Curse Of The Gifted (2000) • Hacker News Board

Re: Curse Of The Gifted (2000)

#271

Post by thesimpsons1022 » Wed, Feb 12, 2014, 6:35 AM UTC

mgkimsal wrote: post #89

austenallred wrote: post #18

I am miles away from Eric or Linus, but the "curse of the gifted" is very real. Thankfully I wasn't smart or gifted enough that I could ride it for long, but when it comes to math and problem-solving I rode it well into my high school years. I never learned to do algebra "by the book," because I didn't need to. Or maybe because I wasn't smart enough to. The math teacher would teach "3x + 6 = 9." Basic algebraic probl…

Almost exact same here, except I failed college calculus - twice. It's always been a sore point for me that people who are obviously not as 'smart' as I am somehow all managed to pass it - I couldn't even understand it. Can I lay a little blame on bad professors? perhaps. others complained about the profs too, but ... they still managed to grok enough to pass. I only managed to satisfy degree requirements by taking '…

i just feel you only have your self to blame if you are in this situation. somewhat seems like you are still blaming the school for not getting you to do the work required of you. (I was the same way, but i caught myself and have tried to change it)

Re: Curse Of The Gifted (2000)

#272

Post by thesimpsons1022 » Wed, Feb 12, 2014, 6:41 AM UTC

bane wrote: post #234

Crake wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with most of what you're saying, except for "every single person's money problem is solved with the very simple 'don't spend more than you earn.'" Sometimes it's not being able to earn enough money that's the problem--there's a baseline level of income needed to pay for very basic no frills food and rent in any given area.

> Sometimes it's not being able to earn enough money that's the problem This is going to come across as prickish, I'm not meaning it with that tone, but here's an example: 1) Costs are more than income? Earn more money. 2) "But where I live has a shitty economy and there are no jobs that pay more that I'm qualified for" Then your options are: move to someplace with better pay potential, work more jobs, downsize your…

thats fine if you come from a perfect background but it sounds pretty ignorant, like you have no empathy for others and can't relate to others situations. for example, if you fucked up as a kid, but want to turn your life around it can be really difficult/impossible. furthermore, life can throw unavoidable things at people, like maybe they had to take care of a sick relative instead of getting an education. you sound like someone whose always lived in a suburb/nice area and has no perspective. i'm telling this to pop your bubble, go to africa or china or brazil, or even the ghetto. there are men there who work harder than you ever will and still can't survive on the money they make, regardless of how much their expenses are.

Re: Curse Of The Gifted (2000)

#273

Post by thesimpsons1022 » Wed, Feb 12, 2014, 6:49 AM UTC

FLUX-YOU wrote: post #176

bane wrote: post #107

edit a little stream of consciousness follows Curse of being gifted is very real. I wonder sometimes how many people couldn't break out of it and have ended up in bad jobs, or worse. Probably like many HNers I also suffered from it mightily in K-12 and by the time I realized what was going on, I was already so far behind that escaping school, rather than redoing years of what I missed, was the easier option. It took…

>Curse of being gifted is very real. I wonder sometimes how many people couldn't break out of it and have ended up in bad jobs, or worse. I read this and immediately thought "Oh, I must be gifted and suffering from this, because in high school I was good at computers, english, science, basic algebra, and geometry and ended up with a useless degree and a bad job." I don't know if I really am gifted, but it's easy to l…

i saw some study that said high school valedictorians dont usually end up with any better outcomes than the average person. intelligence isnt everything in this world. look at reality television and the music industry..

Re: Curse Of The Gifted (2000)

#274

Post by mahyarm » Wed, Feb 12, 2014, 6:59 AM UTC

ejk314 wrote: post #90

bradleyjg wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's bad in more ways than one. Not only do you eventually hit a wall in the subjects you are naturally gifted in and find yourself without the skills to keep going, you also probably avoided the subjects your weren't naturally gifted in. So for example, maybe you can't keep going in math because you can no longer do it in your head and never learned how to do it on paper, but you also never learned to write well, so…

>Straight As can mask a lot of problems. I've got a room mate who was put ahead a grade in middle?late-elementary school and missed the whole foundation of algebra. They did so because he got straight A's so obviously he's smart enough; he could just skip that. (They promised to give him a text book so he could learn on his own that summer, but never got around to giving it to him.) Of course, he started struggling i…

Don't you have to challenge the material for a grade and pass the final exams before you could skip a grade?

Re: Curse Of The Gifted (2000)

#275

Post by mahyarm » Wed, Feb 12, 2014, 7:23 AM UTC

bane wrote: post #182

jakobe wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the kinds of problems most people have seem trivially simple to me This sounds a bit narcissistic. If you think other people's problems are trivial, maybe you're just not being empathic enough to understand their full scope. If everything looks like it follows simple patterns, maybe you just aren't looking close enough. When you learn something new, there's often this point where you feel you understand it all. If…

> This sounds a bit narcissistic. I know. That's the trouble with talking about growing up or being highly intelligent, you end up sounding like a narcissistic prick. Even saying something like "I've tested in the top 1-2% of dozens of aptitude and intelligence tests" sounds like I'm lording it over those who haven't. But I don't think it's really all that different than saying "I'm taller than 99% of the population"…

To lose weight, it's easier to eat less than to move more. You really just have to have a daily calorie deficit of 500 calories from your TDEE (total daily energy expenditure) to lose weight at 1 lbs/week. Since your pretty overweight you can probably easily afford a 1000-750/day calorie deficit and still eat over 2000 calories a day.

Just go here and get your TDEE: http://www.1percentedge.com/ifcalc/

Then calorie count by being a lazy man and getting all of your meals from various chains and easily measured prepackaged foods. A good combo that works for me is a small breakfast of egg whites & salsa, or some sort of veggie or yogurt snack of about 200 calories max. Then for lunch I have a 750 calorie footlong sub from subway and a 700 calorie burrito bowl from chipolte. I avoid liquid calories, take a multivitamin and drink a bunch of water before every meal. I snack on raw vegetables without dip and I also measure the calorie impact of that. I also measure myself every day with a fitbit aria scale so I don't even have to both to write it down. After you get to your goal weight you keep on measuring with the scale to nip weight gain trends in the bud. This works and is fairly affordable.

Just eying your meals and reducing portions is too imprecise. A small burger that fits in the palm of my hand can have the same amount of calories as a footlong sandwich 3 to 4 times the size and you can infuriatingly torture yourself for months on end with no progress. Just be precise and do it right the first time.

Re: Curse Of The Gifted (2000)

#276

Post by bane » Wed, Feb 12, 2014, 7:47 AM UTC

thesimpsons1022 wrote: post #272

bane wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sometimes it's not being able to earn enough money that's the problem This is going to come across as prickish, I'm not meaning it with that tone, but here's an example: 1) Costs are more than income? Earn more money. 2) "But where I live has a shitty economy and there are no jobs that pay more that I'm qualified for" Then your options are: move to someplace with better pay potential, work more jobs, downsize your…

thats fine if you come from a perfect background but it sounds pretty ignorant, like you have no empathy for others and can't relate to others situations. for example, if you fucked up as a kid, but want to turn your life around it can be really difficult/impossible. furthermore, life can throw unavoidable things at people, like maybe they had to take care of a sick relative instead of getting an education. you sound…

I appreciate your comment and the spirit it was presented in. You should dig back through my comment history to find out more about my background.

The TL;DR, grew up pretty poor, came out of that environment with lots of burdens, did exactly what I said above and now am not poor anymore. It sucked, hard, but it's possible. And it's more possible to do it before you make lots of bad decisions that make it even harder to crawl out of. But it's not very complex to do.

Yeah it gives me sympathy, but it gives me a realistic pragmatism too and practical experience simply doing it.

But regardless, I've seen and helped many people who came from much worse backgrounds than I did to do the same and live comfortable productive lives.

I've traveled quite a bit, to some pretty hellish areas, and I know what you are talking about.

I think you put down "Africa" China and Brazil too much. China and Brazil are paradises compared to some of the places I've been. And much of Africa is pretty decent these days comparatively. If you work hard and have good money discipline in any of those places you can probably eek out an okay living. I've seen people eek out passable livings in active war zones. I'd leave, but you know, staying on ancestral lands or whatever is their choice. Their neighbors who did leave lead much better lives. There's always a way.

It's not complex, but it's not always easy.

> life can throw unavoidable things at people, like maybe they had to take care of a sick relative

If you read what I've written here, you'll see that I've already acknowledged that sometimes shit happens and there's no way to readily solve it. But these are outlier atypical scenarios. We can come up with these all day: gas main exploded destroying my house, meteor falls from space and destroys their car, hurricane and tsunami levels the local economy, got cancer, etc.

Yeah that stuff is hard and can be complex. But for most people, most places and most of the time, their problems are not complex and aren't difficult to surmount.

Re: Curse Of The Gifted (2000)

#277

Post by bane » Wed, Feb 12, 2014, 7:50 AM UTC

dclara wrote: post #270

bane wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I still think you are too narrow on a certain spot over the entire spectrum of life. I think you are right. When I think on my wife, the loneliness goes away, but it's tempting to fall back into old thinking patterns and habits, no? Sometimes bad feelings you've carried around for a long time are comfortable, like an old pair of shoes.

Yes, I sort of understand what you mean. I guess the only way out to relieve from the bad feeling is to be grateful for what life has brought to us. But I know, feeling is feeling, feeling is not logic. Try it, you may feel different, because our daily life is impacted by our emotional energy on a large scale. Another angle to see the loneliness is from a long historic point of view. We are all lonely on the way to b…

Thanks for sharing the story. I think we can agree that not dwelling on the past and the feelings it might bring up, but to move forward and be grateful is a better path to follow.

Re: Curse Of The Gifted (2000)

#278

Post by _Adam » Wed, Feb 12, 2014, 7:57 AM UTC

georgiecasey wrote: post #253

nswanberg wrote: post #65

For those curious about the context: https://lkml.org/lkml/2000/8/23/97 Note that noone replied to Eric and the thread continued on. Also go back and read some of Linus's posts before this. Eric writes using vague generalizations about age and experience; Linus writes with specifics about his experience with the kernel. The former style makes for popularly read posts but the latter seems much more effective. Also, co…

i had to scroll down this far to find people who actually read the link. everybody above just wants to tell us how much of a curse their high intelligence is.

I wonder if they want to use their experience with the "curse" as proof of their intelligence? I'm sure anyone here could find some example of it. But I can think of way better things to do than talk about being smart on HN.

Re: Curse Of The Gifted (2000)

#279

Post by cturner » Wed, Feb 12, 2014, 7:59 AM UTC

mindslight wrote: post #139

bunderbunder wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have never, ever, ever met someone who was well-served by skipping a grade. Myself included. Ever. Skipping a grade means giving up a full year of education. If that proposition doesn't give you pause, you probably don't have enough respect for the value of education. Even if you you get absolutely nothing out of that year aside from the soft skills you develop by sitting in a class with other kids and listening to…

I skipped both 5th and 8th, and while I obviously don't have an external perspective, it still feels like it was the right thing to do. Fewer years of "writing/literature" could have weakened my writing skills, but I think that was primarily from my non-application due the incestuous lit-crit regurgitate-the-themes-the-teacher-says educational approach, and more of this certainly wouldn't have helped. I applied mysel…

The hatred for the study of literature at school comes up again and again on hacker news, and grates. At my high school (independent school in australia), literature was one of the best things about the place. The teachers were driven by a love of good narrative, and cultivated students to develop their own essay writing techniques. My final year teacher scorned the exam system, and would give us tips on how to pass the exam at the beginning of the lesson, and then move onto the stuff he cared about for the rest. There was also a long-standing emphasis on public speaking, and the place developed a great history department while I was there.

Narratives are central to human identity. Particularly for young people who haven't yet developed the ability to reason in the abstract. If you want to create people who can follow, who can lead, who oppose tyranny, who oppose corruption, who believe in the ability to change the world, and who understand why they believe what they believe - narrative is the most powerful at your disposal.

Literature may be the only important subject at school. It teaches us about the use of the language we use in our every day interaction, and pushes the study of narratives about life. You guys who got bad literature teaching really missed out. You will have compensated for it somewhat through film and independent reading.

Re: Curse Of The Gifted (2000)

#280

Post by carlob » Wed, Feb 12, 2014, 8:04 AM UTC

bradleyjg wrote: post #169

chao- wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not entirely a marshmallow test and I disagree with your blanket categorization of it as such. During elementary school, a friend and I got a hold of a Math review book meant for college-age folks who didn't really grok Math in High School. We enjoyed competing with each other in learning math, but it resulted in us going into 6th grade knowing everything we would be learning for the next three years. In Math al…

You skipped two grades in one subject with a peer so you weren't by yourself among the older children. I can certainly believe that worked out fine. Maybe even in the more extreme case of a child skipping several grades altogether by himself, that's the best of a bad set of choices. But we shouldn't be offering only bad choices. At least in/near any decent size city, there should be a large enough population to creat…

> At least in/near any decent size city, there should be a large enough population to create classes of a reasonable size of same age students at roughly the same level.

Why? There is great educational value in being in a class which has different levels.

If you are smarter: learning to help others, working together with people that are slower than you are, learning that usually intelligence is not one-dimensional and kids that are not very good at math might be great at writing…

If you are less smart the benefits are across the board. I remember reading a study about mixing kids from different incomes in the same school as opposed to wealth segregation (you might argue that smarts and wealth are not the same, but they are often highly correlated at least when starting out) and the conclusions were that there was no drawback for the rich kids, but huuuge advantages for the poorer.