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How to do things if you're not that smart and don't have any talent

adaobi.substack.com

141–150 of 225 posts

Re: How to do things if you're not that smart and don't have any talent

#141
post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PSA: take a look at CDC's symptoms for ADHD: https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/adhd/diagnosis.html No motivation to start cool new projects is not among them... Actually, reading all those symptoms really puts into the light the 'disorder' part in the ADHD. And here's a philosophical question to ponder: should we change[1] to fit society's expectations or should society adjust itself to our needs? Should we take drugs so th…

I see where you're coming from, but comments like this are why it's taken me 30 years to understand there was something not exactly right with me. It doesn't help anyone because ADHD is something no one has completely understood, especially those that do not have it, and keep muddying the waters at any chance they get. In my experience , if it has any value, ADHD is also lack of motivation to start new cool projects…

I just accepted never finishing anything I guess? I still enjoy the starting, and the never finishing part mostly comes from not wanting to do tedious work.

I do find that as I get older the point where the work grows tedious increases. I’ve spent years on a project, and while not finished it’s certainly usable.

Re: How to do things if you're not that smart and don't have any talent

#142
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give a concrete example of tech work that a "low IQ person" would not be able to tackle?

Writing an embedded C program using ESP-IDF that polls a Bosch BME688 sensor, feeds it Bosch BSEC library (compiled for ESP32, of course) and then pushes the response to an AWS mqtt queue.

"ChatGPT, write me an embedded C program using ESP-IDF that polls a Bosch BME688 sensor, feeds it Bosch BSEC library (compiled for ESP32, of course) and then pushes the response to an AWS mqtt queue."

Re: How to do things if you're not that smart and don't have any talent

#143
post #16
post #14

From my experience in the tech industry I can say with utmost confidence that "not smart"/"talentless" people who are determined and hard-working lead to significantly better real world results than geniuses who are lazy, unmotivated or overall not action oriented. The vast majority of problems at any company are easy and don't need any big technological breakthroughs to solve. They are instead held back by (1) lack…

> (1) lack of effort or (2) lack of organization. (3) lack of reward I say the former 2 is caused by 3. Why would anyone put in over-time to solve a problem, if they dont know how well they'd get rewarded by it? It's why small/founder owned startups get more done with less, because they know themselves how much reward they'd get when putting in the hard yards.

Obligatory "Office Space" quote: ;)

Peter Gibbons: The thing is, Bob, it's not that I'm lazy, it's that I just don't care. Bob Porter: Don't... don't care? Peter Gibbons: It's a problem of motivation, all right? Now if I work my ass off and Initech ships a few extra units, I don't see another dime, so where's the motivation?

Re: How to do things if you're not that smart and don't have any talent

#144
post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PSA: take a look at CDC's symptoms for ADHD: https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/adhd/diagnosis.html No motivation to start cool new projects is not among them... Actually, reading all those symptoms really puts into the light the 'disorder' part in the ADHD. And here's a philosophical question to ponder: should we change[1] to fit society's expectations or should society adjust itself to our needs? Should we take drugs so th…

> No motivation to start cool new projects is not among them... Starting projects isn't the issue (personal experience w/ ADHD) - following through and finishing them is, which is listed in various ways under the inattentive section I've got plenty of new project folders, draft blog posts, plans written down, database schemas, etc - but no shipped results. This is the main issue for me. Starting a project is easy, wo…

> plenty of new project folders, draft blog posts, plans written down, database schemas, etc - but no shipped results. This is the main issue for me. Starting a project is easy, working on it is the issue!

You've done the fun parts. Isn't that enough to hit a good ratio of satisfaction-to-time-consumed ?

Re: How to do things if you're not that smart and don't have any talent

#145
post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doing taxes and bills are not what I consider high reward more like moderate penalty. And, no, I don't pay my bills: everything is auto-pay.

> Doing taxes and bills are not what I consider high reward more like moderate penalty Try not paying bills or filing your taxes and you will see what happens, doing the task prevents you from getting a severe punishment (relative time spent on the task), so it is high reward. People with ADHD tend to be late paying bills or doing taxes and struggle with filling in forms in general, ie they regularly fail to do simpl…

How sad would it be if most or all of my "high reward" tasks are anti-"severe punishment?"

Re: How to do things if you're not that smart and don't have any talent

#146

The article made me think of General Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord's officer classification: "I distinguish four types. There are clever, hardworking, stupid, and lazy officers. Usually two characteristics are combined. Some are clever and hardworking; their place is the General Staff. The next ones are stupid and lazy; they make up 90 percent of every army and are suited to routine duties. Anyone who is both clever an…

That jives very well with the first point: "Be audacious. Most people who are talented or smart are scared of doing things." In general smart people want to understand what they are doing before they do it. This means you can often beat them at a task by simply doing without understanding, which is why General Kurt told us to be wary about such people.

Yeah, I've seen too many bs created by people that thought they were much smarter than in reality.

Re: How to do things if you're not that smart and don't have any talent

#147
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You must be new here, hard work beating talent is an extremely popular topic. People mostly reads these and see themselves as the superior side, if it is an article about hard work beating talent people see themselves as the hard worker, if it is an article about smart people doing X then of course the reader is on the smart side etc. So an article on how most hard work is wasted since it wasn't well thought out woul…

No there's a lot of articles on IQ and intelligence. Less on hard work. Mainly because most people on here are programmers and the job and interview is related to intelligence. People who take pride in there programming skill think they're intelligent. As a programmer myself I think most programmers are average. Programming isn't a very hard job imo. It doesn't require a huge amount of intelligence hence the reason w…

> No there's a lot of articles on IQ and intelligence. Less on hard work

There really isn't, simple search shows:

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

Compare to for example search for intelligence, mostly results about AI or they are about downplaying intelligence, not saying it is important:

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

or intelligent, same thing here:

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

Results that talks about the importance of intelligence get way less votes and are way less popular. Hard work tend to get hundreds of upvotes and are among the most popular on this site, articles about important of intelligence barely get any so are hard to even find via search.

Re: How to do things if you're not that smart and don't have any talent

#148
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give a concrete example of tech work that a "low IQ person" would not be able to tackle?

Writing an embedded C program using ESP-IDF that polls a Bosch BME688 sensor, feeds it Bosch BSEC library (compiled for ESP32, of course) and then pushes the response to an AWS mqtt queue.

Why, in all that, would you use an AWS mqtt queue?

Re: How to do things if you're not that smart and don't have any talent

#149
post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No motivation to start cool new projects is not among them... Starting projects isn't the issue (personal experience w/ ADHD) - following through and finishing them is, which is listed in various ways under the inattentive section I've got plenty of new project folders, draft blog posts, plans written down, database schemas, etc - but no shipped results. This is the main issue for me. Starting a project is easy, wo…

> plenty of new project folders, draft blog posts, plans written down, database schemas, etc - but no shipped results. This is the main issue for me. Starting a project is easy, working on it is the issue! You've done the fun parts. Isn't that enough to hit a good ratio of satisfaction-to-time-consumed ?

Unfortunately satisfaction-to-time-consumed doesn't pay any bills or fill the cupboards with food

In the ideal world aye absolutely, in this reality the time was wasted

Re: How to do things if you're not that smart and don't have any talent

#150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Which Voltage do i need to cut Styrofoam with a resistive wire"

240V, that's an unfair example. As a low IQ person, I sidestepped trying to actually calculate the heat generated by different resistive wires (has to be above the melting point of styrofoam) and thought linearly about what I wanted to do, which was cut styrofoam, so google styrofoam cutter hot wire, got me to amazon.

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