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Wondering about the link between intelligence and meaning

• WrtCdEvrydy 8y ago
  For anyone looking into it, the book 'Bullshit Jobs' deals with some of the underlying issues in this article like meaning in life not being reflected for a full 8 hours of you day.
• duxup 8y ago
  I'm not sure the lack of meaning here would just apply to intellectuals. It talks about finding a job in the world that is something that makes them happy. That would seem to apply to everyone, and I'm not sure has much to do with intellectual ability. It talks about expectations placed on gifted children and what that 'might' do, but failure for anyone else can be terrible too. I'm just not sure when you get to the outcomes being gifted or intellectual or whatever term they want to use, is all that different from anyone else.
  • mcguire 8y ago
    You are probably right, in the larger picture. On the other hand, this is focused on intellectuals, and further, the study's control group implies that intellectuals feel the problem more.
  • YetAnotherNick 8y ago
    I was listening to a podcast which says that a lot of men in US have stopped looking for jobs, as there is no manufacturing jobs available. I wouldn't count them as searching for intellectual jobs(no offense). Sometimes, meaning is what we attach to it.
  • kokokokoko 8y ago
    I think, and I'm generalizing, when we start discussing people in the higher percentages of intelligence, they are more apt to be able to more accurately conceptualize the scope of their life and the lives of those around them within the greater fabric of existence. I've always been a believer in the idea that belief in a higher power was the genetic mutation that allowed humans to gain significant higher intelligence than other animals, as well as language, while still functioning productively and altruistically. People with significantly higher levels of intelligence are much less likely to believe in a higher power. I also speculate that this is why there tends to also be a hard upper bounds of intelligence and why we have such a significant amount of people in the middle of the bell curve with very similar levels of intelligence.
    • JumpCrisscross 8y ago
      > this is why there tends to also be a hard upper bounds of intelligence and why we have such a significant amount of people in the middle of the bell curve This is true by definition for any randomly-generated trait which can be measured on a single dimension.
      • FabHK 8y ago
        Though one could debate about the "hardness" of the upper (or lower) bound. Gaussian RVs have some "softness" there, though of course the double exponential falls off rather quickly. (To which extent intelligence is well described by a Gaussian at the extremes is yet another can of worms.)
      • drilldrive 8y ago
        Yes, but the question is in part of why is the bell curve centered where it is today? Time was not against our side in the past, in that we had plenty of time to evolve for stronger intelligence criteria. Thus there must be a counterbalance for intelligence for general populations. Today I am curious as to what the average IQ of parents, weighted per number of children the parents have, is in comparison to the average IQ of the population.
        • zanny 8y ago
          You don't evolve for the sake of it, thats not how natural selection works. Evolution, espeically in the short order time spans it takes for things like humans to evolve from our last common ancestor with chimps, requires strong environmental pressure to see rapid change such as the development of language or our large brains. We evolved until we outcompeted our relatives (its why we are the only homo left) and until we were the apex species of our biosphere. After that the pressures were much more diffuse over the nebulous optimization space of "what makes humans have more babies". It should be completely unsurprising that our brains are functionally only as smart as they need to be to be able to handle complex language, social interaction, planning, and spatial / self awareness. With some slight bias upwards over the millennia - probably moreso from more caloric availability, in the same way we have gotten markedly taller in 300 years mostly from just being food rich and nutrition aware, than from genetic drift from natural selection. To evolve substantially larger brains past what we already had would have been evolutionarily contrary to fitness. Bigger brains require more calories, moreso endanger the mothers in child birth (and our births are already extremely dangerous due to just that), required more developmental time to mature (15-25 years is insane in terms of developmental maturity in nature) and would have had minimal or no competitive advantage (complex reasoning skills aren't really valuable when all you are born into or will ever have is a tiny tribe and the tactic of exhausting gazelle all day for dinner).
• temp1928384 8y ago
  As someone who works in tech, the misery I feel on a fairly regular basis is experiencing first hand the disconnect between the stereotypical "change the world for the better" Koolaid narrative and the reality of what I was actually working on and enabling, which is not necessarily 1) purely good for the world and 2) always that "innovative". The happiest employees I see (at least outwardly) are those that fully buy in to the Koolaid and do not consider the nuance of what a company or technology enables.
  • dboreham 8y ago
    Hence religion.
  • state_less 8y ago
    I've had a difficult time finding meaning in the same things as others do. If I spot inconsistencies, I lose faith and get the opposite reaction than those who are receiving something from it. It's when I let go of the search for meaning that I find something like contentedness. I often find myself falling back into the hunt, but sometimes thinking about the vastness of space and time, the interwoven causality of the external and 'my' internal mind, there is some release. Hope that helps partner. Maybe I'll see you on down the trail temp1928384.
  • trhway 8y ago
    >The happiest employees I see (at least outwardly) are those that fully buy in to the Koolaid and do not consider the nuance of what a company or technology enables. the magic of the blue pill.
  • tonyedgecombe 8y ago
    Yes, perhaps ignorance really is bliss.
  • cryoshon 8y ago
    >The happiest employees I see (at least outwardly) are those that fully buy in to the Koolaid and do not consider the nuance of what a company or technology enables. yep, this. those who focus on what is directly in front of them at all times are often the most content. these are the people who are convenient cogs for any machine.
• mcguire 8y ago
  "Their most striking finding was substantially diminished levels of meaningfulness and subjective well-being among the giftedness as potential group compared to both the giftedness as achievement group and the control group. Also, in comparison to the giftedness as achievement group, the giftedness as potential group reported more demotivating experiences in school, and they perceived work as much less meaningful and joyful." If you assume "achievement" is based on "giftedness" plus luck, this seems to imply that perceptions of meaningfulness and well being are based essentially on luck. I suspect that there is something wrong with our success-fascinated culture. Or, possibly not. Promoting success by emphasizing it might be worth the cost to those who just didn't happen to succeed.
• devoply 8y ago
  Obviously they are, just look at Philosophy. After Nietzsche and nihilism the whole Anglo world turned away from the continental school to the analytical school. Everything became mechanical. The whole meaning of life in essence became production and consumption... which is followed by an aura of doom and gloom. People stopped having children because they can't balance their needs of consumption with need of taking care of other people. They became isolated again for the same reasons.
  • SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
    I don't know if that's necessarily obvious. You say all that with a great deal of finality - a Marxist scholar would say that's due to the shift in means of production, and a postmodernist would say it's all become that way because of relativity.
• apples_oranges 8y ago
  If anyone is suffering from a lack of meaning I would recommend "War and Peace" by Tolstoy, specifically the plot around Pierre Bezuchov.
  • maxxxxx 8y ago
    Working through it gave my life meaning for quite a while :)
    • SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
      "I gotta get this damn book done"?
      • sigfubar 8y ago
        - Leo Tolstoy
      • maxxxxx 8y ago
        The worst was keeping all the names straight.
• woliveirajr 8y ago
  > This finding highlights the critical difference between happiness and meaning in life. While happiness and life satisfaction has more to do with getting what you want and feeling good, meaning is more related to developing a personal identity, expressing the self, and consciously integrating one's past, present, and future experiences. Even happiness and satisfaction isn't permanent. Their volatility and inconstancy are the perpetual attraction of "doing things". That's one reason that even some ultra-high-quality people feel boredom: if you don't have anything to do in the next day, you won't be proud of yourself. Be it simple goals ("I have everything, so I want a bigger yacht, buy exclusive clothes from that small door in that small street, have a dinner at the top of the Eiffel tower"), that money can buy, or something that your next-island-millionaire-neighbor has done and you haven't.
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• crimsonalucard 8y ago
  It's just us millennials who lack meaning. The whole intellectual thing is just arrogance.
• lainon 8y ago
  In the common parlance, it is often said that power corrupts, but this generally applies to people who are personally unstable and spiritually undisciplined, and so once they escape the corset of social obligation, they act out their suppressed inner fantasies with deranged results. The flip side of power is that it teaches a form of compassion, a "tough love," that comes from the necessity of motivating people, because motivating people is both a matter of strict external force and gentler internal reward. If you're going to lead people into battle or business or a volunteer effort, you need to show them that their task is just and there is no other way, but also make them feel a sense of empowerment and world-remaking importance in their job, so that they see it as not only necessary but beneficient to society and self. People are raw material. They come to you a mixed bag: they have strengths, and weaknesses, and fears as well as ambitions. Most of them do not know how to channel their ambitions, so if not given reason to think otherwise, will become egocentric and either seize power, or disclaim it entirely and retreat into personal worlds of amusements and fetishes. On the other hand, if their ambitions are given a clear path and a reason to exist, they can exponentially increase their productivity and acumen simply by the fact of being inspired toward their task. Among other things, this explains how throughout history small groups of men and women have changed the world radically, and how sometimes a smaller army or business can crucify its competitors: its people are more focused and believe in their task more than the opposition. Although amplified by the modern world, throughout history most people have spent their day to day existence in a state of slight depression. The simplest reason for this is that very few of us get to live a life where we are a constant focus of attention, and so we labor mostly unknown except to a few close friends and our families, whose praise means a lot to us, yet, we would prefer to be more widely influential. Further, because life is a long and winding road in which it is necessary to make errors in order to learn the foundations of successes, all of us will have some failings and embarassments lurking in the past. We prefer not to mention them in public, but whenever we consider our next move, doubt arises in the form of these past memories, much like beating a dog with a stick when it soils the carpet will convince it in the future to remember pain and associate it with that act. Our own histories literally condition us to depression. What amplifies this depression in the modern time is the sheer size of our society, and its general course downward, which even the dumbest among us seem to have noticed. We notice such things on a subliminal level more than an articulated one, since to understand the situation in structure and words requires knowing more of it than most lives will see let alone analyze. Since our society is huge, and seems so far beyond our control or even understanding that it is inexorably going to do what it does, most are slightly depressed by their lack of influence on changing a worsening situation. Among the intelligent, it is recognized that masses of morons will undo whatever they achieve, or worse, turn it into a dumbed-down version of itself, missing meaning but preserving appearance. This keeps even the best among us depressed. The catalyst of change for this situation can be a seemingly miniscule change in belief. People now believe they cannot change themselves or the world, and that things will continue as they have been; if given the knowledge that not only are things invisibly changing, but that the future favors this change, and that they can be the implements of such alteration, people will become inspired and find belief in the future. The same energy that fuels their depression can propel their hard work and brilliant invention in remaking the world. Another way to view this is that depression is the result of one's energy having no outlet, thus it works against the individual by creating internal chaos. Give people an outlet that they believe will have positive results, and they will move the world. It is for this reason that stubborn assholes such as this writer believe that as has happened in the past, a small group of determined people will change our world yet again. People of the world, your time is coming. And time is on our side. Every day we grow stronger and more disciplined, the errors of society bear it and its lackeys further into oblivion, crushing them under the weight of a design which is doomed by its own contradictions to failure. Each day that we do not give in and do not parrot their rhetoric, ours is seen more clearly by others, and more respected. And with each passing day, more of the failures of our current civilization come to light, and more people look for alternate answers, perhaps not to act on directly but to support covertly or simply as vessels for their hope of a better future. When people become inspired, they gain a nearly godlike status in their ability to think clearly, act decisively, and make each choice correctly the first time. In this state, the errors and stumbling confusion that hampers us in daily life is minimized, and replaced with a state of pure function that comes of a lack of spiritual doubt about one's course. People of earth, your fortunes are changing. If you've got a modicum of intelligence, you are probably depressed, and you were probably born depressed: society is against you, as it wants to dumb down every aspect of its function to the point where you will be a misfit and your best efforts will not be appreciated even when successful. You are surrounded by idiots, and thanks to democracy and consumerism and popularity, they do have greater power than you - for now. You have no faith in the rotted process of our society, or its calcified judgment, or even life itself, perhaps, for it has delivered you to this state. Yet this is changing, and the same force of life - call it nature, God, or chance; your pick - has brought this cycle toward the beginnings of a close. You must have faith in the process of living and the change it can bring, because at that point, you can see yourself as an agent of this change. As a wise man once said, "I don't know if what I'm doing will make things better, but I feel better working toward something in which I believe." That outlook requires leaving behind the comfort of feeling you cannot change anything, so contenting yourself with distractions like television, drugs, novelty music and social pressures. We live in a world of a lack of absolutes. We cannot "prove" what we're doing is right any more than those who oppose us can, but we can make a firm stand with statements of personal experience and wisdom such as "I prefer" and "I believe."
• gipp 8y ago
  > Their giftedness as potential group consisted of 198 members of Mensa. Membership in Mensa is granted to individuals who score at the 98th percentile or higher on recognized standardized measures of intelligence. And almost exclusively sought by those lacking in other forms of achievement or sense of identity. Doesn't really seem like a sample that would be generalizable in the way the article presents it.
  • adamnemecek 8y ago
    I agree to a certain degree but for some it’s just a place to play board games with people who are too into board games.
    • pessimizer 8y ago
      Agreed, it's a board game club that makes a lot of people extremely mad.
    • simias 8y ago
      You applied to Mensa mainly in order to play board games? I find that hard to believe.
      • adamnemecek 8y ago
        I didn't apply but I know some people.
        • stcredzero 8y ago
          It's not how you test. It's who you know!
          • adamnemecek 8y ago
            Just to be clear, I wasn't a member, I knew the people in a non-mensa function.
  • 8y ago
• smallgovt 8y ago
  I've found that this 'crisis of meaning' is driven by having personal values that are based on extrinsic criteria. That is, when you value things that are based on things outside your control e.g. social validation, financial success, you will struggle to be happy. When you value things that are intrinsic e.g. integrity, contribution, creativity, you will have a much better shot at staying happy. The problem with 'intellectuals' is that they are more often pulled into the rat race where you are chasing extrinsic things. Also, they often value 'intelligence' itself, which makes you feel bad when you realize that the world is filled with smarter people. Also, intelligence deteriorates as you age.
  • dmux 8y ago
    The idea of intrinsic vs extrinsic validation is called "Locus of Control"[0]. A great book that explores that concept in a little more depth (while still accessible) is Non-violent Communication [1]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locus_of_control https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locus_of_control [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonviolent_Communication https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonviolent_Communication
    • naasking 8y ago
      It's also a core principle of Stoicism.
  • 2019ideas 8y ago
    >when you value things that are based on things outside your control e.g. social validation, financial success, you will struggle to be happy. These are outside our control? I found both were achieved by choosing to be an engineer and going above and beyond.
    • claudiulodro 8y ago
      I think you probably have a lower bar for social/financial success than what OP is talking about. You are neither famous nor rich, and people want to be famous and/or rich. Mad props to you if you are 100% satisfied with you social status & financial success, though. I wish that I were. :)
• neatcoder 8y ago
  > Their giftedness as potential group consisted of 198 members of Mensa. Membership in Mensa is granted to individuals who score at the 98th percentile or higher on recognized standardized measures of intelligence. I have always been curious why a group like Mensa International is relevant in today's society. Does an IQ test like the one Mensa requires has any relevance or correlation with performance in real life career or society?
  • bregma 8y ago
    Absolutely, if your career consists of taking IQ tests.
    • bleezy 8y ago
      Isn't that the modern hiring system that everyone hates on? Do leetcode -> get prestigious job -> quit after 18 months -> do more leetcode -> make more money.
      • coldtea 8y ago
        >Isn't that the modern hiring system that everyone hates on? If you're working for someone else, yes. But those making the most money are not working for others.
  • cm2012 8y ago
    IQ is actually one of the most correlated things to future income prediction. I think only parent income predicts it better.
    • coldtea 8y ago
      Not exactly. "In his recent book Hive Mind economist Garett Jones argues that the direct effect of IQ on personal income is modest, and that most of the benefits of higher IQ flow from various spillover effects that make societies more productive, boosting everyone’s income. This, he says, explains the “IQ paradox” whereby IQ differences appear to explain a lot more of the economic differences between nations than within them." (...) “Fans of g would do well to look at the labor lit: 1 IQ point predicts just 0.5% to 1.2% higher wages.” He has also said that, in terms of standardized effect sizes, IQ accounts for only about 10% of variance in personal income (a correlation of ~0.32). At some very crude levels (at the extremes) it fares better (e.g. someone below 90 would not do very well) but in general is nowhere near representative. https://medium.com/incerto/iq-is-largely-a-pseudoscientific-swindle-f131c101ba39 https://medium.com/incerto/iq-is-largely-a-pseudoscientific-...
• salawat 8y ago
  Everyone is really, most just can't map their emotions to a mindshare or set of words which accurately describes the condition. You've got a large number of people looking at their lives and seeing that this whole system that has been constructed around them seems to do more to stifle any attempt at meaningful change or self-determination. Seeking a change of career outside of minimum wage gets locked away behind expensive licensure. Attempts to improve one's space gets locked away behind permits, and tax reassessment, and other bureaucratic hurdles. Looking back at history one can't help but feel a bit of envy that somehow our ancestors were more free. Or perhaps just less prone to despair due to a naturally more tightly bound worldview. I'm not making any comments on the objective truth or falsehood of historical circumstances, just pointing put that many feel helpless in the face of the sheer size and breadth of the waves and problems that can seemingly pop up out of nowhere at a moment's notice. This extends to the meaninglessness of work. You can try to advance a cause, say environmental activism, but actually end up being able to objectively measure that you're doing more harm than good in the process of being able to just get people to admit there is a problem. The scale of modern problems are just so large it seems like the only winning move is not to play at all, over and over again.
  • invalidOrTaken 8y ago
    >The scale of modern problems are just so large it seems like the only winning move is not to play at all, over and over again. This is a bit of a drive-by comment and I apologize for that, but I've spent a lot of time thinking about "only-winning-move-is-not-to-play" games, and wanted to share what I've learned. OWMINTP games seem imposing and impossible when we talk about them, but often their solution comes from outside the game. And the great thing is that often these games don't constitute the whole of our lives, which means we can focus on other games. Eventually OWMINTP games can get solved from the outside, which is great, because we live outside. Anyway: unasked for, and kind of off-topic, but I wanted to share.
    • salawat 8y ago
      I appreciate the comment, and agree with your viewpoint. It's somewhat of an interesting area of thought of mine as well. The difficulty is what counts as "outside" of the civilized world as we've built it, and if we found it, would we find ourselves in a crisis of the sort faced by Mr. Savage in Huxley's Brave New World? A natural man woefully equipped to survive in the unnatural world we've built around ourselves, but at the same time unable to return to living in a more natural state by virtue of what he'd become in trying to adapt? Natural man facing unnatural problems he is powerless to solve due to his maladaptation to the world he has wrought, yet unable to escape or return to whence he came. It's like some nightmarish Hotel California conundrum.
• saberience 8y ago
  I definitely identify as an intellectual. I spend a lot of time reading books, especially the classics and older philosophy texts, and I definitely identify with this article and the general premise. For me personally, the hard thing is reading the thoughts of Plato, Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, etc. and then trying to understand how we had such amazing thinkers 2000 years ago and that we don't seem to have moved any further at all in the year 2018. Yes, of course science and technology have progressed, but our human behaviors have not improved. In fact, we seem to have regressed and now have Donald Trump as President and Theresa May in the UK, trying to pull the country out of Europe due to rampant xenophobia. Anti-intellectualism, anti-science, anti-vaxx, climate change denial, rampant capitalism at the expense of our souls. It seems like the default goal of the Westerner is to get rich enough so that they can narcotize themselves against all the pain and fear of the future which is underlying our society. Southern California, where I live, is a place where your instagram "image" seems more important than whether you're actually a good person. People spend more of their time glued to their screens scrolling on Insta or Facebook seeing other people's portrayed lives and obsessing over their likes and follows. Working long days so you can afford the next step up on the car ladder or housing ladder, so you can get some temporary satisfaction before that fades and you start the ladder again. I think if Socrates or Plato or Aristotle were to time travel to this future, Socrates would be sharing his hemlock with them before they committed group suicide.
  • tonyedgecombe 8y ago
    It’s not isolated to Westerners, we simply started a little earlier so are further along.
  • 50656E6973 8y ago
    Carl Sagan, MLK, Einstein and others all talked about how our technological progress has outpaced our moral/human progress. There are plenty of more recent examples of such brilliant minds but you'll be hard pressed to find them if you're attention is fixated on shallow toxic dinsinformation platforms like cable news (CNN, Fox) and social media (FB, Twitter) which promote hatred and division over love and community
  • sp332 8y ago
• charliesharding 8y ago
  I recently started going to church again and I've been enjoying it. While I still have issues with it (as do many who go), I think mainstream culture has thrown out the baby with the bathwater when it comes to religion as it does provide a good framework for finding meaning in your life. I don't think I'm alone either - Jordan Peterson's rise to popularity is testament to people craving the kind of moral wisdom that is contained in the bible. I've also come to like the idea of original sin; we all make mistakes and as long as you recognize them as mistakes, you can still be a good person by trying to do right.
  • user-x 8y ago
    Interesting point. I also think there is a sense of predestination that comes with a believe in God. This can have a reassuring effect when it comes to worrying about if you're on the right track in life (the track to "meaning"). I have read that some psychologists hypothesize this sense of predestination is what (in part) causes lower suicide rates among religious folks vs. non-religious folks. Even though I'm aware of these positive effects, I still can't bring myself to believe in any God. I was raised atheist and I've always felt like a believe in the supernatural doesn't mix with an intellectual, scientific view on the world. This is of course completely due to my upbringing; there are plenty of great scientists who believe. I think this is an interesting inner conflict which I'm sure I share with many others.
    • robterrin 8y ago
      There are plenty of religions that offer a more flexible interpretation of "God" that might better suit your world view. You may want to check out Quakerism, the Bahá'í Faith and Buddhism. These are just three that come to mind, but there are many more. I would also add that predestination is a particularly Calvinist protestant belief. Many religions that rely on good works, such as Jesuit Catholicism and Quakerism can provide meaning and sense of purpose without the offensive belief that one has no self determination or choice about being a good person in life.
    • axlprose 8y ago
      > I was raised atheist and I've always felt like a believe in the supernatural doesn't mix with an intellectual, scientific view on the world. This is of course completely due to my upbringing; there are plenty of great scientists who believe. I think this is an interesting inner conflict which I'm sure I share with many others. Yep, this was pretty much me up until a year ago when I started actually studying theology and the philosophy around it more rigorously. What I realized was that this notion of science being in opposition to religion I had, was effectively at least as much of a faith based position promoted to me by modern society, as theism was to religious people. Because when taking a hard honest look at myself, I saw that I had never actually bothered to really study any religious literature to justify coming to such a bold conclusion, in large part because I had prematurely dismissed such an endeavor as being an uninteresting waste of time. But in reality, I should've known my position was questionable ages ago from my long time fascination with the history of science and mathematics. I had conveniently rationalized or outright ignored the fact that the giants upon whose shoulders modern science rests, have all been rather disproportionately theists, because "things are different now"/"we've progressed beyond that". Yet the more I thought about those excuses, the more I realized they were completely unjustified hand waving, because I couldn't find any compelling arguments for why that should be the case, nor why such smart people of the past couldn't have come up with the relatively straightforward arguments for atheism the likes of Dawkins, Sam Harris, et al. came up with (as I had read most of the "4 horsemen of atheism" books already). None of the best arguments for atheism actually hinged on time or technological/scientific progress, so why did many smart people like Leibniz, Newton, and Darwin not only fail to discover such simple lines of thought, but instead often times went in the exact opposite direction and made arguments for theism? Note that I'm not making an argument appealing to past greats being theists, but rather describing my own thought process that led me to question "wtf is going on here?". John Lennox has a lot of interesting books and talks relevant to this particular line of inquiry[0]. But anyways, long story short(er), the watershed moment didn't actually come for me until I stumbled upon a small pastor's YouTube channel [1], and gradually started working my way through several books, including: - Man's Search for Meaning - Viktor Frankl - Miracles - C. S. Lewis - The Abolition of Man - C. S. Lewis [2] - Heretics - G. K. Chesterton - Orthodoxy - G. K. Chesterton - Nihilism - Seraphim Rose - The Experience of God - David Bentley Hart - The Critique of Pure Reason - Immanuel Kant I'm still technically somewhat agnostic and unaffiliated with any particular religious denomination, but I couldn't reasonably go back to my previous atheism after that rabbit hole. I think it's ultimately this illusury distinction between "the natural" vs "the supernatural" that our materialist society has, which makes it so easy to fall into atheism/nihilism. It lulls us into a false sense of confidence about what we "know" as being "natural", as if it were a well-defined "solved problem", all while the purpose of science itself explicitly acknowledges it's not. What makes the illusive grand unifying theory of physics less "supernatural" than a deity, the hard problem of consciousness[3], or the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics[4], for example? The mere assumption that it's more within reach of our understanding? Seems a bit unsatisfying for a premise to form such a large dichotomy around. In that sense, you could argue theism is partially an analogy of Gödel's incompleteness theorems[5] applied to world views. We might be able to kinda/sorta work around such limitations, but it seems silly to just completely ignore they exist, much less turn around and use them as some form of justification against theism a'la "god-of-the-gaps" argument[6]. [0] for example: https://youtu.be/v0AKUTHcI04 https://youtu.be/v0AKUTHcI04 [1] https://www.youtube.com/user/paulvanderklay https://www.youtube.com/user/paulvanderklay [2] here's a good series distilling it, since the book itself is a bit dense: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlZfP0L6b41iCKzdQt-Gkdu_NWQ9CIwPa https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlZfP0L6b41iCKzdQt-Gk... [3] http://scholarpedia.org/article/Hard_problem_of_consciousness http://scholarpedia.org/article/Hard_problem_of_consciousnes... [4] https://www.dartmouth.edu/~matc/MathDrama/reading/Wigner.html https://www.dartmouth.edu/~matc/MathDrama/reading/Wigner.htm... [5] Gödel of course, was also a theist himself, and thought a lot about the implications of his discoveries. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/goedel-incompleteness/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/goedel-incompleteness/ [6] here's a good rebuttal to such arguments which may resonate with HN people: https://youtu.be/CltwD0Ek9Kk https://youtu.be/CltwD0Ek9Kk
• useful 8y ago
  It feels good to learn something at the intro/hobby level. It provides an easy dopamine hit. In order to become an expert in the population it requires a mastery that is hard. It requires a few orders of magnitude more effort with less and less reward as you become more and more competent. Collectors of basic intro knowledge could be looking for something they enjoy but there are a large portion of people who do it because it feels good to learn. This is a trap for smarter people and I'm sure everyone knows the career academic with a multitude of academic degrees or a friend with a new hobby every month. I think everyone should try to be a in the top 1-10% of some pursuit at some point in their lives to see the amount of effort and planning it takes to be at the top of something. You don't have to stay at the top. It makes you appreciate the people at the top of things more because you more easily recognize the effort it takes to be great. Too much of society is focused on the natural ability or luck involved to be at the top. It could be argued that a PHD is this, but I believe that its sort of forced because there are economic and structural motivations that are available that aren't the same as only having a personal motiviation.
  • lordnacho 8y ago
    > In order to become an expert in the population it requires a mastery that is hard. I think that it's not just that it's hard, it's that it's psychologically painful. If you're good at anything, you get filtered into a group of people who are also good. And not everyone will continue to be top of the class. If you tied your identity to being good at this thing, suddenly you are going to have a reckoning. Anecdotally it's often the people who can deal with this that get further, not just the ones who were already further ahead. You'll hear this story often if you come across interviews with sports people. At some point, they got put in a group at a level that was competitive, and they had to deal with not being the shining star.
  • zanny 8y ago
    When I was in high school I was playing World of Warcraft arena competitively and got top .5% (the highest general rank) in seasons 1-4, later on multiple characters in multiple brackets. As I approached college I realized that I had done something that, if I had dedicated myself to almost anything else, would have resulted in me being a masterful expert at it. By the time I was 17 (I played WoW from 13-17, 2004-2008) I had put over 8,000 hours into that game. I spent a quarter of my life playing it for that four year period. It was, of course, an insanely massive waste of time in hindsight. I went from scripting and building custom maps in Neverwinter Nights to playing in Blizzards theme park for a few years where the most coding I managed was hex editing the game models and changing a few labels in addon scripts. I was a directionless dysphoric teenager who had an interest in computers but no real ambition or friends at the time so distraction was tantalizing. It absolutely cost me opportunities to go to more prestigious universities I could have likely qualified for it if I had applied myself to the discipline of getting into elite schools instead of topping ladder ranks. I like to think I came out of that black hole of my life at least knowing the value of dedication. Its only really more recent that I finally came to terms with the total realities of distraction, including writing this post on HN right now. At least this is at the tail end of my 30 minute break from coding this afternoon, so now I'll be getting back to work.
• demircancelebi 8y ago
  I've concluded that the question we are trying to answer is "What's the meaning of life?", but there is no reason for us to assume that that question is the ultimate question. Most probably, there are more important questions we are not yet aware of, and one can find meaning in the search of such questions.
• temp1928384 8y ago
  As a self-proclaimed "slight smarter than average" human being the biggest challenge I face on a day-to-day basis is a tendency to become jaded. I have no idea how to fix that but it makes daily life suffocating in many ways.
• bitexploder 8y ago
  I think modern society suffers from a lack of life philosophy. I don't think it gets much better than ancient greek philosophy. There are no new fundamental insights into the human condition in 3000 years. Epictetus talks a lot about tranquility, which is neither happiness or sadness, but staying centered. It doesn't matter how you feel, feelings are just an appearance in consciousness. What matters is that you move forward with your purpose, something you define outside of the day to day grind. Happiness and sadness are fleeting for most people. If you chase happiness to the exclusion of boredom and fulfilling a greater purpose there will be a reciprocal crash where there can be no happiness. This is why Epictetus cautioned us to always view happiness with just as much skepticism as sadness. Not to become boorish, but to maintain a state of being that you can rely on every day. To that point, intellectuals have always had this struggle. When you value mastery over purpose and you don't find a point of tranquility in your life there will always be a struggle. Intellectuals and smart people often spend a lot of time worrying on externalities they can't control. It is the curse of high awareness / intellectual capability. There is only so much you can possibly change and influence. This is why being a billionaire doesn't drastically alter your happiness. Even with billions of dollars you are still stuck in a mortal shell with the same brains and bodies as the rest of us. Also, MENSA is a self selected group and I have never held a high opinion of it.
  • Florin_Andrei 8y ago
    > There are no new fundamental insights into the human condition in 3000 years. Human nature has not changed much in the meanwhile, if at all.
  • OnACoffeeBreak 8y ago
    My cursory understanding of the stoics is that they are focused on excellence in virtue (wisdom, morality, courage, and moderation) and mastering the self. What I don't understand is whether these constitute the purpose. In other words, is life purpose according to Epictetus mastering virtue or is mastering virtue a way to achieve a purpose that one defines for oneself? Any pointers?
    • platistocrates 8y ago
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• earthwrldshaman 8y ago
  they have been, since ancient Greece..
• forgottenpass 8y ago
  Nope. Their problem is narcissism. The system told them they were gifted, and they grew up to find out the world isn't a blowjob parade. How anyone handles that defines their character.
• ralusek 8y ago
  Do stuff you're proud of until you die. What's more to think about?
  • abdulhaq 8y ago
    Do good until you die. Attaching pride to it is a mistake if it leads to arrogance.
    • ralusek 8y ago
      Fine. "Do good things that you're proud of while maintaining your humility." If you remove pride, you remove meaning, unfortunately. Virtue of the Mean, baby. Yin, Yang. Larry David, Lena Dunham. There can be no light without the dark of the void.
  • tenebrisalietum 8y ago
    What if you're antisocial and start to feel the echo chamber of only doing things you are proud of?
  • JackFr 8y ago
    Seems reasonable to consider what makes you proud.
• fsloth 8y ago
  Whole Mensa concept is based on the abuse of a tool. IQ was deviced as a method to discern - excuse my language - idiots from normies, not to identify geniuses from a general population. I don't doubt those that pass Mensa gauntlet are not fast, but a high IQ is a very narrow and barren method define giftedness. The fact that it has been used in that specific usage time and again does not really vindicate it in any way. But ok, so the sampling is of Mensa members in general. That's fine, like the article states the targeted population is difficult to sample as it is.
  • FabHK 8y ago
    The historical motivation for developing that tool has no bearing on its current capabilities and use, though, right?
    • fsloth 8y ago
      I.Q. is a statistical tool. It has some correlations when applied to large populations ( i.e criminality correlates negatively with us I.Q. while longevity correlates positively). The problem with this that its value in analyzing a single individual is not so obvious - on an individual level there is so much ‘noise’ that when assessing the capabilities of an individual an I.Q. test should be considered a small advisory component of a larger suite of research. The specific problem is that I.Q. is often used like a horoscope or hand reading to predict an individuals capability to perform in some arbitrary context. So where is it applicable, then? For example, if individual has problems at school and they score low on I.Q. they might be good candidates for some supportive measures. And if they score really high it can lead a psychologist to consider other remedies. This is proper use of the tool - it provides additional data points to a professional. But you shouldn’t use I.Q. alone to filter people in the general context. I know some school systems at least used do this and it’s fucking retarded application of this measure. The fact that the people who thought it was a great idea to use I.Q. as a general filter probably scored high on the scale themselves should tell how much one should trust I.Q scores. To misquote a certain judge - Genius is like hard porn. I don’t know how to define it precisely or mathematically but I know it when I see it.
    • 8y ago
• tanilama 8y ago
  All they need is a small dosage of existentialism. Life is indeed meaningless by itself, we are born to reproduce, meaning is what you choose to attach to it.
• BucketSort 8y ago
  Here you go intellectuals - https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/#MeanUse https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/#MeanUse Intellectuals often have a "crisis of meaning" because they are dancing in that space of what things are and how they relate to each other. When you maintain a practice of doing that, you often can't help but apply that same process with yourself as the object. You can shred your identity quite quickly if you have some mental ability, and if you mess with your identity, you mess with what your life means ... i.e. how you wish to be used.
• rubicon33 8y ago
  > "Having high levels of cognitive complexity doesn't assure that one will actually be motivated to utilize their cognitive ability. High achievement is more likely to be associated with high levels of motivation." This pretty much sums up my life. Times where I have had motivation, I have succeeded greatly. Times where I have not, I stagnate and don't move forward. Unfortunately, motivation is fleeting. It's as though my brain is hyper sensitive to novelty. If I can find something I find interesting, I am granted immense motivation and focus. But that quickly dwindles.
  • braunshedd 8y ago
    > "Unfortunately, motivation is fleeting. It's as though my brain is hyper sensitive to novelty" Not to toot my own horn, but I struggled with this myself and ended up 'inventing' my own psuedo life-philosophy 'Experientialism'[1]. You might find this an interesting way of going about the problem. [1] https://braunshedd.com/philosophy-and-metaphysics/what-is-experientialism/ https://braunshedd.com/philosophy-and-metaphysics/what-is-ex...
    • RankingMember 8y ago
      Interesting write-up. To me, the applied philosophy sounds similar to my experience with ADHD, seeking out novel experiences to maximize engagement.
    • rubicon33 8y ago
      Enjoyed that writeup. Definitely got me thinking about the general notion of a life philosophy, and the utility in adopting one. I am guilty of literally rolling some dice for major life decisions, since, most of life to me appears random anyway. That said, Experientialism would have been great to adopt when I was 20. Maybe I would be filming a travel channel on YouTube or something. Nowadays, I need to adopt a life philosophy that helps me to regular, focussed, great work. Not sure yet what that is...
  • BucketSort 8y ago
    There's an interesting relationship between will and intelligence. I've often seen people that aren't Geniuses, but their will motivates them in certain fruitful directions. Darwin is the prime example. I'm strongly convinced that there's an artistic side and mathematical side to all intellectual endeavors. The artistic side is the vision, which is formed by the unique will of the individual. The mathematical side is the capacity of exploring the space of that vision. The more of it you have, the more swiftly you can move through that space; however, if your vision puts you in the wrong space, intelligence alone is useless.
• kingkawn 8y ago
  That we ever felt certain we knew what things meant was the problem that’s being cured. I am optimistic that the subculture of memes attempting to produce inspirational and philosophical thought, although now perhaps mostly mired in cliche, is the grandest crowd-sourced thought experiment in history. It will evolve as the lowest common denominator is raised in complexity and I think will eventually surpass in intellectual insight all previous systems of thought by virtue alone of the number of people contributing and contemplating its output.
• randcraw 8y ago
  I'm impressed that people with IQs of 150 are 4X more likely to suicide. That's sobering. I'd like to know how this has trended over the past century. And if it applies to other forms of talent than just IQ. I also like the OP's division between giftedness as potential vs as achievement. I've know far more gifted folks who belonged to the first group more than the second. That dichotomy nicely captures the importance of drive to the full expression of any natural gift. Far fewer gifteds are comparably hard chargers, in my experience. It's likely that before today's "age of quantitation", fewer gifteds were as aware of the gap between their talent and its lack of expression. Or maybe their attention was focused elsewhere -- on family, duty, or other life endeavors that were unaffected by the gift.
• graphememes 8y ago
  I wonder how those who have the ability and know-how to transition jobs and roles, who stay in their current situation that doesn't have an impact. It is something that haunts my mind. How can you sit, working in a location that you know is not furthering anything, has no fruitful outcome, and is not going to change or push the needle in any way. The ship is sinking and you refuse to budge, but it's not your ship. You have no ties to this ship. The are others reaching out a hand saying, hey, look, our ship is actually stable; making change. Yet, the person still decides to stay aboard against all intellectual odds. Is it fear? Is it stubbornness or pride? I'll never know. Note: This only is about those who can change careers or jobs easily, in high-tech locations, where it occurs frequently. Against that, they stay, on a sinking ship. This post only refers to them, as I can easily understand others in a similar situation but with no way out or the ability to create a way out due to circumstance.
• hathawsh 8y ago
  Intellectuals suffering from a crisis of meaning should ask themselves a sincere question: do I rely on relative intelligence as the core of my identity? When you frame the question that way, a number of obvious problems with that identity come to the surface: - You will never be the smartest person in the room in every subject. There is simply too much to know, you'll never know it all, and others are better at learning different things. - Being smart is no guarantee of success. To be successful, it's more important to learn how to interact, influence, delegate, etc. - Any kind of identity based on comparison with other people is doomed. You will age, your ego will take a hit when someone else seems better, etc. Everyone needs a stable identity. A more sure identity for intellectuals is to define yourself as someone who cares. As an intellectual, you probably enjoy solving problems and you are probably capable of great empathy. Build up those qualities in yourself without comparing yourself to others. That's a way to happiness.
  • stcredzero 8y ago
    You will never be the smartest person in the room in every subject. If you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room. If you seek to always be the smartest person in the room, you have a personality problem which is holding you back.
    • PavlovsCat 8y ago
      > If you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room. Or you're simply alone. There may not be an "i" in "team", but there's two of them in "thinking". > The salvation of the world depends only on the individual whose world it is. At least, every individual must act as if the whole future of the world, of humanity itself, depends on him. Anything less is a shirking of responsibility and is itself a dehumanizing force, for anything less encourages the individual to look upon himself as a mere actor in a drama written by anonymous agents, as less than a whole person, and that is the beginning of passivity and aimlessness. -- Joseph Weizenbaum
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• PavlovsCat 8y ago
  > Every powerful state relies on specialists whose task is to show that what the strong do is noble and just and, if the weak suffer, it is their fault. In the West, these specialists are called "intellectuals" and, with marginal exceptions, they fulfill their task with skill and self-righteousness, however outlandish the claims, in this practice that traces back to the origins of recorded history. -- Noam Chomsky > If I devote myself to other pursuits and contemplations, I must first see, at least, that I do not pursue them sitting upon another man’s shoulders. I must get off him first, that he may pursue his contemplations too. See what gross inconsistency is tolerated. [..] After the first blush of sin comes its indifference; and from immoral it becomes, as it were, unmoral, and not quite unnecessary to that life which we have made. -- Henry David Thoreau, "Civil Disobedience" > Totalitarianism, however, does not so much promise an age of faith as an age of schizophrenia. A society becomes totalitarian when its structure becomes flagrantly artificial: that is, when its ruling class has lost its function but succeeds in clinging to power by force or fraud. Such a society, no matter how long it persists, can never afford to become either tolerant or intellectually stable. It can never permit either the truthful recording of facts or the emotional sincerity that literary creation demands. But to be corrupted by totalitarianism one does not have to live in a totalitarian country. The mere prevalence of certain ideas can spread a kind of poison that makes one subject after another impossible for literary purposes. Wherever there is an enforced orthodoxy - or even two orthodoxies, as often happens - good writing stops. [..] > No tirades against "individualism" and the "ivory tower", no pious platitudes to the effect that "true individuality is only attained through identification with the community", can get over the fact that a bought mind is a spoiled mind. Unless spontaneity enters at some point or another, literary creation is impossible, and language itself becomes something totally different from what it is now, we may learn to separate literary creation from intellectual honesty. At present we know only that the imagination, like certain wild animals, will not breed in captivity. -- George Orwell, "The Prevention of Literature"
• nathias 8y ago
  Intelligence can stop you from believing in something obviously false, education in science can cure some of the naive and false methodology and epistemology of common sense, but neither can be a substitute for philosophy.
• rexgallorum2 8y ago
  If I reflect upon the life outcomes of the truly gifted people I have kept up with, I can divide them into a few broad categories: -A few went on to have stellar careers in academia, science, medicine, law, IT, engineering, or other fields. -Some had more modest aims and settled for more ordinary work--big fish in small ponds. -Some got stuck closer to the bottom of the socio-economic ladder--some are creative types and/or have a history of addiction and self-destructive habits. I don't think there is any question that highly intelligent people learn new things quickly and grasp complex, nuanced, abstract concepts better and more readily than most other people, but the connection between intelligence and achievement, much less happiness and mental well being, is far from clear. An awful lot of very bright people simply fall through the cracks, and we will probably never know how many. I would guess that most profoundly gifted people are pretty lonely. There just aren't enough of them around, and at times it must be like seeing colors nobody else can see.