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I received the label of very high IQ-er early on. Yet, I don’t believe that I’m all that smart. I just spend a lot of time in my head thinking about shit. Oh, a

by afpx 8y ago

I received the label of very high IQ-er early on. Yet, I don’t believe that I’m all that smart. I just spend a lot of time in my head thinking about shit. Oh, and I enjoy solving puzzles. On the other hand, many of my friends are average IQ-ers, and a few are even below average IQ-ers. Yet, I consider some of them to be very smart, and in some ways smarter than high IQ-ers, especially in niche areas (comedy, expression, intuition, communication, trained skills). They just don’t spend a lot of time thinking about shit like I do, and they hate puzzles.

sobani 8y ago
Those areas you mentioned are all skills, where intelligence helps, but practice is far more important. And if your situation is like mine, then those friends probably spend way more time than you practicing those skills. Instead of analyzing a joke / expression / reaction to death, weighting the subtle differences between synonyms, they probably tried a bunch of times and saw what stuck. Don't confuse intelligence with experience. ps. It took me about an hour to write this comment and it isn't any better for it. I probably could've written a dozen in the same time and become much better at expressing my thoughts instead.