Gwern: belief

Transcript context

…Do people tend to underestimate or overestimate your intelligence? I would say they overestimate it. They mistake for intelligence the fact that I remember many things, that I have written many things over many years. They imagine that if they sat me down, I could do it all spontaneously at the moment that they’re talking to me. But with many things I have thought about, I have the advantage of having looked at things before. So I’m cheating. When I talk to people, I may just be quoting something I've already written, or at least thought about. So I come off as a lot smarter than I actually am. I would say I'm not really all that smart, compared to many people I've known, who update very fast on the fly. But in the end, it's the output that matters, right? I guess there is an on-the-fly intelligence. But there's another kind too which is this ability to synthesize things over a long period of time, and then come up with grand theories as a result of these different things that you’re seeing. I don’t think that’s just crystallized intelligence, right?…

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