161–170 of 284 posts
Chris Langan is a fraud, and not even a good one, he claims to have discovered a revolutionary new neural network architecture but lost the napkin he wrote it on. This is my favorite video mocking Langan, made by someone smarter than him. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57IN9sBhYyg
The "world's smartest man" very recently predicted on X that Bitcoin would hit $220k by the end of the year. [1] Here's the thing: IQ probably doesn't mean much of anything. But it is one of only a handful of ways we have to benchmark intelligence. The training of AI systems critically requires benchmarks to understand gain/loss in training and determine if minute changes in the system is actually winging more intell…
> As World's Highest IQ Record Holder, I expect #BITCOIN is going to $220,000 in the next 45 days. > I will use 100% of my Bitcoin profits to build churches for Jesus Christ in every nation. > “For with God nothing shall be impossible.” (Luke 1:37) Something tells me maybe he doesn't actually have an IQ of 276.
The fact that you can do poorly (by external measure) despite high IQ doesn't really mean much. It correlates well with a swath of positive outcomes and I'd still take legitimate 150 IQ (for myself, for my kids) over virtually any other real-world ability. I think only looks are even in the running here. It's not just that IQ allows you to succeed. It allows you to navigate the modern world. I see people having troub…
People think of intelligence as some sort of magic. They ascribe all sorts of ability to intelligence, as if being smart should make you influential. But why should that be? If you're a scientist, you are dependent on getting funding to do experiments, and the experiment showing something interesting. Neither of these things is very connected to intelligence, beyond that low IQ people will not be likely to get to the…
By just applying some common sense it is obvious how absurd this statement is (and I thus rather have difficulties understanding how people can come to such a hypothesis):
Just look at your daily life: how much highly intellectual or academic content (for the latter: e.g. lecture recordings of complicated scientific lectures) do you watch on YouTube? If not: which kind of content do you then watch on YouTube?
This should make it insanely obvious which kinds of people are influential and which ones are not.
210 on a standard IQ scale (15 points per std dev) would mean more than 7 std deviations, order of 10^-12 it's hard for me to not reject the article already for it's click bait headline... ps: 170 is 4.666 std dev, about 10^-6. that's very rare, hard to measure but at least real.
A really good litmus test of individual perspective and maturity, here. Already seeing comments nitpick specific arguments or points, which is itself the trap to shine a light on those individuals more obsessed with arbitrary external measures of their personal definition of success, rather than self-reflecting on said definition and asking whether or not this definition fits who they are or want to be as a person, o…
Dunno - I think it's hard for a lot of us who rolled the dice on our interests early on, picked the winning combo of CS + Finance, and then just raced ahead in the career ladder over our peers as software work consumed the world. Now it's ten years later, those ladders have disappeared, many of us seeing the writing on the wall, and wondering whether we were anything special at all. (The answer of course is no, but i…
> Langan has not produced any acclaimed works of art or science. In this way, he differs significantly he differs significantly from outsider intellectuals like Paul Erdös, Stephen Wolfram, Nassim Taleb, etc. Paul Erdős is the only outsider intellectual on that list, IMO. (Also note that ő and ö are different!)
People think of intelligence as some sort of magic. They ascribe all sorts of ability to intelligence, as if being smart should make you influential. But why should that be? If you're a scientist, you are dependent on getting funding to do experiments, and the experiment showing something interesting. Neither of these things is very connected to intelligence, beyond that low IQ people will not be likely to get to the…
Most of life is like a 100m race where it's allowed to turn up and start early. ie anybody can easily beat Usain Bolt by just starting a few seconds before him.
There are some things which are perhaps a bit more like the highjump - where I'm never going to beat the worlds best no matter how many attempts I do - however these kind of things are very much the exception, not the rule.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So it is possible, and you just calculated the probability of that happening.
How many people would you estimate exist?
210 on a standard IQ scale (15 points per std dev) would mean more than 7 std deviations, order of 10^-12 it's hard for me to not reject the article already for it's click bait headline... ps: 170 is 4.666 std dev, about 10^-6. that's very rare, hard to measure but at least real.
Yeah, IQ tests don't really go above 160 precisely because there's no way to statistically validate the result. There aren't enough people. Someone can design a test and claim it determines IQ up to 210, but there's no way to statistically validate that so it's simply meaningless.
to me the 210 simply signals a certain distance of the author to the topic. that may be unjust, but I can't help it.