What’s wrong about talking about how smart we are?
There is a widespread prejudice against acknowledging your own intelligence.
“It’s sends a bad signal.” Does it? Or is there a widespread prejudice against acknowledging your own intelligence?
Oh. You already knew that. Yes, it does send a bad signal, and it sends such a signal precisely because there is such a prejudice. Normatively, the prejudice seems like a bad idea, but descriptively, such a prejudice exists and it would be foolish to violate it.
I think you’ve motivated me to start a thread or two.
I expect you’ll get downvoted; this thread is only tangentially related to discussing our intelligence (in that collecting empirical evidence is fairly noble) and it’s at −3 at time of posting.
Does this prejudice empower us, or disempower us? Does bending to it empower us, or disempower us?
Taboo “empower”. What are the short-term and long-term consequences of accepting or breaking this prejudice? And what is your certainly about your predictions about this?
I submit that kowtowing to irrational prejudice is prima facie undesirable. If you have an argument why it produces net desirable short and long term consequences in general, or in this case, do tell.
I think the prejudice exists for a reason, and the reason is this:
Intelligence, in general, correlates positively with success at life. However, speaking about one’s own intelligence correlates negatively with success at life.
Of course there are many situations where this rule is misapplied. There is a difference when someone asks me about my IQ and as a matter of fact I say a number; and when I come into a room saying: “hey guys, let’s talk about IQ and about how the world should worship the most intelligent people… and by the way, my IQ is XYZ”. Yet, a careless observer may evaluate the first situation as the second one. Especially on the community forum where LessWrongers ask LessWrongers about their IQ—if you see us as individuals, it is more like the first case, but if an outsider sees us as a community, it is more like the second case. The problem is not LessWrongers talking about their IQs, the problem is LessWrongers asking. Especially asking repeatedly in a short time frame.
The data you gathered here will be highly unreliable. First, it’s self-reporting. What prevents me from taking the test, getting result 90 points, and reporting 190? Nothing. Second, self-sampling. Who is more likely to take the test: readers who usually get high values on IQ tests, or readers who usually get low values. Third, just the idea of an online IQ test makes me shiver—the internet is full with fraudulent tests, or tests made by mentally unbalanced people with almost zero knowledge of psychometrics—and the tests that pretends to reliably measure values above the usual IQ tests are very unlikely to be methodologically correct. It is about statistics: If you want to speak e.g. about “1 in 1000” intelligence level, you better callibrate your test on a few thousand randomly selected people. How likely are they to fill your test seriously, unless you pay them? How much is paying them going to cost you? How likely are you then to provide the resulting test and calibration online for free?
So the consequences of our breaking this prejudice will be 1) gathering data with almost zero reliability, and 2) looking like IQ-obsessed losers to outsider. I see nothing empowering in that.
If we are going to break a prejudice, at least let’s make in a way that makes sense. If we are going to publish a result that e.g. 70% of LW readers have IQ above 130, and 20% are above 150, let’s use a methodology a former psychology student would not find obviously flawed.
There is a widespread prejudice against acknowledging your own intelligence.
Oh. You already knew that. Yes, it does send a bad signal, and it sends such a signal precisely because there is such a prejudice. Normatively, the prejudice seems like a bad idea, but descriptively, such a prejudice exists and it would be foolish to violate it.
I expect you’ll get downvoted; this thread is only tangentially related to discussing our intelligence (in that collecting empirical evidence is fairly noble) and it’s at −3 at time of posting.
You think it’s better to send a signal that we consciously kowtow to irrational prejudice against us?
Does this prejudice empower us, or disempower us? Does bending to it empower us, or disempower us?
Being right where the prevailing prejudice is wrong is exactly the kind of signal I often like to send—it attracts the right kind of people.
Taboo “empower”. What are the short-term and long-term consequences of accepting or breaking this prejudice? And what is your certainly about your predictions about this?
I asked first.
I submit that kowtowing to irrational prejudice is prima facie undesirable. If you have an argument why it produces net desirable short and long term consequences in general, or in this case, do tell.
I think the prejudice exists for a reason, and the reason is this:
Intelligence, in general, correlates positively with success at life. However, speaking about one’s own intelligence correlates negatively with success at life.
Of course there are many situations where this rule is misapplied. There is a difference when someone asks me about my IQ and as a matter of fact I say a number; and when I come into a room saying: “hey guys, let’s talk about IQ and about how the world should worship the most intelligent people… and by the way, my IQ is XYZ”. Yet, a careless observer may evaluate the first situation as the second one. Especially on the community forum where LessWrongers ask LessWrongers about their IQ—if you see us as individuals, it is more like the first case, but if an outsider sees us as a community, it is more like the second case. The problem is not LessWrongers talking about their IQs, the problem is LessWrongers asking. Especially asking repeatedly in a short time frame.
The data you gathered here will be highly unreliable. First, it’s self-reporting. What prevents me from taking the test, getting result 90 points, and reporting 190? Nothing. Second, self-sampling. Who is more likely to take the test: readers who usually get high values on IQ tests, or readers who usually get low values. Third, just the idea of an online IQ test makes me shiver—the internet is full with fraudulent tests, or tests made by mentally unbalanced people with almost zero knowledge of psychometrics—and the tests that pretends to reliably measure values above the usual IQ tests are very unlikely to be methodologically correct. It is about statistics: If you want to speak e.g. about “1 in 1000” intelligence level, you better callibrate your test on a few thousand randomly selected people. How likely are they to fill your test seriously, unless you pay them? How much is paying them going to cost you? How likely are you then to provide the resulting test and calibration online for free?
So the consequences of our breaking this prejudice will be 1) gathering data with almost zero reliability, and 2) looking like IQ-obsessed losers to outsider. I see nothing empowering in that.
If we are going to break a prejudice, at least let’s make in a way that makes sense. If we are going to publish a result that e.g. 70% of LW readers have IQ above 130, and 20% are above 150, let’s use a methodology a former psychology student would not find obviously flawed.