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Comment by ansible | Hacker News Reader

On a similar note, I once read that reaction time and IQ are correlated (not sure how strongly), which is interesting because you might expect motor functions like that to be orthogonal to higher-order cognitive abilities.

Speed is good, in many contexts. Say you've two people, and person A has overall cognitive speed 25% greater than the other.

That doesn't just help with Jeopardy!, it gives you 25% more time to think in normal conversations, on SAT tests, while playing video games, at work, etc.

Even a 10% slower speed differential from a baseline human is a big, big disadvantage.

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> Even a 10% slower speed differential from a baseline human is a big, big disadvantage.

This would make sense if all thinking is equal and only the rate of thinking varies. In practice, the quality of thought processes seems much more important than the the rate at which such processes are carried out.

For example, attempting to assess "cognitive speed" can be very dangerous in interviews. It seems like such a promising metric. A candidate who answers questions 10% faster than average will generally be much more impressive than a candidate who answers questions 10% slower than average, and it's tempting to think person A will be 22% more productive. Of course, over time, it may turn out that he occasionally provides more bad solutions to problems, or can only solve superficial problems, or solves the wrong problems. And you realize the person who consistently solves problems correctly (albeit at a slower pace) is a better choice than the person who introduces new problems as quickly as he solves existing problems.

It could always be argued that person B is actually thinking faster, but thinking through the problem much more carefully, causing him to verbalize his answer later. Or perhaps both people are thinking at the same speed, but person B has simply thought more. Maybe person B is actually thinking slower but more effectively. From an outsider's perspective, we can't know what's happening under the hood, which makes "cognitive speed" a weak metric for judging effectiveness in practice.

This. You want some easy proof? Watch a video of Steve Jobs answering questions, like the WWDC 1997 Q&A video. Time how long it takes him before he starts speaking after the questions are asked, and note the quality of the answer.

Yes, but presumably in those long pauses, a faster thinker would have time to consider more possible replies, make predictions on how the audience would receive them, and generally make more adjustments and improvements than a slower thinker.

In other words, faster cognition would probably help you formulate a slow, considered reply just as much as it would help you answer more quickly. That might be especially helpful in a public speech to a group asking unplanned questions.

I agree with freyr, though, that quality of cognition/ideation matters more than speed, and doubt that 'thinking speed' is necessarily correlated to better thought output.

Like IQ itself, faster basic cognition probably means something, but I don't think anybody knows what it means or how (or even if) it relates to "intelligence" (whatever that means).

In my personal experience, I have seen more great ideas and solutions come from "weird thinkers" than "fast thinkers". I realize that sentence does reduce to the cliche, "Think outside the box, bro," but it seems true over the course of all that I have observed in my own life.

In that example, it may also simply have been that Jobs had been prepped (or prepped himself) thoroughly with answers to a lot of likely questions.

I don't put a lot of credence to the speed thing here. I know one senior executive who made a point of writing down question on cards when he was asked them live at an event. Which I always thought was a rather clever approach to 1.) Make sure he understood the question correctly and 2.) To give himself some time to formulate the best response.

In practice, the quality of thought processes seems much more important than the the rate at which such processes are carried out.

Of course the quality of thought matters.

But if you have two individuals that have the same quality, but different speeds, the faster one will seem smarter.

Think of a fast flowing conversation. A slower thinker is going to miss references and associations that a faster one will get. So the faster thinker will learn more from the conversation, and be able to participate more. This has many benefits.

Reaction time is good in general, but rather useless in the traditional IQ tests, i.e. culture-neutral multiple choice pattern-based questions. If you are 25% faster than your neighbour it gives you the benefit of the additional 25% of the reaction time, not total answering time, which is usually much larger in the context of IQ tests. Or nearly any test, for that matter.

Oh, sorry if I wasn't clear. Reaction time is strongly correlated with the overall speed of brain function. So it applies to other brain operations too.

Normal IQ tests should also contain a computerized part where you have to react and solve problems on a computer with a time limit. Last time I did that, they still used Win2000, but I can only imagine this increased.

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