10 ms·

Ah yes, the monthly link to an article about intelligent/gifted children and the troubles their talents cause them, leading to all the self-proclaimed gifted HN

Ah yes, the monthly link to an article about intelligent/gifted children and the troubles their talents cause them, leading to all the self-proclaimed gifted HNers coming out of the woodwork declaiming "Me too! Me too! Finally someone who understands me!". Not dismissing the article itself, but it's definitely a pattern on HN.

guard-of-terra 11y ago
If there's an unsolved problem, it's going to pop up every so often. I think this is normal given the level of urgency. That is not normal is our inability to fix it and apparent lack of trying.
taneq 11y ago
But my mum had to cut all the tags out of my shirts when I was in school too! Finally someone who feels my pain! :P Edit: She did though, damn things were itchy. Doesn't seem to be a problem since I grew up though. Funny that.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- imgabe 11y ago
  So spoiled! I had to cut out my own tags.
  - taneq 11y ago
    Totally privileged.
- jwdunne 11y ago
  I ripped them out because I didn't trust my mum to cut it out completely. I was afraid the cut would create a sharp edge which would be even worse. I still wince at the few times I'd ripped a hole in a new shirt... Still unbearable but a lot more cautious after I ripped a cheap shirt in half a few months ago hahaha. EDIT: To note, I wasn't considered gifted. Undiagnosed ADHD. Teachers complained I couldn't finish writing the date and was lazy...
  - wdmeldon 11y ago
    Wow. I too feared the sharp edges created when my mom cut the tags out of my shirt, wasn't considered gifted AND had ADHD. There is no way that's a coincidence. Someone needs to study the link between ungifted children with ADHD and their position on incomplete shirt tag removal.
- qb45 11y ago
  Tags? You aren't smart enough. I hated new clothes themselves.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- Practicality 11y ago
  I don't know. Isn't this something all kids do? My brothers all hated the tags and so does my daughter. I think tags on kids clothes are just comparatively gigantic. I always thought most kids just dealt with it to avoid getting in trouble.
baldfat 11y ago
People miss the point. Intelligence isn't a gift for most people it is just a curse that you have to over come.
- tzs 11y ago
  See "The Simpsons" episode BABF22, "HOMЯ", for an hilarious exploration of this theme. In that episode, it is discovered that Homer's IQ was drastically lowered by an untreated childhood mishap. The damage is fixed, and Homer becomes much more intelligent than most of the other inhabitants of Springfield and it makes his life miserable, leading him to lament "is there no place for the man with the 105 IQ?" and purposefully restore the damage to return his IQ to normal Springfield levels.
  - nickpeterson 11y ago
    hmm, I haven't seen this episode, but it feels like it was a spoof on the novella 'Flowers for Algernon', a somewhat heart-wrenching story young children tend to be subjected to.
  - smrtinsert 11y ago
    Artie: Hello, classmates. Instead of voting for some athletic hero or a pretty boy, you have elected me, your intellectual superior, as your king. Good for you. - Simpsons
lucio 11y ago
aaaand.... patterns are bad?
- shiven 11y ago
  Eternal September. Rings a bell?
belorn 11y ago
Most people intuitively understand that a person with 25 points lower IQ than the average population is going to have unique problems and go through life in a slightly different path and order than the average. However, for some reason, this is not easily understood regarding people with 25 points over the average. It's also a pattern on HN because it really is a rather new concept. In Sweden, the law that dictates that every child should have a education that match their ability came into reality 2010 (2010:800, 3§). Before that, the goal was to target the lowest common denominator that would create a passing grade for everyone. This meant that school material targeting IQ around 75 was also put in the hands of children with around IQ 125, and unsurprisingly, this caused problems with under-stimulation and children that go through school without any training in studying.
- goodJobWalrus 11y ago
  > However, for some reason, this is not easily understood regarding people with 25 points over the average. I'm not sure how accurate this is. All the exceptionally talented kids/young people I knew growing up were nice and well-liked, well-adjusted people. All the weird kids I knew were just weird, not really especially talented. I'd like to see the numbers behind those anecdotes. There was recently an article here that discussed why extremely academically gifted children rarely become grown-up geniuses and people who move their fields forward. They stated that it's not because they are troubled, most of them are socially well-adjusted, but I can't find that article now for the lie of me.
  - true_religion 11y ago
    I think it's orthogonal to the article. Under a system designed to the lowest common denominator, those on the low end have to put X amount of effort in order to pass. Those who are gifted have to put in X-Y effort where Y can almost nearly equal X (leading to kids not ever learning how to study). The Swedish system basically begins with the proposition that all students should put out X effort. Gifted children get more advanced work, or more quantity of work till they are putting out X effort. This isn't designed to make them better adjusted, or less 'weird'. It's just there to equip gifted students with more skills relative to the mean.
vinceguidry 11y ago
I see no reason to call this out derisively. It's clear that the US educational system simply doesn't know how to handle high intelligence. And why wouldn't they gravitate towards HN? > self-proclaimed gifted HNers Did you see how much tests for giftedness cost in the article? Do you really expect all these people to go out and get tested before feeling like they have permission to comment on an Internet forum about their experience?
- logfromblammo 11y ago
  They certainly do know how to handle high intelligence. But it's for the benefit of everyone else, other than the intelligent students. I recall in Kurt Vonnegut's _Sirens of Titan_ how people on Earth were handicapped, to counter their strengths. The most intelligent people had to wear earphones that constantly emitted annoying sounds so that it was harder for them to think clearly. That's very much like the way GLaDOS was handicapped in the Portal 2 backstory by attaching Wheatley to her--a personality core that was designed by the best scientists to be the worst possible idiot, to constantly feed her bad ideas. The US educational system piles gratuitous additional work on the smartest students. Rather than just graduating, how about graduating while taking a bunch of AP or IB classes? The system accommodates them by digging additional official channels, rather than allowing them to become self-directed autodidacts or entrepreneurs. I know that when I was a kid, I would have totally wasted any additional free time I may have had outside of classes, but it's very possible that some of my classmates in all the various "X" sections might have taken part-time jobs, or started low-capital businesses, or educated themselves on topics the school could never teach.
willholloway 11y ago
You actually are dismissing the article itself, and the experiences of all the HNers that have experienced what it talks about firsthand. Your phrase "self-proclaimed gifted" is outright dismissive. This is a natural human reaction. The reminder of the existence of people smarter than ourselves often results in narcissistic injury, it feels bad, it can hurt. It's the reason gifted education is such a low and unpopular funding priority. But all that does is make society poorer. Humanity's gifted population is one of it's great resources, and we squander it. We don't protect it, and we don't value it, and we don't foster it. The article talks about twice exceptional kids, these are kids who are gifted but often have a discrepancy or a weakness, a learning disability. Because they are highly verbal and intelligent, they can use that to cover for their weaknesses, but they do not do well in a school setting at all. They withdraw or they become the class clown to entertain themselves. This often compounds over the years, like untreated ADD, and turns into depression, anxiety, substance abuse and so on. And it's a tragedy because they have so much to offer, but we fail them, and we lose a lot of them.
- rotw 11y ago
  Your comment is exactly the attitude the person you were replying to was mocking. What that person saying is that a lot of reasonably intelligent people who are nowhere near geniuses like to think of themselves as geniuses as a form of narcissistic self-flattery. For people good at math, sciences and computing and other occupations considered "nerdy", capability in these fields and stereotypes of intelligence associated with them become a point of pride and they begin to identify with people far smarter than they are, despite actually being unexceptionally intelligent. HN has talented people, sure, but I think it's definitely fair to say there's a large population of people who flatter themselves thinking they're geniuses who regularly post, upvote, and comment on this kind of article with "me too!" sentiments. Pointing this out has nothing to do with the kids in this article, who are genuinely exceptional and certainly worthy of sympathy and nurturing.
  - Lawtonfogle 11y ago
    >Your comment is exactly the attitude the person you were replying to was mocking. What is being mocked is the attitude we should care for people? Think about that for a second. >What that person saying is that a lot of reasonably intelligent people who are nowhere near geniuses like to think of themselves as geniuses as a form of narcissistic self-flattery. Yet the parent comment didn't have that in it. How can the grandparent be mocking the parent if the grandparent is mocking those who chime in 'me too' while the parent doesn't do that?
sathackr 11y ago
And I presume you know these 'gifted HNers' well enough to know they are self-proclaimed? Trust me, having an IQ 50% higher than the average of the rest of the population isn't fun. And though IQ is generally all that is needed to be considered 'gifted,'it isn't everything. There have been many studies on this. I am not self proclaimed, I have the tests to prove it and I get sick of people telling me how smart I am and how they wish they could be like me. I've gotten that line from surgeons and psychologists, people who's job I couldn't do even if I tried. I try to frame it in their mindset to show them that they can do it too. I truly think if they would get out of that mindset, they could be much 'smarter' also. Biology plays a role but it's not everything. I don't identify with the people in the article. I wasn't particularly weird, eccentric, bullied, or any of the typical things that you hear about. I had friends, girlfriends, etc... About the only typical nerd thing was I was usually the teacher's pet. But I think that's just because I was always wanting to help. I was diagnosed with ADHD at 14, refused to take the medications and have been dealing with it ever since. Tags, sock seams, etc... didn't bother me. I had the typical ADHD symptoms, but that's about it.
- pc86 11y ago
  If you have a diagnosed disorder, you should take medication for it unless your physician suggests otherwise.
  - uberlux 11y ago
    The Physician is Always Right! TM
    - pc86 11y ago
      More like "the physician probably knows more than the 14 year old."
      - Lawtonfogle 11y ago
        The doctor will know more, but they spend far less focus on it. They are also biased to over prescribe medication (at least in the US) to an extreme extent. The bias alone is reason to second guess all judgments. (Really, go look into the over-medication of young children with off label prescriptions. And part of the issue is that it isn't just the doctor pushing for it, often the parents want a cure all pill as well.)
timrpeterson 11y ago
HN responses are predictable on many verticals. Upvoting happens for: 1. YC unicorns. 2. Obscure programming language news. 3. Medium/Natilius posts on self-improvement. 4. NYTimes/WSJ/WashPost articles on obvious trends in business or STEM. 5. SV "celebrity" projects.
- Practicality 11y ago
  Yes. Isn't that what makes it Hacker News? If we didn't have a specific set of interests it would just be another news site.
- gadders 11y ago
  6) Managers are dumb and developers are clever
speeder 11y ago
There are two reasons for this. 1) Programming attract this sort of people in first place, where you see programmers, you will see lots of people like the ones described in the article. 2) It is very problematic, unfixed, and people need help. At least I do... but at the same time I refrain from asking for help, because usually the result is negative. "Oh, here we go again with the super intelligent guy complaining about how intelligent he is." Not only for "gifted", but many mental issues are looked down, and are not considered by society a disease like a physical one, a person that is sneezing everywhere, get people to pity that person and help, but a person that is unable to work in society even with heavy meds, need to "grow and mature".
- jschwartzi 11y ago
  About twice a week I wish I was dumber for some reason or another.
  - Practicality 11y ago
    Yes, ignorance is bliss. And "less intelligent" people can't help but be ignorant. I often envy their obliviousness. Even if the whole group is wrong, they all agree with one another and fit in together. Those of us who understand have to choose to either be wrong to fit in or be right and be cast out. Either choice is painful.
  - bonesmoses 11y ago
    Eh. I used to do that until my 30's or so. Now I just want those damn kids off my lawn. ;)
- kalzium 11y ago
  Go to a doctor and let them describe you something for depression. Worked for me. Be open about your problems and don't be ashamed. Most people feel the way you do. I never lie to people about my mental issues - not even at work. Guess what? 95% of the people I worked with (all other programmers) were on some kind of meds, too - for depression, social anxiety, ADHD etc.. Feels so much better just being open about it and crack a joke here and there. "Let's just all put down work, go to the beach and cry!" "I'm in. I'll bring beer." "Oh, I wish I could!" [I remember that conversation happening on Slack once] I don't know! Sitting home alone, pitying yourself and being upset about society never really changes anything. ;)
toolslive 11y ago
Barnum effect in action?
bonesmoses 11y ago
HN is a forum comprised primarily of extremely tech-oriented and innovative people. Are you somehow surprised that some of these would be a standard deviation or two above the norm? And heaven forbid they comment on an article with which they can relate directly, and possibly provide some insight. But yeah... hurr, durr, braggarts, etc.
Lawtonfogle 11y ago
>self-proclaimed gifted HNers And if they had actually brought any evidence other than their own self claim, imagine how they would've been treated. No way to win except to shut up and pretend to be normal... one of the most depressing lessons I have learned is that all the social ills of grade school do not disappear when you graduate; they merge into the fabric of daily life.
- Joeboy 11y ago
  > one of the most depressing lessons I have learned is that all the social ills of grade school do not disappear when you graduate; they merge into the fabric of daily life. For what it's worth I've learned the opposite. Outside of a mass-incarceration type environment, people are mostly pretty OK. It took me way too long to work that out after I left school.
  - Lawtonfogle 11y ago
    I think it is that you get far more power in who you surround yourself with and you learn better how to navigate social issues. Also, people are great at faking at being nice... I live in the South (USA) and lots of people seem really nice until they switch to a topic like homosexuality, at which point you find their beliefs are really quite harmful (things like seizing children and force conversion camps). You learn to avoid the topic and keep pretending everything is nice, but when the person things you or perhaps a friend should be in prison because of who they find attractive, I find it hard to describe them as nice. And heaven help you if you are part of an interracial couple. In short, it is us vs them mentality all the same, and while it is really nice when you are part of the us, it is horrendous when you realize you are actually part of the them.
    - selimthegrim 11y ago
      This is a lost cause on HN, where the surround yourself with the 5 people you want to most be like turns into "let's all hole up in SF with liberal people just like us and to hell with the rest of the country"
ThrustVectoring 11y ago
HN has 300k daily uniques. If you filter down to 99th percentile, and again the half of the student population that has a shitty time through school, the article is going to be seen by something like 6000 people that fit the bill. Given that approximately 1% of the viewership will actually post comments, and you should expect to get sixty people who are willing to talk and have relevant experiences to share. Note that this should be an underestimation - HN filters for the tech crowd, and by proxy, for IQ. Anyhow, my point is that you get less of the woodwork effect than my priors for how many relevant people would want to comment about it. My theory is that they've been traumatized into not talking about their experience as a gifted child, along with a side of imposter syndrome. And you're making that problem worse for that demographic. Congratulations.
InclinedPlane 11y ago
A perfect demonstration of the problem. Being above average intelligence is so great and wonderful, it means life should be easy for those folks, and it means we can dehumanize gifted individuals and downplay their problems. They can't be real problems right? Smart people can't have real problems, they're so smart! The reality is that the system is ill serving many gifted individuals, so much so that it's not just causing gifted kids to not reach their potential but it's causing many of them to have diminished outcomes compared to "normal" kids, with some examples of terrible tragedy (suicide, homelessness, drug addiction, etc.)
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
willurd 11y ago
Way to ignore the article completely and dismiss an entire class of people in one sentence. Bravo.

guard-of-terra 11y ago

If there's an unsolved problem, it's going to pop up every so often. I think this is normal given the level of urgency. That is not normal is our inability to fix it and apparent lack of trying.

taneq 11y ago

But my mum had to cut all the tags out of my shirts when I was in school too! Finally someone who feels my pain! :P Edit: She did though, damn things were itchy. Doesn't seem to be a problem since I grew up though. Funny that.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
imgabe 11y ago
So spoiled! I had to cut out my own tags.
- taneq 11y ago
  Totally privileged.
jwdunne 11y ago
I ripped them out because I didn't trust my mum to cut it out completely. I was afraid the cut would create a sharp edge which would be even worse. I still wince at the few times I'd ripped a hole in a new shirt... Still unbearable but a lot more cautious after I ripped a cheap shirt in half a few months ago hahaha. EDIT: To note, I wasn't considered gifted. Undiagnosed ADHD. Teachers complained I couldn't finish writing the date and was lazy...
- wdmeldon 11y ago
  Wow. I too feared the sharp edges created when my mom cut the tags out of my shirt, wasn't considered gifted AND had ADHD. There is no way that's a coincidence. Someone needs to study the link between ungifted children with ADHD and their position on incomplete shirt tag removal.
qb45 11y ago
Tags? You aren't smart enough. I hated new clothes themselves.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
Practicality 11y ago
I don't know. Isn't this something all kids do? My brothers all hated the tags and so does my daughter. I think tags on kids clothes are just comparatively gigantic. I always thought most kids just dealt with it to avoid getting in trouble.

baldfat 11y ago

People miss the point. Intelligence isn't a gift for most people it is just a curse that you have to over come.

tzs 11y ago
See "The Simpsons" episode BABF22, "HOMЯ", for an hilarious exploration of this theme. In that episode, it is discovered that Homer's IQ was drastically lowered by an untreated childhood mishap. The damage is fixed, and Homer becomes much more intelligent than most of the other inhabitants of Springfield and it makes his life miserable, leading him to lament "is there no place for the man with the 105 IQ?" and purposefully restore the damage to return his IQ to normal Springfield levels.
- nickpeterson 11y ago
  hmm, I haven't seen this episode, but it feels like it was a spoof on the novella 'Flowers for Algernon', a somewhat heart-wrenching story young children tend to be subjected to.
- smrtinsert 11y ago
  Artie: Hello, classmates. Instead of voting for some athletic hero or a pretty boy, you have elected me, your intellectual superior, as your king. Good for you. - Simpsons

lucio 11y ago

aaaand.... patterns are bad?

shiven 11y ago
Eternal September. Rings a bell?

belorn 11y ago

Most people intuitively understand that a person with 25 points lower IQ than the average population is going to have unique problems and go through life in a slightly different path and order than the average. However, for some reason, this is not easily understood regarding people with 25 points over the average. It's also a pattern on HN because it really is a rather new concept. In Sweden, the law that dictates that every child should have a education that match their ability came into reality 2010 (2010:800, 3§). Before that, the goal was to target the lowest common denominator that would create a passing grade for everyone. This meant that school material targeting IQ around 75 was also put in the hands of children with around IQ 125, and unsurprisingly, this caused problems with under-stimulation and children that go through school without any training in studying.

goodJobWalrus 11y ago
> However, for some reason, this is not easily understood regarding people with 25 points over the average. I'm not sure how accurate this is. All the exceptionally talented kids/young people I knew growing up were nice and well-liked, well-adjusted people. All the weird kids I knew were just weird, not really especially talented. I'd like to see the numbers behind those anecdotes. There was recently an article here that discussed why extremely academically gifted children rarely become grown-up geniuses and people who move their fields forward. They stated that it's not because they are troubled, most of them are socially well-adjusted, but I can't find that article now for the lie of me.
- true_religion 11y ago
  I think it's orthogonal to the article. Under a system designed to the lowest common denominator, those on the low end have to put X amount of effort in order to pass. Those who are gifted have to put in X-Y effort where Y can almost nearly equal X (leading to kids not ever learning how to study). The Swedish system basically begins with the proposition that all students should put out X effort. Gifted children get more advanced work, or more quantity of work till they are putting out X effort. This isn't designed to make them better adjusted, or less 'weird'. It's just there to equip gifted students with more skills relative to the mean.

vinceguidry 11y ago

I see no reason to call this out derisively. It's clear that the US educational system simply doesn't know how to handle high intelligence. And why wouldn't they gravitate towards HN? > self-proclaimed gifted HNers Did you see how much tests for giftedness cost in the article? Do you really expect all these people to go out and get tested before feeling like they have permission to comment on an Internet forum about their experience?

logfromblammo 11y ago
They certainly do know how to handle high intelligence. But it's for the benefit of everyone else, other than the intelligent students. I recall in Kurt Vonnegut's _Sirens of Titan_ how people on Earth were handicapped, to counter their strengths. The most intelligent people had to wear earphones that constantly emitted annoying sounds so that it was harder for them to think clearly. That's very much like the way GLaDOS was handicapped in the Portal 2 backstory by attaching Wheatley to her--a personality core that was designed by the best scientists to be the worst possible idiot, to constantly feed her bad ideas. The US educational system piles gratuitous additional work on the smartest students. Rather than just graduating, how about graduating while taking a bunch of AP or IB classes? The system accommodates them by digging additional official channels, rather than allowing them to become self-directed autodidacts or entrepreneurs. I know that when I was a kid, I would have totally wasted any additional free time I may have had outside of classes, but it's very possible that some of my classmates in all the various "X" sections might have taken part-time jobs, or started low-capital businesses, or educated themselves on topics the school could never teach.

willholloway 11y ago

You actually are dismissing the article itself, and the experiences of all the HNers that have experienced what it talks about firsthand. Your phrase "self-proclaimed gifted" is outright dismissive. This is a natural human reaction. The reminder of the existence of people smarter than ourselves often results in narcissistic injury, it feels bad, it can hurt. It's the reason gifted education is such a low and unpopular funding priority. But all that does is make society poorer. Humanity's gifted population is one of it's great resources, and we squander it. We don't protect it, and we don't value it, and we don't foster it. The article talks about twice exceptional kids, these are kids who are gifted but often have a discrepancy or a weakness, a learning disability. Because they are highly verbal and intelligent, they can use that to cover for their weaknesses, but they do not do well in a school setting at all. They withdraw or they become the class clown to entertain themselves. This often compounds over the years, like untreated ADD, and turns into depression, anxiety, substance abuse and so on. And it's a tragedy because they have so much to offer, but we fail them, and we lose a lot of them.

rotw 11y ago
Your comment is exactly the attitude the person you were replying to was mocking. What that person saying is that a lot of reasonably intelligent people who are nowhere near geniuses like to think of themselves as geniuses as a form of narcissistic self-flattery. For people good at math, sciences and computing and other occupations considered "nerdy", capability in these fields and stereotypes of intelligence associated with them become a point of pride and they begin to identify with people far smarter than they are, despite actually being unexceptionally intelligent. HN has talented people, sure, but I think it's definitely fair to say there's a large population of people who flatter themselves thinking they're geniuses who regularly post, upvote, and comment on this kind of article with "me too!" sentiments. Pointing this out has nothing to do with the kids in this article, who are genuinely exceptional and certainly worthy of sympathy and nurturing.
- Lawtonfogle 11y ago
  >Your comment is exactly the attitude the person you were replying to was mocking. What is being mocked is the attitude we should care for people? Think about that for a second. >What that person saying is that a lot of reasonably intelligent people who are nowhere near geniuses like to think of themselves as geniuses as a form of narcissistic self-flattery. Yet the parent comment didn't have that in it. How can the grandparent be mocking the parent if the grandparent is mocking those who chime in 'me too' while the parent doesn't do that?

sathackr 11y ago

And I presume you know these 'gifted HNers' well enough to know they are self-proclaimed? Trust me, having an IQ 50% higher than the average of the rest of the population isn't fun. And though IQ is generally all that is needed to be considered 'gifted,'it isn't everything. There have been many studies on this. I am not self proclaimed, I have the tests to prove it and I get sick of people telling me how smart I am and how they wish they could be like me. I've gotten that line from surgeons and psychologists, people who's job I couldn't do even if I tried. I try to frame it in their mindset to show them that they can do it too. I truly think if they would get out of that mindset, they could be much 'smarter' also. Biology plays a role but it's not everything. I don't identify with the people in the article. I wasn't particularly weird, eccentric, bullied, or any of the typical things that you hear about. I had friends, girlfriends, etc... About the only typical nerd thing was I was usually the teacher's pet. But I think that's just because I was always wanting to help. I was diagnosed with ADHD at 14, refused to take the medications and have been dealing with it ever since. Tags, sock seams, etc... didn't bother me. I had the typical ADHD symptoms, but that's about it.

pc86 11y ago
If you have a diagnosed disorder, you should take medication for it unless your physician suggests otherwise.
- uberlux 11y ago
  The Physician is Always Right! TM
  - pc86 11y ago
    More like "the physician probably knows more than the 14 year old."
    - Lawtonfogle 11y ago
      The doctor will know more, but they spend far less focus on it. They are also biased to over prescribe medication (at least in the US) to an extreme extent. The bias alone is reason to second guess all judgments. (Really, go look into the over-medication of young children with off label prescriptions. And part of the issue is that it isn't just the doctor pushing for it, often the parents want a cure all pill as well.)

timrpeterson 11y ago

HN responses are predictable on many verticals. Upvoting happens for: 1. YC unicorns. 2. Obscure programming language news. 3. Medium/Natilius posts on self-improvement. 4. NYTimes/WSJ/WashPost articles on obvious trends in business or STEM. 5. SV "celebrity" projects.

Practicality 11y ago
Yes. Isn't that what makes it Hacker News? If we didn't have a specific set of interests it would just be another news site.
gadders 11y ago
6) Managers are dumb and developers are clever

speeder 11y ago

There are two reasons for this. 1) Programming attract this sort of people in first place, where you see programmers, you will see lots of people like the ones described in the article. 2) It is very problematic, unfixed, and people need help. At least I do... but at the same time I refrain from asking for help, because usually the result is negative. "Oh, here we go again with the super intelligent guy complaining about how intelligent he is." Not only for "gifted", but many mental issues are looked down, and are not considered by society a disease like a physical one, a person that is sneezing everywhere, get people to pity that person and help, but a person that is unable to work in society even with heavy meds, need to "grow and mature".

jschwartzi 11y ago
About twice a week I wish I was dumber for some reason or another.
- Practicality 11y ago
  Yes, ignorance is bliss. And "less intelligent" people can't help but be ignorant. I often envy their obliviousness. Even if the whole group is wrong, they all agree with one another and fit in together. Those of us who understand have to choose to either be wrong to fit in or be right and be cast out. Either choice is painful.
- bonesmoses 11y ago
  Eh. I used to do that until my 30's or so. Now I just want those damn kids off my lawn. ;)
kalzium 11y ago
Go to a doctor and let them describe you something for depression. Worked for me. Be open about your problems and don't be ashamed. Most people feel the way you do. I never lie to people about my mental issues - not even at work. Guess what? 95% of the people I worked with (all other programmers) were on some kind of meds, too - for depression, social anxiety, ADHD etc.. Feels so much better just being open about it and crack a joke here and there. "Let's just all put down work, go to the beach and cry!" "I'm in. I'll bring beer." "Oh, I wish I could!" [I remember that conversation happening on Slack once] I don't know! Sitting home alone, pitying yourself and being upset about society never really changes anything. ;)

toolslive 11y ago

Barnum effect in action?

bonesmoses 11y ago

HN is a forum comprised primarily of extremely tech-oriented and innovative people. Are you somehow surprised that some of these would be a standard deviation or two above the norm? And heaven forbid they comment on an article with which they can relate directly, and possibly provide some insight. But yeah... hurr, durr, braggarts, etc.

Lawtonfogle 11y ago

>self-proclaimed gifted HNers And if they had actually brought any evidence other than their own self claim, imagine how they would've been treated. No way to win except to shut up and pretend to be normal... one of the most depressing lessons I have learned is that all the social ills of grade school do not disappear when you graduate; they merge into the fabric of daily life.

Joeboy 11y ago
> one of the most depressing lessons I have learned is that all the social ills of grade school do not disappear when you graduate; they merge into the fabric of daily life. For what it's worth I've learned the opposite. Outside of a mass-incarceration type environment, people are mostly pretty OK. It took me way too long to work that out after I left school.
- Lawtonfogle 11y ago
  I think it is that you get far more power in who you surround yourself with and you learn better how to navigate social issues. Also, people are great at faking at being nice... I live in the South (USA) and lots of people seem really nice until they switch to a topic like homosexuality, at which point you find their beliefs are really quite harmful (things like seizing children and force conversion camps). You learn to avoid the topic and keep pretending everything is nice, but when the person things you or perhaps a friend should be in prison because of who they find attractive, I find it hard to describe them as nice. And heaven help you if you are part of an interracial couple. In short, it is us vs them mentality all the same, and while it is really nice when you are part of the us, it is horrendous when you realize you are actually part of the them.
  - selimthegrim 11y ago
    This is a lost cause on HN, where the surround yourself with the 5 people you want to most be like turns into "let's all hole up in SF with liberal people just like us and to hell with the rest of the country"

ThrustVectoring 11y ago

HN has 300k daily uniques. If you filter down to 99th percentile, and again the half of the student population that has a shitty time through school, the article is going to be seen by something like 6000 people that fit the bill. Given that approximately 1% of the viewership will actually post comments, and you should expect to get sixty people who are willing to talk and have relevant experiences to share. Note that this should be an underestimation - HN filters for the tech crowd, and by proxy, for IQ. Anyhow, my point is that you get less of the woodwork effect than my priors for how many relevant people would want to comment about it. My theory is that they've been traumatized into not talking about their experience as a gifted child, along with a side of imposter syndrome. And you're making that problem worse for that demographic. Congratulations.

InclinedPlane 11y ago

A perfect demonstration of the problem. Being above average intelligence is so great and wonderful, it means life should be easy for those folks, and it means we can dehumanize gifted individuals and downplay their problems. They can't be real problems right? Smart people can't have real problems, they're so smart! The reality is that the system is ill serving many gifted individuals, so much so that it's not just causing gifted kids to not reach their potential but it's causing many of them to have diminished outcomes compared to "normal" kids, with some examples of terrible tragedy (suicide, homelessness, drug addiction, etc.)

deleted 11y ago

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willurd 11y ago

Way to ignore the article completely and dismiss an entire class of people in one sentence. Bravo.