Dwarkesh Patel: uncertainty

Transcript context

…So, I don't want to evade the question. The answer is yes. But the way you put it begs the question. It's not the only language like this. It's all knowledge. So, if someone doesn't speak English, quantum computing is a field in which English is the standard language. That used to be German. Now, it's English. Someone who doesn't know English is disadvantaged in learning about quantum computers. But, not only because of the deficiency in language. Suppose they come from a culture in which the culture of physics, mathematics, and logic are equivalent, and only the language is different. If they learn the language, they will find it as easy as anyone else. But suppose a person doesn't think in terms of logic but thinks in terms of pride, manliness, fear, and concepts that fill the lives of, say, prehistoric people or pre-enlightenment people. In that case, they'd have to learn a lot more than just the language of the civilization to understand quantum computers. They'd have to learn a range of other features of the civilization. On that basis, people who can't read driving licenses are similarly in a different culture—which they would also have to learn if they are to increase their IQ, i.e., the ability to function at a high level in intellectual culture in our civilization. Okay, so if it's those kinds of differences, then how do you explain the fact that identical twins separated at birth and adopted by different families tend to have the most of the variance that does exist between humans in terms of IQ? That doesn't exist between identical twins, the correlation is 0.8—which is the correlation you would have when you took the test on different days, depending on how good a day you were having. These are people adopted by families with different cultures who were often in different countries. In fact, a hardware theory explains very well why they would have similar scores and IQ tests correlate with literacy, job performance, and so on—whereas I don't know how the software would explain why it would involve being adopted by different families. The hardware theory explains it in the sense that it might be hardware, it might be true. So it doesn't because it doesn't have an explanation beyond that, nor does the software theory.…

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