[FRIAM] Murdoch and Trump

[Pieter Steenekamp]

The distribution of a small number of big ones and very large number small
ones (like in a scale free network with a power law distribution) is an
emerging property of a complex system where agents interact with each
other. I don’t think human intellect distribution falls in this category.
My guess is that human intelligence approximately follows a normal
distribution? I think there are many average intelligent people on earth,
few morons and geniuses?

On Wed, 22 Jan 2020 at 14:44, uǝlƃ ☣ <gepropella at gmail.com> wrote:

> The problem with Marcus' question is its 2 types of closure. 1)
> communication, reason, and action are separable. But the question convolves
> them. And 2) any instance of communication, reason, or action won't be
> complete. (I'm reminded of Wolpert's paper:
> https://arxiv.org/abs/0708.1362)
>
> And this (also) hearkens back to the scientific use of incomprehensible
> models. The sentiment from Siegenfeld that the objects/mechanisms in a
> model can be obtuse without preventing us from learning about their
> behavior, combined with Pieter's mention of Deutsch, got me thinking again
> about these preemptive closures. Someone like Deutsch, whose cognitive
> abilities seem to be more expansive than most, will tend to over-estimate
> the cognitive abilities of others (cf Dunning-Kruger), lending to a
> tendency to be delusionally optimistic about human progress ... or at least
> a tendency in hindsight to believe we've done all this intentionally ...
> instead of stumbling like idiots into a lucky sweet spot.
>
> The work on "zero-intelligence agents" can be used to make the argument
> that these brainy people, with 6σ expansive intellects, actually *hinder*
> our progress. The progress we've made consists largely of us morons taking
> stunted action, with stunted communication, and stunted reason. I've made
> this argument before when criticizing "Effective Altruism" and some other
> trends in the "rationalist" community.
>
> Seen another way, a better example of an obtuse model than Deutsch is
> Feynman, because he was such a great teacher. I think it's fair to say that
> *we* don't understand the internal mechanisms that composed the animal we
> call "Richard Feynman". Yet, he helped us make scientific progress. I
> expect some might claim that Feynman wasn't a *model* of, say, quantum
> structures. But that claim forgets what computer programmers know in a deep
> sense, that has-a relations and is-a relations can produce the same result.
> Whether Feynman has-a model of the quantum or is-a model of the quantum is
> irrelevant to the large-scale, collective wave of progress.
>
> And so, in addition to my 2 ways of making scientific progress with obtuse
> models (parallax and expressibility), we have this 3rd way implied by
> Marcus and bolstered by Pieter. It would be interesting if there were a
> scale-free distribution of intellect expansiveness (with a small number of
> big ones like Deutsch down to lots of morons like ants or worker bees). My
> guess is the complexity fanbois should be arguing that it's that network
> *structure* that leads to the progress, rather than focusing on any 1 scale.
>
> On 1/21/20 3:05 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> > How about one step back:  Are we involved in a collective process where
> communication, reason, and action are possible?
> --
> ☣ uǝlƃ
>
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