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Human behavioral complexity peaks at age 25: study

journals.plos.org

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Re: Human behavioral complexity peaks at age 25: study

#71

Post by vanderZwan »

gabrielgoh wrote: post #61
xux wrote: post #45

Did anyone even read the article. The study has nothing to do with complex behavior or "sophisticated" behavior. It's a study on your ability to generate random list of results, like "listing the hypothetical results of a series of 12 coin flips so that they would 'look random to somebody else'"

it appears to be a way to measure complex behaviors, and higher cognitive functions, however - so I don't think the commenters are that far off.

I'm sure it is an important factor in how the brain works, and that the research is insightful. I'm having some trouble with the idea of extrapolating complex behaviours from what essentially is a micro-benchmark of cognition. That sounds overly reductionist to me.

Although I guess it is impressive to find consistent results within said micro-benchmark, of course, since that hints at something fundamental about our biology (in the reddit AMA linked elsewhere in the comment the author claims to see no difference for gender, educational background, etc; suggesting age is the main factor. That seems significant).

Re: Human behavioral complexity peaks at age 25: study

#72

Post by red_hairing »

gabrielgoh wrote: post #61
xux wrote: post #45

Did anyone even read the article. The study has nothing to do with complex behavior or "sophisticated" behavior. It's a study on your ability to generate random list of results, like "listing the hypothetical results of a series of 12 coin flips so that they would 'look random to somebody else'"

it appears to be a way to measure complex behaviors, and higher cognitive functions, however - so I don't think the commenters are that far off.

I would call this test an analogue of IQ testing. Again, we see how mainstream thought places IQ on a pedestal. Mainstream thinking overvalues and overrates mental gymnastics, such as performance on IQ testing. But learned experience is in my opinion far more valuable and should be valued more by mainstream thought. At age 60, it is true that I cannot perform as well on IQ tests. But in my opinion my understanding of the world is much greater. I was like a child at age 25, even though I tested well on IQ tests. But I was just a child. Does mainstream scholarship explore this facet of human development? Not much....

Re: Human behavioral complexity peaks at age 25: study

#73

Post by rwnspace »

gabrielgoh wrote: post #61
xux wrote: post #45

Did anyone even read the article. The study has nothing to do with complex behavior or "sophisticated" behavior. It's a study on your ability to generate random list of results, like "listing the hypothetical results of a series of 12 coin flips so that they would 'look random to somebody else'"

it appears to be a way to measure complex behaviors, and higher cognitive functions, however - so I don't think the commenters are that far off.

I'm interested by the path of reasoning from evo-psych. The underlying mechanism may manifest in higher-order features like motivation. How this motivation is mediated by culture (both economic and social) might lead us to draw interesting connections with both pathology and maximising productivity.

Re: Human behavioral complexity peaks at age 25: study

#74

Post by vslira »

red_hairing wrote: post #72
gabrielgoh wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it appears to be a way to measure complex behaviors, and higher cognitive functions, however - so I don't think the commenters are that far off.

I would call this test an analogue of IQ testing. Again, we see how mainstream thought places IQ on a pedestal. Mainstream thinking overvalues and overrates mental gymnastics, such as performance on IQ testing. But learned experience is in my opinion far more valuable and should be valued more by mainstream thought. At age 60, it is true that I cannot perform as well on IQ tests. But in my opinion my understanding of…

Isn't the lower scores for older people just a result of the flynn effect? This doesn't mean a personal drop in "absolute" g, if it's really a thing

Re: Human behavioral complexity peaks at age 25: study

#75

Post by etherael »

averagewall wrote: post #65
etherael wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That strikes me as a poor measure of true randomness.

Why? Do you suspect that subjects were deliberately making their choices less random because they anticipated the poor performance of another person in assessing randomness? It seems like a good assumption that they knew they were trying to fool a sophisticated randomness test that they couldn't second-guess.

No, just humans are well known to be bad at actual randomness.

Re: Human behavioral complexity peaks at age 25: study

#76

Post by etherael »

nabla9 wrote: post #66
etherael wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That strikes me as a poor measure of true randomness.

In this context it's probably better measure of randomness than true randomness. What 'appears random' is better measurement that matches what people try to do. People are not good at recognizing randomness, they confuse it with homogeneity. True randomness generates more human recognizable patterns than people think. If you as people to generate random string of 1's and 0's, they avoid long strings of 0's or 1's too…

I don't quite follow what you're attempting to say here, I mean to say that the study is flawed because "It's a study on your ability to generate random list of results", with the inference that supposedly those who generate the most random results and those who appear by human estimation to do so are the same people, because humans are actually bad at randomness, exactly as you yourself say here.

So what "appears random" is not at all a good measure of what is "actually random" to put it as simply as possible.

Re: Human behavioral complexity peaks at age 25: study

#77

Post by etherael »

coldtea wrote: post #68
etherael wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That strikes me as a poor measure of true randomness.

It's not supposed to be a measure of "true randomness" but a measure of the capacity to generate random-like results.

It's not supposed to be a measure of "true linguistic proficiency" but a measure of the capacity to generate linguistic-proficiency-like results.

So in each case what's the gap between actual linguistic proficiency / randomness, and the appearance thereof? And of what value is measuring these human perceptions rather than the actual facts in each instance (like taking all the results and putting them into a scatter output and seeing if there is actually a pattern in the pseudorandom data, or formally analysing the grammar and spelling in question and verifying that it is technically correct rather than just "english sounding" https://youtu.be/gU4w12oDjn8?t=2m)

Can we draw conclusions about that Italian gentleman's ability to make a song that sounds like English pop music "better" than an English pop music song that is actually technically grammatically correct, and use it to infer that he's got better English skills than the writer of the technically correct song?

And if not, why are we trying to make statements about the ability of some randomness souce not based on any actual measure of true randomness?

Re: Human behavioral complexity peaks at age 25: study

#80

Post by catshirt »

transverse wrote: post #79

I am conducting a survey as a first attempt to see what's going on. If you would be so kind, please take it here: https://j.mp/CoinFlippingSurvey If I get about 100 more respondents, I will release the data and analysis at the same link.

i can't tell if i'm more humored or intrigued.
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