This is good. It seems (to me) to mean that the LessWrong community is starting to “get the hang” of the importance of explanation...
By that I mean that a person who found themselves in the state of being “very” “intelligent” might, at the exact same time that they realized their state of intelligence had been the result of what we call “insights”—a working out of the problem on a level-independent way from the presuppositions inherent in the overwhelming bias of the problem as stated...
that that agent would also concurrently understand that the simple act of “explaining” how it might look to another person trapped further down the scale would cause them to agree, and hence look upwards, seeking the thing we had described for their benefit.
tl;dr in this case is: explanation IS intelligence, as much as insight if not more. “Misunderstood geniuses” is an oxymoron, no matter what genius-level you find yourself in,
Obviously this concept breaks down when considering the nature of communication. If I were a genius and moved to Kyrgyzstan I would never be understand because I don’t know Kyrgyz or Russian.
More relevantly, I would expect that the ability to explain things has a stronger correlation with the ability to model other minds than it does with intelligence.
Keeping in mind, though, that a “stupid cached thought” is not stupid merely because it is cached. It looks to me like this might be a confusion between “cached thought” and “short handle that refers to a more detailed, commonly understood situation”, both here and in your earlier response to me in this thread.
In this case, I think it is (a) stupid and (b) a cached thought.
The earlier response, that you have linked to, was mostly me realizing that the knee-jerk reaction was because I tend to have that reaction to cached thoughts. It just didn’t mean anything to me in that context and it triggered the reaction I have when I encounter cached thoughts. I wasn’t trying to give the impression that I thought, “Think for yourself” was stupid.
In retrospect, I suppose saying “reject out of hand” was a bit harsh...
Hopefully that clarifies something I muddled up earlier. :P
This is good. It seems (to me) to mean that the LessWrong community is starting to “get the hang” of the importance of explanation...
By that I mean that a person who found themselves in the state of being “very” “intelligent” might, at the exact same time that they realized their state of intelligence had been the result of what we call “insights”—a working out of the problem on a level-independent way from the presuppositions inherent in the overwhelming bias of the problem as stated...
that that agent would also concurrently understand that the simple act of “explaining” how it might look to another person trapped further down the scale would cause them to agree, and hence look upwards, seeking the thing we had described for their benefit.
tl;dr in this case is: explanation IS intelligence, as much as insight if not more. “Misunderstood geniuses” is an oxymoron, no matter what genius-level you find yourself in,
Obviously this concept breaks down when considering the nature of communication. If I were a genius and moved to Kyrgyzstan I would never be understand because I don’t know Kyrgyz or Russian.
More relevantly, I would expect that the ability to explain things has a stronger correlation with the ability to model other minds than it does with intelligence.
An oxymoron, or a tautology?
Or just a stupid cached thought.
Keeping in mind, though, that a “stupid cached thought” is not stupid merely because it is cached. It looks to me like this might be a confusion between “cached thought” and “short handle that refers to a more detailed, commonly understood situation”, both here and in your earlier response to me in this thread.
Ironically, this means you need to avoid the cached thought “cached thoughts are stupid” and actually think about the problem.
In this case, I think it is (a) stupid and (b) a cached thought.
The earlier response, that you have linked to, was mostly me realizing that the knee-jerk reaction was because I tend to have that reaction to cached thoughts. It just didn’t mean anything to me in that context and it triggered the reaction I have when I encounter cached thoughts. I wasn’t trying to give the impression that I thought, “Think for yourself” was stupid.
In retrospect, I suppose saying “reject out of hand” was a bit harsh...
Hopefully that clarifies something I muddled up earlier. :P