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...
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.