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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   4482 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 30, 2022

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

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I saw someone on reddit link this greentext image which explains some of the difficulties with basic reasoning ability that people with low IQ have.

I've read some books on the basics of intelligence research (which shows that intelligence is positively correlated with many outcomes that are good, and negatively correlated with many outcomes that are bad), but this text somehow phrased it in very concrete terms that I found interesting. Are there any other readings people have found that tries to contextualize the reality of living at a different intelligence level?

I know that, when people empathize with others, they tend to do so by "putting themselves in other people's shoes", which is trying to figure out how you would act given a different set of circumstances. But doing this with people of vastly different cognitive ability than you is flawed, and I want to understand some of the ways in which it is flawed better.

https://www.gwern.net/reviews/McNamara

Quote:

Some were trapped in boot camp: Gregory describes how many would be sent to remedial training repeatedly, failing the exercise requirements each time. They couldn’t understand how to correctly execute actions: in swinging from monkey bars, they would try to swing one bar at a time, coming to a halt each time; in running an obstacle course, they would have to pause in front of each arrow and think about what an arrow meant before understanding which direction to go, costing them too much time to ever beat the deadline; they would insist on throwing grenades directly at the target like a baseball, not understanding that throwing upwards in a high parabola would gain them the necessary distance; and in the mile run, they would sprint as fast as possible at the start and be surprised when they became utterly exhausted long before the finish line.

This was a great read; thanks for the link.

While this excerpt has relevance as a list of specific failings, it does have the caveat that repeating remedial training is the smarter option compared to getting shipped to Vietnam.

Emil has a blogpost on this sequence of 4chan posts.

How do only 3% get that last one right? That seems like, not as easy I guess as the other ones, but its just going line by line and saying "parents and teachers agreed in general here, disagreed in general here"...am I missing something?

Selection bias. You're mostly surrounded by people who are about as smart as you if you have a CNR job. People like cops, ER nurses, DMV clerks and Walmart cashiers wouldn't be surprised.

I'm sure it's a timed test, it's not testing can you do this, it's testing can you do this quickly and accurately, underpressure.

This post was discussed on the old subreddit. I was skeptical then and I am skeptical now. "Dumb" people (IQ less than 90) have trouble with abstract reasoning and complex cognitive problems, but "Imagine if you didn't eat yesterday, how would you have felt?" is not beyond their ability to imagine. It's almost like the greentext is trying to argue that low-IQ people can't parse a past perfect conditional grammatical construct rather than "They can't grasp hypotheticals."

Or, more likely, the person writing this is the kind of graduate student that would write this shit, and feels nothing but obvious contempt for his interlocutors in prison orange, who then have no interest in playing along with his little games. The dialogue reads more to me like a dude being uncooperative than retarded. Like when I, as an annoying brat 11 year old, would try to get my schoolmates to play intellectual word games and they'd reply to every question with "cheese." Just to piss me off, which was easier than it should have been.

As though I went to San Quentin, organized a basketball game which none of the inmates were very interested in at all, and ran to 4chan to excitedly announce: did you know most convicts are actually very unathletic? Practically crippled! Just let me dribble right by them and make lay ups all day! They barely played defense, and when they got the ball they would almost always turn it over to me and then go back to barely playing D.

If these were prisoners, there’s probably also a very high rate of undiagnosed mental illnesses that could plausibly make dumb but not retarded people much worse at communication.

This is really one of those things that makes me wonder a bit about the concept of IQ. Like, IQ tests undoubtedly to some degree measure intelligence, but also some degree the willingness to cooperate, do what you're asked to do, be social (ie. obey the purpose of the test) etc.; both of these then probably have something to do with one's ability to do well in modern working world, stay out of trouble with law etc. but are still similar concepts.

This realization came to me when talking about "dog intelligence", a concept - it seems to me - to at least in your normal vulgar parlance be mostly related to how well the dogs obey humans when humans order them to do things.

If you have subjects who are not cooperative for sugar blood tests, and eat a lot before blood sample is taken, is it a problem of blood tests?

I can think IQ tests duration is limited to 30-60 minutes so willingness to cooperate has little effect (for most individuals) even if it makes measurement of intellect per se less precise.

Note for some important things willingness to cooperate matters more than intelligence! Just there isn't a good method to measure it, and it's much more prone to change than intelligence.

Re dogs: I'm actually going to disagree about the dogs, because have you ever met a smart breed of dog that belonged to an owner that didn't train it or stimulate it enough? They turn into nightmare criminals. A friend of a friend has this border collie that she never trained right, it'll do things like chew on a doorknob to get into the house from the garage, then methodically poop in every room in the house. Like a determined goal oriented criminal.

Maybe this metaphor is going in a different direction 😂

I have to admit I've never owned a dog myself, I'm just going by how people generally seem to talk about dog intelligence.

I think you’re right, most of the dog intelligence lists you’ll find are based off of trainability and willingness to cooperate with humans. Which makes sense, since that’s the main reason someone would want to know how smart a dog breed is. For instance, Beagles are usually ranked near the bottom of intelligence lists. I have a beagle: she is very clever, but stubborn as a mule and extremely focused on food. Training her was difficult because unless you had food, she usually wouldn’t cooperate. Once you were holding food, she’d “remember” how to roll over, sit, whatever. Stupid? Not at all. Independent and focused on “what’s in it for me?” Very much so.

A large amount of dog owners talk in such matter, but it isn't unclear if it's plurality or majority. And I think that people who have such vulgar "dog intelligence" concept deny utility of IQ tests.

I'd bet quite a bit that this story is really just complete fiction.

I think this was the Freakonomics guy, but there was someone who as a grad student who had to go to low income housing an get answers to a survey.

One of the questions was something along the lines of

How do you feel about being poor and black?

a) Very good

b) Good

c) Uncertain

d) Bad

e) Very bad

Of course the most common answer was

f) Fuck you.

reminds me of this

That was in Sudhir Venkatesh, Gang Leader for a Day (it was his first exposure to Chicago's South Side residents as a grad student), but I've seen his work cited many times in Freakonomics content.

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