What does it feel like to be stupid? An anonymous Quora user explains. | Hacker News Reader

What does it feel like to be stupid? An anonymous Quora user explains.

garrysub.posterous.com

521 pointszhyder149 comments

Meta:

This, to me, is a fundamental problem with the Posterous culture. Here we have a post on a Posterous blog made by a Posterous co-founder which copies, in its entirety and with no significant commentary, a work published elsewhere.

It’s attributed with a link to the source — barely, in lowercased, tiny font, at the bottom. The headline is a link to the Posterous page, not the source (unlike Daring Fireball “linked list” items, for example). How many people will actually follow the link? Why is this Posterous blog entry #1 on HN when a permalink to the original source on Quora is readily available?

Let’s be clear. This is not “fair use.” It’s not plagiarism, as Garry doesn’t claim he wrote the anecdote; but it’s a violation of copyright. It’s publishing without permission of the copyright holder.†

My first submission to Hacker News was an original item I posted to my own website. It got quite a few reads — but a lot of people were re-tweeting a link to a full copy of it hosted on someone else’s Posterous. That user didn’t add much (A sentence expressing “me, too”). I was conflicted: Glad people found my writing interesting enough to duplicate and share, but disappointed that they were reading it on someone else’s site for no good reason.

I see now that if the company’s own bloggers consider copyright a joke, if they believe posting other people’s articles verbatim is kosher, well, can we be surprised their users do, too?

(Postscript: This differs from Tumblr’s “re-blogging” in one important way: You only re-blog other Tumblr posts. “Re-blogging” is part of the Tumblr system. You expect it there if you post there. You don’t “lose” anything by it. I have no problem there.)

† I don’t know if Quora’s terms of service mean that consent is implied, but honestly, in this case and this case only (the case of a Posterous employee), it doesn’t matter, because it’s about setting precedent for the community.

You know what, you're absolutely right. So, let's provide the link to the original article:

http://www.quora.com/What-does-it-feel-like-to-be-stupid/ans...

It actually is simply a violation of copyright. Anything over 15 lines cited iirc.

edit: fixed the link tx Alan!

Following the terms of a license granted by the owner of the content is "simply a violation of copyright" now?

Regardless of its legal status, this post is really tacky. It leaves me with a gross feeling, sort of like when the awkward kid in the conversation follows every joke someone makes with the same joke a minute later--when he finally gets it.

The point of (nearly) any blog post should be to "continue the current conversation", whatever that means for your genre. It's very obvious to me that this post does not do that, or really anything else.

This should've linked to the source text, which would've included comments.

Interesting choice of metaphor given the original topic...

It actually is simply a violation of copyright. Anything over 15 lines cited iirc.

Determining fair use is much more complicated than that. There is no such quantitative standard.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use

Sadly, the nature of the internet is that unduplicated content will die out within a few years. It should be OK to wholly copy an article, while at the same time pointing back to the original piece and original author.

Granted, the duplicator in this case should have made the original author more visible.

I didn't even see the link to quora at the bottom...

Fixed

Well said, and furthermore, linking to the Posterous post is explicitly discouraged in HN's guidelines: Please submit the original source. If a blog post reports on something they found on another site, submit the latter.

http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I'm curious if we will see the URL of the submission updated by a moderator.

I flagged it for that reason.

I wonder if news.ycombinator.com could be changed so it fetches the page of any submitted article and looks for the original-source meta tag described here recently:

http://googlenewsblog.blogspot.com/2010/11/credit-where-cred...

It could then suggest to the submitter that they submit the original source instead. Alternatively, it could keep the link to the submitted article but also add an (Original Source) link next to it.

One issue is that you can't, as far as I can tell, link directly to a Quora answer, only to the entire question, containing all the answers, and the answer in question may not remain at the top.

One can, in fact, link directly to an answer. See jacquesm’s comment. It is not obvious, but like a lot of sites, the timestamp is the permalink.

I registered to reply because this is exactly how I felt. When the page loaded I thought to myself "How come I'm not on Quora looking at this question?". Then I went to Quora and saw that it was dumb and closed it.

Quora's Licenses to You

Subject to these Terms, Quora gives you a worldwide, royalty-free, non-assignable and non-exclusive license to re-post any of the Content on Quora anywhere on the rest of the web provided that the Content was added to the Service after April 22, 2010, and provided that the user who created the content has not explicitly marked the content as not for reproduction, and provided that you: (a) do not modify the Content; (b) attribute Quora with a human and machine-followable link (an A tag) linking back to the page displaying the original source of the content on quora.com (c) upon request, either by Quora or a user, remove the user's name from Content which the user has subsequently made anonymous; (d) upon request, either by Quora or by a user who contributed to the Content, make a reasonable effort to update a particular piece of Content to the latest version on quora.com; and (e) upon request, either by Quora or by a user who contributed to the Content, make a reasonable attempt to delete Content that has been deleted on quora.com.

http://www.quora.com/about/tos

It might be within Quora's contract, but, damn it jim, it's just not ethical!

I think saying, "it's just not ethical!", is a judgement. I find nothing unethical about using content under the terms defined by the content owner.

Wait a minute. What is a content owner?

Copyright owner is the original poster at Quora. If (s)he chooses to delete the post, thus revoking Quora's licence to republish, will it become Quora's responsibility to remove Posterous post and all other copies?

There is no reason that deleting the post necessarily revokes the license granted under "Your License to Quora".

How is any of this isolated to "Posterous culture"?

Someone using any blogging platform (or any hosted website) could do this.

It's not necessarily isolated, I think the argument is that it's more prevalent there.

I have to say I hate Posterous links for a different reason: they're blocked by the Chinese firewall. This greatly decreases my desire to load them, as I have to switch to my proxied browser and have it load slowly via an international connection.

Sure, posts to HN (or, say, most such places) should probably point to the original source unless some value is added in the other site. I can see that some value is added to subscribers of that Posterous feed, however, since it means fewer links to follow and guarantees readable text. So, I am unconvinced that this is a problem with the Posterous community. The reposter is minimizing the effort to consume content for his followers. That the souece link is small is inconsequential--the entire quotation is explicitly formatted and hence immediately understood as such. All one has to do to see the original formatting, discussion, etc. is follow a link; maybe the Posterous user estimates that less than the weighted majority of his audience wants to visit the full site at the point of Posterous consumption. To criticize the use of what is really a feed aggregator for doing just that is a bit like criticizing evolution. Maybe the reposter decided that the content was important enough to reproduce in full to increase the odds of its consumption by his subscribers. Hell, I'll read Jessica Livingston's textual content in Posterous but rarely follow most links from gmail if just catching up on a mobile device. In fact, an arument might be made that a higher quality of content/traffic is achieved in the long run for Quora due to the ability of posts like this to dissemminate its content.

That said, I barely use Posterous, so a member of the "community" would be in a better position to comment (and maybe this has already occurred theough the upvoting of the parent), but I felt like the parent had some pretty harsh words which needed to be addressed due to their generality.

Are there some studies on short format content reproduction producing a net detriment (and no wisecracks about ehow)?

Ethical considerations aside, can anybody here explain why a person would do this?

Why would you take a piece of content off the web and re-publish it in its entirety on your own blog?

I see this happening to my articles, and I initially assumed it was just black hat SEO. But frequently it appears it's an actual human being who seems to think he's adding value to the world by reposting something he found somewhere else.

Can anybody explain the motivation behind this?

I would agree that there is no benefit to a person who comes from HN to read just that specific article. However, if I was a regular visitor to the guys blog and came across the article that way:

- Him posting the full text rather than a hyperlink saves me an extra click. - Maybe it also makes it easier to talk about the article with the rest of that blogs community. - It provides another copy in case the original goes down. - If he also has other posts it provides a consistent visual aesthetic across the body of information.

It's somewhat like creating a miniature library and discussion group.

I don't find any of these arguments convincing, but they're possibilities.

they may also be effects of less than perfect implementations of URLs: here on HN every comment has a URL, which is really excellent. There's also a great signal-to-noise ratio on each page - I'm not talking about the quality of the content (which is also excellent) but the fact that there's very little distracting supplemental content on each page, thus reinforcing the idea that the URL is pointing to your comment, rather than some undefined ephemeral 'page' on HN.

The web at large however, does not fully embrace this level of detail and focus in URLs. So users do not feel comfortable using URLs to link readers to discrete packets of information, they feel safer just copying the data.

This is just a theory.

I recommend you read "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote" by J. L. Borges. I think it describes the motivation for this perfectly.

Quora allows you to explicitly tag your posts as "Not for Reproduction". Everything not tagged this is assumed to be for reproduction.

This is an anonymous article on Quora -- if I could provide more attribution, I would. In fact, I have now added a ton more attribution and links back to the main quora page. I love Quora.

That blog is just my interesting snippets blog. It just so happened that this snippet was so interesting that the entirety made sense. I usually try to break it down into the smallest most interesting bit.

Imagine my surprise as to the reaction to this article. The blog is mainly for myself and my friends / twitter followers. There was no malice here, and I've altered the post to more prominently link to the source content.

The nature of the Internet is such: My blog drives some amount of attention. I don't monetize it and have no intention to. If Quora can make more money by the traffic I direct to it, all the better.

I did not post this to Hacker News. I had no intention of it receiving the attention that it did. All in all, I'm happy that some people got value out of the story. Whoever linked to my post should have linked to the original quora post. That's that.

Hey Garry. Definitely I would agree that you didn’t do anything inherently wrong here, given the Quora ToS; mostly I am arguing reposting entire articles/items to be a bad idea because it would encourage your users to do so when it’s not legal. I hope my comment doesn’t feel like an attack and want to thank you for finding & sharing this interesting anecdote.

I am basing my criticism of “Posterous culture” solely on your post and the one I mentioned that copied my entire blog post. Do you think I’m on to something, or do you think Posterous users probably infringe just as much as users of any other blog service?

If anything, our focus on email and creation tools spurs far more original content than other traditional blogging methods.

We do honor DMCA takedown requests -- they're fairly easy to do and we are very mindful of taking down infringing content.

The ethical standard that you are proposing — do not make public copies of things that other people have posted on the internet, even if they were published anonymously, even if you have explicit permission to do so, as in this case — is a serious danger to our intellectual culture. It would have prevented the creation of Google Cache and the Internet Archive.

In the age of the printing press, once a book or newspaper was printed and published, it was very rarely lost, despite the best efforts of book-burners — simply because there were many stable copies of it in existence, one for every two or three readers. I believe that this newfound resilience of knowledge has benefited humanity substantially. (Perhaps you disagree.)

In the age of the WWW, this is no longer the case. A web page can easily have hundreds of thousands, even millions of readers — more than all but the most popular of books — and still be lost to posterity through simple carelessness or lackadaisical attitudes about archival, because a single stable copy can be accessed by all of these readers concurrently. I have web pages from ten years ago (e.g. http://canonical.org/~kragen/x-pretty.html) and the links have nearly all rotted.

Consequently: if you find something on the web that has enduring value, by all means, make copies of it, and publish them so that other people can do the same. If nobody does, it will almost certainly be lost in a few short years.

Promulgating pseudo-moral injunctions against such copying could consign valuable information to the memory hole much more effectively than any Nazi book-burning parties ever could.

I agree. People who only plagiarize and never innovate or attempt to increase value or utility, who can only copy...let them suffer with that on their conscience. That condition is punishment enough.

But if you find something valuable on the web, copy it and spread it around. I could go on for hours with a sob story about tens thousands of combined hours of thesis, anti-thesis, and synthesis that represented real philosophical progress evaporating in the into the ether because there was no redundancy and we took its existence for granted.

I've had a similar experience. I got out of computer programming because I became ill with West Nile Virus and couldn't think well enough to continue. Even after I recovered from most of the physical aspects of the disease (approximately equal to having mono for a year) I was still unable to continue working on the relatively complex recommendations algorithms that I had been doing before. The math just made no sense to me.

I consider myself generally intelligent and capable, and while ill I was definitely neither. I once failed twice in a row at following the directions to make instant mashed potatoes. It wasn't really a joke that a good day was keeping the toilet seat clean and remembering to flush. It's been about 5 years, and my health is mostly back to normal other than no longer being in decent physical shape. I'm currently doing non-computer work (http://screamsorbet.com) but I'm eager to someday get back to the programming problems I abandoned.

Unlike the author of the article, I didn't find it made me happier. Perhaps it's a general personality issue, but it made me even more depressed. Books and movies were mostly beyond me, and there wasn't much I found to take any joy in. I presumed I would eventually recover (and think I have almost completely) but the overall feeling was one of intense mortality --- a dread of the eventual senility that will probably come with aging, and a realization that when it happens again it will likely be once and forever.

"It wasn't really a joke that a good day was keeping the toilet seat clean and remembering to flush."

It sounds as though your west nile had a stronger effect than the author's problems. Perhaps a person becomes happy insofar as their level of intelligence is closer to the population average. This makes sense if people are happy to the extent that they can relate to others.

Probably, although that was at its worst. The recovery was a continuum spread over a couple years, so there were pretty long periods of mild impairment as well.

I think you're probably right about happiness, but I didn't find that my impairment helped me relate to others. Even when well, I feel like I relate to most people in an 'emulation mode': a feedback loop of consciously gauging reactions and continually asking myself how my audience expects me to react. Being impaired just made this less effective and more stressful.

The general feeling was similar to being sleep deprived and unable to focus. Small concepts felt very complicated and hard to grasp, but at the same time I constantly realized that I wasn't operating very well. I suppose if the effect was more like alcohol, where the impairment is more obvious to the audience than to the drinker, that there might be more of a pro-social effect. I'm not much of a fan of alcohol, though, so again this might be just a personality issue.

Wow, that is quite a story. I've seen and heard the brain be likened to a muscle, and that you need to literally train it to get it up to strength. If you can, get in to some 'lightweight' programming again until you feel comfortable doing that and then work your way in to harder problems.

I've stopped coding for about 3 years at one point (not the best period in my life to put it mildly) and once I tried to get back in to it I found that the stuff that I'd been doing just before quitting was totally beyond me, I literally had to walk myself through the code line-by-line (even though I wrote it only a few years beforehand) in order to make sense of it.

Now, after slowly working my way up again it's much better than before, I've done some more intricate stuff recently and working on the more complex stuff (for me, no doubt it is still childs play compared to what others achieve) is still tough but no longer impossible.

It scares me how much my skills dropped in that relatively short period through no other action than just doing nothing and the 'use it or lose it' mantra is one that I repeat to myself frequently now in order warn myself to never ever let that happen again to any part of me.

It also was a good lesson about taking things for granted.

If it's any consolation, my wife and I love scream sorbet :)

Hmmm not wanting to be a grammer nazi, but there's a type in "makret" instead of market on the homepage of screamsorbet.com

Unless it's intentional :)

Do you mean "typo"? :)

Oh wow. Of course :)

Embarrassing. Will fix shortly. Thanks!

> the overall feeling was one of intense mortality --- a dread of the eventual senility that will probably come with aging, and a realization that when it happens again it will likely be once and forever.

Reading about these kinds of things is exactly why I donate to organisations that are working on curing the diseases of aging (mostly http://www.sens.org). Nothing scares me more than slow decline and decrepitude.

I'm young right now, but I'm both intrigued and scared about growing old and losing my grasp of my mind.

Awhile ago I've decided upon a signal for myself that, should I see it, means "you're crazy and you can't trust yourself". Hopefully I'll recognize it when I see it later, and also have the forethought to deploy it in time. I doubt it'll actually change anything (i.e., if I have Alzheimer's, I'm unlikely to remember the signal anyway and act accordingly) but I like to think of it as a neat little experiment on myself.

My wife's grandpa had West Nile in the summer of '09. He lost about a week's worth of memory while he was sick with the worst of it. He's just not the same person as we was before. He can't remember things very well. He'll do something and then do it again an hour later. You can hardly talk to him anymore because he just gives you this blank stare most of the time.

He's in his 80's so I don't think he's going to recover much from this. You're probably recovering better because of your age.

I need regular confirmation that some people really are slower. My whole life, I've refused to really believe in intelligence. Although I loved the attention of being the 'smart kid', I've always insisted that I just liked reading and puzzles and things, and if anyone else spent as much time reading and writing as I did, they'd be pretty smart too. Of course, some people really don't like reading the kind of nonsense that I do and all the other stuff that comes with it, and it might be more than just preference.

I might really enjoy slam-dunking basketballs if I just did it more, but there is a really good chance that its never gonna happen, no matter how much I try.

This is a fact of life that I'm often unwilling to admit. I'm sure that contributes to the impatience a lot of people feel, we have very little empathy for people who don't comprehend and analyze the same way that we do. Where would that empathy come from? Analogous experience with slam dunks, maybe.

> I need regular confirmation that some people really are slower.

Ask me daily. I'll confirm once a week.

SlownessReminder?

Someone calling you weekly and saying idiotic things?

I wonder if anybody would pay for that, and, at the same time, whether that would be a sign of narcissism.

You don't neee a phone service to hear idiotic things. Turn on any TV political pundit or any reality show.

Or read this comment! "neee"? That's what I get for typing on a mobile phone right when I wake up.

I think intelligence or skill comes from a combination of mental energy, focusing, internal values, and internal reward factors and motivations. The OP basically became slower because his brain had less energy to work with. Especially internal reward factors. If something is so internally rewarding, it can amplify all the other factors of intelligence 50 fold (energy, ease of focus, adjustment of values, etc). What other unusual attributes of intelligence did von neumann for example have? Some people describe him as being able to catch up to the current scientific state of the art to a PhD level in many fields in a year or two if he suddenly rose from the dead like a vampire today because he was that intelligent.

Yea, the whole "hierarchy of intelligence" thing that most people buy into is just rubbish. To say that one person is smarter or more intelligent than another really has no meaning at all, without further qualification or context.

I've also always been one of the "smart kids", but I think it's a load of horseshit.

Even though it offends my egalitarian idealism, the existence of a "g factor" is pretty well documented. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_factor_(psychometrics)

Sounds like a lot of gobbledy gook to me.

Just compare http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_factor_(psychometrics)#Challe... on the same page.

I've always insisted that I just liked reading and puzzles and things, and if anyone else spent as much time reading and writing as I did, they'd be pretty smart too.

Fifteen years ago, I would have told you they secretly understood that and thought you were a sucker for bothering. I always suspected that people used the concept of "intelligence" and their supposed lack of it to excuse themselves from responsibilities such as reading a god damned book once in a while.

How could either of us be disproved? Ability and sustained effort go together so consistently that the exceptions are too rare to mean anything. Whether success enables effort or effort enables success, there's no denying they're found together. I did many things "effortlessly" in school because I started learning them years before. I read (and studied and reread) an Isaac Asimov book on basic physics ("Understanding Physics") in junior high, so is it any wonder physics came "effortlessly" to me in high school? I started learning high school chemistry from a "Chemistry the Easy Way" study guide a year and a half before I took the class; is it any wonder I got As despite being a lazy student who never paid attention in class?

Of course, part of the draw of learning physics and chemistry was that I was acting out a role I enjoyed, that of the "smart kid." So I was "smart" because I did the work because I liked being "smart"... who can find the beginning of that? I remember that in first grade we decorated coat hangers with little construction paper cards for each book we read, and I wanted mine to have more cards than anybody else's. There's no telling how it started.

I might really enjoy slam-dunking basketballs if I just did it more, but there is a really good chance that its never gonna happen, no matter how much I try.

You should admit that you really don't care enough to find out how your body would respond to six months of an hour of daily training aimed at dunking a basketball, and you should consider whether your attitude towards dunking a basketball is any different from a "stupid" person's attitude toward acquiring "intelligence." A twinge of regret, yet security in yourself as you are, and fear that commitment to change would be futile, and worse, appear foolish.

'You should admit that you really don't care enough to find out how your body would respond to six months of an hour of daily training aimed at dunking a basketball, and you should consider whether your attitude towards dunking a basketball is any different from a "stupid" person's attitude toward acquiring "intelligence." A twinge of regret, yet security in yourself as you are, and fear that commitment to change would be futile, and worse, appear foolish.'

That would hint that many "stupid" people around us are not stupid, just insecure. Having the OP belief that "there is no Intel.", perhaps this is why I always try to convince people around me that they can understand math/science/programming etc. :-\

I do value athletics highly and I believe I could overcome my vertical ineptitude, but the reality is that my stature gave me an advantage in wrestling and a major disadvantage in basketball, so I went with what worked and put my effort into being a wrestler.

This is why natural ability is such a hard thing for me to accept - I really believe that I can be good at anything, and I believe that is true of other people as well, but if they don't believe it, how will it happen?

It's kind of a chicken and egg problem, or maybe a qualia problem. I have an empowering imagination and I surround myself with like people. I can't imagine someone else lacking that - but maybe some people do? I don't know, its a little frustrating.

> This is why natural ability is such a hard thing for me to accept - I really believe that I can be good at anything, and I believe that is true of other people as well, but if they don't believe it, how will it happen?

To me, what you can do in life all comes down to a Henry Ford quote:

"Whether you believe you can, or you believe you can't, you're right."

I think the real sting of such a belief is the fact you don't have the security that comes with the belief "I have that inherent ability, no matter what happens"

I think my version of your refusal to believe in intelligence is to refuse to treat intelligence as a scalar quantity - it really has a lot of dimensions. Saying "that person is smart" is pointless because it doesn't give you any idea of what they are actually smart at.

It's also strong belief that most people are pretty smart at something, and those of us who normally get labeled as being conventionally smart are just lucky enough to have easily identified aptitudes which are picked up in school/university.

Some of the stupidest things I've ever seen people do were actually done by people who were exceptional in a narrowly defined area.

While there are limits, they're sometimes further than you think. I am a 5'10" white guy, and I really wanted to dunk basketballs, so I "just did it more". I dunked on shorter hoops, read books, experimented with every method of practicing and training, soaked up sports medicine journal articles, and pored over everything related on the internet. Eventually, I could dunk quite easily, and even developed my own system for helping others do the same.

The title says stupid but the details are about slow and forgetful. Forgetful people can be quick witted and brilliant.

I can tell your from personal experience that being stupid does not feel good especially when you know it. You never "get it" when others talk, you never have anything to say, you are always saying and doing the wrong things, or not doing what should have been done.

I do agree there's a lot more to enjoy. One is not critical and cynical. I like a lot more people, food, music than my smarter siblings. I am very happy walking in parks, looking at trees, or petting animals. Life is simpler.

Agreed. I think it's pretty hard to not know what it's like to feel stupid at least some of the time. Even most geniuses are 'stupid' in at least one area. Most of us have felt the sting of seeing a colleague, friend, or stranger pick up a challenging topic with enviable ease.

The more interesting question is, what it's like to feel that way all the time. I suppose we all choose to associate mostly with those of approximately equal intelligence to ourselves, so we're probably mostly oblivious to our relative intelligence.

I've often considered myself a genius at being stupid. My stupidity aptitudes are staggering across all categories.

Fortunately this has lead to some spectacular failures and the burden of knowledge that comes with. I think I've successfully managed to leverage my multiple stupidities effectively.

Well, for one I know I'll never write any spectacular piece of software that will really make a difference. My only half-decent contributions were to port a library from one language to another.

As you rise in rank, you are associating with people who are all of higher intelligence. I made whatever i could on dint of twice the effort and reading a lot more. I am fortunate I was able to save enough money since i reached a stage where I knew i could not continue to be employed. I was too old to be a continue at middle management, and too stupid to move to higher management. I've retired and lead a slow life living on savings. I do programming for fun, but no-brainer stuff.

Sometimes I do think i am blessed with stupidity. Most intelligent people i know are miserable, spending their entire lives chasing wealth or becoming something to be happy.

> I am very happy walking in parks, looking at trees, or petting animals. Life is simpler.

I think these seemingly simple things are something a lot of smart and brilliant people could enjoy very much. Being smart and able to think will let you enjoy a walk in the park on a whole different level... You could find out what trees those are or think about all the people who been here, who made this park and why and how... I think a walk in the park is a great opportunity to try and focus on HERE and NOW and concentrate on "mindfulness", seeing all things and how they connect.

Or, you know, you could just enjoy walking in parks and let your clever brain rest and indulge in nature, blue skies and fresh air.

Strictly speaking, thinking about "what trees those are" or "about all the people who [sic] been here" is yet another instance of verbal thinking and it's emphatically not "mindfulness". Clearly you're not here and now if you're thinking about people who have been here.

You are right - it was a bad example... I need to read up more on my mindfulness :)

> The title says stupid but the details are about slow and forgetful. Forgetful people can be quick witted and brilliant.

More explicitly, the author is describing the effects of poor oxygen supply to the brain. He seems to make the mistake of thinking of the brain as a machine who's level of functioning can be well described by a single parameter (poor/stupid/malfunctioning --> good/intelligent/functioning). But that's obviously a ridiculous simplification. There's absolutely no reason to believe the effects of poor oxygen supply are comparable to being naturally unintelligent.

In other words: having one of your legs amputated does not give you any insight into being short.

I understood 'slow' to be a nicer euphemism for 'stupid' almost anywhere in the text: referring to reduced mental facilities rather than merely a question of speed.

Direct: http://www.quora.com/What-does-it-feel-like-to-be-stupid

Wow, sounds like Flowers for Algernon in reverse. That would've been an interesting experience and I'm glad it was shared.

Wish I could upvote this comment twice. Flowers for Algernon is one of the most moving stories I have ever read.

You should read Flowers for Algernon[1]. It's a piece of fiction, but it's a great read and reference in discussions like these.

The sad thing about being "stupid" is being unable to put your predicament into compelling writing.

[1]: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dap...

I no longer had the arrogance of being frustrated with slow people [...] I got on with people much better. I developed much more respect for one of my friends in particular who I always considered slow - it turned out he is much deeper than I thought, I just never had the patience to notice before. You could say I had more time to look around.

Reads like the way to cure narcissism.

Yes, this happens to good looking people who lose their looks due to accident or age, the ones with nothing else find it devastating, the others (the lucky ones) find it a very sobering and saddening experience.

Physical beauty is a wasting asset, present when you are least able to appreciate how valuable it is.

I went through a period like this, and it was awful. Diabetes isn't a particularly rare illness, but I am the only one I know who has it, and I had no idea what symptoms to look for. Since it took a while for me to develop the good sense to check into an emergency room, I spent six months essentially insulin free, shedding muscle mass, water weight, gasping for breath, and exerting every ounce of energy I had to climb flights of stairs.

I was basically incapable of complex reasoning because I couldn't expend the required mental energy. I did not become laid back or socially competent; instead, I was irritable and frustrated at my shortcomings. People could take advantage of me more easily. I generally stopped being interested in esoteric things of any sort. I don't think I derived anything of value from the loss of my mental acuity.

One tangential benefit I did receive, however, from having DKA, was an increase in motivation and willpower. I had taken my health and cleverness for granted, and now it was slipping away, and I didn't know why. All I knew was that I wanted it back. I forced myself to slog through, to finish the CRM I was working on, and I started working out more. It didn't help me health-wise at the time, but now that my condition is being managed, I find I am much more aggressive and resourceful in the way I conduct my life.

I'd be curious to know if his political leaning shifted going into and out of his "stupid" period.

This is from the Woody Allen movie "Everyone Says I Love You":

"Just after dinner...

Scott suddenly collapsed. Everybody panicked.

- There's no cause for alarm. There was a blockage in the artery, but it's been dissolved.

- There's no problem?

- No, he's fine.

Our scan indicated that the condition began some time ago...

so if he's shown any kind of strange or weird behaviour...

It's because his brain wasn't getting enough oxygen.

But as soon as his brain started functioning properly...

Scott resigned from the Conservative Republican Club... and started espousing left-wing Democratic philosophy.

Dad was overjoyed. Just as proud as can be."

http://www.script-o-rama.com/movie_scripts/e/everyone-says-i... This is the script, actual subtitles might be different.

What does it feel like to be different.

The world isn't full of 'stupid' people and 'clever' people. The human race doesn't function on a linear spectrum; the full variety of personality types and abilities is far more diverse.

Perhaps some people value their intelligence above all else, when other areas of their lives are lacking?

I don't mind being down-voted - because I believe it's dangerous to flippantly label some people as intellectually inferior.

While it might sound idealistic - I believe everybody has something to offer. There are many types of 'intelligence' - and many personal qualities that are just as important as intelligence.

Reading this made me paranoid.

"Wait, I enjoy walking in the park. Is it possible that I'm not as smart as I think I am? omg, maybe the blood supply to my brain is blocked!"

Without wanting to detract from a fascinating read, s/stupid/high on C02/ is another interpretation.

Can anyone with a medical background chime in on whether or not this is even possible?

Blood and vitamin B are two things your brain needs to function (blood for nutrients, and vitamin B for both nutrients and neurotransmitter production - acetylcholine, dopamine, gaba, serotonin, histamine), so I suppose such an effect is possible, although a lot of it could also be credited to the fear of dying.

Diminished capacity is certainly possible. It has happened to me. I've had a few occasions where illness, drugs or both impaired me severely enough to scare me. (Scarier still was two occasions where I retained my faculties but had personality changes into someone unrecognizable as me, and I was aware of it but couldn't start being me any more than I can stop being me usually.)

My mother had a stroke and for weeks afterward was under the impression that I was a nurse who she disliked.

Our minds are very complex systems of chemical reactions. They work most of the time. There is weird, marvelous, scary stuff up there, and we barely understand any of it.

I become noticeably stupider when staying up late and drinking lots of caffeine. But, I also believe that is when I come up with my best ideas.

I'm a doctor. I'm not aware of any classic pathology that involves cerebral vasculature and vitamin B. There are some cerebral vasculitides that might initially be diagnosed as vitamin B deficiency, and vice versa.

Quora user Lazlo B Tamas would be a good person to ask, though coincidentally he has already gave his answer to the question itself and didn't address this answer.

What specific symptoms would you suppose would be associated to having both?

For years I've suffered from headaches and I feel the cause is almost always a lack of oxygen (I suppose) to my brain. I've realized I definitely suffer from shallow breathing and over the past few years I've learned to breathe deeper. It has definitely helped a lot, though I always wonder if there's something else.

Most of the traits of "stupidity" raised in that piece (reduced arrogance, less anal retentiveness, enjoying obvious movies, patience, going off of sci-fi, being slower and more laid back) are all things I've recently noticed I've gained gradually over the last 10 years.. Early senile dementia? ;-)

Or maybe (as has been happening with me) a growing realization that life is too short to give a fuck about many things.

Those aren't necessarily traits of slowness. It might indicate a heightened awareness of your senses and to the feelings of people around you.

When I was younger I identified so much with my racing brain, it crowded out everything else. I couldn't even enjoy a flower, or art, or respond to the happiness of a small child.

Alternatively, it's called growing up?

No. Increasing maturity, empathy, tolerance and wisdom.

Intelligence is the ability to rationalize your stupid opinions. Dumb people just have opinions without the elaborate rationalizations. I prefer dumb people.

I'm glad the author could take away the story of what it feels like to be slow vs quick. I'd probably be overly caught up on the "almost dying" aspect of the story to hover over much else, to be honest. It's great to see this level of introspection from people.

Seems to me like these "effects" could have a lot more to do with a change of lifestyle and self image, rather than becoming "stupid".

This post reminds me of taking some classes with a certain professor of mine. Most of us in the class would regard ourselves as pretty bright, but this prof was a half step ahead of us. He had a habit of blurting out the answers to questions just as a bunch of us had gotten close to formulating the answer or had just opened our mouths to say it. I never thought he was mean spirited about it. He was just faster than us and a little impatient.

Another thing i can tell you about how it feels. You'll have to get used to being a loner. It's not hard to make friends since people find you to be open and simple. But then when you have nothing to say, they vanish. It's strange how ultimately friendship can be more about what the other person says rather than what the person is.

However, one learns to accept this as how the world is, and there's no ill-feeling or depression associated with it.

>I had an arterial problem for a couple of years [..] this made me forgetful, slow, and easily overwhelmed

Zoom out a bit. Everyone middle aged and above in our society is expected to have some degree of arterial plaque. Nowadays it is considered normal. Obesity and diabetes are on the rise.

Doesn't this mean that many supposedly healthy people are already more slow and forgetful than need be?

It might, but at the same time, I doubt that the difference would be noticable if he only realized it once the doctors were puzzled at how he was alive.

> Doesn't this mean that many supposedly healthy people are already more slow and forgetful than need be?

Absolutely. I imagine that if you summed up the various nutritional and environmental factors that impact on IQ (iodine deficiency, lack of aerobic exercise, vegetables and fish, poor sleep hygiene, dual n-back training etc.) you would find that many supposedly healthy people could increase their IQ by a fair number of points (probably <10, though).

It often breaks my heart when some of my best friends and family reach the limits of their cognitive abilities and display all the intelligence of a Labrador. I love them all unconditionally nonetheless, even if they don't get half of my jokes or most of what I say in the course of the day.

I'm just happy they still love me unconditionally even though they don't get half of my jokes and of most of what I say during the day.

What this man did was find compassion for less intelligent people by becoming one. It is the habit of humans to condescend to less intelligent people, and to envy or undermine those who are smarter. Reaching across the boundaries of what is familiar to us and nurturing compassion there is difficult; this is a case where someone was forced to take a new perspective, and couldn't help but grow that compassion, because people who were previously so unfamiliar became uncannily like himself.

I'm not trying to trivialize his journey; he just as easily could have spiraled into a feedback loop of self-hate and self-pity. It's admirable that he accepted the change within himself, and I enjoyed reading about how awestruck he was as he observed the emotional change within.

I had a similar experience after recieving a concussion this summer. My memory was shot, I had to write everything down constantly. Basically it forced me to become more organized and really simplify my lifestyle. I was really close to getting burned out. It's been a rough trip, but I'm starting to get a good foundation built again. Learning to cut down my projects and not working like a dog has helped out immensely. I would not like to experience that handicap again, as I'm still often struggling with the effects.

There are many definitions of stupid, but I would not classify speed as one of them. As a dyslexic I'm very slow at reading, but I can use technology to augment that slowness.

I think he's meaning it more in the sense of "brightness" or quickness as in "mental agility". The idea is that some people are able to think and process things to a good conclusion more quickly than others on a consistent basis. It may not be so much that stupid people are slow, but rather intelligent people are fast.

Speed likely follows a normal curve, and "slow" just means the left side of the speed curve. Doesn't really make sense to say that there's no slow, there's only fast.

I've heard it referred to as rapid cognition. I'd be very interested to see a study of the benefits of having a more rapid cognition vs. a slower.

In most cases I believe I lean more towards an average speed of cognition, however I have no doubt my brain has multiple speeds (noticeably very rapid in various circumstances). I've been attempting to figure out how to unlock these more rapid moments "manually".

As hinted at by the OP, there appears to be some significant negatives of having an always-rapid cognition. I've noticed this in a few of my friends who seem to operate consistently at that level - they tend to struggle in certain areas of their life, yet have amazing abilities to pick up and process and analyze information. What causes this?

My thoughts:

1. It's lonely in a way (you feel left out). This causes psychological problems.

2. Arrogance is easier when you appear "smarter" than others and perhaps don't question yourself as much as someone who can admit there are smarter people in the world who naturally rethink things much more.

3. The speed could be a result of more efficient brain circuitry in general. Perhaps it's more efficient because it naturally skips "filters"/paths that "slower" thinkers naturally process everything through.

So should more rapid cognition be considered a gift in as many cases as it is? Should we rethink whether there's a direct correlation between unusual rapid cognition (or speed of thought) and what we consider general intelligence? What exactly is missing in our general understanding of intelligence to allow people to slip through who have psychological/emotional issues that prevent them from making proper use of their cognition?

What is the ideal state?

That's a really interesting way of thinking about it. I've recently been thinking about it as people's thinking in terms of Breadth First thinking vs Depth First thinking, though I like your thoughts a lot. From my (albeit limited, this is not a statistical sample) experience, it seems like smarter people are the ones who tend to worry more. Almost as though they can chase through situations quicker and come up with possible (bad) results that give them reason to worry. It kinda plays into that ignorance is bliss mantra, but that's just my experience.

I think rapid cognition is a gift, but the problem is that our gifted programs...or training for people who are like this isn't good enough to teach them how to handle their own brains. I think there should be more work done into helping people unlock AND manage their intellectual assets. Right now I think the situation in the US focuses more on the former and less on the latter. I feel like I'm advocating that smart kids go learn under Professor Xavier or something.

Looks like smart people are the worrying type: Moutafi 2004 found the personality trait of neuroticism (worry), along with extroversion and conscientiousness, to account for about 13% of the variance in general intelligence.

>From my (albeit limited, this is not a statistical sample) experience, it seems like smarter people are the ones who tend to worry more. Almost as though they can chase through situations quicker and come up with possible (bad) results that give them reason to worry. It kinda plays into that ignorance is bliss mantra, but that's just my experience.

My mother is a frantic worrier and pretty intelligent IMO. I have a tendency towards worrying but when my mind dwells on negative situations I try to practice considering what the good outcomes might be or indeed to go overboard and consider the most outrageously impossible worst outcome.

I read about this technique from a link here a couple of years ago I think, it helps a little. One can spirally negatively with thoughts of possible scenarios very readily and when I remember this is a useful check on that.

Couldn't find the link, it's a common technique to teach in cognitive behaviour therapy, like http://us.reachout.com/the_facts/fs_factsheet.php?s=05&f....

Freedom from unnecessary (that is, things you have no control over) worry is one of the basic tenets of Stoicism. After learning about that, it seems foolish that things like this aren't common knowledge or taught in schools. The reduction in stress from just this one single realization is huge.

how do you use technology for augmentation ?

Using Mac OSX's built in text-to-speech function, although I would like it to read faster than its current maximum speed limit. But text-to-speech technology allows dyslexic people to have access to information that was almost previously inaccessible to them. I think every device from here on should be required to have text to speech options built in, just like a new building is required to have elevators/ramps.

A bit late, but hopefully you still catch the question. Are you a coder, and if so, how does dyslexia work with your coding abilities?

I'm currently learning to code for the first time, and it is a bit more of challenge than what I imagine it might be fore a non dyslexic person. It took me awhile to find a typeface that agreed with my eyes, and I think Lucida Sans Typewriter is good as it differentiates the vowels very nicely. A strong commenting system also helps. Hacker News is great though, so many smart people to learn from. I mostly try to be quite in the comments and just listen... But I don't see myself ever being an engineer, as I focus more on 'creative' work.

"speed" as in "quick on the uptake"

“Stupidity is infinitely more fascinating that intelligence. Intelligence has its limits while stupidity has none. To observe a profoundly stupid individual can be very enriching, and that’s why we should never feel contempt for them.” Claude Chabrol

> I just never had the patience to notice before.

I think with a little patience and humility we can notice the deepness of our stupid friends, and relax enough to enjoy what we are doing without worrying.

compare with smoking pot daily for X years.

also, can you train yourself to be smarter by forcing yourself into such a state, much like weight training or high altitude training?

Marijuana doesn't make you dumb permanently... Alcohol has far worse effects on the brain than marijuana, especially over the long term. Listen to Dr. Drew, he says it all the time.

I think he's means it as in compare it to someone who's stoned day in day out for X years, and then decides to quit and then their mental function returns to normal. Compare those two differences. Actually I don't think what he says contradicts anything you're saying.

The last few studies I've seen on moderate alcohol use have concluded that its short-term effects on the brain aren't necessarily cumulative over the long term, as opposed to conventional wisdom.

That may be true but the way young people use alcohol is usually binge drinking rather than having one glass of wine daily

By the same token, is there any reason to assume that someone who uses marijuana doesn't drink irresponsibly too? While I was in college, the two seemed pretty inseparable on average.

Any chance of a link to any of the studies or directions where to find them? I am interested.

considering that alcohol helps prevent blood vessels clogging, it seems like it is a very good positive long-term effect on the brain in particular

Actually, marijuana may make you smarter: some studies show it aids in neurogenesis (i.e. new brain cells).

http://www.jci.org/articles/view/25509/version/1

There are certain cognitive abilities that improve with practice. You'll find that you can get faster at most things you practice if you're able to do them already. A well known example is games like "Brian Age" on the Nintendo DS and Wii. If you play them often you will definitely see improvements on your performance in the exercises in the game, however not in general, as has been recently proven [1].

Intuitively I'd say that your cognitive ability isn't (to put things simple) a value but a range, and you can train yourself by studying to be higher within your range. I believe there are actual physical barriers that don't allow you to push over your "range" - or we'd see obsessed people turning into Savants.

(Regarding your marijuana point: I have seen the impact of daily pot smoking on friends, and it is quite real. I have also seen the effect go away when they stopped smoking. Sounds like a cliché out of a book on morals, but it is the truth)

[1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/7610884/Popular...

I read an article a while back talking about how games like that don't boost the brain's overall ability to think and reason quickly in general, they just improve your brain's performance on those games. That is to say, you're not getting smarter or faster, you're just getting better at Brain Age.

This isn't the article I remember, but it's a good counter-example to the games' claims: http://www.csmonitor.com/Innovation/Horizons/2009/0126/ninte...

Try http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100420/full/4641111a.html

(I have the link handy because I was looking it up yesterday for my DNB FAQ http://www.gwern.net/N-back FAQ.html - DNB being one of the few brain games which apparently does transfer/improve 'in general'.)

(Regarding your marijuana point: I have seen the impact of daily pot smoking on friends, and it is quite real. I have also seen the effect go away when they stopped smoking. Sounds like a cliché out of a book on morals, but it is the truth

Hi fredoliveira

Would you mind elaborating on this a little? It's an area of personal interest. Only for scientific reasons of course ;)

Regards c00ki3s

I can try :-) I am no doctor so everything I'll say is based on what I've seen and personal opinion, so take it with a grain of salt.

A close friend who went to the same university as I did smoked every single day for as long as I (and most people) can remember. He was considered "dumb" - writing this now sounds like people around him were assholes, which isn't the case; we were indeed all friends. He did score poorer grades than the rest, and had severe mood-swings.

A few months ago, he decided to stop smoking pot. I cannot begin to tell you how different things felt. His performance has apparently increased dramatically (to the point where he's now over the group average) and the mood swings are gone. Interestingly, the mood didn't improve for the better and he might be going through depression. But despite the psychological downturn (which may have other causes), his cognitive abilities have noticeably improved.

Again, I'm no doctor, so I can't say for sure whether the two things (stop smoking pot <-> better mental performance) are connected. But as with most people, my gut tells me it is. Just thinking about the people I know who smoke every day, I realize that my expectations for them are lower. Again, by writing this I feel like an ass - I am just being honest, though.

I have heard the same thing. Someone I know smokes rarely, but he plays chess online quite often. He tells me after every time he smokes (probably just one or two joints) his performance is noticeably worse for a week after. And this is from someone who just smokes maybe once a month if at all, daily smoking could impair your cognitive abilities a lot more. But then again this is all more or less anecdotes, still seems to be something about it though.

One thing has been bothering me for years. What if I'm retarded and I don't know that? What if people around me pretend that I'm ok, being polite, or maybe I'm so retarded that I can't notice their reaction to me.

I haven't been able to find an answer.

Stop smoking weed, if that's what got you onto the idea

I mean that quite seriously, not sure if it came across right. I've seen weed induced paranoia cause people to fixate on these sorts of ideas.

That seems like normal paranoia to me. :)

Sounds like an extreme case of the Dunning-Kruger effect in combination with our good friend, the Impostor Syndrome.

I'd say that you should seek external validation, i.e. make something and have it ripped apart on HN.

1. Assume self-interest on the part of (many but not all) other people.

2. See if you can convince some other person to give you money to solve a problem, where your solution involves something besides or in addition to physical labor. (Many but not all jobs qualify.)

3. Success? Congratulations, you are very likely not retarded.

3b. Not convinced because of the "many-but-not-all" qualification? Keep repeating 2 until you are.

3c. I admit that this will never refute the idea that every other person in the the entire world is conspiring to make you feel normal in spite of your deficiencies. (And now I'm part of the Conspiracy.) This seem identical to me to the problem of solipsism, so it doesn't bother me to not have a good answer for that.

This has bothered me from time to time for a long time too. It usually affects me most when I get to make other people do things I though they would not do for me. I've got no cure or definite answer for it.

On the other hand I felt the same of my dancing abilities (and still do) but being praised(+) a lot by lots of people, some of them being international dancing figures, and one of my teachers - whom I find an excellent dancer - asking me to enter into her (not truly professional but important to her) dance company has made wonders to improve my self-image. Even though I feel clumsy from time to time, once a dance or so ;)

So I guess trying to improve more in what you feel you do badly until everyone praises that aspect of you can help it.

(+) I've got to say the praises where not about my technical level, but more about energy, fun and all the things that make a dance alive.

> one of my teachers - whom I find an excellent dancer - asking me to enter into her (not truly professional but important to her)

Dude, you've gotta find a better place for that aside...

So answer it. What if people pretend you're OK and you're really retarded? What is it that bothers you about that?

"My illness has made very little difference to my scientific work. I was lucky to have chosen theoretical physics that is mainly pure thought for which my physical disability is no handicap. I may be mentally disabled as well, but if so, I am too far gone to realize."

- Stephen Hawking

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