JonahS

• JonahSJun 18, 2015, 11:56 PM

  0 points

  in reply to: Gram_Stone’s comment on: Autism, or early iso­la­tion?

  Maybe I’m misinterpreting, but do you mean ”...that that’s simply because psychology researchers haven’t investigated it carefully.”?

  Yes, thanks, fixed.

• JonahSJun 18, 2015, 10:10 PM

  7 points

  in reply to: John_Maxwell’s comment on: In­trin­sic mo­ti­va­tion is cru­cial for over­com­ing akrasia

  I did some reading of the literature on intrinsic motivation and came to a conclusion I hadn’t seen anywhere else, which is that people are intrinsically motivated to complete tasks that raise their status.

  Yes, I think that the situation is that people are biologically hardwired to pursue their comparative advantage because doing so was was historically what was most conducive to becoming higher status, so that people’s motivation goes way up when they’re pursuing their natural comparative advantage (relative to their subjectively perceived communities).

• JonahSJun 18, 2015, 10:06 PM

  0 points

  in reply to: Gram_Stone’s comment on: Autism, or early iso­la­tion?

  Thanks for the detailed comment. I omitted details in order to keep my post short, and get the main point across.

  I believe that the IQ tests that Terman and Hollingworth were using were effectively scaled differently from modern IQ tests. They may have corresponded to “mental age” as opposed to “standard deviations. In particular, they discuss IQ scores of 180, and there definitely aren’t enough people who are 5+ SD above the mean to get reliable scores in that range.

  Putting that aside, there are genetic factors other than IQ alone that play a role in intellectual and emotional development See my discussion of aesthetic discernment here: it hasn’t been established as a valid psychometric construct, but I have very high confidence that that’s simply because psychology researchers haven’t investigated it carefully. If one is 2.5+ SD above the mean in each of IQ and aesthetic discernment, one is going to be extremely isolated. I think that that’s what one is seeing with someone like Scott Alexander.

  Relatedly, Benbow and collaborators also found that children who scored high on verbal and not math have greater social maladjustment than those who score high on math and not verbal (don’t have the references immediately on hand, can dig them up later if you want.)

• JonahSJun 18, 2015, 7:29 PM

  2 points

  in reply to: somervta’s comment on: In­trin­sic mo­ti­va­tion is cru­cial for over­com­ing akrasia

  Thanks, fixed.

In­trin­sic mo­ti­va­tion is cru­cial for over­com­ing akrasia

• JonahSJun 17, 2015, 6:52 PM

  2 points

  in reply to: Viliam’s comment on: Ac­com­plish­ing things takes a long time

  Thanks, this is great advice.

• JonahSJun 17, 2015, 6:30 PM

  0 points

  in reply to: 27chaos’s comment on: Ac­com­plish­ing things takes a long time

  Probably better to send me private messages via the LW interface then rather than communicating by email them—do you know how?

• JonahSJun 17, 2015, 10:07 AM

  0 points

  in reply to: 27chaos’s comment on: Ac­com­plish­ing things takes a long time

  Thanks for the suggestion.

  The actual situation is that over the past 3 months I’ve had a cluster of insights that’s extended far beyond math education as typically conceived, and I think that I’ve finally uncovered a road forward for people in our reference class to (as a group) increase our productivity by ~100x+. (As a point of reference, Bill Gates makes ~$10 billion a year: that should make the factor of 100x less far fetched.)

  There are so many things to say that it’s difficult to know where to start. I have ~500 unpublished pages on the subject, but a lot of it is in the form of correspondence and so not easily shared in its current form.

  May I asks what your own situation is, so that I can better address it? Feel free to email me at jsinick@gmail.com.

• JonahSJun 17, 2015, 9:14 AM

  0 points

  in reply to: 27chaos’s comment on: Ac­com­plish­ing things takes a long time

  I know that the content itself is clear. The main thing that I need to work on is making my writing more engaging to a broader audience. If the writing isn’t appealing enough to motivate people to read carefully, I’m not going to get through to them :D. I think that Scott Alexander /​ Yvain would do a better job than I can. I don’t expect to be able to get up to his level, but I hope to move in that direction.

Autism, or early iso­la­tion?

• JonahSJun 17, 2015, 1:07 AM

  2 points

  in reply to: 27chaos’s comment on: Ac­com­plish­ing things takes a long time

  Thanks.

  I know that I’m actually far above average after controlling for the complexity of the material that I’m trying to convey, but nature doesn’t grade on a curve: it’s not enough to be at the 99th percentile of academic mathematicians to actually successfully convey ideas to a broad audience of people without technical backgrounds :D.

  I’m glad that you’re understanding what I’m writing, but as a practical matter it seems as though I’ve been failing with > 50% of those who I’ve been trying to reach.

• JonahSJun 16, 2015, 7:21 AM

  0 points

  in reply to: Lumifer’s comment on: Ac­com­plish­ing things takes a long time

  I was speaking figuratively /​ poetically. If I can disseminate what i know to 100 people I’ll be happy, though I hope for more, and it might prove to be unrealistic.

• JonahSJun 16, 2015, 1:30 AM

  0 points

  in reply to: Dr_Manhattan’s comment on: Ac­com­plish­ing things takes a long time

  Oh, sure, I know that, I have a very long ways to go. What I meant to convey was that I already have a lot to work on with written communication alone :D. But I am in fact spending more time talking with people in person as well, just only have so much time in the near term...

• JonahSJun 16, 2015, 12:05 AM

  3 points

  in reply to: Gram_Stone’s comment on: Ac­com­plish­ing things takes a long time

  Thanks.

  There are meta-principles that are relevant to learning how to communicate with any group of people, that I’m just starting to learn. Reaching the LW community would be a great starting point, but only makes a small dent in the general problem of knowledge of how to think about the world mathematically in general being very rare, in juxtaposition with the fact that far more people are capable of learning than are currently learning.

• JonahSJun 16, 2015, 12:02 AM

  −1 points

  in reply to: James_Miller’s comment on: Ac­com­plish­ing things takes a long time

  Thanks. The issues come across in writing just as much as orally – you’ve already seen them.

Ac­com­plish­ing things takes a long time

• JonahSJun 13, 2015, 3:35 PM

  0 points

  in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: Sav­ing lives via bed nets is hard to beat for im­me­di­ate impact

  By “impact” I meant “efficacy of donating.”

• JonahSJun 13, 2015, 8:49 AM

  0 points

  in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: Sav­ing lives via bed nets is hard to beat for im­me­di­ate impact

  I’m not up to date, but as of 2013 where was an issue of lack of room for more funding.

• JonahSJun 7, 2015, 8:00 AM

  4 points

  in reply to: Eliezer Yudkowsky’s comment on: Ra­tion­al­ity is about pat­tern recog­ni­tion, not reasoning

  I’m puzzled, is there a way to read his comment

  People described him to me as resembling a young Bill Gates. His estimated expected future wealth based on that data if pursuing entrepreneurship, and informed by the data about the relationship of all of the characteristics I could track with it, was in the 9-figure range. Then add in that facebook was a very promising startup (I did some market sizing estimates for it, and people who looked at it and its early results were reliably impressed).

  other than as him doing it at the time?

• JonahSJun 4, 2015, 5:09 PM

  0 points

  in reply to: katydee’s comment on: So­cial class amongst the in­tel­lec­tu­ally gifted

  Great, thanks for letting me know.