14 Jan 09
2 edits
Originally posted by ChronicLeakyI meant the ones in our own opinions. If you can't identify at least the most important ones, then you shouldn't be entitled to an opinion.
Sure, but in most contexts, this is not possible to do exhaustively, either because there are too many or because the opinion has been formed from insufficient axioms.
The failure of circumspection that you mention is a direct result of people's unwillingness to see through even their own opinions. If they cannot be self-critical, what makes them fit for a debate?
PS: Note that this doesn't mean that the axioms themselves have to be in the most reduced form possibly. One doesn't have to list everything starting with "I assume I exist", "I assume reality outside of me exists", etc. but simply to know from which basis the argument underlying the opinion rests.
PS2: Look at most of the debates here. They usually start with vast amounts of filtering until you finally are able to show the other person the shaky pillar on which his opinions rest. Most of the debates never reach that point, because people refuse to accept that it does, indeed, rest on that pillar.
14 Jan 09
Originally posted by PalynkaI meant the ones in our own opinions. If you can't identify at least the most important ones, then you shouldn't be entitled to an opinion.
PS: Note that this doesn't mean that the axioms themselves have to be in the most reduced form possibly. One doesn't have to list everything starting with "I assume I exist", "I assume reality outside of me exists", etc. but simply to know from which basis the argument underlying the opinion rests.
PS2: Look at most of the debates here. They usually s ...[text shortened]... ach that point, because people refuse to accept that it does, indeed, rest on that pillar.
Oh, okay. In this case, I agree, with the caveat that one conducts one's life on the basis of a vast collection of opinions, and it isn't necessarily clear which ones (especially if one has acquired "deeply-held" opinions at some point) are being applied in a given situation (this may be the source of random cognitive dissonances). I believe that a worthy goal is to introspect carefully about as many of one's opinions as possible, and hopefully about all major new ones as they are formed.
The failure of circumspection that you mention is a direct result of people's unwillingness to see through even their own opinions. If they cannot be self-critical, what makes them fit for a debate?
Exactly.
Look at most of the debates here. They usually start with vast amounts of filtering until you finally are able to show the other person the shaky pillar on which his opinions rest. Most of the debates never reach that point, because people refuse to accept that it does, indeed, rest on that pillar.
Indeed. That some posters (like yourself) regularly make the effort is laudable.
14 Jan 09
Originally posted by ChronicLeakyWe're not worthy! 😵
In this case, I agree, with the caveat that one conducts one's life on the basis of a vast collection of opinions, and it isn't necessarily clear which ones (especially if one has acquired "deeply-held" opinions at some point) are being applied in a given situation (this may be the source of random cognitive dissonances).
15 Jan 09
Originally posted by StarValleyWyMan, cats are not shy about getting what they want from life.
I'm doing ok. Just turned 61. Ain't near as smart as I used to be. Got my health. Got good family. My old dog Zabu is blind and has Alzheimers. She still frolics like a pup. But now, when she bounces, little "accidental toids" tend to pop out her butt. So we tend not to get her too happy in the house anymore.
We inherited a feral cat that looks like ...[text shortened]... to use it and don't let it get to you. It ain't your fault!
Ahem. That was deep.
As for intelligence, I think it was the late David Foster Wallace who wrote "However smart you think you are, you are actually way less smart than that." This is a good thing to learn; I think it's tied to what vistesd called the "pure Zen" in your post. Maybe all this intelligence going away as we get older just seems that way because we're learning this lesson. (Maybe Zabu's getting smarter with age. By sometimes being unable to, erm, contain her happiness, she's learning new clear ways to express herself, like one of those 90-year-old ladies who have figured out that they can say any ridiculous thing with dignity.)
15 Jan 09
Originally posted by ChronicLeakyI see what you're saying and it brings to mind the fact that there are so many chess players here and so few able to apply the same kind of analysis to life ... You have to see the entire board, not just the two pieces in direct confrontation. You have to see what comes next, what would happen if you did one thing or another. Using that sort of analysis, one sees that behind each side along the same diagonal or file is another, more powerful piece providing cover.
As for intelligence, I think it was the late David Foster Wallace who wrote "However smart you think you are, you are actually way less smart than that." This is a good thing to learn; I think it's tied to what vistesd called the "pure Zen" in your post. Maybe all this intelligence going away as we get older just seems that way because we're learning this lesson.
15 Jan 09
Originally posted by FMFWho said you can't learn someone anything?
I see what you're saying and it brings to mind the fact that there are so many chess players here and so few able to apply the same kind of analysis to life ... You have to see the entire board, not just the two pieces in direct confrontation. You have to see what comes next, what would happen if you did one thing or another. Using that sort of analysis, one see ...[text shortened]... hind each side along the same diagonal or file is another, more powerful piece providing cover.
15 Jan 09
3 edits
Originally posted by PalynkaI'm not sure how much thought I gave it before going to McGill. In general, though, graduate students are a pretty interesting bunch vis a vis the proper circumspection issue because, at least among the ones I know well, the tendency is to make the opposite error to the one the DFW quote warns against, at least in a narrow context defined by their work. (I know two exceptions to this at McGill, one of whom gives one the serious willies as a result.)
What did you think your colleagues would be like in McGill before going there? What about where you are now?
EDIT The above is of course limited by whatever my ability even is to judge whether said colleagues are underestimating themselves, which ability of course is super-limited in scope and not really something I often think about. This conclusion is mostly drawn from talking with colleagues about the content of courses we took together, teaching each other various things, etc.
15 Jan 09
Originally posted by ChronicLeakyThere are at least two possible lessons:
I'm not sure how much thought I gave it before going to McGill. In general, though, graduate students are a pretty interesting bunch vis a vis the proper circumspection issue because, at least among the ones I know well, the tendency is to make the opposite error to the one the DFW quote warns against, at least in a narrow context defined by their work ...[text shortened]... leagues about the content of courses we took together, teaching each other various things, etc.
Either the tails get thin extremely fast or its easy to underestimate oneself.
Imagine if it's the former. Then depending on how you define intelligence (absolute vs relative), then you can get very different conclusions. In absolute terms, you might be far from the upper bound, but still be in an very high percentile.
15 Jan 09
Originally posted by PalynkaThis makes sense, but I can't think of a notion of intelligence which is both normally distributed and consistent with the personal characteristic being estimated in the DFW quote, or by my colleagues. I don't think that sane people have angsty crises about their ability to do the sorts of puzzles that are on IQ tests, or stay up at night wondering if they have a sufficiently good memory to accomplish their intellectual goals, for example. Even if they're thinking in relative terms, they are wondering whether their particular confluence of creativity and ability to understand certain things is sufficient to allow them to do things that other people can do (ie whether other people do those things with completely different gross mental tools is unimportant to the person doing the self-estimating).
There are at least two possible lessons:
Either the tails get thin extremely fast or its easy to underestimate oneself.
Imagine if it's the former. Then depending on how you define intelligence (absolute vs relative), then you can get very different conclusions. In absolute terms, you might be far from the upper bound, but still be in an very high percentile.
15 Jan 09
1 edit
Originally posted by ChronicLeakyIt doesn't have to be normally distributed, it just needs to have an upper tail, from which we can conclude (or not) its thinness. I don't see how anyone would argue that the distribution is somehow condensed near the upper bound.
This makes sense, but I can't think of a notion of intelligence which is both normally distributed and consistent with the personal characteristic being estimated in the DFW quote, or by my colleagues. I don't think that sane people have angsty crises about their ability to do the sorts of puzzles that are on IQ tests, or stay up at night wondering if pletely different gross mental tools is unimportant to the person doing the self-estimating).
I don't think that sane people have angsty crises about their ability to do the sorts of puzzles that are on IQ tests, or stay up at night wondering if they have a sufficiently good memory to accomplish their intellectual goals, for example.
I don't see the relevance of all this, nor where I imply that sane people do all that.
Even if they're thinking in relative terms, they are wondering whether their particular confluence of creativity and ability to understand certain things is sufficient to allow them to do things that other people can do (ie whether other people do those things with completely different gross mental tools is unimportant to the person doing the self-estimating).
The DFW quote itself already presumes that comparability exists. Again, that's all I need for my argument. Besides, if the problem was underestimation of one's ability, then again the quote cannot be accurate.
This reminds of your recent comment about the simple snippets which contained much wisdom. More often then not, a deconstruction of such snippets reveals more blanks than actual content. The power of such snippets is that we have a tendency to fill in the blanks the way we want to, according to the situation. The usefulness of the snippet is just serving as an anchor to your own thoughts. But there is almost no inherent wisdom in them.
15 Jan 09
4 edits
Originally posted by PalynkaIt doesn't have to be normally distributed, it just needs to have an upper tail, from which we can conclude (or not) its thinness. I don't see how anyone would argue that the distribution is somehow condensed near the upper bound.
[b]I don't think that sane people have angsty crises about their ability to do the sorts of puzzles that are on IQ tests, or stay up at night wondering if they have a sufficiently good memory to accomplish their intellectual goals, for example.
Even if they're thinking in relative terms, they are wondering whether their particular confluence o ...[text shortened]... different gross mental tools is unimportant to the person doing the self-estimating).
[/b]
My objection isn't to the use of any specific distribution (I said "normal" because I was expecting an allusion to scores on psychometric tests to be made at some point), it's to the assumption that all of the notions of comparability which can be read into the quote, or even any of the useful ones, can be modelled by a random variable with values in a totally-ordered set.
Talk of tails, or any other feature of a distribution, or interpreting intelligence in any sort of statistical way, is premature because nobody in this discussion has posited any sort of scheme for measuring intelligence, nor is any such scheme necessary for the DFW quote to be useful.
For example, the quote can be taken to mean something like:
"For any list you make of your cognitive skills, that set of cognitive skills represents a set of tools insufficient for many situations that you are likely to encounter."
(In fact, in its context in the novel from which it was [probably, slightly] paraphrased, this is probably fairly close to the intended interpretation.)
There is an implicit comparability here, because the set of such lists is partially ordered by inclusion. However, it's not clear what random variable you will use to model this situation. It's not even the case that every two such lists are comparable (the set is not totally ordered).
I don't see the relevance of all this, nor where I imply that sane people do all that.
I was giving examples of potential measures of intelligence which have the comparability property you used, and claiming that they are not really relevant to a discussion about people's estimates of their abilities.
What do you think is being estimated when someone estimates xyr abilities?
This reminds of your recent comment about the simple snippets which contained much wisdom. More often then not, a deconstruction of such snippets reveals more blanks than actual content. The power of such snippets is that we have a tendency to fill in the blanks the way we want to, according to the situation. The usefulness of the snippet is just serving as an anchor to your own thoughts. But there is almost no inherent wisdom in them.
I agree with this, in most cases ("more often than not" ), for exactly the reasons I alluded to in my second post in this thread -- such snippets usually are phrased so broadly that they are unlikely to be the result of a clear thought process, etc. My comment was more intended to convey the idea that one shouldn't necessarily dismiss statements on the basis of their being snippets, i.e. I was less clearly driving at something similar to what you just said more clearly, but with "more often than not" in large letters.
A valuable snippet is probably one which is an anchor for useful thoughts in the way you mentioned and which, through habit, has no other common interpretations other than those useful thoughts. Clearly the DFW quote is not such a snippet; this discussion's existence shows that it violates the second criterion.
EDIT
Besides, if the problem was underestimation of one's ability, then again the quote cannot be accurate.
Consider the interpretation of the quote that I gave above. Suppose I provide a list of my cognitive skills. I can underestimate my abilities by rating the set of situations in which the skills on my list will be useful as smaller than it is. This doesn't contradict the claim made in the quote that the set of such situations is smaller than the set of situations I am likely to encounter.
Of course, another interpretation of the quote places the estimate at the level of the set of situations in which one is likely to have to apply ones (say) known intelligence. In this case, I can see why what you say is true.
15 Jan 09
1 edit
I didn't know the context, so it's much clearer now what you meant by it. Still, I do believe that there is more to intelligence than practical ability. I agree that there are many sub-categories of intelligence and one may excel in some and less so in others (hence my hatred of IQ tests). So the notion of intelligence as an encompassing term doesn't shock me at all.
Yet still, from my personal and anecdotal experience, I still think there is a difference in general cognitive ability. In fact, the opposite strikes me as almost a remarkable coincidence.
How can one measure it? I don't know. I agree that the standard approach of taking IQ tests is extremely limited. I'd like to see a more varied approach for testing cognitive abilities. We can never fully solve the problem that the test reflects the test creator, but we can still be aware of the problem and try to minimize it.