[axxto]

How do you measure the capacity for improvisational comedy? How do you measure a talent for telling convincing lies? How do you measure someone's capacity for innovating in a narrative medium? How do you measure someone's ability for psychological insight and a theory of self? How do you measure someone's capacity for understanding irony or picking up subtle social cues? Or for formulating effective metaphors and analogies, or boiling down concepts eloquently? How about for mediating complex, multifaceted interpersonal conflicts effectively? How do you measure someone's capacity for empathy, which necessarily involves incredibly complex simulations and mental models of other people's minds?

Do you think excelling in any of these doesn't require intelligence? You sound like you consider yourself quite intelligent, so are you excellent at all of them? No? How come?

Can you tell me which part of an IQ test or your "rigorous, moslty equivalent definitions for intelligence" capture any of them?

  > I hate how stupid people propagate this lie that we don't know what intelligence is, just because they lack it. It's quite convenient, because how can they be shown to lack intelligence when the word isn't even defined!

How's this: "I hate how stupid people propagate this lie that we know what intelligence is, just because they do well within the narrow definition that they made up. It's quite convenient, because how can they be shown to lack intelligence when their definition of it fits their strengths and excludes their weaknesses!"

[programjames]

> How do you measure the capacity for improvisational comedy?

What makes something funny? Usually, it's by subverting someone's predictions. You have to be good at predicting other's predictions to do this well.

> How do you measure a talent for telling convincing lies?

You have to explain a phenomenon better than the truth to convince someone of your lie.

> How do you measure someone's capacity for innovating in a narrative medium?

As in, world-building? That is more of a memory problem than an intelligence problem, though you do need to be good at compressing the whole world into what is relevant to the story. People who are worse at that will have to take more notes and refer back to them more often.

> How do you measure someone's ability for psychological insight and a theory of self?

They are better at explaining a phenomenon (their self).

> How do you measure someone's capacity for understanding complex, multi-faceted irony or picking up subtle social cues?

Refer to the above. Also, using the adjectives 'complex, multi-faceted' is lazy here. Be more introspective and write what you really want to say.

> Or for formulating effective metaphors and analogies, or boiling down concepts eloquently?

Compression = finding short programs that recover the data.

> How about for mediating complex, multifaceted interpersonal conflicts effectively?

Quite often not an intelligence problem.

> How do you measure someone's capacity for empathy, which necessarily involves incredibly complex simulations and mental models of other people's minds?

"incredibly complex simulations and mental models of other people's minds," however will you do this? Oh, I know! Your brain will have to come up with a small circuit that compresses other people's brain pretty well, as it doesn't have enough capacity to just run the other brain.

> Do you think excelling in any of these doesn't require intelligence? You sound like you consider yourself quite intelligent, so are you excellent at all of them? No? How come?

I am actually pretty good at pretty much all of these compared to the average person.

[soiltype]

> What makes something funny? Usually, it's by subverting someone's predictions.

And in those other cases? You have a rigorous definition of comedy?

> You have to explain a phenomenon better than the truth to convince someone of your lie.

This is so often not true I would argue it's generally false. A story is believed because a listener "wants" to believe it. Some listeners have more or less complex criteria for acceptance.

> As in, world-building? That is more of a memory problem than an intelligence problem, though you do need to be good at compressing the whole world into what is relevant to the story. People who are worse at that will have to take more notes and refer back to them more often.

People like Tolkien and Martin? Note taking as a sign of poor skill/intelligence is a wildly novel take from my point of view.

> Also, using the adjectives 'complex, multi-faceted' is lazy here. Be more introspective and write what you really want to say.

Couldn't I say the same about your use of Introspective? Surely a more detailed phrase exists to describe what you mean.

> interpersonal conflicts... Quite often not an intelligence problem.

Oh, I think this will get at the root of our misunderstandings. I believe I've seen this attitude before. Before I jump to conclusions: Why exactly do you say this skill is not intelligence-based?

[programjames]

> And in those other cases? You have a rigorous definition of comedy?

There's surely more to comedy than subverting expectations. Someone else who cares more about comedy in particular can figure that out for themself, but surely I gave enough of the general idea to make it clear how you could go about measuring the intelligence necessary for comedy.

> A story is believed because a listener "wants" to believe it. Some listeners have more or less complex criteria for acceptance.

Yeah, that's the sense of "better" I was going for. I could have been more clear here, so I'm glad you figured out what I meant.

> Couldn't I say the same about your use of Introspective? Surely a more detailed phrase exists to describe what you mean.

It was a not-so-kind way of saying, "don't point at vague ideas to obscure what you really mean and make it difficult for others to understand what you mean to keep your opinion unassailable."

> Why exactly do you say this skill [resolving conflicts] is not intelligence-based?

Most people have more time to think than they actually use during conflicts, so I expect most of the time conflicts come from people preferring to not think than because they lack the ability. That or a fundamental value difference (you want my food, I want my food).

[soiltype]

> Most people have more time to think than they actually use during conflicts, so I expect most of the time conflicts come from people preferring to not think than because they lack the ability.

This seems to imply that intelligence only exists in deliberate, conscious thought. Do you think that's true?

Second, revolving conflicts is not the same thing as getting into them, so it's unclear why bring that up at all.

[programjames]

True. I expect most conflicts come from people preferring not to think, and I also expect most conflicts escalate from people preferring not to think. Those are separate statements, and I only said the former.

> This seems to imply that intelligence only exists in deliberate, conscious thought. Do you think that's true?

Eh, I don't think it implies that, and I also don't think that is true.

[soiltype]

Ok, but then... what does any of that have to do with "conflict resolution is not usually a function of intelligence"?

[axxto]

Reducing comedy to 'subverting predictions' and empathy to 'compression algorithms' is like explaining music as 'organized sound waves', technically defensible yet completely missing the point. Missing the forest for the trees is an objective sign of limited metacognition, by the way.

The fact that you claim to be 'above average' at empathy and social cues while writing this robotic dismissal that completely misses the point (I asked for measurement methods, you provided questionable definitions) is the ultimate proof of my argument. You haven't defined intelligence, you've just compressed the meaning of it until it's small enough to fit inside your ego.

[programjames]

I purposefully do not give out methods to measure intelligence, because people can train on them. I knew you wanted that, but that does not mean you get what you want. I also find it strange how you expect me to be empathetic in a way that makes you feel good about yourself, when you deserve no such compassion after pulling the dark arts on me.

[axxto]

That's ok, me and my "dark arts" will have to make do without your "compassion", somehow. And the world will have to make do without "training" on your secret "methods to measure intelligence", somehow.

I don't appreciate your expletives in your original unedited post, by the way, but the fact that you lost your temper is once again proof of something. You sound young, so I hope one day you "find a short program" to recover that data.

That last part was not sarcasm, in case you have any trouble picking it up.

[programjames]

> I don't appreciate your expletives in your original unedited post, by the way, but the fact that you lost your temper is once again proof of something.

It was the first edit where I added them, since I could not reply to your post, and I removed them once I could reply. Yes, I lost my temper. You did too (and first)... you're just less honest and put up a facade of politeness.

> And the world will have to make do without "training" on your secret "methods to measure intelligence", somehow.

Is the goal here to provoke me enough to get what you want? lol. Maximally adversarial.