71–80 of 166 posts
> Working at a large, successful company lets you keep your isolation. If you choose, you can just ignore all the inconvenient facts about the world. Is this why social justice extremism is so popular in Silicon Valley? I mean, social justice is critical to a well-functioning and fair society, but the brand of it that SV folks tend to sell is fairly detached from the realities of living in a human civilization.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I honestly don't even know what to say... 1. "Parents vote about the distribution of the startup positions for the next generation." What? 2. "Poor people should rather be angry about their parents than about the system." Are you serious? What good is that going to do? Sorry, but you must be living quite a privileged, or sheltered life if you believe these things.
Reproduction has a very well-earned taboo thanks to the terrible eugenics trends of the early 20th century. But, this taboo prevents us from seeing some things clearly. One of those things we tend to avoid thinking about as a society is the who/when/why of parenting, and the long-term effects of those decisions (or lack thereof). The movie Idiocracy satirized one aspect of this, but it still doesn't get much discussi…
https://charlierose.com/videos/12443
Humility (know you don't know, always be asking questions), a focus on the greater good (is it about you or something greater than you?), and having a "growth mindset" are part of the antidote:
https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/01/29/carol-dweck-mindset...
Here's a summary for why smart people are "cursed": If you are two or 3 standard deviations about the mean, you'll quickly realize society is optimized and caters to the average intelligence. You'll find it very boring and frustrating having to deal with rules and decisions that do not make sense. You must continually push yourself to stay entertained and meet like-minded people otherwise you'll get very depressed th…
Here's a summary for why smart people are "cursed": If you are two or 3 standard deviations about the mean, you'll quickly realize society is optimized and caters to the average intelligence. You'll find it very boring and frustrating having to deal with rules and decisions that do not make sense. You must continually push yourself to stay entertained and meet like-minded people otherwise you'll get very depressed th…
There's certainly some truth to this, especially in certain anti-intellectual societies and time periods. But many highly intelligent people have been truly gifted not only with intelligence but with the respect and even adoration of others. You should read the biography of John von Neumann.[1] He's deserved the term "genius" if anyone ever did. George Polya[2], famous author of the math classic "How to Solve It"[3]…
"What I have learned, working here, is that smart, successful people are cursed. The curse is confidence." Things to remember when smart people appear confident: - the correlation between confidence and ability to actually "do" something can be low - smart people can live in their heads - smart people can overestimate their expertise in areas they may be familiar or ignorant of, equally - street smarts can kick smart…
Very nice. And to estimate robust competence, perhaps:
"Have you focused on this? Long-term, with reflective practice, and embedded in a critical community?"
I don't know how to make that pithy. "Is this your thing?", "Is this your life?", "Are you a contender?", ...?
I'm interested transformative improvement of science and engineering educational content, through greatly increased use of domain expertise. So I've spent a lot of time scraping against the limits of people's expertise.[1]
The steepness with which people's expertise drops, as you move away from their primary focus of effort, is greatly and pervasively underestimated.
There's a news story genre, an example of which is "Harvard MBA's confused about what causes Earth's seasons!" But why is this surprising? If the last time someone focused on something was in middle school, then their having a middle school understanding of it shouldn't come as a great surprise.
A professor wizzy in their own subfield, may have a graduate student's grasp of nearby subfields, an undergraduate's grasp of the rest of their field, and a high-school grasp of other fields.
A non-biology MIT professor may have no idea what DNA is. An MIT chemistry lecturer no recognition of dimensional analysis. A Harvard physicist, hard-nosed and empirical, in teaching "just has a feeling for it", "intuitively knowing" what will work and not and how well. If you want to find out what crayon color to use for the Sun, don't ask a random first-tier astronomy graduate student - they will almost always get it wrong.[2]
The unadorned adjective "smart"... has startlingly large negative utility.
[1] http://www.clarifyscience.info/part/MHjx6 Scientific expertise is not broadly distributed - an underappreciated obstacle to creating better content
[2] http://www.clarifyscience.info/part/Jw6yo "What color is the Sun?" - An example of science education pathology.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's certainly some truth to this, especially in certain anti-intellectual societies and time periods. But many highly intelligent people have been truly gifted not only with intelligence but with the respect and even adoration of others. You should read the biography of John von Neumann.[1] He's deserved the term "genius" if anyone ever did. George Polya[2], famous author of the math classic "How to Solve It"[3]…
My favorite von Neumann anecdote from the wiki page you linked to came from Edward Teller who said "von Neumann would carry on a conversation with my 3-year-old son, and the two of them would talk as equals, and I sometimes wondered if he used the same principle when he talked to the rest of us."
My pet theory: much of 'gut feelings' and intuition boils down to having our internal black box predict the behavior of other people. When you are 'average', this often simplifies to reasoning about what you would do in the same circumstances, which is relatively easy. If you are 3 standard deviations out, you'll have to compensate that consciously, which is inaccurate and difficult and slow. This is like how UI desi…
Agree. One of my friends is pretty smart (at least, above above-average) and works in the tech industry. When he was young he had to "simulate" his emotions to "look like a normal person." He had to think what normal people would feel under his situation and tried to feel that way (or tried to make himself looked feeling that way in front of people). For example, he thinks that crying on funerals is illogical, becaus…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
My favorite von Neumann anecdote from the wiki page you linked to came from Edward Teller who said "von Neumann would carry on a conversation with my 3-year-old son, and the two of them would talk as equals, and I sometimes wondered if he used the same principle when he talked to the rest of us."
...and that's coming from Teller, who wasn't exactly an intellectual lightweight.
Edit: If anyone is interested in the topic of Hungarian scientists in the twentieth century, I can highly recommend the book The Voice of the Martians[1]. It can be a bit dry at times but it is incredibly interesting nonetheless. American scientists jokingly referred to their Hungarian colleagues as Martians due to their other worldly intelligence and their accents that no one could understand.
[1]https://www.amazon.com/Voice-Martians-Hungarian-Scientists-C...
My experience has been that most "smart" people are actually high-functioning autistic savants. I mean, if they were actually +2 std deviations above on the whole enchilada, their lives wouldn't be such a mess. You can make a lot of money and still be a hot mess. Look at celebrities. Alpha nerds are just a variation on the theme.
A lot of social problems disappear when you're accepted as a famous accomplished person. So a celebrity can be weird and not face the same social isolation.