

Smart People Really Do Think Faster. - amichail
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102169531

======
tokenadult
Ai. Once more a journalistic report that confuses having a high IQ with being
smart. This is not the current thinking among the best researchers on human
intelligence.

[http://www.amazon.com/What-Intelligence-Tests-Miss-
Psycholog...](http://www.amazon.com/What-Intelligence-Tests-Miss-
Psychology/dp/030012385X)

As the current researchers put it, you can be "intelligent" (= score high on
IQ tests) without being "rational" (above reference) or wise (below
reference).

[http://www.amazon.com/What-Intelligence-Beyond-Flynn-
Effect/...](http://www.amazon.com/What-Intelligence-Beyond-Flynn-
Effect/dp/0521741475/)

But this idea goes back a lot further, all the way to the beginning of IQ
testing. Lewis Terman himself wrote, "There are, however, certain
characteristics of age scores with which the reader should be familiar. For
one thing, it is necessary to bear in mind that the true mental age as we have
used it refers to the mental age on a particular intelligence test. A
subject's mental age in this sense may not coincide with the age score he
would make in tests of musical ability, mechanical ability, social adjustment,
etc. A subject has, strictly speaking, a number of mental ages; we are here
concerned only with that which depends on the abilities tested by the new
Stanford-Binet scales." (Terman & Merrill 1937, p. 25)

Ian Deary has very trenchant comments on how poorly understood "ability to
think quickly" is in his book Looking Down on Human Intelligence: From
Psychometrics to the Brain

[http://www.amazon.com/Looking-Down-Human-Intelligence-
Psycho...](http://www.amazon.com/Looking-Down-Human-Intelligence-
Psychometrics/dp/019852417X/)

But, really, the obligatory link for any discussion of a report on a research
result like that is the article by Peter Norvig, director of research at
Google, on how to interpret scientific research.

<http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html>

Check each news story you read for how many of the important issues in
interpreting research are NOT discussed in the story.

P.S. I saw another news story about this research announcement,

[http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126993.300-highspeed...](http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126993.300-highspeed-
brains-are-in-the-genes.html)

and it included this interesting paragraph:

"Just because intelligence is strongly genetic, that doesn't mean it cannot be
improved. 'It's just the opposite,' says Richard Haier, of the University of
California, Irvine, who works with Thompson. 'If it's genetic, it's
biochemical, and we have all kinds of ways of influencing biochemistry.'"

------
zmimon
This is really just pointing out that IQ tests are time based and so people
who think faster do better at them. Measures of intelligence that are not time
based might not show the same difference.

I often found in school / college that I could answer all the questions on
tests and exams but not in the time given. It always felt a little unfair that
others who were actually less capable sometimes got higher scores simply
because they were faster at those parts they _could_ do.

~~~
derefr
Intelligence _is speed_ , but not in the linear way we think of it. When
people think faster, they can put slightly more time into examining each
possible solution branch, which allows them to discard the ones that resolve
as "bad." This, then, culls those branches from their memory, allowing them to
process the rest of the solution tree even faster. Someone who knows a little
more CS than I do could actually give a definite answer to just how much
faster it makes someone, assuming, just for the sake of argument, that
solution trees are binary.

Anyway, there are certain problems that require a "minimum mental speed" to
accomplish; Mensa test questions are basically designed so that your working
memory capacity will be exhausted by extraneous branches unless your mind can
cull them as quickly as it can think of them.

~~~
dejb
> Anyway, there are certain problems that require a "minimum mental speed" to
> accomplish; Mensa test questions are basically designed so that your working
> memory capacity will be exhausted by extraneous branches unless your mind
> can cull them as quickly as it can think of them.

What about people who have a larger or longer-lasting working memory capacity?
Or those who have better culling algorithms? They may be able to solve classes
of problems that 'faster' thinkers could never solve. They might do well at
the Mensa test but on a simpler speed-based test they could do poorly.

Intelligence is not speed.

~~~
derefr
You missed the symmetry of the equality. If you have "better culling
algorithms", each branch gets culled away faster, so, on an EEG or a similar
device, you appear to be thinking faster.

The reason I didn't mention the possible variation in working memory capacity
was a single word that I left out, leaving it, like I said, to the Computer
Scientist: "exponential." Every time your have an additional binary choice to
make, your possible solution-space doubles. It doesn't matter how large your
working memory is; as long as it's a fixed, finite size, an exponential growth
in memory consumption will consume it with relative ease. The culling
algorithm needs to be of a certain minimum efficiency to keep you from
"blowing your stack" and losing your place repeatedly, and this is what is
perceived as "speed."

I think you misinterpreted, though, that I meant that intelligence is the
speed _at which you solve macro-level problems_. It certainly isn't.
Intelligence is the speed at which you prune decisions; external to the mind,
this affects the _confidence_ you can take in your assertions, not the speed
at which you reach them.

The more confident you are in lemma 1, the more quickly you can _consciously
decide to_ move onto lemma 2, and so on, but this requires some internal
message passing that's much slower than the complete decision-branch path-
finding "system call" in your mind. Your macro "problem-solving speed" is much
more affected by the speed of the IRQ handler (the neocortex, I think), but if
the system calls keep returning a low confidence interval, you have to keep
consciously pulling apart intuitions into graphs of semantic knowledge, and
passing each node to the path-finder in turn, until you feel sure enough of
your decision to become aware of it. If your culling algorithm is more
efficient (as directly measured by your score, not your time, on an IQ test)
then you will become aware of things that others never will, because their
minds are caught in loops that return false-negative confidences.

Sleep, then, gives your culling algorithm a larger fixed-bound on its runtime
before it must return a confidence; this is why sleeping on something will let
you make decisions that you felt involved too much complexity the day before.
(Of course, sleeping does other things as well, like transferring things
between short- and long- term memory (where they're stored--if they are stored
--with a much lower path cost), and shutting off the neocortex so the mind
doesn't constantly have to context-switch to ring 3 while it's trying to
process things.)

~~~
dejb
I think you are focusing heavily on one particular model of an 'intelligence
algorithm'. The model you are assuming sounds a lot like the type used for
chess program. I played along with the 'culling algorithm' bit for the sake of
convenience. But I'm not sure there is good enough evidence to assume that as
the underlying model.

The definition of speed I am using is analogous to the clock speed or memory
retrieval speed in a computer and it does seem at one level to be the way you
are thinking of it as well. I think this fits in with what the researchers are
measuring.

> The reason I didn't mention the possible variation in working memory
> capacity was a single word that I left out, leaving it, like I said, to the
> Computer Scientist: "exponential."

The memory requirements of a particular algorithm don't necessarily grow
exponentially with the solution space or the input data. As with time
complexity common space complexity relationships to the input size are n (you
need to store at least the input), nlog(n), n^k and k^n. Most tractable
problems would be nlog(n) or at worst n^k where k was small. The implication
of this is that often small differences in memory can make a huge difference.
Possibly you are forgetting that every extra bit of memory 'exponentially'
increases the number of options it that can represent.

One of the first things you learn in CS algorithms is that the an efficient
(let's say nlog(n)) algorithm running on a very slow computer will beat an
inefficient one (say n^2) on a much faster computer. Sometimes resources such
as memory will make the difference between being able to use an nlog(n) rather
then a n^2 algorithm. To me this is a good analogue to apply to intelligence.
For particular classes of problems (the harder ones) the better algorithm will
trump a faster processor. Having a store of 'right algorithms' probably has a
lot more to do with intelligence than raw thought speed.

Your view seems to be that the fundamental thinking algorithm is a fixed tree-
pruning-like one. If it was then yes speed would be the main differentiating
factor. I think this is the crux of our disagreement.

------
donaq
_And Thompson notes that our brains, unlike our bodies, peak relatively late
in life.

"The wires between the brain cells, the connections, are the things that you
can modify throughout life," he says. "They change and they improve through
your 40s and 50s and 60s."_

I wonder how this squares with the following -->
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=516949>

Do we peak at 27 or 60?

~~~
ShardPhoenix
Both can be true - you can improve specific mental abilities by practice even
in old age, but your overall mental performance will probably decline.

~~~
DTrejo
Neither could be true, in many ways we learn the most during childhood, and in
a very short time (e.g language, motor skills, sight).

------
sofal
I haven't taken an IQ test, so I don't know exactly what that is like, but
I've taken PSAT/ACT/GRE/GMAT tests, and it seems obvious to me that your
performance on those tests is greatly influenced by how fast you can think.

If the IQ tests are anything like the other standardized tests, it is of
absolutely no surprise to me that quick thinkers have higher IQs and I don't
understand why it should come as a surprise to anyone else. Furthermore,
assuming that IQ score depends on quick thinking, I'm not at all convinced
that being smarter implies that you think faster.

~~~
amichail
You make a good point. A slow thinker might be able to accomplish great things
given enough time. Maybe we should consider such a person intelligent.

But even then I suspect that a quicker thinker with similar experience would
be able to accomplish even greater things in that same period of time.

~~~
dejb
It's possible though that this is analogous with running. An IQ test could be
seem as a relative sprint whereas the business of solving genuinely complex
problems might be a marathon.

A 'sprinting test' may actually provide a rough gauge of general fitness and
physical ability - and in so doing be a rough predictor of marathon
performance in the general populace. But at the higher levels those with fast
twitch muscles are actually at a disadvantage in a marathon against those with
slow twitch muscles. Extrapolating the sprint result to the marathon only
works at the very crudest level.

Of course I'm not saying this is actually the case with intelligence but in
certainly could be.

------
koningrobot
I've always thought of myself as really slow mentally. It always baffles me
when I see and hear people in an oral discussion come up with interesting
thoughts _while they are talking_. For me it always takes a couple of days of
silent contemplation to see the interesting implications of something.

When people talk to me I sometimes just can't hear what they're saying, but
whatever it is I stash the sound of it somewhere in my head so I can focus on
processing it once they stop talking. The problem is of course that often
people don't stop talking and the stack gets higher and higher until the
bottom falls out and I stop paying attention completely. And if there's a TV
in the room, it'll suck me in before anyone even says a word, and they'll have
to yell and wave to get me back.

But when it does work out, I can recall their entire monologue word for word.
I can still recall some of the things people have told me as much as 15 years
ago, word for word. (My memory is a total sieve for other things though.)

Regardless, I'm pretty capable of thinking "big thoughts", say a recurring
closure and how it affects/relates to the scope chain, the call stack, the
namespace chain (Ruby is _weird_ this way), and maybe a couple other
complicating dimensions. It just takes a while to think big thoughts (though
I've developed a gut feel for navigating scopes and such by now and it's
pretty much instant).

All that said, I'm pretty sure it works this way for more people.

~~~
alnayyir
Don't fret, some believe Da Vinci and Einstein were the same way.

It's people like you that come up with the most worthwhile and well thought
out ideas.

People like me (rapid prototyping/speedy hashers of ideas) are mostly useless.
It's beyond words difficult for me to put feet to floor and completely
formulate, systematize, and write out a philosophical idea.

I come up with neat ideas, but they die just as quickly.

I systematized the entirety of order and chaos once, connected it with
primitive human origins, and have mostly let it lie and do nothing for
example.

Useless.

------
rgrieselhuber
Reminds me of the OODA loop (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OODA_Loop>).

If this is true, then it seems plausible to optimize for response cycle speed
and iteration to evaluate solutions to problems, regardless of one's raw
intelligence (whatever that means).

This measure does, however, tend to lean towards problem-solving speed as the
primary indicator of intelligence and that's probably not the most accurate
way of measuring it.

------
tocomment
The argument against this I've heard is that if a dog could think 1000x
faster, it would still only have dog thoughts but a 1000x more of them.

There must be something more to intelligence than just speed. Perhaps working
memory is very important? Perhaps it's just having the right software in your
head i.e., knowing how to solve problems and frame things?

------
weiser
These guys (<http://www.visualspatial.com/>) would not be happy with the way
results of this research are framed.

This research seems to be suggesting that auditory-sequential (AS) learners
are more intelligent, i.e., have higher IQ, than visual spatial (VS) learners.

If IQ is the measure of intelligence, then certainly, AS would be regarded as
more intelligent. That is why AS learners do better at every single test that
is timed or requires quickness of thought, be it SAT/GRE, mensa or job
interviews at microsoft/google or a wall street bank or hedge fund.

------
robg
Speed has been inferred based on the connectivity of the anatomy. It's a fair
conclusion to draw but speed, per se, wasn't measured.

<http://www.jneurosci.org/cgi/content/abstract/29/7/2212>

------
euroclydon
Smart people tend to be good ping pong players too, if they try, because you
have to process so much information in such a short time, and then act on it.

~~~
bluishgreen
If you think while playing then you cant play well. I play reasonable good
ping pong, and many times I am also watching me play.I do not know what I will
do because I did not decide consciously.

------
maurycy
Does it really matter whether you think faster or better, actually?

Life is not a 100m run; more like a marathon.

------
staunch
It would be fun to know how "fast" my brain is. I'd pay multiple dollars to
find out.

------
known
time = distance/speed

