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Notes -
Most positive traits correlate somewhat. So do most negative ones.
The problem with intelligence is that it makes you retarded. Smart people can convince themselves of anything, and thus lose connection with reality in proportion to how smart they are.
Take Scott's most recent post on child rearing for an obvious example. He's the smartest person I've ever met personally, and he's a tard.
No. Being deep enough on the autism spectrum makes you retarded about some things. People keep (often intentionally) conflating that with intelligence.
Scott is much more an example of someone on the autism spectrum than he is an example of the modal intelligent person.
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Boy, I don't know how much time you spend around not smart people, but I promise you it's all worse on average.
I think you have to take a wildly uncharitable interpretation of what Scott wrote to think he's therefore bad at child rearing.
Would I personally indulge my toddler quite so much? No, but it sure was funny to read about. My little girl isn't quite so ridiculous, yet.
I think there are certain brain worms that target a certain level of intelligence, but it's not like it gets worse as you get to super geniuses relative to say 115.
Bertrand Russell was a pacifist and Albert Einstein endorsed socialism explicitly. These are views I consider immensely retarded due to overwhelming theoretical and empirical evidence against them. Motivated reasoning effects everyone, and smart people perhaps find more territory to get lost in than a more average person.
But overall there's basically no known tradeoffs with higher intelligence. There are not a set number of character points. Life isn't fair.
Indeed, one can see here for an example that Steve Hsu wrote about.
As Hsu remarked: “No evidence of diminishing returns in the far tail of the cognitive ability distribution.”
Even when range-restricted to the top 1% of 13-year-old test-takers on the SAT math, the four quartiles among The One Percent follow a rank-order with respect to any doctorate, STEM publications, STEM doctorates, patents, whether-95th-percentile-income eventually attained.
Note Hsu’s blog post and the linked underlying Nature article are coming up on 10 years old in a few months, yet things remain unchanged with regard to blank slatism and hopium as to the diminishing-to-zero returns of IQ.
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That post deserves a top level post. I mean, yes, toddlers are often trying(and often deliberately trying), but he's not reacting as the received wisdom of parents passed through generations would recommend.
I trust Scott to wrangle the outcomes of his own genetics more than I do any onlookers with partial information.
His little boy is a hell of a character, but there's nothing in those anecdotes he shared that strike me as an actual problem. Keep in mind Scott does baby duty at set times, and for much of the day he has outside assistance. He can afford to be a bit indulging without losing his mind for the time he has the watch.
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Can I ask how you met Scott?
Went to a meetup at his house back when he lived in my state.
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