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Intelligent people take longer to solve hard problems: study

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Re: Intelligent people take longer to solve hard problems: study

#41

Post by volkk »

Solvency wrote: post #31
ChainOfFools wrote: post #27

I strongly suspect this effect is correlated with a weakness in short-term or working memory. Independent of general intelligence is the necessity for those with a weak short-term or working memory to compensate by relying on long-term, in depth understanding in order to JIT the necessary short-term structures into being on the spot, (often repeatedly as these images decay rapidly) in order to solve a problem. Wherea…

I struggled in math in HS for this reason. Every time a concept was presented to me I felt like I needed to deeply understand it at the most universally root level and create a painstaking mental model of it, to a degree that I imposed on myself for some inexplicable reason. To answer "but WHY". Almost like a form of self-sabotage in hindsight because I think there are decreasing returns in "truly, deeply" grokking m…

i imagine this is probably the healthier/much better approach to learning anything. unfortunately society mostly prioritizes extreme speed and shallow understanding of anything due to the upside of moving quickly and making numbers go up at the end of a quarter.

Re: Intelligent people take longer to solve hard problems: study

#42

Post by beepbooptheory »

I always find it so strange and a little creepy to treat "intelligent" as a category like "brown haired" or "diabetic."

You take a test and receive a score (an "intelligence score" apparently) and if you are past X points you are intelligent. Now you are among the set of intelligent people in the world.

I know this is an agreed upon reality (especially among us nerdy types), but it always rubbed me the wrong way. Even bracketing off all the very real issues around measurement tools here, it always felt in general like neurotic pursuit to quantify the qualitative, or even an egoistic pursuit to claim superiority out of thin air.

And I read articles like these, and I can't help but feel slightly validated despite their presuppositions: maybe there isnt a spectrum of intelligences, but just heterogenous minds. We have come up with these tests, but they just show how well a person is at that test that we happen to call "an intelligence test." But you start digging deeply with the numbers... and of course you going to get counter intuitive results! You have investigated categories that are themselves sustained out of thinnest of scientific consensus and dubious ideological origins, delegating your measurement to fraught tools laden with cultural specificity. It just feels crazy to me, it feels like never leaving grade school.

But maybe they'll find "intelligence" one day, and then I'll have to eat my shoe while waiting in line to be recycled because I didn't pass muster as an intelligent human.

Re: Intelligent people take longer to solve hard problems: study

#44

Post by LTL_FTC »

Solvency wrote: post #31
ChainOfFools wrote: post #27

I strongly suspect this effect is correlated with a weakness in short-term or working memory. Independent of general intelligence is the necessity for those with a weak short-term or working memory to compensate by relying on long-term, in depth understanding in order to JIT the necessary short-term structures into being on the spot, (often repeatedly as these images decay rapidly) in order to solve a problem. Wherea…

I struggled in math in HS for this reason. Every time a concept was presented to me I felt like I needed to deeply understand it at the most universally root level and create a painstaking mental model of it, to a degree that I imposed on myself for some inexplicable reason. To answer "but WHY". Almost like a form of self-sabotage in hindsight because I think there are decreasing returns in "truly, deeply" grokking m…

I discovered the difference in these two types of students much later than I would have liked: last year of college. I like you, felt like I really needed to understand the material to do well, and I did, but there were so many students at discussion sections and office hours with much shallower understandings who would perform better on exams and assignments. These students often ask questions like, “is it always the case…” looking for a hammer they can apply to all similar problems rather than trying to understand nuances. Learning how to get an A in the course is very different than learning the course material.

Re: Intelligent people take longer to solve hard problems: study

#45

Post by jamesdelaneyie »

pcurve wrote: post #29

I don't claim to be intelligent, but I do dread doing group brainstorming sessions using Post-it notes because it takes me time to think about the problem. I'm usually the the guy in the group with the fewest notes. I've rarely see anything useful come out of these sessions, even though I've participated in hundreds of these with different people, companies, and settings.

Your goal during the ideation phase of those workshops should be to output as many post its as possible in the given time. Output the bad ideas quickly and you'll move along to better ideas much faster when you're not humming and hawing over one post it. You have to be ok with looking slightly crazy however and not mind being linked to your poor ideas.

Re: Intelligent people take longer to solve hard problems: study

#46

Post by lanstin »

pcurve wrote: post #29

I don't claim to be intelligent, but I do dread doing group brainstorming sessions using Post-it notes because it takes me time to think about the problem. I'm usually the the guy in the group with the fewest notes. I've rarely see anything useful come out of these sessions, even though I've participated in hundreds of these with different people, companies, and settings.

Yeah, I'll have no answer the first day of mulling over a complex problem, but often I'll have an excellent answer the next day.

It's worked well for my own work, but sometimes people are surprised that the slow seeming person, me, has useful ideas.

Re: Intelligent people take longer to solve hard problems: study

#47

Post by ChainOfFools »

Solvency wrote: post #31
ChainOfFools wrote: post #27

I strongly suspect this effect is correlated with a weakness in short-term or working memory. Independent of general intelligence is the necessity for those with a weak short-term or working memory to compensate by relying on long-term, in depth understanding in order to JIT the necessary short-term structures into being on the spot, (often repeatedly as these images decay rapidly) in order to solve a problem. Wherea…

I struggled in math in HS for this reason. Every time a concept was presented to me I felt like I needed to deeply understand it at the most universally root level and create a painstaking mental model of it, to a degree that I imposed on myself for some inexplicable reason. To answer "but WHY". Almost like a form of self-sabotage in hindsight because I think there are decreasing returns in "truly, deeply" grokking m…

Just a hunch, but do you find that you perform substantially better if you are an environment where you can talk to yourself out loud as you work through a math or physics problem? If so, this is very much indicative of the phenomenon I'm describing, because what's happening is you're recruiting your audio memory as a compensatory short-term workspace, being able to loop some 2 or 3 additional elements of information in this extra area essentially acts as an extension of your working store. And guess what behavior students are typically prohibited or highly discouraged from doing during an exam?

I further suspect that this is also the mechanism responsible for some people's apparent tendency to do all the talking in a conversation, rather than allow a balanced share of time between conversants. The quick decay of short-term information requires constant refreshing, and talking is one means of augmenting this.

Re: Intelligent people take longer to solve hard problems: study

#48

Post by lanstin »

booleandilemma wrote: post #22

Can we also rephrase this as: if you want to be more intelligent, slow down and take the time to think through a problem?

A thirst to deeply understand the systems around one is irreplaceable. Curiosity and an openness to seeing what is there instead of loading some fast model on top of the problem.

Re: Intelligent people take longer to solve hard problems: study

#49

Post by abathur »

jawns wrote: post #15

A while back, I created an online experiment, based on a 2020 study, that identifies dogmatic thinking. https://shaungallagher.pressbin.com/blog/dogmatism.html Without giving too much away, this tracks with the 2023 study's results, in that people with higher intelligence scores are less likely to trust their System 1 gut reaction and more likely to involve their System 2 deliberate, logical processes.

> people with higher intelligence scores are less likely to trust their System 1 gut reaction and more likely to involve their System 2 deliberate, logical processes

Amusingly, I mistrust my attention and visual ~memory so much that I reasoned I would find the "easier" task just as hard unless it was literally like 1 vs 3 dots, or unless it stayed up so long that I could count (maybe harder, since I'd likely get more annoyed at myself for missing questions I believed to be easier). I ignored this option because I was fairly sure it'd just mostly waste 200 points.

I went back after completing to check out this option and don't feel like it made the task noticeably easier (to me).

Re: Intelligent people take longer to solve hard problems: study

#50

Post by bowenjin »

ChainOfFools wrote: post #27

I strongly suspect this effect is correlated with a weakness in short-term or working memory. Independent of general intelligence is the necessity for those with a weak short-term or working memory to compensate by relying on long-term, in depth understanding in order to JIT the necessary short-term structures into being on the spot, (often repeatedly as these images decay rapidly) in order to solve a problem. Wherea…

In my experience short term and long term memory recall speed and accuracy are strongly correlated. It's unlikely someone will be able to swiftly traverse a large long term memory graph, in a manner that would allow you to derive deep insights not just recalling a single piece of information, but have a poor short term memory.

However I do believe long term memory is more robust so if you're in a mentally compromised state, such as having a headache, it will be less affected. So if you have to work through a hard problem on a deadline but have a headache, you can rely on heuristics stored in long term memory rather than deriving everything in short term memory.

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