Comment by gopalv | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gopalv | Hacker News Reader

I feel for this guy - people can't understand that what he wants is "Life his way" and not to be a martyr to society burning his happiness to solve up equations. The greater good and so forth.

But there is a fundamental angle that I find odd about people's perception of intelligence. People expect intelligence to be always found alongside ambition.

When I watched "Limitless", it did hit me in an odd way. If I suddenly could out-think 99% of humanity, I wouldn't be running for president or becoming a stock trader profiting off the market. Actually, I don't know because I'm not that intelligent - but is that kind of ambition pasted over by Hollywood on top of intelligence?

In comparison, everything from Thor, Dark Knight, Iron Man and even the new Wall Street movie was about clean power - hell, even Inception has got the guy with the windmills. That I felt like was an ambition that could occur with genius (i.e "First thing you do, is find the biggest problem on your planet and beat it").

But government official or company executive?

That feels odd.

> People expect intelligence to be always found alongside ambition.

The amusing thing is, ambition is seen as more "inherent" than intelligence--part of your personality, rather than just a skill--and yet, improving general intelligence (by more than 5-10 IQ points) is nearly impossible, while improving ambition just requires taking some dopamine agonists.

I would think it would be rational, given extremely high intelligence, to self-modify toward larger ambitions. I mean, if the ambitions you have are basically cached thoughts that stick around due mostly to inertia, from the limits you were unable to surmount while you were younger and had fewer resources... then why not challenge them? Ask yourself what you'd truly want, if you had every tool available? In fact, why not ask that now?

Of course, the answer you arrive at, after this self-awareness comes, can still be an ambition that's limited in scope. But it'll be limited by choice by your current self, rather than imposed on you by your limited past self.

You're probably saying that as an ambitious man -- but happiness is not necessarily linked to "ambitious success". In fact, the opposite is likely -- if you're highly intelligent and have low ambition, it's very likely you will achieve whatever you're aiming for and lead a happy life.

I say that as an ambitious person (I can't really understand "safe" people motivations either) - it's outside our capability to understand by ourselves a completely orthogonal mindset because you basically can't really simulate it to reach conclusions.

One of the people I admire most is Bill Murray. Every once in a while, when he's bored, he'll check his answering machine for offered acting gigs. The rest of the time, he does whatever he feels like, has more than enough money to get by day-to-day.

What does he feel like doing? Well, in one stint he studied Philosophy and watched movies at the Cinémathèque Française and generally milled about in Paris (I can think of worse ways to spend 4 years). He also plays golf, writes a bit, and crashes parties.

If I was able to use my intellect to get a huge paycheck virtually on demand, I'd probably live a similar life-style.

I am not sure why you feel it is rational to modify towards larger ambitions - don't you think that is that a reflection of your own values rather than an inherent truth?

I would possibly say that it is rational to modify towards having your own set of goals, but whether those goals are ambitious or not I think depends on what you value in life? As in - I think the "intelligence" part probably allows you to realise that it is possible to have many different types of goal in life and that working towards a set of goals that work for you personally is important, but that those goals can be defined by what you yourself value.

The most intelligent guy I know wants to have a family, work on somewhat interesting problems (in chemistry if it matters) but not work huge amount of hours, so he has set himself up to have a regular consulting gig that he can do from anywhere and still focus on spending time with his family.

Well, I was assuming that with greater intelligence comes a greater capacity for empathy with less-similar others (e.g. other races, sexes, classes, species), as seems to be on average the case.

Thus, I'd expect an extremely intelligent, rational person to be very concerned for the future welfare of humanity and earth-borne life in general... and then all the goals that come from that would just happen to be extremely ambitious ones.

It's entirely possible that on reflection, my ambitions should be smaller rather than larger, or should simply take on some scope entirely other to the cultural cached thoughts about ambition.

And by "it's entirely possible", I mean "speaking from experience". Our culture largely just caches the ambitions that keep capitalism running, not the ones people would actually find it satisfying to achieve.

As an Asian, I can say with some amount of certainty that government official or company executive is viewed by the culture as 'successful'. All the parents I know want their kids to end up in a few industries: medicine, finance (accounting!), and law. It's an Asian thing. If similarities could be drawn, working in these industries in Asia would be comparable to living the American dream in the US.

It's truly a shame that the Korean news pan and label him as a 'failure'. It can only suggest what kind of a culture they have (as well as the majority of Asians). The man is spot on -- he is living a happy life as defined by himself, not anyone else.

Finally, you can argue whether IQ is a suitable metric or not, whether whatever metric should be considered, but the more important question is why is he being labelled as a failure for not turning out the way society expects of a person with high IQ?

But there is a fundamental angle that I find odd about people's perception of intelligence. People expect intelligence to be always found alongside ambition.

In many cases these don't go side by side. People with higher intelligence don't have to work hard in school, and skate by. The people who work hard their entire life later on appear to be smarter.

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