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We slow thinkers are among good company, including Charles Darwin: "I have no great quickness of apprehension or wit which is so remarkable in some clever men,
by techstrategist 8y ago
We slow thinkers are among good company, including Charles Darwin:
"I have no great quickness of apprehension or wit which is so remarkable in some clever men, for instance, Huxley. I am therefore a poor critic: a paper or book, when first read, generally excites my admiration, and it is only after considerable reflection that I perceive the weak points. My power to follow a long and purely abstract train of thought is very limited; and therefore I could never have succeeded with metaphysics or mathematics. My memory is extensive, yet hazy: it suffices to make me cautious by vaguely telling me that I have observed or read something opposed to the conclusion which I am drawing, or on the other hand in favour of it; and after a time I can generally recollect where to search for my authority. So poor in one sense is my memory, that I have never been able to remember for more than a few days a single date or a line of poetry."
https://fs.blog/2016/10/charles-darwins-reflections-mind/ https://fs.blog/2016/10/charles-darwins-reflections-mind/
- usgroup 8y agoI’ve wondered recently if speed and intelligence have anything to do with each other at all. It does in IQ tests but Darwin by his account would have been average at best. Further, the argument goes that there exists a g factor, and performance in a test that is sufficiently complex will be predictive of performance at anything else sufficiently complex ... Yet if we allow time to vary this seems to be so obviously false...
- some_account 8y agoI think most people with high iq are awful to work with since they obviously lose interest trying to explain things to less intelligent people. This makes people feel bad around them, and they avoid asking them things. I have seen nice people with high iq but I think it's more common that they are not great around people.
- lifeisstillgood 8y agoI am not sure about that - those people I know who are waaay cleverer than me have bad days of course, but mostly if you ask them to explain the subject they love, they will talk (down) for days without getting bored. Perhaps it's true for us all, we love to talk about what we do.
- castlecrasher2 8y agoHow high an IQ are you talking here? I have a moderately high IQ (~130) and being able to explain complex topics to family and friends in a simple enough way that they understand it is one of the things I enjoy most, probably because having a basic summary then the meaty material is how I best learn complex topics. I don't think humility, empathy, and high IQ are mutually exclusive, though given some of my experiences with smart people I can see why you might think that way.
- jacobush 8y agoI also think some people with high iq learn to fake a lower iq and thus, go below the radar.
- zentiggr 8y agoThere are some times I wish I had gone with this option... would have made a lot of life so much easier than the "but you're so smart, how come you're having trouble with ______?" Wow that sounds whiny but true.
- throwawaymath 8y agoHow could you tell the IQ of people you were working with? I'm struggling to see how you could arrive at this conclusion unless you've 1) worked with an inordinate number of both high IQ individuals, who 2) explicitly mentioned their IQ scores to you. Personal hypotheses such as this one spread like wildfire online because they're easy to state, play to a narrative and are extremely difficult to disprove. They're stated confidently while skipping over so many little gaps - for example, I don't see anything obvious about how high IQ individuals would stop trying to explain things to low IQ individuals. It makes sense as a heuristic for explaining the behavior of one particular individual who is perhaps a misanthrope or has little patience. But it's very poorly generalizable.
- kqr 8y agoWhen I had my IQ test results it seemed like standard practise where I was to give two numbers: one total, and one when not counting the tests relying on speed. Not too surprisingly to anyone who knows me, the difference between the two numbers was for me unusually high. On the other hand, contrary to the Darwin quote, I scored very high on abstraction capabilities -- although before getting my results, I had assumed I was doing very bad at that. Conclusion: you probably want to measure all subtests individually to make sense of your strengths and weaknesses.
- fjsolwmv 8y agoThis is indeed known in the psychological practice in general (it's called "processing speed"), but most lay people aren't aware of it. Ask your friends if they ever got a professional IQ score and if they got the the different scores you describe. You tend to see it with people whose parents notice a high intelligence with learning difficulty and fight for thorough diagnostic testing and educational services. Common tests don't explicitly measure it, but the test design either implicitly demands processing speed (timed tests, or rapidly spoken prompts/questions) or avoid it.
- growlist 8y agoI've often thought about this - I suffered at school because the subject matter quickly seemed to arrive at one or more foundational concepts to not be explored further, whereas my brain would constantly ask, 'but why?'. The relentless pace didn't suit me at all. Nevertheless I learnt to override this in time and now have a BSc and MSc.
- andai 8y agoDid you begin a parallel learning project for actually understanding the material?
- growlist 8y agoWhen I was at school you mean?
- billysielu 8y agoI had that problem at school too. It felt like a denial of service attack.
- techstrategist 8y agoThat’s interesting, I shared the “but why” until mid way through a BSc in Physics. The foundational concepts of “this is how {thermo|mechanics|quantum} works” was exciting, but the remainder of each semester was “now let’s work through all the edge cases” and I had difficulty keeping up.
- handsomechad 8y agoSame here! Glad other people felt this way.
- usgroup 8y agoI kind of think that an intelligence tests should moreso try to evaluate how “Turing complete” you are , rather than how quick the processor is at a narrow range ... Kind of reminds me of the programming language shootout dilemma . X is better than Y because it does Fibonacci sequences quicker ... mostly has no real world utility
- throwawaymath 8y agoProperly administered IQ tests with real psycometric rigor evaluate both, insofar as either can be empirically measured.
- usgroup 8y agoExcept it doesn’t ... Compare Rationality Quotient to Intelligence Quotient. You’d think they relate but they don’t ... https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/18/opinion/sunday/the-difference-between-rationality-and-intelligence.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/18/opinion/sunday/the-differ... This is without considering give-a-f??k quotient, the most important of all, and that by which every test is confounded.
- throwawaymath 8y agoYes, they actually do. IQ tests evaluate not just mental processing speed but also a number of orthogonal cognitive faculties. You cited an opinion article from the New York Times regarding the divergence between rationality and intelligence. I'm not talking about rationality, and in fact I would not immediately believe rationality and intelligence can be adequately tested using the same examination. One relates to decision making processes and the other relates to learning and aptitude processes. There is some overlap, but they're categorically different things. I could direct you to a survey of studies that would more accurately describe the breadth of IQ assessments [1], but I think using my own IQ examination as an example might be more instructive. I've taken a formally administered IQ assessment under a qualified clinician. This assessment included the usual tests, such as the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale and Wechsler Memory Scale (among others). The Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale includes composite domains for "Full Scale IQ", "Verbal Comprehension", "Perceptual Reasoning", "Working Memory" and "Processing Speed." Note that mental processing speed is merely one of the measured dimensions of intelligence here. Each of these is given its own percentile score. Within the Verbal Comprehension Scale domain there are subtests for "Similarities", "Vocabulary" and "Information." Under Percentual Reasoning there are subtests for "Block Design", "Matrix Reasoning" and "Visual Puzzles." Working Memory includes tests for "Digit Span" and "Arithmetic", and finally Processing Speed includes "Symbol Search" and "Coding." During the verbal comprehension battery, you'd be asked questions such as, "How are an apartment and a house alike", or "What is the definition of this word?" You'll also be assessed on your knowledge of various culturally relevant facts. Perceptual reasoning will test spatial orientation, integration performance and fine motor skills. This might include arranging blocks of various colors and shapes into different patterns and being asked to find the missing portion in a complex visual pattern. The working memory examination will test for how much you can focus on simultaneously, and explicitly does not test for your processing speed. You'll be asked about sequences of numbers and tested for both long and short term recollection, as well as how accurately you can mentally perform operations on sequences while keeping them in your mind. That's the digit span test; the arithmetic tests are self-explanatory. The only portion of the examination which explicitly tests for processing speed are the ones focusing on symbol search and coding. Therein you're asked to quickly scan a group of symbols and find a match of one or two targets, or to copy numbers lexicographically coded to symbols as quickly as possible. I am interested in what measure of analogous "Turing Completeness" in human intelligence should thus be measured that is not already reflected in the examination I've just outlined. If you'd like to define that as rationality, then that's fine. But as I said before, I don't believe rationality should be coupled with intelligence. And moreover, I don't think "Turing Completeness" is a good analogy for rationality, since computers are (almost definitionally) neither rational nor irrational, regardless of their computational capabilities. ______________________________ 1. http://www.gwern.net/Iodine http://www.gwern.net/Iodine
- trentmb 8y agoMy undergrad was in mathematics. I routinely failed midterms, but would ace the final exams. I generally felt that, by the end of the term, I understood the material and simply had more time during the final exam than the midterms.
- kwhitefoot 8y agoI wonder how many of us slow thinkers are of the same calibre as Darwin but never achieve anything because life doesn't afford them the leisure to doggedly pursue their thoughts. In my case I think I only share Darwin's disadvantages but perhaps there are others out there who could have the same impact as he did if only the circumstances were right.
- jacobush 8y agoVery probable I think. Just keep in mind, the same was true back in his day I think. Most people were tied up in the drudgery of getting food on the table, quite literally.
- akvadrako 8y agoLife does give you the chance to doggedly pursue your thoughts; you just have to devote yourself to it. I personally live this way, freelancing about 3 months a year and spending the rest of it on whatever interests me.
- nickthemagicman 8y agoHow to get freelance clients?
- arcticfox 8y agoI think you're underselling your talent if you think the capability to live off 3 months / year of work is generally available to people. Most people just aren't good enough at anything to work that little and get by, no matter how hard they try.
- vinceguidry 8y agoThat's kind of what the 'dogged pursuit' is supposed to answer. Sheer persistence counts for more than talent, always has. Not being convenient doesn't make the option unavailable.
- 8y ago
- westoncb 8y agoInteresting. I've also considered myself on the slow end of the thinking-speed spectrum, and have the other memory traits too: not so good with precision/particulars (instead I depend on being able to go back to sources as necessary), and I basically can't memorize anything. I don't know even half the lyrics to a single song. My personal take is that it's largely a matter of intellectual values. I think that if I considered memorization to be important when I was younger, I would have gotten better at it, for instance. Instead my values tend to be around understanding the reason something is one way or another. I remember a friend being very surprised when I gave a satisfactory definition of 'common law' (because I tend not to know 'random' things like that)—but the only reason I remembered it clearly is because I understood the role it served. That tends to be the only thing that makes things stick for me. I think the slowness may in part be due to that too. There are a lot of things that folks will have remembered whole, but I just know how to reason my way back to the result from a smaller set of more fundamental things I've learned.
- MichailP 8y agoCan you share your definition of common law?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- westoncb 8y agoI said it was basically the idea of 'precedents' in law—previous court decisions increase the likelihood the the court will decide the same way in the future. And I pointed out that that probably helps to prevent legal systems from having an 'oscillating' stance on the legality of certain things (that's the 'role' I mentioned earlier, which made it stick for me). (I think it was pretty close to that—but it was also like 6 years ago.)
- techstrategist 8y agoI agree. Memorizing facts or figures has never been interesting to me, beyond order of magnitude. Understanding the context within a greater system is the part that my brain wants to retain.