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[Awaclus]

Some people say that ambiguity is a feature; I think this is mostly BS. It's not actually difficult to write ambigious lyrics

The point of lyrics is not to show off that you can write difficult stuff, but to resonate in the listener. Ambiguity is a feature not because it's difficult to write, but because it's easy to relate to.

[silverspawn]

I feel like I'm basically past the point of caring about relating to music, but yeah that's probably not very typical.

[silverspawn]

In fact I think I'm more looking for the opposite: finding unfamiliar things

Or maybe I just say that because art that I can genuinely relate to anymore doesn't really exist )))

[silverspawn]

So realistically, this entire convince-rationalists-that-human-brains-don't-work-like-digital-computers-project will probably end up taking 2.5-3 years of my life. I've already been working on it for ~1.5 years and I'm not particularly close to finishing (it feels like it's more than 50%, but planning fallacy). Pretty decent chance it'll be the most important thing I'll ever do. Better don't screw it up!

[silverspawn]

It's also the hardest thing I've ever attempted, both in terms of the difficulty of pulling it off successfully and in terms of the actual work involved.

[silverspawn]

My profile picture is about that, kinda.

[silverspawn]

I took this cool intelligence(?) test by Spencer Greenberg!

Apparently I'm actually good at reading facial expressions, better than 99.5% of people at understanding concepts in academic fields, but only average in "processing speed". That meant looking at a bunch of shapes and figuring out e.g. whether there is a duplicate.

[Awaclus]

I took this cool intelligence(?) test by Spencer Greenberg!

Apparently I'm actually good at reading facial expressions, better than 99.5% of people at understanding concepts in academic fields, but only average in "processing speed". That meant looking at a bunch of shapes and figuring out e.g. whether there is a duplicate.

I took the test and I have no idea what you're talking about wrt facial expressions, academic fields or "processing speed". I am however better than 99.27% of people at digit-symbol matching, better than 97.95% of people at fault diagnoses, and better than 95.36% of people at abstract reasoning. I guess the contents of the test are different for different people.

[Awaclus]

It's actually super bizarre to me how low the average is for fault diagnoses. I guess the instructions for the task were mildly complicated, but actually figuring the answers out once you've understood the rules was not and you're given infinite time. But if I'm reading the bar chart correctly, it seems like I got all of the answers right and the average respondent got less than half which is like way worse than you would expect even if you take misclicks etc into account.

[Awaclus]

I also feel like I could improve my digit-symbol matching performance by a lot if I got to practice it. At least doubling my speed should be easily doable, I think. I felt like a n00b sucking at it the entire time I was doing it.

[silverspawn]

I took this cool intelligence(?) test by Spencer Greenberg!

Apparently I'm actually good at reading facial expressions, better than 99.5% of people at understanding concepts in academic fields, but only average in "processing speed". That meant looking at a bunch of shapes and figuring out e.g. whether there is a duplicate.

I took the test and I have no idea what you're talking about wrt facial expressions, academic fields or "processing speed". I am however better than 99.27% of people at digit-symbol matching, better than 97.95% of people at fault diagnoses, and better than 95.36% of people at abstract reasoning. I guess the contents of the test are different for different people.

Yeah, there's no overlap. How interesting.

Also, yours look way more like classical IQ questions than mine did. None of the ones I had felt like measuring IQ. ((I do think intelligence is multi-dimensional and recognizing facial expressions is plausibly part of it, but it's not what IQ tests measure.)) That was kind of why I found the test interesting.

[silverspawn]

Also, impressive results!

[silverspawn]

https://www.guidedtrack.com/programs/gxylxfn/run?ctTestsTaken=20,55,29,39&ctTestsScores=0.64,0.8,0.67,0.91

[silverspawn]

in actual IQ tests, I always did best at the abstract symbol questions, so "find the connection between these abstract symbols" is clearly a very different skill from "answer this trivial question as quickly as possible".

[silverspawn]

Another very neat illusion (triangle):

[silverspawn]

Another interesting one:



The triangle in the Kaniza illusion appears whiter than the background. Therefore, if it's actually darker by that amount, it should appear as equally bright. This is my attempt to make that happen (color inside is (249, 249, 249), a very bright gray).

[Awaclus]

Another interesting one:



The triangle in the Kaniza illusion appears whiter than the background. Therefore, if it's actually darker by that amount, it should appear as equally bright. This is my attempt to make that happen (color inside is (249, 249, 249), a very bright gray).

The problem with something like this is that it can look very different on different screens.

[Awaclus]

in actual IQ tests, I always did best at the abstract symbol questions, so "find the connection between these abstract symbols" is clearly a very different skill from "answer this trivial question as quickly as possible".

The abstract symbol part has always been the most difficult for me. Towards the end, including in this one, I tend to see valid mutually exclusive reasonings for multiple options and can't see a reason to prefer one over another. I did once get the correct reasoning explained for something I was having trouble with by someone who got it though and it was using features of the image that I hadn't even paid any attention to and in that light it was obviously the correct choice, so I bet that is what's actually happening there in my case, but it does raise the question of how reliable the test is if people legitimately find patterns that are there by accident that the designer didn't see.

[silverspawn]

Ok I think Spencer Greenberg just said they have 61 tasks. I'll just take the test again!

[silverspawn]

There was a probability quiz this time and I blazed through it, probably with 0 mistakes, until there was one about the expected value of the geometric function, and I took like 15 minutes deriving it on paper. Probably more than the rest combined. Curious what result that will be.

I hope I have the correct result at least. (looks up). Ah I do thank god. This calculation is so easy to make mistakes with.

[silverspawn]

I would be quite disappointed if I didn't get a good result on that quiz.

[silverspawn]

Okay, pretty good!

I do wonder what result I'd gotten had I remembered that the expected value is 1/p though.

[silverspawn]

You actually did marginally better than me at abstract reasoning. And I did well at rotating cubes

[silverspawn]

This is a surprisingly fun past time

[Awaclus]

You actually did marginally better than me at abstract reasoning. And I did well at rotating cubes

Didn't we get literally the exact same result?