In HPMOR, Draco Malfoy thinks that either Harry Potter was lucky enough to be able to come up with a bunch of great ideas in a short period of time, or he, for some unimaginable reason, has already spent a bunch of time thinking about how to do it. The real answer to this false dilemma is that Harry just read a book as a kid where its author came up with all these for the book’s needs.
In How to Seem (and Be) Deep Thought, Eliezer Yudkowsky says that the Japanese often portray Christians as bearers of incredible wisdom, while the opposite is true of the “eastern sage” archetype in the western midst. And the real answer is that both cultures have vastly different, yet meaningful sets of multiple ideas, so when one person meets another, and he immediately throws at him 3 meaningful and highly plausible thoughts that the first person has never even heard of, and then does so again and again, the first person concludes that he is a genius.
I’ve also seen a number of books and fanfics whose authors seemed like incredible writing talents and whose characters seemed like geniuses, fountaining so many brilliant ideas. And then each time it turned out that they really just came from a cultural background that was unfamiliar to me. And I generalized this to the point that when you meet someone who spouts a bunch of brilliant ideas in a row, you should conclude that it’s almost certainly not that he’s a genius, but that he’s familiar with a meme you’re unfamiliar with.
And hmmm. Just now I thought about it, but it probably also explains that Aura of Power around characters who are familiar with a certain medium, and people who are familiar with a certain profession (https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/zbSsSwEfdEuaqCRmz/eniscien-s-shortform?commentId=dMxfcMMteKqM33zSa), that’s probably the point, and it means that the feeling is not false, it really elevates above mere mortals, because you have a whole bunch of meaningful thoughts that mere mortals simply do not have.
When the familiar with more memeplexes will ponder, he will stand on a bigger pile of cached thoughts, not just on the shoulders of giants, not on the shoulders of a human pyramid of human giants, so he can see much further than someone who looks only from his, no matter how big or small, height.
In HPMOR, Draco Malfoy thinks that either Harry Potter was lucky enough to be able to come up with a bunch of great ideas in a short period of time, or he, for some unimaginable reason, has already spent a bunch of time thinking about how to do it. The real answer to this false dilemma is that Harry just read a book as a kid where its author came up with all these for the book’s needs.
In How to Seem (and Be) Deep Thought, Eliezer Yudkowsky says that the Japanese often portray Christians as bearers of incredible wisdom, while the opposite is true of the “eastern sage” archetype in the western midst. And the real answer is that both cultures have vastly different, yet meaningful sets of multiple ideas, so when one person meets another, and he immediately throws at him 3 meaningful and highly plausible thoughts that the first person has never even heard of, and then does so again and again, the first person concludes that he is a genius.
I’ve also seen a number of books and fanfics whose authors seemed like incredible writing talents and whose characters seemed like geniuses, fountaining so many brilliant ideas. And then each time it turned out that they really just came from a cultural background that was unfamiliar to me. And I generalized this to the point that when you meet someone who spouts a bunch of brilliant ideas in a row, you should conclude that it’s almost certainly not that he’s a genius, but that he’s familiar with a meme you’re unfamiliar with.
And hmmm. Just now I thought about it, but it probably also explains that Aura of Power around characters who are familiar with a certain medium, and people who are familiar with a certain profession (https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/zbSsSwEfdEuaqCRmz/eniscien-s-shortform?commentId=dMxfcMMteKqM33zSa), that’s probably the point, and it means that the feeling is not false, it really elevates above mere mortals, because you have a whole bunch of meaningful thoughts that mere mortals simply do not have.
When the familiar with more memeplexes will ponder, he will stand on a bigger pile of cached thoughts, not just on the shoulders of giants, not on the shoulders of a human pyramid of human giants, so he can see much further than someone who looks only from his, no matter how big or small, height.