What good is G-factor if you're dumped in the woods? A field report from a camp counselor.

He noticed one with only one eye, approached it from the side with no vision, grabbed it, and proudly presented it to the counselor in charge of fishing...Unfortunately, he seems to have interpreted this new system as “win untraceably,” and then was traced trying to poison another camper by exploiting their allergy. He’s one of two campers out of several thousand I worked with that we had to send home early for behavior issues...Addendum: he harassed and kept catching the poor half-blind fish for the duration of the stay, likely because he got so much positive attention the first time he caught it.

"When Your Child Is a Psychopath" comes to mind... (Remember, 1% adult prevalence.) In addition to the attention, he may just have enjoyed abusing the animal; that's one of the most striking childhood traits.

So the smarter one made rapid progress in novel (to them) environments, then revealed they were unaligned, and then the first round of well established alignment strategies caused them to employ deceptive alignment strategies, you say.

Hmmmm.

My childhood was quite different, in that I was quite kind-hearted, honest, and generally obedient to the letter of the law... but I was constantly getting into trouble in elementary school. I just kept coming up with new interesting things to do that they hadn't made an explicit rule against yet. Once they caught me doing the new thing, they told me never to do it again and made a new rule. So then I came up with a new interesting thing to try.

How about tying several jump ropes together to make a longer rope, tying a lasso on one end, lassoing an exhaust pipe on the roof of the one-story flat-roofed school, and then climb-walking up the wall onto the roof of the school? Oh? That's against the rules now? Ok. 

How about digging a tunnel under a piece of playground equipment which had an extended portion touching the ground, and then having fun crawling through the ~4ft long tunnel? No tunneling anymore? Ok.

How about taking off my shoes and socks and shinnying up the basketball hoop support pole? No? Ok.

Finding interesting uses for various plant materials collected from the borders of the playground... banned one after another.

An endless stream of such things.

My principal was more amused and exasperated with me than mad.

I added the Parenting tag [? · GW]. I don't think it is literally fitting as Hastings was not tasked with parenting per se, but I like how he approached his responsibility role to the children at the camps. 

I'd like to hear more about your methods, Hastings. 

As I read this, I actually put myself into his shoes, as another quirky gifted kid...but MY very first impulse upon reading about the fish was that my younger self would have insisted on putting him into an aquarium, keeping him there all summer (along with whatever other critters we can find: frogs, crayfish, snails, salamanders), releasing them on the final day.  Vote on names for him and his friends too.  Even back then I had zero interest in any Quien Es Mas Macho status games, but bring an animal into the mix and I am there front and center.

Same planet, different universes...

Oh my, I hope your sanity is holding. 

In a sort of morbid way, seems like things are working as intended - the "sharp" fella is winning social battles (invented or not) and keep exploiting the ever widening strategy space. Emboldened, he quickly gets to the "this is the line and no further" boundary of his current strategy. But instead of modifying it and keep his old strategy as a tool in his arsenal, he over-exploit it and disrupts the equilibrium so much he gets kicked out. 

The LessWrong Review [? · GW] runs every year to select the posts that have most stood the test of time. This post is not yet eligible for review, but will be at the end of 2025. The top fifty or so posts are featured prominently on the site throughout the year.

Hopefully, the review is better than karma at judging enduring value. If we have accurate prediction markets on the review results, maybe we can have better incentives on LessWrong today. Will this post make the top fifty?

My instinct is also pulling me to think this kid is psychopathic, but drawing this kind of conclusions about some kid we hardly know anything about... it doesn't seem to help anyone. I would not read too much into the fish-catching thing either. I think we could at least say this kid probably does not score very high in terms of collaboration, right? I wonder if the kid just generally didn't show a strong inclination to seek help. If you don't want to get other people involved, sitting there just observing the fish might be a natural thing to do, and if you observe for long enough, realizing you can try catching a half-blind fish might just dawn on you. So I am not sure if this instance is that strongly related to intelligence.

Maybe we can say G-factor matters a lot in the woods if you are not very big on collaboration / playing nice. Humans evolved being social animals and the G-factor probably does not matter much if you are surviving in the woods with a group of other humans. In this case, collaboration and not being a jerk are vital for survival. But, imagine if that's not the thing for you. First, it means you are probably going to have a lot more alternative activities---like when other people are already having fun hunting together using tools that belongs to the group and you don't have a goto-person to get you integrated into the activity. You have to do something else. And if you are smart enough, that could still make you quite useful in the group as the eccentric R&D person. Though... if you are smart but too uncollaborative, then intelligence might actually save / extend your life when the group decides to throw you out.

With stories like this, I think it's important to also resist the stereotypical myths that being extremely intelligent and being not-very-nice are correlated, or somehow intelligence alone is enough (I am not anti-intelligence and I think it'll be good if everyone can get more of it). Resisting this myth is important because the opposite is dangerous. Someone who is both smart, collaborative, and has a genuinely kind heart will probably do best. And someone who is smart, knows how to act collaboratively, but is slightly “misaligned” in some other ways (e.g., out to maximize their own gains over the long run) will be effective. Then, someone who is smart, but fails to even pretend to be collaborative and cannot act as if they are nice will... get thrown out of the group pretty soon. In an actual forest situation, they might last a bit longer than usual, but probably not long enough to reproduce again. So I'd say G-factor is not necessary or sufficient in even the forest.