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You Don't Need to Be Brilliant to Do Brilliant Work

sandymaguire.me

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Re: You Don't Need to Be Brilliant to Do Brilliant Work

#31

Post by wolco »

jkuria wrote: post #26
zwkrt wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of people have one skill, few people have two, and only a tiny fraction ever put multiple skills to use at once.

So true. This is also the 'Dilbert Theory of Value Creation' that I have used to great profit. Scott Adams likes to say, he is not the funniest guy around but funnier than most people. At best, he'd be a mediocre comedian. He can also draw better than most but hardly a Picasso. And yet, by combining both skills he has something "rare and valuable" that has led to enormous financial success. He also adds that it easie…

The path to billionare is unique and can't be copied and involves luck and usually some business skills and almost always communication skills or skills to get others to do work for you.

Being an nba player involves luck and hard work and a high spacial iq.

Anyone could become a billiarie with luck (powerball lottery in one extreme). Only 100,000 people in the world would even have a chance to compete to be an nba player.

Re: You Don't Need to Be Brilliant to Do Brilliant Work

#32

Post by hadsed »

rl1987 wrote: post #22
hprotagonist wrote: post #8

Although high general intelligence is common among hackers, it is not the sine qua non one might expect. Another trait is probably even more important: the ability to mentally absorb, retain, and reference large amounts of ‘meaningless’ detail, trusting to later experience to give it context and meaning. A person of merely average analytical intelligence who has this trait can become an effective hacker, but a creati…

How can one learn or acquire this trait?

I always tend to get interested in some technology or library and go straight to the docs. They usually have intro or tutorial/gallery type sections that help you get started. It helps to have a use case in mind and imagine applying it as you read through the API details. This worked for me equally well for ML libraries as it did for learning kernel stuff (except for the latter i went to a reference book).

It's real similar to just doing your normal software job, but in this case it's just for fun!

Re: You Don't Need to Be Brilliant to Do Brilliant Work

#33

Post by saagarjha »

mlevental wrote: post #30
thaumasiotes wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you say this? Assessing IQ is the entire purpose of standardized tests, and unsurprisingly it's something they do well.

because you can prepare for them.

Can you not prepare for an IQ test?

Re: You Don't Need to Be Brilliant to Do Brilliant Work

#34

Post by saagarjha »

nullwasamistake wrote: post #28

This goes along with a study I read a while back that you can do practically any job with an IQ of 120. Higher than average, but not anywhere close to genius level. With an average IQ of 100 you can still preform well in something like 80% of jobs. Software engineers have an average IQ of 110ish so most HN readers are capable of doing almost any job. It's really about effort and things that are harder to measure like…

> Software engineers have an average IQ of 110ish so most HN readers are capable of doing almost any job.

Do you have a source for this?

Re: You Don't Need to Be Brilliant to Do Brilliant Work

#35

Post by rajacombinator »

neural_thing wrote: post #3

Depends on what you count as "brilliant work". All of the Neuroscience PhDs at Stanford, UCSF and MIT (non-exhaustive list, just examples) I've met are at least 2 standard deviations away from average intelligence and many are 3 SDs away. Makes me think that some brilliant work requires being brilliant.

In which direction?

Re: You Don't Need to Be Brilliant to Do Brilliant Work

#36

Post by amelius »

neural_thing wrote: post #3

Depends on what you count as "brilliant work". All of the Neuroscience PhDs at Stanford, UCSF and MIT (non-exhaustive list, just examples) I've met are at least 2 standard deviations away from average intelligence and many are 3 SDs away. Makes me think that some brilliant work requires being brilliant.

They need to get more brilliant, because frankly I don't see that many useful results coming from the field of neuroscience lately. E.g. the standard drug for depression being SSRIs for so long makes it seem like we are stuck in the dark ages.

Re: You Don't Need to Be Brilliant to Do Brilliant Work

#37

Post by dazhbog »

hprotagonist wrote: post #8

Although high general intelligence is common among hackers, it is not the sine qua non one might expect. Another trait is probably even more important: the ability to mentally absorb, retain, and reference large amounts of ‘meaningless’ detail, trusting to later experience to give it context and meaning. A person of merely average analytical intelligence who has this trait can become an effective hacker, but a creati…

Thanks for sharing! Didn't know about this website. (Which is spot on describing 90% of the HN audience)

Re: You Don't Need to Be Brilliant to Do Brilliant Work

#38

Post by losvedir »

mlevental wrote: post #30
thaumasiotes wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you say this? Assessing IQ is the entire purpose of standardized tests, and unsurprisingly it's something they do well.

because you can prepare for them.

Only to some extent. I've tutored for the SAT and seen some improvement, but you can't get people to perfect scores. I got a perfect score with a bit of practice. Khan academy and the college board say your score can improve on average 115 pts with study, which is not nothing, but is still a long way from 1600 when the average score is ~1000.

So when someone says that people treat SAT scores as a proxy for an IQ test, they mean someone with a 1550 likely has a well-above average IQ, and a higher one than someone who got a 1250, who's still probably somewhat above average.

[0] https://www.khanacademy.org/about/blog/post/160451329150/stu...

Re: You Don't Need to Be Brilliant to Do Brilliant Work

#39

Post by xodast »

wolco wrote: post #31
jkuria wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So true. This is also the 'Dilbert Theory of Value Creation' that I have used to great profit. Scott Adams likes to say, he is not the funniest guy around but funnier than most people. At best, he'd be a mediocre comedian. He can also draw better than most but hardly a Picasso. And yet, by combining both skills he has something "rare and valuable" that has led to enormous financial success. He also adds that it easie…

The path to billionare is unique and can't be copied and involves luck and usually some business skills and almost always communication skills or skills to get others to do work for you. Being an nba player involves luck and hard work and a high spacial iq. Anyone could become a billiarie with luck (powerball lottery in one extreme). Only 100,000 people in the world would even have a chance to compete to be an nba pl…

You do realize there are 6 foot NBA players right. Hardly 100000 in the world. So if you're gonna go to the power ball extreme on one end then you must extend the analogy just as far on the other side of the argument.

Most billionaires were born in top 0.01 percentile of their respective population pool. And had to be lucky and smart amongst other traits.

Re: You Don't Need to Be Brilliant to Do Brilliant Work

#40

Post by hprotagonist »

owyn wrote: post #29
hprotagonist wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

just start drinking from the firehose. the trick is to convince yourself not to care about the immediate utility of what you’re learning. And store pointers to data, it’s lighter weight.

agree. read a lot. especially other people's source code.

read a lot, and i'd say read more or less any and all competent texts you can find.
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