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“I’m not that smart”

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Re: “I’m not that smart”

#41

Post by AstralStorm »

rowanG077 wrote: post #39
lordnacho wrote: post #28

My take on this is that intelligence is like strength or other physical qualities. If you are in a hyper competitive area, you need good genes. But not everything is competitive. Yes, there are absolutely limits on your physical development that you are born with. You won't run 100m under 10s if you're a woman, and you're much more likely if you have recent roots in certain countries. You won't get to play profession…

I thought that intelligence is pretty static by almost(or all?) measurement tools we have. Is that not the case? Not to say that our measurement tools might have serious issues but then you enter the unanswered question of making very concrete what intelligence is.

At the same time it is static and subject to a small test training effect and test-retest variance.

If measured as IQ, the variance tends to be around 5 points on most tests.

Re: “I’m not that smart”

#42

Post by AstralStorm »

klipt wrote: post #18
teachersaredumb wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> extremely heritable But still with regression to the mean, no? The child of two great geniuses is likely to be a somewhat lesser genius. Above average, but below their parents. A few generations of such regression to the mean and there might not be that much extra intelligence in the descendants of great geniuses.

As with any multigenic inheritance with few dominants, this is true. That said, a few point difference is expected to remain in 5 generations, and if the line has more children the higher the chance of a genius line surviving.

Re: “I’m not that smart”

#43

Post by ambicapter »

DangitBobby wrote: post #5

It 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’m sure you could have had a meaningful career in theoretical physics even without the sharpest of cutting edges of a brain. There is always tons of boring-but-necessary work to do in every field, and perhaps you could have enabled someone else to make a breakthrough. Either that or just greatly enjoyed your time doing it, which is meaningful in of itself.

Re: “I’m not that smart”

#44

Post by Aeolun »

DangitBobby wrote: post #5

It 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…

> 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.

Not with that mindset, no ;)

I suck at anything beyond basis probability theory math-wise, but I don’t believe it’s anything to do with inherent ability (or at least not mostly). Math is just boring.

Hmm, though, I guess you can call that inherent. And I certainly wouldn’t achieve anything if someone tried to get me to do research on it.

Re: “I’m not that smart”

#45

Post by michaelgrafl »

rowanG077 wrote: post #39
lordnacho wrote: post #28

My take on this is that intelligence is like strength or other physical qualities. If you are in a hyper competitive area, you need good genes. But not everything is competitive. Yes, there are absolutely limits on your physical development that you are born with. You won't run 100m under 10s if you're a woman, and you're much more likely if you have recent roots in certain countries. You won't get to play profession…

I thought that intelligence is pretty static by almost(or all?) measurement tools we have. Is that not the case? Not to say that our measurement tools might have serious issues but then you enter the unanswered question of making very concrete what intelligence is.

Yes and no. Lifestyle has an impact on intelligence. You probably can't train yourself into a higher IQ, but you can many things that will dimish it (not sleeping well, bad nutrition, drugs, stress, etc.)

So if you've led a non ideal lifestyle in the past, you might be able to increase your intelligence by making less mistakes, relative to your current abilities.

Re: “I’m not that smart”

#46

Post by istinetz »

Aeolun wrote: post #44
DangitBobby wrote: post #5

It 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…

> 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. Not with that mindset, no ;) I suck at anything beyond basis probability theory math-wise, but I don’t believe it’s anything to do with inherent ability (or at least not mostly). Math is just boring. Hmm, though, I guess…

>I suck at anything beyond basis probability theory math-wise, but I don’t believe it’s anything to do with inherent ability (or at least not mostly). Math is just boring.

You're generalizing your circumstances.

Re: “I’m not that smart”

#47

Post by cosmodisk »

DangitBobby wrote: post #5

It 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 tend to agree. There are things that some groups find super easy, yet others struggle and I don't even talk about complex things like physics. For instance, I remember at Uni we had mechanical engineering classes where you have top, side, and front view and you need to draw the piece from a perspective. I could 'rotate' the object in my head like I was wearing a VR set,but some people absolutely struggled with even simplest objects. It'd be good to know why it's like this.

Re: “I’m not that smart”

#48

Post by istinetz »

stevefan1999 wrote: post #38
mach1ne wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you provide a link to the claim? Interesting if true.

nah, he is just trying to sell eugenics, a psuedoscientific practice, in disguise

>psuedoscientific

yeah, animal breeding and crop selection work, but it couldn't possibly work on humans

Re: “I’m not that smart”

#49

Post by saiya-jin »

lordnacho wrote: post #28

My take on this is that intelligence is like strength or other physical qualities. If you are in a hyper competitive area, you need good genes. But not everything is competitive. Yes, there are absolutely limits on your physical development that you are born with. You won't run 100m under 10s if you're a woman, and you're much more likely if you have recent roots in certain countries. You won't get to play profession…

I wholeheartedly subscribe to this. I was never super smart, mildly above-average in both primary, secondary, high school and university too. You could say I always matched the challenge, but not much more.

All the time, there were people around me who were significantly smarter than me, grokking things easily, learning faster, remembering better. Ie my roommate during whole campus was a guy who passed whole high school without the need to study at home, he just remembered it all and did homework just before the classes. there were tons of guys like him. I had to study every day, not too much but consistently. He didn't perform much better than me re grades on university, but he didn't have to work as much.

But here lies the rub - I could easily surpass people like him, even better ones, by just putting in enough time and learn things. In many topics that didn't interest people like him, I was much better. Much smarter folks than me were fired from university since at some point stuff became too hard to just visit seminars and they completely lacked the habit to spent time to learn hard stuff, even by far the smartest guy in whole 120-member class had to put in significant time to learn it for exams to pass.

I kept working on myself, learned various languages (ie right now battling with french), re-discovered topics that forceful learning in high school made me resent (geography, history, biology, physics) and discovered stuff on my own by backpacking around the world (more history and how everything interacted, cultures, food, appreciation of people sometimes vilified back home like Muslims) and just generally stepping far away of my comfort zone for decade and a half, right after finishing university. Now when I look back (and/or meet some of them), I am much more whole and experienced person, when we meet and their kids come and show me some backward place on globe I tell them some stories I've experienced in that region and a bit about their culture and history (don't want to sound condescending, I love them, and my roommate remained my good friend and has very senior management position).

I completed backwardish unknown university and for last decade work among graduates form best European universities. There is very little difference amongst us.

Its truly what IIRC Chaplin said - success is 10% talent and 90% hard work.

Re: “I’m not that smart”

#50

Post by Yizahi »

rowanG077 wrote: post #39
lordnacho wrote: post #28

My take on this is that intelligence is like strength or other physical qualities. If you are in a hyper competitive area, you need good genes. But not everything is competitive. Yes, there are absolutely limits on your physical development that you are born with. You won't run 100m under 10s if you're a woman, and you're much more likely if you have recent roots in certain countries. You won't get to play profession…

I thought that intelligence is pretty static by almost(or all?) measurement tools we have. Is that not the case? Not to say that our measurement tools might have serious issues but then you enter the unanswered question of making very concrete what intelligence is.

Intelligence maybe is static, but Wisdom is not. So you should allocate some points to it, unless going fighter build.
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