Do you have a girlfriend?
No, but there are several women I sleep with occasionally. Do you think having a girlfriend would help alleviate the problem?
Ask HN: "Dumbing yourself down" around your peers?
101–110 of 118 posts
Re: Ask HN: "Dumbing yourself down" around your peers?
#102People are social animals. I think as analytical people we forget this aspect of our humanity a lot. So you need to feed that social part of yourself without doing, time-consuming and mostly pointless things, like getting drunk with the guys and watching naked women dance. If you dig naked women dancing, get HBO. Or just surf the net. As a consultant, I go through phases of alone down-and-working hacking, when I'm no…
That's a pretty good response. Intelligence has nothing to do with intellectual abilities. 'Idiot savants' can do brilliant and amazing things. The smartest people in the world have trouble remembering where they put their glasses. Some people can recall every detail of every minute of their lives. People are simply different. The people that feel that they are smarter than others are often way down the line. The rea…
Your examples are accurate, but they miss the point: there is some correlation between different intellectual abilities, such that being good at math does predict being good at detecting analogies, or understanding a document (just not as well as it predicts being good at specific kinds of math).
People are different, but some people are generally smarter. Doesn't mean that someone generally smart, but bad at X, can pretend to be better at X.
Re: Ask HN: "Dumbing yourself down" around your peers?
#103People are social animals. I think as analytical people we forget this aspect of our humanity a lot. So you need to feed that social part of yourself without doing, time-consuming and mostly pointless things, like getting drunk with the guys and watching naked women dance. If you dig naked women dancing, get HBO. Or just surf the net. As a consultant, I go through phases of alone down-and-working hacking, when I'm no…
I hesitated to comment on this post for a long time but I think you're pretty much completely off base.
I don't really see how the first 3 paragraphs has anything to do with the problem that I'm having, and I think that for some reason you've just assumed that I don't have hobbies (!?).
As for the "give up the I'm-so-smart routine", I've already explained what I meant several times elsewhere so I don't think I need to get into it again, but needless to say, I think you've completely misinterpreted what I was trying to convey. To be honest, I think that paragraph of yours sounds more arrogant than anything in my first post. But then again, sometimes things just get lost in translation.
The last paragraph sounds incredibly condescending. "Get better attitude and lifestyle"? It really sounds like you're trying to say that you live a "better" life and have a better attitude than what I have, even though the only thing you know about me is my age, what I did last night and a personal issue that I'm trying to understand for myself.
As I said, much of this can be attributed to misinterpretation on both sides. Obviously we could go back and forth clarifying various aspects of our posts but I don't really see the value in that. I prefer just to take some of the lessons I posted elsewhere under this submission and work from there.
Re: Ask HN: "Dumbing yourself down" around your peers?
#104This reminds me of a sentence by Arthur Schopenhauer:
"... one's choice in this world does not go much beyond solitude on one side and vulgarity on the other".
Re: Ask HN: "Dumbing yourself down" around your peers?
#105Do you have a girlfriend?
No, but there are several women I sleep with occasionally. Do you think having a girlfriend would help alleviate the problem?
Find people worth being friends with and not those unsatisfying "disposable" friends who annoy you so much. I would say the same about finding a girlfriend, but maybe your fuck buddies don't annoy you as much.
Re: Ask HN: "Dumbing yourself down" around your peers?
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
Like you, I've put it into words many times with my family. I have my cool friends, but they're turned off and intimidated by intellectual conversations and they don't have anything useful to contribute anyway. On the other hand, my geeky friends consider some of my interests superficial. In my dream world, I'd have friends I could go lift weights with, have a BBQ, get dressed up, go clubbing, and talk continuation/p…
> I don't think you should communicate these issues to other people. Which group wouldn't be offended? It certainly won't help anything. To an extent I can agree, but I think the internet is great for discussions like these. I'm not particularly afraid of offending strangers, especially if I've put in a lot of effort to avoid it, but the feedback is great in helping me understand how people might react in the real wo…
Out of curiosity, do either of you two know what your MBTI types are? My initial guess would be some kind of NT. Maybe ENTJ?
Re: Ask HN: "Dumbing yourself down" around your peers?
#107Don't ever dumb yourself down just to be accepted by people. It seems like you have simply outgrown your friends. You are growing and becoming a different person. That is a good thing.
I've always been the type of person who most enjoys having "deep" discussions with one other person. You need to connect with people on a much deeper level than you are currently doing. Don't worry, there are plenty of people like that around. You need to go out and find them.
So... Get out of your comfort zone and start trying new things. For instance, try swing dancing, start taking lessons. You'll find an entirely different caliber of people at swing dances than you will in bars.
I think you are doing fine and the fact that you are concerned about this and reaching out to others to find a solution tells me that you will most likely find what you are looking for.
Good luck in your search and keep on learning and growing like you are doing. It sounds like you are on a great path.
Re: Ask HN: "Dumbing yourself down" around your peers?
#108This is happening with me also. I'm a hacker (ok a developers) and my friends don't understand really what the web is, so I turn to spend 98% of my time in front of computer and avoid to go with them anywhere because their talk makes me headaches. However (few months ago) I did found a friend that really understand me (although being tech-savvy) and we are projecting for the summer. Keep searching, if in your area in…
Something that I've noticed is that this usually happens in "poorer" areas. What country are you from? I'm from South Africa, and most people down here don't even have a computer, let alone the internet. My friends are different though, but they don't spend as much time on the internet as I do. There aren't any other software programmers in my group either.
lol, i'm from the north, no here there's a lot of computers (it was a state project to make them cheap for families at $700 or less) and internet is cheap also ($15/month) but my friends don't understand computers, they only know how to log on facebook :D
Re: Ask HN: "Dumbing yourself down" around your peers?
#109I've dumbed myself down before, to the point where people didn't notice I was smart. Was nice going under the radar. Tried for a while to knock down my intelligence with heavy amounts of drug and alcohol abuse, reading crap and not remotely pushing myself.
I developed a crazy hippy persona which allowed me to talk about crazy topics and get away with it. Was regular on the rave scene getting the nickname of the raving hippy.
When I'm out I won't talk about computers at all (the first rule of computer club is you don't talk about computer club), if someone asks me what I do I'll give a very general response. I often find myself talking about stuff I saw on ted.com or fringe science or other crazy ideas. I actively avoid the normal topics and try to switch the topic to something more interesting.
I like to be a social chameleon, bantering well with lots of different people.
I'm lucky with my friends and house mates, I live with A.I. programmer, a dude with a photographic memory and a fitness instructor, it's a nice balance. Friends wise know a lot of good people from my uni days who like to snowboard and/or travel and are also rather smart.
Though despite being able to hold my own socially, I'm happiest when sat at my desk, pissing around with pcs, code and learning crazy stuff from the net. I've also stopped dumbing myself down now and I'm working on creating the best version of myself that I can.
Guess in your situ would be tempted by a work break for 6months - 1 year. Go find your place in the world =]
Sorry bit of a ramble =]
Re: Ask HN: "Dumbing yourself down" around your peers?
#110This reminds me of a sentence by Arthur Schopenhauer: "... one's choice in this world does not go much beyond solitude on one side and vulgarity on the other".
It's important to make time for both! >:)