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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   2738 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 10, 2024

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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Because rationalists love all things IQ, I wanted to ask something here.

Is there reason to think, and is there support for, the idea that people with low intelligence simply lack or rarely develop some of the ways of cognizing, modeling the world, modeling other people, moral cognition, granularity, etc, that highly intelligent people have? Qualitative differences, not just less speed, less depth and breadth of knowledge?

Feel free to point me at research papers or relevant chapters of books if you don't want to write at length. Thanks!

From my experience, the higher the IQ, the more likely someone is to build up abstract concepts in their thinking. These can be scientific models, but also psychological models, historical models, etc. Lower IQ people struggle to pick up mental models, so when you talk to them, you'll notice they generally only think or speak about what's right in front of them. They don't really wonder or daydream much, unless you suggest something for them to think about. So their faces are always a product of their surroundings, typically relaxed, while intelligent people are often lost in thought and gain a poised/intense look to their face as they age.

There's no categorical difference between quantitative and qualitative differences. "Sometimes when I talk to other people they talk back to me" is a form of "modeling the world" that dogs and even the dumbest humans can do. Everything beyond that is just more "depth and breadth" of knowledge.

But very dumb people are observably worse at all of the things you describe than very smart people, so that "depth and breadth" is all there is, really.

I guess that's a way to say I don't understand the question, or know if it's well-formed.

But different traits scale disproportionally with respect to each other, so I think you can meaningfully translate quantitative differences into qualitative differences in practice via orders of magnitude difference in ability.

That is, if someone with an IQ of 120 can throw a football 2% more accurately than someone with an IQ of 80, then we'd say that football-throwing skill does not scale meaningfully with IQ even if there is technically a minor improvement. If someone with an IQ of 120 can solve simple arithmetic problems 40% faster or more accurately than someone with an IQ of 80, then this would reasonably be considered a quantitative difference. If someone with an IQ of 120 can solve problems related to hierarchically nested hypothetical scenarios 50 times (5000%) faster or more accurately than someone with an IQ of 80, (which is realistic if the latter can barely handle them at all), then this would reasonably be described as a qualitative difference despite technically being quantitative in the details.

Clearly there isn't a well-defined bright line distinguishing the scenarios. But there are cases which fall unambiguously on one side or the other, such that it's meaningful to discuss.

edit: mixed up the words "quantitative" and "qualitative" in some places

Yes, well said.

Have you heard of the models of mental development in psychology? In one of them, Piaget's model, the formal operational stage of reasoning, logic and abstract thinking of several possible outcomes, hypotheticals etc, is supposed to develop around 12 years of age or a bit later. But I've heard it said that not everyone succeeds in ever reaching that stage. This is the kind of thing I want to hear more about.

The only thing I can think of that's related is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructive_developmental_framework Kegan stages, and David Chapman (rat adjacent)'s interpretation of them - https://metarationality.com/stem-fluidity-bridge

You're not teaching the average person Quantum Mechanics. You're not teaching someone with an IQ of 80 how to code or calculus, at least not beyond rote memorization.

My experience with dumb people (as patients) is that they have a worse time keeping track of multiple, interacting bits of information, an inability to predict what seems like obvious interactions and consequences, and worse memory in general.

When it comes to moral cognition, that obviously makes them worse consequentialists, and to the extent that Deontology is unworkable without a mechanism for breaking ties, bad at choosing what to sacrifice. They are also less likely to notice positive sum opportunities and defect, and while more intelligence does offer more opportunities to get a fast one over other people, it also usually makes one notice that life is an iterated game and that in most cases that's not the best idea.

I am skeptical about the "how would you feel if you if didn't have breakfast" meme, at least for 80 IQ people. Lower than that? Almost certainly. But 80 IQ people are slow but largely functional and capable of independent operation in complex society, and can probably manage that, most of the time.

It is worth noting that there are functional complex societies where the average IQ is below 80 (I live in one). In a society where the average IQ is 100, having an IQ of 60 or 70 is more likely to be due to gross cognitive issues manifesting as retardation. Whereas in a society where that is the norm, they're still functional, just dumber. In other words, something deeply broken versus something that is working as intended, just subpar in comparison.* There can also be enclaves of higher IQ people capable of running the place even if the masses are dumb (India is incredibly heterogenous due to millenia of endogamy. Brahmins are almost certainly smarter. TamBrams are notoriously so. Modeling it assuming a normal distribution of intelligence here would be a gross error)

*Racism not intended, but that is the difference between a healthy chimp and and a very retarded human. They might perform similarly on IQ tests, but one is a functional animal operating comfortably in its niche, the other isn't.

Yes.

In my experience, being from a low IQ part of the world, they seem incapable of contemplating hypotheticals, "what ifs"... The only things that can be discussed are things experienced (even vicariously through movies). In general I noticed a certain difficulty with language: I need to speak simple sentences without subordinate clauses otherwise it's like their brains cannot handle the cognitive load.

This is one I hear a lot and, coming from a low IQ part of the world myself, I've never understood. It never occurred to me that people literally couldn't hold hypotheticals in their head.

There are many bits of conventional "wisdom" I see in DR circles that I can at least relate to some experience IRL, even if they're unflattering or exaggerated. This one is just totally baffling.

Maybe it's hard to tell when you're in the boiling pot because you're all low IQ and within the same range. But I've lived in the West for about an equal amount of time now and, while many other things pop out, this was not one of those things.

Well, they can contemplate hypotheticals if they already lived a certain experience, like they can answer questions like: "Would you like some tuna in your salad?" because they've already eaten tuna and already eaten salad in the past. But anything more abstract, like: "What would you do with 1 billion euro?" it's like I'm asking to interpret the fundamental metaphysical substrate of reality. The answers I receive are like: "I don't have 1 billion euro!". Ok, but can you imagine? Well, somehow they can't.

That's nothing to do with IQ, though, and more to do with being pragmatic versus being imaginative. Like, I could imagine having morbillion dollars, but what would be the point? Is there value in daydreaming about something so unlikely? Or is it just a distraction?

Like, "what Twilight character would you be" is a thought exercise. It's also a game for children who don't have anything better to think about.

One could offer the person a hundred bucks in exchange for writing an essay (of some clearly stated minimum quality) on "what would you do with a morbillion dollars". Presumably, that would offer an incentive to a pragmatic person who normally refuses to indulge into such daydreams, while accurately accessing their capacity for contemplating hypotheticals.

My experience of low IQ people is that all of them know what they would do with a billion dollars, and those that know what a euro is know what they would do with a billion of them, at least in vague terms. They might not have a great sense of the purchasing power of a billion dollars, but the idea that dumb people aren't capable of knowing what they would do if they had a large influx of cash is easily falsified. Just go talk to some hobos.

Look, I'm an HVAC tech working for a company whose clients are in large part institutional kitchens. I deal with working class blacks, who statistically have an average IQ in the low eighties with a big left tail, every day. They get hypotheticals. They're often dumb, sure, I wouldn't ask any of them for math help. And I can tell from talking to them that they're usually not the sharpest knife in the drawer(usually trouble keeping track of language or changing the subject rapidly. Especially pronouns- particularly dumb people have a lot of trouble keeping track of pronouns/antecedents). All of them can answer the breakfast question.

I strongly suspect that what's happened here is some claim about time preference ( you ask prodigal poor people "what would happen if you saved X% of your paycheck?" and they might give the correct answer but then never do it in practice or constantly have excuses) has become garbled in transmission until we get the idea that people literally cannot respond to hypotheticals.

Then I guess the segment of the poor population that favors the lottery has to be relatively high IQ, or I have even more questions.

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