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

210 IQ Is Not Enough

taylor.town

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 284 posts

Re: 210 IQ Is Not Enough

#271

Post by programjames »

827a wrote: post #263
programjames wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What I deeply believe is: We're never going to invent superintelligence, not because its impossible for computers to achieve, but because we don't even know what intelligence is. Speak for yourself, not all of humanity. There are plenty of rigorous, mostly equivalent definitions for intelligence: The ability to find short programs that explain phenomena (compression). The capability to figure out how to do things (…

If you want to have a discussion in good faith, then you need to work on your rhetoric. People are unlikely to want to engage with you, here or in your real life, if you regularly talk like that. Seek help.

My goal wasn't to have a discussion, it was to shut down the propagation of lies. This is one of those memetic viruses that people keep passing around, that most people passing around don't even bother to think about, and it has some pretty negative consequences, such as aiding in the elimination of American gifted programs.

Re: 210 IQ Is Not Enough

#272

Post by marginalia_nu »

Viliam1234 wrote: post #252
kbelder wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's absolutely possible, but it means that you need a lot of good evidence for a 210 IQ to outweigh the odds that the score is a mistake or a lie.

Even if we could positively confirm that the person is smarter than literally every human who has ever lived... that would be about IQ 200, still far from IQ 210. (The required number of humans grows exponentially.)

The tallest man in history was 8'11".

If a 14' man shows up, an absurd outlier even among outliers, is all we're able to conclusively say that he is taller than 8'11"?

Re: 210 IQ Is Not Enough

#273

Post by sublinear »

stego-tech wrote: post #258
sublinear wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> billionaires engage in wealth and asset hoarding That's not how money works. Nobody becomes a billionaire by hoarding. Money greater than a surprisingly low amount must be invested. Even the most obvious, boring, and low-risk investments still tend to have good returns. At scale lots of money just becomes a lot more money. There is no ego necessarily involved in this process.

Hoarding not as the act of accumulating such absurd wealth (they do that through exploitation), but hoarding in the sense of refusing to spend down, divest, or otherwise cease further acquisition despite the harms created or perpetuated in doing so. You cannot look me in the eyes and keep a straight face while saying their megayachts, private jets, palatial estates, private islands, and state capture are completely e…

I wouldn't say those things are completely ego-less, but I will say that they're not necessarily for personal enjoyment alone.

The function of all that is entertaining guests. Of course theirs must be the biggest and best to win people over. You may then ask why they need to win people over, and you will find it only keeps getting more complicated and torturous to maintain than what any individual's ego could possibly and stubbornly want to do.

I'm not saying the wealthiest are heroes or saints or anything like that. In fact, in some cases all of what I just said is totally wrong and it's just a front for massive money laundering. Having a means for large private gatherings is also ideal for other possibly nefarious activities.

I'm simply trying to explain what humanity and depth exists where you don't think it does. It's not really one single "evil" person, or even a group of "evil" people, but a situation caused by many well-intended constraints. That a system naturally becomes corrupt as a mere side effect of its scale and tiny imperfections adding up rather any intentions is probably the most evil thing imaginable.

Re: 210 IQ Is Not Enough

#274

Post by Viliam1234 »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #272
Viliam1234 wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if we could positively confirm that the person is smarter than literally every human who has ever lived... that would be about IQ 200, still far from IQ 210. (The required number of humans grows exponentially.)

The tallest man in history was 8'11". If a 14' man shows up, an absurd outlier even among outliers, is all we're able to conclusively say that he is taller than 8'11"?

Yeah, this is a mistake everyone makes, and it is difficult to explain to people who didn't study statistics.

The short version is that intelligence is an ordinal value, not a cardinal value. You can say that person A is more intelligent than person B, but not that person A is exactly 3.14515x more intelligent than person B.

Intelligence is simply measured in percentiles, that's all. You can't be more intelligent than 100% of the population. The 100% of the population is the population of Earth. You cannot get a higher IQ score than that.

Re: 210 IQ Is Not Enough

#275

Post by spacecadet »

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #191
spacecadet wrote: post #31

Its a failure to be the smartest person in the room. Or, if you think you are- you are likely not, and thinking about yourself instead of listening...

> Or, if you think you are- you are likely not In my experience the gut feeling of being the smartest person in the room is often true. Many highly smart people don't have the social position that they are surrounded by like-minded or even smarter people.

red flag.

Re: 210 IQ Is Not Enough

#276

Post by notahacker »

dahart wrote: post #270
notahacker wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but setting questions you theoretically need a certain threshold of ability in pattern recognition to pass without actually having that ability feels like trying to design a 100m dash whilst not really knowing what a sprint or a metre is. You might end up selecting for outlying distance runners instead...

Sure, but that’s not how IQ tests are designed, nor what IQ is. Most people understand the concept of intelligence, regardless of their IQ score. The methodology of IQ testing doesn’t require having a question that only the “smartest” person in the world can understand in order to identify that person. Many of the metrics are based on speed, they are literally a race similar to 100m dash. Another metric is working me…

That's kind of the point though: intelligence has many disputed definitions, but the general consensus is that extreme intelligence (or genius) involves the ability to grasp concepts others can't and apply them in novel ways, and need not savant-like working memory or ability to compute nearly as fast as a dumb old calculator. On the other hand the metrics and methodology of IQ tests distinguish between higher performers based on speed of puzzles that are comparatively simple to understand out of practicality. Of course processing speed for rotational symmetry puzzles also correlates pretty well with [in]ability to learn advanced topics at the lower end of the scale and people at the upper end of test performance are seldom considered stupid, but this thread is about the outliers. If we're still doing running analogies, Bolt and Kichoge are both huge outliers in running respective distances certainly proves they're significantly healthier than the average human, but maybe there's nothing wrong if they get sick or die at similar ages to normal people because peak human health isn't best defined by the outcome of a race.

Re: 210 IQ Is Not Enough

#277

Post by aleph_minus_one »

spacecadet wrote: post #275
aleph_minus_one wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Or, if you think you are- you are likely not In my experience the gut feeling of being the smartest person in the room is often true. Many highly smart people don't have the social position that they are surrounded by like-minded or even smarter people.

red flag.

If you see "red flag" about how I (and other people) live their life: I know that this is a situation that should be changed - but not everybody is in the position to do thar,

If you, on the other hand, consider "red flag" to be against the respective person, I can only say that you are an evil bully.

Re: 210 IQ Is Not Enough

#278

Post by dahart »

notahacker wrote: post #276
dahart wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but that’s not how IQ tests are designed, nor what IQ is. Most people understand the concept of intelligence, regardless of their IQ score. The methodology of IQ testing doesn’t require having a question that only the “smartest” person in the world can understand in order to identify that person. Many of the metrics are based on speed, they are literally a race similar to 100m dash. Another metric is working me…

That's kind of the point though: intelligence has many disputed definitions, but the general consensus is that extreme intelligence (or genius) involves the ability to grasp concepts others can't and apply them in novel ways, and need not savant-like working memory or ability to compute nearly as fast as a dumb old calculator. On the other hand the metrics and methodology of IQ tests distinguish between higher perfor…

> the general consensus is that extreme intelligence (or genius) involves the ability to grasp concepts others can’t and apply them in novel ways

Whose consensus? Can you back up that claim with some links? The only actual metrics we have for intelligence are based on a speed race, and are not based on concepts that you and I can’t understand. Everyone can answer the questions on an IQ test correctly given unlimited time. I would claim that because IQ tests do not involve the ability to grasp concepts other can’t, there is no such consensus. Higher IQ is literally defined as someone being able to answer questions you can understand faster than you.

> Both and Kichoge [sic] are both huge outliers in running

A small nitpick, Bolt and Kipchoge are the fastest at what they do, but they are not huge outliers at all, they’re a very tiny bit faster than their competition, and there’s plenty of competition.

This actually brings up a pretty important statistical point - that measuring outliers in terms of standard deviations washes away ALL of the absolute differences between people. It’s a relative ranking score, not a direct measure of intelligence. Someone with an IQ of 210 might be 0.1% smarter than someone with an IQ of 130. Or even less. The popular idea that a high IQ score somehow means someone has extreme intelligence far higher than others is a complete and total myth, there’s no basis for believing it’s true aside from conflating or misunderstanding what a standard deviation is. Standard deviations tell you about the distribution. It is a metric that gets exponentially smaller the higher the number is, and is always measuring in relation to the group, and does not correlate directly with the metric it’s capturing.

There’s really no such thing as extreme intelligence with people who can grasp concepts others can’t. And there’s no such thing as a 210 IQ either, as others have pointed out. Everything over ~145 is almost completely meaningless and even if it had meaning simply does not demonstrate that very high IQ is appreciably smarter than your average scientist. Isn’t it actually already obvious there isn’t a cabal of super geniuses who have invented the things the rest of us don’t understand?

Re: 210 IQ Is Not Enough

#279

Post by spacecadet »

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #277
spacecadet wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

red flag.

If you see "red flag" about how I (and other people) live their life: I know that this is a situation that should be changed - but not everybody is in the position to do thar, If you, on the other hand, consider "red flag" to be against the respective person, I can only say that you are an evil bully.

I just tend to avoid anyone who attempts this position. They often have too narrow a definition of "smartest" anyways... and that is why avoiding the belief that someone is the smartest person in any given group enriches the experience for everyone. This goes for oneself or even perceiving someone else as. We have something to learn from everyone, if we open our eyes, minds, and hearts.

Re: 210 IQ Is Not Enough

#280

Post by ekianjo »

bena wrote: post #98
ekianjo wrote: post #12

if IQ tests are designed by people with lower IQ what does it say about high IQ scores?

Part of the test is the speed at which you get the answers. So while one may not be able to solve the entire suite of questions within 10 minutes, we can know that someone who can is smarter than someone who can't.

> So while one may not be able to solve the entire suite of questions within 10 minutes, we can know that someone who can is smarter than someone who can't.

If you can try yourself to get better at the IQ questions, this is just about memory and pattern matching, not actual intelligence

Post reply on HN