The general population would contain 50 sociopaths to 1000; I don’t think LessWrong contains 50 sociopaths to 1000. Rationality is a truth-seeking activity at its core, and I suspect a community of rationalists would do their best to avoid lying consciously.
I am not sure what “the common definition of the word ‘lie’” is, especially since there are a lot of differing interpretations of what it means to lie. I know that wrong answers are distinct from lies, however. I think that a lot of LessWrong people might have put an IQ that does not reflect an accurate result. But I doubt that many LessWrong people have put a deliberately inaccurate result for IQ. Barring “the common definition” (I don’t know what that is), I’m defining “stating something when you know what you are stating is false” as a lie, since someone can put a number when they don’t know for sure what the true number is but don’t know that the number they are stating is false either.
I don’t know what you mean by “mean something” with respect to Mensa Denmark’s normings. They will probably be less accurate than a professional IQ testing service, but I don’t know why they would be inaccurate or “meaningless” by virtue of their organization not being a professional IQ testing service.
The only way I can think of in which the self-reported numbers would be more accurate than the IQTest.dk numbers is if the LW respondents knew that their IQ numbers were from a professional testing service and they had gone to this service recently. But since the test didn’t specify how they obtained this self-report, I can’t say, nor do I think it’s likely.
IQTest.dk uses Raven’s Progressive Matrices which is a standard way to measure IQ across cultures. This is because IQ splits between verbal/spatial are not as common. It wouldn’t discriminate against autistics, because it actually discriminates in favor of autistics; people with disorders on the autism spectrum are likely to score higher, not lower.
I’m not sure how the bolding of “in that way” bolsters your argument. Paraphrased, it would be “in the way that the user types the IQ score into the survey box themselves, the IQTest.dk questions are equally flawed to the other intelligence questions.” But this neglects to consider that the source of the number is different; they are self-reports in the sense that the number is up to someone to recall, but if someone types in their IQTest.dk number you know it came from IQTest.dk. If someone types in their IQ without specifying the source, you have no idea where they got that number from—they could be estimating, it could be a childhood test score, and so on.
Please consider getting some rationality training or something.
Remarks like these are unnecessary, especially since I’ve just joined the site.
You should get a Ph.D. in Philosophy if you consider the material studied in philosophy to be an end in itself. Philosophy is a truthseeking discipline, so if you find that inherently rewarding and could imagine doing that for a large part of your life it’s a good decision. Don’t worry about the wariness of philosophy: I can guarantee you that the criticisms levied here against philosophy have been addressed tenfold in actual philosophy departments, by people with sympathies closer to Luke’s than you’d think.
That said, a lot of people go into graduate programs for bad reasons. Here are two I’ve been tempted by:
#1.
Minimizing Status Risk. A lot of people think about risk in terms of financial gain or loss, but few think about risk in terms of status when it’s a real concern for many people. Graduating college can be intimidating, especially if you’re at a prestigious college, because you’re about to be stripped of your hierarchical standing among people your age. If you’ve attended, say, Harvard for four years, you’ve spent those four years thinking of yourself on the top of the food chain relative to other college students.
Once you’re out of college, this is no longer true, and you’re measured by what kind of job you have. It’s extremely tempting to avoid this by applying to graduate school, because graduate school allows you to continue the imagined hierarchical standing that you’ve had for the past few years. Eventually you’ll get a Ph.D. and be on top of the intellectual food chain. This has nothing to do with “avoiding the real world”, because “the real world” as an employment area is conspicuously centered on office jobs or whatever the majority of people happen to do for money. (I wonder if farmers consider everyone else to have a “fake” job. Probably.)
It’s a way of avoiding vulnerability to your status, because working as a clerk or receptionist or barista or server or whatever after college is generally not prestigious and makes you feel like your intellect isn’t worth anything. That’s an uncomfortable feeling, sure, but make sure you’re not eyeing a Ph.D. just to avoid that feeling.
#2.
Even if you’re not avoiding Status Risk, make sure you’re not getting a Ph.D. just to feel like an intellectual hotshot anyway. A lot of people reason about competence in binary ways (expert or non-expert) even though competence obviously exists on a spectrum, so it’s tempting to get a title that lends you immediately to the “expert” end of any discussion. That way, you can throw your weight around whenever there’s a clash of words.
With philosophy especially, it’s enigmatic to a lot of people. There’s a mystery of what you’re actually learning in an advanced program. So a Ph.D. looks like a “certified smart person” badge to a lot of people, and that’s tempting. Make sure you’re not getting it for that reason either.
Here’s the litmus test. Ask yourself: “would I self-study this material anyway if I had the next three-five years paid for? Would this occupy a large part of my time regardless of what I’m doing?” If so, it’s worth it.