[wildermuthn]

The article isn’t as interesting as the idea that it is possible to identify someone smarter than oneself.

Reminds me of PG’s blub paradox:

“As long as our hypothetical Blub programmer is looking down the power continuum, he knows he's looking down. Languages less powerful than Blub are obviously less powerful, because they're missing some feature he's used to. But when our hypothetical Blub programmer looks in the other direction, up the power continuum, he doesn't realize he's looking up. What he sees are merely weird languages. He probably considers them about equivalent in power to Blub, but with all this other hairy stuff thrown in as well. Blub is good enough for him, because he thinks in Blub.”

If being smarter is like being tall, then it is easy to identify someone that is smarter/taller than oneself. But if there is some threshold where smartness becomes a difference of kind rather degree, it may not be possible to identify people who are significantly smarter than themselves.

Like the blub programmer, we may mistake people who are smarter than us as… merely weird. They think differently, which we mistake for thinking wrongly.

Add into the mix that there are probably multiple types of “intelligence”, each suited to different domains, and the problem is compounded.

Speed of thought is different than correctness of thought. The first is easy to identify. The second is a problem that I don’t think we should assume is solved.