"I have come to find out what it's like to be dumb." • Hacker News Board

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

#121

Post by JeffL » Thu, Sep 12, 2013, 9:51 PM UTC

DennisP wrote: post #104

jacquesm wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

You can get a cheap little plastic thing called a "Tick Twister" at the pet store, and it is awesome. I've had to remove plenty of ticks from my dog, and a few from people and this tool is invaluable.

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

#122

Post by misterjangles » Fri, Sep 13, 2013, 7:11 AM UTC

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…

Same thing has happened to me though I'm older and just trying to work and stay current in technology.

I deleted all of the social apps on my phone, then installed a browser extension on my desktop that limits you to X minutes per day in certain sites. I still go to hacker news briefly most days, but blocked reddit completely.

You just have to get out if the habit of hitting these distraction whenever you get bored or face a challenging assignment. Stop feeling like you are missing out on important social news and start viewing these things as time wasters. It's ok to waste a little time, but limit yourself.

Anyway, I go through phases as we'll but it does work for me to just block myself with plugins and such.

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

#123

Post by david927 » Fri, Sep 13, 2013, 1:03 PM UTC

rlanday wrote: post #80

david927 wrote: post #51

Intelligence is an immutable characteristic I get so tired of seeing this. We can't even really define intelligence but I'm guessing this is based on a previous assumption that IQ was static, which we now know it not to be. We need to remember, also, that IQ is not a measure of intelligence.

Citation needed on both points. Most evidence points to IQ scores being valid measures of intelligence, in that they have some predictive power, especially for average life outcomes for groups of people, and are mostly stable throughout life. For example, look up the Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth, which examines life outcomes based on SAT scores at age 12.

valid measure ... some predictive power

I'm not sure if those two belong in the same sentence. If we were to come up with a point system that measured beauty in women, for example, you could measure pronouncement of cheekbones and thickness of lips, etc. While Angelina Jolie would score well, so would Jocelyn Wildenstein, and Emma Watson would score poorly. Such a system might have "some predictive power" for large population sizes, but could never measure "beauty".

Intelligence is qualitative, like beauty, not quantitative, and therefore could never be expressed individually as a number. We would do well to bear that in mind.