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The Curse of Smart People (2014)

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Re: The Curse of Smart People (2014)

#91

Post by MrQuincle »

rojobuffalo wrote: post #59
yakult wrote: post #7

My pet theory: much of 'gut feelings' and intuition boils down to having our internal black box predict the behavior of other people. When you are 'average', this often simplifies to reasoning about what you would do in the same circumstances, which is relatively easy. If you are 3 standard deviations out, you'll have to compensate that consciously, which is inaccurate and difficult and slow. This is like how UI desi…

> NormalPersonVM(pre-alpha) I literally did a spit-take when I read that. Is there a proper term for that cognitive routine?

I had to read it multiple times. I think because I read too much statistics.

Normal(mu, sigma)

It would be cool to have a VM represented by a distribution though. :-)

Re: The Curse of Smart People (2014)

#92

Post by jstewartmobile »

rak00n wrote: post #80
jstewartmobile wrote: post #31

My experience has been that most "smart" people are actually high-functioning autistic savants. I mean, if they were actually +2 std deviations above on the whole enchilada, their lives wouldn't be such a mess. You can make a lot of money and still be a hot mess. Look at celebrities. Alpha nerds are just a variation on the theme.

I don't disagree with you. But celebrities have a far wider audience. Your rockstar programmer doesn't have that. A lot of social problems disappear when you're accepted as a famous accomplished person. So a celebrity can be weird and not face the same social isolation.

As an alpha-nerd, social isolation is just a symptom.

The pathology is that we started with a weak arm and a strong arm, and most of our parents and teachers downplayed the importance of the weak arm while encouraging us to work the absolute shit out of the strong one.

Then they send us out into the world looking like teenagers who just discovered xtube. The world can smell weakness and throws loads of curve-balls at the weak arm, and most of us never notice because we're still too obsessed with the other arm.

Re: The Curse of Smart People (2014)

#93

Post by watwut »

yyhhsj0521 wrote: post #42
yakult wrote: post #7

My pet theory: much of 'gut feelings' and intuition boils down to having our internal black box predict the behavior of other people. When you are 'average', this often simplifies to reasoning about what you would do in the same circumstances, which is relatively easy. If you are 3 standard deviations out, you'll have to compensate that consciously, which is inaccurate and difficult and slow. This is like how UI desi…

Agree. One of my friends is pretty smart (at least, above above-average) and works in the tech industry. When he was young he had to "simulate" his emotions to "look like a normal person." He had to think what normal people would feel under his situation and tried to feel that way (or tried to make himself looked feeling that way in front of people). For example, he thinks that crying on funerals is illogical, becaus…

Inability to understand emotions is not the same thing as being smart. It is possible to be smart and not to understand them, but plenty of smart people do get why people cry at funeral.

Also, majority of people who attend funerals don't cry and even more don't cry publicly. It is highly inappropriate to laugh or look happy, but if he was trying to simulate cry, then his idea of funerals was not based on reality nor observation.

Re: The Curse of Smart People (2014)

#94

Post by Terr_ »

rojobuffalo wrote: post #59
yakult wrote: post #7

My pet theory: much of 'gut feelings' and intuition boils down to having our internal black box predict the behavior of other people. When you are 'average', this often simplifies to reasoning about what you would do in the same circumstances, which is relatively easy. If you are 3 standard deviations out, you'll have to compensate that consciously, which is inaccurate and difficult and slow. This is like how UI desi…

> NormalPersonVM(pre-alpha) I literally did a spit-take when I read that. Is there a proper term for that cognitive routine?

> Is there a proper term for that cognitive routine?

I think it falls under the general term "Theory of Mind". Quoth Wikipedia:

> Having a theory of mind allows one to attribute thoughts, desires, and intentions to others, to predict or explain their actions, and to posit their intentions. As originally defined, it enables one to understand that mental states can be the cause of -- and thus be used to explain and predict -- the behavior of others.

... Unless I misinterpreted your post, and you're talking about the cognition behind spit-takes.

Re: The Curse of Smart People (2014)

#95

Post by watwut »

WalterBright wrote: post #5

> very easy to describe all your successes (project not canceled) in terms of your team's greatness, and all your failures (project canceled) in terms of other people's capriciousness. I see this belief in probably about 80% of people I encounter, and it has little correlation with how smart one is. I like to hang out with people who take responsibility for their failures rather than complaining about how circumstanc…

Sometimes it is your fault, other times it is circumstance and yet other times there was risk/luck involved (e.g. success depended on factors out of your control that could go either way). Both assuming that it was "me" and that it was "circumstance" is wrong.

Re: The Curse of Smart People (2014)

#96

Post by pmoriarty »

EdHominem wrote: post #87
pmoriarty wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While we're on a von Neumann love fest, here are some other great quotes: The Nobel Laureate Hans Bethe speculated: "I have sometimes wondered whether a brain like von Neumann's does not indicate a species superior to that of man". Eugene Wigner wrote that, seeing von Neumann's mind at work, "one had the impression of a perfect instrument whose gears were machined to mesh accurately to a thousandth of an inch." Paul…

I think a lot of people say these grandiose things about smart people because they don't want to consider that they simply spent 30+ years doing little but their work/passion and are simply very good. Feynman was a genius, but he dissects his own accomplishments and you can see how if you only knew this, this, this, and that, plus a few different methods of integration, it would have seemed obvious to you too. tl;dr…

Quite often great accomplishments are the result of a lot of hard work.

But lots of hard work alone does not explain why one person who put in a lot of hard work will greatly outshine many others who also put in a lot of hard work.

Nor does it explain phenomena like prodigies, who excel at a really young age, with far fewer years of effort than many others.

Finally, creativity and inspiration often play great roles in mathematical and other endeavors. They can't entirely be explained by hard work or dedication, which are often prerequisites for intense creative efforts but aren't all there is to it.

Re: The Curse of Smart People (2014)

#97

Post by watwut »

234dd57d2c8dba wrote: post #4

Here's a summary for why smart people are "cursed": If you are two or 3 standard deviations about the mean, you'll quickly realize society is optimized and caters to the average intelligence. You'll find it very boring and frustrating having to deal with rules and decisions that do not make sense. You must continually push yourself to stay entertained and meet like-minded people otherwise you'll get very depressed th…

Oddly enough, the person who invented and attempted to enforce absurdly strict rules was smart. Except that autistic a bit and thus needed rules over nonsense crap to have sense of control. It seemed logical to him, but it did not seemed that way to non-autistic smart people.

Re: The Curse of Smart People (2014)

#99

Post by soufron »

I am fascinated by the number of comments made by people who actually think they're so smart, it's the society (made of billions of people) that's dumb.

1 Mind > 7.5B Minds ?

I tend to think these companies don't hire smart people. They hire psychologically deviant people who will both comply without a problem, and who will do mean things to others because they have a superiority complex... a little like german engineers during WWII ;)

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