From: Eliezer Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Wed Jan 22 1997 - 18:58:46 MST
[Saith Lee Daniel Crocker:]
> If you get to pick the sample universe like that, the argument
> becomes a tautology, doesn't it? Pick a sample set ("scientists")
> that you associate with "genius", and in which there are more
> men, and therefore higher populations at the tails of the curve,
> and QED, more male geniuses. In other words, there are more men
> who are good at the kind of thing men are good at, which I will
> call "genius".
*This* counterargument is too much even for me. SAT scores are one
thing, but it seems to me that the pool of scientists is a reasonable
place to look for genius. If there's a gender bias in the number of
scientists, it may reflect encouragement or harassment or desire to
become a scientist - rather than intelligence - but even so, until
otherwise demonstrated, I think that associating the sample set of
"scientists" with "genius" is a perfectly valid leap.
But then, we all know my love of overarching generalizations.
--
sentience@pobox.com Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
http://tezcat.com/~eliezer/singularity.html
http://tezcat.com/~eliezer/algernon.html
Disclaimer: Unless otherwise specified, I'm not telling you
everything I think I know.
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