Slowness is a virtue • Hacker News Board

Re: Slowness is a virtue

#91

Post by paulcole » Fri, Dec 19, 2025, 10:27 PM UTC

halfcat wrote: post #46

paulcole wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I like the simple point about the hypothetical IQ test sent one week in advance. It’s a simple point but an incorrect one. If you can work on it for a week, it’s no longer an IQ test. Nobody is saying that the questions on an IQ test are impossible. It’s the fact that there are constraints (time) and that everybody takes the test the same way that makes it an IQ test. Otherwise it’s just a little sheet of kinda tri…

Counterpoint to consider: In real life, you can just play a different game. Most people will choose to shoot from 3/4 court instead of running all the way to the other end, because they’re not interested in basketball. Most people aren’t interested enough to work 100+ hours per week. But we wouldn’t say Elon isn’t better at work ”because he doesn’t even work a 40-hour work week” It has a lot to do with interest. Mich…

> Most people will choose to shoot from 3/4 court instead of running all the way to the other end, because they’re not interested in basketball.

I have never once in my life seen anyone do anything close to this. Have you?

Re: Slowness is a virtue

#92

Post by paulcole » Fri, Dec 19, 2025, 10:29 PM UTC

wavemode wrote: post #55

paulcole wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I don’t think that is the correct analogy. The analogy in the blog post is that you (one person) gets a month headstart on the test. You would look like a genius because you’d outscore everyone else who had the time constraint. Yes, if you play a different game you’ll find different high performers. That is obvious. But it is not what the blog post is saying. It is saying if you let one person play the same game…

This is the passage you're citing: > Consider this: if you get access to an IQ test weeks in advance, you could slowly work through all the problems and memorize the solutions. The test would then score you as a genius. This reveals what IQ tests actually measure. It’s not whether you can solve problems, but how fast you solve them. You retort that "if you can work on it for a week, then it's no longer an IQ test", b…

> This reveals what IQ tests actually measure. It’s not whether you can solve problems, but how fast you solve them.

Who is out here arguing that IQ tests only measure whether you can solve puzzles or not?

> You retort that "if you can work on it for a week, then it's no longer an IQ test", but that retort is one that the author would agree with.

Well it would be unreasonable to disagree with because it is less a retort than a simple fact.

Re: Slowness is a virtue

#93

Post by seec » Sat, Dec 20, 2025, 2:06 PM UTC

lo_zamoyski wrote: post #63

socketcluster wrote: post #17

Great article. I like the simple point about the hypothetical IQ test sent one week in advance. It makes a strong case about time being the true bottleness. I think this same idea could be applied to most tests. Implicit in the design of most tests is the idea that a person's ability to quickly solve moderately difficult problems implies a proportional ability to solve very difficult problems if given more time. This…

> I suspect there may be some correlation between High IQ, fast thinking, fast learning and suggestibility (meaning insufficient scrutiny of learned information). What if fast learning comes at the expense of scrutiny? What if fast thinking is tested for as a proxy for fast learning? Precisely. Speaking from experience, in school, every claim that I was supposed to accept and reproduce on an exam or in homework was m…

My life experience and resulting sentiment is extremely similar to yours.

I feel that the education system is deeply flawed and rewards all the wrong things because we refuse to select based on real factors because of political ideology. I think those that are successful become so despite of it, instead of because of it. When you looks at the biographies or people who truly pushed the enveloppe and changed the world, it becomes evident.

We need to ask if the cost of the education system are really worth the rewards. Considering how large that cost has become nowadays, my premilinary anwser would be no. And I feel that the shift to rent seeking economy as well as reduced innovation and iteration speed is deeply linked to that. Most of the recent growth came from IT, a field that was notorious for be full of dropouts. That should tell you something. Now that the field has been innunduated by college graduate, it has shifted to fully extractive behavior.

Any push back against the system is met with suspition because most people feel they should have a shot at making it big, because they are worth it. In practice, it seems that the inequalities never disappear anyway, and people just have to pay more upfront in order to try to prove themselves. In the long run, it mostly end up exactly as it started and society just pay a dear cost for what is basically unproductive behavior.

You behavior remark is quite on the nose, because from my point of view this is exactly how tyrannies are created. If you get rewarded too much for simply being obedient to the autority in place, overtime any other strategy gets pennalised dispropotionally and you end up with a bunch of sycophant you will never push back against the order, no matter how bad the decisions/rules get.