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"I have come to find out what it's like to be dumb."

waldo.jaquith.org

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Re: "I have come to find out what it's like to be dumb."

#101

Post by AYBABTME »

quark83 wrote: post #17

I created a throwaway account so it's not associated with my normal handle on here. This post brings up something I've been wondering about, and it's something that's really been bothering me the last few years. I feel like I've become significantly less intelligent over time, and I can't figure out if that's really the case, or if it's a different issue that simply makes me feel less intelligent. When I was in high…

I was having a pretty easy time in high-school, cruise-controlling with flying scores. Then in my early adulthood, I came to feel more stupid and slow. I think the early decline in my analytical abilities came from boredom. Until the end of high school, I had some blind motivation to think and care, I guess from some initial pool of 'motivation'. Then as I graduated, I was left with a very open ended world to deal with and no clear reason to take any specific path. And no true motivation to think through anything.

I went in the army for a while, infantry. It did help make me feel even more stupid. I developed a different motivation toward knowledge, preferring to sharpen action oriented decision making instead of analytical thinking. Might seem odd just said like that, but placed in an environment where all that matters is making roughly good decisions quickly, all the time, does unsharpen your ability to think at length.

At that point, a couple years in the army, I thought that intelligent past I had was gone. I'd look at books I used to understand easily and feel uninterested and unable to grasps anything in it.

It went like that until I found about programming. When I saw my first line of VBA (!!) while trying to make an Excel spreadsheet, I was baffled and utterly confused. I thought I was beyond my reach, but I still tried out of necessity. And eventually more and more complex constructions of VBA came within my reach. And then I understood that my lost ability to think analytically was not lost, it was just untrained. As I realized I loved programming things, I jumped into anything related I could read. All those cryptic things became understandable, now that I had motivation.

Fast-forward three years, I think I'm now much "smarter"/able than I ever was. I also perceive that my smartness has little to do with some magical gift that fades away out of my control. It seems to have much more to do with how motivated I can be about a topic.

All that to say, you shouldn't diagnose your apparent inability to think as a consequence of you becoming more stupid. You might just be demotivated and still very able, given a little practice and warm up time.

Re: "I have come to find out what it's like to be dumb."

#103

Post by AYBABTME »

quark83 wrote: post #31
Sagat wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a similar story to yours although I doubt I was as smart. In high school I could get the best grades in my class without much effort and got a near perfect score in the baccalaureate. Nothing to brag about though, since I then proceeded to drop out of law school in my second year. I completely lost the will to work and ended up with humiliatingly low grades before finally breaking down and starting afresh. Lik…

Thanks! I appreciate the detailed post you've written. The more I think about it, the more my case sounds like yours. I'm now thinking it's less "something happened to my brain" and more "my habits caused this problem". I'll attempt the same thing you've done to see how it goes. You just quit procrastinating cold-turkey though? How did you force yourself to read? Every time I pull out a textbook at a time that isn't…

My prescription for that is something I half-seriously call 'Matrix-style Knowledge Injection'.

I open a PDF of the textbook I have to read and start the speech synthesizer, with earphones, and force myself to read at the same pace than the speech synthesizer. While the speech synthesizer is not very fast, it is consistent in it's speed and you can get about 70-100 pages an hour.

It works in my case because the voice in the earphones block any other sound from the outside world, and my eyes are staring at the text as the voice reads it to me. It concentrates most of my sense on a single source of data, the textbook's content. I like to see it as brute-forcing the knowledge into my brain by overloading it's input sources with said knowledge.

You quickly get exhausted doing that, but it's effective when you can't get yourself to read a piece of text.

Re: "I have come to find out what it's like to be dumb."

#104

Post by DennisP »

jacquesm wrote: post #48
tszyn wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A friend of mine recently got a rash (I don't think it was a classic bullseye pattern) and some fatigue. She didn't notice a tick. Went to a doctor, suggested that it might be Lyme disease -- doctor told her if she'd had a tick, she would have noticed it, so it must be allergy. A month later she was in the hospital with a confirmed Lyme diagnosis. If I get an unexplained rash with flu-like symptoms, even if I don't s…

> Better safe than sorry Yes, that's the right attitude to take with this disease. The main criterium is that you've been in or are in a region where ticks are found, combined with warm/hot weather. Areas to avoid: long grass, shrub and forests.

Also, if you're in one of those areas, check yourself thoroughly for those tiny deer ticks every twelve hours. If you find one, pull it off without squeezing its abdomen. That'll greatly reduce the chance of transmittal.

The problem is seeing the little buggers.

Re: "I have come to find out what it's like to be dumb."

#105

Post by WizzleKake »

k7gl32 wrote: post #22

Do other people feel their cognitive abilities diminishing as they age? I've been diagnosed with major depressive disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, ADHD-Inattentive type, and probably other things that I can't remember right now. I think most of these diagnoses (panic disorder being the only viscerally clear one) are to explain the disparity between my IQ scores throughout the years and my lack…

> Benzodiazepines: Klonopin, Xanax, Ativan

These drugs make people stupid.

Re: "I have come to find out what it's like to be dumb."

#106

Post by knowtheory »

Lagged2Death wrote: post #102

This is like a Harvard student who drove down into the ghetto one time to buy pot. And now he won't shut up about what it was like comin' up in the 'hood.

That is an entirely inaccurate characterization of Waldo's entire point.

Waldo's trying to describe a state of being. You can argue about whether Waldo really knows what long term depression is really like, but that's separate from learning what it feels like to experience a set of symptoms which he has never previously fallen victim to.

He's not claiming to be an authority or an expert, or to even claim that this some how makes him special. He's claiming that he understands depression better now, having experienced it.

Re: "I have come to find out what it's like to be dumb."

#107

Post by salemh »

girvo wrote: post #77
skunkworks wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A salient point re: the existence of different types of depression. Some cause a physical slowness (can't get out of bed), some cause anhedonia, some are the dementor type, etc.

I personally cannot get out of bed and face the world, I am suicidal at nearly all points of the day (but in a curious way; it's more I picture myself killing myself, but not in a "MUST DO THIS NOW" way. Its very odd and disconcerting). I can still experience emotions (all of them), but they are heavily skewed to the negative. I ignore the future, and focus on the past and present. It's a shit disease.

I've found this comic very helpful to understand/identify with some of the emotions, swings and frustration with depression (and absolute stagnation).

http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2013/05/depression-par...

Re: "I have come to find out what it's like to be dumb."

#108

Post by salemh »

girvo wrote: post #77
skunkworks wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A salient point re: the existence of different types of depression. Some cause a physical slowness (can't get out of bed), some cause anhedonia, some are the dementor type, etc.

I personally cannot get out of bed and face the world, I am suicidal at nearly all points of the day (but in a curious way; it's more I picture myself killing myself, but not in a "MUST DO THIS NOW" way. Its very odd and disconcerting). I can still experience emotions (all of them), but they are heavily skewed to the negative. I ignore the future, and focus on the past and present. It's a shit disease.

I've found this comic very helpful to understand/identify with some of the emotions, swings and frustration with depression (and absolute stagnation).

http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2013/05/depression-par...

Re: "I have come to find out what it's like to be dumb."

#109

Post by Jach »

quark83 wrote: post #17

I created a throwaway account so it's not associated with my normal handle on here. This post brings up something I've been wondering about, and it's something that's really been bothering me the last few years. I feel like I've become significantly less intelligent over time, and I can't figure out if that's really the case, or if it's a different issue that simply makes me feel less intelligent. When I was in high…

It's good to take into account the other comments, especially about changing your behavior. A lot can be done through sheer will and persistence (and training yourself to avoid distractions; yes you can do it and it will be painful so brace yourself), but not everything. I'll add a possibility that hasn't been said so explicitly: you aren't, and never have been, as smart as you think you are or were. Smarter than average? Probably. Von Neumann level smart? No way. You're a genius at best, not a supergenius. There are areas of human thought walled off from you forever unless advances in augmenting the brain arrive, it's that depressingly simple.

Re: "I have come to find out what it's like to be dumb."

#110

Post by karlkatzke »

karlkatzke wrote: post #94

I really feel for this guy. I'm a linux sysadmin in a 24/7 data processing/medical environment. Last november, I fell off my bike, without a helmet on. (I was on paved paths on a college campus during a football game; if I had been playing in traffic or moving quickly, I would've been wearing a helmet. However, I was moving at walking pace and SOMEHOW went over my handlebars. I have no memory of the accident.) I rece…

> painkillers due to migraines for years

I meant "months". Obviously, not everything's back where it should be. (And this is the truth. After my injury, my brain is not the same tool it used to be. I troubleshoot in the reverse order I used to. I skip items in checklists that I remember reading clearly and damned well know are there. Even though most things came back without much struggle, I'm having to re-learn certain small things that used to be second nature.)

Wear your helmets, kids.

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