>“When I was younger, I used to think that my unconventional upbringing was a weakness, but over the past few years I’ve learnt to see it as one of my greatest strengths,” she says. “I never had a single thing handed to me, I had to fight for everything I wanted, like my education. When I was harassed and discriminated against, I fought as hard as I could — because I hadn’t gone through all of that, I hadn’t worked so hard my entire life, just to have someone take it away from me.”

Just survival bias, for every fighter like her there are 99 others that fell through the cracks. Not everyone is born with such a strong will to succeed.

I fail to see why her being proud of her success both despite and because of her upbringing should be cause of criticism just because she fails to acknowledge her "class peers" who failed to make it where she did... it's sort of implicit (esp. since she didn't in any way denigrate them for "not working hard enough").

I think the point is that as a group we should care about bias even though some people are able to fight through it.

It’s like people who say “how could America be racist if Obamacare got elected” which I have been hearing a lot lately. You can have a system that’s massively unfair... the existence of a handful of people who succeed despite unfairness is not evidence of anything except that some people are extraordinary.

To not expect bias for someone only talking about her own experiences (and not comparing herself to others) sounds like you're trying to be criticize for criticisms's sake.

It's the onus of FT to contextualize Ms. Fowler's comments, if that's what you're getting at, but then again, it is FT not People magazine (take it for what it's worth).

Or perhaps the world is not so black and white. Perhaps her experiences taught her things women often seem to not know. Perhaps she had various forms of support that are not obvious here.

I homeschooled my sons. Lack of formal education prior to university is not evidence that one is not getting support. There are parents that actively quash the dreams of their kids and insist the kids pursue something the parent feels matters. They push their kids into pursuing a particular path. This is often seen by outsiders as a good thing, but it usually is not. It usually means the kid never got to decide for themselves what they wanted out of life and simply did as they were told.

What's the bias here? She seems to deserve all the positive attention she gets.

Absolutely, but I think it can also be said that it's a pretty messed up system where it requires that will to succeed to have success.

Does UPenn accept average intelligence people like myself?

I think Susan is great, and she did amazing work, but she's also clearly top 1-5% brilliant. These stories give people like me false hope. As if I can pick myself up by my intellectual bootstraps and just study hard to be a physics/CS major and I'll just be able to make it into a top university.

In university I was a C physics student and maybe a B CS student. And that wasn't at a school known for academic performance. In fact, when I took calculus (with little secondary (high school education) education because I worked) even with free tutoring and doing hundreds of practice problems I only barely passed with Cs.

Going to a top university doesn't necessary correlate with having a successful career. You can definitely make a lot of money or find a lot of success even if your college academics were lacking.

I once saw a list of successful people who dropped out of either high school or college. It ranged from Peter Jennings to Steve Jobs to a number of billionaires. Very interesting.

As nice of a story it makes, those people are the exceptions. For the vast overwhelming majority of the population, secondary -> post-secondary -> graduate studies (last one optional) is the best path to "success". Those people who are able to succeed even after dropping out are the types of people who, even if they were enrolled in a small, no-name community college, would still be able to succeed, not because of their education but rather because of their personality and drive.

I wouldn't automatically put yourself into the average intelligence group. The fact that you are able to do Physics at a C means you are already way above average.

I always use to think that Intelligence was a binary black and white thing. Constantly struggling at school, understanding things in the moment but never able to recall and apply the knowledge effectively to get good grades. People would always think I was intelligent by the way I talked and thought, but looking at my grades or ability to manage daily/mundane tasks and you could see something very wrong.

I read book after book, learned about the brain, learning, memory and plethora of things in between. After developing negative feedback loops with everything, I generally accepted that I would be a failure at everything.

One day I came across a book that just explained what was fundamentally wrong. Long story short my brain couldn't focus and never did, it never developed structures necessary for success in anything let alone math, physics, computer science, music. I found a very very special treatment that can change the network in your brain responsible for focus and enhanced it.

Then all those years spending learning about improving abilities was all accessible, like someone flipped a switch and everything I read/experienced was there. Now I spend my days excelling at everything, there is not a single thing that I am not above average at and in some things far far above average. I live the Limitless movie(although its taken a year for it to be really evident) everyday of my life.

My brain has changed so fundamentally, I can't even say I am the same human being anymore. Now I spend my days trying to become a "genius" I always dreamed about and starting to understand that intelligence isn't one thing in particular its many things:

1. Focus 2. Sensory Awareness 3. Reaction time 4. Analytical Ability 5. Working and Long-term Memory 6. Creativity 7. Emotional Intelligence 8. Executive Function/Task Management

There are probably more, but those are the ones I focus my attention on. You have to find ways to improve those things, it might take a year or it might take the rest of your life. I make it my life mission to identify geniuses in any domain and learn from them. Most of my learning has come from a Kung Fu and Dance master and he excels in all these areas.

Just remember that your abilities are heavily dependent on your intellectual/emotional development. If your parents have serious limitations in those areas you will probably have them to because in your core development years you were mirroring their neurons, but that doesn't mean it can't change. The hardest part is identifying the limitations.

The brain is infinitely complex, everything you have perceived/experienced is probably there, its just a matter of how you access it. You have a universe in your brain use it. I have really only scratched the surface, because even knowing all these things is not enough. You actually have to do physically/mentally stimulating activities to develop these abilities. Even then it is luck, but not impossible.

I am not trying to inflate my ego(because that's a weakness), I am not a genius or anything special in my mind. But it is a just the reality I worked tirelessly to create and I like to share that experience.

Edited For Brevity

This is really interesting. What is that very very special treatment that can change the network in the brain responsible for focus? Any links or further details about it will be really appreciated.

It's called Neurofeedback training. I was fortunate enough to find the person who pioneered this breakthrough treatment and she was only 30min away. There are a lot of scams so please do your research and make sure the person running the clinic has academic weight. I was fortunate to find the right person. It essentially boils down to connecting your sensory system with your motor cortex and it put you into a state that high performing athletes and Buddhist monks get into. I will also mention the way I did the treatment probably gave me above average results. So if you are doing it, you should message me so I can give you the techniques I figured out in the process.

http://www.addcentre.com/

This is very interesting. I have a similar outlook on abilities as you, but only partial/lesser results so far (it's still difficult to find consistent time to develop specific skills). Actually in some ways, your story seems similar to mine. I didn't start to steadily improve until after I had good results with meditation and learning to keep my circadian rhythm in check.

Email me; I'd love to compare notes and also pick your brain.

Please send me an email, I'm very curious about this, it sounds amazing.

Thanks for the information. I will check them out.

You don't have an email in your profile.

Rarely are people truly inherently smarter than everyone else. All of our brains work differently; some of us respond to learning environments, others don't. Take things like IQ tests as a grain of salt; it's just another tool of hierarchy. Find the environment/learning style that works best for you.

>physicist and computer scientist,

Don't you need a degree in computer science to be called computer scientist.

Not sure if i'd call every software programmer a 'computer scientist'.

Merely mentioning this bad apparently. downvotes.

I think it's being downvoted because it comes over as uncharitable and even petty.

A computer scientist is one who practises and/or studies computer science, which she does. No, that doesn't require a CS degree, though it helps.

I think its overly charitable to call someone computer scientist because they write code. Feels very silly and fake, something done to boost up the credentials. sorry.

I mean, she wrote an O'Reilly book about microservice design. I don't think she's really hurting for credentials.

Have you looked at other people on the list.

Elected First female Chancellor of Germany vs wrote a book about microservices.

Yes hurting for credentials in this context. Most people have no idea who she is, her only claim to fame is writing that blogpost.

>call someone computer scientist because they write code

You're the only one doing this. The article omits any justification for the terms, sure. And it could be a baseless claim. But I don't really see any reason to assume that's the case.