This article feels like arguing against a statement that was probably never made on Less Wrong.
I even think I remember Yudkowsky saying that individual differences in IQ are unfair, and that in the glorious transhuman future of course everyone should get at least IQ 200, or something like that.
The implicit assumption that anyone could reason as we do if they simply tried harder.
Frustration or dismissal when others fail to grasp concepts we find intuitive.
For me, the frustrating thing is that many of those people who have the sufficiently high intelligence still choose to be irrational. There is a book "What Intelligence Tests Miss: The Psychology of Rational Thought" by Keith Stanovich that used to be popular here, and it is precisely about how intelligence isn't rationality.
Personalized AI tutors could help those with lower cognitive capabilities catch up, but access to these technologies is uneven. If high-quality AI education tools remain expensive or exclusive, the divide will only widen.
Ironically, this part seems like you making the very mistake that you are accusing rationalists of. Suppose that perfect personalized AI tutors are available to everyone, for free. What happens? I think the divide will widen anyway, simply because the more intelligent people will benefit more from the AI tutors.
This is a mistake people frequently make when discussing education, even if we completely ignore the AI or computers in general. Yeah, education sucks for everyone, both for the smart, the average, and the stupid, in a different way for everyone. It could be made much better, and everyone could benefit from that. However, that alone does not imply that optimal education for everyone would make the differences disappear. If I simplify it a lot, if the improved education helped everyone achieve twice as much as they can achieve now, it would be better for everyone, and yet the differences would now be twice as big, not smaller. You would need to argue that there are ways to dramatically improve the education of the stupid, but no comparable ways to dramatically improve the education of the smart, which goes against the usual experience of smart kids being bored at school most of the time.
Recognizing your cognitive privilege is the first step toward engaging with others more fairly and constructively.
I agree, but in the current (or maybe recent) political climate, acknowledging that some people are more intelligent than others would get you in deep trouble.
Intelligence should not be the sole determinant of value or opportunity. If it is largely unearned, then structuring society around cognitive hierarchies is deeply unjust.
Here, the tricky thing is how to decouple "good life" from "making decisions". Capitalism kinda conflates those two things: if you have more money, you can live a more convenient life, and you can also decide the use of more resources. This already assumes some cognitive capabilities -- merely throwing more money at stupid people doesn't necessarily improve their lives; many of them get scammed, spend the money on drugs, etc. Democracy is also built on the assumption that letting stupid people vote creates better outcomes for the stupid people, which again is not necessarily true.
So the problem is how to create some kind of kindergarten environment for the stupid, where they can live as well as possible, but won't be expected to manage the environment. It is a historical experience that not letting people make the decisions often leads to abuse. The problem is that without cognitive abilities, letting people make the decisions also often leads to abuse... so, I guess, it is not obvious how the society should be structured.
What implicit assumptions do you make about others based on your own cognitive experiences?
I don't anymore. I have advanced towards the state of silent despair.
How should the recognition of cognitive privilege shape discussions on AI ethics and policy?
Mostly by realizing that the machines of the future will probably be smarter than all of us? Which again is not a controversial thought in this community. The original plan was to build a Friendly AI, and that still seems to me like a good outcome to strive for, even if I have no idea how to contribute to it.
The term "privilege" is bad here; prefer "advantage". "Privilege"—privi-lege, private law—implies that there's an authority deciding to grant it to some people and not others, which would be unjust (since most things that affect intelligence, such as genetics and childhood nutrition, happen long before a person does anything to "deserve" it more than others), which in turn encourages people to get angry and suspicious, and encourages the advantaged to feel embarrassed or even guilty by association when they've done nothing wrong. Calling it "privilege" is only useful if you want to encourage that kind of conflict.
That said, there are plenty of people who downplay the importance of intelligence, and/or exaggerate the degree to which it can be improved through hard work, educational interventions, school funding, etc. However, those people are much more likely to be social justice activists than rationalists. The #3 top voted post in the 2023 Less Wrong review was about how to use genetic technology to improve intelligence (and other qualities) in the general population. It's interesting to note that the 2023 post is trying to fix the problem of people not being as smart as they would like to be, while this post's recommendations do not include trying to fix that problem.
I reviewed it. It didn't trigger my "LLM generated content" vibes, though I also don't think it's an amazing essay.
It has LLM written all over it. For example:
This attitude betrays a misunderstanding of cognitive privilege. Just as a person born into wealth has a head start in life, a person born with high cognitive ability begins the race miles ahead of others. Yet, many in rationalist communities resist this conclusion, likely because it challenges the notion of a purely meritocratic intellect.
"Yet, many in rationalist communities resist this conclusion" — Who? Where? I have never seen anything that fits this. It comes out of nowhere. And it isn't a "conclusion", it's the observation the article starts from.
"likely because it challenges the notion" — More confabulated speculation.
"of a purely meritocratic intellect" — A what? What is a "meritocratic intellect"? How does cognitive privilege "challenge" this notion?
The implicit assumption that anyone could reason as we do if they simply tried harder.
Never seen this one either. The very opposite has been notably written by Eliezer. It is commonplace on Lesswrong that while we may to some extent improve our thinking, we are nevertheless cognitively unequal by magnitudes that we know of no way to surmount.
Questions for Reflection
Did the writer prime the LLM with DEI training manuals? Go through it replacing cognitive inequality by race, gender, or income inequality and it would be typical of the genre. In fact, that suggests an alternative hypothesis for the genesis of this article: that the author made just such a translation in the opposite direction.
LessWrong and similar communities value rationality, yet rationalists often overestimate the role of effort and underestimate the role of luck in intellectual ability.
More confabulation.
As AI reshapes our world, it’s time to
Typical LLM tic.
It's all like this. It's a castle in the air, whose nominal author has made no effort to put foundations under it. There is one actual fact in the article, that we have unequal mental abilities. The rest is fog and applause lights.
And speaking of applause lights, while LLM undoubtedly had a hand in writing this article, it is the faults in the thinking and writing that damn it. LLM was merely the tool that facilitated it. People have always been capable of writing such things unaided, parodied by Eliezer:
I am tempted to give a talk sometime that consists of nothing but applause lights, and see how long it takes for the audience to start laughing:
I am here to propose to you today that we need to balance the risks and opportunities of advanced artificial intelligence. We should avoid the risks and, insofar as it is possible, realize the opportunities. We should not needlessly confront entirely unnecessary dangers. To achieve these goals, we must plan wisely and rationally. We should not act in fear and panic, or give in to technophobia; but neither should we act in blind enthusiasm. We should respect the interests of all parties with a stake in the Singularity. We must try to ensure that the benefits of advanced technologies accrue to as many individuals as possible, rather than being restricted to a few. We must try to avoid, as much as possible, violent conflicts using these technologies; and we must prevent massive destructive capability from falling into the hands of individuals. We should think through these issues before, not after, it is too late to do anything about them . . .
I'm just not sure the central claim, that rationalists underestimate the role of luck in intelligence, is true. I've never gotten that impression. At least my assumption going into reading this was already that intelligence was probably 80-90% unearned.
So you are smart. Congratulations! Good for you! But have you ever stopped to consider how much of that intelligence is truly earned? How much of your ability to reason, analyze, and problem-solve was the result of deliberate effort, and how much was simply given to you by chance? If you're being honest, the answer is uncomfortable: you did little to nothing to deserve the cognitive advantages you were born with.
When we talk about privilege, we often focus on external factors—education, wealth, social networks, or access to technology. But there's a more fundamental privilege that gives us a significant edge: our cognitive capabilities themselves.
Consider this: What did you do before age five to develop your abstract reasoning? Your ability to recognize patterns? Your capacity for logical deduction?
The answer, of course, is nothing. Just as we recognize that being born into wealth isn’t a personal achievement, our basic intellectual capabilities are also unearned—the product of genetic luck, prenatal conditions, and early developmental factors beyond our control.
The truth is, while we often distinguish between "raw intelligence" and "grit" or "effort," these qualities are not entirely separate—people with higher cognitive abilities may also have an advantage in developing discipline, problem-solving approaches, impulse control, delayed gratification and resilience. Again, I´m not trying to belittle the effort people put into honing their intellect. But even the ability to engage in that effort—to push cognitive boundaries and pursue knowledge effectively—is an advantage you did not choose.
Communities like LessWrong pride themselves on identifying and correcting cognitive biases, yet there is a glaring blind spot when it comes to acknowledging the role of luck in intelligence. This manifests in subtle ways:
This attitude betrays a misunderstanding of cognitive privilege. Just as a person born into wealth has a head start in life, a person born with high cognitive ability begins the race miles ahead of others. Yet, many in rationalist communities resist this conclusion, likely because it challenges the notion of a purely meritocratic intellect.
Recognizing cognitive privilege has profound ethical implications:
AI will likely reshape human intellectual hierarchies in ways we are only beginning to understand:
If you are among the cognitively privileged, what should you do?
LessWrong and similar communities value rationality, yet rationalists often overestimate the role of effort and underestimate the role of luck in intellectual ability. As AI reshapes our world, it’s time to recognize that intelligence, like wealth, is a privilege—and with that privilege comes responsibility.
I invite the LessWrong community to consider the above questions and discuss how it might better acknowledge and account for this fundamental form of privilege in its discourse and activities.