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Warning! /r/iamverysmart post ahead! I normally wouldn't engage in this, as it's extremely poor manners and terribly arrogant, but it's on topic here and I thin

Warning! /r/iamverysmart post ahead! I normally wouldn't engage in this, as it's extremely poor manners and terribly arrogant, but it's on topic here and I think other potential /r/iamverysmart posters might benefit, so here goes: One of the problems of being intelligent is learning how to tolerate and accept boredom. I used to rebel against being bored and being ahead of the class. I would think: "this is all so easy and why isn't anybody interested in anything interesting?" Once I learned that dealing with boredom is basically the price you pay for fitting in things improved a lot. I deal with a lot of friendships that are profoundly boring just so I can have people to talk to and socially interact with. I don't complain. I don't patronize. I just go through the motions so I can cargo cult my way to a social life. I lowered my expectations on everything and everybody to absolutely nothing and it works great. I overhear other people's conversations and I think to myself: "how can these people even put up with that level of conversation?. They must be pretending to be entertained!" Then I remember all about the boring world out there where people go about their daily lives talking all day about boring stuff. After all this boring interaction I'll occasionally go to a Deep Learning study group and we'll read the latest paper. Very smart people will analyze the paper and leave me a little disconcerted that there are people that I can engage with intellectually and be challenged and entertained by in a sincere way. Anyway, that's just my two cents about the world for the disgruntled /r/iamverysmart crowd out there, whether you actually are or not. :)

neffy 10y ago
Finding something to do with the spare cycles is definitely one problem that has to be solved.
- narrator 10y ago
  Speaking of which, here's another /r/iamverysmart funny story about spare cycles: I had a very smart, quirky friend from rural California. I took her to a party once and she wasn't interested in the people there who weren't terribly intellectual, but I was having a decent time practicing my social skills. She sat in the corner and just starred at the wall catatonically. I asked her if she was alright. She assured me she was and told me she had gotten really good at dealing with boredom growing up in a small town with nothing to do and no other nerds around.
throwaway942 10y ago
Throwaway for obvious reasons. I do not mean this comment as a brag. Far from it. I am one of these people - I tested with an incredibly high IQ (nearly 200 at the time, though I know that fades). I graduated with a 4.2 GPA, and a 3.9 average (because on semester I chose to 'punish' my mother who was taking credit for my high grades, and got a D just to prove it) I have a very hard time with life in general. People bore me to tears. You have to repeat and dumb down everything for them all the time. Most jobs are mind numbingly dull. Unlike the people in this article, I had support. My grandfather was similar to me, and taught me some basic coping mechanisms. They have largely worked, and I've learned how to survive with a nearly perfect memory (oh god the horror, I wouldn't inflict it on anyone) and what I like to call an incredibly high idle. I make enough to get by, and the company I work for seems pleased with me. Been there 16 years so far, always resistent to anything beyond a simple lead type position. Thank god my management usually recognizes that I am VERY bad at dealing with people, and lets me get back to solving problems in my very quiet and dark office. The coping that works for me is split attention. If I'm simultaneously listening to two or more musical pieces, working on different problems on different computers and screens, and fiddling with something (like a pen or something), I can get through a day. If for some reason I'm restricted down to a single source of input (like just a laptop), I basically go completely mad. My mental energy level is far too high, and the frustration of waiting for the computer to keep up causes me to get angry beyond reason. My life is a fucking hell, and I also spend a lot of time contemplating suicide. The imaginative and interesting methods help occupy some cycles.
- Frondo 10y ago
  I have known/worked with a few people who, in confidence, expressed something similar to what you just said, about having to "dumb everything down" for everyone around them. They were bright, of course, I wouldn't quibble with that, but they were also really lousy communicators. It wasn't so much that everyone around them was just a dum-dum, but that they weren't very good at explaining things. They seemed to misattribute those folks not understanding them to people being dumb, not their inability to express ideas.
  - throwaway942 10y ago
lordnacho 10y ago
I don't understand how you can be bored. I understand how dumb people can be bored; they think they know everything, and they never bother exploring. Every conversation is the same superficial baloney. I went to a world class university, having done math a year early and winning contests. It's very, very easy for me to find something I don't understand. There's always some course or wikipedia or something that I can't just pick up and understand. So how could I ever be bored? You mean socially bored rather than intellectually? These days it's not that hard to find other smart people, is it?
- fjdlwlv 10y ago
  When a smart person gets bored, it's because their brain tells then it's not fun to enjoy simple pleasures that normies enjoy. There is no requirement to be dumb to enjoy watching sports, but some people can't enjoy it because "it's stupid". It's more an social-emotional disorder, an obsessive ambition for trying to do Important Things, than a problem with being too smart.
  - lordnacho 10y ago
    If sports is the topic, you will find a wealth of modern statistical analyses that add an extra dimension to your viewing. There's all sorts of blogs offering insights that you couldn't get a few years ago.
Moshe_Silnorin 10y ago
It's better than being a fool. I've lived my life just on the edge of being capable of an original thought. I find it kind of agonizing. From your testimony and Throwaway's it seems most of your problems are due to externalities of other's comparative stupidity. An 8-foot tall man feels out of place in a world built for 5'10 people, through no fault of his own but also through no fault of the comparative midgets. We may have done a disservice to smart people by attaching such stigma to Mensa and other high-IQ societies. A sufficiently selective club or workplace seems like it would solve most of your problems. It also strikes me that once we can select for high-IQ alleles, it might be best to narrow the bell curve even as we raise the mean past your and Throwaway's level.
- fjdlwlv 10y ago
  The stigma on Mensa is that the Mensa is an org of people who have accomplished nothing so they just brag about scoring high on a test 10-30 years ago. There's no stigma around getting together with people to "make" or hack or do math or write an intelligent blog or do whatever smart thing you enjoy.
Inconel 10y ago
I'm curious how those like you who are extremely intelligent feel about teaching, specifically topics which are very rudimentary to you, and whether this bores you to death or provides you with any enjoyment or sense of fulfillment? I'm a decidedly not smart person, but through some good fortune I work with some extremely smart people. I work in aerospace as a technician and many of my coworkers are Engineering/CompSci/Math/Physics people. I frequently pester them with all sorts of questions that to them must be very mundane. Unless they are really good at humoring me, which is entirely possible, I get the feeling that many of them genuinely enjoy explaining things, even when they have to dumb it down, to me.
- ecopoesis 10y ago
  This just means you work with good people. Good people of all levels like to help and teach others. Altruism is a key part of a working society. Unfortunately, being a genius has little to do with being a good person. Given the mad scientist archetype, there may even be a correlation between douchebag and genius.

neffy 10y ago

Finding something to do with the spare cycles is definitely one problem that has to be solved.

narrator 10y ago
Speaking of which, here's another /r/iamverysmart funny story about spare cycles: I had a very smart, quirky friend from rural California. I took her to a party once and she wasn't interested in the people there who weren't terribly intellectual, but I was having a decent time practicing my social skills. She sat in the corner and just starred at the wall catatonically. I asked her if she was alright. She assured me she was and told me she had gotten really good at dealing with boredom growing up in a small town with nothing to do and no other nerds around.

throwaway942 10y ago

Throwaway for obvious reasons. I do not mean this comment as a brag. Far from it. I am one of these people - I tested with an incredibly high IQ (nearly 200 at the time, though I know that fades). I graduated with a 4.2 GPA, and a 3.9 average (because on semester I chose to 'punish' my mother who was taking credit for my high grades, and got a D just to prove it) I have a very hard time with life in general. People bore me to tears. You have to repeat and dumb down everything for them all the time. Most jobs are mind numbingly dull. Unlike the people in this article, I had support. My grandfather was similar to me, and taught me some basic coping mechanisms. They have largely worked, and I've learned how to survive with a nearly perfect memory (oh god the horror, I wouldn't inflict it on anyone) and what I like to call an incredibly high idle. I make enough to get by, and the company I work for seems pleased with me. Been there 16 years so far, always resistent to anything beyond a simple lead type position. Thank god my management usually recognizes that I am VERY bad at dealing with people, and lets me get back to solving problems in my very quiet and dark office. The coping that works for me is split attention. If I'm simultaneously listening to two or more musical pieces, working on different problems on different computers and screens, and fiddling with something (like a pen or something), I can get through a day. If for some reason I'm restricted down to a single source of input (like just a laptop), I basically go completely mad. My mental energy level is far too high, and the frustration of waiting for the computer to keep up causes me to get angry beyond reason. My life is a fucking hell, and I also spend a lot of time contemplating suicide. The imaginative and interesting methods help occupy some cycles.

Frondo 10y ago
I have known/worked with a few people who, in confidence, expressed something similar to what you just said, about having to "dumb everything down" for everyone around them. They were bright, of course, I wouldn't quibble with that, but they were also really lousy communicators. It wasn't so much that everyone around them was just a dum-dum, but that they weren't very good at explaining things. They seemed to misattribute those folks not understanding them to people being dumb, not their inability to express ideas.
- throwaway942 10y ago

lordnacho 10y ago

I don't understand how you can be bored. I understand how dumb people can be bored; they think they know everything, and they never bother exploring. Every conversation is the same superficial baloney. I went to a world class university, having done math a year early and winning contests. It's very, very easy for me to find something I don't understand. There's always some course or wikipedia or something that I can't just pick up and understand. So how could I ever be bored? You mean socially bored rather than intellectually? These days it's not that hard to find other smart people, is it?

fjdlwlv 10y ago
When a smart person gets bored, it's because their brain tells then it's not fun to enjoy simple pleasures that normies enjoy. There is no requirement to be dumb to enjoy watching sports, but some people can't enjoy it because "it's stupid". It's more an social-emotional disorder, an obsessive ambition for trying to do Important Things, than a problem with being too smart.
- lordnacho 10y ago
  If sports is the topic, you will find a wealth of modern statistical analyses that add an extra dimension to your viewing. There's all sorts of blogs offering insights that you couldn't get a few years ago.

Moshe_Silnorin 10y ago

It's better than being a fool. I've lived my life just on the edge of being capable of an original thought. I find it kind of agonizing. From your testimony and Throwaway's it seems most of your problems are due to externalities of other's comparative stupidity. An 8-foot tall man feels out of place in a world built for 5'10 people, through no fault of his own but also through no fault of the comparative midgets. We may have done a disservice to smart people by attaching such stigma to Mensa and other high-IQ societies. A sufficiently selective club or workplace seems like it would solve most of your problems. It also strikes me that once we can select for high-IQ alleles, it might be best to narrow the bell curve even as we raise the mean past your and Throwaway's level.

fjdlwlv 10y ago
The stigma on Mensa is that the Mensa is an org of people who have accomplished nothing so they just brag about scoring high on a test 10-30 years ago. There's no stigma around getting together with people to "make" or hack or do math or write an intelligent blog or do whatever smart thing you enjoy.

Inconel 10y ago

I'm curious how those like you who are extremely intelligent feel about teaching, specifically topics which are very rudimentary to you, and whether this bores you to death or provides you with any enjoyment or sense of fulfillment? I'm a decidedly not smart person, but through some good fortune I work with some extremely smart people. I work in aerospace as a technician and many of my coworkers are Engineering/CompSci/Math/Physics people. I frequently pester them with all sorts of questions that to them must be very mundane. Unless they are really good at humoring me, which is entirely possible, I get the feeling that many of them genuinely enjoy explaining things, even when they have to dumb it down, to me.

ecopoesis 10y ago
This just means you work with good people. Good people of all levels like to help and teach others. Altruism is a key part of a working society. Unfortunately, being a genius has little to do with being a good person. Given the mad scientist archetype, there may even be a correlation between douchebag and genius.