Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Intelligent people take longer to solve hard problems: study

bigthink.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 184 posts

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

#81

Post by sigg3 »

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 also abhor rote memorization. Not because I don't think it's valuable, I just hate extremely repetitive tasks.

Memorization leads to a different kind of knowledge, I think. You don't know the thing, you know the steps to reproduce.

It's like my grandmother who knows several songs by heart, but if you ask about the second line in the third verse she'll sing it from the start until she reaches the line in question. For a song this is sufficient, because it is analogous to the primary use cases.

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

#83

Post by brazzledazzle »

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…

Am I projecting or does this sound like an compensating strategies for an intelligent person with an executive dysfunction disorder?

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

#84

Post by dvwobuq »

anyfoo wrote: post #54
fwungy wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My big stumble in math came when I stopped being able to self-prove everything I saw. At some point you must memorize in math.

That point is very early. Math finally really took off for me when I realized that, no, it's not enough to understand an equation, or a set of requirements, etc., when I'm introduced to it. I have to actually memorize it. Literally with a flashcard app that I open every day. By rote memorization, it is available in my head immediately , and I can use it to reason through things, without having to derive anything. It…

I can entirely relate to this.

About three weeks into my first undergraduate class on abstract algebra, it dawned on me that the instructor wasn't giving me math tests. He was giving me vocabulary tests. In that class, most of the answers to questions flow straight from the definitions. Once I broke out the flashcards and started memorizing definitions, that class became almost trivial.

I used flashcards in all my classes after that to memorize terms, definitions, and concepts. Math and engineering are, for me anyway, like a foreign language. To converse in that language fluently, one must be very comfortable with the vocabulary. It just makes sense.

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

#85

Post by hawski »

tikhonj wrote: post #55
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…

My pet theory is that this is closely related to the "two cultures" in mathematics with "problem solvers" vs "theory builders": is it easier for you to put more strain on your working memory to solve a problem, or would you rather put in more up-front conceptual effort to reduce that strain? I'm not a mathematician, but I've seen a similar bifurcation in programming styles and preferences: something like "debuggers"…

I think I am almost grasping what you are saying, but am not sure.

Those short memory people (who I think I may be among) that GP said about relate to which group of mathematicians and programmers?

I am one of those that prefer to reduce complexity and prefer lower level programming. I think that such a type of person likes C for example.

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

#86

Post by mordae »

SamPatt wrote: post #61
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.

That was fun, I scored lower (2.1) dogmatism and higher on the test (840), which they claim supports their hypothesis. In day to day life the major difference I notice in terms of speed and intelligence personally is that I'm often slow to respond to questions. It didn't even occur to me to be self-conscious about this until eventually a friend pointed it out, but he kindly framed it as "you think before you speak" a…

I had 3.4 and similar number of points as you. The questions don't really work that well.

E.g. the healthcare one doesn't work for my country where universal healthcare is a law and thus State truly has duty to provide it and anyone who believes otherwise is objectively wrong.

I have also received more points for being "dogmatic" in that having strong opinion (that is different than mine of "neutral") on migration is a bad person.

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

#87

Post by mordae »

fxtentacle wrote: post #75

Extremely misleading title, in my opinion. Let me quote the actual research at https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-38626-y : "subjects with higher PMAT24_A_CR (fluid intelligence) made fewer mistakes, but were slower" Yes, intelligent people took longer to solve hard problems. But they made fewer mistakes. Getting things right on the 1st try might be much faster than needing a 2nd attempt, even if the 1st try…

Actually, solving problem quick and dirty, putting the solution to a test and iterating will probably result in better outcomes than simply thinking super hard and making less attempts for a whole bunch of tasks.

It sure helps to be able to iterate quickly in software development for one.

It has reminded me of an exchange from Shirobako (best anime ever, 100/100, watch it even if you prefer other forms); older animator is telling their younger colleague to learn to draw faster, because while they can work on the quality for the rest of their life, but they won't be able to draw fast when they are older. Drawing faster means more iterations, means more experience gained overall.

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

#88

Post by vorpalhex »

carabiner wrote: post #71
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.

Have you read Superforecasting? One conclusion they had was that very partisan thinkers, basically dogmatic, were the worst at predicting future events, and it didn't matter what that dogma was. Liberal or conservative or anti big business or whatever. All of the really good forecasters were relentlessly fact based and spent a huge amount of time diving deeply into facts, and microfacts that supported facts. It sound…

This is funny because I've heard this from the opposite approach: using forecast accuracy to determine personal model accuracy.

If you can accurately predict the future above random chance, that lends evidence that your internal state aligns with reality.

(There are obviously traps here, eg the conspiracy theorist who sees every outcome as proof of the conspiracy)

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

#89

Post by kaechle »

antisthenes wrote: post #73
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.

No offense, but the experiment is nonsense. What makes you think there's any relationship between visual recognition and dogmatism? Even your own results only show a 2.5% difference between the most dogmatic and least dogmatic participants, assuming they even answered the dogmatic portion of the test truthfully and thoughtfully. I can't see how that amounts to anything more than a statistical error. Just in case, my…

The test states at the end that dogmatism is measured based on the answers to a subset of the questions—the game is simply a correlate.

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

#90

Post by KennyBlanken »

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.

A 2% difference in scores between the most and least dogmatic users means your test complete hogwash.

Your refusal to provide any data beyond averages is very telling. My guess is that there's a very wide distribution of scores, little trend, and very little correlation.

Post reply on HN