If you point out problems coming, they act like you’re the one causing it. People hate prevention
I say as little as possible to whoever gets it like a wave coming and help each other brace for it. Everyone else is all”how’d this happen?!”
Omg THANK YOU for saying the thing I have never been able to put into words! I have tried to be logical in preventing future problems, and idiots will think it's some kinda witchcraft because I'm able to notice patterns, or learn from mistakes. Then I get blamed for something totally out of my control. It's always infuriated me.
Maybe we just need to give smart people more training in sounding confident and authoritative.
People love deferring to people who *sound* smart. One thing about people who are knowledgeable about something is that they tend to hedge what they say more often than people who merely *think* they are knowledgeable, because they know enough to know that they don't have perfect, certain knowledge about anything. But grifters speak in 100% guarantees.
Like, you have an epidemiologist or immunologist take the stage and say "well, according to what we know, it's possible that there may be…"
Then you have some podcaster say "no, it's ABSOLUTELY, the case that there's NO WAY that blah blah blah." And people go "this podcaster sounds like he knows what he's talking about" even though the actual scientist is much closer to the truth.
Very typical in my line of work. I call it the Cassandra syndrome. Cassandra was cursed to know everything and having no one believe her. A lot of it is in delivery of course but if I state with confidence a certain course of action is risky as it has a 5% chance of failure people think it is over-cautious. Then the aggressive people do it anyway, and of course 19/20 nothing bad happens. "See, we told you it is OK!" Sigh.
Yep. I’m a software engineer and my entire career has been watching people cut corners and warning them what could happen. Of course when exactly what you said would go wrong does go wrong, you can’t point it out because no one likes being told “I told you so”. So you just pick up the pieces and carry on watching everyone make avoidable mistakes.
That's why you get in writing your idea and then have them override and micromanage into "nah we r gonna do it this way." Then when it fails you have the satisfaction of having in writing their determination to create failure/chaos.
I’ve had to do this repeatedly and while it protected my job when they tried to blame their bad outcomes on me, it also just made them angrier.
This is good advice don’t get me wrong, but people should watch their back if they have to use it. Incompetent managers do not like it when they try and fail to pin bad decisions on their staff. I was treated even worse after they looked foolish in front of senior management.
I was once on a software selection committee. Some vendor showed us a product with a flashy interface that wowed everyone but me. I pointed out that their approach to data management was fundamentally different than ours and I saw no way that you could migrate our existing data and make the kind of connections we needed to make. It seemed so obvious to me. The head of IT then smugly told me (in front of EVERYONE) that since I wasn't in IT, I didn't know what I was talking about and I should leave it to the experts. In the end I was the lone vote against the flashy software.
A year later, IT still couldn't migrate the data, everyone still had to enter the data twice (both into the old program and the new one), and the CEO gave the IT manager a deadline to get it done or she was fired. I never found out what happened; I was long gone by then.
What gets me is when people don't understand the point of a hypothetical. I'm no genius but it doesn't take one to understand how a hypothetical situation could apply to an argument.
The worst thing is you just learn to prepare yourself for the shitstorm afterwards, and then they get angry that you arent as bad off as they are because that means you could have helped them.
But...if you try and help them, then it goes back to your first line.
> If you point out problems coming, they act like you’re the one causing it.
"You need to quit talking about it. You're speaking it into existence."
... Sooo many times I've heard that.
Or you are a Debbie/Daniel downer.
I was always treated like that when the higher ups at work presented a “new and improved” program.
When I would ask the “what if” questions, their answers would be hostile.
I just like to think things through and cross all of “T’s” and dot all of the “i’s”.
I finally left that department and have never looked back.
Except in America, where they've been manipulated into being mad at whatever the rich and influential want them to be mad at. Immigrants, gay people, Internet towers, Barack Obama's fashion sense, they hate so much it's impossible to imagine them happy
Dog, that’s not unique to America. Have you seen whats going on in Europe and South America right now? Fascists are successfully stoking hate all over the globe
I hear you somebody needs to do a parody of the song Love is a drug but instead it's hate is a drug. God knows there's enough material out there to make it interesting.
Ohhh man, so much this. The fact that, as a species, we are functional middle schoolers. At all walks of life, up to world leaders: it's like the opposite of Ratatouille "a good chef can come from anywhere".
There is jack all that can be done about that, and history is written by people who, at best, read half of it. We can't achieve wisdom simply because we have to reset everything with the next generations.
We try to sabotage for success but really, the monkeys are running the zoo here.
↑ So much this ↑
The only history Putin knows is what maps looked like during the peak of the Russian Empire. He fights pointless wars out of an ignorant sense of nostalgia, and is willing to destroy his own country in an attempt to "Make Russia Great Again."
Problem of today’s society is that it is the loudest dumb that dictates the way. If everyone just ignores the dumb in end they drag everyone with them because they make choices for everyone’s behalf.
The trick I've learned (although I admittedly don't always follow my own advice) is the two statement rule.
If you read/hear something that makes you think "that's a factually incorrect statement, and I actually have the knowledge to address it, so I should since it's important to correct the record", that's fine and you can do so if you want to.
If they push back and it's ostensibly because of a misunderstanding, then clarify the miscommunication because sometimes what you think ought to be coherent isn't always. Everyone's basis for how they parse information is different.
If that doesn't work, then that's it. Your goal was to provide information and you did. Leading a horse to water is the extent of your obligations.
Reminds me of one of my favorite exchanges from the show 'Briscoe County, Jr.":
Brisco County Jr.: You know something Bowler, this trip has taught me something.
Lord Bowler: What's that?
Brisco County Jr.: The more I learn, the less I know.
Lord Bowler: Yeah, I hear you Brisco and I understand what you mean.
Brisco County Jr.: You do?
Lord Bowler: Yeah, and at the rate we're learnin' things, we won't know nuthin' in no time.
It does matter who you know, but not in the way most people mean. If you know good people, good friends, good family, that's what you need. Most people mean "who you know" in terms of success, money, jobs.
i had a situation where the people I knew immediately all knew the right people who knew the right people, and in some way they all knew of each other or had a connection somehow, and I was able to get a second chance in life.
That was truly the moment I realized it really can be “who you know”
Have you ever seen those digital art pictures where you can zoom in constantly and there’s pictures within pictures within pictures and it keeps going?
That’s how I explain history to people. The more you learn history the more you realize you’re just scratching the surface. It can always go deeper.
That's the boat I'm in. I'm not really smart, but I am smart enough to realize how dumb I am, which I think makes me above average intelligence, but really, it all just fuels my depression.
That’s why measuring “intelligence” with tests is stupid. Someone may be quick on math and spatial skills, but they may be completely unable to speak, connect with people, deliver a joke, write, act, sing, compose, dance, paint, etc, where those things may be effortless for other “average” people. Steven Hawking may have been a genius at physics, but he couldn’t dance for shit.
As a psychologist, something that bothers me is the focus on "full scale IQ" - A singular score does not represent someone's intelligence unless all domains of intelligence are close to even.
On an intelligence test, such as the WAIS or RIAS, intelligence is measured in multiple domains to address your concerns. Even if the following report states that the FSIQ isn't meaningful, that's all anyone looks for in the general public.
Intelligence is only a small fraction of success. Without hard work, a good bit of luck, and usually some good connections intelligence doesn't amount to much of anything.
Definitely this. There’s a misconception that if someone is really smart, they’ll have a wonderful career with lots of money and while that can be true, many are not any more successful than the average person. I’d argue that having terrific people skills can get you much farther in life.
For every Michael Burry running a hedge fund with complete autonomy ***despite*** his awkward social skills, there are 1000 other smart but awkward people stuck in monotonous jobs they hate.
I think Stephen Jay Gould said something to the effect of wondering how many actual geniuses died as slaves out in cotton fields because they had no chance of successfully applying that high intelligence.
Calvin Coolidge - “Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts.
Yes. All the smarts I was blessed with would be nothing without the drive and charisma to *work* *very hard* to turn it into a success. In school - from enriched primary through my engineering degree - I have met dozens of people as smart or smarter than me who have not really gotten anywhere.
When everything is easy as a young child, success without effort is taken for granted. Then your fish bowl is poured into a big tank when you get to college/uni, then that tank into the ocean when you graduate, and if your habits are still based on the big fish you were at 10 years old, good fucking luck.
Also all the anxiety and depression alluded to other posters here is very real and doesn't help.
Sometimes I wish to be stupid again just to feel that ignorant bliss. Now it's like you can't afford this, you can't eat that, try this healthy thing that taste like crap but the wonder it can do to your body after you eat it for a few months
I won't go calling myself smart, but life is much more anxiety inducing when you can't go around ignoring humanity's problems or imagining that they have simple solutions.
We ain't gonna survive this round, folks. Human nature all but guarantees it. Here's to the rats and roaches; may they make a better go of it.
Yep. Depressed and anxious. Well technically anxious and then depression comes in because of being anxious most of the time.
Therapy and meds help but that doesn't solve the underlying problems - especially with ADHD.
I’ll add that everyone wants a piece of you too. You can’t make friends because you don’t know who is using you for your talents, and who actually cares about you as a person. And god forbid you should ever make a mistake, or even worse, not know some obscure fact about someone’s great grandmother from 1723. Queue the incessant “oh, you’re not as smart as you think you are.”
Bitch, I never said I was smart. YOU said I was smart. After 40-odd years of competing against the best and brightest, I am in fact aware of how fucking stupid I am and how many people are much more talented than I.
"exponentially higher" is a bit of a strange phrase. It's just "much higher". Exponential comes into play when there's growth. The nature of the growth can be exponential.
>highly gifted
You mean highly pressured? These are not the same thing. “Gifted children” are labeled by other people, then expectations grow till they implode.
I was referring to pg (profoundly gifted) kids. The universe dealt us a pg kid. Her neuropsychologist warned us that the outliers like her had an exponentially higher drop-out and suicide rate. As evidenced by other comments here, the depression factor is very real. Even in kids.
Knowing this, what do you do differently with her?
I assume I'd want to avoid any pressure on her to 'succeed' or live up to anyone's expectations of her and to let her know that if she drops out or changes her mind that's okay, that kind of thing and / or anything else?
As a former "gifted kid" myself, I think I would have done better if adults had complimented me on how hard I worked on something, rather than just assumed it was easy for me because of my intellect. I never really learned a work ethic until I got to college because I was always skating by and being told I was brilliant, and then college hit me like a ton of bricks.
I was also gifted, in top sets, went to various programs, and similarly also didn’t learn a good work ethic because things were easy. I remember being complimented a fair bit, and to be honest I don’t think it helped, I think it just boosted ego. Maybe even reinforced the belief that I could do well without really trying.
The thing that would have been best, in my opinion, would have been actually challenging me consistently. My parents weren’t well off enough to send me to a private school, so it was just whatever the public education system could offer.
Creating more situations where a decent work ethic is needed, without applying too much pressure to succeed would be the best combination. Mental and emotional support becomes the biggest challenge once the academic side is mastered.
Mostly we just made sure other people stayed out of her way while making it clear that her happiness was our #1 priority. The first thing we did was put a full stop to all cognitive testing. My daughter is an ‘extreme’ outlier, so even well-intending people started treating her like a side show by dwelling on test scores and percentiles. Percentiles mean absolutely nothing in the grand scheme of things. She’s just a kid and a human being who wants to be happy without her value being tied to a percentile. We made it clear that there is no such thing as ‘failure’, just changes in direction.
She’s still a teen, so I don’t think I’m in a position yet to say what we’d do differently. She’s a degreed physicist now pursuing her PhD in a top program. She seems to have found her place... but I still worry every day.
No pressure is equally bad, I'd say. Since without any healthy pressure, it's so easy to succumb to apathy, ennui and eventually depression (which can be worsened if they also know they're gifted)
Speaking as someone that was considered the same, but also with ASD. What helps is early on teaching them the 'fun' of learning, 'working' (personal projects, stimulating activities) and building 'experiences'
And the important is not to pressure them that they 'have' to succeed, but that they have to enjoy and find something they're passionate and can willingly go into it for the fun of it
If I had no pressure, and wasnt forced (at first) to 'try' everything (but never pressure to stick it out if I didnt feel it, even if I was rly good at it), which I experienced at work it, I ended up attempting suicide because it all felt so pointless
Of the kids I went to high school with, the most successful adults were bright kids with relaxed parents. The ones whose parents told them "as long as you get good grades and stay out of trouble, you can do what you want" are now designing stuff for Boeing/Lockheed, curing cancer, or are executives at large corps. They all are happily married with kids of their own, interesting hobbies, and involved in their communities.
The ones who were pressured are either dead, barely functioning addicts, or far left/right political activists
I really, really hope this is true because that is how we decided to handle our pg kid. We just ran interference while she set her course. So far so good.
As someone who tested gifted (99th percentile) I definitely preferred my relaxed father who just wanted me to be happy than my neurotic mother who demanded that I become a doctor.
I am not a doctor.
Edit: Just wanted to make clear that I did not test profoundly gifted. Just regular gifted. I don't know even know how people above the 99.9% make it. It took me decades to figure out how to just hang with people.
Opposite parents for me. Cripplingly depressed since 19. Suicidal since 25. Got into a fight with my dad in 2020 where he tried to kill me with a pipe. We don’t talk anymore.
One of the most commonly heard refrains from him was “I thought you were supposed to be the smart one” and “where did the other 3/5/7/whatever percent go?”
I see you know my parents. They must've gotten the same training.
Mine wanted to be a lawyer.
Um, Mom? People bully me and beat me up already. You want me to have them.also hate me as an adult?
the last sentence is an interesting one. Remember when I was looking into Addiction for cures, etc, one of the big recommendations was to replace the addiction with something else. Religion was a big one and the reason why you see some former drug addicts as the ones who are the most "born again" if you will.
I wonder if political activism falls into the same category.
Outside of labels, which is valid, the more you ask “what if,” the more anxiety and depression that follows. When you have a brain that’s not fully developed, it can be difficult to emotionally handle the higher level thoughts. The world can be cruel, unfair, and has evil. That’s a lot for a 12 year old to process.
I was this kid. Apparently I was "gifted". And I am "smart". But have a terrible time regulating my emotions, wasn't liked socially until late high-school, didn't grow up with many friends. I have ADHD and do very poorly in standardized education.
I was so depressed as a youngin. And I felt immense pressure because I always felt like a failure, which made me feel even worse because I was reminded how "smart" I was. And how my dad wanted me to be an engineer, ect.
I took to drugs and alcohol at a young age. When my parents caught me they thought I just wanted to be "cool", when I was looking to slow myself down and escape for a while.
I followed the standard burnout path of the "gifted" kid and work in entry level IT now. In hindsight, all the external pressure of being "the smart kid" and having no help with processing my thoughts / emotions stunted me for most of my life.
I don't have many real regrets, and I don't blame anyone for anything: But I wonder how different my life would have been if my parents didn't put so much value in a bullshit IQ test I took in 4th grade.
I'm not a genius, I'm probably just autistic.
That was very well explained. My early life was much the same and I’ve been underemployed my entire life bc I never learned how to schmooze and be political with people I didn’t trust or like (which was about 90% of everyone).
I think too much was expected of me as a kid. I was smart intellectually but I was emotionally still just a kid.
Was given a battery of cognitive tests in school (Canadian kids will know the CCAT testing from the 90s onward) and was evaluated at 147. Ended up in a special school for gifted kids (The Woodlands School in Mississauga, enhanced learning program - don’t care if I end up doxxing myself).
Now at 38 I’m on long term sick leave and being evaluated for partial disability status due to an autism diagnosis that ‘somehow’ escaped the cadre of psychologists who have had their turn picking my brain. Hooray for discrepancies in autism evaluation for women 🎉😕
Individuals are capable of liking or disliking us, but society as an aggregate fucking hates neurodivergent people—it just does, even though most of its individuals do not and are perfectly fine—and we're not usually allowed to express this.
If neurotypicals are so socially adept—trust me when I say that most social ineptitude I see isn't autism—then why do they build such shitty societies? Who starts 95+ percent of the wars? Who runs capitalism at the upper echelons? Granted, Ayn Rand was probably one of us, but she's only relevant at all because she was saying what a bunch of selfish fucks wanted to here.
Exactly this... They realise not everyone is smart enough so they just have to make friends anyways. At least you can't keep on living in your heads forever, you needs people to make you feel alive
Smart people are lonely. They try to think through social situations instead of growing the social part of the brain, making them ok at masking but struggling with natural social skills.
Yes, I have a social battery. I can do one or two social settings per week, and I like a lot of downtime in my house.
I don't really consider myself an introvert. I'm out there wilding it up with the best of them when I do get out. I have to stop myself from over sharing.
But that gets tiring for me constantly. So I like to charge up with TV or single player video games or puzzles.
Being in the house too much is equally tiring. It's a balance thing for me, but over all yeah I have fewer interactions on average, but my interactions are of high quality with a select group of people I really enjoy. So I need less to feel socially satisfied.
Unfortunately, this seems to be often self-wrought due to highly intelligent people being bored around less intelligent people and that being visible on their faces, which makes others not want to spend time with them because it’s insulting.
What’s interesting, though, is that it takes a certain degree of intelligence to know when to be intelligent and when to let loose. So, if certain highly intelligent people don’t have that, then they’re actually of a lower intelligence than they might think they are.
It works in the same way that recess is good for productivity. Take a break for a little while, come back with fresh eyes and you do better than you would if you hadn’t taken the break.
You might think that being around people less intelligent could somehow rub off on you, like maybe watching football is a sort of boring, unintelligent, caveman type activity, but by taking that break from your own mind, you’re giving it a rest. In doing so, you’re able to address things better.
If we really think that the most intelligent people on the planet don’t also enjoy some dumb stuff, then we’re completely wrong and we’ll never ever achieve anything close to their degree of intelligence with an unwillingness to shut off and know the place and time to utilize our intelligence. We should be forever grateful to the people who create the environments in which we are able to do so.
I always thought how lonely it must be to be a genius of something. All these thoughts and nobody to share them with or bounce ideas off of because you have no peers in that regard. I guess that’s why a lot of geniuses are deemed “crazy”
I remember getting so angry in school when the teacher had to repeat simple instructions like 20x. There was always some kid that was like "wait, what are we doing???"
Gosh! I wish it weren't true. Top of the class through school and college, also tonne of public speaking, working for a leading MNC at 23 right out of college. Guess what, burnt out at 26. Just couldn't handle the pressure. I am the one with the "wasted potential" now and reminded of it every time I muster the courage to socialize. Cheers!
I always love the “you went to school, double majored, and now you’re working a retail job in a tiny store…” conversation. Yeah, I coasted through high school getting straight A’s and then I busted my ass and burnt myself out in university. My chosen field wasn’t what I wanted to do but it took me a while to figure it out. Then I fought a major depressive episode for about a year before seeking any help. Now that I’m dealing with the depression I sought a job where I could be happy. One of my first days there one of the ladies asked me, genuinely, what had happened. I answered honestly and said that I just couldn’t hack it. I was emotionally exhausted and the career just wasn’t what I wanted (and that I felt terrible for wasting so much money on the education). Her response was “you’re not using it now but it’s not a waste. My kids are both doctors and they love going to work everyday. If they were miserable I would expect them to quit and find something else. You shouldn’t wake up every morning and dread what the day. And maybe after you’ve found happiness and peace in something simpler you’ll go back to it. You never know.” And that was the most understanding and supportive response I’ve ever gotten from anybody.
Oh this is the exact reason I avoid family events! I truly hope you're doing well and know your worth in life is not determined by your job. People suck!
The expectations and the high standards they hold for themself as well as by others. If they don't succeed, struggle to meet expectations or make mistakes, they will think that they are a failure and will beat themselves over it.
Even though I feel I hide this well, I’ve somehow passed it on to my kids :( I have to constantly reassure them that yes, everyone fails at things, and no, just because you didn’t get it right the first time, it doesn’t make you a failure.
It’s hell.
High intelligence often goes along with high sensitivity for stimuli, so it’s very hard for them to go to busy places because, as I like to put it, you hear everything but can’t hear anything
I question myself sometimes as to how smart I am, but a LOT of people tell me I'm smart, and come to me with all sorts of questions, but this is something I can absolutely confirm. Bars, Clubs, concerts, all of them I pretty much don't go to as the amount of noise just absolutely drowns everything out.
I tested in the top 1-2 percentile on tons of aptitude tests growing up, went to a top twenty school, and am a physician...
...until very recently, I had the opposite preference. I loved noise and stimulation because it helped drown out the voices in my head saying I lacked value and was unlovable. Now, with therapy, mindfulness training, and time, I love my quiet spaces (although still more extroverted than I think is typical of highly intelligent people). Anyways, just an anecdotal story that contradicts that statement, or perhaps better said, an exception that you already made space for with use of word "often".
Smart people end up being disliked for their intelligence. Their intelligence makes other people feel like they are underachieving or inferior and those people will compensate with aggression. Smart people will also be disliked for sharing ideas that are good but against what people believe.
In general, being too much of smart, just like being too much of good looking, leads to jealousy and competition from human nature.
Smart people tend to doubt ideas and things more while regular people are more prone to black and white and seeing things in one track. Because of this, regular people doubt smart people’s abilities because they are more likely to doubt known solutions or show uncertainty around certain things that most people don’t do.
in my experience, people who were smart and gifted at a young age seem to get more frustrated and give up quicker at things they dont immediately excel at in adulthood.
smart kids who grow up and dont have to work because they have family money or whatever? they seem to be the most aimless of all.
For those of us that were "gifted" kids, gifted kids are special needs kids. Yes, we can accomplish more at our age than some of our peers, but it also takes more work to build to that point.
I just had an alumni meeting from my old magnet high School, and the prevalence of poor mental health and neurodivergency is insane. I have already lost a classmate to suicide.
a lot are depressed and socially inept, especially when they realize that networking was really more important than intelligence to get ahead in life, and all the "dumber" kids have successful careers and family lives.
Intelligence does not mean a person is knowledgeable on all subjects. And doesn't imply any sort of wisdom. Steve Jobs was super smart and he refused to shower and treated his cancer with apple juice.
The world cannot comprehend smart women. Being a woman who owns her intelligence is deeply offensive to more people than not. Yet the first descriptor THEY use is “smart”. It’s rarely a compliment. I’d rather you notice my goofiness, my tenderness, my dedication. People who do notice those things first almost always appreciate the intelligence behind those things.
And, as an intelligent woman, when you admit you don’t know SO much more than you do know, vultures jump on that as a gotcha moment. As if intelligence is simply knowing a certain assortment of facts. It’s all very silly and transparent.
They're normally not the loudest in the room and unfortunately the least heard.
Also, they don't interact with a lot of people for various reasons one being if the people can understand what they're talking about. Some deal with facts and not emotions some blend both.
For those who are smarter than almost everyone but not at the genius-level, they can be lazy since learning/understanding things comes so easily. College can be a rude awakening - those A's in high school that required no work are now C's, and it's hard to get motivated to study when you've never had to do it in the past
Being smart in one area doesn't mean you are smart in all areas
I've heard stories of extremely skilled doctors who didn't know how to use basic functions on a PC for instance
Because of societal inequalities, many intelligent people aren't allowed or given the resources to grow and thrive, they're just crushed under the mundane demands of the underclass they live in.
They're told that they are wasting their potential if they don't pursue a career in scientific fields, like medicine, or something like law or engineering. This is especially true in so many Asian families, as there are only a few careers that are deemed to be "respectable" by older generations. As someone who was labeled as a "very intelligent girl" by my family, I've been told so many times that I could have been a doctor etc. etc.
Not being able to grasp how some people can function in their daily lives being so fucking stupid. Also overanalysing things and generally thinking too much. The saying ‘Stupid but happy’ is very true
It makes you lonely because most people are no really smart and it is so frustrating (from my point of view) to be unable to make the simplest connections, observations and conclusions comprehensible to most people without puppets and pictures. That's why I smoke pot - it lowers the IQ by 30 points, immediately and reversibly
Truly gifted people have high rates of mental illness and burnout, and can make life derailing decisions. Many will thrive later in life, but many won't get the opportunity.
You can be smart but that doesn't mean you'll be rewarded by society financially or reputation wise
There are different types of smart, book, emotional, street, creative, probably a million others, you can be a genius at fixing cars but be stuck at a dead end $18hr mechanic job
So you can be really smart and live your life working at the dollar general because you never found out how to monetize your type of smart
Or you can have your PhD job and be an absolute idiot in every other aspect of your life
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Its miserable. You have to watch silently as everything falls out the bottom. Dumb people are way happier
If you point out problems coming, they act like you’re the one causing it. People hate prevention I say as little as possible to whoever gets it like a wave coming and help each other brace for it. Everyone else is all”how’d this happen?!”
Omg THANK YOU for saying the thing I have never been able to put into words! I have tried to be logical in preventing future problems, and idiots will think it's some kinda witchcraft because I'm able to notice patterns, or learn from mistakes. Then I get blamed for something totally out of my control. It's always infuriated me.
Maybe we just need to give smart people more training in sounding confident and authoritative. People love deferring to people who *sound* smart. One thing about people who are knowledgeable about something is that they tend to hedge what they say more often than people who merely *think* they are knowledgeable, because they know enough to know that they don't have perfect, certain knowledge about anything. But grifters speak in 100% guarantees. Like, you have an epidemiologist or immunologist take the stage and say "well, according to what we know, it's possible that there may be…" Then you have some podcaster say "no, it's ABSOLUTELY, the case that there's NO WAY that blah blah blah." And people go "this podcaster sounds like he knows what he's talking about" even though the actual scientist is much closer to the truth.
Very typical in my line of work. I call it the Cassandra syndrome. Cassandra was cursed to know everything and having no one believe her. A lot of it is in delivery of course but if I state with confidence a certain course of action is risky as it has a 5% chance of failure people think it is over-cautious. Then the aggressive people do it anyway, and of course 19/20 nothing bad happens. "See, we told you it is OK!" Sigh.
Yep. I’m a software engineer and my entire career has been watching people cut corners and warning them what could happen. Of course when exactly what you said would go wrong does go wrong, you can’t point it out because no one likes being told “I told you so”. So you just pick up the pieces and carry on watching everyone make avoidable mistakes.
That's why you get in writing your idea and then have them override and micromanage into "nah we r gonna do it this way." Then when it fails you have the satisfaction of having in writing their determination to create failure/chaos.
I’ve had to do this repeatedly and while it protected my job when they tried to blame their bad outcomes on me, it also just made them angrier. This is good advice don’t get me wrong, but people should watch their back if they have to use it. Incompetent managers do not like it when they try and fail to pin bad decisions on their staff. I was treated even worse after they looked foolish in front of senior management.
I was once on a software selection committee. Some vendor showed us a product with a flashy interface that wowed everyone but me. I pointed out that their approach to data management was fundamentally different than ours and I saw no way that you could migrate our existing data and make the kind of connections we needed to make. It seemed so obvious to me. The head of IT then smugly told me (in front of EVERYONE) that since I wasn't in IT, I didn't know what I was talking about and I should leave it to the experts. In the end I was the lone vote against the flashy software. A year later, IT still couldn't migrate the data, everyone still had to enter the data twice (both into the old program and the new one), and the CEO gave the IT manager a deadline to get it done or she was fired. I never found out what happened; I was long gone by then.
What gets me is when people don't understand the point of a hypothetical. I'm no genius but it doesn't take one to understand how a hypothetical situation could apply to an argument.
The worst thing is you just learn to prepare yourself for the shitstorm afterwards, and then they get angry that you arent as bad off as they are because that means you could have helped them. But...if you try and help them, then it goes back to your first line.
> If you point out problems coming, they act like you’re the one causing it. "You need to quit talking about it. You're speaking it into existence." ... Sooo many times I've heard that.
We don't talk about Bruno...
Or you are a Debbie/Daniel downer. I was always treated like that when the higher ups at work presented a “new and improved” program. When I would ask the “what if” questions, their answers would be hostile. I just like to think things through and cross all of “T’s” and dot all of the “i’s”. I finally left that department and have never looked back.
Except in America, where they've been manipulated into being mad at whatever the rich and influential want them to be mad at. Immigrants, gay people, Internet towers, Barack Obama's fashion sense, they hate so much it's impossible to imagine them happy
They're happy hating on an enemy. It's like their sports team and they hate the other guys.
Yes, only in America. By the way, how did those EU parliamentary elections go?
Idiocy knows no geographic boundaries.
Great point
"See how you are poor? That's because of gay people. Definitely not rich people and capitalism. Now go storm the capital"
Dog, that’s not unique to America. Have you seen whats going on in Europe and South America right now? Fascists are successfully stoking hate all over the globe
I hear you somebody needs to do a parody of the song Love is a drug but instead it's hate is a drug. God knows there's enough material out there to make it interesting.
Bold of you to assume you’re smart
It's amusing isn't it. Everyone on reddit is super intelligent and always complaining about all the dumb people around them.
Ohhh man, so much this. The fact that, as a species, we are functional middle schoolers. At all walks of life, up to world leaders: it's like the opposite of Ratatouille "a good chef can come from anywhere". There is jack all that can be done about that, and history is written by people who, at best, read half of it. We can't achieve wisdom simply because we have to reset everything with the next generations. We try to sabotage for success but really, the monkeys are running the zoo here.
Just wanted to say that "history is written by people who, at best, read half of it" is SUCH A GOOD LINE that I will shamelessly steal.
Hey, two thoughts, two souls!! At the same time!! 😃✌️
"...and history is written by people who, at best, read half of it. " 😂 Brilliant! Well, Putin did his homework and read ALL of it. And repeats it.
Some people read all of it and come out with entirely the wrong message
Putin read Russian imperial history, and gives zero fucks about the rest of the world's history.
Nah, Putin is an uneducated thug who bought himself a master's degree. He read no history, just an asshole playing a smart person.
↑ So much this ↑ The only history Putin knows is what maps looked like during the peak of the Russian Empire. He fights pointless wars out of an ignorant sense of nostalgia, and is willing to destroy his own country in an attempt to "Make Russia Great Again."
That sounds familiar but can’t think where I’ve heard it before 🤔
That. I stopped discussing conspiracy theories with my friend who believes in all of them.
My conspiracy theory friend helps me gauge if I'm crazy or not.
Dude. It took me years to learn not to argue with stupid people. Let them fuck Up their lives. What business is it of mine? Remove the warning signs.
Problem of today’s society is that it is the loudest dumb that dictates the way. If everyone just ignores the dumb in end they drag everyone with them because they make choices for everyone’s behalf.
The trick I've learned (although I admittedly don't always follow my own advice) is the two statement rule. If you read/hear something that makes you think "that's a factually incorrect statement, and I actually have the knowledge to address it, so I should since it's important to correct the record", that's fine and you can do so if you want to. If they push back and it's ostensibly because of a misunderstanding, then clarify the miscommunication because sometimes what you think ought to be coherent isn't always. Everyone's basis for how they parse information is different. If that doesn't work, then that's it. Your goal was to provide information and you did. Leading a horse to water is the extent of your obligations.
Those who don't know their history are doomed to repeat it. Those who do are doomed to watch other people repeat it.
The more you know, the more you realize how much you don't know.
Reminds me of one of my favorite exchanges from the show 'Briscoe County, Jr.": Brisco County Jr.: You know something Bowler, this trip has taught me something. Lord Bowler: What's that? Brisco County Jr.: The more I learn, the less I know. Lord Bowler: Yeah, I hear you Brisco and I understand what you mean. Brisco County Jr.: You do? Lord Bowler: Yeah, and at the rate we're learnin' things, we won't know nuthin' in no time.
One of the best relatively unknown Bruce Campbell projects.
Until you hit that realization it doesn't matter what you know, just who you know.
It does matter who you know, but not in the way most people mean. If you know good people, good friends, good family, that's what you need. Most people mean "who you know" in terms of success, money, jobs.
i had a situation where the people I knew immediately all knew the right people who knew the right people, and in some way they all knew of each other or had a connection somehow, and I was able to get a second chance in life. That was truly the moment I realized it really can be “who you know”
Have you ever seen those digital art pictures where you can zoom in constantly and there’s pictures within pictures within pictures and it keeps going? That’s how I explain history to people. The more you learn history the more you realize you’re just scratching the surface. It can always go deeper.
That's the boat I'm in. I'm not really smart, but I am smart enough to realize how dumb I am, which I think makes me above average intelligence, but really, it all just fuels my depression.
Most people aren't, though most think they are
Very true, half this thread thinks they're Einstein because they have unmanaged depression
And no social skills. Personally I don't think someone is actually smart if they aren't smart with people too.
That’s why measuring “intelligence” with tests is stupid. Someone may be quick on math and spatial skills, but they may be completely unable to speak, connect with people, deliver a joke, write, act, sing, compose, dance, paint, etc, where those things may be effortless for other “average” people. Steven Hawking may have been a genius at physics, but he couldn’t dance for shit.
As a psychologist, something that bothers me is the focus on "full scale IQ" - A singular score does not represent someone's intelligence unless all domains of intelligence are close to even. On an intelligence test, such as the WAIS or RIAS, intelligence is measured in multiple domains to address your concerns. Even if the following report states that the FSIQ isn't meaningful, that's all anyone looks for in the general public.
Kinda did Hawking dirty, there. I'm sure he showed off some smooth moves at that time travel party.
look how Trump connects with the masses, clearly a sign of emotional intelligence! A people person like … Scareface! /s
Self evaluation is difficult for most people. Admitting or own faults can be painful.
This thread is proof. Plus everyone says their kid is “brilliant” and then goes on to describe how they don’t have basic social skills.
Dunning-Kruger effect. People think they are smarter than they are. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
And they are very loud about it too
For an example, look at the comments in this thread.
Intelligence is only a small fraction of success. Without hard work, a good bit of luck, and usually some good connections intelligence doesn't amount to much of anything.
Definitely this. There’s a misconception that if someone is really smart, they’ll have a wonderful career with lots of money and while that can be true, many are not any more successful than the average person. I’d argue that having terrific people skills can get you much farther in life.
For every Michael Burry running a hedge fund with complete autonomy ***despite*** his awkward social skills, there are 1000 other smart but awkward people stuck in monotonous jobs they hate.
I think Stephen Jay Gould said something to the effect of wondering how many actual geniuses died as slaves out in cotton fields because they had no chance of successfully applying that high intelligence.
Calvin Coolidge - “Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts.
Yes. All the smarts I was blessed with would be nothing without the drive and charisma to *work* *very hard* to turn it into a success. In school - from enriched primary through my engineering degree - I have met dozens of people as smart or smarter than me who have not really gotten anywhere. When everything is easy as a young child, success without effort is taken for granted. Then your fish bowl is poured into a big tank when you get to college/uni, then that tank into the ocean when you graduate, and if your habits are still based on the big fish you were at 10 years old, good fucking luck. Also all the anxiety and depression alluded to other posters here is very real and doesn't help.
Smart people often overthink things and have higher stress
If ignorance is bliss, this is the other thing.
Where ignorance is bliss tis folly to be wise.
Awareness is overpreparedness
Also more likely to be depressed
This is so sad but true!
Sometimes I wish to be stupid again just to feel that ignorant bliss. Now it's like you can't afford this, you can't eat that, try this healthy thing that taste like crap but the wonder it can do to your body after you eat it for a few months
And that's horrible to deal with it
"With great power comes great responsibility" -Ben
That’s Uncle Ben to you, motherfucker.
And avoid too much therefore
I've noticed a lot of them are depressed
Statistically I believe IQ and rates of depression are correlated.
If ignorance is bliss the inverse must also be true...
It’s hell knowing every possible thing that could go wrong.
Being smart is stressful
I won't go calling myself smart, but life is much more anxiety inducing when you can't go around ignoring humanity's problems or imagining that they have simple solutions. We ain't gonna survive this round, folks. Human nature all but guarantees it. Here's to the rats and roaches; may they make a better go of it.
Yep. Depressed and anxious. Well technically anxious and then depression comes in because of being anxious most of the time. Therapy and meds help but that doesn't solve the underlying problems - especially with ADHD.
I imagine it's pretty hard being constantly surrounded by idiots
I wouldn't even say I'm all that smart, but I'm pretty sure I'm surrounded by idiots.
The definitive take on the subject: https://youtu.be/7k3f2KKS4jE?si=tjLj7kU8DlyXR0DC
They are often ignored, overlooked, and blamed for other people's issues.
People expect too much from them
I’ll add that everyone wants a piece of you too. You can’t make friends because you don’t know who is using you for your talents, and who actually cares about you as a person. And god forbid you should ever make a mistake, or even worse, not know some obscure fact about someone’s great grandmother from 1723. Queue the incessant “oh, you’re not as smart as you think you are.” Bitch, I never said I was smart. YOU said I was smart. After 40-odd years of competing against the best and brightest, I am in fact aware of how fucking stupid I am and how many people are much more talented than I.
Only a fool thinks himself wise, for the wise truly know they are fools.
The suicide rate for highly gifted kids is exponentially higher.
"exponentially higher" is a bit of a strange phrase. It's just "much higher". Exponential comes into play when there's growth. The nature of the growth can be exponential.
‘Exponentially’ was the expression used by the neuropsych. I assumed they meant the risk increased with the degrees of giftedness.
Ah, the risk is an exponential function of giftedness.
>highly gifted You mean highly pressured? These are not the same thing. “Gifted children” are labeled by other people, then expectations grow till they implode.
I was referring to pg (profoundly gifted) kids. The universe dealt us a pg kid. Her neuropsychologist warned us that the outliers like her had an exponentially higher drop-out and suicide rate. As evidenced by other comments here, the depression factor is very real. Even in kids.
Knowing this, what do you do differently with her? I assume I'd want to avoid any pressure on her to 'succeed' or live up to anyone's expectations of her and to let her know that if she drops out or changes her mind that's okay, that kind of thing and / or anything else?
As a former "gifted kid" myself, I think I would have done better if adults had complimented me on how hard I worked on something, rather than just assumed it was easy for me because of my intellect. I never really learned a work ethic until I got to college because I was always skating by and being told I was brilliant, and then college hit me like a ton of bricks.
I was also gifted, in top sets, went to various programs, and similarly also didn’t learn a good work ethic because things were easy. I remember being complimented a fair bit, and to be honest I don’t think it helped, I think it just boosted ego. Maybe even reinforced the belief that I could do well without really trying. The thing that would have been best, in my opinion, would have been actually challenging me consistently. My parents weren’t well off enough to send me to a private school, so it was just whatever the public education system could offer. Creating more situations where a decent work ethic is needed, without applying too much pressure to succeed would be the best combination. Mental and emotional support becomes the biggest challenge once the academic side is mastered.
Mostly we just made sure other people stayed out of her way while making it clear that her happiness was our #1 priority. The first thing we did was put a full stop to all cognitive testing. My daughter is an ‘extreme’ outlier, so even well-intending people started treating her like a side show by dwelling on test scores and percentiles. Percentiles mean absolutely nothing in the grand scheme of things. She’s just a kid and a human being who wants to be happy without her value being tied to a percentile. We made it clear that there is no such thing as ‘failure’, just changes in direction. She’s still a teen, so I don’t think I’m in a position yet to say what we’d do differently. She’s a degreed physicist now pursuing her PhD in a top program. She seems to have found her place... but I still worry every day.
No pressure is equally bad, I'd say. Since without any healthy pressure, it's so easy to succumb to apathy, ennui and eventually depression (which can be worsened if they also know they're gifted) Speaking as someone that was considered the same, but also with ASD. What helps is early on teaching them the 'fun' of learning, 'working' (personal projects, stimulating activities) and building 'experiences' And the important is not to pressure them that they 'have' to succeed, but that they have to enjoy and find something they're passionate and can willingly go into it for the fun of it If I had no pressure, and wasnt forced (at first) to 'try' everything (but never pressure to stick it out if I didnt feel it, even if I was rly good at it), which I experienced at work it, I ended up attempting suicide because it all felt so pointless
Of the kids I went to high school with, the most successful adults were bright kids with relaxed parents. The ones whose parents told them "as long as you get good grades and stay out of trouble, you can do what you want" are now designing stuff for Boeing/Lockheed, curing cancer, or are executives at large corps. They all are happily married with kids of their own, interesting hobbies, and involved in their communities. The ones who were pressured are either dead, barely functioning addicts, or far left/right political activists
I really, really hope this is true because that is how we decided to handle our pg kid. We just ran interference while she set her course. So far so good.
As someone who tested gifted (99th percentile) I definitely preferred my relaxed father who just wanted me to be happy than my neurotic mother who demanded that I become a doctor. I am not a doctor. Edit: Just wanted to make clear that I did not test profoundly gifted. Just regular gifted. I don't know even know how people above the 99.9% make it. It took me decades to figure out how to just hang with people.
Opposite parents for me. Cripplingly depressed since 19. Suicidal since 25. Got into a fight with my dad in 2020 where he tried to kill me with a pipe. We don’t talk anymore. One of the most commonly heard refrains from him was “I thought you were supposed to be the smart one” and “where did the other 3/5/7/whatever percent go?”
I see you know my parents. They must've gotten the same training. Mine wanted to be a lawyer. Um, Mom? People bully me and beat me up already. You want me to have them.also hate me as an adult?
Maybe be a doctor and tell people everything they love is killing then
the last sentence is an interesting one. Remember when I was looking into Addiction for cures, etc, one of the big recommendations was to replace the addiction with something else. Religion was a big one and the reason why you see some former drug addicts as the ones who are the most "born again" if you will. I wonder if political activism falls into the same category.
Outside of labels, which is valid, the more you ask “what if,” the more anxiety and depression that follows. When you have a brain that’s not fully developed, it can be difficult to emotionally handle the higher level thoughts. The world can be cruel, unfair, and has evil. That’s a lot for a 12 year old to process.
I was this kid. Apparently I was "gifted". And I am "smart". But have a terrible time regulating my emotions, wasn't liked socially until late high-school, didn't grow up with many friends. I have ADHD and do very poorly in standardized education. I was so depressed as a youngin. And I felt immense pressure because I always felt like a failure, which made me feel even worse because I was reminded how "smart" I was. And how my dad wanted me to be an engineer, ect. I took to drugs and alcohol at a young age. When my parents caught me they thought I just wanted to be "cool", when I was looking to slow myself down and escape for a while. I followed the standard burnout path of the "gifted" kid and work in entry level IT now. In hindsight, all the external pressure of being "the smart kid" and having no help with processing my thoughts / emotions stunted me for most of my life. I don't have many real regrets, and I don't blame anyone for anything: But I wonder how different my life would have been if my parents didn't put so much value in a bullshit IQ test I took in 4th grade. I'm not a genius, I'm probably just autistic.
That was very well explained. My early life was much the same and I’ve been underemployed my entire life bc I never learned how to schmooze and be political with people I didn’t trust or like (which was about 90% of everyone). I think too much was expected of me as a kid. I was smart intellectually but I was emotionally still just a kid.
Was given a battery of cognitive tests in school (Canadian kids will know the CCAT testing from the 90s onward) and was evaluated at 147. Ended up in a special school for gifted kids (The Woodlands School in Mississauga, enhanced learning program - don’t care if I end up doxxing myself). Now at 38 I’m on long term sick leave and being evaluated for partial disability status due to an autism diagnosis that ‘somehow’ escaped the cadre of psychologists who have had their turn picking my brain. Hooray for discrepancies in autism evaluation for women 🎉😕
Not to mention the suicide rate among autistic people is 10 times the national average (from at least one study I read) for a variety of reasons.
Individuals are capable of liking or disliking us, but society as an aggregate fucking hates neurodivergent people—it just does, even though most of its individuals do not and are perfectly fine—and we're not usually allowed to express this. If neurotypicals are so socially adept—trust me when I say that most social ineptitude I see isn't autism—then why do they build such shitty societies? Who starts 95+ percent of the wars? Who runs capitalism at the upper echelons? Granted, Ayn Rand was probably one of us, but she's only relevant at all because she was saying what a bunch of selfish fucks wanted to here.
They dumb themselves down to get along with regular people.
With alcohol and drugs, often.
I'm still smart on drugs
Use more then
Sounds about right, that would make me an idiot
Exactly this... They realise not everyone is smart enough so they just have to make friends anyways. At least you can't keep on living in your heads forever, you needs people to make you feel alive
most of the time they end up acting weird while trying to dumb themselves down
I had to do this and ended up losing my focus and drive. Still working on recovering it
loneliness
Smart people are lonely. They try to think through social situations instead of growing the social part of the brain, making them ok at masking but struggling with natural social skills.
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Yes, I have a social battery. I can do one or two social settings per week, and I like a lot of downtime in my house. I don't really consider myself an introvert. I'm out there wilding it up with the best of them when I do get out. I have to stop myself from over sharing. But that gets tiring for me constantly. So I like to charge up with TV or single player video games or puzzles. Being in the house too much is equally tiring. It's a balance thing for me, but over all yeah I have fewer interactions on average, but my interactions are of high quality with a select group of people I really enjoy. So I need less to feel socially satisfied.
Unfortunately, this seems to be often self-wrought due to highly intelligent people being bored around less intelligent people and that being visible on their faces, which makes others not want to spend time with them because it’s insulting. What’s interesting, though, is that it takes a certain degree of intelligence to know when to be intelligent and when to let loose. So, if certain highly intelligent people don’t have that, then they’re actually of a lower intelligence than they might think they are. It works in the same way that recess is good for productivity. Take a break for a little while, come back with fresh eyes and you do better than you would if you hadn’t taken the break. You might think that being around people less intelligent could somehow rub off on you, like maybe watching football is a sort of boring, unintelligent, caveman type activity, but by taking that break from your own mind, you’re giving it a rest. In doing so, you’re able to address things better. If we really think that the most intelligent people on the planet don’t also enjoy some dumb stuff, then we’re completely wrong and we’ll never ever achieve anything close to their degree of intelligence with an unwillingness to shut off and know the place and time to utilize our intelligence. We should be forever grateful to the people who create the environments in which we are able to do so.
They have very few people, if any, around them they can properly relate to.
It can be frustrating when people around you struggle to understand stuff that is common sense to you.
I always thought how lonely it must be to be a genius of something. All these thoughts and nobody to share them with or bounce ideas off of because you have no peers in that regard. I guess that’s why a lot of geniuses are deemed “crazy”
I remember getting so angry in school when the teacher had to repeat simple instructions like 20x. There was always some kid that was like "wait, what are we doing???"
They often become extremely burnt out by the time the reach adulthood. The pressure to 'do well' in life can be too much stress.
Gosh! I wish it weren't true. Top of the class through school and college, also tonne of public speaking, working for a leading MNC at 23 right out of college. Guess what, burnt out at 26. Just couldn't handle the pressure. I am the one with the "wasted potential" now and reminded of it every time I muster the courage to socialize. Cheers!
I always love the “you went to school, double majored, and now you’re working a retail job in a tiny store…” conversation. Yeah, I coasted through high school getting straight A’s and then I busted my ass and burnt myself out in university. My chosen field wasn’t what I wanted to do but it took me a while to figure it out. Then I fought a major depressive episode for about a year before seeking any help. Now that I’m dealing with the depression I sought a job where I could be happy. One of my first days there one of the ladies asked me, genuinely, what had happened. I answered honestly and said that I just couldn’t hack it. I was emotionally exhausted and the career just wasn’t what I wanted (and that I felt terrible for wasting so much money on the education). Her response was “you’re not using it now but it’s not a waste. My kids are both doctors and they love going to work everyday. If they were miserable I would expect them to quit and find something else. You shouldn’t wake up every morning and dread what the day. And maybe after you’ve found happiness and peace in something simpler you’ll go back to it. You never know.” And that was the most understanding and supportive response I’ve ever gotten from anybody.
Oh this is the exact reason I avoid family events! I truly hope you're doing well and know your worth in life is not determined by your job. People suck!
The expectations and the high standards they hold for themself as well as by others. If they don't succeed, struggle to meet expectations or make mistakes, they will think that they are a failure and will beat themselves over it.
Even though I feel I hide this well, I’ve somehow passed it on to my kids :( I have to constantly reassure them that yes, everyone fails at things, and no, just because you didn’t get it right the first time, it doesn’t make you a failure. It’s hell.
Smart people are often truly sad.
Here’s a quote I like from the school of life: there’s a certain type of loneliness that comes with complexity of mind.
Smart people often overthink and worry excessively about things, leading to increased stress and anxiety.
Being smart doesn’t automatically make someone a good person.
Living life without a dumb lens can be negative and depressing. Cynicism is also a powerful happiness killer.
High intelligence often goes along with high sensitivity for stimuli, so it’s very hard for them to go to busy places because, as I like to put it, you hear everything but can’t hear anything
I question myself sometimes as to how smart I am, but a LOT of people tell me I'm smart, and come to me with all sorts of questions, but this is something I can absolutely confirm. Bars, Clubs, concerts, all of them I pretty much don't go to as the amount of noise just absolutely drowns everything out.
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These are very often correlated (when there is no intellectual disability).
I tested in the top 1-2 percentile on tons of aptitude tests growing up, went to a top twenty school, and am a physician... ...until very recently, I had the opposite preference. I loved noise and stimulation because it helped drown out the voices in my head saying I lacked value and was unlovable. Now, with therapy, mindfulness training, and time, I love my quiet spaces (although still more extroverted than I think is typical of highly intelligent people). Anyways, just an anecdotal story that contradicts that statement, or perhaps better said, an exception that you already made space for with use of word "often".
It's hard to relate to the majority of people.
Feel intellectually/existentially lonely. That close friends don't really understand the way you think about yourself and the world.
Smart people end up being disliked for their intelligence. Their intelligence makes other people feel like they are underachieving or inferior and those people will compensate with aggression. Smart people will also be disliked for sharing ideas that are good but against what people believe. In general, being too much of smart, just like being too much of good looking, leads to jealousy and competition from human nature. Smart people tend to doubt ideas and things more while regular people are more prone to black and white and seeing things in one track. Because of this, regular people doubt smart people’s abilities because they are more likely to doubt known solutions or show uncertainty around certain things that most people don’t do.
in my experience, people who were smart and gifted at a young age seem to get more frustrated and give up quicker at things they dont immediately excel at in adulthood. smart kids who grow up and dont have to work because they have family money or whatever? they seem to be the most aimless of all.
they're so realistic that most of them (not all) are depressed and does not look forward for anything life could offer.
Loneliness? Alcoholism? Anxiety? Guys, am I smart?
... Probably.
they have to live in a world ruled by not so smart people
Democracy: Where any two idiots can outvote a genius.
Hence the depression. 😜
For those of us that were "gifted" kids, gifted kids are special needs kids. Yes, we can accomplish more at our age than some of our peers, but it also takes more work to build to that point. I just had an alumni meeting from my old magnet high School, and the prevalence of poor mental health and neurodivergency is insane. I have already lost a classmate to suicide.
a lot are depressed and socially inept, especially when they realize that networking was really more important than intelligence to get ahead in life, and all the "dumber" kids have successful careers and family lives.
I wonder what percentage of people commenting on this post think they're smart and aren't.
I'm not a smart person but I imagine it might get lonely.
Overthinking, They often overanalyze and worry excessively.
Intelligence does not mean a person is knowledgeable on all subjects. And doesn't imply any sort of wisdom. Steve Jobs was super smart and he refused to shower and treated his cancer with apple juice.
The world cannot comprehend smart women. Being a woman who owns her intelligence is deeply offensive to more people than not. Yet the first descriptor THEY use is “smart”. It’s rarely a compliment. I’d rather you notice my goofiness, my tenderness, my dedication. People who do notice those things first almost always appreciate the intelligence behind those things. And, as an intelligent woman, when you admit you don’t know SO much more than you do know, vultures jump on that as a gotcha moment. As if intelligence is simply knowing a certain assortment of facts. It’s all very silly and transparent.
The beginning of the movie *Idiocracy(2006)*, summed it up very well.
They're usually really good in bed.
They are generally unhappy because most people in the world don’t understand them.
Loneliness, Feeling isolated because others might not relate to their thoughts.
They're normally not the loudest in the room and unfortunately the least heard. Also, they don't interact with a lot of people for various reasons one being if the people can understand what they're talking about. Some deal with facts and not emotions some blend both.
Passion in an opinion is inverse to information available. It's hard to be passionate when well informed.
For those who are smarter than almost everyone but not at the genius-level, they can be lazy since learning/understanding things comes so easily. College can be a rude awakening - those A's in high school that required no work are now C's, and it's hard to get motivated to study when you've never had to do it in the past
Being smart in one area doesn't mean you are smart in all areas I've heard stories of extremely skilled doctors who didn't know how to use basic functions on a PC for instance
Because of societal inequalities, many intelligent people aren't allowed or given the resources to grow and thrive, they're just crushed under the mundane demands of the underclass they live in.
Just direct this to Dr. Anthony Fauci as he was recently grilled by republican lawmakers what it feels to be in a room of entitled stupidity.
The people who call themselves smart, often aren't.
The more truth they know the more sad they are.
They're told that they are wasting their potential if they don't pursue a career in scientific fields, like medicine, or something like law or engineering. This is especially true in so many Asian families, as there are only a few careers that are deemed to be "respectable" by older generations. As someone who was labeled as a "very intelligent girl" by my family, I've been told so many times that I could have been a doctor etc. etc.
Perfectionism: Struggling with never feeling their work is good enough.
Not being able to grasp how some people can function in their daily lives being so fucking stupid. Also overanalysing things and generally thinking too much. The saying ‘Stupid but happy’ is very true
It makes you lonely because most people are no really smart and it is so frustrating (from my point of view) to be unable to make the simplest connections, observations and conclusions comprehensible to most people without puppets and pictures. That's why I smoke pot - it lowers the IQ by 30 points, immediately and reversibly
The wrong ones think they are.
High Expectations, Constant pressure to meet their own and others' high standards.
Smart people often get taken advantage of by shrewd people
You have a pendulum of "damn, I'm an idiot" and "damn, I'm a genius" moments. It's also rather hard to relate to most people
Truly gifted people have high rates of mental illness and burnout, and can make life derailing decisions. Many will thrive later in life, but many won't get the opportunity.
Smart people will make the absolute 100% correct decision, and still second-guess themselves
Intelligence is just one small factor in success
Get bored easily. On average more depressed in general. Come off as a pretentious prick even though you're genuinely not.
You can be smart but that doesn't mean you'll be rewarded by society financially or reputation wise There are different types of smart, book, emotional, street, creative, probably a million others, you can be a genius at fixing cars but be stuck at a dead end $18hr mechanic job So you can be really smart and live your life working at the dollar general because you never found out how to monetize your type of smart Or you can have your PhD job and be an absolute idiot in every other aspect of your life
Alcoholism is rampant on high intelligence people
They're lauded for how smart they are, leaving them blind to the fact that they're human and still very capable of errors.
Most of those, who think they are, aren't.
Their ability to use their intelligence gets undervalued in favour of society's' expectation of memorisation ability until they get to university.
They overthink everything.
Smart people still can act like idiots sometimes.
A lot of people associate being smart with being 'good'. I have met a fair share of smart assholes in my life!