"A man was sentenced to death, but the king wanted to give him a last chance. He asked the man to choose from one of the three knights that were there. One of the knights was the Knight of Life, and he always told the truth. The second Knight was the Knight of Death, and he always told lies. The third knight was the Knight of the Dungeon. He sometimes lied and sometimes told the truth. If the man chose the Knight of Death, he would be executed before sunset. If he chose the Knight of Life, he would be acquitted and set free right away. If he chose the Knight of the Dungeon, he would spend the rest of his life imprisoned in the Dungeon. The man was allowed to ask the three knights one question each. Thus, he asked the fat knight, "What is the name of this tall knight?" The reply was, "He is the Knight of Life." He asked the small knight, "What is the name of this tall knight?" The reply was, "He is the Knight of Death." Then he asked the tall knight, "Who are you?" "I am the Knight of the Dungeon" was the reply. After that, the man was able to correctly choose the Knight of Life, and was set free immediately. Who is the Knight of Life, and who are the other two knights?"

This puzzle seemed beautiful to me because it was so pure. If you can understand English, then you have the potential to solve it.

My friend solved it in about forty seconds, according to him. I solved it in over twenty minutes, and only after being wrong once.

I am an extremely slow programmer. I have had the good fortune of being around many productive programmers, so I know this to be the case. I used to make excuses as to why I was so. But in the end, it doesn't really matter; I am wrong 90% more often than I am correct, and I act stupidly most of the time. My memory is so horrible that I routinely forget the start of the sentences I am writing. I often re-read what I write (be it English or C++) over ten times before I am satisfied it means what I meant. My mathematical skills are a wash. (I still don't even understand the meaning and utility of 'e', and not for lack of trying.) My mind's eye is blind; I find it almost impossible to imagine what a given figure should look like, if I am about to draw it, so something such as Paul's painting http://bookshop.gfu.net/AxCMSTemplates_GFU/pics/products/013... seems nothing short of magic. My hand-eye coordination is decent, but not great. My reflexes are decent, but not great. So in summary, I feel I am decent, but not great; but I have an overwhelming appetite to be great.

I don't want to give up on becoming a genius, and I don't want to believe that I cannot become one just because I wasn't born one.

    fat:   "tall is Life"
    small: "tall is Death"
    tall:  "tall is Dungeon"

Now, one of the other two must be Life (because tall isn't), and so one of them must be telling the truth about tall. He's called Death and Life, so he must be one of them. We know he can't be Life, so tall is definitely Death.

Whoever called him Death was telling the truth, and must be Life. Only small called him Death, so small is Life. (edit I should have said: Life must be telling the truth about him, so if only one of them does that, that one is Life).

And the remaining guy - fat - must be the remaining knight - Dungeon. Dungeon can lie or truth, so it doesn't matter what he said (in fact, he was lying: he said tall was Life, when tall was Death). It only mattered what he said so we could distinguish between him and small.

    fat   is Dungeon
    small is Life
    tall  is Death

If the second guy is lying, that means we know the two liars and the third must be Life. But he says he isn't. Therefore, the second knight is Life, the third is Dungeon, and the first is Death.

But solving a puzzle isn't genius. It's logic. Some people spend much more time with logic than others: programmers have lots of games like these. The Blue Eyes puzzle comes to mind as a particularly hard one. Similarly, the more people program, the more they learn mental shortcuts that let them be more productive. Time fixes everything, and the best attribute to fix things is passion. You've got that. You just need to make sure to unfailingly look for whatever your goal is, and to learn everything you need to pursue it. Remember: there's more to building something than programming.

Let me try to prove this from a different direction. You've probably heard of Henry Molaison, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HM_(patient) ... His hippocampus was surgically removed, rendering him unable to form new memories. Do you truly believe it would have been possible for him to build Quake 3 just because he was overwhelmingly passionate about doing so?

So I solved that puzzle quick-ish. But then, as a kid I played logic games to pass time. Other kids would play sports, and I'd pore through books of puzzles and solve them. So suddenly I'm able to do that. But it means that now, as a freshman at the gym, I'm operating as a near-pathetic level. For Christmas I got two 30-pound weights because that's a level that's easy for bench and hard for curls. But compared to my roommate? That's nothing. He does 50s for light workout. It's because he's spent much more time doing that than me.

There are always impediments. The best trick is to figure out how best to work around them and do what you want anyway. Figure out where you best fit in to the process of creation. Look at the top Apple team. Steve Jobs and Tim Cook and Jony Ive - the three I know of best - are quite different people. Jobs is hotheaded. Cook is known for incredible stamina but he's not a design guy. Ive is all design, nothing else. They're very different people who excel at doing a few things very well, and they work together to create their brilliant products.

However, that rarely matters as much as it's emphasized. The more you focus on something, the more brilliant your end results will seem.

Next question: how do you determine whether you're born with it? At what point does your demonstrated ineptitude force you to admit that you are incapable of realizing your goals?

("you" doesn't refer to you specifically, obviously. I just talk in the active voice.)

However, if you give up, you'll never know if you could have been. The struggle is what makes it so hard, but it's what makes it worth it in the end.

Not all of the YC startups that failed have failed just because the founders stopped working on them, I'd imagine. At what point should you let failure overwhelm you?

I'd bet that most of the failing YC founders learned important lessons from their failures. Nobody succeeds every time.

The problem is, it is not at all a foregone conclusion that you will become one of the greats just because you throw most of your life at it. Should a retard give up on his life's goals sooner, later, or ever?

How disciplined are you? Everyone values genius, welcome to the crowd. It is a convenient excuse to obsess on others' talent as if genes and childhood were all that separated you from them. You appear to be focusing too much on outcome rather than on the hard work necessary to achieve it. Skills always look natural from the outside! But ask the honest, reflective people you admire and they'll tell you: they worked their butts off on fundamentals. Psst: fundamentals are open to you too.

Don't obsess over shortcuts. I would love to see you explain to a person with no arms how you'd gladly cut yours off for slightly better gray matter.

Practice with intense effort. If forum composition and wordsmithing is a challenge, discipline your technique by journaling stream-of-consciousness. To improve your memory treat it like a muscle: high reps, low weight at first.

How is your health? Do you exercise, eat right, avoid alcohol, have a positive attitude and sleep well? These are simple but powerful levers.

Talent is overrated. Upgrade your attitude not your physical brain, silly. :)

Not to mention: as you go for it, you find better and better people along the way.

It's hard not to be devilishly jealous of their towering talent, though. Also, I'd imagine it would be extremely hard to earn their respect, so it they would be hard or impossible to find, or to keep.

You bring up a really interesting point. To me, doing the work myself matters more than realizing the vision. I never knew that about myself before, so thank you.

I'm not really sure that intelligence matters as much as people think it does. K.A. Ericsson is a psychologist who studies expert performance, and he's clearly shown that a high iq is not required to become an expert in something. What is required is 1000's of hours of deliberate practice. So basically when you see overnight successes, you're really missing the hard work that got them there. Everyone needs to put in the effort.

And besides research is coming out that really supports the idea that intelligence can be raised. There is some evidence that practicing the Dual-n-back test will raise your fluid iq. And the test isn't domain specific. http://cognitivefun.net/test/5 is a good site for the test.The community there is also really good.

Which one is the best programming candidate? :)

Not much finesse in that (possible) solution to your problem, but it sounds like you don't have many options.

I don't think Methylphenidate is an amphetamine. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ritalin

My brain basically broke it down like this: 1. Anyone saying someone else is the knight of life must be either the dungeon or the death. i. If the person he said is the knight of life, calls himself the knight of life then things get complicated... ii. Luckily the person that was called the knight of life, in fact called himself dungeon, which means that neither could be the knight of life. 2. Since the knight of life is the small, believe what he says. The tall = death. 3. This leaves only the Fat to be paired with the dungeon.

Fun puzzle.