Comments on: Talents Part 2: Attitude vs. Altitude

By: Evan Gaensbauer

Evan Gaensbauer — Thu, 19 Feb 2015 05:27:37 +0000

I know on the first part on this topic I wrote how I didn’t read it because of the trigger warning, because I have high scrupulosity, and low self-esteem. However, I arrived at it tangentially again while reading Jonah Sinick’s sequence on LessWrong about mathematical ability. In particular, my (relative) lack of mathematical ability is exactly the intellectual domain which used to make me feel horrible, and is the one which has (for a time) driven me out of post-secondary education. When reading Sinick’s most recent post, on innate mathematical ability, I realized it was exactly the sort of essay for which I specifically would want the trigger warning Scott applied to his “Parable of Talents” essay. However, I realized if I wasn’t triggered by Sinick’s essay, it was unlikely I’d be triggered by Scott’s. So, I’ve read both this first one, and this one.

They’ve helped me. First of all, I wasn’t triggered. That surprises me to the point I don’t believe my scrupulosity is as high as it once was. My self-esteem isn’t very high, but I think now it’s less sensitive. Like, a few years ago, I wouldn’t be surprised if exposure to this rhetoric sent me spiraling into negative emotions. However, the idea of ‘self-esteem’ makes sense to me know. Ideas from Feeling Good by Dr. Burns seem intuitive now. I get how and why I can and should have ‘self-esteem’ (for my own mental health), and I don’t have to earn my own ‘self-esteem’.

If, to others reading this, the idea of ‘self-esteem’ needing to be earned only through the completion of, like, seemingly Herculean tasks seems ludicrous, know my thinking at such time was backwards. Anyway, Scott, thanks a lot for writing about this! You’re great not because of your innate writing skills, but your willingness to apply those skills to getting ideas like this one across.

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By: Aegeus

Aegeus — Thu, 12 Feb 2015 07:36:15 +0000

Eh, you know what you’re getting into when you build a character like that. If I build a character with 8 Str, I know he’s not going to be good at swinging a giant battleaxe, so I won’t equip one. So my concept of the character won’t be the hulking barbarian stereotype with an axe. Maybe I’ll use Dex instead of Str, so he’s an incredibly tough but agile character – a martial artist’s build, perhaps. Maybe I’ll make him a defensive build with a big shield, who just grits his teeth and takes hits on the chin.

Point is, mechanics and fluff go hand in hand. I’ve never seen someone say “I want to build a big hulking barbarian, but I also want to use this set of stats that doesn’t allow me to swing a mighty battleaxe.”

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By: James James

James James — Mon, 09 Feb 2015 09:30:07 +0000

“Basketball… isn’t tied up with our notions of self-worth.”

Why is intelligence tied up with our notions of self-worth, but basketball isn’t? Perhaps its because intelligence can make you have a better quality of life?

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By: Emile

Emile — Mon, 09 Feb 2015 08:52:04 +0000

The problem with it is that I honestly don’t think the school breakfast/lunch programs are big considerations when people are deciding whether or not to have children.

Maybe not, they may look at other people they know who have kids and see how much they struggle financially, etc. Or if they already have kids, they can have an idea of how much effort and money it would take with one more.

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By: Corporate Lawyer

Corporate Lawyer — Sun, 08 Feb 2015 19:00:40 +0000

Scott is doing his whole uber-rationalist shtick on IQ. He’s talking about IQ like we would talk about it in a perfect world, all the while missing the single biggest reason why public discussion of IQ is stopped dead in its tracks. He wants to avoid it because its uncomfortable, and this is his blog so he can do whatever he wants. But it’s really really hard to keep a straight face discussing IQ when it turns out that the people who have lower or higher IQs tend to be disproportionally a certain kind of skin color, and especially when those ratios get more extreme the higher/lower you go. And then just dismissing that little phenomenon as not relevant at all.

But I guess the most important thing here for Scott is that he feel superior to both the people who deny IQ exists and the people who talk about IQ as it relates to race. That’ll keep him for feel icky and having the “wrong kind of people” pop up in discussion threads. And I guess that’s the whole point of a intellectual blog, to make your self feel good.

So, his response was disappointing, but what are you going to do. This is how this topic goes.

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By: 27chaos

27chaos — Sat, 07 Feb 2015 04:48:28 +0000

I also have noticed that it’s easier to write online comments or informal comments than to write more formal essays.

When I write formal essays, I use a strategy that’s a mix of the two you describe. I write a bullet point list of ideas that are both general and specific, but don’t really use any organized method or outline. Many of the ideas are bad ones, but the point is to get them all down on paper. After I have a lot of ideas written, I sort them to put like ideas with like. Then I choose which order I want to make my points in. Then I start writing actual sentences.

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By: 27chaos

27chaos — Sat, 07 Feb 2015 04:44:25 +0000

I don’t think it’s possible to be high IQ but also lazy about intellectual things in the same way it’s possible to be tall but not athletic. My perception is that if you have a high IQ then higher caliber thoughts will come into your head automatically. Even if you do nothing all day but play videogames, the way you’ll go about playing videogames will be influenced by your IQ. Intelligence is a general problem solving capability. Consequently, it’s impossible to avoid using it.

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By: 27chaos

27chaos — Sat, 07 Feb 2015 04:37:10 +0000

Agree a lot with this. My comment elsewhere ITT has some similar ideas, but you’ve given me a couple new ways to think about this.

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By: FacelessCraven

FacelessCraven — Sat, 07 Feb 2015 04:08:50 +0000

@Liz – “Well yeah, because after the first several dozen awful pictures they probably decided it was worthless and a waste of time like I did.”

And this is the core of my point. “Hard Work” means pushing through that feeling and drawing anyway, day after day, for years. There is an innate instinct to avoid situations that hurt one’s self-esteem, and this instinct is toxic to efforts at self-improvement. Add in the belief that “talent” is unteachable, and you have a self-perpetuating pattern.

One response to the pattern is to simply give up, stop drawing entirely.

Another response is to keep drawing, but only draw things you already got good at before the pattern set in. This is what you see on DeviantArt, and frequently in the web-comics community as well. The not-entirely-helpful harsh critique of the ConceptArt.org community developed as a direct response to this approach.

The third response is to embrace the suck, admit to yourself that you’re awful, and give yourself permission to keep being awful as long as you’re learning. This is the heart of what it means to be an artist.

“How am I supposed to know whether I’ll someday finally magically get better out of the blue like you did or if I’ll just keep torturing myself for no reason when I could have spent my time more fruitfully?”

I have no idea if learning to draw is a fruitful use of time for any particular person. That’s an entirely subjective decision. All I’m saying is that natural talent is not the deciding factor, and that the path from zero skill to marketable skill is a fairly well-mapped one.

A simple demonstration doable in a couple hours: http://imgur.com/viJqCKa

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By: Agronomous

Agronomous — Sat, 07 Feb 2015 01:36:32 +0000

Since there is no “Academie l’Anglaise” descriptivism is the correct epistemological stance regarding the correctness of any particular usage of the English language.

Yeah, but I Googled it and that’s not what most English-speakers mean by “correct”. Descriptively, they use “correct” in the prescriptive sense.

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