This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
If we define g factor as smartness then I can understand @dailydogma argument. His point basically seems to be, whatever causes Einstein's success in physics was not his g factor. There are lot of people who are very talented in a skill such that the second place in the world doesn't come close to the first place in ability. For them g factor may not explain the variance in ability but some other (maybe inborn and genetic) trait may explain that variance better, a trait which does not generalize well to other domains.
Nigel Richards is incredibly dominant in his field, he is the french scrabble champion. He is better than any computer at the game and he doesn't understand french at all. He only learned it for the game in just nine weeks. This is not an ability any other competitor shows. [https://youtube.com/watch?v=T-8NrvVqbT4] If you try to explain his success with g you would end up with a very simple question
"If his ability is so much greater than his opponents and this is primarily explained by his g then his g must also be far far greater than his opponents, why is he is not an equally prominent physicist or the like. G factor generalizes, he should be better at everything." A explanation for this can be he has some trait which doesn't generalize well but helps with his specific domain, so he doesn't have very high IQ (or g or intelligence) but he is still very good in his field.
This can also lead to a very smart but not an world shattering level smart Einstien who nonetheless can make the discoveries he did. Just look at latest models from OpenAI and how jagged they are, they can do Erdos problems but we are not at AGI are we?
Maybe Von Neumann was consistently a genius in may different fields and hence was smarter than Einstien.
If at the very top something other than g factors starts explaining most of the variance then you can easily have 135 IQ Feynman.
Edit: Math is very g loaded but once you filter for people with high IQ (120+ or 130+) the correlation would drop, and you would probably end up with very jagged talent rather than a generalized talent which is used in g. After filtering at 145 IQ threshold different cognitive abilities merely have 0.1 correlation https://doi.org/10.1016/j.intell.2017.07.004
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link