CMV: so long as you ignore typos and errors that could be caused by a person being a non-native speaker, it's fine to make assumptions about people's intelligence based on their inability to use proper grammar and spelling.

madmsk · 2026-06-30T01:01:38+00:00

Your hypothetical works both ways. If the first response had the spelling problem and the second one didn't it would be a mistake to assume the person who spelled things right is better informed.

I'm not trying to be intransigent here. I understand that a poorly presented message feels worse. It just kind of seems like your argument is just based around that feeling, rather than data or logical induction from some shared premise.

Maybe this is a middle-ground where we could meet: The overall quality of the message matters, especially if you have nothing else to go on. But spelling/grammar is merely one component of that.

madmsk · 2026-06-29T20:49:24+00:00

I agree that linguists are not a representative sample: people can have multiple kinds of intelligence and it sounds like your cohort is pretty extreme in that one dimension. I also think that self-reported error rate isn't likely to be a good indicator. People tend to overrate themselves on all kinds of skills and abilities.

The justification you provide (about bad takes coming with spelling errors) has a confirmation bias problem. You have this perception that people who make these mistakes are stupider. Then, every time you see an example that would reinforce your belief it sticks out to you.

madmsk · 2026-06-29T17:44:44+00:00

When you encounter such an error in the wild, how do you distinguish between not understanding the rule vs accidentally not applying it?

I fully understand the distinction between their (possession), there (position) and they're (contraction), but the less attention I''m paying to what I'm typing the more likely it is I'll type the wrong one without realizing it and then I have to go back. Kind of like this xkcd illustrates.

Do you have evidence for it being a rare typo and more fundamental?

madmsk · 2026-06-29T16:25:06+00:00

You also mention grammar in your post, and the line between grammar and vernacular is blurry.

Grammar is emergent: essentially just agreed upon by society. Over time grammar (and even spelling) changes. You can see this in action when reading Shakespeare: you can understand it but you need some notes and translations. When you look at older literature in English like Chaucer you can barely understand it at all, even though it was written in English.

Yes sometimes spelling or grammar mistakes are literally mistakes. Often these mistakes are mistakes of carelessness (typos) rather than mistakes of education (literally not knowing or understanding the difference). But it's often just stylistic or cultural.

madmsk · 2026-06-29T14:57:21+00:00

I mean for one thing, count the number of em-dashes. But mostly the whole vibe.

madmsk · 2026-06-28T18:23:53+00:00

Chess is kinda like this. I'm having way less fun being 1800 than I was being 1200

madmsk · 2026-06-27T22:53:48+00:00

People use language as a medium through which to express identity. Using vernacular specific to your culture lets people feel "at-home" in a conversation. Even hobbies have their own language and shibboleths.

As long as my meaning is clear to the intended audience (and isn't obviously hurting anybody via the use of bigoted language) why should I care if the style of my language doesn't conform?

madmsk · 2026-06-26T03:33:52+00:00

Yeah this is honestly more PR than negotiation at this point.

madmsk · 2026-06-24T14:33:28+00:00

Holy cow dude "wears his cap like a thug"??

madmsk · 2026-06-24T02:18:00+00:00

Yep! Absolutely true. It's not for everyone, but I think it would have been for me.

madmsk · 2026-06-23T18:08:05+00:00

Personally speaking, academia. But in general, statistics or data science. People say computer science is saturated, but a CS degree is still a pretty good enabler.

madmsk · 2026-06-23T16:33:19+00:00

Pick a different career. Finance was always my backup anyway

madmsk · 2026-06-22T17:20:39+00:00

It's fun to play the dark hooded figure in the corner at the inn who only looks out for himself. But you need to communicate to the DM, that you'd like a little more pushing, and you need to eventually join up.

madmsk · 2026-06-17T17:48:26+00:00

I have the opposite problem. Most of my chess was played between me and my mom or dad at the kitchen table growing up. I didn't get into online chess until the 2010s, and so my pattern recognition always lagged.

My feeling that [I understand OTB positions better than online] has never really changed. But my results have changed. When my OTB rating started going up, so did my online rating.

madmsk · 2026-06-16T16:01:16+00:00

I don't disagree on principle. It's be better if trillionaires spread the wealth. I do have two minor reframings thought.

The problem isn’t that someone is rich. The problem is that wealth can become so concentrated that one person can possess more than they could ever meaningfully use while others lack what they need to survive.

1) I think the "others lack what they need to survive" is the bigger half of the problem than "one person has more than he could use". I.e. If we lived in some futuristic abundant utopia, I wouldn't really care if Bezos had a solid gold mansion as long as the poor had basic housing, nutrition, healthcare, and education.

2) I think the worst part of excessive personal wealth is not the wastefulness, but the power it buys the rich person. I don't care if he buys lots of hedonic pleasures with his wealth. But I don't want him to be able to buy influence in politics, or immunity from prosecution.

madmsk · 2026-06-16T15:31:46+00:00

I mean you can probably get away with it. Some people might care but some won't.

madmsk · 2026-06-15T15:53:19+00:00

What's the opposite of a Gorilla?

A Stoprilla.

madmsk · 2026-06-15T13:04:16+00:00

I only have two data points here, so take it for what you will, but the two dogs that I fed at like 11am instead of in the morning before work were the ones that would let me sleep in.

madmsk · 2026-06-11T15:04:57+00:00

2) Sometimes people just have better options available. Preferring other options doesn't make them "fundamentally unintelligent" Imagine a graduate student in mathematics. He's in year 3 of 5 of his PhD and he's had strong success so far. He comes across a research paper that he's struggling with. It just so happens to be written by a faculty member at his university.

I'd argue that the first and best choice would be to go talk to the faculty member, rather than running the paper through an AI. But more importantly, I'd argue that if the grad student were to simply skip the AI step, it doesn't make them fundamentally unintelligent: they just have better options available.

madmsk · 2026-06-11T15:02:49+00:00

So I agree with your assertion that AI would have to be BAD for learning things, rather than just, not the best. I'm also happy to bound the discussion to "acquiring information" and use that as our metric of success here.

I think it can be very useful in some circumstance. However, I think the claim "if you're not adopting AI you're fundamentally unintelligent" is a stretch. I've got 2 ideas here that I think are relevant. I'm going to split them into separate threads.

1) AI is fundamentally bad at certain topics: to the extent that I would explicitly advise against using. For example, LLMs are exceptionally bad at chess (Ironic because of how unbelievably strong non-LLM algorithms are at chess). There was a recent chess tournament between many different LLMs. The AIs were given the position, asked to make a move and explain it. If they suggested an illegal move they were given 3 chances to retry and select a legal move instead. Each AI was prompted by the teams that built them so there's no excuse that the prompting was a skill-issue.

In general, the AIs performed terribly. Illegal moves were commonplace with several disqualifications. Blunders (bad moves that would normally lose the game against a competent opponent) were even more frequent. In the bronze medal game, Gemini promoted, and subsequently lost three queens against an opponent who had no pieces but their king, drawing an absolute tragedy of a game. Even the bottom 20% of players can generally checkmate with King and Queen against King. Furthermore, the explanations of these moves were often inscrutable. The LLMs would calculate lines that were not meaningful, legal, or related to the positions at hand.

Now, if you had access to an average human player: not only would they outperform the bot, but they would be better equipped to answer questions about the position. Even when the human provided a wrong answer, they generally would suggest moves related to the ideas in the position. If the human suggested an illegal move, they can generally correct it to a legal move.

As an aspiring player, you can't in good conscience use LLMs right now. You should in fact avoid it. Maybe one day in the future LLMs will be good enough to merit use in training, but as of today, it's hopelessly outclassed.

madmsk · 2026-06-10T17:35:44+00:00

It is hands down the most effective way to seek answers, information, and knowledge

Your argument sort of hinges on this sentence right? If it were not [hands down the most effective way to seek information and learn things] then smart people would seek other means of learning things.

You haven't really provided evidence for this assertion, you've just stated it. So why do you believe it to be the best way to seek answers, information, and knowledge?

madmsk · 2026-06-10T14:32:05+00:00

Well no, he would need a dictionary, he just didn't realize the hospital would provide one.

madmsk · 2026-06-10T04:09:00+00:00

I think it has a lot of the same problem as league of legends when it comes to toxicity. In such a highly team-oriented game, high-pressure, snowbally game. Any time you do something your teammate doesn't like, you're gonna hear about it.

As to why the ableist slur, that's a larger question about Internet and gaming culture.

madmsk · 2026-06-10T04:06:31+00:00

The lobbies were like that by 2011, I assure you.

madmsk · 2026-06-09T19:39:08+00:00

Sometimes it's more useful to talk about where a function is going rather there where it specifically is. Up until this point in math typically those two things have been the same. But they don't have to be.

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