Not being stupid | Hacker News Reader

Not being stupid

28 pointssanj47 comments

I read this quote at http://robotics.caltech.edu/~mason/quotes.html

'"I used to have a boss named Rock. Rock had earned a degree in astrophysics from Cal Tech [sic] and had never had a job where he used his knowledge of the heavens. Once I asked him if he regretted getting his degree. "My absurd degree in astrophysics has proved to be very valuable," he said, "Some things in this world are just hard. When I am struggling with something, I sometimes think 'Damn, this is hard. I wonder if I am stupid,' and then I remember that I have a degree in astrophysics from Cal Tech; I must not be stupid."'

I wish I'd heard that 10 years back!

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When I am struggling with something, I sometimes think 'Damn, this is hard. I wonder if I am stupid,' and then I remember that I don't have a degree in astrophysics from Cal Tech; I must be stupid.

When I am struggling with something, I sometimes think 'Damn, this is hard. I wonder if I am stupid,' and then I remember that I have a counterfeit degree in astrophysics from Cal Tech; I might be stupid, but I can still fool others.

When I am struggling with something, I sometimes think "Damn, this is hard. I wonder if I am stupid". And then I remember I have a PhD in solid-state theoretical physics, and I think "Man, I used to be smart -- how did I manage to become so stupid since then?"

When I am struggling with something, I just give up.

"If something's hard to do then it's not worth doing." - H. Simpson

"And if something is not hard to do, why try at all." - Paras Chopra

From the same page (unrelated comment): "Not long ago, we came up with an interesting set of facts: A billion hours ago, human life appeared on Earth. A billion minutes ago, Christianity emerged. A billion seconds ago, the Beatles changed music forever. A billion Coca-Colas ago was yesterday morning." Goizueta knew his marketing stuff (wasn't he one of the biggest Coca-Cola's presidents?).

Coca-Cola is also one of the finest examples of the "Be Evil, Don't Care" philosophy. And it could work for you, too, if you're willing to sell your conscience.

Conscience? I don't think I ever had that. Damn, I could have sold it if I had though.

(Spoken with a go-getter CEO voice)

Can you have a mortgage for one?

Can you explain why Coca Cola is evil? They make things that people want (I know I do) at a very reasonable price.

They used to sell fanta to Nazis in WWII

Anti-union violence in Latin America.

Is it fair to say that you think coca cola is evil because they do business with corrupt latin america bottlers?

That's cool if that is your belief, but where do you draw the line? Coca Cola is evil because they do business with evil people. Yahoo is evil because they accept advertising from Coca Cola. Companies that get acquired by Yahoo are evil because a part of the $$ they get is blood money?

You don't have to rebel, but you gotta resist.

They make people want poison and sell it to them?

Yes, it is bad in large quantities over an extended period of time. Is that all it takes to be evil? If so almost everything qualifies.

Not only in large quantities, plus it is addictive (sugar). Note that they started out with cocaine, back in the day. Sure, different times, but still...

I don't want to argue about the healthiness of coke, though. If you want to drink it, by all means, go ahead. It is your life, not mine.

The quote comes from Aaron Hillegass's book, "Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X", which is a great read for anyone wanting to learn Cocoa.

I won a statewide competition in chemistry in high school, went to Caltech as an undergraduate, and it was hard. Transferred to another top-rated school, which wasn't nearly as hard.

To get a Caltech degree does require being smart, and being dedicated.

Additional-- even the worst Caltech undergrads were reasonably smart and dedicated. My recollection is Caltech had a 33% non-matriculation rate--extremely high for a top-select school

It's stupid not to work on hard problems. Worse, it's lazy.

In certain aspects of life, intelligence can be a liability. Smart people can tend to focus on analyzing a problem and what can go wrong/what went wrong while less smart people have virtual blinders and just act rather than think about acting.

Man, I hear that. I also have a Ph.D. in astrophysics from Caltech (proof: http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechETD:etd-05222003-161626). I feel stupid all the time, but then, like Rock, I think "How stupid can I really be?"

N.B. I meet retreaded physicists all the time in tech. Case in point: last week I met the CTO of Aptana, who wrote a particle physics thesis at Harvard with Shelly Glashow.

Has anyone ever seen a truly smart person struggle? I for one have never. They must either hide it very well, or never really hit those roadblocks that make people think themselves, and not the roadblocks, are the problem. What is it?

I once was put on a project with a very senior engineer. He had many more years of general experience than I, but we were both new to the project.

I tended to sit around feeling stupid, making feeble attempts to be productive. He, on the other hand, knew how to ask the right questions of the right people and get the information he needed to proceed. He was just as clueless as me on the project, but the difference was he knew how to quickly and easily move from being clueless to being knowledgable.

Absolutely. Some have even asked me for help.

The difference is in how they ask for help. Folks that are usually thought of as stupid either get flustered and say "I can't do this", or they don't ask for help at all and hope nobody will notice. While the ones we think of as "truly smart" have confidence that they'll get it eventually, they're just missing some crucial piece of information.

I suspect this holds true of original research as well, but this is usually done in private, and so nobody sees the smart people struggle.

I still find this quite hard to grasp. If it's declarative (book) knowledge, then it makes sense to ask immediately. Does that count as struggling?

If it is insight though, for even those armed with all the crucial facts, they may still be unable to make certain connections and mental leaps. I guess this is the kind of struggle I'm talking about. Given the same data, two researchers can come up with interpretations of different strength and quality. Across all the brilliant people I have met before, whenever this happens I can only ask "how the hell?" And they would say something like, "oh, it's just this and that."

"It is different with the magicians. Even after we understand what they have done it is completely dark." -- Kac on Feynman.

Is there a similarity? I have to wonder what caused Rock to struggle...

It sounds a lot like circular logic. How do you work out whether someone is smart or not? By whether you see them struggle?

    I can only ask "how the hell?" And they would say something like, "oh, it's just this and that."

That could be someone who, once they understand something, can explain it easily. That doesn't (necessarily) mean that they reached the initial understanding easily.

Has anyone ever seen a truly smart person struggle?

Yes. When I was getting a math degree, people who were really good in one area, like analysis, often struggled in another area, like abstract algebra.

Likewise, when I lived in Boston I worked with PhDs in microbiology and biochemistry who had a hard time with computer programming.

I've noticed this too and tend to agree with your observation, but I don't think this is necessarily because certain people don't get or are not naturally talented in a specific subarea of mathematics.

My math professors told me that math majors tend to fall in love with the second upper-division math course that they take, because in the first one, you're still struggling with the details of moving from mostly computational to proof-based problems. Usually this first course is either real analysis or abstract algebra, and since all analysis and algebra classes tend to build on the fundamentals of these courses, this may show up in the subsequent classes that you take within these fields.

I can understand the PhD part: the programming involves a different mindset than bio and chem: "It's more of a craft, than an art" -- a neurobio PhD. To paraphrase, it is more dependent on wisdom than cleverness.

The math tidbit is interesting though. What other examples have you seen of good mathematicians being lopsidedly talented in one area? What kinds of areas were these? I can somehow see real analysis involving a different ability than that of discrete math.

Most mathematicians are "lopsidedly talented" in one area, typically that of their Ph.D. You rarely see modern mathematicians who are able to understand--much less make significant contributions to--current research in many different fields.

(well if they are struggling wouldn't you not consider them smart)

That's about the silliest thing I've read.

Everyone struggles. The difference with the smart people is how they respond to those struggles.

   That's about the silliest thing I've read.

Parent or grandparent?

Re Parent: yep, could well be a form of confirmation bias. "That guy is struggling, must not be smart. I wonder why all the smart people never struggle?"

I was being facetious. I meant to say what my sibling comment wrote. Confirmation bias.

> "They must either hide it very well, or never really hit those roadblocks"

To struggle is human. Smart people sometimes try to hide their stuggles. But the truly smart people recognize that struggling is human, and accept it. So you should see them struggle. If you haven't seen them struggle, you aren't looking. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, these guys have all had very public failures. They admit it, learn from it, move on, and are stronger for it.

people who have degrees aren't stupid or smart, they are people who have degrees. a degree is a piece of paper. it means you did stuff and someone thought you did it well enough for them so they handed you the piece of paper. in the grand scheme of things, it's just a piece of paper. get over it, you're not smart or stupid because of the piece of paper, it's just a piece of paper! and so on.

Slow down. Caltech has a lot of intellectual self-respect. Getting into Caltech is hard. Getting out of Caltech is also hard. You need brains. Lots of cc of brains.

"It's just a piece of paper."? Uh-uh. Not from Caltech. It's as much a piece of paper as a cat-scan result that says your brain is big, or a check for a million dollars. In this case, the words on the piece of paper mean something.

There's a minimum bar for getting into Caltech, and an even higher minimum bar for graduating from there. We're talking about lower bounds here. Saying "a degree is a piece of paper" entirely misses the point.

The degree isn't the point. The point is that he accomplished something. You could substitute a lot of other things for your own personal version of the story.

It's pretty stupid to think the accuracy rate of the degree is 100%. Or that the only way to get that degree is by being smart.

Um, spending a couple of years just to get self-confidence is a pretty stupid deal.

A lot of people never get any their entire lives. Sure, there are other ways of doing it, maybe cheaper or easier ones -- but nearly any price is worth paying.

How about Tequila?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0rMkt3uB9c

A couple of years? You obviously know nothing about getting a Ph.D. It takes at least six years to gain that much self-confidence!

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