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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 3, 2023

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If it's just about IQ, wouldn't @self_made_human's demonstrably much higher IQ make him an exception?

I know this is almost certainly true, but it's still nice that people notice haha.

Now, if only I wasn't a 99.999th percentile wordcel and only like 75th as a shape rotator. I know which team makes more money!

We're on themotte. Most who bother to interact with comparatively longform text are higher IQ than average, and people here obviously like thinking about ideas.

What math courses have you completed, and how did the last few feel?

Hmm.. I was perfectly fine at math till 10th grade, where I fell off harshly.

I blame this on my (at the time undiagnosed) ADHD, since my eyes would glaze over.

I also severely fucked myself by not paying attention during early trigonometry lessons, something my tutors failed to address.

I think in a world where I was taking Ritalin at the time, I'd have done much better.

I do like math much more now that I'm not forced to study it, I watch channels like 3Blue1Brown on the regular, and I occasionally use GPT-4 to teach myself statistics.

I am under the impression that the tenets of ML aren't that complicated, and while I have no natural affinity for it, when my happiness is at stake I can pop pills and grind. I have to do that for medicine as is!

Edit: The Indian math curriculum is far more rigorous than the US one is, without going into things like AP courses. While my calculus is only middling and my trig terrible (beyond the very basics), I googled the 12th grade US maths curriculum and I think I have most of it handled.