Megan McArdle recently linked to an old piece of hers called something like “If you’re so smart, how come you’re not rich?”. I also have been trying to get through - unsuccessfully, it’s very long, although interesting - an article about George Polya’s “How to Solve it” (https://www.thepsmiths.com/p/review-how-to-solve-it-by-george) that defines intelligence in (to me) a novel way: “Intelligence is the ability of an agent to achieve its goals.”
I don’t know what to make of this, but it seems to me that a lot of people’s orientation is too focused on non-instrumental aspects of our existence, and instead we’d be better off to, say, worry less about personality and more about what causes lead to effects in the world. Not that I’m not interested in personality and psychology – I certainly am! But this focus does, as I suppose is the point of this letter, only capture a small part of the dynamic of what makes things happen in the world. Most people simply do what’s expected in the environment they’re in, and as little of that as possible.
In explaining someone’s choices we can appeal to his settled personality, and his (view of his) situation, and *what else*? His desires and drives and (non-rational) impulses—or are these part of *personality*? His beliefs about matters other than his situation? Something in him that does not count as beliefs or desires or personality traits (what would that be?)?
The presupposed conceptual scheme is obscure to me.
People misuse science, but it’s a a mistake to think that personality is primarily a scientific concept. A significant amount of brain power has evolved to predict the behavior of others based on what we know about them. We use a lot of data subconsciously to make these predictions (difficult to capture in a Big 5 survey).
It isn’t a criticism at all. Attention seeking behavior? Observations about the misuse of results by lay-people, as you explain amusingly and perfectly, has nothing whatsoever to do with the validity of the research.
No, that's not it. It's a very real thing. Zlatkus' take on Personality from the article is "praising with faint damning". Consider, "The Big Five is empirically grounded, cross-culturally robust, and modestly predictive." and "So, Big Five research is limited, but genuinely useful. It’s a hit. The miss is how the concept of personality is popularly, or even professionally, used: either by overextending Big Five findings or, more egregiously, by relying on personality tests that distort or ignore them altogether."
Oh, so we have a (1) hit, which is (2) empirically grounded [i.e., "robust" and "replicated", not an easy feat in psychology], (3) cross-culturally robust, (4) modestly predictive, and (5) genuinely useful.
But, oh dear, lay people don't interpret or use the science in a rigorous and valid way. Somebody alert the press about this shocking news, because that almost never happens with popular interpretation of scientific results. Or else, there are some uses of personality research which are bad, not because the research is bad - because it isn't, the research is good! - but because those uses *ignore* the research altogether! But, see, if you use the personality tests that *are* based on the (good!) personality research findings, then you will get good, moderately predictive results!
I mean, come on, what kind of weak-ass criticism is this? It reads like it was *satire* making fun of the kind of a bogus critique a slimy lawyer would make in total desperation for lack of anything stronger to say! Do I have to bring Tyler Cowen over here to read it and give me his opinion on whether this is Straussian with an esoteric meaning the opposite of what it pretends to say, given away to those in the know by the signal of just how ridiculous it is to repeatedly glorify the thing you are pretending to knock down?
Megan McArdle recently linked to an old piece of hers called something like “If you’re so smart, how come you’re not rich?”. I also have been trying to get through - unsuccessfully, it’s very long, although interesting - an article about George Polya’s “How to Solve it” (https://www.thepsmiths.com/p/review-how-to-solve-it-by-george) that defines intelligence in (to me) a novel way: “Intelligence is the ability of an agent to achieve its goals.”
I don’t know what to make of this, but it seems to me that a lot of people’s orientation is too focused on non-instrumental aspects of our existence, and instead we’d be better off to, say, worry less about personality and more about what causes lead to effects in the world. Not that I’m not interested in personality and psychology – I certainly am! But this focus does, as I suppose is the point of this letter, only capture a small part of the dynamic of what makes things happen in the world. Most people simply do what’s expected in the environment they’re in, and as little of that as possible.
In explaining someone’s choices we can appeal to his settled personality, and his (view of his) situation, and *what else*? His desires and drives and (non-rational) impulses—or are these part of *personality*? His beliefs about matters other than his situation? Something in him that does not count as beliefs or desires or personality traits (what would that be?)?
The presupposed conceptual scheme is obscure to me.
People misuse science, but it’s a a mistake to think that personality is primarily a scientific concept. A significant amount of brain power has evolved to predict the behavior of others based on what we know about them. We use a lot of data subconsciously to make these predictions (difficult to capture in a Big 5 survey).
Is “personality” perhaps invented as a coherence mechanism where what exists is far different?
It isn’t a criticism at all. Attention seeking behavior? Observations about the misuse of results by lay-people, as you explain amusingly and perfectly, has nothing whatsoever to do with the validity of the research.
No, that's not it. It's a very real thing. Zlatkus' take on Personality from the article is "praising with faint damning". Consider, "The Big Five is empirically grounded, cross-culturally robust, and modestly predictive." and "So, Big Five research is limited, but genuinely useful. It’s a hit. The miss is how the concept of personality is popularly, or even professionally, used: either by overextending Big Five findings or, more egregiously, by relying on personality tests that distort or ignore them altogether."
Oh, so we have a (1) hit, which is (2) empirically grounded [i.e., "robust" and "replicated", not an easy feat in psychology], (3) cross-culturally robust, (4) modestly predictive, and (5) genuinely useful.
But, oh dear, lay people don't interpret or use the science in a rigorous and valid way. Somebody alert the press about this shocking news, because that almost never happens with popular interpretation of scientific results. Or else, there are some uses of personality research which are bad, not because the research is bad - because it isn't, the research is good! - but because those uses *ignore* the research altogether! But, see, if you use the personality tests that *are* based on the (good!) personality research findings, then you will get good, moderately predictive results!
I mean, come on, what kind of weak-ass criticism is this? It reads like it was *satire* making fun of the kind of a bogus critique a slimy lawyer would make in total desperation for lack of anything stronger to say! Do I have to bring Tyler Cowen over here to read it and give me his opinion on whether this is Straussian with an esoteric meaning the opposite of what it pretends to say, given away to those in the know by the signal of just how ridiculous it is to repeatedly glorify the thing you are pretending to knock down?