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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

#101

Post by thorncorona »

mordae wrote: post #87
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 animat…

If what you're doing is getting a math problem correct than I would imagine doing it once correctly is the fastest approach...

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

#102

Post by coldblues »

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…

A lot of replies here talk about short term memory, needing to truly understand information on a deep level and have the "why?" question answered, using software to externalize information and a lot more that I can't really mention right now on a phone in the middle of the night browsing HN and coming across this gem.

A lot of this stuff seems highly related to ADHD. I exhibit them, and have done quite some amateur research myself on these behaviors and others seem to relate as well.

P.S: I am also an i3wm user btw ;)

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

#103

Post by pchangr »

a_wild_dandan wrote: post #58
ChainOfFools wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That's really interesting! Do you know any other techniques to hijack our brains for performance boosts? I'm reminded of the classic Feynman story about discovering the different mental models that he/his coworkers used, and how those models affected thinking: https://youtu.be/Si6NbKqYEd8?t=105

I write. It’s like having an internal monologue slowly repeating you whatever you’re thinking so it let’s the brain re-structure knowledge. It’s super helpful to force myself to pay attention. I rarely read what I wrote but because I did, there’s a higher chance I remembered.

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

#104

Post by thorncorona »

giovannibonetti wrote: post #57

Related: Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman. According to Wikipedia [1]: "The book's main thesis is a differentiation between two modes of thought: "System 1" is fast, instinctive and emotional; "System 2" is slower, more deliberative, and more logical." Intelligent people might rely more on System 2 than ordinary people, which pushes latency up. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow

A large portion of the effects and studies mentioned in that book have been retracted or refuted, just fyi.

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

#105

Post by painted-now »

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 had a very similar experience studying physics and I still have some form of that in my current job as software engineer working on a quite large code base:

I really can't operate on things for which I don't have a deep intuition. If I really have to treat something as a blackbox, I need to explicitly spell out the assumptions and "compress them enough" (which is actually probably also just about building an intuition on those assumptions).

I envy people a lot that can just "copy & paste" some knowledge in their thinking.

I think I now got to the point where I accepted that to be a part of me and made it "my brand" and I see that I can add value with being different in this aspect.

I often wonder how it must feel like to be able to "copy paste" knowledge. If you painstakingly have to sweat through all kinds of things that others can just "copy&paste", it can feel like others are "cheating" - but in the end it's just me being jealous.

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

#106

Post by painted-now »

amatecha wrote: post #56
Solvency wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yeah, I basically have no choice but to deeply, truly understand something. If I don't "completely get it", I will struggle endlessly to employ the "knowledge" I have. It's been a lifelong challenge (indeed I barely finished high school because I was actually failing classes because it was impossible to keep up -- yet I am a senior software engineer today), while some people forge ahead seemingly effortlessly, I am s…

I pretty much have the same experience as you! (See my other comment in this thread)

I really agree: this discussion is great!

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

#107

Post by growingkittens »

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"…

A distinction you might find interesting:

Systemic thinking - considering the system as a whole. Systematic thinking - considering the components of a system step-by-step.

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

#108

Post by proc0 »

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…

Slow is smooth, smooth is fast.

Forgot where that's from but I think it's a Navy or Marine saying.

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

#109

Post by hirvi74 »

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…

In regards to the study you linked:

> Intelligence is here defined as the performance in psychometric tests in cognitive domains like verbal comprehension, perceptual reasoning or working memory. A consistent finding is that individuals who perform well in one domain tend to perform well in the others, which led to the derivation of a general factor of intelligence called g-factor

Whelp, I guess I broke the mold on this one. I have more than 1.5 standard deviations between some of my scores lol.

I do not put much faith in IQ tests to begin with. I do not think the tests are completely useless, but I do think their utility is vastly overstated and the meaning of one's results are highly misused.

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