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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

#131

Post by ajkjk »

xigency wrote: post #91
ajkjk wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree with this; also, it feels like you are reading out the same theories I have somewhere in my brain and that's a weird sensation. A related theory: being good at math, especially mental math, correlates with aphantasia (not being able to see pictures in your head). People who can see images in their head learn to do arithmetic early on with visual algorithms, which are fundamentally not good for understanding as…

> A related theory: being good at math, especially mental math, correlates with aphantasia (not being able to see pictures in your head) This is the kind of condition I wonder if I have. Because on one hand, if I do a visualization exercise I would describe it as foggy at best. Then again, I struggle to understand how our brains could be wired that differently from person to person, that we could have or lack certain…

I would emphasize that people who are good at mental math tend to not see a chalkboard, while those are less good at it tend to. Relying on visualization is, I have noticed from asking around, a weakness. Of course it's just anecdotal but the pattern seems pretty pronounced to me. (I polled a hundred people at one point and saw this pattern reflected in the responses)

I agree, though, that visualization is probably latent even in people who can't do it. I notice it when half asleep for instance.

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

#132

Post by awb »

abathur wrote: post #49
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…

Same. I tried the "easier" version early on in the challenge and it didn't help increase my confidence. I only chose it going forward when I had not even the slightest idea. It really helped once, but not the other times.

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

#133

Post by SoftTalker »

cookiengineer wrote: post #112
ilc wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Source: Principal Software Engineer, 25+ YOE. You are far smarter than you think. Learn to get into flow, and also figure out how to get your state back faster... Once you do, it is a super power. Simple things like leaving your editor/IDE open, create the same situation you left. I personally use music + IEMs to help me block sound and focus. -30-35 DB off the IEMs, and +70DB off my music... yeah, I don't hear anyth…

The reason I love vim and i3/kitty so much as a combination is exactly this. I have 4 monitors in the exact state I left them when I get back, with the last TODO comments I added and what the problem was (that I thought about deeply overnight). For me the best way to get into the flow is by directly getting back to where I left. If I take time to wake up, make breakfast or anything else I usually lost my ideas alread…

I use emacs for everything I write for the same reason. Code, email, notes, plans, etc. I do all in emacs. The consistency in editing text helps me focus on what I am writing.

The only other software I usually have running on my work computer is a web browser.

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

#134

Post by foota »

danq_ wrote: post #129

There are two measures of intelligence: Correctness and Speed. Correctness is the primary measure, and if two parties are correct then speed differentiates their level of intelligence. This is the only measure that has been quantified and scientifically correlated with many other attributes of human existence like success and happiness. This measure is is called IQ. If both people get an answer correct, then literall…

green user to shadow banned speedrun?

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

#136

Post by Unkechaug »

MSFT_Edging wrote: post #72
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've always felt like I have awful short term memory. I use tiling WMs so I can see information side-by-side. If I need to type something exactly, I forget the exact details almost immediately. I need to derive things to understand them, ie music theory. I'm jealous of people who can memorize and take at face value but if I'm looking at a chord, I need to know the components that create that chord, which gets frustra…

I have never been more seen in my life. It's very frustrating, especially when other people tend to extrapolate the little they know and apply it to everything. It can be frustrating when others are right but for the wrong reasons, and not even know it.

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

#137

Post by hgsgm »

anyfoo wrote: post #59
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…

I elaborated as a reply to a sibling comment, but repeat after me: You need to memorize things in math , especially if you want full understanding. It is a necessary tool. I realized this when I saw one of the higher math geniuses in university, one who really understood most things better than most of us, learn equations and lemmas from flashcards one day. That memorization may become superfluous after you worked wi…

The OP article is in part about how people whom memorize things perform worse because their memory is incorrect, while people who understand things will spend more time making sense of a problem of solution instead of more quickly guessing part-blind.

Not-memorizing forces you to practice more and develop deeper intuition which helps you reconstruct info. Memorization is a side-effect or learning, not a cause.

Our brains are connection machines, not encyclopedias.

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

#138

Post by hgsgm »

ChainOfFools wrote: post #63
anyfoo wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I elaborated as a reply to a sibling comment, but repeat after me: You need to memorize things in math , especially if you want full understanding. It is a necessary tool. I realized this when I saw one of the higher math geniuses in university, one who really understood most things better than most of us, learn equations and lemmas from flashcards one day. That memorization may become superfluous after you worked wi…

I agree with this, and the rationalization that I eventually worked out and learned to live with is that as you get into more advanced areas of math, much of what you are learning are building blocks for assembling more complex tools - but those are tools you have no use for yet, and therefore can't hook constituent elements into any existing framework of understanding. There is no way to pass through these obstacles…

No! Instead of rushing ahead into meaningless abstraction, you should spend more learning in the world of concrete examples and applications, to provide meat for those abstract skeletons. We don't need a mathematician is who is a poor imitation of a computer or a reference book.

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

#139

Post by hgsgm »

LTL_FTC wrote: post #44
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…

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 th…

Are you sure that the people who learned the material are dumber than you?

Knowing the range of application of a technique is important.

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

#140

Post by hgsgm »

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"…

It's not that people disagree about which approach is more effective, it's about whether the person cares more about theory or practice (or in what balance, people are not binary). The theory hat doesn't like practice, and says "theory improves practice" as a fig leaf. The practice hat doesn't like theory, and says "practice improves theory" as a fig leaf.

Of course both are important at a global scale. But one person can focus on one side and make an contribution.

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