Cognitive reflection, intelligence, and cognitive abilities: A meta-analysis

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289621000982

by Bluestein • 2 years ago

80 48 2 years ago

The study found that your ability to reflect on "your first impulsive response" in order to refine it or discard it, is closely related to your general intelligence ability and numerical abilities. It refutes the idea that cognitive reflection is a separate skill independent of general intelligence.

Bluestein4• 2 years ago

I guess, by some measure it should be a separate skill. It appears to be a measurable skill, apart from AGI, so there's that.-

PS. It would appear to be a great, reflexive, quality for an AI to have: the ability to monitor its outputs, and improve on responses, in a "metacognitive" way.-

prometheus76• 2 years ago

Just because something is distinct does not mean it is independent.

alphazard• 2 years ago

This is usually what happens when you try to tease out another skill or separate "intelligence" from the general factor, it ends up being correlated in the end.

Teever• 2 years ago

Well yeah, defects are clustered so if someone is likely to be damaged in one way they're likely to be damaged in another.

discreteevent• 2 years ago

ability to reflect on "your first impulsive response"

This is why it's harder to be brave if you're smart.

sandspar• 2 years ago

Citation needed.

nabusman• 2 years ago

Isn't the other way around? Take a fireman, he's running into a burning building, whereas I'd think the first impulse would be to run away, hence he's reflecting on his first impulse to be brave.

nicklecompte2• 2 years ago

It seems to me like it is yet another study which refutes the idea that we're able to scientifically measure "general intelligence" (or "cognitive intelligence," using the author's term). Instead of anything which can be called intelligence, these tests keep measuring the same wrong thing. This thing is clearly amenable to short-term improvement with practice, and possibly assistance from a trained psychologist. And I don't think it has much to do with the actual problems human brains have to solve. The fact that human brains can be trained to solve IQ test problems or math problems is interesting. But surely it's a tiny slice of what human brains can do.

llamaimperative5• 2 years ago

No, it's another datapoint for IQ. General intelligence was discovered empirically, not hypothesized and then searched-for.

The basic observation was that people who score highly on one intelligence-related test will generally score highly on every other intelligence-related test. The "dimensions" of intelligence, while hypothetically separable and distinct, don't actually appear to be so in practice. Smart people are smart at most things (in general), dumb people are dumb at most things (in general).

This only gets shaky when one uses it to make moral arguments about people's value or worth, so I'll just explicitly say it: being smart is not a moral victory or very likely even something you earned at all. Smart and dumb people have equal claim to a dignified life here on earth.

RandomWorker2• 2 years ago

Cognitive Reflection (CR) refers to the individual ability or disposition to stop the first impulsive response that our mind offers and to activate the reflective mechanisms that allow us to find an answer, make a decision, or carry out a specific behavior in a more thoughtful way.

Basically the idea that you think before you act. Makes sense that this would enhance all other skills. Is this junk science? I’d rather see actual test plus data with control variables. Meta analysis seems to have the conclusion already in the introduction. We think this matters here’s a bunch of evidence we found, therefore it matters.

OnlyMortal• 2 years ago

It’s impulsive if it’s blindly obvious.

Someone of intelligence would find that so and have no need to reflect or even think about it.

nine_k• 2 years ago

Our knowledge of a situation is almost always imperfect, and can most of the time benefit from longer, deeper, less blond analysis.

Where impulses and reflexes rule is time-sensitive activities, like most sports, playing musical instruments, or driving. Whoever can deploy a better repertoire of thoughtless, instant reactions wins. It's basically precomputed and cached thought.

jvanderbot4• 2 years ago

oh the word games in this thread.

This is an old concept:

System 1 and System 2 (The linked article but also everyone?)

book: Thinking fast and slow (Daniel Kahneman)

analogy: Elephant and Rider (Haidt)

analogy: Charioteer and Horse (stoics)

An impulse is not blindly obvious (e.g., unconscious bias or unquestioned assumptions), and an intelligent person may or may not have correct biases / impulses in all situations. However, a person who can sit with their impulses, override them, and try to see through them through reflection may in fact have something that is synonymous with intelligence to a degree (thesis of TFA).

I believe the implication is that "much of intelligence is reflection" and that "continuous reflection yields better intuition on the reflected domain". Not "a person born with high IQ has better instincts".

rhelz• 2 years ago

It is junk science--when a skill is truly mastered, it is done entirely without thinking bout it. Flow. Conscious, reflective thought is very slow and is typically only invoked when all else fails.

When you are programming--really sucked into it, the state of flow---you are not thinking about how you are programming. You are not aware that you have feet, inside of socks, or even that you are sitting down. You are not even aware you are thinking about it at all--you actually disappear altogether, all that really exists is this mind-meld of you, the problem you are trying to solve, and the program you are solving it with.

If, in the middle of this state, you stop and start questioning "am I programing this the right way? Am I sure this is the best way to do it? Should I be making this more general, or generic? All you get is analysis paralysis.

Its a trap even, because bike shedding feels like you are getting things done, or being smart, foresighted, etc etc. You are not; if you know how to solve the problem within spec and budget, doing anything else is just procrastinating.

ForHackernews• 2 years ago

I disagree with this. Outstanding programming (outstanding performance at almost anything) involves a flow state where you are doing-the-thing almost unconsciously, but that frees your mind up for meta-cognition reflecting on the bigger picture and concurrently refining the performance of the task. To be an outstanding athlete, you also need to be your own best coach.

Emma_Goldman• 2 years ago

I don't think this is right at all, a lot of intellectual forms of 'flow' necessarily involve incessant reflection, often through writing and re-writing, but also through conversation with self and others. Keep in mind that Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, who pioneered the concept of flow, thought of the manipulation of symbols - including in science, philosophy, conversation - as one of its principal domains.

Jensson• 2 years ago

Basically the idea that you think before you act

They talk about thinking before you judge, not thinking before you act. ADHD people often have a hard time thinking before they act but many of them are still really smart and think a lot before judging.

Judging without thinking is a much bigger problem than doing without thinking, but most people still do it.

RandomWorker2• 2 years ago

That’s a really interesting and important distinction. Thanks for clarifying. Suddenly I understand ignorance and stupidity in a whole new light.

mateo1• 2 years ago

Doing a meta-analysis on something easily quantifiable is sketchy enough, doing a meta-analysis on something as vague and hard to measure as "cognitive intelligence" is.. well, it's sociology's territory. Not to say it isn't of value, many discoveries were made on a lot less methodologically strict grounds and this kind of "conversation" does create the stimulus for further, more specific research, but you ought to read this more like a an investigative journalistic piece with a lot of opinion rather than hard science.

jeydi42• 2 years ago

So video games and quick stimuli make you smarter? :)

waihtis2• 2 years ago

I feel its the complete opposite. Playing video games for hours makes me generally incapable of deep thinking. Btw the same happens after hours-long coding sessions.

saulrh• 2 years ago

You're exercising your cognition. It's no surprise that the acute effects include exhaustion. The long term effects are you have stronger cognition.

closetnerd• 2 years ago

Hierarchical model for the win. Consistent with Jeff Hawkins research as well.

Cognitive reflection, intelligence, and cognitive abilities: A meta-analysis

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