In short, what I am is an overpowering urge to be anything else.
If you want to do great things, here is how: Keep learning new subjects, keep finding new problems, talk to other talented minute, work hard, and enjoy yourself. Worrying about being "smart" is a lame excuse. The "smartest" man in the world is this guy:
You may not notice it, if you live in your own little isolated world.
Yes, you can be very intelligent, and incompetent; but no, you cannot be competent, able to get stuff done, and not intelligent.
People are successful for all different reasons, and the best anyone can do is put themselves out there and take advantage of opportunities. The minute you convince yourself that are not smart enough or too lazy or whatever, then you're just committing to failure—most likely because psychologically safe—which is stupid because no one has the recipe for success. Chase your dreams!
Certainly, they can be successful, but at what? Not likely anything great.
If you're like me and think that greatness is a few-times-in-a-century thing, then look at the people who achieve it, you'll be astonished. Some of my big-list people aren't people you'd expect at all. Bill Watterson, who was by all accounts keep-to-himself in school. Samuel Beckett, who entered college as a cricket fiend and slowly gravitated towards writing.
Nobody tries to be great. There's the limit. Few average-minded people will attempt anything extraordinary. Few smart people will, for that matter. And if you don't try, you don't do it.
That said, none of the great works I've seen in my life are things I've felt to be beyond me. Do you feel otherwise? Do you look at things and feel like you could not, at birth, have entered a path of life capable of producing those things?
The things I think are beyond me are beyond me by choice. I won't ever write virtuoso piano music, because I don't want to spend 20 years learning to play the piano well enough to write that stuff. But if I really, really wanted to, I could, given enough time.
The problem is that few people realize that. They see something complex and decide they could never do that, not realizing that the more you know the simpler it seems.
On second read, maybe that's not what you're saying, and I missunderstood. Forgive me--I haven't slept in 40 hours. :-)
What I said in the other branch of this thread is that you'll never know if you can be great unless you spend your life trying, and that so few people do try that almost all of the people who really strive for it end up succeeding, to at least some degree.
Have you read, or read of, any of these longitudinal studies?: http://www.hoagiesgifted.org/eric/faq/gt-long.html
The best known longitudinal studies were conducted by Louis Terman. In 1921 Terman and his colleagues began a longitudinal study of 1,528 gifted youth with IQs greater than 140 who were approximately 12 years old. Over a period of approximately 40 years, the researchers laid the groundwork for our understanding of giftedness and paved the way for efforts to identify and nurture giftedness in school. Terman died in 1959 but the study will continue until 2020, to encompass the entire lives of his original 1528 gifted youth. Results of the study have been published in several volumes
http://books.google.com/books?id=KQ4rLiAbHQQC&pg=PA41...
Intelligence is an important determinant of lifetime achivement. The classical study demonstrating this association was carried out by Lewis Terman and his colleagues. The study began around 1920 by intelligence testing a large number of children in California. From this sample they selected 1,528 (857 boys and 671 girls) with IQs of 135 and above. The minimum IQ of 135 represents approximately the top one percent of the population. The average IQ of the total sample was 151 (Terman, 1925).
These children were followed up thirty-five years after their initial identification when they were in their early forties. By this time, the authors of the follow-up concluded that "the superior child, with few exceptions, becomes the able adult, superior in nearly every respect to the generality" (Terman and Oden, 1959, p. 143).
Terman and his associated found that 70 percent of their sample had graduated from college; two fifths of the men and three fifths of the women had gone through graduate school. Of the men, 86 percent were in the two highest socioeconomic categories of professions and management. None of these individuals were in the lowest socioeconomic category of unskilled workers, as compared with 13 percent of the male population at that time. Seventy of the men were listed in American Men of Science, and three had been elected to the National Academy of Sciences. Thirty-one were listed in Who's Who in America. Between them, they had produced nearly 2000 scientific papers, some 60 books in the sciences, 230 patents, and 33 novels. Fourteen percent of the men did not fulfill the promise of their high IQs and failed to obtain socioeconomic class one or two occupations. These men were almost all impaired by psychiatric problems or lack of motivation.
Among the women, most of them became housewives and mothers and consequently did not have such visible achievements. Nevertheless, seven women were listed in American Men of Science and two in Who's Who in America. Between them they had produced 32 scholarly books, 5 novels, more than 200 scientific papers, and 5 patents.
The other possibility is that I am completely wrong...
Again and again, as a kid, I'd come across situations with bullies and go with the lie that the bullies were stupid and jealous. Then in high school, I'd realize that some of those bullies were very bright, clever, and talkative, and that my own actions towards other kids could be perceived as bullying, when to me it was more a good-natured hazing. I started to realize that even the stoner deadheads that I thought were entirely mindless were in fact intelligent people who knew they were ruining their lives and just didn't care.
From the people I've seen, the idea of exclusive intelligence is not as true as most people think it is. I've met people with higher IQs than me who seem less intelligent than I am, because they weren't raised in the way I was, and so went around laboriously working on schoolwork without ever once finding their own interests. For me, that was the height of unintelligence: doing things without asking why. On the other hand, I know one or two people I used to think were stupid going out and doing some pretty impressive things, not because they were particularly bright, but because they kept at something longer than other people did.
The line about genius being 99% perspiration keeps coming up in my mind during this conversation. Most people have good ideas: one statement I read says everybody has three million-dollar ideas every year. We've all thought of cool things and then seen somebody else making a fortune of that cool thing. The difference between that person and the rest of the people with that idea is that that person knew what to do with his idea. The idea itself wasn't uncommon, but its realization was.
Most people don't do great things because most people don't care to do great things. They never try once. Look at the startups you see here. Most of them are interesting, most of the coders have good things in mind. But how many would you call great? Even the really good coders rarely take on anything monumental.
Stop! Stop! Now I feel less special!
Most people are very bright and just don't care to apply themselves.
I think it's probably closer to the truth to say most people don't know how to apply themselves. Just about everyone starts off with dreams of doing something great. Most people, no matter how smart, either give up to quickly or (less often) spend their lives working on the wrong thing. Figuring out what to work on, and then not giving up, is way more important than raw intelligence.
Perhaps you've missed this because some people give up so quickly that it appears they never tried at all.
Nothing is immediate. Everything takes years and years of work. So whatever you want to do, start now! Begin learning. Learn everything. If you ever have a question, or wonder why something is the way it is, ask! You'll learn more, more, more, and eventually you'll find a question without an answer. That's when you begin work.
Forgive me for being immodest and talking about myself, but that's the story I know and I hope it helps. When I was really young, I was surrounded by books, and learned how to read when I was 2 or 3. I'd read quite a lot by middle school, and so when we were asked to write things, I wrote by copying a lot of the things I'd read from different sources. Some people called it a matter of intelligence, but it wasn't: I had just read a lot, and so had a wide palette to blatantly steal from. At the same time, I had computers around since I was an infant, but I'd never really learned about things like forums until I was about 13 - which from some stories is pretty damn old online! From there, though, I learned a lot about communities, and tried making my on site two years later. It was all a matter of timing: if I'd discovered forums at 19, my first site would have launched a lot later. As it happens, now I'm working on a site for writers, and I'm combining a lot of the things I've learned in the past to make it happen.
Passion's the real key, and from what you've written you've got that. Now you need to make that passion last. You can just go out and start trying things, but be warned in advance that they won't seem impressive at first. Each one gets a little bit better. And the more perspective you've got, the more this happens. Something you thought was perfect seems awful once you see things other people have made - I know this happens in both writing and web design, and I'm sure it must happen in every other field imaginable. It'll take time; nothing happens overnight. Not even for child prodigies: Mozart spent 6 years immersed in music before he became a prodigal violinist, after all, and he had a father who'd spent his life learning the craft that Mozart learned and then mastered.
Never let generalizations stop you from getting something done. Don't worry about intelligence. Worry about doing things, thinking things. Let other people compliment you after the fact, and if you get things done they will. Focus your effort on accomplishment and you'll be guaranteed to succeed.
You might be 50% better than your baseline in some areas, but if you can't learn to feed yourself then you are not going to become a dancer.
PS: I think it's best to look at it as leverage, if you need less sleep you can get more done, if you have a higher IQ you can get more done, but if you spend time watching TV then you're getting nothing done.
Are you just speaking hypothetically, or do you really think you are unable to be smart? Because if you do think that, chances are you're wrong.
> In short, what I am is an overpowering urge to be anything else.
Join the club.
"A man was sentenced to death, but the king wanted to give him a last chance. He asked the man to choose from one of the three knights that were there. One of the knights was the Knight of Life, and he always told the truth. The second Knight was the Knight of Death, and he always told lies. The third knight was the Knight of the Dungeon. He sometimes lied and sometimes told the truth. If the man chose the Knight of Death, he would be executed before sunset. If he chose the Knight of Life, he would be acquitted and set free right away. If he chose the Knight of the Dungeon, he would spend the rest of his life imprisoned in the Dungeon. The man was allowed to ask the three knights one question each. Thus, he asked the fat knight, "What is the name of this tall knight?" The reply was, "He is the Knight of Life." He asked the small knight, "What is the name of this tall knight?" The reply was, "He is the Knight of Death." Then he asked the tall knight, "Who are you?" "I am the Knight of the Dungeon" was the reply. After that, the man was able to correctly choose the Knight of Life, and was set free immediately. Who is the Knight of Life, and who are the other two knights?"
This puzzle seemed beautiful to me because it was so pure. If you can understand English, then you have the potential to solve it.
My friend solved it in about forty seconds, according to him. I solved it in over twenty minutes, and only after being wrong once.
I am an extremely slow programmer. I have had the good fortune of being around many productive programmers, so I know this to be the case. I used to make excuses as to why I was so. But in the end, it doesn't really matter; I am wrong 90% more often than I am correct, and I act stupidly most of the time. My memory is so horrible that I routinely forget the start of the sentences I am writing. I often re-read what I write (be it English or C++) over ten times before I am satisfied it means what I meant. My mathematical skills are a wash. (I still don't even understand the meaning and utility of 'e', and not for lack of trying.) My mind's eye is blind; I find it almost impossible to imagine what a given figure should look like, if I am about to draw it, so something such as Paul's painting http://bookshop.gfu.net/AxCMSTemplates_GFU/pics/products/013... seems nothing short of magic. My hand-eye coordination is decent, but not great. My reflexes are decent, but not great. So in summary, I feel I am decent, but not great; but I have an overwhelming appetite to be great.
I don't want to give up on becoming a genius, and I don't want to believe that I cannot become one just because I wasn't born one.
If the second guy is lying, that means we know the two liars and the third must be Life. But he says he isn't. Therefore, the second knight is Life, the third is Dungeon, and the first is Death.
But solving a puzzle isn't genius. It's logic. Some people spend much more time with logic than others: programmers have lots of games like these. The Blue Eyes puzzle comes to mind as a particularly hard one. Similarly, the more people program, the more they learn mental shortcuts that let them be more productive. Time fixes everything, and the best attribute to fix things is passion. You've got that. You just need to make sure to unfailingly look for whatever your goal is, and to learn everything you need to pursue it. Remember: there's more to building something than programming.
Let me try to prove this from a different direction. You've probably heard of Henry Molaison, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HM_(patient) ... His hippocampus was surgically removed, rendering him unable to form new memories. Do you truly believe it would have been possible for him to build Quake 3 just because he was overwhelmingly passionate about doing so?
So I solved that puzzle quick-ish. But then, as a kid I played logic games to pass time. Other kids would play sports, and I'd pore through books of puzzles and solve them. So suddenly I'm able to do that. But it means that now, as a freshman at the gym, I'm operating as a near-pathetic level. For Christmas I got two 30-pound weights because that's a level that's easy for bench and hard for curls. But compared to my roommate? That's nothing. He does 50s for light workout. It's because he's spent much more time doing that than me.
There are always impediments. The best trick is to figure out how best to work around them and do what you want anyway. Figure out where you best fit in to the process of creation. Look at the top Apple team. Steve Jobs and Tim Cook and Jony Ive - the three I know of best - are quite different people. Jobs is hotheaded. Cook is known for incredible stamina but he's not a design guy. Ive is all design, nothing else. They're very different people who excel at doing a few things very well, and they work together to create their brilliant products.
However, that rarely matters as much as it's emphasized. The more you focus on something, the more brilliant your end results will seem.
Next question: how do you determine whether you're born with it? At what point does your demonstrated ineptitude force you to admit that you are incapable of realizing your goals?
("you" doesn't refer to you specifically, obviously. I just talk in the active voice.)
However, if you give up, you'll never know if you could have been. The struggle is what makes it so hard, but it's what makes it worth it in the end.
Not all of the YC startups that failed have failed just because the founders stopped working on them, I'd imagine. At what point should you let failure overwhelm you?
I'd bet that most of the failing YC founders learned important lessons from their failures. Nobody succeeds every time.
The problem is, it is not at all a foregone conclusion that you will become one of the greats just because you throw most of your life at it. Should a retard give up on his life's goals sooner, later, or ever?
Not to mention: as you go for it, you find better and better people along the way.
It's hard not to be devilishly jealous of their towering talent, though. Also, I'd imagine it would be extremely hard to earn their respect, so it they would be hard or impossible to find, or to keep.
You bring up a really interesting point. To me, doing the work myself matters more than realizing the vision. I never knew that about myself before, so thank you.
How disciplined are you? Everyone values genius, welcome to the crowd. It is a convenient excuse to obsess on others' talent as if genes and childhood were all that separated you from them. You appear to be focusing too much on outcome rather than on the hard work necessary to achieve it. Skills always look natural from the outside! But ask the honest, reflective people you admire and they'll tell you: they worked their butts off on fundamentals. Psst: fundamentals are open to you too.
Don't obsess over shortcuts. I would love to see you explain to a person with no arms how you'd gladly cut yours off for slightly better gray matter.
Practice with intense effort. If forum composition and wordsmithing is a challenge, discipline your technique by journaling stream-of-consciousness. To improve your memory treat it like a muscle: high reps, low weight at first.
How is your health? Do you exercise, eat right, avoid alcohol, have a positive attitude and sleep well? These are simple but powerful levers.
Talent is overrated. Upgrade your attitude not your physical brain, silly. :)
I'm not really sure that intelligence matters as much as people think it does. K.A. Ericsson is a psychologist who studies expert performance, and he's clearly shown that a high iq is not required to become an expert in something. What is required is 1000's of hours of deliberate practice. So basically when you see overnight successes, you're really missing the hard work that got them there. Everyone needs to put in the effort.
And besides research is coming out that really supports the idea that intelligence can be raised. There is some evidence that practicing the Dual-n-back test will raise your fluid iq. And the test isn't domain specific. http://cognitivefun.net/test/5 is a good site for the test.The community there is also really good.
My brain basically broke it down like this: 1. Anyone saying someone else is the knight of life must be either the dungeon or the death. i. If the person he said is the knight of life, calls himself the knight of life then things get complicated... ii. Luckily the person that was called the knight of life, in fact called himself dungeon, which means that neither could be the knight of life. 2. Since the knight of life is the small, believe what he says. The tall = death. 3. This leaves only the Fat to be paired with the dungeon.
Fun puzzle.
Which one is the best programming candidate? :)
fat: "tall is Life"
small: "tall is Death"
tall: "tall is Dungeon"
Now, one of the other two must be Life (because tall isn't), and so one of them must be telling the truth about tall. He's called Death and Life, so he must be one of them. We know he can't be Life, so tall is definitely Death.
Whoever called him Death was telling the truth, and must be Life. Only small called him Death, so small is Life. (edit I should have said: Life must be telling the truth about him, so if only one of them does that, that one is Life).
And the remaining guy - fat - must be the remaining knight - Dungeon. Dungeon can lie or truth, so it doesn't matter what he said (in fact, he was lying: he said tall was Life, when tall was Death). It only mattered what he said so we could distinguish between him and small.
fat is Dungeon
small is Life
tall is Death
Not much finesse in that (possible) solution to your problem, but it sounds like you don't have many options.
I don't think Methylphenidate is an amphetamine. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ritalin