“I’m not that smart”
seths.blog
“I’m not that smart”
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Re: “I’m not that smart”
#2My first attempt at university I took an intro CS class because I was interested in computers and thought it might be a better fit for me than my major at the time. I did all right for a couple of weeks, but struggled and eventually failed the class. I wrote it off as my brain simply not being wired for programming.
When I actually had a programming problem I was interested in solving, I did great. I discovered many years later that what caused my early failure was mostly me being a bad student. I didn’t do the reading, I didn’t do the homework, I did the labs when I could make sense of them. The trouble was, I didn’t realize that was the problem. In my defense, the class was a weed out class, and made a lot of assumptions about what you knew going in. But ultimately I wasn’t really prepared for school, and didn’t really understand how coursework and personal effort contributed to success in that space.
I guess what I’m saying is, don’t write someone off as not willing to do the work. They may not know that they can do the work.
Re: “I’m not that smart”
#3 I don’t care enough to do the reading, to fail along the way, to show up, to make a promise, to learn as I go, to confront failure, to get better at the work.
All of that might be true.
But you’re almost certainly smart enough.
I don’t know if it will shift culture to reward and encourage effort, perseverance, grit, etc… over apparent “talent”, but it’s a step in the right direction.
Re: “I’m not that smart”
#4Treating “intelligence” as a synonym for “training” is a more effective and positive approach than thinking certain people have some from-birth advantage over others.
So many people walk around thinking they’re stupid when they’re not. They just were not trained well in things society considers the core competencies of smart people (math, literature, physics, etc)
You can read perspectives on intelligence from people who’ve won the Putnam and they convey that they ‘just’ put in a crazy amount of work training in competitive mathematics. And even before they were deliberately training for the Putnam, they were raised in an environment that trained them for mathematical competency.
Of course there is likely a genetic and/or physical component to intelligence, but the major aspect of being smart is about wealth and educational inequality.
Re: “I’m not that smart”
#5It became quickly very clear to me in undergrad that some people had this intuitive conceptual understanding of math and physics that I would simply never have, despite the effort (and I did make good grades). Some of these guys just blew me away with how smart they were. The more time I spent around people a lot smarter than me, the more I realized that some people's brains are just operating at a completely different level. I could have done physics, but I never would have been doing cutting edge theoretical research. I'm simply not smart enough. There is quite clearly a spectrum of mental capabilities from mentally challenged all the way to genius level. To believe this has no impact on what you're capable of achieving in a lifetime is quite naive.
And you would not have been doing me any favors by trying to convince me that I could have had a meaningful career pursuing theoretical physics research, something I'd never realistically achieve.
Re: “I’m not that smart”
#6It became quickly very clear to me in undergrad that some people had this intuitive conceptual understanding of math and physics that I would simply never have, despite the effort (and I did make good grades). Some of these guys just blew me away with how smart they were. The more time I spent around people a lot smarter than me, the more I realized that some people's brains are just operating at a completely differe…
I'd venture that the "guys ... operating at a completely different level" likely gained their intuitive understanding of math and physics from earlier educational training (formal or informal).
But this is really besides the point, because Seth says:
> The number of tasks in our culture that require someone who was born with off-the-charts talent is small indeed.
I think we can carve off advanced theoretical physics and pure mathematics as a tiny field where the 1/50,000 'genius' people are needed, and that leaves basically all the rest of society.
Re: “I’m not that smart”
#7It became quickly very clear to me in undergrad that some people had this intuitive conceptual understanding of math and physics that I would simply never have, despite the effort (and I did make good grades). Some of these guys just blew me away with how smart they were. The more time I spent around people a lot smarter than me, the more I realized that some people's brains are just operating at a completely differe…
I'd venture that the "guys ... operating at a completely different level" likely gained their intuitive understanding of math and physics from earlier educational training (formal or informal). But this is really besides the point, because Seth says: > The number of tasks in our culture that require someone who was born with off-the-charts talent is small indeed. I think we can carve off advanced theoretical physics…
Yes, people do tend to think that differences like these are environmental (such as formal training early from early on), likely because their moral system insists on it. We like to believe meritocracy is a fair system driven primarily by your own decisions. But if you don't come by your merits with hard work, meritocracy stops sounding like a just way of deciding who gets to have a good life and who doesn't. It's clear to me as the nose on my face that education is a small piece of the merit puzzle. Not nothing, but it can be rectified, unlike the situation where you are lacking the brainpower.
I was mainly talking about physics to color my opinion with my personal experience. The truth is, I know I'm smarter than most people, and I am fairly certain that intelligence is actually a significant hurdle that keeps people from being competent at my job. I disagree with the content of the article. Plenty of people are not smart enough to fill roles we need or to hold down a job that pays well.
Re: “I’m not that smart”
#8Treating “intelligence” as a synonym for “training” is a more effective and positive approach than thinking certain people have some from-birth advantage over others. So many people walk around thinking they’re stupid when they’re not. They just were not trained well in things society considers the core competencies of smart people (math, literature, physics, etc) You can read perspectives on intelligence from people…
>but the major aspect of being smart is about wealth and educational inequality
No, this is flat out wrong. There has been so much research on this, and intelligence is both highly predictive of life outcomes (controlling for wealth) and extremely heritable. If you take the biological kids of smart people and raise them in poor households, they still turn out very smart, much smarter than the biological kids of dumb people who are raised in rich households.
Re: “I’m not that smart”
#9My first attempt at university I took an intro CS class because I was interested in computers and thought it might be a better fit for me than my major at the time. I did all right for a couple of weeks, but struggled and eventually failed the class. I wrote it off as my brain simply not being wired for programming. When I actually had a programming problem I was interested in solving, I did great. I discovered many…
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Re: “I’m not that smart”
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd venture that the "guys ... operating at a completely different level" likely gained their intuitive understanding of math and physics from earlier educational training (formal or informal). But this is really besides the point, because Seth says: > The number of tasks in our culture that require someone who was born with off-the-charts talent is small indeed. I think we can carve off advanced theoretical physics…
Yes, people do tend to think that differences like these are environmental (such as formal training early from early on), likely because their moral system insists on it. We like to believe meritocracy is a fair system driven primarily by your own decisions. But if you don't come by your merits with hard work, meritocracy stops sounding like a just way of deciding who gets to have a good life and who doesn't. It's cl…
The entire modern dialectic around intelligence is emotionally driven. Dumb/unsuccessful people want to believe that smart/successful people just got an unfair leg up in life. And smart/successful people want to believe that anyone can achieve what they did if society helped them enough. We don't want to accept that some people are born with what it takes to become elite and some are born without it and will never have it.