Discussion

Comuniq

Havoc: Bit surprised that empathy makes no difference in this. People with high empathy tend to be good at reading others in general so would have thought that at least partially translates here

yetihehe: People with high empathy tend to feel other's feelings more (sometimes to their own detriment). Emotional intelligence helps with reading other people.

hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm: >Emotional intelligencePseudoscience.

david-gpu: I guess this supports a vague belief that I have held for decades: it is really difficult to rank the intelligence of people who are smarter than youThrough work I had the privilege of being around lots of people who were smarter than me, but if somebody asked me to rank them from "somewhat smarter" to "much smarter", I would have had a hard time.Just an anecdote! I don't have any hard evidence.I also wondered for many years why most of them didn't quit their jobs when on paper they would have been able to do so, but work is not a great place to ask those sorts of questions.

x3n0ph3n3: It's also difficult to write characters that are smarter than the writer. See how poorly TV and movie writers portray intelligent characters.

youoy: Finally a comment which is clearly 100% human

hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm: If you believe comprehending emotions belongs in its own category of intelligence, I have a bridge to sell you.

dtj1123: Having met many extremely intelligent people who struggle to understand the emotional state and responses of those around them, hell yeah I think it's a distinct category.

stephbook: I've got some personal litmus tests:1) Syntax/semantic split. Can the person accept that a function called "multiplyBy5(a,b) { return a+b }" doesn't actually multiply by five, but adds the numbers? 2) PR speak: Does the person recognize that public relation speak is usually intentionally misleading, as in "the Russian Ministry of Defense said that a fire [onboard the Moskva] had caused ammunition to explode" (obviously caused by an Ukrainian missile and not an accidental fire, even though that's what's implied.) [0] 3) They're, their, there: There easy to tell apart, since they're meaning is so different. /s 4) Viewpoints: Can this person understand and articulate viewpoints that they consider "wrong" or simply don't hold themselves? 5) (new) LLM introspection: Does the person understand that LLMs have no secret understanding of themselves? An LLM like "Grok" doesn't actually understand "Grok" better than Gemini understands "Grok" - apart from minor differences in model strength maybe.[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_the_Moskva

doxeddaily: Not bad litmus tests. And yes a lot of idiots seem to fail at steel manning. I mean if you can't steel man your opponent what are you even doing?

ZYZ64738: Studies with fewer than 1,000 samples are not very meaningful.

Maxatar: A sample size of 198 as per this study is more than sufficient to draw pretty strong conclusions.The issue is not the sample size, it's that studies like these almost always involve a very homogenous population of young college students.

JumpCrisscross: Think of it as social intelligence if the term “emotional” bothers you. Solitary intelligence, in the wild, is just a different beast from tracking the exponential complexity of a social system. Everything we’re seeing—in biology, psychology and in artificial intelligence—indicates that while these functions seem to share resources (you can’t have a lot of one with almost none of the other), they are distinct, with folks (and animals) possessing a lot of one and little of the other being observed, and their handicaps resulting from the lacking part being observeable, too,

fallingfrog: Well, I mean, tone deaf people cannot accurately judge musical talent.

hkpack: Why not? I know people who are very good at feeling other people’s emotions but very poor at analyzing them.In kids you can see it all the time - like a kid started crying because he sees others cry, but if you ask them why they cry - the explanation is always ridiculous.But even some adults are like that, interpreting your own or even others emotions is both a skill and a talent.

hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm: >In kids you can see it all the time - like a kid started crying because he sees others cry, but if you ask them why they cry - the explanation is always ridiculous.That's just called empathy.

im3w1l: Consider a computer with a cpu and gpu. The CPU is a general purpose computer. It can do literally anything. Including software rendering. But the GPU is purpose designed for graphics so it will be much more efficient at the job. These days the GPU is also a general purpose computer so it could in theory do anythign the CPU does too, but for many things again it will be less efficient.It's the same with emotional intelligence. The brain has dedicated circuitry for understanding other people. You can reason it through abstractly but it will be less efficient. You can also solve problems about natural science with the emotional reasoning part of the brain. Ever heard the expression "the atom wants a full shell of electrons"? That's empathy.

hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm: No, it is more like software. You either grow up around others, socialise and train your intuition or you don't. To believe there is special circuitry really goes deep into the pseudoscience territory.

lisdexan: Someone could be extremely proficient in disciplines that are associated with 'raw' intelligence, and yet utterly fail at theory of mind. Anyone that has been in a college campus probably has seen examples e.g, Classmate might click instantly with real analysis but will routinely perplexed about why their girlfriend is mad, or why they are seen as abrasive.To be clear, in my experience it wasn't even a case of being on the spectrum or other neurodivergence. They simply had a bad model of other people's thoughts and emotions. Of course this isn't DnD, I've met people a order of magnitude smarter than me in the usual academics and with a deeper understanding of people.You might not like the terminology, but it's a real thing and can be independent from what we usually call intelligence.

jaffee: And today in obvious headlines: "Game recognize game"

TheMagicHorsey: Reminds me of this game show episode. I was watching it with friends, and I'm not sure if we all picked out who the smartest person would be, but I do remember we definitely figured out who one of the lower-ranked people would be just based on her blathering (I won't give it away here since people may want to enjoy the episode themselves). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAlI0pbMQiM

srean: That was an interesting watch.There seems to be a consensus among the commenters on YouTube that aligns with yours. I was quite surprised to find that I did not, at all, find her arrogant. The majority of the commenters did. I am still finding it hard to believe.As far as IQ tests go, I know I will do poorly. I think way too slow. Which I am sure is part of what it is testing for.

everdrive: Something I have always appreciated. I'm much less anxious working with very intelligent people, even if their intelligence eclipses mine. They don't have unusual ideas about what I should or should not be able to grasp. They can recognize which of my ideas are intelligent and which of my ideas are half-baked.Working with unintelligent people, you need to spend more time building up a reputation. They cannot tell if you're intelligent based on what you say, or how you explain things -- only if you get results. This is nerve wracking for multiple reasons, but chiefly because intelligent people can be wrong, or unlucky, etc, and so only judging someone based on results is partially judge based on luck.

uxhacker: You mean WEIRD.(Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic)But why this matters is there a challenge judging intelligence cross cultures?

bena: The thing about IQ and EQ being on different ends of a spectrum is kind of wrong. Turns out, those people whose minds work more efficiently, do so across the board.In other words, smarter people are better able to gauge people's emotions as well.