Maybe you're looking in the wrong place. I don't think groups promising intelligence are a great place to look for intelligence (unless that "promise" is just your supposition, and not their claim).
Either that, or you're looking for the wrong thing. I'm not sure what you're trying to find there, but I find most people purporting to be intellectuals really just want to spew opinions and not be interrupted.
I enjoy the company of people with passion, more than I do that of "smart" people. Passionate people are experts at something, and they have something to teach me.
> I enjoy the company of people with passion, more than I do that of "smart" people. Passionate people are experts at something, and they have something to teach me.
I wish I could upvote this a million times over.
I've often found that groups proposing to be built of smart people are often as not built of over-opinionated pretentious people who've come to believe they are intelligent through one way or another. It's why I've avoided high-IQ societies and the like. It's just a bother and I don't think I'm particularly enriched by them.
I've actually found that I do like energetic, "passionate", self-aware people more, which is probably why I've hung around HN so long.
Dunning-Kruger societies.
I used to associate with a bunch of people who self-identified as "being smart". Trying to fit in led me to form the terrible habit of never saying "I don't know".
I've since met a number of genuinely smart people, and they are typically driven by curiosity and delight in learning, not pretension.
This sounds a bit narcissistic. If you think other people's problems are trivial, maybe you're just not being empathic enough to understand their full scope.
If everything looks like it follows simple patterns, maybe you just aren't looking close enough.
When you learn something new, there's often this point where you feel you understand it all. If you're a quick learner, you will reach this point quickly. But things only seem simple because you don't understand them fully yet. You have to continue learning, specialising, looking at the details, and only then will you learn that the subject isn't quite as simple as you thought.
You get bored when you figure out what kind of car someone has, or what color their furniture has. You think you have them all figured out. But if you continue talking to these shallow people, you might see there's something beyond these superficial details.
I know. That's the trouble with talking about growing up or being highly intelligent, you end up sounding like a narcissistic prick.
Even saying something like "I've tested in the top 1-2% of dozens of aptitude and intelligence tests" sounds like I'm lording it over those who haven't. But I don't think it's really all that different than saying "I'm taller than 99% of the population". Except tall people, or people with some other exceptional attribute can get together and commiserate about their exceptional attribute without the kinds of social stigma attached to it that intelligence does.
It's very hard to have an honest discussion about being smart without diving into lots of euphemisms and using lots of humbling verbiage.
Most people's problems are simple. They just don't want to fix them because the emotional cost for them is high. So they endlessly try to find ways to solve their problems with the minimum of emotional impact and they make no progress. Getting past your own emotions to make forward progress with your life is the best skill almost anybody can make with respect to solving the problems in their life.
It's not easy, and I don't mean to minimize the impact emotions have. It was definitely a difficult skill for me to learn (and I'm still learning it).
But take money, every single person's money problem is solved with the very simple "don't spend more than you earn". Yet there are literally hundreds of thousands of pages written on financial advice and dealing with personal debt. We think it's a complicate topic, and we treat it like it is, but it's not.
I've found that most problems people deal with are similar.
I'm pretty overweight, and when I think it's a problem, I come up with all kinds of excuses about it and how to solve it and endlessly mill about not doing anything. But it's hilariously simple for me to solve: exercise more, eat less. But I struggle with it like many people struggle with money or relationships or whatever.
You've framed this incorrectly. The reason you ended up sounding like a narcissistic prick is because you were being a narcissistic prick. Perhaps you were just reducing his point to something a little too trivially simple.
There's nothing wrong with saying things like "I've tested in the top 1-2% of dozens of aptitude and intelligence tests". That doesn't sound narcissistic. Making the unsubstantiated claim that you are so smart that the problems of 'normal' people are trivially simple to solve and shall be disregarded is narcissistic. Especially when, once called out on that claim, you respond with an example fit perfectly to your honestly very narrow solution and cover every other scenario with an aloof "well, some problems do get complex".
Honestly, it sounds like jakobe was dead on. If the world seems so simple to you, you're probably not looking close enough. If you really are so good at coming up with solutions to the problems of the world, I hope you're spending your time improving it for yourself and those around you in truly substantial ways.
> If the world seems so simple to you, you're probably not looking close enough.
Funny, the closer I look, the more locally simple everything seems. It's how we learn, how we work and how we simply do things. Take things that are too big to do and break them down until they're simple enough to do. You can't move a mountain all at once, but you can move it if you blow it up into truck sized pieces.
There's nothing in the world that a person does that's more complex than what a person can do.
If the world seems complex too you, maybe you should just look more closely?
> If you really are so good at coming up with solutions to the problems of the world, I hope you're spending your time improving it for yourself and those around you in truly substantial ways.
I hope I am too. With great power comes great responsibility, no? I'm definitely not working on the next photo sharing app if that's your implication.
When you think most problems people deal with are simple and similar. Take your example, overweighted. You think the solution is simple: exercise more, eat less. Usually it's from an engineer's brain. But probably, you forgot to take your excuses into consideration, that's why you over simplified it. Then you struggled with it like many other people. If you do take all of the aspects into consideration, it's no longer simple any more.
When you easily felt bored after you have learn something new, I think it's lacking of depth to learn it more or to find more fundamental problems in it before you skip it.
I agree with you in most of the points, but I wish I could see that you can really dive into something and make it a big different for the world. If you cannot find anything with enough challenge for you, you may want to visit here: http://kck.st/JNqv8z because most people think that they are overwhelmed.
But it is, that's my point. If I went out and jogged instead of being on HN, and cut my portions by 25-30%, I'd be fit as a fiddle. But I simply don't do it because <excuses>. There's nothing complicated about it at all.
This is a problem that so many people are fighting against, and mostly we are losing. Exercise may help, eat less may help, they are not ultimate solutions. The fundamental thing or the root cause is that our metabolism becomes slow which tends to accumulate more fat, and the energy being absorbed from food is not enough per meal, so we tend to eat more. Increasing the quality of food without junk, all organic and fresh, no transgenes, no trans-fat, is the ultimate solution along with regular exercise. But we may not be able to afford or be willing to pay the cost for staying healthy. It has a long term impact.
Just go here and get your TDEE: http://www.1percentedge.com/ifcalc/
Then calorie count by being a lazy man and getting all of your meals from various chains and easily measured prepackaged foods. A good combo that works for me is a small breakfast of egg whites & salsa, or some sort of veggie or yogurt snack of about 200 calories max. Then for lunch I have a 750 calorie footlong sub from subway and a 700 calorie burrito bowl from chipolte. I avoid liquid calories, take a multivitamin and drink a bunch of water before every meal. I snack on raw vegetables without dip and I also measure the calorie impact of that. I also measure myself every day with a fitbit aria scale so I don't even have to both to write it down. After you get to your goal weight you keep on measuring with the scale to nip weight gain trends in the bud. This works and is fairly affordable.
Just eying your meals and reducing portions is too imprecise. A small burger that fits in the palm of my hand can have the same amount of calories as a footlong sandwich 3 to 4 times the size and you can infuriatingly torture yourself for months on end with no progress. Just be precise and do it right the first time.
This is going to come across as prickish, I'm not meaning it with that tone, but here's an example:
1) Costs are more than income? Earn more money.
2) "But where I live has a shitty economy and there are no jobs that pay more that I'm qualified for"
Then your options are: move to someplace with better pay potential, work more jobs, downsize your life, earn the necessary qualifications for more money. Can't decide? Roll the dice and pick one.
3) But I have <insert expense here>.
Then get rid of that expense. It's possible to live on very very little. When people here talk about what they need to live vs. what they want, even those that advocate for the most spartan existence way over inflate the basic needs.
Oh, it's your children? Yeah, that's tough. I didn't say I could solve all your problems, just that they were simple. You shouldn't have had kids if you couldn't afford to support them. If you are in that bad of shape, you might want to consider giving your kids up for adoption. Sucks, but it's probably best for them.
Yeah of course there are unexpected "shit happens" problems, got cancer or hurricane wipes out the local economy or whatever. And sometimes that does make things complex. But most people I've encountered have problems like this notional money problem because they:
a) buy more stuff than they can afford, going into massive debt
b) make poor life choices that feel emotionally good at that time, and assume expenses they can't handle, but could have controlled at some point and now want a solution for the pile of disaster they're in. It's sometimes buying a new car, or having kids or buying too big a house or whatever.
For example, I have a close friend who has a habit of making poor life choices. He's divorced twice, different kids by each mother, pays over 65% of his income in child support and alimony, buys used cars with exceptionally low reliability and poor gas mileage, never educated himself or got any work certificates or anything so his salary without those weights isn't all that great anyways, and now that he's in this pinch wonders how to solve his rather significant money problems. It seems very complex to him and trying to emotionally process and talk about the well of failure he's found himself in has gotten him nowhere.
Here's the simple solution in 10 steps with a 3 step discount.
Step 1) Stop getting married and producing children.
Step 2) Stop buying shitty cars. In the long run it costs more. Go to the free library, get a copy of consumer reports and find cars that have exception reliability and low mpg as a used car. Buy that.
Step 3) Get an education or at least a certificate in something to make you more marketable. The library and internet is free and has all the information he needs to at least get read up to pass a basic certification in something.
Step 4) Stop getting fired from jobs for "getting sick" and not showing up on time.
Step 5) Use that work history and education/qualifications to get another, better job/fight for promotions at work.
Step 6) In the while, do side jobs that pay only in cash and don't report it. (I didn't say solving it was legal or ethical, only that it's simple)
Step 7) Stop buying useless shit he can't afford. He tells me all the time about this or that concert he just went to, or the new costume he's getting for the cosplay competition at the local comic convention or the new game he just bought. Stop it.
$1/10 packs Ramen noodles, rice and 1/3 can of spam or a can of tuna per day with vitamin supplements should be his new diet. Splurge once a week at Taco Bell for a treat.
Option) Think about a different career path. IT isn't working for him, maybe working at Costco is a better option. Decent pay, excellent benefits, good work environment.
Maybe go be a waiter, there are always jobs available waiting tables. It's a quick road to $3 or $4k a month, which is more than he makes. Plus lots of tips are cash making it easy to come home with a pocket of spending money that he wouldn't need to report and keep away from his ex-wives.
It'll take a few years to dig out of, but it's completely doable and not quantum rocket surgery to solve. It's not complex, it's simple. He just needs to do it.
The TL;DR, grew up pretty poor, came out of that environment with lots of burdens, did exactly what I said above and now am not poor anymore. It sucked, hard, but it's possible. And it's more possible to do it before you make lots of bad decisions that make it even harder to crawl out of. But it's not very complex to do.
Yeah it gives me sympathy, but it gives me a realistic pragmatism too and practical experience simply doing it.
But regardless, I've seen and helped many people who came from much worse backgrounds than I did to do the same and live comfortable productive lives.
I've traveled quite a bit, to some pretty hellish areas, and I know what you are talking about.
I think you put down "Africa" China and Brazil too much. China and Brazil are paradises compared to some of the places I've been. And much of Africa is pretty decent these days comparatively. If you work hard and have good money discipline in any of those places you can probably eek out an okay living. I've seen people eek out passable livings in active war zones. I'd leave, but you know, staying on ancestral lands or whatever is their choice. Their neighbors who did leave lead much better lives. There's always a way.
It's not complex, but it's not always easy.
> life can throw unavoidable things at people, like maybe they had to take care of a sick relative
If you read what I've written here, you'll see that I've already acknowledged that sometimes shit happens and there's no way to readily solve it. But these are outlier atypical scenarios. We can come up with these all day: gas main exploded destroying my house, meteor falls from space and destroys their car, hurricane and tsunami levels the local economy, got cancer, etc.
Yeah that stuff is hard and can be complex. But for most people, most places and most of the time, their problems are not complex and aren't difficult to surmount.
If I were to wake up tomorrow and decide "I want to solve this weight problem" I know exactly what to do and how to do it. There's a clear path from problem to solution and there's nothing complicated about it. It might not be fun, and it might take a while, solutions aren't guaranteed to offer immediate gratification, but it's absolutely trivially solvable.
And that's the point. The kinds of normal problems people struggle with are usually pretty easy to solve, but they just don't for <reasons>. And they'll have those problems until they simple decide to stop having that problem and solve it. There's nothing complicated about their issues, and often the solution is trivially simple, but they don't because they haven't decided to.
They add all kinds of conditions and oddball requirements (e.g. "I need to make more money, but I need to stay here, doing this exact job that's not paying me enough because I have lots of friends here."). That's not deciding to solve their problem.
Physical, emotional, and mental energy are required to pull through these "simple" habits and behaviors, which makes these neither easy nor fun. We seek out advice and shortcuts so that we don't require as much energy to make these transformations. It's a sustained kind of energy to move away from ingrained habits or lifestyles.
Pressures around you tend to keep you where you are (mentally, physically, and emotionally). I would say that even making a decision to change your life is out of the norm and requires a rare kind of commitment and energy.
I think it all comes down to the fact that people don't like change. People associate comfort with consistency and conformity. Network effects compound this effect.
It looks like his genes are smarter than yours.
I find very hard to be in a "regular" conversation. Bored/dislike me pop, realities, and the normal kind of conversation that people have. Even if I understand that some of that conversations are important or are NOT stupid, still, I can't plug in. Neither talk by phone, or use any kind of chat or social app (even before all that NSA stuff!).
Boy, how I regret pass my time in a library, all days, all the time...
* The library was mid-sized, and that was the section for kids. Next I move to the full big one, but then I have get out of school, need work, and that kill it...
I read this and immediately thought "Oh, I must be gifted and suffering from this, because in high school I was good at computers, english, science, basic algebra, and geometry and ended up with a useless degree and a bad job."
I don't know if I really am gifted, but it's easy to latch onto anything that explains my situation and places the blame on something else besides myself. Guess I like the idea of being a gifted victim.
I'm sad and feel sad. :(
Take advantage of your merits and avoid the shortcomings by making appropriate decisions towards your job and future endeavor. But how?
First of all, you are not a gifted victim. What you need to do is to uplift yourself to take more challenges and opportunities in your life instead of being buried in your bad job and sadness.
Second, do more research to find the area you are most interested in and dive into that. If you cannot concentrate on certain field or topic, that's a different issue, part of which is regarding the EQ.
Wow. Just wow.
"a wife who's smarter than me"
Would love to know what metric you use to determine that she is smarter than you are. (I have some guesses of course but would rather hear why you think that and then reply with my thoughts.) I don't think it's a simple as "she keeps me on my toes".
I told myself, "I can't let her do that to me again", because it didn't feel good to actually really lose an argument because the other person was authentically correct and I was wrong.
And then it happened again and again.
I had never met another human being where that happened, ever.
If I feel this confident about my argument, it means I usually know it well enough that I can out argue anybody, it got me out of lots of fist fights in school, but also into lots of trouble with my teachers as I disassembled their lessons -- literary symbolism was a bad class for me for example as I challenged many of the asserted symbols and interpretations.
If I don't know it well enough I usually just keep quiet about it or don't get involved in a debate in the first place, and instead sit back and quietly learn.
But with her, she was able to, with less information, completely out-think me. To this day she still does it with alarming regularity.
She's been amazing, she helps me clarify my thinking and keep focused and not get caught up in negative thinking and actions too much. She comes up with and gives me constant challenges that take years to complete and keep me engaged in constructive positive thinking rather than destructive/deconstructive thinking. She's helped me get past decades of hurt and social isolation from my childhood and has literally polished me into a productive member of society.
Wow that's really interesting and great as well. [1]
Won't get into why I think my wife is "smart" and won't say anymore lest she reads this and the wrong thing happens! (I'll leave it at that).
That said I'm always amazed at the number of people I've run into who think there is some downside to not having a basically "stupid" woman that is totally dependent on the husband. I've had people actually question why I would want to be married to someone who is "smart". (My wife is a Physician so people automatically think "smart"). [2]
[1] Typically when someone thinks someone is smart [3] it's because they know something the other person doesn't and can run circles around them. (Reason why people say "he's really good with computers" in other words anything more than what they know is "really smart".)
Anyway in the case of what you have presented above you say:
a) "In a debate I'm usually able to rationally disassemble another person's arguments and "win"'
(So you think you are good at this)
then
b) "I remember the moment that she presented her argument and it was different than mine and I realized she was absolutely correct "
(So you see she is better at something you think you are really good at that really intesifies things since you have a point of reference (whereas people evaluating the computer guy have less of that for sure)
c) "And then it happened again and again."
d) "I had never met another human being where that happened, ever."
So you are in awe of her because your metric is your own intelligence which you have already figured out is quite high. And you have proof of that from past experience.
[2] I dated another woman who was a Physician and she didn't know you couldn't heat a pizza in a pizza box in other words that paper burned in the oven. (really). So much for that type of smarts.
[3] Edit: Other than the obvious markers like degree, grades, job title etc.
Yeah, I suppose that would be the metric then!
It's fantastic to have somebody, everyday, who constantly challenges me and forces me to exercise my mind.
I would definitely have had trouble with a "trophy" wife...and actually I find that I get along better with men who have highly intelligent wives better than men who have hot trophy wives.
"Trophy" wife does NOT mean "not intelligent".
So for example one wouldn't have called Hillary Clinton a "trophy wife" because although she is quite accomplished she is not really of the grade of looks that would be "trophy" (in the common usage).
Ok so now I go and seek the definition on the internet to see what it says. And it says this:
"a young, attractive wife regarded as a status symbol for an older man."
That said of course you are right that "trophy wife" does not mean "not intelligent" but that is most likely the assumption that the majority of people are making.
In particular, how smart are such people?
Is it an incorrect assumption if people are simply using what they have learned from others over time as far as what the word appears to mean?
In other words if you think that a "PC" is an IBM PC even though a Mac is a "PC" isn't that ok?
I say the ubiquitous definition is such that there is very little you will be able to do to change that.
What we are talking about is defacto vs. dejure. Dejure you are right. Defacto though seems to indicate "such people" are right.
Furthermore, it's kind of weird to talk about intelligence in terms of levels. I know plenty of people who are smarter than me in certain fields, but I don't think I've ever met someone who was objectively smarter than me in every way, to the point where I could separate us into different classes of intelligence. In my experience, the IQ model is flawed: intelligence is much more fluid, and exists on many more axes, than we give it credit for.
There was a Reddit comment I read a while ago — I wish I could find it again! — where the author tried to describe what it would be like to have a Lex Luthor level of genius. You'd be able to effortlessly do anything you wanted. Ideas would immediately come together in your head. Even the most complex branches of science would be as easy as basic algebra. Everyone's problems would seem so simple and naive, but it would make it hard to relate to people. That's kinda what this comment read like to me.
(Sorry if I'm wrong, bane.)
This is actually a very well studied and successful field. In fact it's so successful, it makes those kinds of predictions possible, if you follow me.
Certain things are marketed to certain kinds of people because they're inclined to buy them, based on that person's self-perception.
The products/neighborhoods that are successful are the ones that are most successful at predicting what particular people will like, which in turn makes those choices more predictable for a given individual.
It's a Darwinian feedback process, almost. If the choices weren't predictable, they wouldn't have been available to have been made.
There's a specific reason I'm not inserting IQ into what I'm talking about, I agree that it's not a good focal point for a discussion about intelligence.
And I'm not saying I have perfect prediction of human behavior. Just that, with many people, if I spend enough time observing them, I can start to predict what they'll do or say with better than chance accuracy. The best analogy I can give is not Sherlock Holmes, but Groundhog day. What people miss in that movie is that the main character (Phil Connors played by Bill Murray) is spending his time mapping out the behavior patterns of the girl of his dreams (Rita by Andie MacDowell) to see if he can find the behavior pathways that will lead to her falling in love with him (or sleeping with him depending on your take on the story). Many people follow routines and habits, and if you observe them long enough it's like spending the same "day" over and over with them. You can start to mentally note and map out their behavior and then start making predictions about that behavior.
Most people do it all the time, we track what foods or films or whatever our friends like and dislike, and then make recommendations to them, or buy them presents based on that. We know them, so we think we can predict their behavior on a like/dislike vector. But what if you observed other things? Say you find a friend has an extreme allergy to milk and milk products. You can guess then that, if they drink coffee, they'll use a milk substitute, maybe soy. If they use soy, and you know what stores in their area carry soy milk and which don't and the ones that do are only the vegetarian stores, then you might be able to make a probabilistic guess that they're vegetarian. If they're vegetarian, you know there aren't many restaurants that are vegetarian in their area, so they probably cook at home, meaning they have a decent kitchen. So you can guess they have decent cookware, guessing at their income level you can guess if it's $100 an item cookware of $1000 an item cookware. There's only so many vendors at each price point for that, and only so many sell in my area etc., and on and on to yoga studio and car choice and neighborhood.
You can probabilistically guess all kinds of things from a cup of coffee. A little more observation, a comment here and there, a couple questions from you to direct your guesses and you can improve your chances and before you know it you can run down the list of consumer choices many individuals make which defines their space.
Even singular biases or opinions can tell you worlds about a person. It's kind of like stereotyping, but it's a little more informed than that. You can guess, for example, a person with strong opinions on say gun rights is likely aligned with several other related categories. Differences in those aligned categories might tell you other things, and let you know if they're conservative, liberal, anarchist or something else. Even a single comment can inform your predictive model about a person and set boundaries on what they would or wouldn't do.
You also have to know things. I couldn't do this with somebody from a country or area I don't know anything about. I don't know the politics, neighborhoods, social signals, in and out group dynamics and on and on.
Another example, there's an old phrase, "everybody skis in Aspen", meaning that knowing a person is from Aspen implies they do snow sports, but knowing that doesn't inform you of much other than they probably own a pair of skis or a snowboard and there's a fair chance they come from money.
But knowing a person you meet in someplace like Tampa, is an avid skier (an outlier) tells you all kinds of things about them. That they travel, that they probably don't go to anywhere on the East Coast (the snow sucks), that they probably have a passport (to go to the Canadian Rockies or the Alps), and gives you an idea of their disposable income they set aside for trips and skiing, which then can inform you of their total income and on and on and on.
People are like chaotic systems, and every piece of information you know restricts the space they can operate in. Within limits you can infer many many things. And it's not superhuman.
It's funny that you say it's more Groundhog Day than Sherlock Holmes when your soy milk example, to me, is pretty much as Holmesian as it gets. I've never intentionally tried the kind of deduction that you describe, but at least for me and my circle of friends, I can see it easily falling apart just a few steps in. Plenty of stores carry soy milk nowadays, not just vegetarian ones. I can't possibly hope to know all the restaurants where my friends live. Most of my friends who cook at home get by with dull knives and ancient cookware. And not only do I have no idea which stores sell kitchen supplies, but it's not always obvious whether someone does their shopping in person or on Amazon. This is especially the case for hobbies and activities I'm less familiar with, such as yoga.
I suppose if I had meticulous knowledge of my area and practiced a lot, I could get my guesses above 50%. But it seems like something I'd have to put a lot of effort in, not a skill I would just acquire casually.
Do you find that this comes easily to you?
(I'm not saying that figuring things out about people is impossible, of course. It makes sense to divide up the probability space and increase your odds. Again with your coffee example, you could probably make a reasonable educated guess that the person is vegetarian, or even that they cook at home. But where they shop? Where they eat? There's so many choices these days, and people like trying new things. Even if I had a hunch, I certainly couldn't outright tell them with specificity about all their consumer habits, like you described with your coworker. The probability of me being right would just be way too low.)
I appreciate you posting here, it's pretty interesting to read.
> Holmesian as it gets
Yeah, it wasn't a great example, just sprung to mind. But I think you got the basic gist of how it works. I think the difference is that Holmes deduces his conclusions by following clues, but Groundhog Day aggregates information to find patterns...which can then be used to make deductive guesses. I guess it's more of an inductive approach at the beginning.
> Do you find that this comes easily to you?
If I don't put effort into turning it off, which I do most of the time these days because I associate doing it with bad feelings, it's just part of the normal process my brain goes through when I'm getting to know somebody. So about as much effort as having a bunch of conversations and remembering a few things. I have a terrible memory so I have to spend some effort reinforcing a few key facts. But I can then usually derive the rest with reasonable accuracy without having to remember it all.
Why remember things when I can just figure them out each time?
It's actually part of the classic "gifted curse" I personally deal with. I never really bothered to learn good memorization techniques because I can usually figure things out from the few kernels I do remember. But when topics get too complex, or I'm just outright missing data, the jenga pile falls over and I'm rather lost.
I'm also slightly dyscalculic and dyslexic (took a few tests and everything for formal and second diagnoses), which provides their own sets of challenges -- this is surprisingly common among the very gifted, but we usually "solve" it ourselves internally and thus the research on it is pitifully poor. I didn't personally find out about it conclusively till I was well into my mid-twenties, though some early childhood tests raised the possibility.
It's hard to get tone across when talking about one's own experiences. In my case my experience is about having the attribute of high intelligence.
If this was a discussion about being tall instead of being intelligent, and I happened to be very tall, would it change your opinion if my deduction had been that tall people can dunk basketballs more easily than short people and then relayed an experience where I, though I don't play basketball, demonstrated this to a short fanatical basketball fanatic by dunking a ball?
It doesn't mean I'm always right, or that my deductions are always correct. I'm not omniscient. In that anecdote it turns out I was, and it was destructive to my relationship.
Being highly intelligent is like walking around with a bomb in your head. You have to be very careful how you approach other people because your mere existence is hard for them to accept. It's not a good feeling to hurt or scare people by doing what you were born to do.
Just being tall, and doing tall people things, like grabbing something off of a high shelf, is not likely to elicit the same response.
You have to constantly translate the complex interconnected mental world you swim in into a simpler model you can communicate with. When I meet another high-intelligence person, I don't have to do that beyond establishing a common vocabulary. It's a fun thrill to have a conversation with somebody who's mind races along like yours, just like it's fun for a tall person to be around other tall people.
One of the issues with being highly intelligent is that you're right more than most people, which makes it difficult to trust the input of more normal folks. So you end up trusting yourself all the time, which means that when you are wrong, you don't know or recognize it until it explodes spectacularly in your face.
You have a good metaphor here, but what kinds of ball are you dunking when you have higher IQ than other people? Do you do anything productive to take advantage of your high IQ? I didn't see it yet.
I agree that being super intelligent is a disaster to people around you. But if you can make something to benefit people, you will be accepted as a hero by the people eventually. That's how heroes are generated.
But to answer the spirit of your question. It depends.
What's the cognitive task I'm gifted at? Did I do that task? Why should I feel shameful for doing that?
If I'm good at rational reasoning, is doing the act of reasoning bad?
If I'm good at advanced physics, is doing physics bad?
If I'm good at painting, or music, or solving rubik's cubes, or biology or psychology, is the act of doing those things I'm good at something I should be bothered about?
There's a significant social stigma about being smarter than everybody else in the room. They're elevated on a weird kind of pedestal both to celebrate, but also to make sure they don't get in too close of contact with the normal folks. It's not fun. Most really smart folks just want to contribute and be useful and use their gifts. Just like tall people tend to play basketball or musically gifted people want to play music.
We don't really celebrate demonstrations of intelligence. It's weird and bizarre and worthy of study and research, but not use. The really really intelligent folks find themselves locked away solving other people's problems for them, rather than being engaged.
> Do you do anything productive to take advantage of your high IQ? I didn't see it yet.
If I'm good at a cognitive task, is there something useful I can do with it?
A criticism that I think is rightfully levied on people like Marilyn Vos Savant is that she doesn't use her gifts for anything particularly useful. Solving other people's brain teasers every week is pretty low on the accomplishment scale.
I try to put what I can do to good use, but outside of the startup sphere I've worked on some very hard, very vexing World problems and been successful in some cases, less successful in others. A byproduct of that work is some cool and elegant technology and approaches that I try to share with others, some of which has had some pretty big impacts on the world which I'm very proud of. It hasn't made me FU rich, but that's never been what I was aiming for. I live very comfortably.
I've also, quite literally, been the guy locked away in a room to solve a hard problem. It's not fun, and it brings up those deep feelings of social isolation. I'm not a person, I'm a functional black box nobody knows quite how to deal with.
But, something I really enjoy, figuring out how to take the advanced work and make it usable by regular folks is a pretty engaging and pretty striking challenge.
I guess there is a gap in your heart which needs to be bridged with your social life. Advanced research can be seen as a type of work, all the scientists are kind of isolated with the regular groups of people. But they can still have their social life to enjoy food, art and something else outside the work.
On the other hand, my doubt came from the fact that you have a wife who is more intelligent than you. If you did, you would never feel lonely. No matter what you do in this world, you have companion who can really understand your value is. You should not feel lonely and you would not feel it so weird when you see the majority of people cannot understand you. If you wish to get rid of the social isolation, there are always ways to enjoy other types of pleasure life brings to you. I still think you are too narrow on a certain spot over the entire spectrum of life.
At any moment when I see any small achievement I get, I feel so fulfilled, especially when some people may understand my work. That's enough.
I think you are right. When I think on my wife, the loneliness goes away, but it's tempting to fall back into old thinking patterns and habits, no? Sometimes bad feelings you've carried around for a long time are comfortable, like an old pair of shoes.
Another angle to see the loneliness is from a long historic point of view. We are all lonely on the way to be born. See the story here: http://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/theegg_mod.html by Andy Weir. So try to forget about it or ignore the feeling and find every piece of joy in your daily life.
As far as userids, neither you or I should be making guesses about people based on such things. :-)
It can get better. In recent years, the gifted community talks a lot about "social and emotional needs of the gifted." There are conferences and the like which focus on that. Perhaps that would help?
Signed: Another "outcast," (but fairly content...though it's hard to express since, certainly, I have problems I am still trying to fix.)
Thanks, it's good to know. Better communication mediums have certainly helped us find each other.
Pre-Internet was terribly terribly lonely for me. But it's getting better. I've found little help in groups or associations (MENSA, Triple 9, etc.), preferring to find individuals one at a time.
Places like HN aren't a bad place to find other "outcasts".
From this I can tell that you're smart, but not really smart. The really smart never say things like that.
There's literally hundreds of thousands of pages of advice columns and books and lectures you can go to about various typical money/relationship problems which make up the vast bulk of people's issues which are all summed up with the above.
Problem: I don't make enough money
Solution: Stop not making enough money and make more money.
Problem: My Significant Other and I don't get along
Solution: Stop not getting along and get along or break up.
Problem: My life sucks
Solution: Stop living a sucky life and get a better life.
Yeah, not every problem is simple, and not every problem (simple or not) has a simple problem, but the vast majority of day-to-day problems people have are trivially solvable...they just don't do the things to solve them.
Solutions don't have to be instantaneous, they just have to resolve the problem. People want instant quick fixes, "I'm poor" and poof money falls out of the sky, sorry doesn't work that way. But making money is stupidly easy...do something somebody wants and charge them for it.
"But I'm not rich" well that's not really a problem is it?
Problem: people die Problem: people are unhappy
Or, to relate to what transpires as "your" problem, having a meaningful fulfilling time with other people. Which by the way is a problem that I think is fundamental to human existence.
In my experience, problems that look trivial get increasingly complex the closer you look at them. The simple problem of (off the top of my head) how to cook an egg will probably bring you a lifetime worth of fulfilling intellectual challenges.
I have a decent IQ, skipped a few years of education, and used to think I had trouble relating to other people. I still seem to have this uncanny ability (at times) to solve programming issues (I'm a developer). I used to think I had trouble relating to other people and set out to live a more passionate life, and spent a lot of time with less intellectually oriented people. One thing I learned (and I had to learn it, as in spend effort on acquiring some kind of knowledge) is that intelligence is so much more than what I thought it was. It is not just about solving problems, it is also about experiencing and appreciating reality, and how to share and express your appreciation of reality. It clicked one day, and I have pretty much no problems anymore connecting with people, regardless of how trivially solvable their "problems" are.
This is a bit rambling and dishing out advice, and I don't want it to sound that way. I am trying to boil it down to your approach of problem + solution. Here is a simple one:
Problem: the sunset yesterday was beautiful, and I want to share the beauty I experienced with you.
Problem: people are unhappy, sounds like you found the trivial solution, no? Your explanation sums to me as "don't do things that make you unhappy, do things that make you happy".
Problem: it's hard to connect with people, do things that connect with people. Do them with lots of people till you find connections.
My central thesis here is that solving normal every day problems, the kind that people write into Dear Abby about, is usually pretty simple. It's why Dear Abby and similar columns have
a) been around for decades
b) are given just a couple inches of column space
c) answer half a dozen "life problems" every week in under 2 paragraphs.
Would it come across better if I framed it as a Dear Abby question? Nobody seems to have particular problems with her? If you strip away the polite wording, her solutions are usually one or two sentences.
Or would it be better if I padded the simple solution in easier to digest language like Dear Abby?
Problem: People Die
Solution: I'm very sorry that people die. It's a sad thing when a particularly bright light, who's contributed so much to the world, and so much yet to contribute, is snuffed out. People have desired long and hard for an end to the end, but it's a simple fact of life. Learning to accept death, and find closure, without dwelling in the past (move forward in celebration of their life!) is an important part of living your own life.
Does that make you feel better? The solution is no different. But now we've both wasted time getting to it. It's not any more complex than it was before, but now it's coated with sugar. That's not problem solving.
Here's an article acknowledging and celebrating this
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/01/17/words-of-wi...
Read very carefully her advice and see if it's materially different than mine.
Solution: Move & get a career where you're more likely to find the right people.
"Whenever I start feeling sick, I just stop being sick and be awesome instead" - Barney Stinson
Pertinent to your quote:
Dear Abby: My last job had me at an open office work site where people did lots of international travel. Inevitably somebody would come back sick from some exotic illness. That, combined with a high stress job had me sick constantly and it has me feeling sick, tired and run down. I feel like I've aged 6 years in the last 6 months and it's impacted everything from my relationships to my fitness. How can I solve this problem?
Solution: Stop being around sick people and get a lower stress job.
With your problems, you can't do that any more - you can't deal with the curse of being gifted by simply not being gifted anymore because that wouldn't be you, now, would it? You have to deal with walls of internally consistent, but questionable ideas because that's who you are, you can't simply snap out of it and replace them with good, reality-based ideas.
I don't know know why you have to deal with depression and hopelessness, but regardless of how true it may seem, it's not healthy to construct a narrative in which you alone are a genius dealing with deep questions and others are simpletons with mundane problems. It leads to dehumanization of others, which robs you of the very companionship you seek. Underneath others' simple problems like "weight issues" and "financial issues" lurk deep emotional issues of the kind that you struggle with.
I gave an example of a regular everyday problem I have that's simple and straightforward to solve. Most people's problems are rather simple, mine are no different. The difference between somebody who can't "solve" their personal problems and somebody who can is almost largely a function of them simply taking action on the solution.
Being gifted is like being tall, problems tall people have can't always be solved, just like problems that come with being gifted. But sometimes you can address some of the issues. But they too usually aren't all that complicated.
> It leads to dehumanization of others, which robs you of the very companionship you seek.
I do agree with you on this. I know from conversations I've had with other extremely gifted people, that it's very tempting and easy to separate normal folks away from yourself and treat them like a different species.
> I don't know know why you have to deal with depression and hopelessness
It's just a kind of loneliness. I know from talks with other folks like me that it's pretty normal.
It's like being extremely tall, like statistically 1 in 10,000. You literally have nobody who you can commiserate and share with about all the minute-by-minute issues you have with extreme height.
It's the same for people like me. I'm not 1 in 10,000, but unless I spend most of every day meeting new people, I'm not statistically likely to find anybody else quickly. I've known people far smarter than I am who are even more hopelessly alone.
Finding another truly smart person, and it's not always immediately obvious, is like finding a source of light in a dark room. Nothing else matters at all about them, just communicating with somebody who's mind works kinda sorta like yours is like breathing pure oxygen after being stuck in an airtight cocoon.
But even then, high intelligence is so individual, so specific, that you can't ever really find common ground. But at least you know that they're out there, a beacon of light in a deep fog.
Being exceptional, in a way you can't really change, is extremely isolating by nature. The Guinness book of records is full of isolated, lonely, deeply depressed misanthropes.
> it's not healthy to construct a narrative in which you alone are a genius
It's difficult not to, when statistically you might be the smartest person in a group of thousands of people. And when your job and entire life is about "being smart" to help solve issues for the rest of the masses.
Dehumanization works both ways, imagine that nearly everybody you meet and interact with looks at you purely as a functional black box to exploit, problem goes in, solution comes out. You're basically treated as a walking appliance every day. At first it's kind of flattering, but after a while you get tired of not having basic social interactions and courtesies extended to you. And then you tire of being treated like a high maintenance piece of tooling. Fuck that noise, I've been there and it gets old.
Problem: you're treated like a machine and not a person
Solution: remove yourself from that environment, meet new people and play normal for a while so you can bath in normal interactions
You wrote earlier:
"I've often found that groups proposing to be built of smart people are often as not built of over-opinionated pretentious people who've come to believe they are intelligent through one way or another. It's why I've avoided high-IQ societies and the like."
Why are their reasons for believing that they are special invalid, while yours are valid? I think they came to believe in their own high intelligence much the same way that you have. It validates something and fulfills some need. Grownups talking incessantly about their intelligence are like retired athletes who never made it in the pros talking about their stellar scouting reports placing them above those who had successful professional careers. If they didn't make it, the scouting reports were wrong. Don't assess yourself like society assesses children.
A lesson I've learned, the hard way, many times, is that it's possible to appear intelligent when you aren't. For example, people often mistake excellent communication skills as intelligence, so people who speak and present well are lauded for their smarts. It's like Williams syndrome, which people find endlessly curious, because they have exceptional language skills, but are otherwise cognitively impaired.
And it's not often immediately obvious if somebody just uses language well, or if they're genuinely intelligent. It can take weeks or months of observation, and probing to start to see their cognitive deficits. They might even be reasonably bright, but we're not talking about that kind of above average person.
There are other similar phenomenon. The idiot-savant, who can't brush their teeth in the morning by themselves, but can then go and crack crypto over their breakfast of apple and carrot paste.
Or the otherwise completely average person who puts 80 hours a week into violin practice and can perform with the best gifted soloist. Hard work can get you very far.
Argh it's tough to explain because English hasn't really developed a reasonable vocabulary that allows for simple categorical descriptions of different kinds of intelligence.
Imagine you go to a track and field camp, and it's made up of all the fastest runners from their respective towns. Except you and maybe one other kid are twice as fast as everybody else there. Even in that environment, where everybody else is fast, you're faster. Nobody there is slow, it's just that you and the other kid are in a class of your own. You didn't practice to become fast, you simply are. There are kids there who've dedicated their lives to being fastest, and some of them are quite talented. But it doesn't matter. They get upset at you for being fastest there with little effort. And on top of it, you can even play other events a runner wouldn't be good at pretty high levels. Your particular gift isn't in shot put, and you don't play that event, but you're enough of a natural athlete that you can figure out a way to place in the top 3 anyways.
And to make it worse, instead of competing you in the all state sports camp final, they turn you into a team coach. But you don't really know anything about the process and particulars of what it take for a normal person to become a fast runner. You were simply built that way and nobody knows what to do with you.
You've never been anything but kind and friendly to you, but they definitely feel a little threatened and jealous. So you end up eating meals alone, or maybe with the other fast kid, who it turns out you don't really get along with for normal social reasons like not having other shared interests. Eventually a few kids respond to your friendliness and you hang around for a bit, but their other friends can't accept you so given the decision to be your friend or go back to their old group of friends, they fade away. You can't begrudge them that, you understand, but it's the 10 thousandth time that happened to you. That's your life.
I've been fortunate enough on occasion to end up on groups with other similarly gifted people and it's awesome. But like I said earlier, you don't ever really become friends, you mutually acknowledge each other's intellect and get about doing the task at hand. Eventually somebody is happy with the work your team is doing and thinks it'd be great to break the team up and spread the smarts around a bit, so it never lasts long.
But why isn't this true of yourself? You've created this elaborate personal definition of intelligence, one that doesn't seem to have much correlation with anything positive that is objectively observable. And you do very well according to this definition, while others who think they are smart don't do quite as well. You don't see a problem here? It would be quite easy for anyone to come up with some vague definition of intelligence that they personally do well on.
At best, most personal definitions of intelligence held by the "gifted" tend to be extrapolated from attributes of children that are correlated with future success, especially in mentally demanding fields. We're interested in children's intelligence because it helps us project their future. But you're an adult, and not a particularly young one at that. There's no need to extrapolate. You are what you are. You're not judged by future potential, of which intelligence is one of many proxies. No serious scholar judges Nobel prize winning scientists by their high school test scores and no serious sports analyst judges professional athletes' careers by their pre-draft workouts. When you have the real thing, proxies become meaningless.
At worst, such definitions are carefully constructed to match the strengths and interests of the person doing the construction, while avoiding the weaknesses or conveniently treating them as positives. This is where all kinds of interesting inversions happen, for example, common proclamations like I'm depressed because I'm too smart or I can't succeed at that job because I'm too intelligent. Not that reversals never happen in isolated circumstances, but intelligence only has meaning because it measures mental performance potential. Whatever quality one may have, if it tends to result in negative mental outcomes, calling it intelligence renders the term meaningless.
I'm curious - you mentioned something about your wife being smarter. Does she suffer from all these problems you have due to being too smart? Does she share your disdain for those who aren't as smart?
You are absolutely correct in everything you ask here. If this were a discussion called "cognitive difficulties otherwise highly intelligent people struggle with" we'd be having a different discussion. We'd talk about overcoming dyslexia or dyscalculia, or other cognitive biases and issues that might be surprising. But this isn't that kind of discussion, this is a discussion about "the difficulties that come purely from being gifted". If one of those difficulties is finding other people as gifted to relate with, then isn't that valid?
I'm not exceptionally intelligent in everything. Just in those few areas I was gifted in. I'm a pretty normal, beer drinking, average bloke to most people who know me. I'm not particularly physically gifted, I have my own cognitive deficits to deal with like anybody. I get along fine with most people and I certainly don't look down on them regardless of what you're reading into things. I get frustrated sometimes when dealing with normal folk, at where their ability to think on something ends. But I've met a few people who possessed truly superhuman intellects and I'm sure they got frustrated with me.
Among the many difficulties that emerge with discussing personal experiences of being exceptionally gifted: social isolation, jealousy, fear -- is the lack of useful models, vocabulary and language to discuss the phenomenon. It's not common enough, and not well researched enough for there to be a convenient shared vocabulary we can use, especially one without such loaded words like "smart" "intelligent" and "gifted". It's not such a deficit to most people that it's really worth studying to be honest. Highly Intelligent people can usually figure out their own problems and go on to live productive enough lives. But it doesn't mean there aren't shitty aspects of the gift.
As to how do I know I possess this one quality?
It's not the hundreds of cognitive assessment tests I suffered through as a child. It's not people telling me "oh you're so smart". It's the experience of walking onto a team of smart successful people, the smartest in their field, and tackling an intractable problem in a few months that they, as a group have struggled with for years. It's cutting noise out of intensely complex problem sets and finding the core of the problem and an elegant solution (or knowing that the only solution is to brute force the problem). It's having that recognized repeatedly and then finding yourself on "hard problem" teams over and over again and ending up as the smart guy on the team of smart people.
It's being the one guy with the right solution in a room of problem solvers over and over again. And then your approach or solution gets legs and you find yourself meeting new people you have no connection with and in an offhand comment they bring up something you worked on that solved major issues for them and they don't know you were the one who came up with it.
But it's also about knowing when to stop and say "I don't know" or "I didn't know that" when you don't. It's knowing that some people are better than you are at their thing and letting them be better at it. And it's knowing where your gifts end and you turn into just regular folk. It's knowing you put pants on the same way, and go to the bathroom the same way as anybody else. And it's finding things that people are good at themselves, or better than you at, and enjoying and appreciating it as they talk about and practice their craft. Not getting jealous or scared of them for their gifts.
I'll go back to the analogy I've used here, people of extreme height. Replace "intelligence" and "gifted" in your previous questions with words like "height" and "tall". How does an extremely tall person know they're extremely tall? They just do. There all kinds of ways to measure height and if all those measures add up to "extremely tall" they just are. It doesn't mean other tall people aren't also vertically gifted. It doesn't put the hormonal output of other people's pituitary gland or the particulars of their inherited gene expressions down, it just means they aren't as tall.
>Does she share your disdain for those who aren't as smart?
So an extremely tall person who's talking about the sucky parts of being extremely tall doesn't disdain shorter people. They just have a unique experience that they'd like to share that likely nobody else in earshot will have experience with.
My wife is frequently frustrated with the cognitive limitations of others, and she also gets terribly lonely about making friends with normal folks. She finds their behavior odd and irrational and puzzling, but she doesn't put anybody down over it. She also works with excessively intelligent folks, and often ends up as the smartest kid in the room of smartest kids. Her gifts are of a very different nature than mine. But we don't often talk about them as we find it hard to relate to each other's gifts.
Her gift is more of the: take a problem with steps A through Z. She can go from A-to-Z without bothering with B,C,D or any of the the others. She can even do it with very noisy problem sets and her external thinking process when she's using her gift is extremely chaotic and hard to follow, but the output is nearly always right. She did not pursue the field her gift is useful for though, a brief childhood prodigy experience scared her away and she switched gears to several other career paths.
During college she was well known for her gift. People she didn't know from advanced classes she never took would come up and ask her for help understanding a section. She'd look at the chapter for a couple minutes, learn how to do it, and then show them. It was frequent enough that it often interfered with her own studies. I can probably say I saw it happen 50 or 60 times? (She's not a very good teacher though because it takes her a supreme effort to show the steps to somebody else. But she was always willing to give it a go to help them.)
Beyond that, she shares most of the classic gifted curses: intense social isolation, fear, jealousy, dehumanization (being treated more like an appliance than a person), and the typical sort of laziness and lack of learned skills that curses many highly gifted people.
We all have common ground with others, all it takes is figuring out that common ground and restricting oneself to it, despite what else you have to offer and how much it means to you, for the sake of what you can share with that other person.
People do it all the time, usually even in friendships and relationships, and average people aren't ultimately less alone just because they're surrounded by other average people. I'd say not being alone is being in touch with yourself and with others; and if the average person has that, they hide it mighty well. I'd rather say "normal" people are simply alone and isolated in groups and in sanctioned ways, instead of as individuals. And even "normal" people have to "play normal" all the time.
> The Guinness book of records is full of isolated, lonely, deeply depressed misanthropes.
This may be true, I have no idea, but I don't think that all gifted people have to end up isolated and depressed. Do you think the average person is happy just for being average? Nah, everybody hurts. Yes, people love to discriminate against others who are different, and being smart can be depressing, just for seeing through a lot of the crap so much time and energy and lives are wasted on -- but it takes two to make it a full-blown gap, half of that equation is always in your hands. Here's two quotes I like, I think they go well together:
"I have expressed my strong interest in the mass of the people; and this is founded, not on their usefulness to the community, so much as on what they are in themselves. Indeed every man, in every condition, is great. It is only our own diseased sight which makes him little. A man is great as a man, be he where or what he may. The grandeur of his nature turns to insignificance all outward distinctions." -- William Ellery Channing
"Is it only when the flowers are in full bloom and when the moon is shining in spotless perfection that we ought to gaze at them?" -- Kenko Yoshida
The problem as I see it is that the potential exists, but there is no engagement on tackling hard problems.
Not sure if I can describe it well, but it's like taking a running car out of gear and just letting it coast. As thoughts enter and threaten the moment, just say "hi" and let them pass right through, rather than dwell on them.
Getting all the buzzing bees to quiet down for a few minutes is wonderful.
1. The "I" ratio on your comment -- how much you're talking about yourself, your needs, your wants, your opinion, and your experience vs. looking at third-party needs, wants, opinions, experiences, and the general outward span of reality -- it's pretty high on the "I" side.
This might or might not be something worth intentionally looking to change. You've obviously got enough reflective ability and raw mental horsepower to self-modify on this characteristic if you want, and it will definitely be a different frame of reference and create a different subjective experience. It might be more enjoyable to you, might produce more happiness, and might lead to something meaningful -- depending on what you want out of life, and your definitions/sentiments around enjoyment, happiness, and meaning.
2. Play harder games.
The first part of this comment -- the "I ratio" -- that's an observation and something to think about, not a recommendation.
This one is.
I'm almost certain your life would be across the board more enjoyable to you and useful broadly if you play harder games. Boredom and acedia are almost universally agreed to be miserable things, and when you're bored/disillusioned and very smart, it's a torturously bad situation.
I was something like that when I was younger -- testing across the boards on tests, interested in things that few other people could talk to me about, etc.
I always wanted really deep and meaningful conversations, connections, ways to use the mix of gifts and curses I was given in a way that felt right to me and seemed to be good destiny-fulfillment (pardon me if that sounds hokey; the English language isn't really cooperating with what I'm trying to say -- I mean subjectively there, not an objective fate/destiny obviously).
Anyways -- you'll find that the people playing harder, larger games tend to be interesting, and the amount of variables, confounding factors, etc, to really give you a workout. More importantly -- you can use your talents for improving your personal well-being and the well-being of humanity-at-large simultaneously.
It's difficult to play hard big games, even getting into them is tricky. But the big hard games offer a chance to really put your mind and capacity to work, and the other people playing the big hard games tend to be really uniquely brilliant and complex and interesting.
Also -- thank you for your honest relating of your subjective experience, and for writing about the reasoning process... which I found really fascinating. I also found it fantastical on a first read, but looked to keep my mind open to it -- and your chain of reasoning seems sound. I think it's a new skill I didn't realize was quite available that would be interesting to train in.
To others besides bane -- don't read into this comment too much! It was a personal note. Bane -- thanks and godspeed, feel free to drop me an email sometime if there's some interesting complex problems on your mind.
Sebastian
Thanks for the very reasoned comment. It's of course hard to talk about yourself without coming off as highly narcissistic. I do work on not doing that generally, just taking advantage of this unique discussion to do share and do so. I hope to most people I come across in real life I come across as genuine and empathetic. I don't interpret this forum to be the place for that, but for an honest revelation of what goes on in the brain of somebody like me. We don't do it very often because, as you can see by some of the comments here, the social implications are often not pleasant.
> Play harder games.
I've definitely taken this to heart.
I actually think the activity this community is formed around, start ups, is a good "game" in a way. There's a wonderful amount to learn simply from the act of doing business that's very hard to simply read and meditate on.
I participate in other tough mental activities as well.
One thing that I do want to emphasize, and I realize now that I haven't done a good job of it in my other posts on this topic, is that I'm generally quite happy and satisfied with life these days. I'm simply sharing the kind of problems and "curses" people like me go through.
But mostly they were just problems to be solved. Getting out of environments like public schooling was helpful for one. Finding an awesome wife has been fantastic. I get to autodidact as much as I want and travel wherever I want in the world a few times a year and expand my horizons. I've also sought out challenging jobs where I hope other smart folks will be (sometimes I'm disappointed, but I've been pleasantly surprised in a few cases).
I write a little, here and there, little personal research papers, that sort of thing.
I've also tried to find activities that force me to "turn it off". Community art classes, or photography, and use different parts of my brain I don't normally use. I find the kind of liberal arts environments particularly relaxing because so few people are competing, you can just sort of explore yourself, in something you aren't necessarily good at, and have a teacher as a guide if you want. You don't have to produce a Rembrandt or an Ansel Adams, you produce something extremely primitive and simple and it's totally fine.
It's fun on occasion and it feels to the brain like a good stretch does to the body.
Curse of being gifted is very real. I wonder sometimes how many people couldn't break out of it and have ended up in bad jobs, or worse.
Probably like many HNers I also suffered from it mightily in K-12 and by the time I realized what was going on, I was already so far behind that escaping school, rather than redoing years of what I missed, was the easier option.
It took me a few years of milling around before I finally got my head together the right way and turned my life around into something productive.
One thing that still comes up to this day for me is a profound sense of isolation and loneliness. It's hard to relate to people because the kinds of problems most people have seem trivially simple to me and are not the kinds of problems I have and the kinds of things people want to talk about are not of interest to me. I try to stay intellectually engaged by turning the issue into one of how to communicate with people who aren't as quick as I? Adult education, how people learn, are a small hobby of mine. I even did a short stint as a teacher.
I'm consumed with relationships with mapping out the other person's cognitive limitations and patterns and trying to work within and around those. This is not a good habit, but I find I end up doing it with most everybody. The people I tend to keep around me are those that I haven't been able to conclusively do this with. I guess they keep me interested? I'm rarely surprised by people.
I remember I mentioned this to an associate one time. He asked me if I had done this with him. I answered yes. He challenged me to prove it. I went down a list of his cognitive biases, how they fed into his decision making process, and how this created a pattern of where I could even start inventorying what I thought he had in his apartment (I'd never been to his apartment). I missed the color of his couch, but guessed correctly where he bought his furniture, what kind of car he drove and was likely to buy and why, what TV shows he watched, what music he listened to (and had listened to in the past), the clothes he did and didn't have in his closet, what kind of food he liked and where he liked to shop, I picked his neighborhood, choice of home computer, where he wanted to retire and even a handful of books he probably had in his home library. I think it hurt him, or his sense of individuality, to be deconstructed like that. It was the last time I ever did this to another person. On the flip side, he tries to mix his life up, make random vectors in his life now and not be so predictable. But I know also that he does it because of what I did. It's just another behavior to slot into his patterns.
Relating to people impacts me in many ways, from coming up with product ideas to finding a mentor, to the closeness of friends. It's tough, I have very few close friends but I hold onto them fiercely. With most people I interact with I feel like we're simply in a status of mutual understanding and shared purpose, but not friendship. Maybe out for some laughs and a good time, but that's it.
I got very lucky and found a wife who's smarter than me, and she keeps me on my toes and from drawing the world down into my brain and further isolating myself with walls of internally consistent, but bad ideas. I've never figured out how to predict her thinking process beyond some high level abstract patterns. I think she does it on purpose, to keep me appreciative of her.
Not having a mentor has probably been the hardest. I feel like I have nobody helping me find my path most of the time and have to literally carve a path in the universe for myself. My parents were simply not equipped to deal with a kid like me at all and made many mistakes over the years. From moving to the country (thinking the quiet would help me grow, when it just isolated me more) to schooling choices, etc. School didn't know how to handle me and in business I've found woefully few people I look up to.
I yearn for a simpler life, but realize I couldn't live that life for long, I would quickly lose interest. I start to crave novelty and surprise. New things are interesting to me. But I've also found that once I start to understand the pattern of newness in something, an entire field will start to bore me.
Actually most of the life skills I have I learned from my school's music program. How to break a problem down, how to communicate with people of various levels, how to tutor and teach, how to lead a group and present, setting and keeping schedules etc. Most of my adult years have been spent trying to adapt these skills from orchestra into the rest of my life, while most people would have learned them in more context appropriate ways.
But I guess I turned out okay. I do not look back on most of my childhood with much fondness, I do look back on it with a great deal of sadness and regret and wish I could redo it all. I found out a few years ago that my mother had saved all of my report cards growing up, lovingly stored in a scrapbook. When I found out she had done this, in a fit of anger, resentment and deep embarrassment I tore them up and threw them away.
There's no solution, it just is this way. I live a very fulfilling life that I enjoy and I try to minimize regrets and find joy. I think I'm on a path towards simplifying my life, but I have a notion that I'll find a more minimal life dreadful and boring after a few months.
I do seek out others who I sense have a similar story, but I find that none of us ever really build close bonds with each other. We exist more in a group of mutual acknowledgment than in friendship. I'm drawn towards groups that promise an intelligent gathering, but I'm frequently disappointed by what I find once I get there.
My mother once asked me why so many smart kids end up in drugs and drink, I responded that, at least for me, it slows the thinking down and clarifies the thoughts. It's like having an engine in your car that's always at full rev, and then finally taking your foot off the accelerator for a bit. It also lets the emotions flow a bit easier, the ones that we have to keep bottled up during the day, the slow accumulation of small frustrations from dealing with people who I can't relate to. It's like a sore I can pop and let the puss flow out for a bit.
It's hard staying positive, not falling into hopelessness and depression. I've had very close scares a couple times where I thought about disengaging from everything and ending it. Feeling like you're in the wrong world all the time is maddening. I found a way to continue on, and it works for me. But that endless well of despair still sits there, but it's like I'm walking around the edge of it, like walking around the edge of a swimming pool, trying to make sure I don't fall or jump in.