How much you think “smarts” explains absolute variance in impact among EAs.
How much you think “smarts” explains predictable variance in impact among EAs (if smarts explains 10%, but 90% is noise, then smarts is the best and in fact only metric we care about)
How much you think the community currently believes “smarts” explain absolute variance in impact among EAs.
How much you think the community currently believes “smarts” explains predictable variance in impact among EAs
A very quick response by someone not very numerical and lacking much recent information on the relevant literature related to IQ:
1/2- a lot (say 50%) if you assume we measure impact via something like research publications, and assume the presence of mediators such as individual and independent tasks (i.e., no collaboration), good (mental) health, and static agents (e.g., no feedback loops from agents engaging in regular reflection/self-improvement/recalibration loops and changing career paths), and motivation etc. Maybe 10% beyond an IQ of 120 if you assume a variance of impacts (e.g., introducing high competence people/organisations to EA, doing operations work to amplify the impact of intelligent people, and taking personal risks to setting up needed projects that have high expected value), while not assuming that any of the above mediators (e.g., mental health) are present.
3⁄4 − 50% but without realising the assumptions that are plugged in and mentioned above. Most of us know smarter people who are not able to work with others, not in good mental health, not as strongly EA aligned, healthy, not very motivated to do work or not very interested in improving themselves or changing their minds on things.
As this suggests, I think that EAs tend to assume that intelligence is more sufficient for impact than I think they should. Part of this is my expectation that they tend to I) think of simple single impact/assessment scenarios and ii) assume the presence of other needed ingredients.
Some tangential thoughts:
Much if not most impact probably comes via collaboration with other smart people. However, some of the smartest people I know could not easily collaborate in a startup type collaboration and were therefore, from a entrepreneurial perspective, less valuable than less intelligent but more socially skilled/patient/humble alternatives etc. In such cases hiring based on intelligent could produce bad outcomes.
As I see it, many of the the highest impacts in EA come from bringing good people into the community rather than actually doing work that is seen as high value. This does not seem to load on intelligence much and is instead more about other competencies, such as social skills, access to networks and networking interest and ability). However, my experience of hiring decisions here suggest that signals of intelligence are overweighted relative to social skills.
A very quick response by someone not very numerical and lacking much recent information on the relevant literature related to IQ:
1/2- a lot (say 50%) if you assume we measure impact via something like research publications, and assume the presence of mediators such as individual and independent tasks (i.e., no collaboration), good (mental) health, and static agents (e.g., no feedback loops from agents engaging in regular reflection/self-improvement/recalibration loops and changing career paths), and motivation etc. Maybe 10% beyond an IQ of 120 if you assume a variance of impacts (e.g., introducing high competence people/organisations to EA, doing operations work to amplify the impact of intelligent people, and taking personal risks to setting up needed projects that have high expected value), while not assuming that any of the above mediators (e.g., mental health) are present.
3⁄4 − 50% but without realising the assumptions that are plugged in and mentioned above. Most of us know smarter people who are not able to work with others, not in good mental health, not as strongly EA aligned, healthy, not very motivated to do work or not very interested in improving themselves or changing their minds on things.
As this suggests, I think that EAs tend to assume that intelligence is more sufficient for impact than I think they should. Part of this is my expectation that they tend to I) think of simple single impact/assessment scenarios and ii) assume the presence of other needed ingredients.
Some tangential thoughts:
Much if not most impact probably comes via collaboration with other smart people. However, some of the smartest people I know could not easily collaborate in a startup type collaboration and were therefore, from a entrepreneurial perspective, less valuable than less intelligent but more socially skilled/patient/humble alternatives etc. In such cases hiring based on intelligent could produce bad outcomes.
As I see it, many of the the highest impacts in EA come from bringing good people into the community rather than actually doing work that is seen as high value. This does not seem to load on intelligence much and is instead more about other competencies, such as social skills, access to networks and networking interest and ability). However, my experience of hiring decisions here suggest that signals of intelligence are overweighted relative to social skills.