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For gifted children, being intelligent can have dark implications (2015)

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Re: For gifted children, being intelligent can have dark implications (2015)

#121

Post by busterarm »

logfromblammo wrote: post #111
busterarm wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an interesting idea and I agree with the argument. Having been one of those 'gifted children' and gone to gifted schools where I wasn't challenged, I think this is a good idea. I basically never had to put any effort in until my last year of high school and completely breezed through my education. Once I hit university and couldn't get away with that anymore, I was totally unequipped to handle continuing my educ…

I breezed through university. I might have worked a little harder to get a 4.0, but I knew even then that barely anyone outside of academia cares about GPA, and that I didn't want to be an academic. So I did the math, and I even made some strategic decisions to not complete some graded assignments in my last year. I'm not particularly challenged at work now, either. I'm not a very good employee. I have on several occ…

I finally was able to start my software development career in my early 30s and I found happiness working on a small team where there's a lot of work that needs to be done.

I can't necessarily do things the best way every time, but we have enough difficult problems to solve and its always appreciated when we make the marketing team's job easier. I love that my work either directly translates into more cash coming in or saves us a bunch of cash.

I'm a mediocre developer and okay with that I guess. I know that my potential is way higher, but I also feel like there's some greater calling out there in my life that is not my job/career.

It takes the edge off that feeling you're experiencing -- I definitely felt the exact same way in previous jobs.

Love the Ren & Stimpy reference in your name btw.

Re: For gifted children, being intelligent can have dark implications (2015)

#122

Post by Lawtonfogle »

pc86 wrote: post #96
uberlux wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Physician is Always Right! TM

More like "the physician probably knows more than the 14 year old ."

The doctor will know more, but they spend far less focus on it. They are also biased to over prescribe medication (at least in the US) to an extreme extent. The bias alone is reason to second guess all judgments. (Really, go look into the over-medication of young children with off label prescriptions. And part of the issue is that it isn't just the doctor pushing for it, often the parents want a cure all pill as well.)

Re: For gifted children, being intelligent can have dark implications (2015)

#123

Post by ThrustVectoring »

jokoon wrote: post #79

I don't know if I'm gifted (I score 125 at some IQ test on abstraction when applying at a company, but still IQ is not always a correct to measure intelligence, so take this with a grain of salt), but my psychiatrist tells me I'm intelligent (he might say this to agree with me, maybe he doesn't think so and it's for another goal). Yet I'm unemployed, 30 year old, and can't manage to get hired or to do work that is gi…

Schools don't have teaching the basics as their primary purpose. They aren't even there for facilitating learning in general - if they were, they'd look a hell of a lot different. For one thing, they'd drop basically all the structure they provide and replace it with independent study and tutoring.

No, the primary purpose of schools is to teach children how to be controlled by authority figures. As a side bonus, it watches over children for a large period of time. Controlling parents insist on the state paying for what's essentially day-care, so that's what we get.

I have no clue how to fix things. Best advice I have is to opt out. "Homeschool" your children, don't force them into learning anything in particular, and pay attention to what their actual goddamn needs are.

Re: For gifted children, being intelligent can have dark implications (2015)

#124

Post by nabla9 »

willholloway wrote: post #67
clentaminator wrote: post #12

Ah yes, the monthly link to an article about intelligent/gifted children and the troubles their talents cause them, leading to all the self-proclaimed gifted HNers coming out of the woodwork declaiming "Me too! Me too! Finally someone who understands me!". Not dismissing the article itself, but it's definitely a pattern on HN.

You actually are dismissing the article itself, and the experiences of all the HNers that have experienced what it talks about firsthand. Your phrase "self-proclaimed gifted" is outright dismissive. This is a natural human reaction. The reminder of the existence of people smarter than ourselves often results in narcissistic injury, it feels bad, it can hurt. It's the reason gifted education is such a low and unpopula…

The problem is that "Taking care of the gifted kids" is often upper middle class talking about their slightly above the average kids (IQ >125) who they want into special schools.

I'm in the 98th percentile and I thought that I was special flower until I started to study math and physics in university level. I met several people who I would consider actually gifted (IQ above 160 and intellectual curiosity to use that IQ). I quickly realized that my problem had never been my intelligence. It was the arrogance and laziness that came with being relatively smart. I could cope with everything and everyone if I tried even a little.

Many of these actually bright guys (and especially girls) had actual problems in their youth. Taking part of International Mathematical Olympiads allowed them to use their noggin and meet others like them. Getting noticed and the ability to take university classes while minor was the lifeline that gave them purpose and mentoring they needed. They really benefited from being noticed when young.

Re: For gifted children, being intelligent can have dark implications (2015)

#125

Post by bonesmoses »

jokoon wrote: post #79

I don't know if I'm gifted (I score 125 at some IQ test on abstraction when applying at a company, but still IQ is not always a correct to measure intelligence, so take this with a grain of salt), but my psychiatrist tells me I'm intelligent (he might say this to agree with me, maybe he doesn't think so and it's for another goal). Yet I'm unemployed, 30 year old, and can't manage to get hired or to do work that is gi…

> Yet I'm unemployed, 30 year old, and can't manage to get hired or to do work that is given to me.

IQ and that kind of intelligence is only really a predictor of how quickly you are capable of learning. Unfortunately, it means very little regarding motivation, ambition, or any of the other traits generally associated with being successful. It's difficult to derive success entirely from pure intelligence, especially with cognitive biases humans are prone to accumulate through experience as they mature.

Most people would say that's why we have society: to prevent misapplied potential in various areas, and to competently leverage mental resources such that everyone can benefit. But people, being imperfect, fuck it up along the way, so we all have our cross to bear, and society becomes shaped by its malignancies.

Talk to any cultural anthropologist. :)

Re: For gifted children, being intelligent can have dark implications (2015)

#126

Post by aws_ls »

rotw wrote: post #100
willholloway wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You actually are dismissing the article itself, and the experiences of all the HNers that have experienced what it talks about firsthand. Your phrase "self-proclaimed gifted" is outright dismissive. This is a natural human reaction. The reminder of the existence of people smarter than ourselves often results in narcissistic injury, it feels bad, it can hurt. It's the reason gifted education is such a low and unpopula…

Your comment is exactly the attitude the person you were replying to was mocking. What that person saying is that a lot of reasonably intelligent people who are nowhere near geniuses like to think of themselves as geniuses as a form of narcissistic self-flattery. For people good at math, sciences and computing and other occupations considered "nerdy", capability in these fields and stereotypes of intelligence associa…

Actually Great GP "mocking" comment would have fit perfectly in a parody of HNers posts/comments. We keep seeing them from time to time, and LOL at them. But not as a top comment on a sensitive article about the problems of gifted children (a minority of a kind).

For that matter, even on posts of mental health issues, people comment and proclaim "me too", do you and GGP think, even there people are just trying to carve out an image out of vanity.

Simple fact is this, GGP's comment angered a lot of people - I too wrote few draft replies earlier and deleted them. But you comment, made me say, what the heck?

Actually, to such low value comments as that of the GGP. May be we should allow reddit like replies. You reap what you sow.

Re: For gifted children, being intelligent can have dark implications (2015)

#127

Post by Lawtonfogle »

Joeboy wrote: post #119
Lawtonfogle wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>self-proclaimed gifted HNers And if they had actually brought any evidence other than their own self claim, imagine how they would've been treated. No way to win except to shut up and pretend to be normal... one of the most depressing lessons I have learned is that all the social ills of grade school do not disappear when you graduate; they merge into the fabric of daily life.

> one of the most depressing lessons I have learned is that all the social ills of grade school do not disappear when you graduate; they merge into the fabric of daily life. For what it's worth I've learned the opposite. Outside of a mass-incarceration type environment, people are mostly pretty OK. It took me way too long to work that out after I left school.

I think it is that you get far more power in who you surround yourself with and you learn better how to navigate social issues. Also, people are great at faking at being nice... I live in the South (USA) and lots of people seem really nice until they switch to a topic like homosexuality, at which point you find their beliefs are really quite harmful (things like seizing children and force conversion camps). You learn to avoid the topic and keep pretending everything is nice, but when the person things you or perhaps a friend should be in prison because of who they find attractive, I find it hard to describe them as nice. And heaven help you if you are part of an interracial couple.

In short, it is us vs them mentality all the same, and while it is really nice when you are part of the us, it is horrendous when you realize you are actually part of the them.

Re: For gifted children, being intelligent can have dark implications (2015)

#128

Post by Lawtonfogle »

evanpw wrote: post #37
andrelaszlo wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you referring to these Bell curves? :P http://www.slideshare.net/terriko/how-does-biology-explain-t...

I think the GP is referring to differences in standard deviation, not mean, which causes the larger-deviation population to dominate at both the left and right tails.

I'm not saying the theory is right or wrong, only that people seem to have a much harder time understanding a theory based off of same means but different standard deviations than a theory based off of different means.

Re: For gifted children, being intelligent can have dark implications (2015)

#129

Post by draugadrotten »

> The vibe I'm getting from Sweden (I lived there for a while, learned the language and still follow the news), is that it's moving to a more and more class-segregated country. Sure, everybody can look for the best school for their children, but only parents from higher socioeconomic classes will do that.

Hear, hear.

The school system decline is also a political "hot potato" because of the connection to increasing immigration. Since free immigration is considered a holy sacrament by many Swedes, it is a political no-no to connect school problems to immigration (just wait and see if I get any comments to this statement on here)

For the ten worst performing schools in Sweden, where students have the lowest grades in 2015, these are the stats:

Rågsveds skola, Stockholm (90 percent immigrants) Ryaskolan, Göteborg (93 percent immigrants) Vättleskolan, Göteborg (84 percent immigrants) Västra Engelbrektsskolan, Örebro (82 percent immigrants) Hjällboskolan, Göteborg (99 percent immigrants) Kronan, Trollhättan (98 percent immigrants) Sandeklevsskolan, Göteborg (98 percent immigrants) Apelgårdsskolan, Malmö (99 percent immigrants) Nivrenaskolan, Sundsvall (22 percent immigrants) Rinkebyskolan, Stockholm (98 percent immigrants)

It would appear that the Swedish school system is not able to properly educate immigrants.

And as you say, Sweden is "moving to a more and more class-segregated country." It very clear from the above list.

The 32-year old minister of education, Mr Fridolin, recently went on record saying the government will NOT implement further restrictions on immigration. He also said he would fix the school system in 100 days.

Source of statistics: http://www.svt.se/nyheter/regionalt/vast/skolsituationen-aku...

Asbestos suit ready. Flame on.

Re: For gifted children, being intelligent can have dark implications (2015)

#130

Post by JohnBooty »

byuu wrote: post #85

I could say a lot about the quality of education: the lack of a challenge, the boringness of the one-size-fits-all curriculum, etc. But boredom isn't that big of a deal. I made up for that by studying what I wanted to outside of school, instead of doing homework. Even with the vindictive teachers that made homework 30% of the final grade, it was still cakewalk to pass their classes without doing a single assignment.…

I 100% believe everything you said, but it's shocking to read. Bullying of the gifted kids wasn't really a thing in my public school in the suburbs of Philadelphia. I'm not sure if this was despite or because of the fact that while we had some gifted classes, we weren't totally segregated from the rest of the kids nor were we extolled as the "elites."

More importantly, I'm sorry that happened to you. Nobody should have to deal with the toxic environment you suffered through.

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