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I am not a big fan of proxies when it comes to important matters. We should aim to get as close to the underlying variable as possible.
Got a black and white potential candidate for a job as a physics researcher? In my world whoever scores higher in the IQ test gets it.
Not hiring child molesters at a pre school is less about competence or safety and more about optics. Lets say you had a device that could read minds and is attached to ones wrist to deliver a deadly electrical shock before one is to sexually abuse a child. I would bet most parents would still rather this guy not be near his children with the device on even if it means his life depends on doing an excellent job.
Will we ever reach the perfect set of proxies? No. But if they are used the way Bayes intended, I am fine with them. In practice they are used as hard and dumb cutoffs.
Oh you have 5 years of experience Instead of the 5.1 we are asking for? Too bad.
The problem with this view, which is at the heart of the modern rational world, is that the energy expended to figure things out in totality isn't always worth expending.
Your brain doesn't need to understand the shape of the environment on the atomic level to manipulate it, you've developped the concept of objects, which are a useful, wrong, simplification of it.
Newtonian physics are falsified, yet we use them daily in engineering.
The truth is that ALL criterions are proxies. The true nature of the world is unknowable and all decisions are made using models based on experience.
And quality models are energy efficient for their uses.
This actually gets at how I personally define “IQ”, which is the physical level at of detail at which a being understands reality. In this sense, there is a theoretical — and arguably practical — upper bound on intelligence, where a being understands all of reality across all time — that is, the position of every atom in the universe across every temporal dimension.
I have no doubt in the near future we will have AIs which achieve a significant portion of this — the ability to perceive and manipulate reality at the atomic level across a substantial — say, galaxy sized — slice of the universe. In practice these would be indistinguishable from magic to someone alive today. You could just say “get me a beer” to the AI, it would instantly assemble atoms into a glass (ice cold with frost on it) filled with atoms assembled as freshly brewed beer.
Looks like you're mixing in so much perception, memory, reach and ability to manipulate into "intelligence" that your personal definition of "IQ" is going to massively differ from the colloquial.
This is like the gripe I have with the Yud-esque AI doomers who claim intelligence is when if more, then can do magic.
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The issue with not using proxies is that really a lot of measures are nearly impossible to get any other way. I can’t give an intelligence test to potential hires — it’s illegal. So I have to use college graduation as a proxy. I can’t really ask whether you’re going to commit a crime, — the criminal isn’t going to admit it — but someone rocking up with face tattoos wearing a hoodie is a decent proxy for criminality.
Where are you, and when was the last time you were in the position to hire someone? I only ask because while I've seen this argument made on numerous occasions throughout rationalist circles, I have never seen it born out in meat-space. In my experience, aptitude and skill tests are a bog-standard component of the hiring process, and have been throughout my professional life.
Having sat on both sides of that proverbial table I feel like something must be getting left out here.
Yeah, I’ve had to take aptitude and IQ-proxy(wonderlic etc) tests at most jobs I’ve applied for. If testing potential hires is illegal then it’s certainly not very well enforced.
Same here, furthermore just last week I was on the other side of the desk administering our internal test to a bunch of potential new hires. Given I work for a large US government contractor, and how up my ass Legal typically is about everything else involving budgets/hiring I find it hard to believe they would somehow miss that.
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