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I went through a battery of IQ tests as a kid and got a _high_ score (139). But that was when I was seven years old. I'm 30 now, have a master's degree (which w

• drcross 7y ago
  This may seem like an insensitive question and I don't mean it in that way but why can't you "think your way out of those problems". For example when I noticed myself being quiet as a teen I applied for a job in a shop to shore up my social skills. I had the keen awareness that ultimately no one cares about me having depression and only me alone can make efforts to treat it. How did your analysis compare?
  • vorpalhex 7y ago
    Similar situation. I was terriby uncharismatic and it was killing my ability to make friends and deal with the office well - so I studied charisma and practiced the skills. Lots of social A/B testing (that's a bit of a cold way to look at it) and evolving and now my situation is generally improved.
    • anon1m0us 7y ago
      What would you say are some of the things that helped the most? What did you practice? What did you study? How did you study? Reading? Watching?
      • vorpalhex 7y ago
        I started with reading books on basic etiquette and manners as a baseline. I also asked folks who I trusted (my sister, fellow geeky/awkward folks) for genuine feedback which helped identify the issues no book can help - for years I would actually look at someones mouth instead of their eyes and didn't realize this until a girlfriend told me. Like most skills, it's a slow walk up a mountain - just keep taking a step every day, have conversations with strangers, pick up an on topic blog or book as it's useful.
    • starpilot 7y ago
      I was able to get better at rock climbing, but some people never get over a fear of heights. I've got borderline personality disorder. Consider a bad social encounter: for you, there might be some shame but your brush yourself off and figure out what to do differently next time. Now imagine instead, when you get home from the party or whatever, someone there follows you and screams at you for hours that you're a pathetic failure, how being social is hopeless, how you'll never make it, dissecting everything you did, until you're on the floor crying. Except that person is inside your own head. You'd probably just try to never go out and socialize again, it's just too painful. If you did, you'd then have double the painful memories, and what good would that do?
      • vorpalhex 7y ago
        So obviously social anxiety in the formal, medical sense is a real thing. I've had friends who have struggled with it, and had very good luck working with therapists. I'm sure that it's still a struggle for them, but at least from an external perspective, they seem to socialize and form relationships just as well as everyone else now. Outside the formal anxiety sense, most people struggle with the negative feedback loop. The trick is that you can't simply turn it off - even if you're the best socializer in the history of humanity. For me, I set an informal timer (usually while journaling or in the shower) to intentionally introspect my interactions and pick one thing I felt I could have improved on ("I really wish I had said more than 'fine' when So-and-so asked me how my day was") and then move on. One lesson that's hard, for me and I suspect others, is that while it's very important to be polite, it's not your job to make everyone else feel happy or complete - that's not an excuse to go around being a jerk, but also don't feel you owe anyone else something by default. It's enough to have a conversation about the weather or let the other person complain about their boss some and offer a bit of empathy.
  • throwaway_bad 7y ago
    That's usually how smart people get depressed in the first place, by thinking too much. You realize that there's no point to anything you do. You will die. Humanity will die. The universe will die.
    • big_chungus 7y ago
      This is why people have religion. Regardless of your personal views on the fact, it's a darn good way to avoid getting depressed by this sort of nihilism. You believe the universe will go on; you'll see your family one day and spend eternity in paradise. You may think it's BS, but have to admit it doesn't really matter for most people, it still does the job.
      • NeoBasilisk 7y ago
        As someone who has been on both sides of that belief, I can agree that it generally has a stabilizing effect on people's mental state. However, once you lose that belief, it is very difficult to make yourself believe it again. And probably even harder for people that never believed in the first place.
      • flatline 7y ago
        And yet millennia of philosophy have also attempted to address it. Epicurus comes first to mind from the materialist camp. Religion is not the only source of solace for existential dread, there are more rationalist approaches that can be viable. I think these have been sufficiently overshadowed by religion that they are only recently re-entering the public discourse.
      • phkahler 7y ago
        Another way to deal with nihilism is to embrace it. Once you accept that nothing matters, you can stop beating yourself up for mistakes and failures. You can strip the urgency from your goals. It allows you to proceed with outcome independence. This needs to be paired with some form of motivation too, but I think that's more up to the individual.
        • 7y ago
  • DoreenMichele 7y ago
    Depression can be due to situational factors or biological factors. If you are smart and your depression is situational, yeah, problem solving can do wonders. But fixing biologically-based depression is much harder and, even if you try to do it, it's not guaranteed to work. We don't have a solid enough understanding of the biology of biologically-based depression.
    • solomontribe 7y ago
      Situation can bring change of genetic expression. Read : Epigenetics
    • slg 7y ago
      And the two things that can generally best help combat biologically-based depression, therapy and medication, also happen to be extremely expensive and probably haven't been readily available as an option for someone who is just now reaching a middle class income.
      • DoreenMichele 7y ago
        I think there are complicating factors here that I intentionally chose to leave out of my comment because I get so much flak for thinking I know anything with confidence that isn't "common knowledge." I was involved with The TAG Project because I was homeschooling my two 2xe sons. I basically believe that people with very high IQs have different nutritional needs specifically to support their weird brains. My extra smart son gets really difficult to deal with when he's deficient in B vitamins, a vitamin class important to the brain. He easily gets deficient and there is no point arguing with him when he's deficient. So if you are basically chronically malnourished because of special nutritional needs that are currently unrecognized, there's little hope of getting that issue redressed. It snowballs from there: nutritional deficiency causes poorer cognition and more mental health issues which suppresses your ability to cope and becomes a general downward spiral that the world currently can't even properly diagnose. (The above is opinion based in part on being sort of a subject matter expert. Please don't ask me to "cite my source." My pro bono professional experience and personal experience is the source of my opinion. I'm not writing a PhD thesis here. I'm having a conversation. Thank you.)
  • starpilot 7y ago
    A depressed person would say, "Doing X will not improve my situation or make me happy." And he might be right. With treatment-resistant depression, it's like your "happiness muscles" respond minimally or not at all to training. You're trying to light a pile of ashes. This is similar with many persistent mental conditions. Why not just tell an obese person to eat less food? Why doesn't someone with a phobia just stop being scared? And so on.
    • jodrellblank 7y ago
      Why doesn't someone with a phobia just stop being scared? Exposure therapy works for phobias; people exposed to their phobia in a way that increases their anxiety, long enough for their brain to notice they haven't died and recalibrate its fear response, stop being scared. Why not just tell an obese person to eat less food? Because they enjoy eating food? Eating food isn't what they want to stop, being fat or sick is what they want to stop. Eating food is delicious, comforting, filling, reassuring, is it any wonder people resist giving that up? It's not that their eat-less muscle won't respond to training, it's that they won't work their eat-less muscle because that involves eating less, and they like eating. A depressed person would say, "Doing X will not improve my situation or make me happy." And he might be right. That doesn't say his happiness muscle is broken and won't respond, it says he has unexplored reasons for preferring the status quo more. He gets more benefit from unhappiness than from doing X. Go explore those reasons.
  • on_and_off 7y ago
    >no one cares about me having depression This :( It is a hard truth but chances are that you are the only one that can improve your life.
    • on_and_off 7y ago
      In case somebody reads this. My life has started getting better when I got off my ass and worked to make it better. I got the job I wanted, started working out, started going out more (still working on that one tbh), went from being single to several long term relationships, etc. None of it was easy, all of it was and is a struggle. At some point, I realized that nobody else was going to work on all these things if I did not.
  • grzm 7y ago
    > why can't you "think your way out of those problems" The tool you're trying to use to fix the problem is itself failing in some way. This is part of the pernicious nature of depression.
  • jack_h 7y ago
    I'm in a similar situation to the OP. For me personally it's really difficult to "think my way out" of these sorts of problems. First they're large intertwined problems, second they're existential in nature, and third as you get older time becomes a huge factor. It's a vicious cycle really. Everyone has some idea of what they want out of life and whether or not they are "on track" to attain it. The further behind you are, the more this leads to increased depression, anxiety, anger, etc. At that point it's hard to effectively think or do anything at all, so the situation deteriorates further. Sometimes something works out; you get a girlfriend, you get a good job, whatever it happens to be. You start to feel like you can make a come back, you start making progress turning your life into what you want it to be. The problem is if that initial pillar gets knocked out from under you (break-up, laid off, etc) things can go down hill really damn fast; I know this from experience. You're right that largely speaking no one cares about a person having depression, or rather people say they care but their actions rarely line up with their words. That can be a very self-destructive realization though, because often times help is what you need. Some people can push past these adversities seemingly without issue. Others like myself have a much more difficult time with it. Perhaps "thinking through" the problem is the problem, maybe that leads to analysis paralysis. Maybe that's why those with higher IQs have this problem. I honestly have no idea.
  • zigzaggy 7y ago
    As my old therapist would say, “a broken mind can’t fix a broken mind.” I suffer from pretty intense social anxiety. It turns out I was comparing the way I felt to the way other people appeared, and felt like a failure for a long time. I finally shelved all the old ideas I could shed and wrote my own definition of success. I can’t speak for others but I couldn’t think myself whole because my perspective was all wrong. It took talking through all that garbage and getting to the truth before I started getting healthy and whole.
    • TurkishPoptart 7y ago
      how did you find your therapist? what criteria did you look at to find them? I've had bad luck with them lately.
  • skraaa2913 7y ago
    This is really interesting! You are quite the "doer". I think for a lot of people the problem is that they think and plan a lot, but never do anything. You seem to be able to identify a problem and then proceed to solve it, which is a pretty good quality, I think. You take control of your life and do things instead of waiting for the "right time". Tell me, what do you think about your actions? "I need to do it because nobody else will"? Maybe "It's my responsibility, so I need to get it done"?
  • lallysingh 7y ago
    Compute != Data != Models Wise people could figure it out, but there's only a partial overlap between wise and intelligent.
  • naasking 7y ago
    > This may seem like an insensitive question and I don't mean it in that way but why can't you "think your way out of those problems" Because in your mind, motivation follows naturally from logically deduced need. Motivation isn't so connected in most people's minds; it's an emotional thing, which isn't necessarily driven by rational thought. I'm sure you've seen people doing something wrong even though they know it's wrong.
    • bsanr2 7y ago
      I don't think it's necessarily emotional. The world does not have set inputs and outputs, and effort can be expended on activities that turn out to be arbitrarily fruitless. Decoupling expenditure of effort from expectation of reward would naturally and logically reduce motivation for even logically-deduced need. I think trauma and disappointment are far more prevalent than true sloth or vice, if such things as the later two exist at all.
  • emmelaich 7y ago
    Jobs are important. Also team sports. Any team sports at all.
• DoreenMichele 7y ago
  Most IQ tests only go up to 145. Anything very close to 145 may mean you "ceilinged the test." In other words, your IQ could be even higher, but the test can't measure it beyond that. Very high IQs can only be accurately assessed at an early age by a qualified professional. So many people will never have an accurate score.
  • lonelappde 7y ago
    How is it possible for anyone to have a valid very high IQ, since IQ is a percentile test and there's no way to know how many very high IQ people were never properly tested? Very high IQ is fundamentally flawed because IQ is resistant to precise measurement.
    • anon1m0us 7y ago
      Social systems, like kindergarten, can tell if someone is smart or average or very not smart. Society generally only tests those at the outer boundaries to verify and classify them into groups. You're right, someone who seems average (or totally unknown to social systems), but is actually super genius, might not get tested. It's the "genius in the rice paddy" argument and yes, those exist. Srinivasa Ramanujan was one. That doesn't mean IQ is fundamentally flawed. You don't need to know if someone is 99th percentile or 99.0004 percentile to know they are probably the smartest in the average room of a hundred people and that's what we use IQ to determine.
      • confidantlake 7y ago
        Sorry to be nitpicky but this stuff is interesting to me. I would think someone in the 99th percentile would have a 99% chance of being smarter than another random person. In a room full of 100, to be smarter than all 99 other people would be .99^99 or only around a 37% chance of being the smartest in the room. I may be off on this, as I am definitely not in the 99th percentile.
    • deleted 7y ago
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• IdiocyInAction 7y ago
  Well, intelligence is not a limiting factor for you. But that doesn't mean that it is bullshit; for others I have met, it was a limiting factor and they would heavily disagree. It is true though, that other factors can sometimes be much more valuable. Charisma, conscientiousness and attractiveness can carry people very far.
  • gopalv 7y ago
    > for others I have met, it was a limiting factor and they would heavily disagree The GP comment isn't really about intelligence - it is about the measurement of intelligence & the impact of parental expectations (societal, self and partner ones too). And very unfortunately it cuts both ways. People who measure poorly at 7 years old might be kept out of challenging classrooms where they would actually discover their talents & flourish. People who measure high are pushed until they burn out of their skulls trying to fulfill their "measured" potential - or alternatively placed in the company of the talented where they end up with an underachiever's ego[1]. As my sister once told me "Society doesn't want you in particular, anyone who will do what you could do will do". I often think about that at work - society can afford to burn thousands of bright minds on optimizing ads and their placement. [1] - I remember chills watching the setup for Molly's Game.
• deleted 7y ago
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• ggm 7y ago
  IQ is bullshit, and discipline, social skills, and connections are priceless. 100x this. I hope you get on top of your personal issues. Seek help: I did, it was useful, if expensive; money only exists to be spent
  • e9 7y ago
    Help didn't help me, but I am glad it did for you. I spent lots of money but eventually what saved me is reading this article and then the whole book about intelligent people suffering from depression and failures in life: http://www.hoagiesgifted.org/dabrowskis_theory_existential_depression_feb09.pdf http://www.hoagiesgifted.org/dabrowskis_theory_existential_d... it related to me more than anything else but everyone is different
• eternalban 7y ago
  > discipline, social skills, and connections are priceless. Entirely correct. Therapy is effective. Meditation will help. There is a Chinese old saw about "treasures that you carry within you and which none can rob nor destroy but you". And get yourself a girl friend. [p.s. when you get your act together, you know discipline, social skills, and making connections, your 139 will put you way ahead of those who merely have those skills, so cheer up.]
  • lliamander 7y ago
    > And get yourself a girl friend. I might generalize this to "put yourself in position where you have a responsibility to other people". The expectations that other people have of us can be a burden, but they can also help us pull together enough motivation to get stuff done.
  • TurkishPoptart 7y ago
    I appreciate your comment. >And get yourself a girl friend. As much as I would love to snap my fingers and make this happen, I really have no idea how to go about this. I met my last serious girlfriend at a bus station in Minsk, just struck up a conversation (in English). Whereas here in the US, I have been in $BoringTechCity for 3 years, and haven't had a woman so much as smile at me. I'm very much a skinny George Costanza, and I freak people out. I also abstain from dating apps and am at this "squishy" part of adulthood where I enjoy staying in, making Indian curry and playing Red Dead, and can't imagine doing anything social in the evenings after work. (I did, however, perform stand-up comedy twice last week, at two different venues. Both times went pretty well, but I don't feel compelled to do it again anytime soon.)
    • eternalban 7y ago
      > can't imagine doing anything social in the evenings after work So this is key. Start using your God given high voltage brain and start imagining. Then plan. Then implement. Looks? Effendi, you see the most gorgeous women with the most unlikely males all the time. I wouldn't worry about that even a tiny bit. > I did, however, perform stand-up comedy twice last week, at two different venues. Both times went pretty well, but I don't feel compelled to do it again anytime soon. A sense of humor is one of the most attractive qualities in a man to a woman. You are already set. You are smart, you are funny, you have a fucking job. Have you considered you are ungrateful to the Universe or God or the Spaghetti Monster? :-)
• forgotmypw 7y ago
  I can relate to your situation, because I was there a few years ago, at a similar age. Please forgive me for offering some unsolicited advice. I highly recommend meditation. A helpful book I started with is called Wherever You Go, There You Are. I'm now getting into The Mind Illuminated, and I think it is also good. The subreddits /r/meditation and /r/TheMindIlluminated are informative, at the moment. When you find the time, which can be difficult when you are working a job, try forcing yourself into social interactions. For example, chatting with people at cafe or at the train station, volunteering, and meetups. Also, I found myself feeling like I've been Tom Sawyered just a little bit with the job thing. If I could go back in time and tell myself not to sweat the job thing so much, I would.
  • TurkishPoptart 7y ago
    >When you find the time, which can be difficult when you are working a job, try forcing yourself into social interactions. For example, chatting with people at cafe or at the train station, volunteering, and meetups. I like this advice. I just don't like following through with it because 1) I feel like a creep 2) I can't really tell if people are bothered by me and don't want to inconvenience them 3) I'm afraid I will say something wrong and the whole experience will bite me in the ass, so it's safer to do nothing.
• alexbanks 7y ago
  My old therapist (who literally saved my life fwiw) made me go through a series of IQ tests and I also received a similar score (141). At the time, he was attempting to prove that I had intelligence, and that I was smarter than I gave myself credit for. But the thing that I noticed was that it actually spun me in the opposite direction - when I thought I wasn't smart I could explain away the lack of motivation or success or whatever. When it was "proven" that I was "intelligent", I just felt like more of a failure. I had this big brain that I was barely using. I'm glad I know, because it feels good to know I guess. But I don't think that making me take that test really moved the needle for me in terms of self worth or success or anything like that. I had to figure my shit out via other methods (while working with that therapist). I suppose the point of this message is only to say that I empathize with your situation.
  • mdorazio 7y ago
    Similar boat for me, but in my case it was that everyone else then raised their expectations. Because if you're "gifted" or whatever term they use these days, clearly you should be accomplishing amazing things constantly and if you don't you're a disappointment to the world at large. That kind of burden is pretty awful for most kids to grow up with.
    • alexbanks 7y ago
      I was in gifted classes growing up, but it felt like a big fraud. I never really did any of the work, so my grades were always mediocre at best. But then testing came around and I'd score in the top %s, and continue to get placed in classes I wasn't willing to work hard enough to succeed at. It was this treadmill of failure and shame. It was really really awful, but my mom always said if I placed that high I had to take those classes, so I just kept going. It was definitely a pretty damaging process.
      • TurkishPoptart 7y ago
        This is me. Did you at least become a software engineer?
• btilly 7y ago
  Mythology to the contrary notwithstanding, but IQ at age 7 is not indicative of much. And paying attention to it is actively detrimental. First of all at the tail of the IQ distribution, the normal approximation breaks down. Secondly, we get a big jump in mental development when we hit our growth spurts. So IQ at that age is not massively well-correlated with your IQ a few years later. But that doesn't get into why it is actively detrimental. It turns out that children are motivated to seek confirmation of what they are complimented on. So a child who is told they are smart seeks easy tasks where they look smart, and tends to avoid hard tasks that might show them not to be so smart. While children who are complimented on their hard work and willingness to learn will seek out challenges to push themselves. Research indicates that this effect sets in shockingly easily. And the two groups respond very differently to setbacks. The ones who are complimented on what they are gets demotivated. The ones who are complimented on what they do get motivated to tackle it again. See https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-power-prime/200909/parenting-dont-praise-your-children https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-power-prime/2009... for more on this and some verification that I'm not just making this up. Your personal life is an anecdotal data point, but it fits perfectly. You were identified young as smart. It was drilled in enough that you know exactly how smart. But it sounds like you learned to coast on brains and avoid challenges, and are now suffering the consequences. If this is true, I would recommend that you read https://www.amazon.com/Cant-Hurt-Me-Master-Your-ebook/dp/B07H453KGH https://www.amazon.com/Cant-Hurt-Me-Master-Your-ebook/dp/B07... for advice on how to build mental toughness. That can help you overcome life challenges which are in your way.
  • codesushi42 7y ago
    Unless you are an outlier on either side of the spectrum (e.g. 80 or 150), IQ isn't very indicative of anything. And why would anyone believe it should be? Do you really think a test with a relatively small set of questions, written by a biased group of individuals is going to be representative of human intelligence? It baffles me that IQ is used as any kind of meaningful measurement beyond showing whether someone is mentally retarded or a prodigy.
    • chrisco255 7y ago
• Nav_Panel 7y ago
  I also took an IQ test as a child, but I have no recollection of it and my mother never told me my score. I'm grateful for this---I did identify with my intelligence for a long period in adolescence, but I never had any institutional or scientific authority behind it, merely a vague sense that "you're smart." Now I'm a comfy SWE. I've been spending a lot of time reading to try and give myself the tools to resolve the various neuroses I developed as a teen, and it's going well. I still don't know what my score on that test was and I don't really care.
• WaxProlix 7y ago
  Hey, do you have a place where I could contact you?
  • TurkishPoptart 7y ago
    Hi, were you speaking to me? I have added my email address to my profile page if you'd like to reach out! Thanks.
• anon1m0us 7y ago
  IQ is not bullshit, but it's neither necessary nor sufficient to make your life better or save it. The article exactly mentions that anxiety and depression are amplified in folks like yourself. You have to overcome them to use your pseudo-superpower to save the world... or not, who knows is it even worth saving? idk Compound the extra psychological difficulty you face with the improbability of finding someone who understands you, with the counter-intuitive understanding of your situation as desirable by everyone less smart than you are, you're so lucky, I wish I was as smart as you, "no you don't, but you wouldn't understand" ... It sets you up for a very lonely life. Isolation can lead to insanity. What I'm trying to say is: What you are experiencing is normal for someone like you. BTW, what's a SWE?
  • denkmoon 7y ago
    SWE = Software Engineer
    • xorand 7y ago
      Heh, I read SJW and it totally made sense.
  • TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
    I believe SWE is Software Engineer in this context. > neither necessary nor sufficient So, bullshit.
    • anon1m0us 7y ago
      No! It's not bullshit. It is a measurable human trait that is correlated to a wide range of life outcomes. It might actually be the most correlatable human trait there is. Yes, some of those life outcomes are good and some of those life outcomes are bad. That doesn't make it bullshit. What it most often means, if you have a high IQ, is that you have a choice and more often many choices, because you can see more choices and it's overwhelming and it's easy to give up and say fuck it all this is bullshit and SWE (I am so embarrassed to say I had to look up SWE even though I am a software engineer and one of the SWEs was smoke weed every day, ha!) Which brings me to my point! If you have high IQ, you can be a SWE or SWE. You know what I mean??
• jlawson 7y ago
  Anxiety and depression are terrible issues, I hope you figure out the key for that lock soon. The other side of this is 'lazy as shit' - in terms of psychometric measures, you're largely describing conscientiousness, one of the five OCEAN traits. IQ and conscientiousness both correlate with income, but it's their combination that really makes for economic high achievers. Sounds like you have half the triforce, as it were. You may very well be highly intelligent but not conscientious. There are lots of people like this, it's not a sin, just a personality. I will say that conscientiousness is probably more valuable than IQ in many ways, but IQ is nothing to scoff at. Imagine being in the same situation as you, but being dumb as well. >But we grew up in the world told we could do anything we wanted! You can do anything you want. The trick is that 'wanting' here doesn't mean 'I want to have the results of having done that long arduous risky focused effort'. It means 'I want to go through that long arduous risky focused effort'. Most people don't want anything like that, though. To say "You can go to the gym," is not the same as saying, "You're entitled to be jacked." It just means you're allowed to strive.
• skissane 7y ago
  I measured a similarly high score as a child (my parents refused to reveal to me the exact number, but told me it was somewhere in the 130-150 range; I guess now as an adult I could ask them if they remember the exact number; but I've never felt it important enough to ask.) I haven't done badly in life, but I've always felt I could have done a lot better if I had better executive functioning. If somehow I could have traded some of my IQ points for better executive functioning points (is there such a thing?), I'd happily take that trade.
  • K0SM0S 7y ago
    I've observed that high IQ people who tend to function well — certainly not a given — are extremely disciplined. Basically as I see it, using every bit of rational intelligence to tame and condition the rest of their being (emotions, health, social, will, etc), develop all the other forms of intelligence. The 'dark path' for most seems to be an ironic world view, which leads to a sarcastic mindset and ultimately nihilism if not contained. Hence a major lifelong requirement is to really learn what self-love means. I have no idea what my IQ is, I just feel it's too much or too little for my own sake; case in point I finally stopped hating myself and learned self love at 34. Changed my life, like step 1 of a major transformation. The only recommendation I'm certain helps everyone is Stoicism.
    • blattimwind 7y ago
      > The 'dark path' for most seems to be an ironic world view, which leads to a sarcastic mindset and ultimately nihilism if not contained. This is a perfectly fine coping mechanism for big-picture stuff (environ. protection, climate change, genotoxic materials, migration, politics); it only becomes highly problematic when you use it as the coping mechanism for everything. > Stoicism Depending on the construction stoicism can come quite close to nihilistic world views, actually.
      • K0SM0S 7y ago
        Disclaimer: the following is opinion, I can't prove it or show data. Merely my personal experience (and observation). About irony/sarcasm: I used to think exactly like you. I must say it was totally flawed. I don't know how to word this scientifically (and please understand I'm not religious): sarcasm hurts your soul, your heart, your mind, your spirit. It's like drugs: short term good but really bad long term. It helps for some time and then slowly eats at you. A sarcastic person is in effect trading the possibility of hope for the comfort of accepting things. There is a way where you keep both, through forgiving, through understanding, with humility. Humor gets a pass when it speaks of bad things, or in a bad manner, because it's a way of denouncing said things/manners. Certainly not to validate it. That's where sarcasm has its place IMHO: as a very bad manner that humor serves to show. About Stoicism: that's true. Hence why I always preface with self-love, because the Stoic apparatus is quite unable to speak of this in modern terms. In general I agree with Ferris on this though: Stoicism is the best operating system for the human mind. Now that I know, I see it and find it in so many things, people, the good side of life (and it seems quite missing in many a miserable path).
• cortesoft 7y ago
  I know for me, finding out I had a high IQ made me more arrogant, which was a major problem for me in elementary school. I was always a jerk about being able to understand things easily, to be able to do well in school without trying. Learning how to not be a dick about being intelligent was probably the most valuable thing I learned at school.
  • hinkley 7y ago
    My parents never told me my IQ. They were afraid I would turn into a monster (and given their parenting skills, that wasn't a bad instinct). I learned it from my spouse after she talked to my mother. Problem is, I thought I was just 'smart'. If there were things I struggled to understand, it was only natural for others not to get it unless I could unpack it for them. However I also had this notion that when I understood things immediately that I was just 'faster', that in five, ten, fifteen minutes they would figure it out and we'd all be in agreement and everything would be great. Everything was not great, and I would get visibly agitated with people for not getting these completely obvious things. These are not realistic expectations and certainly are not attractive behaviors.
• deleted 7y ago
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• fragmede 7y ago
  That could be ADHD or some such; sounds like you're pretty unhappy but laziness is often psychological issue masquerading as moralistic judgement.
• emmelaich 7y ago
  I wonder whether the cause is not high IQ per se, but the difference between your IQ and your peers, siblings, parents. For many things it makes you less understandable (and vice versa) and this is necessarily going to have a socially ostracising effect. Which then of course leads to anxiety, and thence mood disorders.
• ddiq 7y ago
  You'd think that someone with an IQ of 139 would be able to see why the example of his failure to capitalize on his own intelligence doesn't discount the value of IQ as a measurement of general intelligence.
• api 7y ago
  I wonder if that high score had a negative effect on you somehow by making you feel like you were somehow not living up to it. In any case I wish you well. I have some similarities in my background including high scores, isolation, and depression, and trust me it can get better.
• WheelsAtLarge 7y ago
  I think that intelligence tends to make high IQ individuals lazy, for lack of an other word, and afraid to try things that can't be easily mastered. I remember in school understanding and mastering subjects without much trouble and work but once a subject got too hard it was time to move to something else. So for most of my life that has been my method of operating. Unfortunately,for me, that makes it impossible to get far in any career. Hard work and the ability to work through adversity is what's needed for a successful life. I wish school and parents would stop using IQ as a measure for future success. It's not a good predictor.
  • chrisco255 7y ago
    I think K-12 education system makes high IQ people lazy because they don't need to try hard to get through a curriculum that was designed for people who learn more slowly. So this sets in as a habit. I went through gifted programs and thinking back, I probably could have learned calculus by middle school if my education had adapted to my learning rate, but it didn't. We still had the same text books as every other 4th grader, we just covered more of the material in a year.
  • yibg 7y ago
    This was true for me. Up until college things came so easily that I barely had to do any work to get good grades, so I didn’t. Fortunately college was a kick in the pants for me. First year I went in with the same attitude as high school, that I can just study the night before an exam and ace it. Didn’t go so well in college and I barely passed first year. I got scared enough that hunkered down and really tried for the rest of college. College grades aside I think that experience of having to stick with it and work through adversity really helped me later in life.
• shard972 7y ago
  > Anyway, what I'm trying to say is IQ is bullshit, and discipline, social skills, and connections are priceless. So based purely on your personal experiences, your willing to throw out an entire field of study that has mountains of empirical evidence.
• ianai 7y ago
  IQ is BS. 25/hour is pretty good in most zip codes. Don’t under estimate just how large the income percentiles are, especially for singles. I’ve probably had fewer relationships than you and I’m more than likely older. Modern society erected some serious issues with interpersonal relationships and formations therein. How are we going to meet when there’s so little time and money left over after we’re done fulfilling our societal or personal needs (chores, self care, etc)? This is also part of why I would never go anywhere near wrecking a relationship by being someone’s “other guy.” It’s too important to society to respect when two people are able to work through all the hoops society places against decent, healthy relationships to go around affecting them when they occur. Edit- Hell, I donate monthly to a charity that benefits single women and mothers to at least feel like I’m doing something for the women of the world that I’m likely to never share my life with.
  • Kaveren 7y ago
    IQ isn't BS as much as you may wish it to be. I don't know why people feel the need to deny science just so everyone can be on a more level playing field. it's comforting rhetoric but not supported by the evidence.
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    • blattimwind 7y ago
      I don't think a single IQ test is overly meaningful. I did some IQ tests in my youth, which produced interesting numbers (120-140 range); later I took one during my university time, which came back with a two-digit result.
      • bjoli 7y ago
        I have done one of the few respectable IQ tests many times (wife is a psychologist working with the tests in question). Regardless of mental form (hung over,sick, high on life) I have scored in the same ballpark. Most IQ tests (especially self admi istered ones) are BS. The proper ones are probably the most studied aspects of psychology there are and correlate with a whole lot of things in significant ways.
• lone_haxx0r 7y ago
  > Anyway, what I'm trying to say is IQ is bullshit, and discipline, social skills, and connections are priceless. IQ is not bullshit. It's quite good at what it does: measuring intelligence. Maybe you were referring to the idea that being smart will inevitably make you successful, which is indeed bullshit.
• VeninVidiaVicii 7y ago
  When I was 30 (3 years ago) I was in the exact same position as you, to the tee. I decided to go BACK to school and get another bachelor's degree in something I actually cared about even though I already had a master's. Now I'm in my second year in a PhD program in a biomedical program. Point is: a lot of us start to feel like we made a mistake and it's too late to fix.
  • MaximumYComb 7y ago
    Came from a working class rural background. I was in gifted streams but they finished when I was 12. My high school was more focused on keeping troubled students in line than helping gifted ones. Finished school and got a trade. Never felt happy. At age 30, started comp sci at uni. Best decision I ever made. It fixed the "mistakes" I made in my life choices
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• squarefoot 7y ago
  I scored 140 when I was 10 or 11, and today 40+ years later I sometimes would like to be able to wind back time before day one and remix my parents DNA with a chimp so that I could score no more than half of that figure. Being intelligent can be indeed a blessing, but only if you live in the right context, both at home and school (that's parents responsibility when you're a kid), otherwise people will marginalize/bully you; at school just because you are (talk, act, etc) different, at workplace because being more intelligent makes you faster at identifying problems and solving them. Whether or not this turns out into a higher pay you make some enemies anyway because either some colleagues become envious or they now need to work harder because you set a new standard to follow. Being intelligent can also ruin your life if you have ideals, that is, you would like to change things for the better also for other people. What kills you from the inside is the awareness about something that is awfully bad or wrong and understanding that you are absolutely powerless at changing it, so that you'd rather want to never have known about that problem from start. Socially speaking things aren't that different: I've got to the point of faking being "normal", both at work or in social life, that is, I had the solution for a problem or something smart to say or do, but kept it for myself because I didn't want to appear different, and I also sometimes wanted to be invited at parties, so I totally understand your point. The only thing being intelligent helped a lot was finding the right woman (17 years together with highs and lows, mostly highs) but especially at young age one would rather find a wrong one each week than the right one for life. That's where being intelligent doesn't help at all: if you want to have fun, hide as much as you can that you belong in the right part of that gaussian. BTW, I've got a bit more luck at finding jobs, but mostly because it was before the post 2k crisis; one morning I sent my (almost empty by then) resume to various companies and recruiters, and by lunch time I had like 12 or 13 job offers. That was just crazy; it didn't last long though.
  • agumonkey 7y ago
    > , at workplace because being more intelligent makes you faster at identifying problems and solving them. Don't know my IQ but I grew up with a taste and habit of thinking and trying to solve problems, and in some workplaces people want to complain and not solve problems. Weirder than that, if I offer the solution free, they react half negatively (maybe insulted, or shamed ?), and later they may even complain that I stopped offering solutions. Extremely damaging to my mind.
• adatavizguy 7y ago
  Can you do me a favor? If not for yourself simply do it for a random guy on the internet. Can you walk at least 15 minutes a day if you are not already? Work up to 1 hour a day. It's fine if you walk slowly. You don't have to run. You don't have to do push ups. Just walk. You'll feel better about everything in about a week. I walk everyday. I prefer a pair of 1461 Doc Martin over my $170 Asics.
  • TurkishPoptart 7y ago
    Was this comment directed toward me? Sorry, I am kind of an HN newb. I'm going to assume it was for me, and take you up on it!
• defterGoose 7y ago
  I too tested as highly gifted as a child and have had some difficulty with my career prospects (though that is probably my fault since I quit a good-paying job to strike out on my own and try the entrepreneur life.) I've often thought that my parents did me no favors by constantly praising my intelligence. I coasted through high school and did OK in college due mostly to laziness, despite knowing I should have been working harder. The weed probably didn't help either. At the end of the day though, I'd rather look back on a life of trailblazing with reduced income/"success" rather than holding down some job that I consider bullshit. I'm reminded of that quote from Good Will Hunting about serving the douchebag Harvard guy's kids fries at the drive thru. "Maybe. But at least I won't be unoriginal"
• loopz 7y ago
  You can test high in anything, but it doesn't automatically convert to practical value - that takes actually doing the work. So your motivations got screwed up, blinding you to the fact you today mostly can do whatever, but with circumstances, belief systems and ego as continuous direction. Believing you are special, even if told so makes you unremarkable, grows into ego, which blocks you from others. Pursue your interests, seek out groups, courses where you get in touch with people reeling you in. Ignore people and circumstances that make you cocoon.
• nscalf 7y ago
  So I have had a very similar experience, with some unique flavoring. I was also quite overweight when I was young, so I experienced a lot of bullying. I missed most classes and graduated high school with truancy, and a 3.8. Ultimately, the thing that installed some hard work and discipline for me was Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. After years of just understanding things with no effort and easily outpacing most peers, I was the worst (by far) person in the room at a mostly intellectual pursuit. I was lucky that this stuck, because a lot of people describe it as decreasing depression (there is a lot of physical content and group dynamic), you meet a lot of people so it helps with enhancing social skills, and the physical exercise goes a long way. Beyond that, knowing how to protect yourself gives you a lot of confidence with strangers, for better and worse. I hate being the guy that shouts my religion to people who aren’t asking for it, but I really think a lot of people would benefit from this. It’s had such an impact that I donate to some charity that gives free lessons and uniforms to under privileged kids in Oakland. Check out a martial art, it’s a more thoughtful way of exercising, and you may hate being the worst person in the room enough to learn how to get better.
• hermitdev 7y ago
  I've not taken an IQ test, but consistently scored in 99th percentile in standardized tests up through high school (Iowa Basics, then SAT & ACT). Work ethic was a problem for me for a long while, mostly because I was bored and school was too easy. It wasnt until college that I was challenged. Went from straight A's in HS to a 3.4 GPA when I graduated college. Didnt have a steady relationship either until I was 36, then got married inside of 2 months (I knew my now wife for over 10 years, though, we just didn't date during most of that time). I might be slightly on the autism spectrum, but never been diagnosed. Always been a bit of a loner and introvert. Back in high school, when classmates were out partying on weekends, I was hacking. Learning Z80 ASM the hard way with dead tree books and struggling to find info on random local BBS's (not much in Montana and not a long way to go before a BBS was long distance). I started work on a masters in electrical engineering, but have never finished. Wanted it more than I needed it. Somehow (referral from a friend of a friend) landed a job in finance as a developer a year out of college, and been in the industry ever since. All of my current friends, and even my wife, I have due to working in the industry. Not that finance itself is responsible for it, just where I met everyone. Also regarding networking, all of my early jobs were acquired via networking. After a decade of experience at a well known hedge fund, recruiters hound me all the time, and if I want, I can get several interviews within a week. Its worth not burning bridges.
  • TurkishPoptart 7y ago
    A little off-topic, but I've long been highly skeptical of finance, what with light-speed AI-guided high-frequency trading, the massive concentration of wealth, the inability for government to keep apace with the private sector, and the seeming inability for average working people to benefit from the system...it all puts me into a feeling of unease.
• ladzoppelin 7y ago
  Wow that's really good advice. Sometimes I think lack of discipline is a side effect of depression or another mental disorder like addiction.
• jv22222 7y ago
  Regarding the lazy (and depressed) part. Try getting an Oculus Quest and playing BoxVR for 20 mins every day. I've just started doing that and within a week I have started to feel a lot more energy. It's a workout without realizing you're doing a workout, and it helps to get some of that good feeling dopamine running around your body.
  • TurkishPoptart 7y ago
    This sounds interesting and I love spending money on video games, so I will look into this.
• sytelus 7y ago
  Many kids in this IQ range often also have a photogenic memory. This helps them do pretty good academically in many tests. There is obviously more than just great memory in excelling at tests but relatively kids who have entire book searchable at high speed in front of them have a tremendous advantage in a setup that at least used to exist decades ago. Eventually, many of these kids end up in Ph.D. programs because excelling and competing with their natural gift of high-speed high-volume memory pushes them forward. This then usually leads to fairly satisfactory lifestyle despite other issues. I'm wondering how good you considered yourself in memory and retention? If so, did this allowed you to excel at academic tests?
• todd3834 7y ago
  I’m sorry to hear about some of the difficulties you’ve been through. If you ever want someone to talk to, my email is in my profile. I’m not a therapist and I’m totally not qualified to help people with their problems but I can be a good listener and friend.
• throwawaywayyaw 7y ago
  Can't disagree. A more powerful processing unit can (and mostly will) dig deeper on the problems it faces. Which is not a good thing. Ask me about fabric of the universe, the meaning of life etc. and I will explain what a panic attack is. People my age living their life happily while I am looking to the sky with a beer on my hand and wishing to be in the Matrix with no care.
• vkolencik 7y ago
  Your rare awareness makes me hopeful that it's withing your power to turn your life around. Anyways, this makes a good argument why IQ is largely inconsequential in the real life: https://medium.com/incerto/iq-is-largely-a-pseudoscientific-swindle-f131c101ba39 https://medium.com/incerto/iq-is-largely-a-pseudoscientific-...
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• ahje 7y ago
  I've been through the same. Grew up being told I could do anything I wanted, but people insisted that I focus on the stuff I was naturally talented at instead of learning the basic stuff I needed but couldn't figure out on my own. Like how to behave in a group. The upside to it is that i have gotten through it. Somewhat. I've got a decent job, and I'm not worrying about losing it all the time anymore. I've got family, and who knows -- one day I might actually feel confident enough to make friends with someone. But yes, it can't be said enough. Discipline, social skills, connections AND self-confidence are much more important than IQ.
  • jakoblorz 7y ago
    Sorry for asking so blatantly: You have a family but no friends? So you did have friends before? Why not ask them for drinks?
    • ahje 7y ago
      I did, but I had a period where I moved around a lot, living in different countries and trying new things. Lost most of whatever network I had in the process, but learned a lot about how interact with the rest of the world.
• scarejunba 7y ago
  There's a hypothesis I have about the guys who win: at critical moments, they don't fuck around. I've noticed this about all the winners I know. Just that slight voice inside that says, "Let me ease off the throttle a bit here. It's not going to be critical." They ignore it or don't have it. I do, so I started ignoring it. Up for a corner kick and the ball is headed clear for the opposing forward to only have to clear our one defender held back and 1 on 1 the keeper? I sprint the whole way. Almost every time, I get there from across the pitch in time to help. It's the same with emails or projects or objectives. There are critical periods and when it's critical you've got to push through. I've realized I've always known when it's critical. I've just not committed in that moment. Now I know. Interestingly, this means you can spend lots of time off the throttle. I'm pretty sure intelligence is common. There are lots of smart people. I think the combination of that plus this is killer. Btw if you want to see what this feels like at work, try Adderall.
• diffeomorphism 7y ago
  > Anyway, what I'm trying to say But what you actually said is that IQ is perfectly valid but not magic and that anxiety and depression are serious problems.
• agumonkey 7y ago
  tl;dr; society is social IQ is only valuable up to a point, the rest is seduction
• mcv 7y ago
  I recognise so much of this. A lot of my friends are incredibly smart and yet are struggling with life in various ways. Most of them are programmers, which I think is a relatively good place for us, but many have trouble staying motivated when the work isn't quite what they hoped for, and they either fall into a rut of low productivity, or quit/get fired and keep looking for something better. I'm no different, but I've been very lucky to roll into something that works very well for me. I never did homework in school, and got by on a talent for math and science (until we got to integrations, and I was unable to derive and remember the standard primitives, which saw my grades tumble into failing grades; I graduated with a good grade for math only because geometry (which is very intuitive for me) was a third of the final grade). So I managed to get by with never doing any homework, which meant that in university, I got completely stranded at the many classes that really required serious studying, and I focused mostly on the more intuitive logic/programming oriented classes that I could still ace without any real work. I couldn't graduate without the other classes, though, so I dropped out. (I've never completed a proper IQ test that I got to see the results of; as a teenager I did one from a book that I didn't finish and still got 136, and I got 139 from one on TV that maxed out at 141, so I assume I'm somewhere near 140. I was tested for motivation problems at school as a teenager, which apparently showed I was smart, but my mother didn't want to share the results with me. Clearly I was smart, just not good at actual work. So I'm lazy as shit, or possible struggle with motivation, but who can tell the difference? But I've been lucky to roll into a field that I have a talent for (software development), and I'm doing pretty good there. I was single and not dating at all (too insecure to even try) until 32 (yes, virgin until then), when I tried online dating and eventually met my wife, who has been great for me and my career (and I apparently for hers). So convinced me to quit jobs where I wasn't happy and find something better, and the financial stability she provided helped a lot in the step to become a freelancer. I'm still constantly distracted by online stuff (I should be programming as I'm typing this), and I wonder if I would have been an amazing programmer if I could keep my focus on programming for the whole day, but my work is generally good enough to get by. At least as long as I'm interested in the project; on boring, repetitive projects that are no different from any other, I start out great and after a couple of months I lose interest and I need to do something else. My longest job ever was almost 4 years, and that was 2 years too long. These days I work as a freelancer on projects from 6-18 months, and that works about right for me. Team mates tend to love me during the first few months, but get tired of me after about a year. My current project is more interesting than usual: I set up the first prototype and the team developed around me. I get to focus on the interesting stuff that I care most about, and there's interesting stuff with graph databases, complex data modeling, and I get to refactor the structure on the project simply because I say it's necessary. Other people have recently been added to the project to pick up the more boring stuff, and for the first time I feel like I'm getting recognition for the stuff I'm best at. This is an amazing feeling and I can see myself working here for much longer than usual, but we'll see how things look after another half year (I've been here for nearly a year now). But again, I know I've been lucky, as I haven't actually worked for any of this; I was just lucky to roll into something I have a talent for, was lucky to meet my wife, and got lucky with some of the projects I worked on. But I could easily see how my life could have taken a different direction. 20 years ago, nobody would have said that I would be the successful and happily married one among my friends. It's still hard to believe, especially when I see so many people who are just as smart as I am, and most likely working harder, often more knowledgeable about technical topics, still struggle with so many aspects of life. I feel like I never really earned the easy life I've got.
• teekert 7y ago
  Happiness = Reality - Expectations
• growlist 7y ago
  I tested pretty high when I was younger but for various reasons school didn't suit me. I don't think it helps a child at all to be told they are really clever.
• mrmonkeyman 7y ago
  I myself not being blessed with any intelligence whatsover can confirm that not thinking so damn much will prove beneficial for you. That's literally what you need to do. More doing, less bla-bla. Way, way more doing. The Voice is wrong, ignore it. Look at dumb people like me and imitate them. Your depression and anxiety will fade. When you are healed, dial up the thinking, slowly, until your performance is adequate. No more.
• UserIsUnused 7y ago
  I can relate too much with that. Too much of earning about being genius while young and even in college, now I'm just lonely, depressed, anxious, and feeling like wasted potential. >Anyway, what I'm trying to say is IQ is bullshit, and discipline, social skills, and connections are priceless 100% agree.
• 2muchcoffeeman 7y ago
  > * Anyway, what I'm trying to say is IQ is bullshit, and discipline, social skills, and connections are priceless.* It’s one of those things where when it’s taken out of context or on its own it’s really useless. Then people assume things based on a single measure and you’re screwed.
• nerbert 7y ago
  You CAN do whatever you want, in our society the challenge is to know WHAT you actually want.
  • Art9681 7y ago
    You can TRY to do whatever you want but there is no guarantee you will be successful at it. In many cases, your living situation will actively prevent you from even trying. Not everyone is in a situation to thrive. Some people are fortunate to have been born into, or be given a life full of opportunity, but for many that is not the case.
• mapcars 7y ago
  >But we grew up in the world told we could do anything we wanted! I think it's that sort of expectation that is screwing with us People misinterpret what it means, instead of "I can do what I want" it means "nobody knows what you will do, anything can happen".
• bena 7y ago
  It's not bullshit, but it's not a ticket to paradise either. It's a challenge with a child with any extraordinary ability. They start getting praised for the simple existence of the gift rather than any work. So the first time something seems like work, the child thinks they're just bad. It then becomes a kind of learned helplessness. You also learn to not try because trying is the first step to failure.
• criddell 7y ago
  > But we grew up in the world told we could do anything we wanted! You mention anxiety, depression, and that you feel lazy. Is part of the problem that there's nothing you want to do right now? > IQ is bullshit, and discipline, social skills, and connections are priceless Of the four qualities you list, you already have the one that's mostly innate. The others you can develop.
  • TurkishPoptart 7y ago
    >You mention anxiety, depression, and that you feel lazy. Is part of the problem that there's nothing you want to do right now? Yes. On one level _want_ to earn a Security+ certificate or do a coding class part-time. I can't say for certain that they'll change my life for the better, but they seem like the _right_ thing to do for someone who has had 10 jobs but unable to begin a career. >Of the four qualities you list, you already have the one that's mostly innate. The others you can develop. I suppose you have a point, but I really lack the confidence and faith that if I keep trying to improve these things, then I'll see results. Because of my warped mind, moving myself in the direction of bettering myself =/= positive results, but rather new FUD, new failures, faux pas, doubts, and decline. Maybe IQ is innate, but I don't really use it, and I think I'm losing it. Depression makes my brain feel swollen and hard to grasp the right word and formulate plans. And yes, I have taken many, many medications. Most recently Buproprion and Fluoxetine. Now I've been taking 40mg Fluoxetine daily for a few months, but it doesn't help with any of the aforementioned problems. I think I continue to take it to show that I'm trying to do _something_ about this. Perhaps I should give therapy another shot. I just feel terrible and selfish spending money on it, when I think just saving a few hundred dollars a month would do more for my mental health than bawling to a shrink about my troubled teen years... Sorry to ramble. Thank you for your reply. I will try to reconsider what I can develop.
    • criddell 7y ago
      I sincerely wish you good luck. I make my living writing software and find it extremely rewarding. I like the people I work with and I find the job challenging, the domain interesting, and the pay is great. I hope you find something similar.
• not_a_cop75 7y ago
  Maybe you need to start rewarding yourself even if the rest of the world doesn't.