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Comment by jjice | Hacker News Reader

This story is part of the reason I'd never want to know about where I land intelligence wise compared to other people. No matter the outcome, I don't think it could be good. I it's below average, I'll feel limited. If it's above average, I'll have added pressure of self expectations and maybe arrogance. That's not the case for everyone, but I'm happy where I am currently.

Back to the story - the use of grammar and spelling that progress throughout the story is so simple, but such a great way to portray his progress aside from the content of the story.

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I discovered that intelligence is like height. It helps with the ability to reach but effort matters more. I was lazy for twenty years and put effort behind the wrong energy.

If I understood risk, consistent effort, and emotions better, I would have retired in my mid twenties.

What would you have needed to understand about risk and emotions to have retired in your mid twenties?

If i retired in my mid twenties I think I would still hate myself. Knowledge of algorithms doesn't feel like labor to me it still feels like a curse. I'm pretty braindead and hardly self-sufficient now but I'm glad I never took any of the big payouts I had presented to me in my youth. I still don't know what I would do with myself if I had any significant amount of money that wasn't earned off labor but instead me selling my stake in companies / projects / what-have-you.

Performing formalized risk assessments can provide you with insights about a risk you're thinking about taking. I think it helped me take the right risks and leave the workforce early.

Emotionally? Just* ignore them and pursue the thing that pays you the most. It's boring and it's unhealthy and it's hard and it's not romantic.

I thought buying bitcoin to pay work off related malware infections was "too expensive" at $300 when in reality I could have purchased several thousand bitcoin, had my client reimburse me, while keeping a chunk for myself because of course I would have.

also, the idea of being not being able to get hired or fired is really a silly concern as I always did my job well and did not want to leave my "safe" job.

Unfortunately my experience disagrees. Past a certain threshold, effort does indeed matter more, but most people don't meet that threshold.

If you're here, then there's a good chance you're in a social bubble where you rarely interact with people below that threshold.

I thought it's the inverse. There is a point where effort no longer matters because of talent, but people are rarely even close to that. So mostly people are defined by their effort.

I believe you are right in your hesitancy. I was administered an IQ test as part of the diagnostic process for another medical condition. To be honest, I wish I was never shown the results. Now, to be be fair, I did kind of intentionally dodge a few questions and did get in a slight argument with the proctor over one of the sections. But I doubt either one of those actions had much of an impact on the grand total of my score. I did end up receiving a medical diagnosis, and was informed that my IQ is not an accurate assessment of my intelligence due to the test not being calibrated for people with my disability. Still, seeing that that I had 2.5 SD between some scores did kind of explain some things about my past.

Of course, IQ is highly debated and all that. I think there is some merit to IQ, and I also think intelligence is far more complex than what can be measured on a test. Still, I wish I never knew my score because it forever lives in the back of my mind rent free when applying for jobs, trying to learn new skills, etc.. I've always had low self-esteem, so perhaps it a matter of personality when it comes to these things.

> “Alpha children wear grey. They work much harder than we do, because they're so frightfully clever. I'm awfully glad I'm a Beta, because I don't work so hard. And then we are much better than the Gammas and Deltas. Gammas are stupid. They all wear green, and Delta children wear khaki. Oh no, I don't want to play with Delta children. And Epsilons are still worse. They're too stupid to be able to read or write. Besides they wear black, which is such a beastly color. I'm so glad I'm a Beta.” ― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

I haven't read Brave New World, but this immediately reminded me of The Gods Themselves with Rationals, Emotionals and Patentals.

The only IQ score I’d be comfortable knowing for myself is it it’s 100. Perfectly average straight down the middle. I want to feel like my fate isn’t enhanced or hindered by my intelligence

How is that possible to not know? Have you never worked on a team?

I mean, there is a difference between an informed estimate and knowing for sure. Maybe that person you always work with is not the brightest programmer, but maybe they don't care about it as much as you. People can demonstrate intelligence is many different ways.

Plus, if they doesn't want to know, why does it matter? It's their life to live in ignorance. For this specific topic, I don't see any harm in leaving your actual IQ number a mystery for the cosmos.

I don't know how they would know for sure. The result of a test? I'm sure it differs among domains in any case.

As an 1980's "gifted" kid, believe me, they made sure you knew. IQ tests in 3rd grade, "enrichment" classes 3x a week, taking the SAT in 7th grade for some special program.

Later in life, most of these gifted kids were total disappointments. I know I am.

I was a 1990's "gifted" kid and would later come to appreciate the enrichment classes as an opportunity to interact with other kids who wouldn't make fun of me for knowing things and being able to figure things out fast. In the "normal" track you have to learn to hide all of that quickly or you get picked on. Once a week I could experience being normal.

If the expectation was that I would end up saving the world or something then sure I'm a disappointment, but I like to think I've gotten pretty far considering where I started.

I definitely enjoyed the enrichment classes. I didn't feel challenged again for years, until AP classes later in high school.

Oh, don't get me wrong, I was a "gifted" kid too. Turning 30 this year. I was in advanced classes from around 4th or 5th grade when they started separating us (suburban Texas) and then went to a special high school where I graduated with an associates degree and my high school diploma. Not trying to brag, just to relate and say I've been there.

I wouldn't say I was a disappointment, but I certainly didn't go as far as even the "smart" kids from my own graduating class. I know many of them are "real" engineers working for companies we all know and doing important work in hardware, architecture, civil projects, and aerospace. I feel dumb compared to them.

At the same time, I have a successful career in software, no debt, happily married for almost 10 years, moved to a different continent, etc etc. Sure, am I "smarter" than the average Joe? I guess, but knowing that information doesn't change anything about my life. If I took a real IQ test, I think I would also feel some sort of disappointment or pressure to live up to expectations or better myself in some way.

Idk; I guess that's why I made my original comment. The utility of knowing your IQ is "above average" is so useless to me, I'm not sure why anyone would want to knowingly saddle themselves with that knowledge. Be free, be happy, and be yourself.

One of the major issues is that IQ has basically no cardinality to my understanding. We can all agree that 105 score is "smarter" than a 100, but we cannot discern to what degree.

I've read some conjectures that IQ is quite accurate below average, but seems to fall apart rather quickly the further one starts looking at scores above 100. But who knows? I'm just some random dude with Internet access.

There are likely diminishing returns, depending on what you do in life, career, etc. Even the mythical 10x engineer probably doesn't need a 160 IQ. ;)

It reminds me of the Lewis Terman study. Terman was a psychologist and intelligence research that studied the lives some n > 5000 "gifted" children over the course of his entire life (and their entire lives too). In fact, the study is still going on to my knowledge.

Anyway, of the all the gifted children studied, many of them went to be fairly accomplished but never became anything noteworthy -- doctors, lawyers, teachers, researchers, etc..

However, two of the children that didn't meet the cut for the study due to not having a high enough IQ actually went on to win a Nobel Peace Prize separately in separate fields. Those two individuals were Luis Alvarez and William Shockley.

Just because you think you're the smartest person in the room doesn't make it true.

While not the literal morale of the story of Flowers for Algernon, it's one of the big themes, i.e. your beliefs and understanding of your intelligence and the world around you change drastically with your "actual" intelligence.

> Just because you think you're the smartest person in the room doesn't make it true.

According to one (or more) of the annual Stack Overflow Developer Surveys, didn't something like over 90% of developers think they were better than the average developer?

My point is that I agree with you. What one thinks isn't always the reality.

Perception is just a horrible thing.

The fact that reality is WILDLY different for two people simply based on how they perceived it is exhausting.

Also it actually sums up why I hate managing people. Everyone is the star of their own show, and managing them is about showing them all the other actors. It's exhausting.

Having a clear picture where you fall with regards to a broad population is indeed very hard, particularly if we consider all the different dimensions of intelligence: mathematical ability? musicality? problem solving? negotiation? emotional intelligence? planning ability? lateral thinking?.

At best, by working in a team all you can achieve is to (rightly or wrongly) estimate your level within the team itself, but only with regards to the type of intelligence which is most used in the given context. And, given that the team members have most likely been selected for or were motivated to join because of their relevant abilities, the team is subject to selection bias.

As a result, on average, you are most likely to be very close to the perceived "average" intelligence of the teams to which you belong. Hence why impostor syndrome is so common in highly skilled professions — as a milder version of the Peter principle [0], people tend to climb to the level where their skills are average.

It is only when comparing the intelligence (or other abilities) of team members that are not relevant to their task, usually when socialising in another context, that you may become aware of broad differences and maybe get a better idea of where you fall in that specific dimension.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle

I can estimate people’s skill levels within different areas, but only get a very rough estimate of their general intelligence.

Whenever I work with someone more insightful and effective than me, I'm compelled to do better and get closer to their level. I've never had the thought that they must be more intrinsically intelligent.

Maybe try to seek out that experience then? I think its a little dangerous to go through life not understanding that there are levels of intrinsic intelligence. It should be fairly obvious. And it applies to everyone, you can read quotes of old physics nobel laureates that speak about Von Neumann as if he was not a human.

The take away should be that, yes some people are intrinsically smarter, but that is a crappy system to base self worth off of, because then only one person in the world gets to be happy.

Dangerous? Why would it be dangerous? If anything, believing you are less intelligent than someone more accomplished than you might incentivize you to be complacent and stay at your current level of development, because "I'll never be as smart as them."

It's also worth pushing back against the notion of a linear intelligence scale to begin with. There are many kinds of intelligence, some of which are not easy to measure.

This is precisely why I will never take an IQ test.

Frankly, everyone's familiar with the Dunning-Kruger effect, but the lack of intelligence in this story reminds me of Roog by Philip K. Dick. It's about a dog's paranoia regarding the local garbage men. He tries to warn his "guardian," but all he can say is: Roog.

of course, it is not actually paranoia - the garbage men really are evil non-human beings!

Phil Dick never outright states that the dog in "Roog" is wrong. That's the most likely interpretation, but given this is a PKD story, not the only one!

This just sounds like Courage the Cowardly Dog lol

Everyone thinks they are familiar with the Dunning Kruger effect. Probably 95% of people get it wrong.

[I am not a psychologist, but here is my summary of how I think the real effect works...

Let's say we have a skill we can be assessed on a scale of 1-10. 1 is worst, 10 is best.

The popular perception of the Dunning Kruger effect is that people lower on the scale, say 2 or 3, rate themselves highly - say 7 or 8. And people who are higher - say a 7 or 8 - rate themselves more modestly - say a 5 or 6. i.e. people who are less skilled rate themselves as being better performers than people who are better.

The actual effect is a lot weaker, and a kind of reversion to the mean. If you are a 2 or 3 you may rate yourself a 4 or a 5. If you are a 7 or an 8 you may rate yourself as only a 6 or a 7. Less skilled people are well aware that they are less skilled, but may underestimate the degree of the effect.]

> Everyone thinks they are familiar with the Dunning Kruger effect. Probably 95% of people get it wrong.

The Dunning Kruger effect effect, eh?

You can't call out a percentage of people you plucked from thin air on not understanding something, then qualify your understanding as your own interpretation.

Are you aware that your whole post just said "Nobody understands the version of this thing in my head?" This us a studied thing. You need sources and conclusions drawn from them, not your own speculation (not that it was horribly off the mark, but come on, man)

Sure they can, it's called a joke.

Oh my god.

I'll see myself out.

Fair point - I just didn't want to make a post saying '95% of people get this wrong, but I'm not going to tell you how!' - the message is presenting, in my own simplified form, what I understand is the popular understanding of Dunning Kurger, versus how I understand the effect manifested in the study.

Of course my understanding is also based on some probably misremembered media, combined with a five minute refresher on the Wikipedia page, so it may be equally erronious. Please do you own research.

I await your peer-reviewed study on the Journal of Redditometrics and Hacker Newsodynamics on the relative frequency of people misusing the Dunning Kruger effect. In the meantime, I think I'll stick with my own perception of people misusing the result routinely to mean that stupid people think they're geniuses, because that's all I ever see myself.

But he's correct. The original paper demonstrated an effect that has been widely miscommunicated and misinterpreted.

The exact percentage of people getting it wrong was plucked out of the air, but that's not the important part of his comment.

>"Everyone thinks they are familiar with the Dunning Kruger effect. Probably 95% of people get it wrong."

How sublimely apropos!

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