5 ms·

The whole article reads bizarre to me. It’s like pg believes there is some kind of generic smartness metric that characterizes people, and so you’re either smar

by d--b 5y ago

The whole article reads bizarre to me. It’s like pg believes there is some kind of generic smartness metric that characterizes people, and so you’re either smart, very smart or not smart at all. But people can be smart at things and terrible at others. And it’s not that smart people are terrible at things because they aren’t curious about them, it’s just that some tasks require different mindsets. Like I feel generally fairly smart in engineering, but I just can’t seem to learn chess at all. Generating new ideas is an entirely different skill. You can’t balance having ideas and being smart. You should try and have both, and no, one is not more important than the other. I mean the whole article feels like the stupid questions we’d ask ourselves when we were kids: would you rather have a 9-meter arm, or a boneless leg?

Osiris 5y ago
I haven't read it but "smart" isn't some universal trait. One can be "smart" in one area and really dumb in another. I don't understand how someone can be a good chef. You can be great at that, intuitively using the chemistry of it while failing even the most basic chemistry class. I guess I should read the article.
fullshark 5y ago
Reads to me like a VC frustrated by the lack of investment opportunities he’s been presented lately.
pedrosorio 5y ago
> Like I feel generally fairly smart in engineering, but I just can’t seem to learn chess at all. This seems like binary thinking. Can't learn chess over what period of time, with what resources and for what definition of "learning chess"?
UncleOxidant 5y ago
I did not see the word "imagination" mentioned in that article. It seems like a glaring omission given the topic. "How can imagination be cultivated?" would be an important question in that context. It could include things like letting kids (and adults) have more unstructured time, etc. We've largely banished boredom from the world now that we're constantly connected to the internet via our smartphones, but boredom could also be important for imagination. In my experience a lot of my best ideas came not with hard focus ("working hard") on a problem but while I was on a walk in nature not particularly focused on anything.
- DoreenMichele 5y ago
  Pithy Einstein quotes likely fail to capture the full picture of what Einstein did and should not be used as a basis for casually dismissing attempts to have meatier discussions.
reikonomusha 5y ago
I don't think he's lost much in the article by not descending into the rabbit-hole of developing a nuanced view of what "smart" means. I think it's a word used frequently enough in common language that the reader can do justice in interpreting it correctly and in good faith. Same goes for other, equally generic terms like, "she really has it all together" or "he's a pretty sharp guy". These aren't vacuous, meaningless statements, despite the lack of precision in their meaning.
- d--b 5y ago
  Fair enough, I probably didn’t express myself well. It’s just that the article re-plays the old “intelligence vs creativity” debate, and is full of naive statements about it. And you kind of want to answer: “you know, I think it’s a little more complicated”
darawk 5y ago
> The whole article reads bizarre to me. It’s like pg believes there is some kind of generic smartness metric that characterizes people, and so you’re either smart, very smart or not smart at all. General intelligence is absolutely a real thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_factor_(psychometrics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_factor_(psychometrics) Yes it's true that some people are good at some things and bad at others. That does not mean there isn't a general underlying "cognitive ability" factor.
- jkaplan 5y ago
  > That does not mean there isn't a general underlying "cognitive ability" factor. Careful. "g" is a statistical regularity, not proof of a generalized "underlying cognitive ability." From the same Wikipedia article: >It is a variable that summarizes positive correlations among different cognitive tasks >Yet, there is no consensus as to what causes the positive correlations between tests This whole subject is a scientific, statistical, and ethical can of worms (as pg alludes to in the essay), and this isn't the place to get into it... I just want to flag that it's a bit more complicated/controversial than it might sound at first.
  - tshaddox 5y ago
    I also haven’t seen any explanations for why positive correlation between any particular set of tests leads to the conclusion that this is truly a general cognitive ability. If you test people on the ability to play the piano, organ, and harpsichord, and find positive correlation between competency in all of them, you wouldn’t conclude that this demonstrates general cognitive ability. You’d just conclude that those musical instruments are similar. Likewise, choosing a bunch of tests from, say, all the common areas of study in Western schools, doesn’t automatically say anything about the entire range of cognitive abilities.
    - PeterisP 5y ago
      The argument for general cognitive ability is because the correlation is observed among all the various measures related to cognitive ability that we have. If you test people on the ability to play the piano, organ, and harpsichord, and assert that this is a reflection of general cognitive ability, then this is prediction is testable by later correlating this ability with other measures, and gets falsified by observing the metrics with which it does not correlate. So far, the concept of "G" survives because it actually does succeed in various tests of alternative metrics of cognitive ability - e.g. "emotional intelligence" metrics, biological metrics such as reaction speed, and various 'outcomes' e.g. job performance and future income controlled for socioeconomic background. In essence, the answer to "why positive correlation between any particular set of tests leads to the conclusion that this is truly a general cognitive ability" is that many respectable people have tried to find measures of aspects of cognitive ability that are separate and uncorrelated, however, as far as I know, all such attempts have failed so far and their experiments on alternative metrics did correlate with everything else and just became more data supporting the concept.
PicassoCTs 5y ago
New ideas - are created by recombination and filtering. Your subconscious generates new recombination, the wider the scope and stranger the combinations - the higher the chances of a miss, but also of discovering a "pass" to a new field. Now these re-combinations are filtered, again first subconsciously. If you murdered your childish, playful self in your late youth or give too much about societys evaluation of what society can not even evaluate your idea might never creep into your aware consciousness. Now for the ugly part. Some of us are, by curse or luck, predisposed to have a more flexible brain when it comes to recombinating ideas, persons, circumstances. My basic assumption always was, that it is a useful side-effect of watchfulness aka the guardian role aka looking for danger in noise. This of course can go horribly wrong. A creatives world is just one frail filter function working away from, writing game of thrones too living in game of thrones in your living room. I really would love to see the statistics here, to test this. Any center of creativity should be surrounded by camps of relatives were the filter functions went haywire. Now for the final touch. There is no recipe. No "cook" this algorithm, dance this dance through your brain and you will turn more creative. If asked for it- the brain will fantasize and invent those recipes. Which will be nice to read, but worthless when attempting to reproduce. The closest one would get is to reproduce the education that shaped shapeable brains into extraordinary creative people. And if all this works out, you are still just somebody with a (good) idea. Ideas are plenty in the sea and having good ideas does not equal the ability to execute on it. I would love to have a 9 meter arm made from boneless legs. Thanks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Robotic_Arm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Robotic_Arm
godot 5y ago
Hmm, it seems like the article has addressed most of your points directly. > It’s like pg believes there is some kind of generic smartness metric that characterizes people, and so you’re either smart, very smart or not smart at all. > But people can be smart at things and terrible at others. And it’s not that smart people are terrible at things because they aren’t curious about them, it’s just that some tasks require different mindsets. Like I feel generally fairly smart in engineering, but I just can’t seem to learn chess at all. He addressed this specific point in the "if intelligence/smartness is all that matters" scenario: "If intelligence is what matters, and also mostly inborn, the natural consequence is a sort of Brave New World fatalism. The best you can do is figure out what sort of work you have an "aptitude" for, so that whatever intelligence you were born with will at least be put to the best use, and then work as hard as you can at it." He is acknowledging that different people have good intelligence in different things (like engineering vs chess in your example). But he is saying this really shouldn't be the focus at all, because intelligence isn't truly what matters. > Generating new ideas is an entirely different skill. It is and he spent most of the article saying that skill can be cultivated (and isn't necessarily about intelligence). > You should try and have both, and no, one is not more important than the other. He also stated this as well at the introduction and this was pretty much the point of the essay. > I mean the whole article feels like the stupid questions we’d ask ourselves when we were kids: would you rather have a 9-meter arm, or a boneless leg? Not sure I get it or how the essay feels like that question. He isn't saying you can only have one (intelligence) or the other (skill to generate new ideas). He said it's ideal to have both.

by d--b 5y ago

Osiris 5y ago

I haven't read it but "smart" isn't some universal trait. One can be "smart" in one area and really dumb in another. I don't understand how someone can be a good chef. You can be great at that, intuitively using the chemistry of it while failing even the most basic chemistry class. I guess I should read the article.

fullshark 5y ago

Reads to me like a VC frustrated by the lack of investment opportunities he’s been presented lately.

pedrosorio 5y ago

> Like I feel generally fairly smart in engineering, but I just can’t seem to learn chess at all. This seems like binary thinking. Can't learn chess over what period of time, with what resources and for what definition of "learning chess"?

UncleOxidant 5y ago

I did not see the word "imagination" mentioned in that article. It seems like a glaring omission given the topic. "How can imagination be cultivated?" would be an important question in that context. It could include things like letting kids (and adults) have more unstructured time, etc. We've largely banished boredom from the world now that we're constantly connected to the internet via our smartphones, but boredom could also be important for imagination. In my experience a lot of my best ideas came not with hard focus ("working hard") on a problem but while I was on a walk in nature not particularly focused on anything.

DoreenMichele 5y ago
Pithy Einstein quotes likely fail to capture the full picture of what Einstein did and should not be used as a basis for casually dismissing attempts to have meatier discussions.

reikonomusha 5y ago

I don't think he's lost much in the article by not descending into the rabbit-hole of developing a nuanced view of what "smart" means. I think it's a word used frequently enough in common language that the reader can do justice in interpreting it correctly and in good faith. Same goes for other, equally generic terms like, "she really has it all together" or "he's a pretty sharp guy". These aren't vacuous, meaningless statements, despite the lack of precision in their meaning.

d--b 5y ago
Fair enough, I probably didn’t express myself well. It’s just that the article re-plays the old “intelligence vs creativity” debate, and is full of naive statements about it. And you kind of want to answer: “you know, I think it’s a little more complicated”

darawk 5y ago

> The whole article reads bizarre to me. It’s like pg believes there is some kind of generic smartness metric that characterizes people, and so you’re either smart, very smart or not smart at all. General intelligence is absolutely a real thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_factor_(psychometrics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_factor_(psychometrics) Yes it's true that some people are good at some things and bad at others. That does not mean there isn't a general underlying "cognitive ability" factor.

jkaplan 5y ago
> That does not mean there isn't a general underlying "cognitive ability" factor. Careful. "g" is a statistical regularity, not proof of a generalized "underlying cognitive ability." From the same Wikipedia article: >It is a variable that summarizes positive correlations among different cognitive tasks >Yet, there is no consensus as to what causes the positive correlations between tests This whole subject is a scientific, statistical, and ethical can of worms (as pg alludes to in the essay), and this isn't the place to get into it... I just want to flag that it's a bit more complicated/controversial than it might sound at first.
- tshaddox 5y ago
  I also haven’t seen any explanations for why positive correlation between any particular set of tests leads to the conclusion that this is truly a general cognitive ability. If you test people on the ability to play the piano, organ, and harpsichord, and find positive correlation between competency in all of them, you wouldn’t conclude that this demonstrates general cognitive ability. You’d just conclude that those musical instruments are similar. Likewise, choosing a bunch of tests from, say, all the common areas of study in Western schools, doesn’t automatically say anything about the entire range of cognitive abilities.
  - PeterisP 5y ago
    The argument for general cognitive ability is because the correlation is observed among all the various measures related to cognitive ability that we have. If you test people on the ability to play the piano, organ, and harpsichord, and assert that this is a reflection of general cognitive ability, then this is prediction is testable by later correlating this ability with other measures, and gets falsified by observing the metrics with which it does not correlate. So far, the concept of "G" survives because it actually does succeed in various tests of alternative metrics of cognitive ability - e.g. "emotional intelligence" metrics, biological metrics such as reaction speed, and various 'outcomes' e.g. job performance and future income controlled for socioeconomic background. In essence, the answer to "why positive correlation between any particular set of tests leads to the conclusion that this is truly a general cognitive ability" is that many respectable people have tried to find measures of aspects of cognitive ability that are separate and uncorrelated, however, as far as I know, all such attempts have failed so far and their experiments on alternative metrics did correlate with everything else and just became more data supporting the concept.

PicassoCTs 5y ago

New ideas - are created by recombination and filtering. Your subconscious generates new recombination, the wider the scope and stranger the combinations - the higher the chances of a miss, but also of discovering a "pass" to a new field. Now these re-combinations are filtered, again first subconsciously. If you murdered your childish, playful self in your late youth or give too much about societys evaluation of what society can not even evaluate your idea might never creep into your aware consciousness. Now for the ugly part. Some of us are, by curse or luck, predisposed to have a more flexible brain when it comes to recombinating ideas, persons, circumstances. My basic assumption always was, that it is a useful side-effect of watchfulness aka the guardian role aka looking for danger in noise. This of course can go horribly wrong. A creatives world is just one frail filter function working away from, writing game of thrones too living in game of thrones in your living room. I really would love to see the statistics here, to test this. Any center of creativity should be surrounded by camps of relatives were the filter functions went haywire. Now for the final touch. There is no recipe. No "cook" this algorithm, dance this dance through your brain and you will turn more creative. If asked for it- the brain will fantasize and invent those recipes. Which will be nice to read, but worthless when attempting to reproduce. The closest one would get is to reproduce the education that shaped shapeable brains into extraordinary creative people. And if all this works out, you are still just somebody with a (good) idea. Ideas are plenty in the sea and having good ideas does not equal the ability to execute on it. I would love to have a 9 meter arm made from boneless legs. Thanks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Robotic_Arm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Robotic_Arm

godot 5y ago

Hmm, it seems like the article has addressed most of your points directly. > It’s like pg believes there is some kind of generic smartness metric that characterizes people, and so you’re either smart, very smart or not smart at all. > But people can be smart at things and terrible at others. And it’s not that smart people are terrible at things because they aren’t curious about them, it’s just that some tasks require different mindsets. Like I feel generally fairly smart in engineering, but I just can’t seem to learn chess at all. He addressed this specific point in the "if intelligence/smartness is all that matters" scenario: "If intelligence is what matters, and also mostly inborn, the natural consequence is a sort of Brave New World fatalism. The best you can do is figure out what sort of work you have an "aptitude" for, so that whatever intelligence you were born with will at least be put to the best use, and then work as hard as you can at it." He is acknowledging that different people have good intelligence in different things (like engineering vs chess in your example). But he is saying this really shouldn't be the focus at all, because intelligence isn't truly what matters. > Generating new ideas is an entirely different skill. It is and he spent most of the article saying that skill can be cultivated (and isn't necessarily about intelligence). > You should try and have both, and no, one is not more important than the other. He also stated this as well at the introduction and this was pretty much the point of the essay. > I mean the whole article feels like the stupid questions we’d ask ourselves when we were kids: would you rather have a 9-meter arm, or a boneless leg? Not sure I get it or how the essay feels like that question. He isn't saying you can only have one (intelligence) or the other (skill to generate new ideas). He said it's ideal to have both.