I have come to find out what it's like to humblebrag.
"I have come to find out what it's like to be dumb."
91–100 of 123 posts
Re: "I have come to find out what it's like to be dumb."
#92Good god. What is this pretentious bullshit? This tone of this post was so incredibly ridiculous I had to create an account to ask why it was posted here or taken seriously. This self proclaimed smart person, with heavy emphasis on the self proclaimed part (check out the incredibly smug About page) apparently needs Lyme disease to feel the plight of the oh so pitiful stupid people. News flash, half the population is…
I don't see anything pretentious about it. He's not bragging about being smart, just stating that he is what most people would call intelligent.
Intelligence can mean many things, but I like to think of it in terms of "brain power"; the amount of abstract thought you can hold and process, your brain's RAM and CPU power so to speak.
The term depression is very broad and probably encompasses numerous as-yet-undefined sub-categories, but his description is very much like my own experience: A dulling of the mind. It's like downclocking the brain's CPU and emotional coprocessor from 2Ghz to 200Mhz. Thinking became slow and required more effort, analytical capabilities pretty much went away and I didn't have the spare capacity to really enjoy anything. A song or a movie I knew I liked just didn't register because my brain wasn't capable of processing it the way it used to. Learning became uninteresting and a chore and problem solving became near impossible. In short, I felt really dumb. I knew I wasn't, but I couldn't "smarten up" however much I tried. Knowing this, not being able to enjoy learning, problem solving or experiencing something was the worst terror of depression.
The experience left me wondering about the immutability or genetic predeterminism of "intelligence". If we broadly define intelligence as "brain power", I know now that it can vary a great deal. I wonder how much of this brain power is predetermined through genetics and how much is affected by the environment. We know that diet plays a large role and that certain diseases affect the brain in this way. How much of a person's "dumbness" can be removed by changing the external factors? In addition, I think broader aspects of intelligence such as analytical abilities, memory and "abstract capacity" can be taught or improved through training. I know my own "intelligence" certainly has required lots of training through the years, not to mention the knowledge that plays a large part of it that had to be acquired.
Re: "I have come to find out what it's like to be dumb."
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
Being dumb doesn't feel like having a bad memory, or thinking slower, or not being able to multitask. It feels like looking at a square peg and a grid of shape-holes, and not (quickly) realizing that "shape" is a relevant property that the holes differ by, such that you should select a hole based on the shape of the peg. ...they'd solve problems in entirely different ways, out of necessity for not recognizing pattern…
Rather than a personal definition, I really was, in my comment, defining intelligence according to the (narrow, not-all-encompassing) definition used by people who create tests of IQ or "g". IQ is tautologically defined as "the number output by IQ tests." And what an IQ test, tests, is your ability to recognize and exploit novel patterns, generalized across different domains (word problems, pictures, music), under ti…
> And what an IQ test, tests, is your ability to recognize and exploit novel patterns, generalized across different domains (word problems, pictures, music), under time pressure
It's worth pointing out that most criticisms of IQ tests are that the amount of novelty in the problems is pretty heavily dependent on your cultural background.
Re: "I have come to find out what it's like to be dumb."
#94I 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 received a closed head injury, cervical spine injury, and had bleeding on the brain, and was borderline for concussion. I spent the night in the critical care unit and they wouldn't let me sleep. It was a pretty serious injury and I was on painkillers due to migraines for years.
For several months, I tried my hardest to do my job. But I didn't "grok" things. I couldn't code in the languages I'd known since the late 90s. I couldn't learn new things -- learning Ruby, even with the help of codecademy, was epic fail. I'd go through the classes and put any old thing in to make it work (thinking it wouldn't), and get 100% without understanding WHY it worked. I couldn't keep up with technology and wasn't reading HN and the other news sources I normally keep up with.
Eight months after the injury, I suddenly understood my first languages again. Another month after that, I could learn new things, and picked up Ruby and Chef inside of a week.
The worst part of it is that I didn't know that I was stupid. I thought I wasn't trying hard enough, and I pushed myself into feeling horrible about the whole thing.
The entire experience has given me a lot of sympathy for people who say that they can't do something because it doesn't feel understandable to them, even after they've been shown and guided through it.
Re: "I have come to find out what it's like to be dumb."
#95Just the premise is smug.
If you think you're smart now, and lymes has made you dumb, you really are dumb.
We're all dumb. Lymes just made you dumber.
Re: "I have come to find out what it's like to be dumb."
#96He most definitely does not have depression. Saying that depression is simply apathy and 'feeling dumb' spits in the face of those who have to deal with actual depression everyday.
Re: "I have come to find out what it's like to be dumb."
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
Rather than a personal definition, I really was, in my comment, defining intelligence according to the (narrow, not-all-encompassing) definition used by people who create tests of IQ or "g". IQ is tautologically defined as "the number output by IQ tests." And what an IQ test, tests, is your ability to recognize and exploit novel patterns, generalized across different domains (word problems, pictures, music), under ti…
> And what an IQ test, tests, is your ability to recognize and exploit novel patterns, generalized across different domains (word problems, pictures, music), under time pressure It's worth pointing out that most criticisms of IQ tests are that the amount of novelty in the problems is pretty heavily dependent on your cultural background.
Very true! I'm surprised there isn't some well-known trick of scientific process to screen this out, actually.
One that comes to my mind pretty quickly: after the first test to collect people's "novel" results (the one that'll be used as input for the final score), have them take 2-5 more tests with the same tasks (enough so that the questions are utterly non-novel by the end.) Show them the correct answers for the problems on the test they just did between each session.
Now take the scores from all the tests (including the first one), and fit a curve to them. The second derivative at the point of the first test then (might!) represent the novelty they were experiencing at that point. Now figure out how much extra novelty they experienced compared to an average member of the population, and use that as a coefficient to the final IQ score from the first test.
Re: "I have come to find out what it's like to be dumb."
#98Earlier 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…
Consider going to bed early enough that you wake up without an alarm clock. It's not going to 100% prevent you from ever falling asleep during the day, but it'll sure help.
Personally, my intellectual capabilities are at their peak in the first few hours after I wake up.
Re: "I have come to find out what it's like to be dumb."
#99The closest I've ever come to understanding what it's like to have depression, or any other neurological disorder affecting mental state, was a few years back when I had a particularly bad cold and/or allergies, and decided to take Mucinex DM.
By the end of the first day I felt a general malaise. By the end of the second day I was feeling something I've never felt before, or since. Everything, and I mean everything in life seemed without value or purpose. The only thing that kept me functioning and not immobilized as a curled up ball in bed were the expectations of my family and job (which was also for family). Even so, I could tell I wouldn't be able to keep that up much longer.
When I come home, my two young daughters would run up and want to talk to me. While I admit, I sometimes lose patience for them when I'm tired, in this case I patiently let them explain what had happened so far that day, but the entire time, without exception, I could only think about how I wanted this to be over so I could sit down and do... what? Nothing seemed worthwhile. No TV, no book, no computer. I realized I might as well go lay down on the bed. My goals and ambitions were also gone. I didn't want to work, I just wanted to be left alone.
I lasted another day on Mucinex before I decided this was definitely not healthy, regardless of how much less phlegm I had to deal with, and stopped taking it. I felt normal (if stuffy) within a day or two.
I'm not saying this is the same as depression, I really have no basis for knowing. All I know is that if that's what people that are depressed feel like, I feel very, very sorry (and terrified) for them. The idea of the ramifications if that lasted long term are horrendous. If I survived it long term, I'm fairly certain it would be at the cost of ruining my life.
Interestingly, a friend of mine said he had a similar experience with Mucinex DM a few months later. I didn't get into the details with him though (although I had already described my experience before). It seemed too personal to ask for more detail, considering my own experience.
Re: "I have come to find out what it's like to be dumb."
#100Grouping all the described symtoms under "depression" (and "stupidity") is a non-helpful way to think about Lyme disease, which messes up all sorts of neurotransmitters. You won't get very far by just comparing your experience to that of a depressed person; variously, the symptoms of Lyme disease can mimic clinical depression (serotonin/norepinephrine imbalance), or ADHD (dopamine imbalance), generalized anxiety (GAB…
I agree with your post, except this part, "mimic clinical depression (serotonin/norepinephrine imbalance), or ADHD (dopamine imbalance), generalized anxiety (GABA imbalance), seasonal/chronic fatigue (acetylcholine imbalance), and so on. " They really don't know what causes anxiety, or clinical depression. The are having a horrid time finding the true cause of these ailments. If anyone is seeing a MD who claims to kn…
> The placebo effect is sometimes stronger than any antibiotic.
When it comes to depression, the primary factor isn't really a "placebo effect". It's true that most of the treatments do no better than a fake pill, but they also do no better than doing nothing at all and just waiting.
Moods have cycles. You tend to go to the doctor for treatment when your mood is UNUSUALLY BAD. Some random time later, you'll probably feel a lot better. Maybe the seasons will change and you'll get more sunlight, or things will get better at work, or just...random fluctuation.
If at your MOST DEPRESSED you go see a doctor who believes in treating depression with pills, he'll assign treatment A. You try that a while; it doesn't help. So he has you switch to treatment B. Still depressed. Treatment C. Now you start to feel better. A believer in medicine takes that to mean "Drugs A and B don't work for you, but C cured your depression!" But you were certain to be taking SOMETHING when you got better, so maybe it's just a coincidence that you were taking C at the time that happened.