wasn’t a solution. Since you seem to agree:
showing that the odds are still bad...
I am going to guess that I’ve convinced you of my point that academia isn’t a solution. Have I?
If the problem is “X is hard”, then “X is easier if you do Y” is good information, and “Y only improves X-easiness by so much” is no rebuttal. Arguing about whether it’s “a solution” is semantics. Also, you’re reading way too much into that ‘playground’.
If the problem is “X is hard”, then “X is easier if you do Y” is good information
If that were true, then concepts like these would not exist:
an ineffective strategy
false hope
false sense of security
a waste of time
If spending 5 dollars on a small chance of a good thing is a Pascal’s mugging, the suggestion that spending tens of thousands of dollars plus multiple years in academia is a good idea for rare people to meet teach other is an all out Pascal’s burglary.
Your arguments are getting ridiculous. I’m ending this discussion.
This does not mean they will experience group bonding with those people.
Okay, but you’ve got to consider that the students are broken up into different classes and the classes only contain something like 30 students each, depending, and they’re broken up into levels (that correspond more or less to how many years they’ve spent in college). So if a rare person is 1 in 1000 in the wild, and they’re 1 in 100 in a school, and a school has 10,000 students...
10,000 \ 4 levels = 2,500 possible students who might get classes at your level (25 people like you)
The 25 people like you will be divided between 83 different classes if the class size is 30 each.
So you’ve got about a 30% chance that there’s somebody like you is in a given class. Now, since there are 28 other students in each class (aside from you and them), what’s the chance you’ll actually identify each other out of the crowd? After that, what’s the chance you’ll have anything in common? Maybe you won’t like their personality. Maybe they’re shy and never say anything. Maybe you sit on opposite ends of the room and never talk. There are a lot of factors influencing whether you might meet someone and whether you figure out if they’re compatible.
If you are 1 in 100 and take 6 classes per semester, you may have an opportunity to meet 4 people like yourself in class each year. An opportunity to meet a total of 16 people like you over the course of your four year college career would actually be pretty crappy odds, especially considering all of the other factors.
Ok; now do the same calculation for the world outside academia, making similar assumptions—no going up to every random person on the street and asking what their IQ is, if you please. You can’t do any better than maximising your odds; showing that the odds are still bad is unpersuasive, you have to show that they are the same as, or worse than, the alternative course of action.
No I don’t. That WOULD be the way to go IF the argument was “Academia is a better place to meet people than on the street.” But that wasn’t the disagreement. My original suggestion was “If your IQ is high enough, it can be really hard to find people to bond with.” the counterargument was “Academia is a playground (implying that it’s a solution, not just that it’s better.)” and my rebuttal was “Academia is not a solution to this problem.” Don’t straw man me.
All I had to do is explain why academia wasn’t a solution. Since you seem to agree:
I am going to guess that I’ve convinced you of my point that academia isn’t a solution. Have I?
If the problem is “X is hard”, then “X is easier if you do Y” is good information, and “Y only improves X-easiness by so much” is no rebuttal. Arguing about whether it’s “a solution” is semantics. Also, you’re reading way too much into that ‘playground’.
Yes, it really is a rebuttal and a good one too, for sane values of “so much”, “hard” and “Y”.
If that were true, then concepts like these would not exist:
an ineffective strategy
false hope
false sense of security
a waste of time
If spending 5 dollars on a small chance of a good thing is a Pascal’s mugging, the suggestion that spending tens of thousands of dollars plus multiple years in academia is a good idea for rare people to meet teach other is an all out Pascal’s burglary.
Your arguments are getting ridiculous. I’m ending this discussion.