I think that the amount of contributions a person can contribute to discussions like on LessWrong, and cognitive interpersonal activities in general, is not only determined by intelligence, but also how unique their perspective of the world is, or how much thought-patterns they have that others don’t, or how different they think from the others, etc. Audrey Tang joining the AI safety field is an example (it feels like to me she does have some wacky intuitions that could help the field see things in more different ways, aside from being very smart).
The rare gift is having deep understanding and experience in a unique outsider domain, while also understanding how to extract, explain, and apply insights from that domain in a rational way.
I think that the amount of contributions a person can contribute to discussions like on LessWrong, and cognitive interpersonal activities in general, is not only determined by intelligence, but also how unique their perspective of the world is, or how much thought-patterns they have that others don’t, or how different they think from the others, etc. Audrey Tang joining the AI safety field is an example (it feels like to me she does have some wacky intuitions that could help the field see things in more different ways, aside from being very smart).
Related: The bar is lower than you think
The rare gift is having deep understanding and experience in a unique outsider domain, while also understanding how to extract, explain, and apply insights from that domain in a rational way.