tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6786809981065530267.post7094524820520425415..comments2024-03-14T09:05:08.053-07:00Comments on Special Ed Philosopher: How Can Smart People Do Dumb Things? (Dysrationalia?)Kevin Currie-Knighthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17401531417243089948noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6786809981065530267.post-41543718351537315572009-03-20T21:25:00.000-07:002009-03-20T21:25:00.000-07:00Yeah, I'm not sure how well I communicated this, b...Yeah, I'm not sure how well I communicated this, but I wasn't raising any question of how "real" the RQ idea is. I was agreeing how valuable a good test is in general, and how much more difficult it is to deduce your way to any kind of certainty in the absence of a test procedure.<BR/><BR/>I mentioned Myers-Briggs because I think it's a good example of the "just try it and see" approach bearing fruit (not because it has anything to do with intelligence). I think they did a good job of not overthinking it when they created the personality dimensions. They just suggested something, we tried it, and it's worked out well so far. We'll probably scrap it before long for something better, and we'll probably find that "something better" the same way.piahwefhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14301480369336177718noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6786809981065530267.post-27747341861745762872009-03-19T03:38:00.000-07:002009-03-19T03:38:00.000-07:00Myers Briggs is good. For IQ, the WISC is a standa...Myers Briggs is good. For IQ, the WISC is a standard test, and the way they know that this IQ thing is "real" is that the parts of IQ very stronly correlate to eachother, and often (not always) correlate strongly with other factors, like educational abililty. <BR/><BR/>Rationality would be a very intersting thing to test for, and I do believe the author's claim that it is a key and missed component to what we think of as "broad intelligence." <BR/><BR/>But whether it is real or not doesn't matter if we find no good reliable way to test it.Kevin Currie-Knighthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17401531417243089948noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6786809981065530267.post-21284794689737734552009-03-18T20:08:00.000-07:002009-03-18T20:08:00.000-07:00What's nice about being able to test for an effect...What's nice about being able to test for an effect is that you don't have to guess about whether it's real or not anymore, you just have to refine and improve your tests. In any complex system, a good approach to measuring any effects is to think of anything that could possibly be a measurable effect, do the math, and see if it cancels out to a zero. If you find a test that gives consistent results, then you've discovered something useful even if it wasn't what you set out to validate.<BR/><BR/>The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator seems like a good example of this kind of approach working well. I don't get the impression that it was created out of any strong predictive model, it was just a rough guess at a good way of psychologically classifying people, and it seems to have a lot of value, so we keep using it. In my extremely limited experience with it, most people fall pretty neatly into one category, and their category makes pretty good predictions about the things it's intended to predict (even though some people stretch it too far).piahwefhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14301480369336177718noreply@blogger.com