7 ms·

I get quite depressed when I read articles like this. I'm resentful of the fact that my early academic performance was merely above average, rather than excepti

by Jimmy 10y ago

I get quite depressed when I read articles like this. I'm resentful of the fact that my early academic performance was merely above average, rather than exceptional. Some days I feel confident in my abilities and my plans for the future; other days, I fear that it's already too late for me to accomplish anything of note.

exelius 10y ago
Don't fret; everyone in our generation was raised to believe we were the 1 in 10,000. That simply can't be true 99.99% of the time. We're a generation that needs therapy to realize that a stable, six-figure job as a mid-level engineer at 30 isn't failure. Our expectations (some might say entitlement) were set so unreasonably high that most of us have no chance of meeting them.
- Jimmy 10y ago
  Well, that's simply unacceptable to me. A stable six-figure job is failure. If I'm fated to try and fail for the rest of my life to break into the 1 in 10,000, then so be it.
  - exelius 10y ago
    I think the idea is that the 1-in-10,000 in this context is that it's not something you can "break into"; you're either born gifted or you're not. It's really hard for our generation to accept that some people really are born "better" -- which is exactly why the article mentions the education system now focuses on bringing up lower performers rather than identifying and accelerating gifted students.
    - Jimmy 10y ago
      I'm a strong believer in the idea that some people are born better, you don't have to convince me. The extent of my abilities is still unknown to me. I know what I want to achieve and I will continue trying to achieve it until I succeed or I am dead. To accept anything less is equivalent to death.
      - csallen 10y ago
        May I ask how old you are? And what you're trying to achieve?
        Jimmy 10y ago
        I'm 24. My goal is to be one of the most influential video game designers of this century. I may not be considered the absolute greatest (rankings like that are very fickle anyway, and never universally agreed upon, even in the sciences). But I do want my works to be considered necessary for any future survey of the major works of this period.
        criddell 10y ago
        > My goal is to be one of the most influential video game designers of this century. Shouldn't your goal be to make great games? Otherwise, aren't you striving for a goal defined by other people? For goals like yours, politics and personality can matter as much as the work itself. If you are enjoying the journey you are on, then go for it (and I hope you are spending as much time on your social network as you are on games). Otherwise, I'd urge you to consider the opportunity costs of a narrow, intense focus.
        Jimmy 10y ago
        >Shouldn't your goal to be to make great games? That was an implied sub-goal. The verification criteria I gave was merely to illustrate what the concrete results of my endeavors might look like. If I said flatly "I want to make great games," then someone might reasonably respond "how do you know you're succeeding?" >For goals like yours, politics and personality can matter as much as the work itself. This is quite true. But Paul Graham has a great quote which I think might be applicable here: "Everyone in the sciences secretly believes that mathematicians are smarter than they are... And so there is a great temptation to work on problems you can treat formally, rather than problems that are, say, important."
        10y ago
  - eli_gottlieb 10y ago
    Stop focusing on being special and actually dedicate yourself to something real.
    - Jimmy 10y ago
      I have an extremely specific set of projects I want to implement.
  - rb808 10y ago
    >A stable six-figure job is failure. If you look at the study, only a quarter of the gifted students made it to the 95% income percentile. Being a Genius doesn't make you rich or happy or give you a satisfaction. It makes it more likely you'll have a PhD & produce academic papers.
    - srtjstjsj 10y ago
      A lot of them are earning low wages because they have PhD and are professors
    - xyzzyz 10y ago
      To get to 95% income percentile, you need to earn at least $190k a year. I'd be very interested in seeing how many gifted students don't reach, say, 75% percentile, which is around $90k a year, and why.
      - kajjffkk 10y ago
        Smart people dont need to grind their life away to brag to their peers about their middle class income. Hopefully for all of us, theyre doing something more innovative for society, no matter how long it takes.
- athenot 10y ago
  Not only it's not a failure, it's the optimal happiness zone. It's enough that all the basic needs are met and there is a decent amount of freedom and low stress, and low enough to be able to keep a modest mentality.
iopq 10y ago
My academic performance was average, but I did place first in a math Olympiad in my school. That said, I was competing with kids that didn't know algebra and I got basically every question right.
jccalhoun 10y ago
There are lots of "late bloomers" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_bloomer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_bloomer
paulpauper 10y ago
That's why you need to invest in index funds (ideally the S&P 500 or Nasdaq 100), high-IQ companies - specifically Google Amazon and Facebook- or use the inverse ETF decay strategy that makes 20-40 percent a year. Buying in-the-money call options using 3-1 leverage on Google, Amazon, and Facebook has returned 200% since 2013 vs. 30% for S&P 500. The motivation behind this strategy is that average-IQ people can make good money piggybacking off the creative contributions of America's smartest .1%. Facebook, Amazon, and Google stock will keep rising, as part of this trend, allowing average people to profit by joining the ride. But existential problems are harder to solve than money ones, and even the smartest are faced with them (hence philosophy as a subject).
- shostack 10y ago
  I was with you until the individual stock purchase and leverage bit. For most people this is NOT a wise strategy as they have neither the investing experience nor savings to gamble like that.
  - paulpauper 10y ago
    The backtest of the strategy I developed risks $10k to make $100k since 2013. It attains maximum drawdown if all three stocks (AMZN FB GOOG ) fall 30% because 3-1 leverage is used. But since it's an option strategy, you don't risk more than the $10k invested. Yeah there is risk, but GOOG AMZN and FB have a combined market cap of about 1 trillion. It could be modified to be more diverse but returns are less. The sharpe ratio fr the strategy (which is a way of quantifying risk vs. returns) is 2 vs .80 for the S&P 500 in that period. This strategy could be a good way for someone with a small amount of money to make quick returns and then later move to a more conservative strategy.
karma_vaccum123 10y ago
Intelligence, even super-intelligence, is rarely a key determinant of success, despite what you will read here.
yolesaber 10y ago
In my college class there were two kids I would call absolute geniuses, possibly the smartest folk I have ever met. One wrote his senior thesis his second year there (on compilers and type theory) and another was a young philosophy transfer student from Deep Springs who regularly owned and outwitted professors in class to such a degree that rumors abounded he would be offered a faculty position after graduating. And he was. But he didn't take the position. Why? Because he killed himself a few days later, jumped in front of a train. The kid who wrote his senior thesis sophomore year got a job working for Google when he was nineteen (this was back when Google was still cool and considered the elite of the elite) and killed himself before his 21st birthday. My point is that academic performance and intellect doesn't mean shit outside the academy and is a terrible indicator to use for success or accomplishment. It's never too late.
- Bakary 10y ago
  I won't ever know how people like that process the world but my guess is that they are attuned to the sheer horror of it in a way that most people can't conceive of, and aren't able to distract themselves from this with other pursuits. Following this taking their own lives becomes the only solution they can envision.
  - sheer_horror 10y ago
    I'm a 22 year old student and developer. I took a test that said I was gifted as a kid. Since I was very young, I've sensed 'sheer horror' constantly. It's when I see my friends and family, and they describe their aspirations that they won't reach for lack of insight; its the people that get stuck in a local minimum of cognotive dissonance who decide not to seek the global minimum. The coming death of the world is the strongest and most painful, because to help avoid that is to decimate my interpersonal relationships in pursuit of a craft that I could use to grow a business that might have some shred of succeeding and granting me the power of influence. I can't meet people without perceiving their flaws that they won't acknowledge. Every day I am appalled by my mistakes and failures of the week, yet my standards are so high that I cannot even express my grief without people rolling their eyes at my lofty goals. I should be writing my integration tests.

by Jimmy 10y ago

exelius 10y ago

Don't fret; everyone in our generation was raised to believe we were the 1 in 10,000. That simply can't be true 99.99% of the time. We're a generation that needs therapy to realize that a stable, six-figure job as a mid-level engineer at 30 isn't failure. Our expectations (some might say entitlement) were set so unreasonably high that most of us have no chance of meeting them.

Jimmy 10y ago
Well, that's simply unacceptable to me. A stable six-figure job is failure. If I'm fated to try and fail for the rest of my life to break into the 1 in 10,000, then so be it.
- exelius 10y ago
  I think the idea is that the 1-in-10,000 in this context is that it's not something you can "break into"; you're either born gifted or you're not. It's really hard for our generation to accept that some people really are born "better" -- which is exactly why the article mentions the education system now focuses on bringing up lower performers rather than identifying and accelerating gifted students.
  - Jimmy 10y ago
    I'm a strong believer in the idea that some people are born better, you don't have to convince me. The extent of my abilities is still unknown to me. I know what I want to achieve and I will continue trying to achieve it until I succeed or I am dead. To accept anything less is equivalent to death.
    - csallen 10y ago
      May I ask how old you are? And what you're trying to achieve?
      - Jimmy 10y ago
        I'm 24. My goal is to be one of the most influential video game designers of this century. I may not be considered the absolute greatest (rankings like that are very fickle anyway, and never universally agreed upon, even in the sciences). But I do want my works to be considered necessary for any future survey of the major works of this period.
        criddell 10y ago
        > My goal is to be one of the most influential video game designers of this century. Shouldn't your goal be to make great games? Otherwise, aren't you striving for a goal defined by other people? For goals like yours, politics and personality can matter as much as the work itself. If you are enjoying the journey you are on, then go for it (and I hope you are spending as much time on your social network as you are on games). Otherwise, I'd urge you to consider the opportunity costs of a narrow, intense focus.
        Jimmy 10y ago
        >Shouldn't your goal to be to make great games? That was an implied sub-goal. The verification criteria I gave was merely to illustrate what the concrete results of my endeavors might look like. If I said flatly "I want to make great games," then someone might reasonably respond "how do you know you're succeeding?" >For goals like yours, politics and personality can matter as much as the work itself. This is quite true. But Paul Graham has a great quote which I think might be applicable here: "Everyone in the sciences secretly believes that mathematicians are smarter than they are... And so there is a great temptation to work on problems you can treat formally, rather than problems that are, say, important."
        10y ago
- eli_gottlieb 10y ago
  Stop focusing on being special and actually dedicate yourself to something real.
  - Jimmy 10y ago
    I have an extremely specific set of projects I want to implement.
- rb808 10y ago
  >A stable six-figure job is failure. If you look at the study, only a quarter of the gifted students made it to the 95% income percentile. Being a Genius doesn't make you rich or happy or give you a satisfaction. It makes it more likely you'll have a PhD & produce academic papers.
  - srtjstjsj 10y ago
    A lot of them are earning low wages because they have PhD and are professors
  - xyzzyz 10y ago
    To get to 95% income percentile, you need to earn at least $190k a year. I'd be very interested in seeing how many gifted students don't reach, say, 75% percentile, which is around $90k a year, and why.
    - kajjffkk 10y ago
      Smart people dont need to grind their life away to brag to their peers about their middle class income. Hopefully for all of us, theyre doing something more innovative for society, no matter how long it takes.
athenot 10y ago
Not only it's not a failure, it's the optimal happiness zone. It's enough that all the basic needs are met and there is a decent amount of freedom and low stress, and low enough to be able to keep a modest mentality.

iopq 10y ago

My academic performance was average, but I did place first in a math Olympiad in my school. That said, I was competing with kids that didn't know algebra and I got basically every question right.

jccalhoun 10y ago

There are lots of "late bloomers" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_bloomer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_bloomer

paulpauper 10y ago

That's why you need to invest in index funds (ideally the S&P 500 or Nasdaq 100), high-IQ companies - specifically Google Amazon and Facebook- or use the inverse ETF decay strategy that makes 20-40 percent a year. Buying in-the-money call options using 3-1 leverage on Google, Amazon, and Facebook has returned 200% since 2013 vs. 30% for S&P 500. The motivation behind this strategy is that average-IQ people can make good money piggybacking off the creative contributions of America's smartest .1%. Facebook, Amazon, and Google stock will keep rising, as part of this trend, allowing average people to profit by joining the ride. But existential problems are harder to solve than money ones, and even the smartest are faced with them (hence philosophy as a subject).

shostack 10y ago
I was with you until the individual stock purchase and leverage bit. For most people this is NOT a wise strategy as they have neither the investing experience nor savings to gamble like that.
- paulpauper 10y ago
  The backtest of the strategy I developed risks $10k to make $100k since 2013. It attains maximum drawdown if all three stocks (AMZN FB GOOG ) fall 30% because 3-1 leverage is used. But since it's an option strategy, you don't risk more than the $10k invested. Yeah there is risk, but GOOG AMZN and FB have a combined market cap of about 1 trillion. It could be modified to be more diverse but returns are less. The sharpe ratio fr the strategy (which is a way of quantifying risk vs. returns) is 2 vs .80 for the S&P 500 in that period. This strategy could be a good way for someone with a small amount of money to make quick returns and then later move to a more conservative strategy.

karma_vaccum123 10y ago

Intelligence, even super-intelligence, is rarely a key determinant of success, despite what you will read here.

yolesaber 10y ago

In my college class there were two kids I would call absolute geniuses, possibly the smartest folk I have ever met. One wrote his senior thesis his second year there (on compilers and type theory) and another was a young philosophy transfer student from Deep Springs who regularly owned and outwitted professors in class to such a degree that rumors abounded he would be offered a faculty position after graduating. And he was. But he didn't take the position. Why? Because he killed himself a few days later, jumped in front of a train. The kid who wrote his senior thesis sophomore year got a job working for Google when he was nineteen (this was back when Google was still cool and considered the elite of the elite) and killed himself before his 21st birthday. My point is that academic performance and intellect doesn't mean shit outside the academy and is a terrible indicator to use for success or accomplishment. It's never too late.

Bakary 10y ago
I won't ever know how people like that process the world but my guess is that they are attuned to the sheer horror of it in a way that most people can't conceive of, and aren't able to distract themselves from this with other pursuits. Following this taking their own lives becomes the only solution they can envision.
- sheer_horror 10y ago
  I'm a 22 year old student and developer. I took a test that said I was gifted as a kid. Since I was very young, I've sensed 'sheer horror' constantly. It's when I see my friends and family, and they describe their aspirations that they won't reach for lack of insight; its the people that get stuck in a local minimum of cognotive dissonance who decide not to seek the global minimum. The coming death of the world is the strongest and most painful, because to help avoid that is to decimate my interpersonal relationships in pursuit of a craft that I could use to grow a business that might have some shred of succeeding and granting me the power of influence. I can't meet people without perceiving their flaws that they won't acknowledge. Every day I am appalled by my mistakes and failures of the week, yet my standards are so high that I cannot even express my grief without people rolling their eyes at my lofty goals. I should be writing my integration tests.