Kindly stop being cryptic. It’s irritating and patronizing. You are not teaching a class of fourth graders in whom you are obliged to instill the virtue of academic independence.
Unless I’m missing something, this was your first contribution to the discussion. Is this seriously your idea of participating in the conversation? Apparently out of the blue, you referred to Annoyance as “cryptic”, “irritating”, “patronizing”, and implied that he thought he was teaching 4th-graders.
4th-graders clearly were not the intended audience of the comment. The person to whom he responded, who clearly knows about the Ashkenazi, was. If you’re missing something in the exchange, feel free to ask for clarification.
Consider a similar (hypothetical) situation where folks are having a conversation involving some advanced math, and you come along and berate them for not including explanations for those that haven’t been exposed to it before.
There is a mechanism for having a conversation between two people, but it isn’t the comments, it’s the private message system. If Annoyance’s intended audience was exactly one person and no one else was meant to be able to understand him or get anything out of the comment, then why was it here and not there? Pure convenience?
Advanced mathematics is the sort of thing that a lot of people here know about; I stay out of such discussions partly because they rarely pique my curiosity and partly because I am aware that I am below the threshold of what could reasonably be expected in the way of mathematical expertise in this context. Most of the people here know vastly more about math than I do, so I don’t expect people to keep mathematical discussions down to my level (although I’d probably leave the blog outright if such discussions came to dominate, since I would be unable to glean anything useful). Unless something has greatly escaped my notice, no highly specialized knowledge of genetics is commonplace here (or at least not more so than in any gathering of generally bright people).
Combined, the fact that it was posted publicly without any obvious earmarks of being intended only for gwern, and the fact that I don’t think I am unusually poorly informed about genetics, led me to believe that Annoyance was aiming at too high a level of expertise (or possibly just being cryptic, irritating, and patronizing). The upvotes on the comment in which I said as much suggest that it is likely other interested viewers would also like to know what is being said. (Either that, or they just don’t like Annoyance for some reason.)
If Annoyance’s intended audience was exactly one person
My intended audience was everyone who knew something about Ashkenazi genetics and intellectual testing results and yet hadn’t really taken notice of what those results suggest they lack.
If you don’t know anything about the topic, the comment wasn’t directed at you.
So, since you’re hinting that they do, indeed, tend to lack “something” and that you know what that something is, would you mind enlightening the rest of us?
Ashkenazi Jews have an unusual ability profile as well as higher than average IQ. They have high verbal and mathematical scores, while their visuospatial abilities are typically somewhat lower, by about one half a standard deviation, than the European average (Levinson, 1977; Levinson and Block, 1977). Han Eysenck (Eysenck, 1995) noted “The correlation between verbal and performance tests is about 0.77 in the general population, but only 0.31 among Jewish children. Differences of 10-20 points have been found in samples of Jewish children; there is no other group that shows anything like this size difference.” The Ashkenazi pattern of success is what one would expect from this ability distribution-great success in mathematics and literature, more typical results in representational painting, sculpture, and architecture.
As far as I can tell, their rate of dyslexia is virtually nil; I don’t know if this is wholly due to breeding effects or partly to culture. The mental traits and abilities that are statistically associated with dyslexia seem to be generally underdeveloped.
The few famous Ashkenazi who seem to also have strong kinesthetic/visual abilities, like Einstein and Feynman, are such outliers and exceptions that I’m not sure they can be said to fit into any expectation system.
Perhaps you could reach a larger audience, including many who don’t yet know anything about the topic, if you simply shared the insight you believe gwern missed.
Consider a similar (hypothetical) situation where folks are having a conversation involving some advanced math, and you come along and berate them for not including explanations for those that haven’t been exposed to it before.
Did Alicorn ask for explanations? Why do you think this has anything to do with explanations? Was the conversation remotely like that? Have you read the conversation? How do rhetorical questions make you feel?
Unless I’m missing something, this was your first contribution to the discussion. Is this seriously your idea of participating in the conversation? Apparently out of the blue, you referred to Annoyance as “cryptic”, “irritating”, “patronizing”, and implied that he thought he was teaching 4th-graders.
4th-graders clearly were not the intended audience of the comment. The person to whom he responded, who clearly knows about the Ashkenazi, was. If you’re missing something in the exchange, feel free to ask for clarification.
Consider a similar (hypothetical) situation where folks are having a conversation involving some advanced math, and you come along and berate them for not including explanations for those that haven’t been exposed to it before.
There is a mechanism for having a conversation between two people, but it isn’t the comments, it’s the private message system. If Annoyance’s intended audience was exactly one person and no one else was meant to be able to understand him or get anything out of the comment, then why was it here and not there? Pure convenience?
Advanced mathematics is the sort of thing that a lot of people here know about; I stay out of such discussions partly because they rarely pique my curiosity and partly because I am aware that I am below the threshold of what could reasonably be expected in the way of mathematical expertise in this context. Most of the people here know vastly more about math than I do, so I don’t expect people to keep mathematical discussions down to my level (although I’d probably leave the blog outright if such discussions came to dominate, since I would be unable to glean anything useful). Unless something has greatly escaped my notice, no highly specialized knowledge of genetics is commonplace here (or at least not more so than in any gathering of generally bright people).
Combined, the fact that it was posted publicly without any obvious earmarks of being intended only for gwern, and the fact that I don’t think I am unusually poorly informed about genetics, led me to believe that Annoyance was aiming at too high a level of expertise (or possibly just being cryptic, irritating, and patronizing). The upvotes on the comment in which I said as much suggest that it is likely other interested viewers would also like to know what is being said. (Either that, or they just don’t like Annoyance for some reason.)
My intended audience was everyone who knew something about Ashkenazi genetics and intellectual testing results and yet hadn’t really taken notice of what those results suggest they lack.
If you don’t know anything about the topic, the comment wasn’t directed at you.
So, since you’re hinting that they do, indeed, tend to lack “something” and that you know what that something is, would you mind enlightening the rest of us?
Edit: Never mind, I tracked it down:
Thank you, CronoDAS.
As far as I can tell, their rate of dyslexia is virtually nil; I don’t know if this is wholly due to breeding effects or partly to culture. The mental traits and abilities that are statistically associated with dyslexia seem to be generally underdeveloped.
The few famous Ashkenazi who seem to also have strong kinesthetic/visual abilities, like Einstein and Feynman, are such outliers and exceptions that I’m not sure they can be said to fit into any expectation system.
Perhaps you could reach a larger audience, including many who don’t yet know anything about the topic, if you simply shared the insight you believe gwern missed.
Did Alicorn ask for explanations? Why do you think this has anything to do with explanations? Was the conversation remotely like that? Have you read the conversation? How do rhetorical questions make you feel?
Keep in mind that Annoyance is consistently irritatingly cryptic, and not always in conversations that have reached an advanced level.