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The Curse of Smart People (2014)

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Re: The Curse of Smart People (2014)

#21

Post by czep »

_m8fo wrote: post #9

I wonder how much human potential we're wasting by putting "smart people" on a pedestal instead of having higher and better utilization of regular people. Regular people are far more capable than working at McDonalds, Walmart, Amazon, or whatever wage slave job BigCo is offering. It's pretty hard to prove, but I bet that we're barely even at 1% utilization of humanity's potential, given our technology and population.

Imagine if the world's nail salon workers could spend their time curing cancer, fighting hunger or homelessness instead of the useless primping of rich people's hands and feet. If we only had an economic system to allow everyone to reach their fullest potential despite circumstances of birth, and social priorities where personal vanity was not placed above the good of humanity. In 500 years time maybe we'll get there.

Re: The Curse of Smart People (2014)

#22

Post by dasil003 »

jakobegger wrote: post #12
bitexploder wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This almost seems like a cliche or a troll. I think smarts also lead people to miss the world around them and trivialize anything that isnt a "challenge". To some very smart people I know -- chill out and laern to enjoy the absurdity and mundane as well as the challenge. Be bored once in a while. Know satisfaction in the simple.

To me that doesn't sound like the curse of the "smart" people, it sounds more like the curse of the arrogant people. Smart people understand that there is a reason that pointless / absurd rules are there. Usually the reason is not that everyone else is too stupid. The problem is usually that people have conflicting interests, and there just isn't a simple solution.

1000 times this. Raw brain processing power doesn't have all that much to do with one's disposition to the world. Wise people realize that the smartest human is still hopelessly incapable of really understanding the universe. Smart people can come up with better models of reality, but they are still subject to the chaotic nature of the universe just like the rest of existence.

Forming and dwelling on a belief that society wasn't created for you is something that can happen for a variety of reasons. The healthy thing is to accept the things you can't control and figure out how you can best get along in the environment to which you are subject. For the very smart, there has probably never been a better time to be alive in terms of applying ones gifts.

Re: The Curse of Smart People (2014)

#23

Post by mr_luc »

wolfgke wrote: post #16
jakobegger wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me that doesn't sound like the curse of the "smart" people, it sounds more like the curse of the arrogant people. Smart people understand that there is a reason that pointless / absurd rules are there. Usually the reason is not that everyone else is too stupid. The problem is usually that people have conflicting interests, and there just isn't a simple solution.

> Smart people understand that there is a reason that pointless / absurd rules are there. Understanding that there is a reason (which is often that it was made as a political compromise in a distant past) does not imply that one tolerates/accepts it. As I hinted understanding the reason can also mean that one gets a much deeper hate for the rules.

And that can be the case just as much even if there is no simple win-win solution to the problem.

One can hate the rules -- for their injustice, ineffectiveness, abstract immorality, etc -- and at the same time realize that the rules are an inevitable result of the complex system we inhabit.

As a student of history and humanity and a free moral agent, you can recognize the reality we live in, acknowledge that it contains many no-win situations, and still hate the status quo even if you don't have a solution for how to fix it, because it deserves to be hated.

Re: The Curse of Smart People (2014)

#24

Post by arjie »

WalterBright wrote: post #5

> very easy to describe all your successes (project not canceled) in terms of your team's greatness, and all your failures (project canceled) in terms of other people's capriciousness. I see this belief in probably about 80% of people I encounter, and it has little correlation with how smart one is. I like to hang out with people who take responsibility for their failures rather than complaining about how circumstanc…

In psychology, they call this having an internal locus of control: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locus_of_control. Just in case someone's interested in related work.

Re: The Curse of Smart People (2014)

#25

Post by arjie »

Author takes issue with the following attitude in a certain way.

> Smart people, computer types anyway, tend to come down on the side of people who don't like emotions. Programmers, who do logic for a living.

There's another way to take issue with that, though. In _The Righteous Mind_, Jonathan Haidt argues that emotion-processing is critical to decision making (and that we use emotion-processing to guide reason), citing some work that people with damaged emotion processing suffer analysis paralysis on simple tasks.

It's an interesting idea. Of course, emotion processing etc. is also the stuff that causes us to have a negative emotional reaction on seeing weird code. The rest of the book argues as to how we form moral opinions, but that part was interesting without the stuff about morality.

Re: The Curse of Smart People (2014)

#26

Post by throwaway91111 »

arjie wrote: post #25

Author takes issue with the following attitude in a certain way. > Smart people, computer types anyway, tend to come down on the side of people who don't like emotions. Programmers, who do logic for a living. There's another way to take issue with that, though. In _The Righteous Mind_, Jonathan Haidt argues that emotion-processing is critical to decision making (and that we use emotion-processing to guide reason), ci…

I wonder if you can overcome that type of decision paralysis with an RNG. Paralysis may mean stalemate; an emotional response wouldn't be meaningful in goal terms (though the side effects of emotional satisfaction may be very meaningful).

Re: The Curse of Smart People (2014)

#27

Post by bbcbasic »

bitexploder wrote: post #11
234dd57d2c8dba wrote: post #4

Here's a summary for why smart people are "cursed": If you are two or 3 standard deviations about the mean, you'll quickly realize society is optimized and caters to the average intelligence. You'll find it very boring and frustrating having to deal with rules and decisions that do not make sense. You must continually push yourself to stay entertained and meet like-minded people otherwise you'll get very depressed th…

This almost seems like a cliche or a troll. I think smarts also lead people to miss the world around them and trivialize anything that isnt a "challenge". To some very smart people I know -- chill out and laern to enjoy the absurdity and mundane as well as the challenge. Be bored once in a while. Know satisfaction in the simple.

You're both right

Re: The Curse of Smart People (2014)

#28

Post by throwaway91111 »

jacobolus wrote: post #15
234dd57d2c8dba wrote: post #4

Here's a summary for why smart people are "cursed": If you are two or 3 standard deviations about the mean, you'll quickly realize society is optimized and caters to the average intelligence. You'll find it very boring and frustrating having to deal with rules and decisions that do not make sense. You must continually push yourself to stay entertained and meet like-minded people otherwise you'll get very depressed th…

The “smart people” I know are seldom bored, because they are constantly reading interesting books, are fascinated by an endless stream of ideas, can think about a number of hard problems anytime they like, and have the curiosity and empathy and enough basic knowledge to coax an information-rich conversation out of almost any interlocutor. YMMV.

I think boredom is just fatal for some smart people. Look at DFW writing The Pale King, a tome on boredom, before his suicide last decade. You occupy yourself to avoid going mad.

Re: The Curse of Smart People (2014)

#29

Post by throwaway91111 »

moxious wrote: post #19
BrailleHunting wrote: post #3

Perhaps "smart" is too un-nuanced by conflating the real performance of many types of intelligence areas (social, emotional, political, spatial, logical, etc.) into a singular narrow attribution based on brief interactions? (Also yet another example highlighting where language constrains thinking.) And therefore the overvaluing of maximizing possession of one strength at the detriment of avoiding complementary streng…

Smart is a hard thing to talk about. Like the concept of "quality". There are hundreds of different kinds, and I can't really describe it, but you and I both know it when we see it. I can forgive them for being overly broad with "smart". You're also right that it's not one thing, but it's just hard to talk about, because it's like a wet bar of soap.

The human brain is insanely good at consistent dimensional reduction. Our conscious interactions struggle with the same task; it's Herculean to approach general purpose ordering in many-dimensional situations.

Re: The Curse of Smart People (2014)

#30

Post by Spooky23 »

Swizec wrote: post #17
WalterBright wrote: post #5

> very easy to describe all your successes (project not canceled) in terms of your team's greatness, and all your failures (project canceled) in terms of other people's capriciousness. I see this belief in probably about 80% of people I encounter, and it has little correlation with how smart one is. I like to hang out with people who take responsibility for their failures rather than complaining about how circumstanc…

I like to put it and think of it this way: Other people aren't for or against you, they're for themselves. Focus on those whose goals align with your goals. Then help them.

Great advice that is only surpassed by the golden rule.

I was fortunate to have a senior director type guy give me this advice early on. (Although not quite as politely!) I followed it and it has served me well.

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