I like the term “twice exceptional”. All of my biggest strengths are aspects of myself that come with tradeoffs. For 20 years straight, I was praised for the strengths and scolded for the tradeoffs. Motherfucker, you can’t enjoy how quickly I learn things I’m interested in and also treat me like I’m lazy when you expect me to sustain equal amounts of interest in 10 different things that bore me and I fail. You can’t enjoy all the art and tech I make and then get annoyed when it’s difficult to break me out of a hyperfixation.
I firmly believe that the tortured artist stereotype is bullshit. There’s nothing about being an artist that requires you to be miserable. But we sure do treat people like shit when their brains work differently.
The later half is so true, early on when you’re a statistical anomaly you can get special treatment, but once you become a small problem or the skill backfires they blow up as if it couldn’t have been seen coming. They expect 100% efficiency like you’re a battery to sap and don’t care how it affects you mentally.
No it’s not and it’s also weird to treat that percentile as if people in it are extremely rare. People who fall in the blue area (noticably higher than average intelligence, but not exceptional) are about 15% of the population. The problem is that people somehow feel attacked if someone claims themself to be clever and it’s accepted to shame them for that.
As you get older, you sort of get used to the fact that the majority of your fellow passengers are oblivious to the fact we’re on a bus speeding towards a cliff, driven by depravity and delusions of grandeur. And you realize short of a miracle, nothing is going to change it. It’s either that or you go mad. ¯*(ツ)*/¯
on the topic of iq, i have a lot of problems with the way people seem to interact with the concept. there’s a bunch of assumptions all baked into it:
iq is a variable that actually exists in nature
people’s iq is static and follows a standard distribution
iq tests are capable of objectively measuring or at least approximating this variable
this variable is a good stand-in or even synonymous with cognitive ability
cognitive ability is univariate or single-faceted, able to be described with a single number
cognitive ability equates to or correlates with usefulness, happiness, sociability, success, whatever
finally, that any of this really matters, like in a materially impactful way, or is something that we should focus on
it’s not that each of these statements is 100% wrong, it’s that each shouldn’t be assumed to be true. but the way i usually see iq invoked kinda just uncritically runs with all of them, contained within a neat little ideological package.
also a pet theory i like (that isn’t actually true or provable) is that gifted programs are meant to remove children deemed smarter from their communities and funnel them into middle management and academia, so they don’t become agitators for change in their communities and workplaces
That could be true, but I think only if there’s a systemic effort to diagnose and put those children into specialized establishments. Where I’m from, it doesn’t appear to be the case.
was just joking around with a sibling about how some of the most intensely “being highly intelligent is my identity” people from high school with supportive families grew up to be dumb as hell.
the gifted valedictorian became a nurse, then went full “iraq had WMDs, but it was classified” chud, quit the workforce to have 4 children, is a god-tier horder with rooms full of actual garbage, and now is entangled in several MLMs shoveling a spouse’s very high income into a blackhole.
the “actually, i have a 160 IQ” inherited a bunch of $$, bought a bunch of vehicles, had 5 kids, went full blown “dance mom” facebook+social media freakshow, and spends most of their effort trying to cultivate inappropriate relationships and fabricate dramas with other married spouses in their neighborhood.
excellence and success are subjective. a life of curiosity, personal enrichment, family, and friends can be excellent without needing accolades or other features of careerist striving. but i’ll be damned if some really “smart” people don’t take their potential and, in defiance of the odds, turn it into a shit smoothie.
You sound bitter and cruel. Nursing is a wonderful profession that requires a lot of intelligence. There’s nothing wrong with having children. Hoarding is a fucking mental disorder and one of the most intelligent men I know struggled with it.
I was in the “gifted and talented” program as a kid and all it meant was I got more homework lmao. Good thing I loved reading and actually enjoyed being assigned novel chapters
I think I pretty quickly came to the conclusion that I was effectively being punished for understanding the normal material more easily than my classmates, and I didn’t get why my “gifted and talented” work was necessary, since it was, to me, bonus material, and not even interesting bonus material.
A core memory of mine is after showing up one time without an assignment done, my teacher decided to go around the room asking what everyone wanted to be when they grew up. All my G&T classmates said standard kid answers like doctor, lawyer, firefighter, whatever. Not being a smartass, I gave the genuine answer that, because I really liked Taco Bell, and there was a taco bell in walking distance, I’d be happy to work there and get some free Taco Bell.
Teacher called my parents.
How the fuck was I supposed to know giving a real, and in hindsight significantly more attainable answer was unacceptable? We were in elementary school, so why the hell would I know at that point that basic food service is basically non-viable in America?
At first, us “academically gifted” kids were only separated from the general population for language arts, but later in middle school they expanded the program for math, and the way they implemented that was we skipped 7th grade math entirely and took the normal 8th grade curriculum, “pre-algebra.” So that as a freshman in high school, I would take 10th grade math, etc.
I think I took less time than the average 6th grader to “get it.” I didn’t need 50 practice problems for homework to become proficient in long division, 30 would do. I think a 7th grade math class that included a little less plug and chug practice and more word problems and practical application, ie reinforcing what this math we’re learning is for and how to really use it, would have helped me a lot.
Instead, I was just thrown forward a year and expected to just handle it, and even taking a course called “advanced math topics” which amounted to “algebra 3” rather than taking pre-calculus my senior year of high school, I never caught back up.
Something really similar happened to me in lower grades. As a result of their fuckery I had big gaps in basic math and it caused me problems/self doubt that lasted… Actually I’m still really self conscious about it god dammit. Everyone saw that stupid rain man movie and little ADHD “weird kids” like me that just really liked reading got screwed
This isn’t true at all. IQ isn’t some magical catch-all measure of a person’s intellectual ability, but it’s not entirely total quackery either.
I suspect that academic success would be very strongly correlated with having a supportive home life, but IQ not so much. Maybe the gifted kids you refer to were the academically successful ones and not the high-IQ ones?
They once had me take one of those horoscopes and one part of it was a rorschach test. How is that not quakery.
Another part was to have me write a short text wich fair enough.
fill in mulltiple choise questions that were deliveratly obtuse and ambigous.
The only part that i would expect to corrrelaete with intelligence was when i had to memorize a string of numbers and repeat it after a while. But even then this is an ability you can train.
IQ is bullshit in the sense that as a measurement of cognitive abilities it doesn’t really work, but that doesn’t mean the only factor influencing intelligence is social upbringing either
i mean, say what you will, but i could have the most supportive environment on earth and i’m pretty sure i wouldn’t ever be the second coming of messi (or michael jordan for you gringos), same should go for newton, knorozov or whoever
Of course. Humans are not clones. As long as they are not there is some variance due to physiological inherited factors.
That being said a lot of intelligence can be trained.
And a lot of it is culturally loaded. Im sure the average paleolithic hunter gatherer was smarter than me because they have to constantly solve complex problems. While people today rely on civilization to take on the load.
We dont actually do t need to be that intelligent know a days. And actually very few people relly care about it. For example there is some disiese going around that has about 7% chance of leaving you mentally handicapped. And you can catch it reapeatedly. No one really cares. Because they never came to a situation were their inherent intelligence was the bottleneck to solve a problem. Once eventually everyone loses 10or 20% of their intelligence they will still be fine.
So most of these asholes going woe is me im so samart. 1-Are not really that smart. 2-inherent phisiological limitations to cognitive avility have never been an actual limitation in their lives.
The iq is bullshit in the sense the the tests are bullshit. Only the part testing working memory relates to those innate charachteristics.
You are the one trying to start shit here. If you had a more nuanced response. In this case, an example would be descriving your experience. You would get a more nuanced response. See the other guy.
All I did was say I took an IQ test that didn’t have any of the elements in yours. You came back calling me stupid.
Elaborate on how I started shit with you. Explain yourself. How the fuck do you envision yourself as being justified. How the fuck do you explain your perception of me starting shit with you.
I know lots of people that didn’t grew up in a supportive environment and have a high IQ. I mean on the level of “my parents/father (it’s mostly the father) never cared about me and now I have sevear depression and tried to kill myself” level. And partially they were pregnant at the age of 13/14
And I did grew up in a supportive environment and am stupid as fuck.
Maybe on average, but you’ve got my ass who was put in the gifted program from 2nd grade on, with a single mom who was working two jobs and thus wasn’t around much, and who couldn’t afford childcare so I had to spend most of my before and after school time with my physically violent and abusive grandmother. Not that being in said program did much good (between the bad home situation and my ADHD, I was constantly in trouble at school), I didn’t even finish my bachelor’s in the end, but there were a few of us “smart” kids with fucked up home lives in there too.
Boy I sure wish I had a 6 hr video explaining the incredibly racist origins of the Bell curve which has no value at all scientifically speaking, perhaps even by a Liverpudlian narrator of sorts
You might need to elaborate. I’m confused at the Bell curve (which is a visual representation of the normal distribution) not having any value at all.
The Central Limit Theorem guarantees that the normal distribution will show up all over the place. To say that it has no value scientifically is simply false.
I guess you didn’t realize that pretty much every ND diagnostic criteria is something that pretty much every human experiences to some degree or another, but people who experience them to levels where it negatively impacts their life can get diagnosed and treated so that they can attempt to live a “normal” life. It’s not some big gotcha you just figured out, it’s part of the actual diagnostic criteria for the conditions.
Can’t find the source right now, but some tweet compared it to peeing. Everybody has to pee, but when you have to go 30 times a day, there is obviously something different about you.
Fully agree. It’s strange that people think that being aware of ones deficits is beholden to people of above average intelligence. Being aware of your own limitations is a pretty basic human trait.
Others have touched on this, but ultimately the most vital trait a person can possess is perseverance and a bias for action. I would gladly work with a mediocre person who works relentlessly at improving their skills and figuring out solutions. I don’t enjoy working with “gifted” people who have plenty of ideas and few actions to show for it. Intelligence can make you risk averse, and you’re useless if you’re too afraid to take any action.
Add comment