
More Wrong Things I Said in Papers - ikeboy
http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=2854
======
startupdiscuss
You know, these days, we shouldn't have the concept of a blog or paper being
published. It should be collaborative effort.

The initial post should be a comment period where you ask for feedback and no
matter how large your mistake, it should be considered okay.

And slowly as you get more eyes on it, it should solidify into a more accepted
paper.

~~~
jacquesm
A large part of science drives on ego, the process you describe would reduce
that considerably. 'Publish or perish' works if there are a very small number
of authors at the top of a paper.

~~~
lgas
Great, let's change that. Letting ego drive everything does not seem like a
good idea.

~~~
coldtea
Yeah, because such things as human nature we can just go ahead and change...

~~~
seanmcdirmid
If the communists could do it, we can to! Oh wait....

------
dharmon
In my PhD thesis I claimed a function was convex that was not. The
embarrassing part was that in the next section I proved that an almost
identical function was non-convex.

Phew, I feel better getting that off my chest. Good thing nobody reads
dissertations.

------
clifanatic
I wish I was smart enough to be that wrong.

~~~
Noseshine
How do you know you are not? Well, you certainly have a case by making this
assumption in the first place.

Are you "not smart enough" in _all_ areas, or just not not in (deep) math?
Rhetorical question.

Look at "IQ". There is no such thing as "IQ" \- simply because there are so
man vastly different things that you should measure. I forgot the lecture, but
you can show that the exact same "IQ" can be for people with vastly different
skill sets, or different IQs with a completely different distribution of
abilities, and the higher IQ losing out in one or more fields. The guy with
the Einstein math and physics abilities can be a total dimwit when it comes to
managing or just dealing with people, for example, something I would argue the
world is in much greater need of compared to getting more math geniuses.

When you don't understand something ask yourself: Do I actually _need_ to
understand this?

I took about 70 edX and Coursera courses mostly in completely different fields
then my own (CS). One of the most important lessons is that there is sooooooo
much knowledge.

Have a look at this little story of a very simple product that humans make
(ignore which concrete one they chose):
[https://medium.com/@kevin_ashton/what-coke-
contains-221d4499...](https://medium.com/@kevin_ashton/what-coke-
contains-221d449929ef)

Summary quote (product name replaced with "X"):

    
    
        > The number of individuals who know how to make X is zero.
        > The number of individual nations that could produce X is zero.
    

That's for one of the most simple products out there.

You do _not_ need to understand each and every subject. You are _not_ dumb if
you don't. You may be dumb if you think you are dumb that you don't understand
every single random subject... :)

~~~
nabla9
>Look at "IQ". There is no such thing as "IQ" \- simply because there are so
man vastly different things that you should measure.

When you measure vastly different things, like reaction time and performance
in IQ tests, there is surprisingly strong correlation (> 0.8 without
correction for attenuation). This supports the hypothesis that there is such
thing as G-factor.

None of those vastly different things we can measure measures it directly, but
they all together point into the same direction. What has reaction time have
to do with academic performance, job attainment, income, or IQ tests?

Most of those who argue for different intelligences don't provide good
evidense against strong correlation.

~~~
Noseshine
That argument is like "economy" vs. "individual". When I wrote "there is no
such thing as IQ" I mean (as stated?) that this is not a concrete thing, but a
summary measure of many things. Of course it exists, it just doesn't represent
a (single) concrete thing. The growth rate of the economy, maybe, comes to
mind.

Of course averages work fine when you look at the grander things, but they are
useless when looking at individuals. So sure, IQ "works" in that sense, for
"big picture stats". It's not good for individuals. _(Necessary additional
comment: Looking at more than one individual is not "looking at an
individual", but it again is "statistics".)_

If you only want to place "the best" on average, going for "IQ" is enough. If
you want to match each one (individually, not by global average - in which
case after hiring by IQ you just place them anywhere) to the appropriate job
it isn't. The _distribution_ of skills under a given IQ score can be very
different.

    
    
        > IQ is an imperfect predictor of many outcomes. A person who scores very low
        > on a competently administered IQ test is likely to struggle in many domains.
        > However, an IQ score will miss the mark in many individuals, in both directions.
    

[http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/beautiful-minds/what-
do-...](http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/beautiful-minds/what-do-iq-tests-
test-interview-with-psychologist-w-joel-schneider/)

~~~
nabla9
> IQ is an imperfect predictor of many outcomes.

It's _very_ often the best single predictor.

As the article you quote puts it:

>IQ is an imperfect predictor of many outcomes. A person who scores very low
on a competently administered IQ test is likely to struggle in many domains.
However, an IQ score will miss the mark in many individuals, in both
directions.

If IQ test misjudges 5-20% of applicants, it's still hell of a predictor.

~~~
Noseshine

        >  it's still hell of a predictor.
    

I think I had already responded to that. The question is "on what level" and
"what for". See my previous response.

I wrote _" If you only want to place "the best" on average, going for "IQ" is
enough. If you want to match each one (individually, not by global average -
in which case after hiring by IQ you just place them anywhere) to the
appropriate job it isn't."_

It's the same as arguing for racial profiling because "it works". Well it
does! If you don't care about people (individuals) but only about peoples.

------
schoen
I wrote a paper a few years ago that was published in a journal and which I
felt was subsequently refuted by another paper. (I argued that for various
reasons a server can never tell if a client has been virtualized or modified
or not in the absence of hardware-based anti-virtualization features, but
[https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~jfrankli/hotos07/vmm_detection_hotos...](https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~jfrankli/hotos07/vmm_detection_hotos07.pdf)
and some recently work on obfuscators make me think I was mostly to entirely
wrong.) Particularly since I don't have a blog right now, I keep thinking that
I have no way to correct my assertions in public. It feels like it would be
useful to be able to do that, just so if anyone somehow comes across the old
paper they could quickly find out why its arguments aren't valid.

~~~
dredmorbius
Whatever happened to loyalty.org & virtuanova?

~~~
schoen
Some things happened that made me no longer feel that my life was "new", so I
stopped blogging there. (One thing is that the friend's server that it was
hosted on went down.) I had trouble thinking of a new blog name and so
neglected to start a successor blog.

~~~
dredmorbius
If it makes the process of restarting any easier, consider sticking with one
of the existing brands.

I'm a big fan of _not_ just writing to write, but focusing on having something
to say. I find that when you think you do, you're almost always correct.

------
erdevs
Aaronson is awesome. Intellectual honesty like this is to be admired in any
field.

~~~
0xmohit
It's rare to see folks admit mistakes even in private. Writing it on a blog
which is probably widely read is extremely rare. Such incidents are deeply
inspiring.

------
alecco
[http://retractionwatch.com/](http://retractionwatch.com/) is fun to visit
once in a while

