Not dismissing the article itself, but it's definitely a pattern on HN.
Your phrase "self-proclaimed gifted" is outright dismissive.
This is a natural human reaction. The reminder of the existence of people smarter than ourselves often results in narcissistic injury, it feels bad, it can hurt.
It's the reason gifted education is such a low and unpopular funding priority.
But all that does is make society poorer.
Humanity's gifted population is one of it's great resources, and we squander it. We don't protect it, and we don't value it, and we don't foster it.
The article talks about twice exceptional kids, these are kids who are gifted but often have a discrepancy or a weakness, a learning disability.
Because they are highly verbal and intelligent, they can use that to cover for their weaknesses, but they do not do well in a school setting at all.
They withdraw or they become the class clown to entertain themselves.
This often compounds over the years, like untreated ADD, and turns into depression, anxiety, substance abuse and so on.
And it's a tragedy because they have so much to offer, but we fail them, and we lose a lot of them.
What is being mocked is the attitude we should care for people? Think about that for a second.
>What that person saying is that a lot of reasonably intelligent people who are nowhere near geniuses like to think of themselves as geniuses as a form of narcissistic self-flattery.
Yet the parent comment didn't have that in it. How can the grandparent be mocking the parent if the grandparent is mocking those who chime in 'me too' while the parent doesn't do that?
And the article was about a minority population of vulnerable, at-risk children, some of whom go on to commit suicide.
And the top HN comment was mocking. Think about that for a second.
There are a lot of people that hate the gifted, just because of the way they were born. They relish the opportunity to take them down a notch.
For that matter, even on posts of mental health issues, people comment and proclaim "me too", do you and GGP think, even there people are just trying to carve out an image out of vanity.
Simple fact is this, GGP's comment angered a lot of people - I too wrote few draft replies earlier and deleted them. But you comment, made me say, what the heck?
Actually, to such low value comments as that of the GGP. May be we should allow reddit like replies. You reap what you sow.
I'm in the 98th percentile and I thought that I was special flower until I started to study math and physics in university level. I met several people who I would consider actually gifted (IQ above 160 and intellectual curiosity to use that IQ). I quickly realized that my problem had never been my intelligence. It was the arrogance and laziness that came with being relatively smart. I could cope with everything and everyone if I tried even a little.
Many of these actually bright guys (and especially girls) had actual problems in their youth. Taking part of International Mathematical Olympiads allowed them to use their noggin and meet others like them. Getting noticed and the ability to take university classes while minor was the lifeline that gave them purpose and mentoring they needed. They really benefited from being noticed when young.
I'm going to say you are a special flower. You're smarter than 98% of people. You are 1 in 50 special.
I think from your own words you would have benefited greatly from gifted education. Thinking about your story here, I think that maybe lowering the IQ bar to something like 125 is exactly what gifted education needs.
Look at what you said:
"I could cope with everything and everyone if I tried even a little."
You were coping, and getting by. You are calling it laziness but maybe it was boredom?
Maybe after being bored and unchallenged you became "lazy" at school. I would bet that you were very interested in your own activities that you were interested in.
If we opened up gifted education to 120+ there would be enough students to have a decent sized class in suburban schools.
It's also a pattern on HN because it really is a rather new concept. In Sweden, the law that dictates that every child should have a education that match their ability came into reality 2010 (2010:800, 3§). Before that, the goal was to target the lowest common denominator that would create a passing grade for everyone. This meant that school material targeting IQ around 75 was also put in the hands of children with around IQ 125, and unsurprisingly, this caused problems with under-stimulation and children that go through school without any training in studying.
I'm not sure how accurate this is. All the exceptionally talented kids/young people I knew growing up were nice and well-liked, well-adjusted people. All the weird kids I knew were just weird, not really especially talented.
I'd like to see the numbers behind those anecdotes. There was recently an article here that discussed why extremely academically gifted children rarely become grown-up geniuses and people who move their fields forward. They stated that it's not because they are troubled, most of them are socially well-adjusted, but I can't find that article now for the lie of me.
The Swedish system basically begins with the proposition that all students should put out X effort. Gifted children get more advanced work, or more quantity of work till they are putting out X effort.
This isn't designed to make them better adjusted, or less 'weird'. It's just there to equip gifted students with more skills relative to the mean.
At the time I had 8 classes. 6 of them were required: math, english, history, etc., and 2 were free electives: sports, music, technical (computers and woodshop). As a 11yo these were the few freedoms we were allowed in school and the work didn't feel like work. I enjoyed making music. I enjoyed making stupid, wooden gifts for my family and friends. So the counsellor says we're dropping your 2 electives so you can have take our gifted classes. And that is when I hoped right out of it.
Now that is the gifted (also called ESL) program in none exceptional schools. It's usually just an extra class. There are schools of excellence, governor's school, magnet school, etc. Which focus on different curriculum. These will have an emphasis around math, language, arts, sports. You apply by filing an application or submitting a portfolio. Some, you have to be nominated by your teachers.
That was back in the 1980s and 1990s; not sure how things have changed.
I have to say... I thought our school system did a good job with gifted students. We had some classes with other gifted kids and a lot of classes with the school's general population. We weren't treated as elite freaks or anything, were never told we were "better", and all in all I think they did it right.
When I was growing up anyone who was nominated by their teachers would simply skip grades or get shifted into an honours program if it was available for their level.
Just as I was graduating high school however, all the gifted programs were phased out as being unnecessary (or unfair depending on whom you talked to). There was much hay made about the tight school budget needing to go to support students who were being left behind by the new national testing standards.
Now, though, ten years later, they have magnet schools for the talented which are by nomination only.
Having been one of those 'gifted children' and gone to gifted schools where I wasn't challenged, I think this is a good idea.
I basically never had to put any effort in until my last year of high school and completely breezed through my education. Once I hit university and couldn't get away with that anymore, I was totally unequipped to handle continuing my education or holding a job that matched my capabilities. I hit a wall of failure pretty hard.
It probably took me another 7 years after that to get my life together where I had the habits to try and achieve things through consistent effort.
And yeah, all of the depression, anxiety and substances abuse that you would expect happened too.
I'm not a very good employee. I have on several occasions had one of my bosses tell me not to do more than the minimum effort. Don't improvise. The company doesn't get paid more for excellence. Just do as you're told. He who pays the piper calls the tune, and that guy wants "Rock and Roll Part 2" by Gary Glitter (aka the Hey Song) for the 50th time in a row rather than whatever crap it is that you would prefer to play.
I feel like I could accomplish very difficult tasks, but I also feel that the effort would not only go unrewarded, but that other people would actively resent me for doing them.
If society loved genius, it would pay more for it. I'm not even a genius. I'm either slightly smarter than the median, or just egotistical enough to think that I am. But now I'm just a mediocre, run-of-the-mill software professional on paper, because that's what companies around here are willing to pay for, and so I eased off my throttle far enough to pretend to be that for them. Being on HN helps a lot when I'm just filling a seat.
Naturally, this hasn't exactly produced a healthy relationship between me and the rest of society.
I think that maybe schools don't want to produce geniuses, because they are very disruptive, and hard to please, and it's harder to keep them in line with a load of BS. There may actually be a tiny kernel of truth in the conspiracy theory that public schooling intentionally dumbs down the smartest students or endlessly occupies them with useless busy work, even as it trains up the others to be more useful as workers.
I can't necessarily do things the best way every time, but we have enough difficult problems to solve and its always appreciated when we make the marketing team's job easier. I love that my work either directly translates into more cash coming in or saves us a bunch of cash.
I'm a mediocre developer and okay with that I guess. I know that my potential is way higher, but I also feel like there's some greater calling out there in my life that is not my job/career.
It takes the edge off that feeling you're experiencing -- I definitely felt the exact same way in previous jobs.
Love the Ren & Stimpy reference in your name btw.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/31/opinion/sunday/how-to-rais...
edit: or it could be, not sure any more...
I didn't see the article in question, but I'd put money on this being an excerpt from Adam Grant's "Originals" as it was released in the past couple of weeks and this is a point made in the opening chapter.
However, unlike the kids in the article, he doesn't enjoy Shakespeare or fawn over Incan currency. Talking to him is amazing. His thought processes are very mature, even compared to many adults. His language (when not telling fart jokes) is eloquent. He has no choice with his peers: dumb it down or be a freak.
Several of my friends fit into this profile too. None of them fit the mould painted in this article. Although, that doesn't surprise me. I found this article disappointing on several levels (eg. generalisation about gender is 'she').
There were a few points in the article that resonated with me: behavioural problems in my son (which we later categorised as Aspergers compounded with boredom) and misdiagnosis by teachers. My son was put in a special class for struggling students until I produced a WISC report showing he was gifted or near gifted. When he wrote a beautiful children's book at 5, they thought it was a forgery and ignored it until I had the WISC report to confirm his ability. The report changed a lot with his teachers.
The article talks about segregation as a positive. I'm not convinced this is a positive as these children are likely going to need to integrate in broader society. I purposely put my kids at a standard but high performing school rather than choosing a special school for this reason. The results have been mixed. There is bullying by peer girls and boys and at least one 'friend' said "my mother can't see me play with you or I'll get in big trouble" (also known as Aspergers are lepers to some parents - if this is true, she is an awful person).
If I have one suggestion for parents of a gifted child, it would be to accept that your child will have areas where they are smarter than you and to nurture their talent through their interests. I've recently observed at length two mothers with near gifted or gifted sons whom they mercilessly bully (I have no idea why a parent would do this to their child). Both mothers have a daughter too - and the daughter (in both instances) can't be praised enough. Two of my closest and gifted friends (50+) recalled similar bullying from their mothers (and were unsupported by weak fathers). Thankfully, my wife is not like that with our son.
So, yes, I see odd behaviour from gifted children as normal due to an incompatibility at an intellectual level. Gifted is noticeably different from clever. When you talk to a 5 year old that shows complex reasoning like an adult most of the time, they are most probably gifted. Someone that knows some surprising facts is probably clever rather than gifted.
Because most people of above-average intelligence go through life on the normal path, they just do it faster or better.
Life is certainly going to be more difficult, more dangerous, and probably less fulfilling for someone with an IQ of 85 than it will be for someone with an IQ of 110 or 135.
I agree about dangerous and difficult[1]. But why "less fulfilling"? That's a risky comment to make because we've seen, as one extreme example, doctors place people with learning disability[2] on Do Not Resuscitate orders without the knowledge or permission of the patient or their relatives.
[1] Living in Fear, a report about bullying, from the charity MENCAP who campaign for people with LD. https://www.mencap.org.uk/sites/default/files/documents/2009...
[2] UK usage of LD.
More intelligent people may be less likely to learn how to work hard as a child. They learn that life is easy, and you can succeed without trying. When they get to something hard enough to require trying, they think they aren't smart enough to do it.
When I was in basic school, before the separation happens, I had a friend that was said to be asozial. Asozial is a common description in Germany for low class people without basic education. His father was alcoholic, they lived in a really run down house and his parents weren't able to help him with the topics covered in basic school. At no point did I have the feeling that he was somehow dumber or less intelligent. What he was struggling with was the situation he was in. Meanwhile I was struggling with add and was only able to get through the first years of school with the help of my mother that made me sit down at the table until all homework was finished. When my parents saw that we struggled only the slightest bit they helped us with school. I didn't get private tutoring, but that seems to be extremely common now. Another thing that's only available to kids of affluent families.
The vibe I'm getting from Sweden (I lived there for a while, learned the language and still follow the news), is that it's moving to a more and more class-segregated country. Sure, everybody can look for the best school for their children, but only parents from higher socioeconomic classes will do that.
"Most people intuitively understand that a person with $25k less income per year than the average population is going to have unique problems and go through life in a slightly different path and order than the average. However, for some reason, this is not easily understood regarding people with $25k over the average."
Trust me, having an IQ 50% higher than the average of the rest of the population isn't fun. And though IQ is generally all that is needed to be considered 'gifted,'it isn't everything. There have been many studies on this.
I am not self proclaimed, I have the tests to prove it and I get sick of people telling me how smart I am and how they wish they could be like me. I've gotten that line from surgeons and psychologists, people who's job I couldn't do even if I tried. I try to frame it in their mindset to show them that they can do it too. I truly think if they would get out of that mindset, they could be much 'smarter' also. Biology plays a role but it's not everything.
I don't identify with the people in the article. I wasn't particularly weird, eccentric, bullied, or any of the typical things that you hear about. I had friends, girlfriends, etc... About the only typical nerd thing was I was usually the teacher's pet. But I think that's just because I was always wanting to help.
I was diagnosed with ADHD at 14, refused to take the medications and have been dealing with it ever since. Tags, sock seams, etc... didn't bother me. I had the typical ADHD symptoms, but that's about it.
Note that this should be an underestimation - HN filters for the tech crowd, and by proxy, for IQ. Anyhow, my point is that you get less of the woodwork effect than my priors for how many relevant people would want to comment about it. My theory is that they've been traumatized into not talking about their experience as a gifted child, along with a side of imposter syndrome. And you're making that problem worse for that demographic. Congratulations.
It's clear that the US educational system simply doesn't know how to handle high intelligence.
And why wouldn't they gravitate towards HN?
> self-proclaimed gifted HNers
Did you see how much tests for giftedness cost in the article? Do you really expect all these people to go out and get tested before feeling like they have permission to comment on an Internet forum about their experience?
I recall in Kurt Vonnegut's _Sirens of Titan_ how people on Earth were handicapped, to counter their strengths. The most intelligent people had to wear earphones that constantly emitted annoying sounds so that it was harder for them to think clearly. That's very much like the way GLaDOS was handicapped in the Portal 2 backstory by attaching Wheatley to her--a personality core that was designed by the best scientists to be the worst possible idiot, to constantly feed her bad ideas.
The US educational system piles gratuitous additional work on the smartest students. Rather than just graduating, how about graduating while taking a bunch of AP or IB classes? The system accommodates them by digging additional official channels, rather than allowing them to become self-directed autodidacts or entrepreneurs.
I know that when I was a kid, I would have totally wasted any additional free time I may have had outside of classes, but it's very possible that some of my classmates in all the various "X" sections might have taken part-time jobs, or started low-capital businesses, or educated themselves on topics the school could never teach.
And if they had actually brought any evidence other than their own self claim, imagine how they would've been treated. No way to win except to shut up and pretend to be normal... one of the most depressing lessons I have learned is that all the social ills of grade school do not disappear when you graduate; they merge into the fabric of daily life.
For what it's worth I've learned the opposite. Outside of a mass-incarceration type environment, people are mostly pretty OK. It took me way too long to work that out after I left school.
In short, it is us vs them mentality all the same, and while it is really nice when you are part of the us, it is horrendous when you realize you are actually part of the them.
But yeah... hurr, durr, braggarts, etc.
Edit: She did though, damn things were itchy. Doesn't seem to be a problem since I grew up though. Funny that.
I still wince at the few times I'd ripped a hole in a new shirt...
Still unbearable but a lot more cautious after I ripped a cheap shirt in half a few months ago hahaha.
EDIT: To note, I wasn't considered gifted. Undiagnosed ADHD. Teachers complained I couldn't finish writing the date and was lazy...
I think tags on kids clothes are just comparatively gigantic. I always thought most kids just dealt with it to avoid getting in trouble.
1. YC unicorns.
2. Obscure programming language news.
3. Medium/Natilius posts on self-improvement.
4. NYTimes/WSJ/WashPost articles on obvious trends in business or STEM.
5. SV "celebrity" projects.
That is not normal is our inability to fix it and apparent lack of trying.
1) Programming attract this sort of people in first place, where you see programmers, you will see lots of people like the ones described in the article.
2) It is very problematic, unfixed, and people need help.
At least I do... but at the same time I refrain from asking for help, because usually the result is negative. "Oh, here we go again with the super intelligent guy complaining about how intelligent he is."
Not only for "gifted", but many mental issues are looked down, and are not considered by society a disease like a physical one, a person that is sneezing everywhere, get people to pity that person and help, but a person that is unable to work in society even with heavy meds, need to "grow and mature".
Even if the whole group is wrong, they all agree with one another and fit in together. Those of us who understand have to choose to either be wrong to fit in or be right and be cast out. Either choice is painful.
Be open about your problems and don't be ashamed. Most people feel the way you do. I never lie to people about my mental issues - not even at work. Guess what? 95% of the people I worked with (all other programmers) were on some kind of meds, too - for depression, social anxiety, ADHD etc.. Feels so much better just being open about it and crack a joke here and there. "Let's just all put down work, go to the beach and cry!" "I'm in. I'll bring beer." "Oh, I wish I could!" [I remember that conversation happening on Slack once]
I don't know! Sitting home alone, pitying yourself and being upset about society never really changes anything. ;)
But when I was a kid, the school begged my parents many times to take me to some kind of doctor, and this only offended my parents, that always refused, the exception is that they once too me to see if I was deaf or not.
After I reached adulthood, and flunked hard at life in general, that I went to seek medical help.
The results were:
1) the first few medics I went, believed I was a junkie wanting fake prescription, I have no idea why (I never used any illegal substance, never had used controlled meds before, and never got drunk, and never smoked).
2) My parents had a few nasty fights with me, claiming that I was normal and only doing what I was doing to hurt them or something.
3) As I went learning about my conditions, and started to be open about it, people instead started to interpret that I wanted pity and attention, or that I was humblebragging, and had invariably negative reactions.
4) Eventually I found a good medic, that prescribed me Ritalin, it is helping a little, but very little.
Among my issues is that I never learned how to work "hard", I only work in bursts, and only when I am interested or close to a deadline, school was extremely easy to me, I don't even know my teacher faces of the last school years because I just slept in the classes (and still aced the tests), I never learned to sit down quiet and study, this is now biting me in the ass (I don't had Calculus classes on university, and now that I need it I am trying to learn by myself, but I keep getting distracted...)
I never learned hwo to pretend that I am working, like people do in their workplaces, even when I was the highest performing person in the workplace I still got fired because I was not "serious" or I wasn't "wearing the company shirt", because while all my co-workers just sat staring at their code 8 hours, I coded all that I had to code in 1 hour and then spent the rest goofing around on youtube and reddit.
When I DO want to code 8 hours, I still end goofing around too easily (example: Xcode crashes... while I wait for it to launch I decide to read e-mail, one e-mail has a link to wikipedia... and here we go wasting 4 hours reading wikipedia).
Plus lots of other issues irrelevant to work performance (like needing stuff cut-off from t-shirts, moving all the time to the point of losing a girlfriend over it, puking when eating certain foods, inability to communicate with "normal" people, because no matter what phrase I construct, it keeps getting way over their heads, and the list goooooes on).
The best I found I can do is rant on internet sometimes.
And keep taking Ritalin properly, and going to the psychologist... still very slow progress, I am 28, live with my parents, have no girlfriend, I am unemployed, and don't own any property (but have debts, my total net worth is negative).
I could go on about my work experience - which was also similar to yours despite I let myself go - but when I start raging it's hard to stop and afterwards I often feel worse than before. ;)
I learnt that I get mostly motivated by projects I come up myself, so I try stick to my own stuff for a while to level up my skills. (I _need_ an outlet for all my creativity...) And try to connect with people who are also building interesting things (and aren't assholes) and from whom you can learn new things. DIY scene is pretty nice place to be in really.
I try not to focus so much on work and career for now, because to be honest - working at that last office left me a bit with a trauma and I came to realize that I only have one life and I don't want to have to waste it with doing something I hate or that makes me feel like s*. So no more offices for me at the moment.
About the meds and therapy - it is a slow process, yes. And I actually had to try seven or so different kinds of meds until I found the right one that helped. It still makes me feel a bit weird and dull (sometimes annoying), but so much better than before...
I'm also 28, unemployed, in debt. But meh, still could be worse.
The reality is that the system is ill serving many gifted individuals, so much so that it's not just causing gifted kids to not reach their potential but it's causing many of them to have diminished outcomes compared to "normal" kids, with some examples of terrible tragedy (suicide, homelessness, drug addiction, etc.)
The damage is fixed, and Homer becomes much more intelligent than most of the other inhabitants of Springfield and it makes his life miserable, leading him to lament "is there no place for the man with the 105 IQ?" and purposefully restore the damage to return his IQ to normal Springfield levels.
- Simpsons