Particularly problematic is this self congratulatory process:
some simple mistake leads to non mainstream conclusion → the world is insane and I’m so much more rational than everyone else → endorphins released → circuitry involved in mistake-making gets reinforced.
For example: the IQ is the best predictor of job performance, right? So the world is insane that it mostly hires based on experience, test questions, and so on (depending on the field) rather than IQ, right? Cue the endorphins and reinforcement of careless thinking.
If you’re not after endorphins, though: IQ is a good predictor of performance within the population of people who got hired traditionally, which is a very different population than the job applicants.
These things can be hard to budge ….they certainly look it … perhaps because the “Im special” delusion and “world is crazy” delusion need to fall at the same time.
Plus in many cases all that had been getting strengthened via reinforcement learning for decades.
It’s also ridiculous how easy it is to be special in that imaginary world. Say I want to hire candidates really well—better than competition. I need to figure out the right mix of interview questions and prior experience and so on. I probably need to make my own tests. It’s hard! It’s harder still if I want to know if my methods work!
But that crazy world, in it, there’s a test readily available, widely known, and widely used, and nobody’s using it for that, because they’re so irrational. And you can know you’re special by just going “yeah, it sounds about right”. Like coming across 2x+2y=? and going on speculating about the stupid reasons why someone would be unable to apply 2+2=4 and 2*2=4 and conclude it’s 4xy .
Particularly problematic is this self congratulatory process:
some simple mistake leads to non mainstream conclusion → the world is insane and I’m so much more rational than everyone else → endorphins released → circuitry involved in mistake-making gets reinforced.
For example: the IQ is the best predictor of job performance, right? So the world is insane that it mostly hires based on experience, test questions, and so on (depending on the field) rather than IQ, right? Cue the endorphins and reinforcement of careless thinking.
If you’re not after endorphins, though: IQ is a good predictor of performance within the population of people who got hired traditionally, which is a very different population than the job applicants.
These things can be hard to budge ….they certainly look it … perhaps because the “Im special” delusion and “world is crazy” delusion need to fall at the same time.
Plus in many cases all that had been getting strengthened via reinforcement learning for decades.
It’s also ridiculous how easy it is to be special in that imaginary world. Say I want to hire candidates really well—better than competition. I need to figure out the right mix of interview questions and prior experience and so on. I probably need to make my own tests. It’s hard! It’s harder still if I want to know if my methods work!
But that crazy world, in it, there’s a test readily available, widely known, and widely used, and nobody’s using it for that, because they’re so irrational. And you can know you’re special by just going “yeah, it sounds about right”. Like coming across 2x+2y=? and going on speculating about the stupid reasons why someone would be unable to apply 2+2=4 and 2*2=4 and conclude it’s 4xy .