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Comment by hypertele-Xii | Hacker News Reader

This is me. I have an IQ of 163. All I heard my entire childhood was "you're so smart, you don't need help, you just have an attitude problem". Was placed in the only special class in school, where all the kids from the other side of the normal distribution were placed - retards, bullies, etc.

Got beaten every day until I learned to fight back. At what point was I supposed to have the time and energy to learn? There were no role models. My parents are horrible. Just skipped school as much as I could to play with tech/computers. Still unproven if all my experience amounts to anything. A genius quietly suffering in poverty and loneliness, fallen off every bandwagon, used and abused, desperately trying to achieve literally anything.

The worst part is the chronic thinking that I could've/should've/would've done something amazing, if a single shit had been given at any point along the way. Such a waste of human potential. Even if it wasn't my fault as a child, it's my responsibility to fix as a developmentally disabled adult. To this day nobody gives a shit. So I work out, do what little work I can, cry myself to sleep, and pray for God to use me as an instrument for good.

The next 10 years will make or break me.

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Different people have Different speeds in $things. If one piece of the system is at a different (slower/ faster) speed where majority pieces are on another but more or less similar speed to each othet, the one piece is going to get burnt quick.

Options... use gears at touch points to match speed, or have a robust outer layer to eliminate impact of friction, or Try to control speed to match the system

A combination of these options, may work. Challenge is to identfy the required option and apply what works for a given situation, which is another activity needing quite some brain cycles.

Just an observation...

Hope your upcoming life is pleasant.

I have an IQ of 148 which the educational psychiatrist who did my test told me put me in the top 0.02% of the UK. I63 is.. insane

It's pretty neat to find someone smarter than me (and actually be aware of the fact).

If it helps: I think we're all a bit broken.. But whilst the first 23 years of my life were pretty rough, I'm thriving in my late 30s.

My unsolicited advice would be to find something that makes your feel good about who you are and throw yourself into it. Life and your resilience/ability to take on challenges will get so much better with a few wins under your belt.

I also can't overestimate how valuable a supportive partner is. Step 1: make sure you're worth it. Better to be kind than clever as Bezos famously said.

> I have an IQ of 163.

That's remarkable given the current world population of 8 billion.

Given a normal IQ distribution centred about 100 and a standard deviation of 10 that puts you in the upper half of the six sigma range ... along with (approx) only 7 other people on the planet.

That's about one person out of every 30,000. Not too incredibly unusual. 160 is 4-sigma. There are ten thousand people in the US like that. Probably several dozen here on HN.

The standard deviation is 15 IIRC. Mine was measured at 159 when I was young (according to my father) which amusingly is the same as Lisa Simpson's.

IQ is scored on an SD15 or SD16 scale, not an SD10 scale. On a more typical SD15 scale an IQ of 163 is 1 in 74883 people, or around 4500 people in the US. It’s lower than my IQ, and I’ve by happenstance met people with the exact same IQ working in the same company.

Tech in particular tends to attract high IQ individuals, so I wouldn’t be surprised if there are hundreds or thousands of HN users with similar IQs or higher.

I would let go of this victim mentality sooner rather than later.

Everything I said is inescapable fact. A victim mentality would be "I can't do anything about it". I have the opposite mindset, so you're entirely wrong to suggest this. An accurate account of history is not victim mentality, it's truth.

>The worst part is the chronic thinking that I could've/should've/would've done something amazing, if a single shit had been given at any point along the way. Such a waste of human potential.

Fixation on how your present circumstances might be better if not for the wrong done by others to the extent that you describe it as a severe and chronic issue is neither inescapable nor particularly factual.

> Fixation on how your present circumstances might be better if not for the wrong done by others to the extent that you describe it as a severe and chronic issue is neither inescapable nor particularly factual.

So your stance is that I imagined the whole thing? You're not making any sense here. It's absolutely, undisputably factual that when a child lacks basic necessities for development, they don't develop properly and will suffer as a consequence.

As a consciously conscious being, I have awareness of that suffering. That's not a "fixation", it's an actual chronic issue that makes life 100x harder than it needs to be, and awareness of the issue is the antidote to preventing something similar from happening to others, especially by my doing.

You are attempting to null my experience, I don't know why, but you're failing at it because you cannot null the cold, hard, objective, measurable facts simply by saying "nuh uh".

>So your stance is that I imagined the whole thing?

Yes, the life you could've had but didn't exists only in your imagination.

>You're not making any sense here. It's absolutely, undisputably factual that when a child lacks basic necessities for development, they don't develop properly and will suffer as a consequence.

No, it isn't. Some children do alright in shit circumstances, while some fail to in great circumstances. And some people suffer despite the trappings of success while others are content with what others may describe as failure.

>As a consciously conscious being, I have awareness of that suffering. That's not a "fixation", it's an actual chronic issue that makes life 100x harder than it needs to be,

Do you think any suffering in childhood inevitably leads to a lifetime of inescapable suffering? If not, just how much early suffering does it take? If a child who suffered slightly less can get over it, why not the one who suffered slightly more?

Even if it was factual it's not a terribly effective way of getting to where you want to go

Tbh I don't care about your history. I had a terrible childhood too. The story is long and boring but it includes beatings, broken bones, being drugged without my consent, and other terrible and traumatic abuses along with the high IQ, super ability, gifted, blah blah blah. But who cares. Now I have a PhD, I have a great job, and a wonderful gf. A lot of that is because I gave up holding onto that story I sat and told myself about how terrible and true my history was like you are doing. It doesn't matter that your accounting of your history is accurate or not. Telling yourself these things is not effective behaviour at building yourself into the person you want to be.

But nobody is going to make you change. You will either wake up one day and be so tired of your own bullshit that you will start to change. Or you won't. It's really all up to you.

Have you learned empathy on the way?

I have an amazing amount of empathy for this person who is sitting there telling themselves that they are terrible, their life is a product of the traumatic history. I feel the pain in their words when they respond telling of the grandiose achievements they would have obtained if only. I understand the anger and justification they feel when they start a sentence "if only it had been different..." I have been in this headspace. But it wasn't different. My life wasn't different either no matter how much I wished that it was so. And no matter how much I felt the pain from the trauma I suffered, that trauma never went away. That's why I know the choice to move away from this identity, and it really is an identity, is a very difficult choice and requires a lot of hard work. Because at some point that trauma lives on because of your choice to keep it alive. I have spent years in therapy overcoming such trauma. And finally I'm putting it behind me. I fully support this person making similar choices and would be happy to provide resources for them to pursue. But they have to want that and they don't seem to want it in this moment. I can empathize with that decision too. I made it for a long time before I became tired of living my life in pain.

I'm a little shocked you would tell someone "[I] don't care about your history," and "they don't seem to want help." Did you ever hear people tell you that? Did it help? I certainly feel insulted by your 'pull yourself up by your bootstraps sonny," tone.

Nothing really ever helped me get out of the mindset I was in until I felt like helping myself. It is the nature of the beast in my opinion. Although I agree with you. I was being a bit dismissive. I think it's because the original poster simply dismisses what everyone has to say no matter what they are saying.

You appear to be inserting your own words into my mouth. Nowhere did I say I was terrible. In fact, I'm doing better than ever before. That's in large part due to accurate accounting. You even say I'm "sitting here" with a connotation of passivity, as if there's no way I could be typing this at a standing desk or a phone while on the move. You're trying to hammer "victim mentality" so hard down my throat it's... kind of hilarious.

These grandiose achievements as you put them consist of basic necessities for survival. The fact you use words like "grandiose" reveals a deeply dismissive attitude towards the suffering of others. I'm guessing, because you've completely dismissed your own suffering, along with the benefits of accurate accounting. Maybe that was the only way for you to move forward. I'm capable of having awareness and accounting and still moving forward.

You seem to be so afraid of past truth you're literally exclaiming "it doesn't matter" while intensely commenting on mine and sharing your own. So clearly it does matter to some repressed part of you.

> no matter how much I felt the pain from the trauma I suffered, that trauma never went away.

Soo... stop feeling the pain and just do accurate accounting. Why are you making this so complicated?

> And finally I'm putting it behind me.

No offense, the way you talk doesn't sound like that's actually happening.

This response gives me hope - don't let the haters bring us down! Keep on keepin' on!

> It doesn't matter that your accounting of your history is accurate or not.

There's a ridiculously destructive belief if I've ever heard one. Your PHD is an accurate accounting of your research. Your bank account is an accurate accounting of your earnings. I hope your wonderful girlfriend is accurate in her accounting of your relationship, because the alternative is she's cheating on you. See where this is going?

Dismissing accurate accounting of anything, including history, is a recipe for disaster.

Accurate accounting is the #1 skill that has drastically improved my quality of life.

> But nobody is going to make you change. You will either wake up one day and be so tired of your own bullshit that you will start to change.

You seem to be under the false belief that I'm somehow stuck unable to change. Don't know where this is coming from, but it smells of projection. You're dismissing accurate counting of history so hard it's almost like you're afraid to face the truth.

I'm not afraid of an accurate accounting of the truth, on the contrary. We call that wisdom.

For what its worth I'm genuinely sorry that this happened to you.

I’m sure this will get downvoted but you might also have depression or PTSD. Talk to your doctor about Ketamine treatment for depression and look into MDMA for PTSD. Both drugs can be abused but can also be extremely effective at treating the above conditions.

As far as reaching your potential goes, just be kind to yourself

Can confirm these are good suggestions, already been there, already done that, did indeed help :)

I work with a lot of people (both adults and students) who have this kind of intelligence and who are used to being the smartest person around.

I can tell you that your feeling of wasted potential isn't just a consequence of how you were treated. Most people in this situation have it. Even when they are wildly successful by any other standard. Like PhDs from ivies are normal, the number of people walking down the hallway who are billionaires is astoundingly high, etc.

You would be shocked at the self harm, depression, and suicide rate that at this level. All because of this idea of "oh, I could have won a Nobel" (I'm certain that if they had they would find a way to be sad about wasted potential anyway).

The solution is therapy. Don't wait. Just go do it. Just because you're smart doesn't mean that you don't need that kind of help. It might mean that you need it even more!

I'm curious if you have any suggestions for such people to find a successful therapy fit (I'm asking both out of personal curiosity as well as hoping that it will help others)? I'm not in that category of brilliant, but I tried therapy off and on for 10 or 15 years before I started feeling like it really helped. I think part of the problem is that I didn't know what was "wrong" with me - I knew that I had trouble with maintaining romantic relationships and I knew that I was sometimes unhappy (though I was rarely willing to admit to myself how unhappy I often was), but I didn't really know why. And I spent a lot of time introspecting, so generally when I tried therapy out the therapist wouldn't have any real insights that I hadn't thought of already. I didn't dislike my therapists, but generally would give up after a few months of not feeling like any progress was being made.

I'm not sure all of what went into things working out for me in therapy the past couple of years, but I think at least a part of it was shifting into a more emotions based approach. I'm not sure how open to that I would have been when I was younger. My tendency to approach most things intellectually was a very powerful tool, but it wasn't successful at getting to the underlying feelings I was not really aware of. Having more access to those feelings has been overwhelming at times, but also has enabled a lot of ongoing progress on being more satisfied with my life.

I would recommend schema therapy to anyone. It has helped me immensely to understand feelings, thoughts, reactions, and also to decide what is and isn't something I should attend to. Additionally I would recommend dialectical behaviour therapy to anyone. It gives you the skills to interact with the knowledge gained from schema therapy. Lastly, I recommend doing mindfulness training. If you only spend 5 minutes a day it will change your life. I am able to be calm when before I wasn't, able to be thoughtful about others when before I would react, able to focus on a task and organise my day when before I could not muster the executive function to brush my teeth. These things have made my life considerably better.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is at the moment the most effective form of therapy we have. It can take a few tries to find someone who you click with.

CBT isn't about someone giving you an aha moment into your own feelings or giving you advice you hadn't thought of (although that does happen). It's more about giving you skills to reinterpret those feelings, their sources, and the actions that result from them. So even if you feel like you introspect and understand how you're doing, CBT can be very effective in being more satisfied with life.

> I can tell you that your feeling of wasted potential isn't just a consequence of how you were treated. Most people in this situation have it.

Yup. I was reasonably well-treated as a gifted kid (well, still bullied to death, but at least, I had smart + available parents and many opportunities to learn by myself). I still suffer from that.

I do have a few achievements behind my belt. I have a PhD, I have code running on your computer and in low earth orbit. Pretty much every junior developer learns stuff that I (and many, many others) have contributed to create. I raise a kid, I donate blood, money, time to charities. And I can't escape the feeling that I'm wasting my time, that I could/should be doing something greater, and that I'm basically useless as is.

Yes, I probably need some kind of therapy :)

> And I can't escape the feeling that I'm wasting my time, that I could/should be doing something greater, and that I'm basically useless as is.

Sometimes I feel like humans have a limiter put on them and someday we could 'fix' it. I occasionally get a glimpse of huge ideas that aren't just built on existing stuff, but then it fades and I'm back to the grind.

Therapy is not a solution, it's just wasting time dwelling on the problems, which I'm already aware of and struggling to fix. There is nothing a therapist can tell me that I don't already know, and aren't already doing.

I don't self-harm, I'm not suicidal, I'm not even depressed. I'm just so late to the party that the chances of making it shrink ever smaller each year. No therapist can ever turn back time, so no therapist can ever help.

You have a very narrow view of therapy. Modern, research based therapy practice like dialectical behaviour therapy don't really care about your past or whatever oppression you suffered. They give you the skills necessary to interact with your life today. If you are struggling to handle problems yet believe you already know and are doing everything then I would suggest you find some humility.

> They give you the skills necessary to interact with your life today.

I'm fully interacting with my life today. My life today is not a problem. I'm the master of survival skills for my particular environment - I would've died already otherwise.

The problem is the circumstances that failed to cultivate and extract my potential. The problem was leaving me to fend for myself. The problem was godlessness, immorality, violence, and stupidity.

No therapist can fix that. Ergo, therapy is a waste of time.

> If you are struggling to handle problems yet believe you already know and are doing everything then I would suggest you find some humility.

Can you explain this? Knowing and doing everything is a struggle almost by definition. This struggle I welcome with glee because it's a struggle I choose to endure for the betterment of my quality of life, and through health and productivity, hopefully a benefit to all one day.

I've read what you've written. I won't give you a long argument about why therapy can help someone in you situation because you won't buy it.

But I will say that as someone who spends all day with people that have have his kind of intelligence, therapy is for you. Recontexualizing your life, past and present, as well as your future path is pretty much bread and butter CBT.

Too many smart people have the disease of "I know better, therapy can't help" which is why for example elite institutions have the highest suicide rates. You're falling into that trap, but it's a catch 22, once you're in it, you won't be able to logically argue your way out. Just take the leap and go to therapy.

My suicide rate is and will forever remain zero, so your continual bringing that up as a reason in favor of therapy is having the opposite effect.

If you truly believed that therapy is for me, you'd be glad to give me the long argument. You already know I won't buy it because you know it isn't.

you must be a pleasure to have at parties.

Sure. Back when I partied, people were phoning me up, I took cabs from one party to the next. Every weekend, sometimes multiple parties on the same day. People came to hug me, some even literally said I was an "integral part of their party experience". Something about being easy to be themselves in my presence.

Your attempted ad hominem falls flatter on its face than a pancake mask at a hydraulic press factory. I've not only partied a lot in my youth and was very liked, I was deep in the scene, friends with the crews that organized the parties, the DJs, camera and audio techs, backstage, etc.

Yes I'm well aware of the grandiosity you attribute yourself which covers the hurt and vulnerable child within screaming to not be abandoned, abused, neglected, shamed or isolated. But nobody here will do that to you. This place is a safe place. People only wish you well here given all the comments urging you too bring the critical thinking that this forum is well known for to your own problems. It could be that you don't know everything. It could be that therapy could help you. You simply should try it while heartedly before you dismiss it so eagerly.

> Yes I'm well aware of the grandiosity you attribute yourself

Where is this coming from? I know it's not coming from me because my explicit narrative is precisely that my life lacks these "grandiose" things as you put them, for the obvious reasons I laid out.

Since it's not coming from me, sounds like projection coming from you.

For the record I read your statements in the same way they do. I might not use "grandiose" but I see what they mean.

Simply from reading your own statements, I can see that you're wrong. I'm probably not as smart as you, yet I can see that you're wrong, but you cannot, why is that?

I'm happy for your alleged ability to see wrongness, but bring into question the validity of merely exclaiming so without any explanation. You didn't just read and see wrongness, you wrote about it without any content whatsoever. Your comment is entirely void of substance.

So how am I wrong, or are you satisfied merely virtue-signaling?

It's great to be smart, but thinking you are smart can become a big problem.

If smartness is so great, how is awareness of it a problem? Your statement appears contradictory, could you elaborate?

Some CBT, quick!

> The worst part is the chronic thinking that I could've/should've/would've done something amazing, if a single shit had been given at any point along the way.

Like what? Define amazing. Become the founder of some extractive start up? Write some bs science and gain a nobel prize? Be the best chess player?

My view is that you always have to put yourself together. Intellect is simply a factor, but so is honesty and the state of your heart. You can be very smart and you can still be stupid. You sound a bit resentful, but do you ever consider that your experience grants you the opportunity to lead life away from the well-travelled track to success, and do something personally and actually meaningful?

> do you ever consider that your experience grants you the opportunity to lead life away from the well-travelled track to success, and do something personally and actually meaningful?

Like what, fail in an entertaining manner?

Imagine telling a malnourished child that their experience grants them the opportunity to lead life away from the well-tasted fruit to satiation, and do something personally and actually meaningful, while starving to death.

That's how stupid that sounds. "Have you tried eating dirt?"

My definition of amazing at this point is not being useless then dying alone and unloved.

To pile on to what another commenter said above, therapy is for you.

I know you dismissed it out of hand. You clearly have no faith that someone (specifically, a well-trained therapist) might have something valuable to contribute.

However, while your powers of observation might border on superhuman, they are still very much just yours. A therapist can help you build an emotional toolset you will not otherwise provide yourself, and which will make you a more complete person, not least of all in the area of building and maintaining meaningful interpersonal relationships.

Think of it like this: you can read music theory and memorize the entire western classical canon by heart and still be a terrible piano player, never improving if you don’t show up to practice at the keys with a talented teacher.

One simply cannot reason ones way around the emotional core that drives us as humans.

CBT will help you change your behavior and how things feel, but, imho, psychodynamic psychotherapy can go much deeper and truly improve your emotional IQ.

> One simply cannot reason ones way around the emotional core that drives us as humans.

Found the flaw in your argument. I am not driven by emotions. If therapy is all about that then all the more reason to not waste time with it.

My (accurate accounting of) history with building and maintaining meaningful interpersonal relationships is fine. Why do you assume I need help with that?

In these comments I see a lot of imagining problems I supposedly have right now, when all I did was share the problems I used to suffer from, in the context of a discussion about the systemic, environmental deficiencies in how society is structured causing massive waste of human potential.

Therapy takes time and money. I don't use emotions to make decisions on how to invest my time and money. You're arguing in favor of investing my time and money into a questionably effective solution to an imagined problem.

This planet has a lot of time left in it for humans to do things. One human missing an opportunity doesn't lead to the statistical outcome that that opportunity wont be fulfilled in the future. An individual is not that important to humanity as a whole progressing. Live your life.

Its not a game of aggregation, despite everything you have been told. Oneself is not humanity at large.

Ignore the jumped-up, self proclaimed authorities, the things they have taught you, the servile mentality and mental structure you are in.

Oneself is the only thing important in one's life. Every individual is infinitely valuable. It's simple too - just forget everything you know, and do right, by following truth and love. It costs nothing.

PS I recognise that I must sound like a fruitcake, but the answers come from within. The revolution will not be televised.

> Oneself is the only thing important in one's life.

Also known as narcissism.

> There’s nothing that a therapist can tell me that I don’t already know…

Also known as arrogance.

From your many statements in this thread, you seem to be articulate and, if your cited accomplishments are truthful, generally successful. But your presumptive posturing, bordering on incurious, and projections on others for perceived failures suggests that you’re likely underestimating just how much you don’t know. “Intelligence” is a nebulous concept that manifests in a variety of ways that can be frequently difficult to pin down. Humility and the capacity for making honest evaluations for one’s own limits is a distinct form of emotional intelligence that you might find can enhance the more conventional notions of intellect that you seem to possess.

Things like higher education and therapy are not necessarily designed to imbue you with wholly novel information and experiences, absent a considerable amount of initiative and work from within. They are frameworks for providing the tools so you can achieve your potential. Nothing is perfect, you might very well find that they sometimes fail in that effort, but you are responsible for putting forth the good faith efforts to engage with these tools if you wish to achieve the success that they can facilitate.

That’s my perspective, anyway, and I wish you all the best on your path.

With the next bit...

> Oneself is the only thing important in one's life. Every individual is infinitely valuable.

Is that narcissistic too?

Yes. There's no such thing as "infinite value" and certainly not for every individual. Our value, especially as men, is entirely tied to our ability to get shit done. If you do nothing, you are literally worthless.

Are you an adolescent?

Possibly depends on your definition of adolescence. I'm 35. Wikipedia says "age provides only a rough marker of adolescence, and scholars have not agreed upon a precise definition", so if you want me to answer you accurately, you're going to have to provide more definition.

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