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I'm not a very smart person. I would say that I'am stupid, in fact. Recently, my thoughts on my bus-rides while listening to Rossini has been preoccupied by what is the world like to an intelligent person.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdm8IfInaJg
When a genius gets on a bus, takes a seat and feels the texture of the seat cover, is he able to tell what material it is? The metal bars that he has to grab hold of to reach his seat so that he does not fall, does he know what type of alloy it is? He puts his earphones into his ear, is he able to describe the physics behind this phenomenon - sound travelling to his ear from his music player, in verbatim?
Based on what I have defined intelligence thus far, it's all about knowing the answers to questions. Ergo, a smart person definitely has to be curious, right? When he walks down the street, he starts to question everything that appears before his eyes. Why are leaves green? Why is the road made of this certain asphalt? Are the other types of asphalt? The light in the street lamps, how does electricity travel though wires in the ground? The colours of the cars, how do different colours appeal to different people? The fluffy white clouds in the blue sky, what determines their density or shape? Why is there a McDonald's outlet in this particular spot, and not another? Why is the sky this shade of blue?
To me, asking yourself all these things constantly must surely be exhausting mentally. But of course, I wouldn't know. Maybe a genius can have all these things running through his mind and still have enough brain power to think about more abstract things like his exact position in the Universe. In his mind, he paints a picture of this pale blue orb, spinning, and simultaneously revolving around an even bigger orange orb. But, that's not the end of it! The orange orb and all the other things that revolve around it is revolving around something else! The mental picture then zooms out, waaay out. This beautiful spiral in his mind is moving, and then he realises just how small and irrelevant he truly is.
But then, he is still content because of what he knows what precisely, is going on in his world. This vignette now just seems like someone who is able to regurgitate things that he was taught in school very well.
I don't know really, what is it like to be smart and wise. What took up Newtons and Einstein's idle thoughts? What takes up Hawking's thoughts when he isn't busy thinking about black holes and such?
I end this blog with three of my favourite quotes of Hawking.
It is not clear that intelligence has any long-term survival value.
My goal is simple. It is a complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all.
I think computer viruses should count as life. I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We've created life in our own image.
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Intelligence is nothing, wisdom is everything.
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I think it was Albert Einstein (I'll try to find the source), but he mentioned something interesting.
He said that it wasn't that he was smarter than anyone else when it came to solving problems. It was that the way his brain worked, he couldn't let a problem go until he solved it. Even if you are sitting at a bus stop you can work physics problems in your head. It may be a blessing or a curse though. It is a bit harder to enjoy life and be non-chalent when you constantly question everything and NEED to know the answers to them.
To give you an example, while I was in college and working on some tougher assignments or problems (engineering major), I would still be working the problems in my head trying to figure out what I was doing wrong when I was in the shower. A more freaky example was the fact that I would spend so much time doing these problems and things, that if I went to sleep with a problem in my head, I would literally work on it while I slept. I remember that I was dreaming about the stupid thing and it finally worked out right. I woke up immediately and tried to use the solution I did while I was asleep. Sure enough it worked.
Oddly enough I had a Nuclear engineering friend that admitted the same thing. Falling asleep, working it out, then waking up and it working out.
The Brain is pretty amazing though.
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Nice post. Idk why you preface it with calling yourself dumb, you seem to be an analytical person yourself. But yea, id say all it takes to be what people call "smart", is an itching curiosity and a thirst for learning and understanding about things around you in the world. You're constantly learning when you let yourself contemplate things no matter how seemingly mundane. For me learning and answering questions is an adventure. I suspect any intelligent person would agree, they teach themselves things for the sake of knowing more about the space they inhabit.
Keep learning, keep growing. Dont worry about whether or not you're a genius because truth is, intelligence is fluid, and difficult to measure. I know a lot of shit, but given the right(or wrong) variables, I can appear to be very stupid. So dont put to much value on how smart you consider yourself, or other people. That just gets in the way of learning, after all.
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I agree with your idea that intelligence isn't knowing the answers to questions, memorizing stuff isnt what seperates a genius from a regular person. Of course, how much you know is a significant factor in what you will be able to figure out. I would say that knowing is not what makes someone a genius, but rather a tool that helps them to apply their genius.
As for the rest of your questions, unfortunatly I'm not a genius. I am a reasonably intelligent physics oriented person though so maybe that counts for something. for me my curiosity and "smartness" occur unpredictably, most of the time I just do and think "normal" stuff. But sometimes I make an observation or have a thought which leads me to really investigating in my mind (and if needed with looking things up, experimenting, whatevs) until I become satisfied with my understanding. It's very focused though, maybe a genius could, but I'm not going to be figuring out secrets of the universe while busy with something else and talking to somebody.
When this does happen exhausting is the last thing I would describe it as. Exciting is the word I would chose, I think it would be incredible to be constantly in that state of understanding and learning which you predict is what it may be like to be a genius.
And here's a quote from Einstein, mr "I'm stupid":
Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.
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Italy12246 Posts
I think what separates "average smart" people from "holy shit that guy is a genius" is an amazing ability to rationalize and visualize extremely abstract concepts.
I am a third year physics student, i have ok grades and all, and i am left in absolute awe at what the best students can do. You can talk to them about the most abstract math and physics concepts, and they just...understand it. Immediately. You can see they have a clear and simple picture in their head of what is going on exactly, while a "normal" person will just have such a hard time understanding the same thing.
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On March 14 2012 21:19 Flameberger wrote:And here's a quote from Einstein, mr "I'm stupid": Show nested quote +Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid. I guess I'm a genius when it comes to wasting time. Yay.
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Your question is really difficult to even start to answer, for a few reasons. For one, there has never been a very good definition of intelligence, nor is there only a single type of intelligence. Also, none of us has ever had the experience of existing as a person who had greater or less intelligence than ourselves, so there is no way for us to explain what the differences are. Standardized tests say that my IQ is in the 99ish percentile (which means little more than that I'm good at taking IQ tests, but let's just assume it means I have more of some kind of smart than most people), but I couldn't possibly tell you how the way I see the world differs from the way someone who would land in a lower percentile on the same test.
I can tell you my hypothesis: I think what people think of intelligence is a combination of pattern recognition and a capacity for passion.
Pattern recognition allows you to abstract away some of the complexity of the world, making it easier to comprehend very complicated things by recognizing how they are like less complicated things. It also allows you to find signals in the noise of very complex phenomena, so that you see relationships that would not be evident to someone without the same capacity for pattern recognition.
[Edited to add: ] Another really important ability when you're talking about being able to understand something at a deep level is to operate simultaneously at different levels of abstraction. So you think about the sun as a point with a given mass while you're working out the orbits of the planets, but have the ability to move to a different level of abstraction and think of it in a different way when dealing with a problem that can't be solved with the "sun as a point" abstration.
By "capacity for passion" I mean the ability to get really interested in something. I speak Japanese and German, and I learned the languages significantly faster than the people who were living in Japan and here in Germany with me at the time, but most of the reason seemed to be that I was just much more fascinated with the languages than they were, and so I could spend 8-10 hours a day reading and studying flash cards without ever getting tired of it. On the other hand, I grow bored with practicing a piece of music very quickly, so despite having played the piano for 18 some-odd years, I'm complete crap at it.
I think we are "intelligent" in the contexts in which we have both of these things. I suspect that there aren't that many people who don't have some context in which they have both a strong understanding and a passion. If you want to understand what it feels like to be a genius in some, then, I imagine you should just imagine what it feels like when you're operating in a niche in which you have those traits.
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On March 14 2012 21:10 Smoot wrote: I think it was Albert Einstein (I'll try to find the source), but he mentioned something interesting.
He said that it wasn't that he was smarter than anyone else when it came to solving problems. It was that the way his brain worked, he couldn't let a problem go until he solved it. Even if you are sitting at a bus stop you can work physics problems in your head. It may be a blessing or a curse though. It is a bit harder to enjoy life and be non-chalent when you constantly question everything and NEED to know the answers to them.
To give you an example, while I was in college and working on some tougher assignments or problems (engineering major), I would still be working the problems in my head trying to figure out what I was doing wrong when I was in the shower. A more freaky example was the fact that I would spend so much time doing these problems and things, that if I went to sleep with a problem in my head, I would literally work on it while I slept. I remember that I was dreaming about the stupid thing and it finally worked out right. I woke up immediately and tried to use the solution I did while I was asleep. Sure enough it worked.
Oddly enough I had a Nuclear engineering friend that admitted the same thing. Falling asleep, working it out, then waking up and it working out.
The Brain is pretty amazing though.
I have this aswell, after an exam if I'm not sure if I had the right answer or if I couldn't figure it out I will keep trying to solve it in my head until I get it right. Usually 5 minutes after the exam I will be like, omfg it was so obvious and smack myself on the head for not solving it during the test haha. For some reason I am able to think much clearer when i'm not under stress. This happens to me far too often :/ Where I literally walk out of the classroom and know how to solve the problem =.=. I'm not a genius tho.
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Some things just click.
A genius doesn't have to constantly wonder about everything from physics, (how/why does electricity travel) biology (why are leaves green) and market economics (why is the McDonalds where it is).
I think it is pretty impossible to be a rennaisance man these days. Each field of science has just gone so far that committing yourself to a single discipline is already a life-time of work.
But some people are indeed better at picking up some things, or just all things in general.
All in all, people like to overestimate their own intelligence. TL often describes itself as "above average intelligence" whilst it isn't above average in any fashion.
People ascribe intelligence to external traits like being an introvert whilst the two aren't really related. People ascribe certain fields (phyiscs) as more intellectually demanding than others (sociology). A lot of it has to do with perception as well.
End of the day, never call yourself smart. You are smart when other people call you smart.
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I'm a person who grew up being told I was really smart. I got good grades, used big words, had a knack for technology and math, etc etc etc.
But I actually never really felt that smart. I often wondered what it was that made me different from somebody who was "stupid". It's actually fucked me up in life a lot, because to this day I'm not actually sure if I'm smarter than most people or not. It's true that to this day, I figure things out faster/solve problems easier than a lot of people around me.
But, it has also had the side effect, that I consider anyone with vaguely mainstream tastes to be "stupid". If you use facebook, you're stupid. If you like watching reality TV, you are stupid. If you listen to pop music, you are stupid. And it's not as if I just think low of people who don't like the same things as I do.. It's more like I've found a correlation in people I find to be dumb, after I realize it, I check their interests and hobbies and more often than not they follow the pattern. And someone I find "smart", after the fact I find they usually avoid those things too.
But what gets me is that even to this day, people get a vibe from me and go "oooh, you're a smartypants". And I still feel like nothing special. I can see other people as dumb, but never see myself as particularly smart. I don't feel dumb either.
I guess, its hard to see yourself as anything but average. After all, the only real benchmark you have to judge other people is yourself.
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On March 14 2012 21:09 blubbdavid wrote: Intelligence is nothing, wisdom is everything.
What said this?
On March 14 2012 21:10 Smoot wrote: I think it was Albert Einstein (I'll try to find the source), but he mentioned something interesting.
He said that it wasn't that he was smarter than anyone else when it came to solving problems. It was that the way his brain worked, he couldn't let a problem go until he solved it. Even if you are sitting at a bus stop you can work physics problems in your head. It may be a blessing or a curse though. It is a bit harder to enjoy life and be non-chalent when you constantly question everything and NEED to know the answers to them.
To give you an example, while I was in college and working on some tougher assignments or problems (engineering major), I would still be working the problems in my head trying to figure out what I was doing wrong when I was in the shower. A more freaky example was the fact that I would spend so much time doing these problems and things, that if I went to sleep with a problem in my head, I would literally work on it while I slept. I remember that I was dreaming about the stupid thing and it finally worked out right. I woke up immediately and tried to use the solution I did while I was asleep. Sure enough it worked.
Oddly enough I had a Nuclear engineering friend that admitted the same thing. Falling asleep, working it out, then waking up and it working out.
The Brain is pretty amazing though.
On March 14 2012 21:13 Sporadic44 wrote: Nice post. Idk why you preface it with calling yourself dumb, you seem to be an analytical person yourself. But yea, id say all it takes to be what people call "smart", is an itching curiosity and a thirst for learning and understanding about things around you in the world. You're constantly learning when you let yourself contemplate things no matter how seemingly mundane. For me learning and answering questions is an adventure. I suspect any intelligent person would agree, they teach themselves things for the sake of knowing more about the space they inhabit.
Keep learning, keep growing. Dont worry about whether or not you're a genius because truth is, intelligence is fluid, and difficult to measure. I know a lot of shit, but given the right(or wrong) variables, I can appear to be very stupid. So dont put to much value on how smart you consider yourself, or other people. That just gets in the way of learning, after all.
On March 14 2012 21:19 Flameberger wrote:I agree with your idea that intelligence isn't knowing the answers to questions, memorizing stuff isnt what seperates a genius from a regular person. Of course, how much you know is a significant factor in what you will be able to figure out. I would say that knowing is not what makes someone a genius, but rather a tool that helps them to apply their genius. As for the rest of your questions, unfortunatly I'm not a genius. I am a reasonably intelligent physics oriented person though so maybe that counts for something. for me my curiosity and "smartness" occur unpredictably, most of the time I just do and think "normal" stuff. But sometimes I make an observation or have a thought which leads me to really investigating in my mind (and if needed with looking things up, experimenting, whatevs) until I become satisfied with my understanding. It's very focused though, maybe a genius could, but I'm not going to be figuring out secrets of the universe while busy with something else and talking to somebody. When this does happen exhausting is the last thing I would describe it as. Exciting is the word I would chose, I think it would be incredible to be constantly in that state of understanding and learning which you predict is what it may be like to be a genius. And here's a quote from Einstein, mr "I'm stupid": Show nested quote +Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.
So would you guys say that there is a period of time where your brain is "dormant", and the intelligence of your thoughts sink to sub-50 IQ?
That is a very nice quote Flamerberger. But isn't that what we to do in our world?
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I'm pretty sure that being really smart would be quite depressing. Ignorance is bliss.
I can't remember who said it, or their exact words.....but something like....
"If you think you're smart, you're stupid. If you think you're stupid, you're smart."
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On March 14 2012 21:23 Teoita wrote: I think what separates "average smart" people from "holy shit that guy is a genius" is an amazing ability to rationalize and visualize extremely abstract concepts.
I am a third year physics student, i have ok grades and all, and i am left in absolute awe at what the best students can do. You can talk to them about the most abstract math and physics concepts, and they just...understand it. Immediately. You can see they have a clear and simple picture in their head of what is going on exactly, while a "normal" person will just have such a hard time understanding the same thing.
Maybe it depends on how you define the word "smart" and how loosely you use the term. You say that the others are geniuses and you are average smart. What if you put it in such a way that you are stupid and they are just average?
On March 14 2012 21:28 AmericanUmlaut wrote: Your question is really difficult to even start to answer, for a few reasons. For one, there has never been a very good definition of intelligence, nor is there only a single type of intelligence. Also, none of us has ever had the experience of existing as a person who had greater or less intelligence than ourselves, so there is no way for us to explain what the differences are. Standardized tests say that my IQ is in the 99ish percentile (which means little more than that I'm good at taking IQ tests, but let's just assume it means I have more of some kind of smart than most people), but I couldn't possibly tell you how the way I see the world differs from the way someone who would land in a lower percentile on the same test.
I can tell you my hypothesis: I think what people think of intelligence is a combination of pattern recognition and a capacity for passion.
Pattern recognition allows you to abstract away some of the complexity of the world, making it easier to comprehend very complicated things by recognizing how they are like less complicated things. It also allows you to find signals in the noise of very complex phenomena, so that you see relationships that would not be evident to someone without the same capacity for pattern recognition.
[Edited to add: ] Another really important ability when you're talking about being able to understand something at a deep level is to operate simultaneously at different levels of abstraction. So you think about the sun as a point with a given mass while you're working out the orbits of the planets, but have the ability to move to a different level of abstraction and think of it in a different way when dealing with a problem that can't be solved with the "sun as a point" abstration.
By "capacity for passion" I mean the ability to get really interested in something. I speak Japanese and German, and I learned the languages significantly faster than the people who were living in Japan and here in Germany with me at the time, but most of the reason seemed to be that I was just much more fascinated with the languages than they were, and so I could spend 8-10 hours a day reading and studying flash cards without ever getting tired of it. On the other hand, I grow bored with practicing a piece of music very quickly, so despite having played the piano for 18 some-odd years, I'm complete crap at it.
I think we are "intelligent" in the contexts in which we have both of these things. I suspect that there aren't that many people who don't have some context in which they have both a strong understanding and a passion. If you want to understand what it feels like to be a genius in some, then, I imagine you should just imagine what it feels like when you're operating in a niche in which you have those traits.
Very interesting points that you have brought up. Passion for something certainly can be the engine which drives you to a certain level of intelligence at a certain topic, but what happens when that passion dies? See, to me, when you have the passion for something, you develop some sort of ability to devour copious amounts of knowledge on this certain something. Put simply, you swallow faster than the others. In the end, it's just the same old regurgitating right?
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I thought I was smart in high school because I pretty much knew what's going to be on the test simply by going to class (and not sleeping in it). Sometime I slept and I still knew. Then I went to university and realized how wrong I was. I went from being the "genius" of the crowd to the "that funny perverted dumb guy". True story.
I think what makes you feel smart all depends on the environment. In a relatively small controlled group with inferior beings, yes, you feel smart and awesome and basically you are the answer to the world's problems. Then you actually step out in to the world and realize you are nothing. Those that are heralded in the global stage may not have the highest IQ or the largest brain capacity, but they probably feel smart because the rest of the world says so.
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On March 14 2012 21:38 zalz wrote: Some things just click.
A genius doesn't have to constantly wonder about everything from physics, (how/why does electricity travel) biology (why are leaves green) and market economics (why is the McDonalds where it is).
I think it is pretty impossible to be a rennaisance man these days. Each field of science has just gone so far that committing yourself to a single discipline is already a life-time of work.
But some people are indeed better at picking up some things, or just all things in general.
All in all, people like to overestimate their own intelligence. TL often describes itself as "above average intelligence" whilst it isn't above average in any fashion.
People ascribe intelligence to external traits like being an introvert whilst the two aren't really related. People ascribe certain fields (phyiscs) as more intellectually demanding than others (sociology). A lot of it has to do with perception as well.
End of the day, never call yourself smart. You are smart when other people call you smart.
Why is it impossible to be a renaissance man? From my point of view, people currently are hurrying to specialise in a certain field, and because of this, there will soon be an excess of these 'specialists'. When this happens, 2 things can happen : major breakthroughs will be had in the certain field, introducing things that will be even more difficult to comprehend, maybe rendering some specialists useless (creating a constant cycle of this). The other would be as more of these specialists pop up, demands of corporations or other businesses will spike, meaning they will start looking for people with that extra factor, perhaps someone who doesn't just excel in one field, buy multiple. Not to say that there won't be any breakthroughs, but just very slight improvements, so slight that it's very easy for the specialists in the field to keep up with easily.
Don't know if anything I said made sense though. =(
On March 14 2012 21:44 darkscream wrote: I'm a person who grew up being told I was really smart. I got good grades, used big words, had a knack for technology and math, etc etc etc.
But I actually never really felt that smart. I often wondered what it was that made me different from somebody who was "stupid". It's actually fucked me up in life a lot, because to this day I'm not actually sure if I'm smarter than most people or not. It's true that to this day, I figure things out faster/solve problems easier than a lot of people around me.
But, it has also had the side effect, that I consider anyone with vaguely mainstream tastes to be "stupid". If you use facebook, you're stupid. If you like watching reality TV, you are stupid. If you listen to pop music, you are stupid. And it's not as if I just think low of people who don't like the same things as I do.. It's more like I've found a correlation in people I find to be dumb, after I realize it, I check their interests and hobbies and more often than not they follow the pattern. And someone I find "smart", after the fact I find they usually avoid those things too.
But what gets me is that even to this day, people get a vibe from me and go "oooh, you're a smartypants". And I still feel like nothing special. I can see other people as dumb, but never see myself as particularly smart. I don't feel dumb either.
I guess, its hard to see yourself as anything but average. After all, the only real benchmark you have to judge other people is yourself.
I guess that's one of the pains of being labelled as smart I guess. You begin to question why you are why you are, why is it that you are different from others. Maybe that's where pursuing the Sciences can come in though? Genetics and all that stuff. Maybe there are actually concrete, tangible factors that makes a "genius".
One of the ways to live, as my Dad has taught me, is that you are never good. You are always average and you will never be good. If you see that you are better than other people, they are the people that are below average. You suck.
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On March 14 2012 22:00 OpticalShot wrote: I thought I was smart in high school because I pretty much knew what's going to be on the test simply by going to class (and not sleeping in it). Sometime I slept and I still knew. Then I went to university and realized how wrong I was. I went from being the "genius" of the crowd to the "that funny perverted dumb guy". True story.
I think what makes you feel smart all depends on the environment. In a relatively small controlled group with inferior beings, yes, you feel smart and awesome and basically you are the answer to the world's problems. Then you actually step out in to the world and realize you are nothing. Those that are heralded in the global stage may not have the highest IQ or the largest brain capacity, but they probably feel smart because the rest of the world says so.
Perhaps you could elaborate more on "that funny perverted dumb guy"? ^^ Maybe even write a blog!
If you feel smart because of the small boxed up environment you are in, that is just plain wrong. That makes you an idiot in my opinion. Being smart to me is being able to view the entire world, and place yourself humbly, in the middle of the intelligence range.
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Dude, darkscream, you just described my whole life with every word you said! People used to hate me all the way to college because they thought I was a smartass, though I never intended to insult them or anything, it's just the way I am. It is all about curiosity. It always happens to me that if there is a question that I do not know the answer to I dedicate all my mental resources to finding it. I spend ever living moment thinking about the problem, running solutions through my head until the bingo, sometimes, I can't even get sleep over it and get anxious. Life is a series of questions and answers, of problems and equations, it's not something that is counsciously thought all the time (the things you described like feeling the materials in the bus, determining what it is and such, unless, of course, you have an inclination towards that, more like figuring out everything. How does the sound get from that phone to my ears? How do the vibrations interract with my inner ear in such a way that I am able to identify the sound and its qualities, how it is produced in the first place, those are things that I asked myself and deduced the answers to) I do not think it's about how fast you can give an answer, but more about what questions do you ask yourself, and the way you interpret things around you because veryone sees things differently. Speed comes with practice, you don't have to be a mathematical genius to multiply 4 digit numbers in your head, you just have to practice and sure enough, you can do that (and it's freaking awesome). Don't stop questioning, always be inquisitive and try to find out stuff.
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I really like the Einstein quote that Flameberger brought into the thread.
All of the answers to the questions in the OP can be found! There are experts who devote their lives into answering those questions and delve in deeper so they can learn even more about it. In addition, the internet provides Google! All of your questions will be answered in 0.23 seconds with 643,000,000 other results (approximately).
Instead of being a "jack of all trades," I find it more respectable, practical, and reasonable to be a master at the one thing that matters to you the most.
I should make clear that I'm not trying to discourage your curiosity - that's a good thing to have. Just wanted to point out that there's no need to belittle yourself by calling yourself stupid
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On March 14 2012 22:15 oPPRoBe wrote:I really like the Einstein quote that Flameberger brought into the thread. All of the answers to the questions in the OP can be found! There are experts who devote their lives into answering those questions and delve in deeper so they can learn even more about it. In addition, the internet provides Google! All of your questions will be answered in 0.23 seconds with 643,000,000 other results (approximately). Instead of being a "jack of all trades," I find it more respectable, practical, and reasonable to be a master at the one thing that matters to you the most. I should make clear that I'm not trying to discourage your curiosity - that's a good thing to have. Just wanted to point out that there's no need to belittle yourself by calling yourself stupid
Why won't you belittle yourself instead of overestimating yourself?
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OP you sound like a very smart person.
Dumb people are the ones who live their daily lives watching fox news, and thinking they are informed.
It takes a smart person to have a good look at themselves and realise they are not as smart as they think they are.
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I think you described a smart person well. I think they observe more of the world than other people. Their mind is simply open to processing all kinds of information from everywhere. They are less occupied with societal trends and more with absolute truths. Most of all I think a smart person is able to translate their thoughts into a form someone else can understand. That is difficult.
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On March 14 2012 22:27 Azera wrote:Show nested quote +On March 14 2012 22:15 oPPRoBe wrote:+ Show Spoiler +I really like the Einstein quote that Flameberger brought into the thread. All of the answers to the questions in the OP can be found! There are experts who devote their lives into answering those questions and delve in deeper so they can learn even more about it. In addition, the internet provides Google! All of your questions will be answered in 0.23 seconds with 643,000,000 other results (approximately). Instead of being a "jack of all trades," I find it more respectable, practical, and reasonable to be a master at the one thing that matters to you the most. I should make clear that I'm not trying to discourage your curiosity - that's a good thing to have. Just wanted to point out that there's no need to belittle yourself by calling yourself stupid Why won't you belittle yourself instead of overestimating yourself?
I believe it's not a matter of picking one of the two polar opposite sides of inferiority and overestimation. It's a balancing act to find the place in the middle
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On March 14 2012 21:44 darkscream wrote: I'm a person who grew up being told I was really smart. I got good grades, used big words, had a knack for technology and math, etc etc etc.
But I actually never really felt that smart. I often wondered what it was that made me different from somebody who was "stupid". It's actually fucked me up in life a lot, because to this day I'm not actually sure if I'm smarter than most people or not. It's true that to this day, I figure things out faster/solve problems easier than a lot of people around me.
But, it has also had the side effect, that I consider anyone with vaguely mainstream tastes to be "stupid". If you use facebook, you're stupid. If you like watching reality TV, you are stupid. If you listen to pop music, you are stupid. And it's not as if I just think low of people who don't like the same things as I do.. It's more like I've found a correlation in people I find to be dumb, after I realize it, I check their interests and hobbies and more often than not they follow the pattern. And someone I find "smart", after the fact I find they usually avoid those things too.
But what gets me is that even to this day, people get a vibe from me and go "oooh, you're a smartypants". And I still feel like nothing special. I can see other people as dumb, but never see myself as particularly smart. I don't feel dumb either.
I guess, its hard to see yourself as anything but average. After all, the only real benchmark you have to judge other people is yourself. I had a similar experience. I never really realized how often I was applying myself in school, by showing up and listening to the teacher, and attempting to think things through (while other people fell asleep or chatted). I went through getting called a genius, but never really learnt that I put in the effort to be good, rather than just being 'naturally talented'. Long story short, I feel like my inability to learn to put in effort was the reason I ended up failing university.
As such, I've come to believe that 'smart' people just know how to put in that effort into higher learning.
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On March 14 2012 22:34 sluggaslamoo wrote: OP you sound like a very smart person.
Dumb people are the ones who live their daily lives watching fox news, and thinking they are informed.
It takes a smart person to have a good look at themselves and realise they are not as smart as they think they are.
Ah, I'm not smart at all, I'am but a 15 year old boy.
On March 14 2012 22:36 HowitZer wrote: I think you described a smart person well. I think they observe more of the world than other people. Their mind is simply open to processing all kinds of information from everywhere. They are less occupied with societal trends and more with absolute truths. Most of all I think a smart person is able to translate their thoughts into a form someone else can understand. That is difficult.
Thanks!
On March 14 2012 22:43 scarper65 wrote: It feels amazing.
=p
On March 14 2012 22:44 oPPRoBe wrote:Show nested quote +On March 14 2012 22:27 Azera wrote:On March 14 2012 22:15 oPPRoBe wrote:+ Show Spoiler +I really like the Einstein quote that Flameberger brought into the thread. All of the answers to the questions in the OP can be found! There are experts who devote their lives into answering those questions and delve in deeper so they can learn even more about it. In addition, the internet provides Google! All of your questions will be answered in 0.23 seconds with 643,000,000 other results (approximately). Instead of being a "jack of all trades," I find it more respectable, practical, and reasonable to be a master at the one thing that matters to you the most. I should make clear that I'm not trying to discourage your curiosity - that's a good thing to have. Just wanted to point out that there's no need to belittle yourself by calling yourself stupid Why won't you belittle yourself instead of overestimating yourself? I believe it's not a matter of picking one of the two polar opposite sides of inferiority and overestimation. It's a balancing act to find the place in the middle
Haha yes, I agree.
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Italy12246 Posts
Ah, I'm not smart at all, I'am but a 15 year old boy.
Look at it this way: the op shows you use your brain. Stupid people don't use their brain. Therefore at the very least you aren't dumb Besides as you said, the concept of "smart" is very subjective and changes in various contexts. A few friends of mine think i'm really intelligent simply because of what i study, but im average among physics students. On the other hand, compared to people that study say communication science simply to get a degree...yeah
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To be honest most of those questions in the OP don't seem to hard to answer or atleast make educated guesses or theories. I don't think there is such thing as genius, just curiosity and sense of responsibility. I know this isn't much of an explanation to most people but if I write any longer the more unlikely it is for me to hit the post button. And that's stupid and ignorant, which is the very opposite of genius and also very real.
I guess a smart person can go outside in any weather, like what he sees and senses so much that he feels it's okay to question and inspect. Because whatever happens he always has his favourite place. Acquiescence can lead to ignorance aswell so it's one of those funny differences in humans.
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On March 14 2012 21:38 zalz wrote: Some things just click.
A genius doesn't have to constantly wonder about everything from physics, (how/why does electricity travel) biology (why are leaves green) and market economics (why is the McDonalds where it is).
I think it is pretty impossible to be a rennaisance man these days. Each field of science has just gone so far that committing yourself to a single discipline is already a life-time of work.
But some people are indeed better at picking up some things, or just all things in general.
All in all, people like to overestimate their own intelligence. TL often describes itself as "above average intelligence" whilst it isn't above average in any fashion.
People ascribe intelligence to external traits like being an introvert whilst the two aren't really related. People ascribe certain fields (phyiscs) as more intellectually demanding than others (sociology). A lot of it has to do with perception as well.
End of the day, never call yourself smart. You are smart when other people call you smart.
This. Really, Liszt could improvise on the piano when he was a little toddler. He didn't even need lessons, just the inspiration of someone else's playing and he took off from there.
When I was studying piano I was obsessed with the idea of what it was like to be that good. Like just wtf went on in their brains? It was a pointless persuit because I never learned how to do what they could and it just confused me further.
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On March 14 2012 23:01 Cortza wrote:Show nested quote +On March 14 2012 21:38 zalz wrote: Some things just click.
A genius doesn't have to constantly wonder about everything from physics, (how/why does electricity travel) biology (why are leaves green) and market economics (why is the McDonalds where it is).
I think it is pretty impossible to be a rennaisance man these days. Each field of science has just gone so far that committing yourself to a single discipline is already a life-time of work.
But some people are indeed better at picking up some things, or just all things in general.
All in all, people like to overestimate their own intelligence. TL often describes itself as "above average intelligence" whilst it isn't above average in any fashion.
People ascribe intelligence to external traits like being an introvert whilst the two aren't really related. People ascribe certain fields (phyiscs) as more intellectually demanding than others (sociology). A lot of it has to do with perception as well.
End of the day, never call yourself smart. You are smart when other people call you smart. This. Really, Liszt could improvise on the piano when he was a little toddler. He didn't even need lessons, just the inspiration of someone else's playing and he took off from there. When I was studying piano I was obsessed with the idea of what it was like to be that good. Like just wtf went on in their brains? It was a pointless persuit because I never learned how to do what they could and it just confused me further. I would argue that he got lessions by watching someone else play. He looked, listened, payed attention and therefore he understood cause and effect of each of the notes. 'This plays that sound', 'these notes go well together', etc.
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Being intelligent isn't about knowing things. Any idiot can know things. Being intelligent is about analysis, thinking your way through a problem. You sound reasonably smart, just not that knowledgeable about a lot of things. Becoming informed happens over time, as you develop interests and learn. Want to know something? Just look it up. Try to understand the answer.
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There are many kinds of "smartness" that people have - I'm pretty smart if you consider smart as being, in its most common meaning, good at mathematics, science etc. However there are many other kinds of smartness/ability/talent that I wish I had in its place but don't.
I'm good at math and science but I suck at starcraft 2. I don't have a flair for games. I can't multitask very well. I am really not a fast learner when it comes to anything other than mathematics and science.
I have poor hand-eye coordination and hence I suck at piano, or rather sight reading in particular. Tried my hands at drums and failed miserably as a result of that as well. Also can't play games like DJmax very well cos of that.
I suck at sports. I have poor spatial awareness and game sense so I cant play soccer/frisbee/basketball very well.
I'm not good looking. I'm short and scrawny.
I have poor social skills. I have never been good at talking to people. I don't have many friends. I can't look pretty girls in the eye. I slouch most of the time. I don't have a good sense of humour.
Now, upon considering all of the above, why on earth would I want to be smart if I suck at everything else?
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On March 14 2012 23:07 Cyber_Cheese wrote:Show nested quote +On March 14 2012 23:01 Cortza wrote:On March 14 2012 21:38 zalz wrote: Some things just click.
A genius doesn't have to constantly wonder about everything from physics, (how/why does electricity travel) biology (why are leaves green) and market economics (why is the McDonalds where it is).
I think it is pretty impossible to be a rennaisance man these days. Each field of science has just gone so far that committing yourself to a single discipline is already a life-time of work.
But some people are indeed better at picking up some things, or just all things in general.
All in all, people like to overestimate their own intelligence. TL often describes itself as "above average intelligence" whilst it isn't above average in any fashion.
People ascribe intelligence to external traits like being an introvert whilst the two aren't really related. People ascribe certain fields (phyiscs) as more intellectually demanding than others (sociology). A lot of it has to do with perception as well.
End of the day, never call yourself smart. You are smart when other people call you smart. This. Really, Liszt could improvise on the piano when he was a little toddler. He didn't even need lessons, just the inspiration of someone else's playing and he took off from there. When I was studying piano I was obsessed with the idea of what it was like to be that good. Like just wtf went on in their brains? It was a pointless persuit because I never learned how to do what they could and it just confused me further. I would argue that he got lessions by watching someone else play. He looked, listened, payed attention and therefore he understood cause and effect of each of the notes. 'This plays that sound', 'these notes go well together', etc. That still means he was self-taught using the materials available to him (but those materials weren't directed at him). I could only guess (I am not a Liszt by any means) that he had superb memory to retain whatever he listened to, and something special in him that could mold those memories into concepts which could be recalled quickly and emotionally. I tend to improvise better (and with better structure / central idea) when I keep a topic in my head (ex: rainy day) and review all my memories associated with that topic (ex: a rainy movie scene, Chopin's raindrop etude, being stuck in traffic in a rainy day, etc.). Anyway, all of that is based on my view of how it's done, none of this is official or documented (or maybe it is, but I haven't looked it up).
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I think an intelligent person on a bus is thinking of ways to improve their life and get a car.
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I strongly disagree with this idea that there's some people just naturally get inspiration.
I find that inspiration for me comes when I'm able to just do whatever I want. As in the state of mind where you're able to just explore, without being affected by reasons other than curiosity.
A lot of people who are "very good" but are never amazing just seem to me like they're motivated largely by success, and they can never really do stuff out of pure curiosity...
On a sidenote, I disagree with the original post that a "smart person" needs to apply this attitude to the entire world. People who can apply that attitude to any specific thing, even for just a few minutes, are extremely rare.
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On March 14 2012 21:51 Zorkmid wrote: I'm pretty sure that being really smart would be quite depressing. Ignorance is bliss.
I can't remember who said it, or their exact words.....but something like....
"If you think you're smart, you're stupid. If you think you're stupid, you're smart."
lot of ppl have said something along those lines, i'm quite sure Pascal (french philosopher/mathematician) was one of them. But it's a common occurence.
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Curiosity and hard work are basically what "genius" is. Contrary to popular belief, Mozart worked damn hard on his music throughout his life, regardless of his talent. It's really more of a measure of how much you actually care about something imo.
But yea, I wonder about random stuff like in the OP. And happily we know most of those answers. If you want learn the basics of quantum mechanics just go for it. There are plenty of tools to help you along the way.
Humility is commonly overrated though. Take credit for doing a good job or understanding something. People are too quick to put themselves down and demoralize themselves into not doing things. Train yourself not to be lazy.
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On March 14 2012 23:16 dUTtrOACh wrote: I think an intelligent person on a bus is thinking of ways to improve their life and get a car.
pretty sure that's quite a stupid statement.
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On March 14 2012 23:14 Clazziquai10 wrote: There are many kinds of "smartness" that people have - I'm pretty smart if you consider smart as being, in its most common meaning, good at mathematics, science etc. However there are many other kinds of smartness/ability/talent that I wish I had in its place but don't.
I'm good at math and science but I suck at starcraft 2. I don't have a flair for games. I can't multitask very well. I am really not a fast learner when it comes to anything other than mathematics and science.
I have poor hand-eye coordination and hence I suck at piano, or rather sight reading in particular. Tried my hands at drums and failed miserably as a result of that as well. Also can't play games like DJmax very well cos of that.
I suck at sports. I have poor spatial awareness and game sense so I cant play soccer/frisbee/basketball very well.
I'm not good looking. I'm short and scrawny.
I have poor social skills. I have never been good at talking to people. I don't have many friends. I can't look pretty girls in the eye. I slouch most of the time. I don't have a good sense of humour.
Now, upon considering all of the above, why on earth would I want to be smart if I suck at everything else?
I agree with this.
On a slightly different note its sometimes its good to consider the difference between academic smart and being generally smart. My old housemate was the typical bimbo blonde. fell for everything and made stupid comments. But she could study nonstop, got top grades, knew 3 different languages. Yet i wouldnt really consider her an intellectual or anything. Just someone who was good at studying and remembering.
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On March 14 2012 23:30 Littlemuff wrote:Show nested quote +On March 14 2012 23:14 Clazziquai10 wrote: There are many kinds of "smartness" that people have - I'm pretty smart if you consider smart as being, in its most common meaning, good at mathematics, science etc. However there are many other kinds of smartness/ability/talent that I wish I had in its place but don't.
I'm good at math and science but I suck at starcraft 2. I don't have a flair for games. I can't multitask very well. I am really not a fast learner when it comes to anything other than mathematics and science.
I have poor hand-eye coordination and hence I suck at piano, or rather sight reading in particular. Tried my hands at drums and failed miserably as a result of that as well. Also can't play games like DJmax very well cos of that.
I suck at sports. I have poor spatial awareness and game sense so I cant play soccer/frisbee/basketball very well.
I'm not good looking. I'm short and scrawny.
I have poor social skills. I have never been good at talking to people. I don't have many friends. I can't look pretty girls in the eye. I slouch most of the time. I don't have a good sense of humour.
Now, upon considering all of the above, why on earth would I want to be smart if I suck at everything else? I agree with this. On a slightly different note its sometimes its good to consider the difference between academic smart and being generally smart. My old housemate was the typical bimbo blonde. fell for everything and made stupid comments. But she could study nonstop, got top grades, knew 3 different languages. Yet i wouldnt really consider her an intellectual or anything. Just someone who was good at studying and remembering.
I don't think it's that easy to separate it. Some people do better academically while not being generally smart because they're better at studying and remembering. But some people just don't find real life as interesting as what they're learning academically.
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On March 14 2012 21:56 Azera wrote:Show nested quote +On March 14 2012 21:23 Teoita wrote: I think what separates "average smart" people from "holy shit that guy is a genius" is an amazing ability to rationalize and visualize extremely abstract concepts.
I am a third year physics student, i have ok grades and all, and i am left in absolute awe at what the best students can do. You can talk to them about the most abstract math and physics concepts, and they just...understand it. Immediately. You can see they have a clear and simple picture in their head of what is going on exactly, while a "normal" person will just have such a hard time understanding the same thing. Maybe it depends on how you define the word "smart" and how loosely you use the term. You say that the others are geniuses and you are average smart. What if you put it in such a way that you are stupid and they are just average? Show nested quote +On March 14 2012 21:28 AmericanUmlaut wrote: Your question is really difficult to even start to answer, for a few reasons. For one, there has never been a very good definition of intelligence, nor is there only a single type of intelligence. Also, none of us has ever had the experience of existing as a person who had greater or less intelligence than ourselves, so there is no way for us to explain what the differences are. Standardized tests say that my IQ is in the 99ish percentile (which means little more than that I'm good at taking IQ tests, but let's just assume it means I have more of some kind of smart than most people), but I couldn't possibly tell you how the way I see the world differs from the way someone who would land in a lower percentile on the same test.
I can tell you my hypothesis: I think what people think of intelligence is a combination of pattern recognition and a capacity for passion.
Pattern recognition allows you to abstract away some of the complexity of the world, making it easier to comprehend very complicated things by recognizing how they are like less complicated things. It also allows you to find signals in the noise of very complex phenomena, so that you see relationships that would not be evident to someone without the same capacity for pattern recognition.
[Edited to add: ] Another really important ability when you're talking about being able to understand something at a deep level is to operate simultaneously at different levels of abstraction. So you think about the sun as a point with a given mass while you're working out the orbits of the planets, but have the ability to move to a different level of abstraction and think of it in a different way when dealing with a problem that can't be solved with the "sun as a point" abstration.
By "capacity for passion" I mean the ability to get really interested in something. I speak Japanese and German, and I learned the languages significantly faster than the people who were living in Japan and here in Germany with me at the time, but most of the reason seemed to be that I was just much more fascinated with the languages than they were, and so I could spend 8-10 hours a day reading and studying flash cards without ever getting tired of it. On the other hand, I grow bored with practicing a piece of music very quickly, so despite having played the piano for 18 some-odd years, I'm complete crap at it.
I think we are "intelligent" in the contexts in which we have both of these things. I suspect that there aren't that many people who don't have some context in which they have both a strong understanding and a passion. If you want to understand what it feels like to be a genius in some, then, I imagine you should just imagine what it feels like when you're operating in a niche in which you have those traits. Very interesting points that you have brought up. Passion for something certainly can be the engine which drives you to a certain level of intelligence at a certain topic, but what happens when that passion dies? See, to me, when you have the passion for something, you develop some sort of ability to devour copious amounts of knowledge on this certain something. Put simply, you swallow faster than the others. In the end, it's just the same old regurgitating right? Even after the passion is gone, the knowledge remains, as well as the understanding of the relationships between the facts that you have. As I said in my previous post, any conversation about intelligence is going to founder at some point on the problem of defining what that word actually means. If you consider intelligence to be nothing but the accumulation of facts, then losing passion in something wouldn't make much of a difference. If, like me, you consider intelligence to have more with the ability to derive understanding about new things, then the knowledge left behind is also still useful, as it provides a framework for understanding new things.
Consider the case of language. I learned Japanese for about 10 years. Eventually the passion that drove me in the first years died off; I was fluent, and used the language to do research for my master's thesis and to watch Japanese television and whatnot, but I wasn't driven to constantly be involved in learning more about the language. When I started learning German, though, I already had an entire framework of understanding about how language works and how I personally best learn linguistic information, so I was able to learn German much faster than I could have if I hadn't yet learned another language. Every thing that you understand at a deep level gives your brain the tools to more easily understand other, similar, things.
Whether or not that understanding and the ability to synthesize new understanding about the world based on what you know and what you observe is what we mean when we say "intelligence" is, of course, still open. It doesn't really cover all the bases of what people might call intelligent behavior, like the ability to quickly do mathematical operations or write particularly moving and beautiful prose.
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There's a difference between genius and smart. Anyone can be smart. I go to a pretty decent university (top 20 in the nation), and the real difference between those that do well and poorly has nothing to do with natural intelligence. It's all about work ethic. That's how most people got into the university in the first place, and it's also how most keep staying at the top. It helps that you're interested in your school subjects, then you can continually think about the topics and relate them to your real life even outside the classroom. That's a good way to get a one-up on most your classmates.
Genius on the other hand is a whole different ball game. I've met a lot of smart people in my life, but I couldn't say I've ever met a real genius before.
Edit: But in the end, I think OP is doing fine. As long as you recognize the importance of self-questioning and improvement, then that's "smart" enough in my book. Most people are stagnant. Cheer up OP. You're smarter than you realize.
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Yes, I realise that most people are "academically smart. Their brain is like a sponge that just absorbs and regurgitates during tests. But outside academics, their unbelievably "un-smart". People like that are given top priority here though. =(
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On March 14 2012 23:37 coffecup wrote: There's a difference between genius and smart. Anyone can be smart. I go to a pretty decent university (top 20 in the nation), and the real difference between those that do well and poorly has nothing to do with natural intelligence. It's all about work ethic. That's how most people got into the university in the first place, and it's also how most keep staying at the top. It helps that you're interested in your school subjects, then you can continually think about the topics and relate them to your real life even outside the classroom. That's a good way to get a one-up on most your classmates.
Genius on the other hand is a whole different ball game. I've met a lot of smart people in my life, but I couldn't say I've ever met a real genius before.
In my experience there are pretty much three levels of "smartness":
1) People who have some amount of natural talent but don't work hard 2) People who work very hard but lack real curiosity 3) People who essentially live in something they like, people who are driven almost purely by curiosity
In my experience, people who get called geniuses are just people in the 3rd category.
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On March 14 2012 23:39 Azera wrote: Yes, I realise that most people are "academically smart. Their brain is like a sponge that just absorbs and regurgitates during tests. But outside academics, their unbelievably "un-smart". People like that are given top priority here though. =(
Being "smart" has nothing to do with your academics. I just used a school analogy because I assumed most people at TL are either in highschool, college, or graduate school. You can easily translate this analogy to outside life. A "smart" person essentially is someone who has the work ethic to constantly want to improve. I believe that everyone has the capacity to become well informed and reasonably well versed in any subject so long as he has the discipline and mindset to dedicate himself to the task. This can translate into things like fitness and sports, social skills, job-related skills, and sc. Being "smart" is more about process than the result imo.
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You're a lot brighter than you give yourself credit for, op. Most people don't even ask themselves these sorts of questions.
Intelligence comes in many forms and is notoriously difficult to measure. Even if we can agree on exactly what constitutes a smart person, I don't think it's possible to make any sort of blanket statement on how they think or perceive the world around them.
In my own experience, it hasn't really been intrinsically obvious to me what my strengths and weaknesses are. Only by observing how awful many others are at writing have I realized that I am a good writer. Conversely, when friends talk about plot details of movies they saw 3 years ago, I realize that my long-term memory is probably below average. I suspect things are similar for true geniuses. Certain things are intuitively easy for them to accomplish or understand, but this is their normal state of being. They have to observe how dumb others are to recognize their genius.
On March 14 2012 22:05 Azera wrote: One of the ways to live, as my Dad has taught me, is that you are never good. You are always average and you will never be good. If you see that you are better than other people, they are the people that are below average. You suck.
As someone already said, a middle ground is ideal. I thought I was pretty fucking smart growing up, and, in retrospect, this harmed me a lot more than it helped me. On the flipside of the coin, it's really not healthy to constantly feel like you're never good enough (and that others are even worse). Motivation to improve has to exist alongside respect for yourself.
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On March 14 2012 23:37 coffecup wrote: There's a difference between genius and smart. Anyone can be smart. I go to a pretty decent university (top 20 in the nation), and the real difference between those that do well and poorly has nothing to do with natural intelligence. It's all about work ethic. That's how most people got into the university in the first place, and it's also how most keep staying at the top. It helps that you're interested in your school subjects, then you can continually think about the topics and relate them to your real life even outside the classroom. That's a good way to get a one-up on most your classmates.
Genius on the other hand is a whole different ball game. I've met a lot of smart people in my life, but I couldn't say I've ever met a real genius before.
Edit: But in the end, I think OP is doing fine. As long as you recognize the importance of self-questioning and improvement, then that's "smart" enough in my book. Most people are stagnant. Cheer up OP. You're smarter than you realize.
I agree with this, however you should take into account that some people learn slower then others which could be some aspect of intelligence. I know of people that study for hours and hours, yet still get a lower grade than someone who didn't study all that much.
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Canada13372 Posts
On March 14 2012 23:39 Azera wrote: Yes, I realise that most people are "academically smart. Their brain is like a sponge that just absorbs and regurgitates during tests. But outside academics, their unbelievably "un-smart". People like that are given top priority here though. =(
Because a lot of jobs have the need requisite knowledge.
Just remember the people who can take what they are told, think critically and apply it outside of school are the smart ones. The ones who memorize something and simply spit it back but cannot apply it will have a very hard time doing their work.
The difference between us and the super geniuses is the way in which people like Hawking can take something they know (or have learned) and can apply it to a new problem in order to discover some new solution and do the same thing over and over in a highly complex way. They build their knowledge and understanding further allowing them to continue to apply their knowledge to their area of study. They are special in the way in which they can do it but everyone has the capacity to do this in some way.
This is why experience is so important in the world when trying to get a job. Johnny could have a degree straight out of school but he wont get hired because Bob's been doing the same job Johhny wants for 30 years. Even if Bob's degree is worse someone knows that Bob can use what he knows to do the job whereas Johnny can use what he knows to spit it back at you but might be unable to truly apply it to a real world setting.
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I've been thinking about this topic quite alot. How does it feel to be a genius? How does it feel to have 100iq? Are they like darkscream said? How does it feel to have under 70iq like alot of people in Africa?
For the lowest levels if iq there are some examples of ability like if you can repair furniture or something, but it's still impossible for us to know how it really feel. I've met a few people that were just mindbogglingly intelligent (atleast in some areas) and I just cant get how it must feel. Lets say you have a guy with 150iq, a guy with 125iq should be like someone with 100iq for the 125iq guy. Or maybe I'm totally wrong.
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IQ doesn't say all that much imo. I've heard/read that you can get you can score 10 percent higher if you just practice the subjects they give you during an IQ test. That would mean you could go from being smart to highly gifted.
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On March 14 2012 23:35 AmericanUmlaut wrote:Show nested quote +On March 14 2012 21:56 Azera wrote:On March 14 2012 21:23 Teoita wrote: I think what separates "average smart" people from "holy shit that guy is a genius" is an amazing ability to rationalize and visualize extremely abstract concepts.
I am a third year physics student, i have ok grades and all, and i am left in absolute awe at what the best students can do. You can talk to them about the most abstract math and physics concepts, and they just...understand it. Immediately. You can see they have a clear and simple picture in their head of what is going on exactly, while a "normal" person will just have such a hard time understanding the same thing. Maybe it depends on how you define the word "smart" and how loosely you use the term. You say that the others are geniuses and you are average smart. What if you put it in such a way that you are stupid and they are just average? On March 14 2012 21:28 AmericanUmlaut wrote: Your question is really difficult to even start to answer, for a few reasons. For one, there has never been a very good definition of intelligence, nor is there only a single type of intelligence. Also, none of us has ever had the experience of existing as a person who had greater or less intelligence than ourselves, so there is no way for us to explain what the differences are. Standardized tests say that my IQ is in the 99ish percentile (which means little more than that I'm good at taking IQ tests, but let's just assume it means I have more of some kind of smart than most people), but I couldn't possibly tell you how the way I see the world differs from the way someone who would land in a lower percentile on the same test.
I can tell you my hypothesis: I think what people think of intelligence is a combination of pattern recognition and a capacity for passion.
Pattern recognition allows you to abstract away some of the complexity of the world, making it easier to comprehend very complicated things by recognizing how they are like less complicated things. It also allows you to find signals in the noise of very complex phenomena, so that you see relationships that would not be evident to someone without the same capacity for pattern recognition.
[Edited to add: ] Another really important ability when you're talking about being able to understand something at a deep level is to operate simultaneously at different levels of abstraction. So you think about the sun as a point with a given mass while you're working out the orbits of the planets, but have the ability to move to a different level of abstraction and think of it in a different way when dealing with a problem that can't be solved with the "sun as a point" abstration.
By "capacity for passion" I mean the ability to get really interested in something. I speak Japanese and German, and I learned the languages significantly faster than the people who were living in Japan and here in Germany with me at the time, but most of the reason seemed to be that I was just much more fascinated with the languages than they were, and so I could spend 8-10 hours a day reading and studying flash cards without ever getting tired of it. On the other hand, I grow bored with practicing a piece of music very quickly, so despite having played the piano for 18 some-odd years, I'm complete crap at it.
I think we are "intelligent" in the contexts in which we have both of these things. I suspect that there aren't that many people who don't have some context in which they have both a strong understanding and a passion. If you want to understand what it feels like to be a genius in some, then, I imagine you should just imagine what it feels like when you're operating in a niche in which you have those traits. Very interesting points that you have brought up. Passion for something certainly can be the engine which drives you to a certain level of intelligence at a certain topic, but what happens when that passion dies? See, to me, when you have the passion for something, you develop some sort of ability to devour copious amounts of knowledge on this certain something. Put simply, you swallow faster than the others. In the end, it's just the same old regurgitating right? Even after the passion is gone, the knowledge remains, as well as the understanding of the relationships between the facts that you have. As I said in my previous post, any conversation about intelligence is going to founder at some point on the problem of defining what that word actually means. If you consider intelligence to be nothing but the accumulation of facts, then losing passion in something wouldn't make much of a difference. If, like me, you consider intelligence to have more with the ability to derive understanding about new things, then the knowledge left behind is also still useful, as it provides a framework for understanding new things. Consider the case of language. I learned Japanese for about 10 years. Eventually the passion that drove me in the first years died off; I was fluent, and used the language to do research for my master's thesis and to watch Japanese television and whatnot, but I wasn't driven to constantly be involved in learning more about the language. When I started learning German, though, I already had an entire framework of understanding about how language works and how I personally best learn linguistic information, so I was able to learn German much faster than I could have if I hadn't yet learned another language. Every thing that you understand at a deep level gives your brain the tools to more easily understand other, similar, things. Whether or not that understanding and the ability to synthesize new understanding about the world based on what you know and what you observe is what we mean when we say "intelligence" is, of course, still open. It doesn't really cover all the bases of what people might call intelligent behaviour, like the ability to quickly do mathematical operations or write particularly moving and beautiful prose.
So as Hawking has said, intelligence is the ability to adapt? I actually agree with this wholeheartedly.
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Oddly enough, the wiser and smarter you get, the more you realize how stupid and ignorant you actually are. It's both awe-inspiring and depressing at the same time.
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On March 14 2012 23:37 coffecup wrote: There's a difference between genius and smart. Anyone can be smart. I go to a pretty decent university (top 20 in the nation), and the real difference between those that do well and poorly has nothing to do with natural intelligence. It's all about work ethic. That's how most people got into the university in the first place, and it's also how most keep staying at the top. It helps that you're interested in your school subjects, then you can continually think about the topics and relate them to your real life even outside the classroom. That's a good way to get a one-up on most your classmates.
Genius on the other hand is a whole different ball game. I've met a lot of smart people in my life, but I couldn't say I've ever met a real genius before.
Edit: But in the end, I think OP is doing fine. As long as you recognize the importance of self-questioning and improvement, then that's "smart" enough in my book. Most people are stagnant. Cheer up OP. You're smarter than you realize.
On March 14 2012 23:47 coffecup wrote:Show nested quote +On March 14 2012 23:39 Azera wrote: Yes, I realise that most people are "academically smart. Their brain is like a sponge that just absorbs and regurgitates during tests. But outside academics, their unbelievably "un-smart". People like that are given top priority here though. =( Being "smart" has nothing to do with your academics. I just used a school analogy because I assumed most people at TL are either in highschool, college, or graduate school. You can easily translate this analogy to outside life. A "smart" person essentially is someone who has the work ethic to constantly want to improve. I believe that everyone has the capacity to become well informed and reasonably well versed in any subject so long as he has the discipline and mindset to dedicate himself to the task. This can translate into things like fitness and sports, social skills, job-related skills, and sc. Being "smart" is more about process than the result imo.
Come to think of it, maybe there should be a different word to refer to people who memorise well (have eidetic memory, etc). Talented, perhaps, but that word is very subjective too. See, this about this. Let's say we have a critical thinker and someone who is chock-full of knowledge but needs to be spoon-fed and shown the directions. The critical thinker is "stupid" compared to other person then?
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Smart is such a weird concept. It used to be a way to separate the privilieged from the masses, like, "you guys are stupid so you deserve to be peasants". In some ways it still is. "You're stupid, so you have to work as cashier or some other job that people generally don't like". IQ tests were constructed to see what aptitude people had to finish school and help those that couldn't. But that's it. IQ doesn't really say anything other than your aptitude for studying.
However it turned into this massive thing where IQ is seen as the be all end all of everything that comes to mind when you say intelligence. There are other theories of intelligence but they kind of don't get the same attention because nobody has really figured out how to accurately measure, for example, emotional intelligence, even though it's proven to be more effective for your career than the regular IQ... delay of gratification, something which is really important in order to be "smart" in our society today.
Anyway I'm one of those people that have been told since they were little that they're gifted. I had some troubles in school (like most people, no?), switched schools, caught up. Never really had to study for anything, just went to lessons, listened, thought, played lots of computer games. I've been told I'm a genius of language and that I'm efficient and smart in general.
It's not really true though. I'm smart at school, good at language and picking up abstract concepts of human behaviour and applying them to concrete situations and ok-ish at maths and physics. I could never really get a good enough grasp of chemistry, biology and stuff like that though, I was really terrible at them.
My way of reading my teachers and understanding the core of what they wanted out of me helped me through school, my choice of a technical programme at high school helped me score high on a test that later lets you use the test instead of grades when you apply for uni. I've always felt stupid in general. Part of this comes from not really studying, always feeling I should know more but never having the energy to actually care enough.
The word genius is something completely different. I bought a book in order to understand how science sees this concept. Haven't read it, typical of me, but by browsing the index I picked up that this book sees a genius as someone who revolutionalized the field. Fe, Einstein, Mozart, Nietzsche, various artists. By "revolutionalize a field", it's basically coming up with a way to bring it forward in a way that nobody else has thought about in a specific cultural setting. You can't revolutionalize too much or you'll just be called crazy and get laughed at or executed, like the guy who discovered genes before anyone else, lol. A couple of hundred years later, people called him a genius. So yeah, I'd be careful in calling anyone a genius.
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On March 14 2012 23:47 3clipse wrote:You're a lot brighter than you give yourself credit for, op. Most people don't even ask themselves these sorts of questions. Intelligence comes in many forms and is notoriously difficult to measure. Even if we can agree on exactly what constitutes a smart person, I don't think it's possible to make any sort of blanket statement on how they think or perceive the world around them. In my own experience, it hasn't really been intrinsically obvious to me what my strengths and weaknesses are. Only by observing how awful many others are at writing have I realized that I am a good writer. Conversely, when friends talk about plot details of movies they saw 3 years ago, I realize that my long-term memory is probably below average. I suspect things are similar for true geniuses. Certain things are intuitively easy for them to accomplish or understand, but this is their normal state of being. They have to observe how dumb others are to recognize their genius. Show nested quote +On March 14 2012 22:05 Azera wrote: One of the ways to live, as my Dad has taught me, is that you are never good. You are always average and you will never be good. If you see that you are better than other people, they are the people that are below average. You suck. As someone already said, a middle ground is ideal. I thought I was pretty fucking smart growing up, and, in retrospect, this harmed me a lot more than it helped me. On the flipside of the coin, it's really not healthy to constantly feel like you're never good enough (and that others are even worse). Motivation to improve has to exist alongside respect for yourself.
Looking at how awful the writings of others are made you realise that you are a good writer? Shouldn't it be instead something like, "Looking at how close my writing is compared to authors like Hemingway made me realise that I'am a pretty decent writer."? Just my 2 cents.
Intelligence is definitely hard to define. It's just that people mix up the ability to memorise with critical thinking ("pure" definition of intelligence?). I have no idea, but I'm sure knowing a lot of things helps with critical thinking.
Me thinking that I'm smart is the worse thing that can happen because I'll just get complacent.
On March 14 2012 23:52 ZeromuS wrote:Show nested quote +On March 14 2012 23:39 Azera wrote: Yes, I realise that most people are "academically smart. Their brain is like a sponge that just absorbs and regurgitates during tests. But outside academics, their unbelievably "un-smart". People like that are given top priority here though. =( Because a lot of jobs have the need requisite knowledge. Just remember the people who can take what they are told, think critically and apply it outside of school are the smart ones. The ones who memorize something and simply spit it back but cannot apply it will have a very hard time doing their work. The difference between us and the super geniuses is the way in which people like Hawking can take something they know (or have learned) and can apply it to a new problem in order to discover some new solution and do the same thing over and over in a highly complex way. They build their knowledge and understanding further allowing them to continue to apply their knowledge to their area of study. They are special in the way in which they can do it but everyone has the capacity to do this in some way. This is why experience is so important in the world when trying to get a job. Johnny could have a degree straight out of school but he wont get hired because Bob's been doing the same job Johhny wants for 30 years. Even if Bob's degree is worse someone knows that Bob can use what he knows to do the job whereas Johnny can use what he knows to spit it back at you but might be unable to truly apply it to a real world setting.
Then doesn't Johnny get a chance to prove himself? How will we know if Johnny can work more efficiently than Bob even though he's been at it for such a long time? How do we know that Johnny can't apply what he's learnt (much more than Bob) at work, resulting in him becoming a better worker?
Seems like people just have a problem adapting imo.
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France12483 Posts
It feels like being good against protoss and zerg but very bad against terran.
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On March 14 2012 23:55 Eatme wrote: I've been thinking about this topic quite alot. How does it feel to be a genius? How does it feel to have 100iq? Are they like darkscream said? How does it feel to have under 70iq like alot of people in Africa?
For the lowest levels if iq there are some examples of ability like if you can repair furniture or something, but it's still impossible for us to know how it really feel. I've met a few people that were just mindbogglingly intelligent (atleast in some areas) and I just cant get how it must feel. Lets say you have a guy with 150iq, a guy with 125iq should be like someone with 100iq for the 125iq guy. Or maybe I'm totally wrong.
Isn't the average IQ 90~100+?
I think to have low IQ is to be pretty much driven by your primitive instincts. For example, we have Subject A, sub-70IQ.
"I'm hungry." He says.
Subject A walks into the kitchen to see his younger sister preparing some noodles.
"Those noodles smell good".
He then proceeds to walk over to his sister, pushes her away, and takes her noodles.
While a person of average intelligence, Subject B...
"I feel hungry. I wonder what I should eat?"He says.
Subject B walks into the kitchen to see his younger sister preparing some noodles. He decides that he shouldn't consume too much carbohydrates so he looks for a granola bar instead.
"Darn it, where are those granola bars?"
He gives up his search and asks his sister ,"Hey, do you mind sharing those? If you're really hungry then I'll just make my own, it's fine."
His sister decides that she isn't that hungry after all and decides to split the noodles. Both parties are happy!
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On March 15 2012 00:13 Nudelfisk wrote: Smart is such a weird concept. It used to be a way to separate the privilieged from the masses, like, "you guys are stupid so you deserve to be peasants". In some ways it still is. "You're stupid, so you have to work as cashier or some other job that people generally don't like". IQ tests were constructed to see what aptitude people had to finish school and help those that couldn't. But that's it. IQ doesn't really say anything other than your aptitude for studying.
However it turned into this massive thing where IQ is seen as the be all end all of everything that comes to mind when you say intelligence. There are other theories of intelligence but they kind of don't get the same attention because nobody has really figured out how to accurately measure, for example, emotional intelligence, even though it's proven to be more effective for your career than the regular IQ... delay of gratification, something which is really important in order to be "smart" in our society today.
Anyway I'm one of those people that have been told since they were little that they're gifted. I had some troubles in school (like most people, no?), switched schools, caught up. Never really had to study for anything, just went to lessons, listened, thought, played lots of computer games. I've been told I'm a genius of language and that I'm efficient and smart in general.
It's not really true though. I'm smart at school, good at language and picking up abstract concepts of human behaviour and applying them to concrete situations and ok-ish at maths and physics. I could never really get a good enough grasp of chemistry, biology and stuff like that though, I was really terrible at them.
My way of reading my teachers and understanding the core of what they wanted out of me helped me through school, my choice of a technical programme at high school helped me score high on a test that later lets you use the test instead of grades when you apply for uni. I've always felt stupid in general. Part of this comes from not really studying, always feeling I should know more but never having the energy to actually care enough.
The word genius is something completely different. I bought a book in order to understand how science sees this concept. Haven't read it, typical of me, but by browsing the index I picked up that this book sees a genius as someone who revolutionalized the field. Fe, Einstein, Mozart, Nietzsche, various artists. By "revolutionalize a field", it's basically coming up with a way to bring it forward in a way that nobody else has thought about in a specific cultural setting. You can't revolutionalize too much or you'll just be called crazy and get laughed at or executed, like the guy who discovered genes before anyone else, lol. A couple of hundred years later, people called him a genius. So yeah, I'd be careful in calling anyone a genius.
What's the book called?
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Well, I get surprised a lot that most people don't understand the math that I think is child splay. It also surprises me that some people actually fail tests. However, math is my strong point and not my ELA
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On March 15 2012 00:22 Azera wrote:Show nested quote +On March 14 2012 23:55 Eatme wrote: I've been thinking about this topic quite alot. How does it feel to be a genius? How does it feel to have 100iq? Are they like darkscream said? How does it feel to have under 70iq like alot of people in Africa?
For the lowest levels if iq there are some examples of ability like if you can repair furniture or something, but it's still impossible for us to know how it really feel. I've met a few people that were just mindbogglingly intelligent (atleast in some areas) and I just cant get how it must feel. Lets say you have a guy with 150iq, a guy with 125iq should be like someone with 100iq for the 125iq guy. Or maybe I'm totally wrong. Isn't the average IQ 90~100+? I think to have low IQ is to be pretty much driven by your primitive instincts. For example, we have Subject A, sub-70IQ. "I'm hungry." He says. Subject A walks into the kitchen to see his younger sister preparing some noodles. "Those noodles smell good". He then proceeds to walk over to his sister, pushes her away, and takes her noodles. While a person of average intelligence, Subject B... "I feel hungry. I wonder what I should eat?"He says. Subject B walks into the kitchen to see his younger sister preparing some noodles. He decides that he shouldn't consume too much carbohydrates so he looks for a granola bar instead. "Darn it, where are those granola bars?" He gives up his search and asks his sister ,"Hey, do you mind sharing those? If you're really hungry then I'll just make my own, it's fine." His sister decides that she isn't that hungry after all and decides to split the noodles. Both parties are happy! I don't think that having a low IQ turns people into unsensible assholes.
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Intelligence = Asking 'why' and finding out the answer for yourself, imo.
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On March 15 2012 00:29 blubbdavid wrote:Show nested quote +On March 15 2012 00:22 Azera wrote:On March 14 2012 23:55 Eatme wrote: I've been thinking about this topic quite alot. How does it feel to be a genius? How does it feel to have 100iq? Are they like darkscream said? How does it feel to have under 70iq like alot of people in Africa?
For the lowest levels if iq there are some examples of ability like if you can repair furniture or something, but it's still impossible for us to know how it really feel. I've met a few people that were just mindbogglingly intelligent (atleast in some areas) and I just cant get how it must feel. Lets say you have a guy with 150iq, a guy with 125iq should be like someone with 100iq for the 125iq guy. Or maybe I'm totally wrong. Isn't the average IQ 90~100+? I think to have low IQ is to be pretty much driven by your primitive instincts. For example, we have Subject A, sub-70IQ. "I'm hungry." He says. Subject A walks into the kitchen to see his younger sister preparing some noodles. "Those noodles smell good". He then proceeds to walk over to his sister, pushes her away, and takes her noodles. While a person of average intelligence, Subject B... "I feel hungry. I wonder what I should eat?"He says. Subject B walks into the kitchen to see his younger sister preparing some noodles. He decides that he shouldn't consume too much carbohydrates so he looks for a granola bar instead. "Darn it, where are those granola bars?" He gives up his search and asks his sister ,"Hey, do you mind sharing those? If you're really hungry then I'll just make my own, it's fine." His sister decides that she isn't that hungry after all and decides to split the noodles. Both parties are happy! I don't think that having a low IQ turns people into unsensible assholes.
Well I wouldn't know =D I just guessed that people with low IQ won't be able to comprehend the emotions of others.
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On March 15 2012 00:08 Azera wrote:Show nested quote +On March 14 2012 23:37 coffecup wrote: There's a difference between genius and smart. Anyone can be smart. I go to a pretty decent university (top 20 in the nation), and the real difference between those that do well and poorly has nothing to do with natural intelligence. It's all about work ethic. That's how most people got into the university in the first place, and it's also how most keep staying at the top. It helps that you're interested in your school subjects, then you can continually think about the topics and relate them to your real life even outside the classroom. That's a good way to get a one-up on most your classmates.
Genius on the other hand is a whole different ball game. I've met a lot of smart people in my life, but I couldn't say I've ever met a real genius before.
Edit: But in the end, I think OP is doing fine. As long as you recognize the importance of self-questioning and improvement, then that's "smart" enough in my book. Most people are stagnant. Cheer up OP. You're smarter than you realize. Show nested quote +On March 14 2012 23:47 coffecup wrote:On March 14 2012 23:39 Azera wrote: Yes, I realise that most people are "academically smart. Their brain is like a sponge that just absorbs and regurgitates during tests. But outside academics, their unbelievably "un-smart". People like that are given top priority here though. =( Being "smart" has nothing to do with your academics. I just used a school analogy because I assumed most people at TL are either in highschool, college, or graduate school. You can easily translate this analogy to outside life. A "smart" person essentially is someone who has the work ethic to constantly want to improve. I believe that everyone has the capacity to become well informed and reasonably well versed in any subject so long as he has the discipline and mindset to dedicate himself to the task. This can translate into things like fitness and sports, social skills, job-related skills, and sc. Being "smart" is more about process than the result imo. Come to think of it, maybe there should be a different word to refer to people who memorise well (have eidetic memory, etc). Talented, perhaps, but that word is very subjective too. See, this about this. Let's say we have a critical thinker and someone who is chock-full of knowledge but needs to be spoon-fed and shown the directions. The critical thinker is "stupid" compared to other person then?
Critical thinking is also a skill that you can improve. To go back to the school analogy, I have taken many courses where the exams are open book and open notes yet somehow the median is 60%. This is because the exam tests critical thinking and the application of the ideas that are taught during the course. You cannot study for this exam in the traditional "memorize the bold word" or "do many math problems" kind of manner, but you can improve your ability to take these kinds of exams if you study for it in the right way.
I don't believe a single skill can define someone as being "smarter" than someone else. My view of intelligence is quite simple and universal. Whatever skill you believe you are deficient in, you can become reasonably proficient in it so long as you have the discipline and knowledge to improve in the right way. Period. It's worked for me all my life. I volunteer as a tutor for low-income families and have seen young children excell in subject areas (yes even those apart from academics such as social skills with friends or school sports) even if they are not endowed with Mozart-like genius. Most of us aren't gifted geniuses, but we can all improve. And that's really all that matters to me.
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On March 15 2012 00:40 coffecup wrote:Show nested quote +On March 15 2012 00:08 Azera wrote:On March 14 2012 23:37 coffecup wrote: There's a difference between genius and smart. Anyone can be smart. I go to a pretty decent university (top 20 in the nation), and the real difference between those that do well and poorly has nothing to do with natural intelligence. It's all about work ethic. That's how most people got into the university in the first place, and it's also how most keep staying at the top. It helps that you're interested in your school subjects, then you can continually think about the topics and relate them to your real life even outside the classroom. That's a good way to get a one-up on most your classmates.
Genius on the other hand is a whole different ball game. I've met a lot of smart people in my life, but I couldn't say I've ever met a real genius before.
Edit: But in the end, I think OP is doing fine. As long as you recognize the importance of self-questioning and improvement, then that's "smart" enough in my book. Most people are stagnant. Cheer up OP. You're smarter than you realize. On March 14 2012 23:47 coffecup wrote:On March 14 2012 23:39 Azera wrote: Yes, I realise that most people are "academically smart. Their brain is like a sponge that just absorbs and regurgitates during tests. But outside academics, their unbelievably "un-smart". People like that are given top priority here though. =( Being "smart" has nothing to do with your academics. I just used a school analogy because I assumed most people at TL are either in highschool, college, or graduate school. You can easily translate this analogy to outside life. A "smart" person essentially is someone who has the work ethic to constantly want to improve. I believe that everyone has the capacity to become well informed and reasonably well versed in any subject so long as he has the discipline and mindset to dedicate himself to the task. This can translate into things like fitness and sports, social skills, job-related skills, and sc. Being "smart" is more about process than the result imo. Come to think of it, maybe there should be a different word to refer to people who memorise well (have eidetic memory, etc). Talented, perhaps, but that word is very subjective too. See, this about this. Let's say we have a critical thinker and someone who is chock-full of knowledge but needs to be spoon-fed and shown the directions. The critical thinker is "stupid" compared to other person then? Critical thinking is also a skill that you can improve. To go back to the school analogy, I have taken many courses where the exams are open book and open notes yet somehow the median is 60%. This is because the exam tests critical thinking and the application of the ideas that are taught during the course. You cannot study for this exam in the traditional "memorize the bold word" or "do many math problems" kind of manner, but you can improve your ability to take these kinds of exams if you study for it in the right way. I don't believe a single skill can define someone as being "smarter" than someone else. My view of intelligence is quite simple and universal. Whatever skill you believe you are deficient in, you can become reasonably proficient in it so long as you have the discipline and knowledge to improve in the right way. Period. It's worked for me all my life. I volunteer as a tutor for low-income families and have seen young children excell in subject areas (yes even those apart from academics such as social skills with friends or school sports) even if they are not endowed with Mozart-like genius. Most of us aren't gifted geniuses, but we can all improve. And that's really all that matters to me.
Wow, I would love to have exams like those. And it's a great thing you're doing =)
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It's not about all the things you know (facts / knowledge), but how you grow and can use them (wisdom). For example you injure yourself and you're off your sports team. You're miffed, but soon realize there are very good reasons why you shouldn't be on the squad just right now e.g. lets you focus on school work. The point is, you can KNOW why it's happened, you can understand everything about it and know all the right things to do, but it's pointless if you can't deal with it and have peace with it in you heart.
As blubbdavid alluded to wisdom is much more desirable than just being smart or knowledgeable. Wisdom and love (having a right heart), you can own (and know everything about) the whole wide world, but it's pointless if you don't know your own soul.
"If I have the gift of prophecy [can basically predict the future, pretty smart, right?] and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge ... but have not love, I am nothing." - 1 Corinthians 13:2 PM me about it, one doesn't cite the bible on an internet forum without inviting interest and replies <3
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On March 15 2012 00:15 Azera wrote: Looking at how awful the writings of others are made you realise that you are a good writer? Shouldn't it be instead something like, "Looking at how close my writing is compared to authors like Hemingway made me realise that I'am a pretty decent writer."? Just my 2 cents.
"Shouldn't it be?" If you're arguing this to be a better benchmark, I completely agree. The thing is, if I were on the level of Hemmingway, I'm not sure if I would realize it just from reading his work. I usually don't realize my talents are talents or my weaknesses are weaknesses until I compare them with my peers and notice a very severe difference. It's not that easy to evaluate yourself unless someone tells you you're exceptional or you realize how much worse they are. I think it's easier to identify difference than similarity, if that makes any sense.
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On March 14 2012 20:58 Azera wrote:
When a genius gets on a bus, takes a seat and feels the texture of the seat cover, is he able to tell what material it is? The metal bars that he has to grab hold of to reach his seat so that he does not fall, does he know what type of alloy it is? He puts his earphones into his ear, is he able to describe the physics behind this phenomenon - sound travelling to his ear from his music player, in verbatim?
The answer to all these questions is just "No." Not unless he felt a material like that before and someone told him what it was. If he can describe the way the sound went to his ear, it was only because someone already told him how it worked.
Smart people are smart, but they're also people. They don't instantly know everything. They slowly acquire knowledge like everyone else. The only differences are perhaps they pay attention a little better, remember a little better, or perhaps they just "get it" a little sooner. But they need to spend their time learning like everyone else.
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On March 15 2012 01:02 jrkirby wrote:Show nested quote +On March 14 2012 20:58 Azera wrote:
When a genius gets on a bus, takes a seat and feels the texture of the seat cover, is he able to tell what material it is? The metal bars that he has to grab hold of to reach his seat so that he does not fall, does he know what type of alloy it is? He puts his earphones into his ear, is he able to describe the physics behind this phenomenon - sound travelling to his ear from his music player, in verbatim?
The answer to all these questions is just "No." Not unless he felt a material like that before and someone told him what it was. If he can describe the way the sound went to his ear, it was only because someone already told him how it worked. Smart people are smart, but they're also people. They don't instantly know everything. They slowly acquire knowledge like everyone else. The only differences are perhaps they pay attention a little better, remember a little better, or perhaps they just "get it" a little sooner. But they need to spend their time learning like everyone else.
Wouldn't you agree that there is also a intelligence ''cap''? That some times are just too abstract/hard for someone to understand.
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Lets look at it this way - if being really smart is the be all and end all for you, and nothing satisfies and pleases you more than being smart, then whatever floats your boat - go ahead and wallow in self pity. But I must warn you - you will be missing out on a lot of stuff in life. I was one of those fellas who thought being the smartest kid on the block was everything a few years back, so I studied and studied, but as I got closer and closer to the top, I realized there will always be someone smarter than me, more intelligent than me, and then I realized - I should've done something else with my life rather than obsess about smartness, but it was too late. My life became empty.
So just get over it man seriously. Life is too short to be brooding about not being the next albert einstein.
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The thing is, if you’re really intelligent in many ways (“many” being a key word here), you can work out too many things too quickly in life and lose interest in everything except a few specific things. Those things might be what you understand the least, or they might be what emotionally engages you as a person. In any case, you might be left with very limited knowledge and curiosity about the world in general. Not because you ever knew everything, but because you can extrapolate information so well that you can tell that the information you will extract from a subject will ultimately be unsatisfying. The distinction between that and just not being interested in something is actually minute, but in some ways extremely significant.
Which is why I think the kind of “intelligence” you had in mind in the OP is rare, or at least ethereal since the person possessive of it will soon have it all figured out to the level their interest extends. So basically, mostly some 15-16 year olds will look at the world in that way.
Of course there are those who actively hunt information everywhere, but often as it pertains to their vocation. Writers look for ideas and details and settings, etc, Einstein looked at the world with relativity in mind. But I have formed the impression that the intelligence leap (though that's a wierd and rather meaningless concept, as well as painfully generalized) between those few people and the more common knowledge-hunters who show aimless interest in a wide variety of things is relatively large.
It's actually hard to try to phrase yourself in this context, because there is so much implicit junk attached to concepts surrounding intelligence that it's almost impossible to avoid subtext that you're not trying to say and often heartily disagree with.
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On March 15 2012 00:22 Azera wrote:Show nested quote +On March 14 2012 23:55 Eatme wrote: I've been thinking about this topic quite alot. How does it feel to be a genius? How does it feel to have 100iq? Are they like darkscream said? How does it feel to have under 70iq like alot of people in Africa?
For the lowest levels if iq there are some examples of ability like if you can repair furniture or something, but it's still impossible for us to know how it really feel. I've met a few people that were just mindbogglingly intelligent (atleast in some areas) and I just cant get how it must feel. Lets say you have a guy with 150iq, a guy with 125iq should be like someone with 100iq for the 125iq guy. Or maybe I'm totally wrong. Isn't the average IQ 90~100+? I think to have low IQ is to be pretty much driven by your primitive instincts. For example, we have Subject A, sub-70IQ. "I'm hungry." He says. Subject A walks into the kitchen to see his younger sister preparing some noodles. "Those noodles smell good". He then proceeds to walk over to his sister, pushes her away, and takes her noodles. While a person of average intelligence, Subject B... "I feel hungry. I wonder what I should eat?"He says. Subject B walks into the kitchen to see his younger sister preparing some noodles. He decides that he shouldn't consume too much carbohydrates so he looks for a granola bar instead. "Darn it, where are those granola bars?" He gives up his search and asks his sister ,"Hey, do you mind sharing those? If you're really hungry then I'll just make my own, it's fine." His sister decides that she isn't that hungry after all and decides to split the noodles. Both parties are happy!
Well 100 is average (not in every country ofcourse) but I kinda used the description darkscream had, but forgot to really mention/clarify that. I put 150 and 125 to really have distinct gears. 150 is clearly above 140 that according to some is the lower limit to be called a genius. Maybe I should have used 130 and 160 to include retards (below 70) but I skipped that even if one can assume that they too enjoy reality TV.
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Well, one thing I'll say is I feel good from intellectual stimulation. It's almost like a drug. In fact, it probably is a drug that causes the good feeling. Maybe dopamine or something like that.
This implores me to seek intellectually stimulating activities. I feel incredibly bored whenever my brain doesn't have a high rate of activity and I'm not being stimulated in any other way. You could say it's hard for me to relax. Lately I've been playing lots of puzzle games (like Picma) and dungeon crawlers.
I think I feel good when I think a lot because I've been doing it for so long. The brain is a muscle, and it feels good when you're buff. I do think about things mentioned in the OP, but usually I have enough basic knowledge to answer smaller questions related to the big question, so it becomes a game where I figure out which questions to ask so that I piece the puzzle together and end up with a big answer. Of course it's not very scientific but it is very intellectually stimulating. I've become quite good at this game. For questions like "what alloy is this?" If I don't know the answer by observing, I use process of elimination and I can usually narrow it down to one or two materials. You might be surprised by all you can learn just by asking a series of simple questions.
Einstein was a strong divergent thinker. He asked simple questions and then did mental exercises to solve problems. For example, as a young man Einstein asked himself what it would be like to ride on a beam of light. It took him many years of thought experiments, however the answer helped him develop the special theory of relativity. Convergent and Divergent Thinking
IQ measures convergent thinking, the lesser of the two. There probably isn't a good way to measure divergent thinking. Maybe recognition is the only way.
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Wish i was smart enough to understand what you guys were talking about in this thread. Some smart people I know do really well in classes and are very motivated in general.
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To smart people: Do you find the voice in your head annoying sometimes? Y'know, that voice in your head that feels the need to analyze every single detail of your life and the need to improve it
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To answer several of the questions in your post, a genius can be a genius without knowing the physics behind all those things. Questioning how things work is frequent but not necessarily constant. I often end up reviewing memories, working out problems, etc when I'm doing something that requires little to no conscious effort, which is anything except academic work, MMA, and gaming.
I should add that I end up analyzing a large amount of what goes on in my life - not so much the physics but the behavior of people and the way I do things - to improve my understanding and efficiency. (I enjoy psychology quite a bit, but I am a bioengineering major).
Also, about the "renaissance man" concept: It is possible to be talented in every field, but it is no longer possible to reach the pinnacle of several fields, because the body of knowledge in each field takes a significant amount of time to master. It's possible to master two fields, or just maybe three, but no more than that.
Constant stimulation is almost a must. I can sit there and seemingly do nothing, but I won't actually be doing nothing while I'm waiting - my mind will be full of whatever needs solving. If there is a problem that really interests me or affects me personally, and I don't resolve it before going to sleep, I will usually wake up with the solution or some progress worked out in my head.
On March 14 2012 22:27 Azera wrote:Show nested quote +On March 14 2012 22:15 oPPRoBe wrote:I really like the Einstein quote that Flameberger brought into the thread. All of the answers to the questions in the OP can be found! There are experts who devote their lives into answering those questions and delve in deeper so they can learn even more about it. In addition, the internet provides Google! All of your questions will be answered in 0.23 seconds with 643,000,000 other results (approximately). Instead of being a "jack of all trades," I find it more respectable, practical, and reasonable to be a master at the one thing that matters to you the most. I should make clear that I'm not trying to discourage your curiosity - that's a good thing to have. Just wanted to point out that there's no need to belittle yourself by calling yourself stupid Why won't you belittle yourself instead of overestimating yourself?
Why not estimate your value at exactly what it is? There's no need for over- or underestimation. Being humble is different from belittling yourself.
On March 15 2012 01:18 Recognizable wrote:Show nested quote +On March 15 2012 01:02 jrkirby wrote:On March 14 2012 20:58 Azera wrote:
When a genius gets on a bus, takes a seat and feels the texture of the seat cover, is he able to tell what material it is? The metal bars that he has to grab hold of to reach his seat so that he does not fall, does he know what type of alloy it is? He puts his earphones into his ear, is he able to describe the physics behind this phenomenon - sound travelling to his ear from his music player, in verbatim?
The answer to all these questions is just "No." Not unless he felt a material like that before and someone told him what it was. If he can describe the way the sound went to his ear, it was only because someone already told him how it worked. Smart people are smart, but they're also people. They don't instantly know everything. They slowly acquire knowledge like everyone else. The only differences are perhaps they pay attention a little better, remember a little better, or perhaps they just "get it" a little sooner. But they need to spend their time learning like everyone else. Wouldn't you agree that there is also a intelligence ''cap''? That some times are just too abstract/hard for someone to understand.
There is no true intelligence cap. The issue with understanding abstract concepts is that they build up on other less abstract concepts, which build on others, so there becomes too much to hold in memory at once and it needs to be worked out on paper. Perhaps you've heard of the psychology rule of thumb that people can typically store 5-9 items in memory at a time? I can easily store ten or eleven, but anything more than that and I have to devote all my attention to remember it.
On March 15 2012 02:23 MaV_gGSC wrote: To smart people: Do you find the voice in your head annoying sometimes? Y'know, that voice in your head that feels the need to analyze every single detail of your life and the need to improve it
It's not a separate voice. It's my own attention, choosing to devote itself to something that interests me. The only thing that's annoying is when I need to focus on something that doesn't interest me, and I keep getting distracted by my other thoughts every few seconds.
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asking questions and observing won't be the only ingredient for someone to be considered a genius. Rather, its what they do with that raw data that separates smart people from normal people. For instance, there was this korean tv show where a guy whose IQ was over 180 came on the show and showed his amazing ability to memorize. He said he wasn't one of those "savants" who mindlessly memorized without knowing what they are (savants actually have lower IQs than normal people), but he was able to produce the same result by using mnemonic devices. He had no way of knowing beforehand what he had to memorize, but the second he was presented with the data to memorize, he found patterns and created mnemonic devices to aid memorization.
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On March 14 2012 21:51 Azera wrote:Show nested quote +On March 14 2012 21:13 Sporadic44 wrote: Nice post. Idk why you preface it with calling yourself dumb, you seem to be an analytical person yourself. But yea, id say all it takes to be what people call "smart", is an itching curiosity and a thirst for learning and understanding about things around you in the world. You're constantly learning when you let yourself contemplate things no matter how seemingly mundane. For me learning and answering questions is an adventure. I suspect any intelligent person would agree, they teach themselves things for the sake of knowing more about the space they inhabit.
Keep learning, keep growing. Dont worry about whether or not you're a genius because truth is, intelligence is fluid, and difficult to measure. I know a lot of shit, but given the right(or wrong) variables, I can appear to be very stupid. So dont put to much value on how smart you consider yourself, or other people. That just gets in the way of learning, after all. Show nested quote +On March 14 2012 21:19 Flameberger wrote:I agree with your idea that intelligence isn't knowing the answers to questions, memorizing stuff isnt what seperates a genius from a regular person. Of course, how much you know is a significant factor in what you will be able to figure out. I would say that knowing is not what makes someone a genius, but rather a tool that helps them to apply their genius. As for the rest of your questions, unfortunatly I'm not a genius. I am a reasonably intelligent physics oriented person though so maybe that counts for something. for me my curiosity and "smartness" occur unpredictably, most of the time I just do and think "normal" stuff. But sometimes I make an observation or have a thought which leads me to really investigating in my mind (and if needed with looking things up, experimenting, whatevs) until I become satisfied with my understanding. It's very focused though, maybe a genius could, but I'm not going to be figuring out secrets of the universe while busy with something else and talking to somebody. When this does happen exhausting is the last thing I would describe it as. Exciting is the word I would chose, I think it would be incredible to be constantly in that state of understanding and learning which you predict is what it may be like to be a genius. And here's a quote from Einstein, mr "I'm stupid": Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid. So would you guys say that there is a period of time where your brain is "dormant", and the intelligence of your thoughts sink to sub-50 IQ? That is a very nice quote Flamerberger. But isn't that what we to do in our world?
No. If you are malnourished or simply overworked, your brain will run low on its supply of neurotransmitters such as acetylcholine, etc, which are required for the brain to function. When this happens, your brain simply cannot function at the same capacity. This has happened to me a few times, more because of malnourishment, but I have never gone so far as to be retarded (50 IQ is retarded). I might have gone down to average, but I'm not even sure about that since it's hard to truly know what average intelligence is.
On March 15 2012 02:46 dongmydrum wrote: asking questions and observing won't be the only ingredient for someone to be considered a genius. Rather, its what they do with that raw data that separates smart people from normal people. For instance, there was this korean tv show where a guy whose IQ was over 180 came on the show and showed his amazing ability to memorize. He said he wasn't one of those "savants" who mindlessly memorized without knowing what they are (savants actually have lower IQs than normal people), but he was able to produce the same result by using mnemonic devices. He had no way of knowing beforehand what he had to memorize, but the second he was presented with the data to memorize, he found patterns and created mnemonic devices to aid memorization.
Creating mnemonics is a pretty natural thing to do once you know what they are and how they aid memorization, is it not?
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On March 14 2012 21:51 Azera wrote: So would you guys say that there is a period of time where your brain is "dormant", and the intelligence of your thoughts sink to sub-50 IQ?
That is a very nice quote Flamerberger. But isn't that what we to do in our world?
I would describe my brain as having dormant or active status depending on circumstances. If I'm playing a video game and listening to music chances are my brain isnt doing much productive thinking at all. Even when bored I will often spend the time letting my mind wander but not really focusing on anything. But then I'll latch onto a chain of thought or problem and things will actually start working.
As for judgements, I do think that humans have a tendancy toward narrow criteria for judging people. I try to avoid forming negative opinions about people even if they seem to lack the qualities I strive for.
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On March 15 2012 04:19 Flameberger wrote:Show nested quote +On March 14 2012 21:51 Azera wrote: So would you guys say that there is a period of time where your brain is "dormant", and the intelligence of your thoughts sink to sub-50 IQ?
That is a very nice quote Flamerberger. But isn't that what we to do in our world?
I would describe my brain as having dormant or active status depending on circumstances. If I'm playing a video game and listening to music chances are my brain isnt doing much productive thinking at all. Even when bored I will often spend the time letting my mind wander but not really focusing on anything. But then I'll latch onto a chain of thought or problem and things will actually start working. As for judgements, I do think that humans have a tendancy toward narrow criteria for judging people. I try to avoid forming negative opinions about people even if they seem to lack the qualities I strive for.
Until I was 16, I used to not think much when playing games, both FPS and RTS. Needless to say, I was not very good at either, just average at FPS and bronze at RTS. After I started analyzing my play and the games themselves, I improved significantly. I'm 19 now, so it's only been three years, but I am miles better at games in general than I was back then.
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It is not clear that intelligence has any long-term survival value.
Unfortunately it is said that Isaac Newton, in my mind the most brilliant human being to ever walk the earth, died a virgin.
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On March 15 2012 07:01 Nikoras wrote:Unfortunately it is said that Isaac Newton, in my mind the most brilliant human being to ever walk the earth, died a virgin.
Yet his research has lived on for hundreds of years. There might not be any genetical information of Isaac Newton, but after so many generations, what good would 1 or 2 genes do?
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On March 15 2012 07:04 Recognizable wrote:Show nested quote +On March 15 2012 07:01 Nikoras wrote:It is not clear that intelligence has any long-term survival value. Unfortunately it is said that Isaac Newton, in my mind the most brilliant human being to ever walk the earth, died a virgin. Yet his research has lived on for hundreds of years. There might not be any genetical information of Isaac Newton, but after so many generations, what good would 1 or 2 genes do?
Maybe children would even have hampered his research. Who knows?
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He was probably just asexual and completely devoted to finding out answers.
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On March 15 2012 13:37 Arthemesia wrote: He was probably just asexual and completely devoted to finding out answers.
Yeah I guess so. But we never will know what kind of children he would have had though. Maybe they would have been even greater than him.
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