5 ms·

> Hehe I don’t need to argue every wrong thing you say No you don't. But if it's a central point of my argument, and ESPECIALLY when you throw it in my face la

by Xirdus 2mo ago

> Hehe I don’t need to argue every wrong thing you say No you don't. But if it's a central point of my argument, and ESPECIALLY when you throw it in my face later on that I based my argument around it - it feels like I wasted a lot of time and effort for nothing, and makes me wonder how much else of what I'm saying is a similar waste of time because you refrained from telling me I'm wrong about something else similarly important. Makes me hesitant to put too much effort into this conversation. > I meant that from the start, assuming the factor is 1.8 is a very bad assumption. I agree with the literal words - exactly 1.8 is almost certainly the wrong answer. But where we differ is that you believe it's less than 1.8, and I believe it's more than 100. A person with IQ 180 is likely two orders of magnitude more intelligent in absolute terms than someone with IQ 100. On the other hand, someone with IQ 60 is only marginally less intelligent than someone with IQ 100. It's because intelligence is not a physical attribute, but closer to a skill. Usain Bolt is only a little faster than a typical adult because speed is capped by the physical limits of the human body. Intelligence is not, because it's not a physical attribute. And if you want to continue insisting it is a physical attribute, I'd like to ask you for some evidence that it's actually the case, rather than assuming it a priori. As far as I know, neither brain size nor the number of neurons nor synapses is correlated with IQ.

dahart 2mo ago
> it feels like I wasted a lot of time […] Makes me hesitant to put too much effort into this conversation Hahaha, buddy, this is very funny. Lack of effort is what caused your problem in the first place. I’m super surprised you’re digging in your heels on this. If it was me, I’d drop it, since it’s not a good look, but suit yourself. You got something wrong. So what? Own it. Fix it. It isn’t my responsibility to correct you, it’s yours. You did indeed waste a tiny little bit of time by arguing and jumping to conclusions before reading carefully. ;) And that’s okay, which is why I ignored it. I’ve wasted time making mistakes too. There’s nothing wrong with making mistakes. How you deal with mistakes is revealing though, and blaming others for your mistakes isn’t typically very productive here, even if some politicians seem to get away with it. :P I do honestly appreciate that your previous comment tried to de-escalate a bit. Asking what I meant was a positive step, and asking that earlier would have saved you some time. Always assuming good faith and making sure you read carefully and understood everything is a good thing to learn to do on HN, that’s what the guidelines are trying to hint at. I have learned this lesson myself the hard way, multiple times, FWIW. > Intelligence is not, because it’s not a physical attribute Well okay this is our core problem. We have been talking about different things. And, I need to concede on this point that you are right. If I google “is intelligence a physical trait” the results I get say: no. In my defense, I thought I was careful to qualify that what I was talking about earlier as the biological component of intelligence, but I’m okay admitting I’ve made some mistakes here. It is worth noting that “Intelligence is one of the most heritable behavioural traits” and that “studies have consistently shown that genetic influence on individual differences in intelligence is substantial”. https://www.nature.com/articles/mp2014105 https://www.nature.com/articles/mp2014105 > A person with IQ 180 is likely two orders of magnitude more intelligent in absolute terms than someone with IQ 100. There is zero scientific basis for that claim. This is exactly what I was talking about from the top. This popular interpretation of extremely high IQ scores substantially overstates what can legitimately be inferred from the numerical scores. That’s why I call it a misconception. IQ only directly measures how unusual someone’s intelligence is, not how good it is. IQ is at best only moderately good at predicting cognitive performance on some tasks, and whether it predicts anything is highly dependent on the type of task. And after reading about it more, I’m going to correct myself and agree that IQ does not predict cognitive brain capacity, and we don’t yet have anything that does. But scientists are looking for that. Anyway, this belief you have that 180 IQ vs 100 IQ is 100x more intelligent - whatever more intelligent actually means - is extremely extreme!! Why do you believe this, and what evidence is there of your claim? You’re absolutely right that I disagree with you there. But I will read and consider any supporting links or data you can provide, and I am open to changing my mind if the data is compelling. There’s a reason that IQ is considered outdated now, that scientists do not accept that intelligence is 1-dimensional, and that cognitive scientists now talk about multiple intelligences, and use g instead. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_factor_(psychometrics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_factor_(psychometrics) > As far as I know, neither brain size nor the number of neurons nor synapses is correlated with IQ. Human brain size does correlate with IQ somewhat. Now you know. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_size#Intelligence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_size#Intelligence https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7440690/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7440690/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/does-brain-size-matter1/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/does-brain-size-m...
- Xirdus 2mo ago
  Admittedly I skimmed most of your comment. I'm not masochistic enough to enjoy reading what an idiot I am or whatever else you wrote there, and I come to this site for enjoyment. Let me know if I missed something important, like not understanding what you're saying at all yet again. I agree that intelligence is highly genetic. So is schizophrenia, though, and I don't think anyone would describe schizophrenia as a physical trait. So merely being genetic is not a proof of being a physical attribute. Just like intelligence and IQ are two separate things, so is intelligence and the underlying biological structures enabling intelligence. Saying the former when you mean the latter is not just unclear, it's flat out incorrect. There is as much proof of the 100 times intelligence gap as there's for any other number. Which, yes, is zero. Nobody has come up yet with any method to quantify intelligence directly, and until that happens, it'll be impossible to make any objective statement about raw amount of anybody's intelligence. I was just saying what I personally believe to be most likely. I was wrong about lack of correlation. Thank you for the links. That said, I did dig further, and from what I gathered, brain size differences account for at most 25% of variation in IQ. The other 75% must be either non-physical differences, or physical differences that don't affect brain size. My bet is on the former, because there's neither any evidence nor a theoreticsl model for the latter. Granted, I haven't looked for a theoretical model too deeply; you're more than welcome to prove me wrong yet again. The biggest obstacle for the ... whatever the thing you're saying is called, I'm 100% sure I'd get it wrong if I tried to name it, so I won't... are child geniuses. Children have smaller bodies, shorter legs, and less muscle mass than adults. There are extremely few 7 year old boys who are taller, faster or stronger than a median 25 year old man - around one in a billion for height, probably zero for the other two. Similar story with head circumference, though to a lesser degree. The 95% range for 7 year olds barely overlaps with the range for adults. Every single case I could find of a child that young reaching the mean HC of an adult man (57cm) was a sad story of a rare medical condition that definitely didn't make them smarter. I use it to conclude it's extremely rare for child heads - and by proxy, child brains - to reach the size of adults. If intelligence was physical, that should also prevent virtually all children from being more intelligence than a median adult. And yet, there's plenty of children whose intelligence surpasses most adults. It's almost commonplace. How do you reconcile that with your argument?

by Xirdus 2mo ago

dahart 2mo ago

> it feels like I wasted a lot of time […] Makes me hesitant to put too much effort into this conversation Hahaha, buddy, this is very funny. Lack of effort is what caused your problem in the first place. I’m super surprised you’re digging in your heels on this. If it was me, I’d drop it, since it’s not a good look, but suit yourself. You got something wrong. So what? Own it. Fix it. It isn’t my responsibility to correct you, it’s yours. You did indeed waste a tiny little bit of time by arguing and jumping to conclusions before reading carefully. ;) And that’s okay, which is why I ignored it. I’ve wasted time making mistakes too. There’s nothing wrong with making mistakes. How you deal with mistakes is revealing though, and blaming others for your mistakes isn’t typically very productive here, even if some politicians seem to get away with it. :P I do honestly appreciate that your previous comment tried to de-escalate a bit. Asking what I meant was a positive step, and asking that earlier would have saved you some time. Always assuming good faith and making sure you read carefully and understood everything is a good thing to learn to do on HN, that’s what the guidelines are trying to hint at. I have learned this lesson myself the hard way, multiple times, FWIW. > Intelligence is not, because it’s not a physical attribute Well okay this is our core problem. We have been talking about different things. And, I need to concede on this point that you are right. If I google “is intelligence a physical trait” the results I get say: no. In my defense, I thought I was careful to qualify that what I was talking about earlier as the biological component of intelligence, but I’m okay admitting I’ve made some mistakes here. It is worth noting that “Intelligence is one of the most heritable behavioural traits” and that “studies have consistently shown that genetic influence on individual differences in intelligence is substantial”. https://www.nature.com/articles/mp2014105 https://www.nature.com/articles/mp2014105 > A person with IQ 180 is likely two orders of magnitude more intelligent in absolute terms than someone with IQ 100. There is zero scientific basis for that claim. This is exactly what I was talking about from the top. This popular interpretation of extremely high IQ scores substantially overstates what can legitimately be inferred from the numerical scores. That’s why I call it a misconception. IQ only directly measures how unusual someone’s intelligence is, not how good it is. IQ is at best only moderately good at predicting cognitive performance on some tasks, and whether it predicts anything is highly dependent on the type of task. And after reading about it more, I’m going to correct myself and agree that IQ does not predict cognitive brain capacity, and we don’t yet have anything that does. But scientists are looking for that. Anyway, this belief you have that 180 IQ vs 100 IQ is 100x more intelligent - whatever more intelligent actually means - is extremely extreme!! Why do you believe this, and what evidence is there of your claim? You’re absolutely right that I disagree with you there. But I will read and consider any supporting links or data you can provide, and I am open to changing my mind if the data is compelling. There’s a reason that IQ is considered outdated now, that scientists do not accept that intelligence is 1-dimensional, and that cognitive scientists now talk about multiple intelligences, and use g instead. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_factor_(psychometrics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_factor_(psychometrics) > As far as I know, neither brain size nor the number of neurons nor synapses is correlated with IQ. Human brain size does correlate with IQ somewhat. Now you know. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_size#Intelligence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_size#Intelligence https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7440690/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7440690/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/does-brain-size-matter1/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/does-brain-size-m...

Xirdus 2mo ago
Admittedly I skimmed most of your comment. I'm not masochistic enough to enjoy reading what an idiot I am or whatever else you wrote there, and I come to this site for enjoyment. Let me know if I missed something important, like not understanding what you're saying at all yet again. I agree that intelligence is highly genetic. So is schizophrenia, though, and I don't think anyone would describe schizophrenia as a physical trait. So merely being genetic is not a proof of being a physical attribute. Just like intelligence and IQ are two separate things, so is intelligence and the underlying biological structures enabling intelligence. Saying the former when you mean the latter is not just unclear, it's flat out incorrect. There is as much proof of the 100 times intelligence gap as there's for any other number. Which, yes, is zero. Nobody has come up yet with any method to quantify intelligence directly, and until that happens, it'll be impossible to make any objective statement about raw amount of anybody's intelligence. I was just saying what I personally believe to be most likely. I was wrong about lack of correlation. Thank you for the links. That said, I did dig further, and from what I gathered, brain size differences account for at most 25% of variation in IQ. The other 75% must be either non-physical differences, or physical differences that don't affect brain size. My bet is on the former, because there's neither any evidence nor a theoreticsl model for the latter. Granted, I haven't looked for a theoretical model too deeply; you're more than welcome to prove me wrong yet again. The biggest obstacle for the ... whatever the thing you're saying is called, I'm 100% sure I'd get it wrong if I tried to name it, so I won't... are child geniuses. Children have smaller bodies, shorter legs, and less muscle mass than adults. There are extremely few 7 year old boys who are taller, faster or stronger than a median 25 year old man - around one in a billion for height, probably zero for the other two. Similar story with head circumference, though to a lesser degree. The 95% range for 7 year olds barely overlaps with the range for adults. Every single case I could find of a child that young reaching the mean HC of an adult man (57cm) was a sad story of a rare medical condition that definitely didn't make them smarter. I use it to conclude it's extremely rare for child heads - and by proxy, child brains - to reach the size of adults. If intelligence was physical, that should also prevent virtually all children from being more intelligence than a median adult. And yet, there's plenty of children whose intelligence surpasses most adults. It's almost commonplace. How do you reconcile that with your argument?