5 ms·
This is something we as humans are going to have to deal with at one point or another. While some people would have it that "we are all the same" - the fact is
by mbrumlow 9y ago
This is something we as humans are going to have to deal with at one point or another. While some people would have it that "we are all the same" - the fact is that we are not.
It tends to become a touchy subject when you suggest that brain functionality differs between people but we seem to blindly accept that some people make better athletes than others.
It is particularly hard because you can't simply look at somebody and make any sort of judgement about ones mental abilities and there sometimes is no rhyme or reason why one person is more creative, or smarter than the other.
For me, I am a strong believer that brain functions are much like those of our physical counterparts. While the majority of people can all train the body up to run 1, 5, or 10 miles or more some people will simply have to exert less effort and be able to run further or faster than others. The same goes for brain functions. We can all be "good" in math, science, reading excreta... But only a subset of us will be experts in those subjects or even all of those subjects.
I think there is a lot to be studied how how early brain development can push the boundaries for the given set of hardware you are born with. But at some point I think you are mostly locked into what you have.
This is a hard topic to even begin to study. Because while two people may be able to preform the same mental functions we don't have a good way of judging amount of effort, and prep time required. For example, somebody who is just introduced to a new consept and can preformed the mental functions within minutes of introduction vs somebody who can preform the same mental functions but required 2 years of practice. The two people have very different cognitive capabilities, and you could argue one is smarter than the other.
As for the notion that we are not all the same. Please don't take that as we should be treating each other different based off skills. I think with regards of us all being human we all deserve the same level of respect and opportunity in life. My interest in this subject is based on the notion that we could have happier lives if this sort of subject was less taboo and we could explore making life decisions based off our actual aptitude.
I would much rather work with people, and do a job that I found "easier" every day than a job that I could do that I found "hard". While that is a very black and white statement that is not to mean that I don't want a challenge, but it does mean that I don't want to constantly be struggling.
I see this in the world already. Where people take jobs they hate, because their aptitude is simply low for that line of work. Where everything is constantly a uphill battle. I can't help to wonder how much better their life would be had they picked a different job where the work came more easy and maybe even considered fun to them. I was lucky to find a job where there is just enough hard stuff to keep me busy, but the bulk of the work I find easy. I think a lot of people who found their way into software experience this. Meanwhile I have friends who can't wait till the work day is over and generally hate their job and complain about how hard it is.
So simply put, some people are more creative, or smart or any other attribute because we are all different, and had different experiences during critical brain development times in life. I think the expectation that everybody would be the same -- or even have the same aptitude on any given mental exercise would be weird -- unless we were all clones.
- chillwaves 9y agoHow many people train up to even a tenth of their physical capability? Consider applying the same to creative effort. Yes, your absolute best effort may beat my absolute best, but we live in a world where most people are not even trying.
- mbrumlow 9y agoIts tricky, but consider the function of "trying" just another brain function. Many brain functions are required to achieve a outcome. So pure aptitude in one area might require cooperation of another. So we might be able to group different functions and map their dependencies. You might end up with something like (effort * raw_aptitude) = actual_aptitude for a given function, and there will be crossovers where where raw_aptitude is less in one person but their effort is more. And again one could arguably assign one being better than the other. When we talk about these sorts of things there are not many "gotchas" because you can't use one brain function to discount the other brain function as they really work together. So I really don't feel like somebodies lack of effort negates anything I said in the original post, as it is just another brain function. This does bring up a interesting crossover where mental faculties does play a role in physical performance. There was a study that showed that "smart" people made poor solders. The notion was that the smarter person was able to think further in the future about how their actions, or orders may play out. It was their ability to ponder the possibilities that ultimately caused them to shut down. On the flip side somebody who did not think as far into the future, or was not keen to pondering on future possibilities executed orders without hesitation -- making them a better solder. I don't know if I agree with this study, or their notion of smart, as "smart" can be subjective and is not really well defined. But it is fun to think about and wonder how these things do play a role in every day life.
- technological 9y agoI understand and agree to large extent regarding your statement "While some people would have it that "we are all the same" - the fact is that we are not." What is your take on each individual has his or her own strong quality which is different from others ? Like some may good at managing people, some good at analysis