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Intellectual Loneliness

• handzhiev 5y ago
  Yet another "I'm smarter than everyone" post. I'm pretty introvert and parties bore me. But the brightest thoughts and ideas, and the biggest intellectual challenges happen through conversations. It just takes time and effort (and less focus on ego) to go into deeper conversations with people and not feel "intellectually lonely"
• pkukkapalli 5y ago
  I think he's getting at something important. I started writing for the same reason basically. But wish there was a way to network my writings with other people's writings. Maybe I just need to build a social media following (probably on Twitter)?
  • ianbicking 5y ago
    I miss the community of bloggers in the old days... there was these groups of people often cross-referencing and reacting to each other in the form of essays. No particular hierarchy, just an amorphous conversation
    • mkr-hn 5y ago
      Quote dunks replaced response posts and we're all worse off for it.
    • pkukkapalli 5y ago
      Yeah, I prefer the discussions via essay format as well. Instead of the quick meme reactions. I guess it's good for comedy and being edgy, but not really for high quality ideas. I vaguely recall seeing a Show HN of a discovery tool for personal blogs, but don't think it really took off. Sad to see.
• Mikhail_Edoshin 5y ago
  This is not intellectual, but spiritual loneliness. There's a book about learning how to draw "with the right brain". The main idea is that you learn how to see. It quotes one of pupils who said that once he learned that he realized that there were no people who were not beautiful.
• Borrible 5y ago
  'But I like people. I do. I like people, but I like them in short bursts.' George Carlin. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvyG79aBdJg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvyG79aBdJg
• suction 5y ago
  His whole website looks fake to me, as in it's actually run by a corporation to market their product. Not unlike those affiliate "blogs" using stock photography and inspirational bs quotes to create the impression of a person running them. All in all, the term "intellectual" wouldn't have been my first choice in describing the content I see on there.
• Venkatesh10 5y ago
  Guess I have Intellectual loneliness too.
• billconan 5y ago
  I feel the same too. I feel my direct circle is too small. There are a lot of interesting people out there. I was thinking about creating a platform similar to clubhouse, but asynchronous . So like an audio version hackernews. why audio based? because producing audio content/conversation is easier than writing/blogging? And being asynchronous makes topic mining and content based recommendation possible. I guess Metaverse will work too?
  • CrazyStat 5y ago
    > I was thinking about creating a platform similar to clubhouse, but asynchronous. One of my friend groups uses Marco Polo for this. It's video, not just audio, but for us most of the time the video is not important.
    • billconan 5y ago
      so do you like Marco Polo? I think the key feature should be content mining and a robust recommendation algorithm to find interesting people.
      • ianbicking 5y ago
        Just connecting people wouldn't be enough, you need some context to help them turn these individual relationships into a real peer group, something to give people the confidence to engage fully and not just perform or consume
      • CrazyStat 5y ago
        We use Marco Polo as a closed group thing, so content mining and recommendations aren't really relevant to our use case. Turning it into an open social media platform seems like it would basically be TikTok with different content. As for liking it... I've always preferred text over audio or video, but some members of the group are much more likely to participate this way, so it's a compromise.
• porknubbins 5y ago
  This hits pretty close to home. Some of the best conversations in my life have been with humanities grad students who are smart and still deeply interested in their subject, but I lost touch with those kind of people. It seems harder to converse about engineering topics though working together on problems kind of hits the same spot.
  • tibbar 5y ago
    This is funny. Yes, some engineers (and I’m an engineer, so it’s fair game) seem only comfortable talking about engineering. You can try to go outside the zone but things only pick up when you get back to DevOps. My best friend is a studio artist (but his parents were engineers).
  • therealdrag0 5y ago
    I think the problem is mental diet. Even though many engineers have a history of interest in humanities, our mental diet doesn’t situate us for regular conversations about it. Or not being in a class together, we’re not all thinking about the same things. We might read the same books but with months or years between so hard to talk about.
• elhudy 5y ago
  Props to the author for making excuses to leave early. I’m more likely to drink in excess and resort to indifference, abandon all intellectual drive, and feel like a normal human for a night. Maybe i have a problem…
  • pddpro 5y ago
    Reminds me of the House MD episode where the guy takes drugs to make himself "stupid" enough to live with his wife.
    • elhudy 5y ago
      Dr house likely tops my intellectual prowess but i appreciate the analogy.
      • kortilla 5y ago
        Well it wasn’t dr house doing it, it was one of his patients. Some super smart guy just constantly drunk all of the time to handle living with his normal wife.
        • hungryforcodes 5y ago
          I think this happens in alot of marriages after a while. /s
  • Loeffelmann 5y ago
    > abandon all intellectual drive, and feel like a normal human for a night. Man. This sounds like 14 year old me thinking I'm just so beyond everybodys mental capacity and that's why I am lonely.
    • elhudy 5y ago
      I didn’t mean to come off as pretentious. In fact on HN i often feel inadequate! I’m not lonely at all - I’ve built a huge support community over the years and have friends all over the world. I don’t think I’m beyond everyone’s mental capacity, but I’m certainly beyond most people in terms of curiosity and fascination for subjects beyond general conversation. I’ve gotten better at driving conversation to deeper places, and surrounding myself with people who enjoy doing the same. But it’s often easier at social events to drink and stop caring.
• navait 5y ago
  The solution is to be good teacher and learner - there's so many fascinating interests these days and things i don't know about. And I want to share things from my niche too.
• tibbar 5y ago
  I took a ten year break from reading books. Instead I programmed, read blog posts, followed the news, and had a few good talks with friends here and there. When I started reading again my world caught on fire. A good book is vastly, unimaginably better than doom scrolling, and the wealth of ideas and history and inspiration that starts to accumulate as you read more is life changing. For example, I learned how to properly build habits, how my childhood in a cult came about and what other people who left have done to come to terms with it, and endless interesting facts about lifelong hobbies and interests. Reading is great.
  • lostmsu 5y ago
    Good books are hard to come by after you read quite a few. To me most now read like rehashes of what I read before.
    • tibbar 5y ago
      That’s interesting! I have interests in history and fiction as well so the surface area probably feels much larger to me. I’m also a slow reader — sadly, though my siblings can read hundreds of pages an hour, I’m more like ‘hours per hundred page.’
    • dgfitz 5y ago
      Ah but how do you know if a book is good until you’ve read it? I’m an avid reader and I’ve yet to run out of new books to read, going on 25 years of reading novels at this point.
      • rTX5CMRXIfFG 5y ago
        Same way that you won’t know whether drugs are really that bad unless you’ve personally tried them, which doesn’t mean you must try them. You build a taste for books, skim through it, read reviews from people you trust... I suppose everyone has their own way of measuring a book before diving into it, and one can of course quit in the middle of it should one make the wrong decision.
• DarylZero 5y ago
  > Writing on the Internet is the best way to solve intellectual loneliness because sharing ideas in public turns you into a magnet for like-minded people. I imagine most people who try writing on the internet don't acquire any audience at all.
  • DoreenMichele 5y ago
    I didn't see that as suggesting an audience. To me it sounds more like online friends who know enough about some of the same interests I have to engage in meaty discussion.
    • DarylZero 5y ago
      Having an audience that engages in discussion is only more than having an audience.
  • rTX5CMRXIfFG 5y ago
    I actually found that paragraph rather strange. My experience of writing is the exact opposite: the world as it stands is an internet shouting match among lost souls, and I write precisely because while I have my own thoughts, I want to run away from all the shouting, and I refuse to dignify it by participating in it.
  • vorpalhex 5y ago
    I'm always surprised at how many people seem to take note of my little blog, despite having no consistent topic and irregular posting.
    • DarylZero 5y ago
      Where do they come from?
• lngnmn2 5y ago
  Steppenwolf expressed this much better. And yes, watching certain professors (not YouTubers) makes one's heart run faster. I remember prof. Brian Harvey 2008 course (Scheme based) of old MIT courser by Eric Grimsin. Or Systematic approach by Gregor Kiczales, or Dan Grossman's "Programming languages" course. And then you stumble upon another node_modules shit... Andrew Ng was also very cool.
  • DoreenMichele 5y ago
    Steppenwolf expressed this much better Care to name the song?
    • perl4ever 5y ago
      Maybe they meant the novel rather than the band? (I haven't read it) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steppenwolf_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steppenwolf_(novel) P.S. it seems there are multiple bands inspired by Hesse, not just Steppenwolf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anyone%27s_Daughter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anyone%27s_Daughter
      • DoreenMichele 5y ago
        Thanks. I realized I might be guessing wrong about the reference but was willing to look foolish in the interest of brevity. Appreciate the reply.
        • perl4ever 5y ago
          It was bugging me why I knew it was a famous novel when I hadn't read it in or out of school. When I woke up, I remembered - in my freshman psychology class many years ago, we were given a choice of literature to do a presentation on, and one of them (which I did not choose) was Siddhartha, also by Hermann Hesse. And the professor talked about Steppenwolf.
    • lngnmn2 5y ago
      No better illustration is ever needed.
• marktangotango 5y ago
  > the war I wage every night when I get a second rush of energy from mind-altering books Two things I've experienced with this. First is that there seems to be a half-life on this activity. One day one may ask themselves, what tangible benefit have I gained from all these germs of wisdom and information I've gleaned over the years? Second is that invariably, outside of "hard" disciplines, there's nearly always a counter argument or viewpoint that can be equally compelling. So for myself, the way two decades of intellectual curiosity manifests is the conversations I have with my kids. They generally think I'm a bore, but sometimes I relate something that seems to give them a spark.
  • tibbar 5y ago
    I think part of it is building understanding of aspects of art/science/history/literature that you find interesting. If you have, say, a deep understanding of the events and context of WWII (a very ambitious goal), it might not have a big outward effect on your life, but it’s very satisfying and opens the door to more fulfilling ways to engage with the subject —- in this case, say, building a collection, or going to a war museum, or meeting other people who are into this. I’m not saying that existentially it counts for anything but there are usually rewards to learning deeply about any worthwhile subject.
  • rTX5CMRXIfFG 5y ago
    To your first point: the sheer pleasure of knowing seems to be the benefit. I feel that it would be difficult to find an answer that suffices more than that does. To the point about there always being a counterpoint to anything—I’ve come to use that as a justification for how nothing we do, believe, or want is objectively necessary, and what truly matters more is whether we can all get each other to agree on a certain goal to then objectively judge our actions against. It seems to me that that agreement on goal or purpose for our actions is at the core of why people disagree on pretty much any issue.
• rramadass 5y ago
  Very much identify with this. The banality of everyday Life is soul-crushing leading to ennui. I think it is in large part due to our consumerist/distraction-filled society (itself a product of Technology) and catering to the lowest common denominator in everything. Questions plaguing me: - Why do i need to conform to social mores? - Why must i accommodate myself to "popular culture"? - Why don't people stop what they are doing, take a step back and ask themselves "Where are We and How did We get Here"? - What have we "Gained" and What have we "Lost"? - What exactly has "Progressed" and what "Regressed"? - Why don't people want to face "Reality" but are willing to live in any "Fantasy" of their making/subscribing? - Is this all there is to my Life? - How do i cope with the utter meaninglessness of it all? My answer is to shut myself away from Society and live within my Head, alone and lonely. But Books provide a coping mechanism by getting me out of my Head and providing me new experiences through that of the author.
  • phist_mcgee 5y ago
    - Why do i need to conform to social mores? - Why must i accommodate myself to "popular culture"? Grow up. Worrying about these questions is not unique, nor special. You're trying to find an escape hatch to reality. Those do not exist. If you want to really effect change, stop focusing on the why, and start focusing on the how. We have enough armchair philosophers to last a lifetime.
    • rramadass 5y ago
      A rather flippant and presumptuous comment (i am already middle aged :-). As Krishnamurti said; "It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." The point is not that the questions are special/unique; it is that they are fundamental, perennial and plague everybody (the "me" is just a placeholder). The tragedy of existence is that there can be no settled answer to them and each of us have to find out for himself or subscribe to somebody else's answer. But then again as Camus said; "Beginning to Think is beginning to be undermined". Your start with realizing something is not quite right but unable to place your finger on it, begin asking questions each of which only reveals the rest of the layers of the onion and before you know it are starting to suffer from cognitive dissonance. You then abandon looking for answers and start to focus on learning to cope with the non-answers and getting on with your Life.
• bell-cot 5y ago
  I'm facing this. Though without the parties and such. It seems to go with getting older. My two best friends for intellectual conversation passed away in 2021. Just one such friend is left. TBD how that'll go. Two people can't make for the richness of intellectual conversation that three or four can. And the ghosts of the two who are gone could cast long shadows over the remaining two of us getting together much.
  • heresie-dabord 5y ago
    > Two people can't make for the richness of intellectual conversation that three or four can. Hailing frequency open. (o: I have found that four or more participants brings verve and more perspectives to the subject. Deeply engaging discussion is far more enjoyable (to me/to some) than tiresome chatter, quips, memes, and n-depth packed nonsense spewed for the sake of content-creation. The anti-culture of consumer fetishism and media monetisation serves a completely different purpose.
• togaen 5y ago
  This, to me, sounds like someone who just doesn’t like the challenge of creating their own narrative. Of course it can be easier to just get lost in books and lectures: those are narratives that are ready made and pre-packaged. It’s much more work to walk into a situation and define your own. But it makes you a much more interesting person.
  • d0gsg0w00f 5y ago
    This is how I've come to cope with social situations too. Life got a lot more interesting when I decided to be interested in trying to learn something from everyone I talk to.
    • foobiekr 5y ago
      This. One of the best conversations I had recently was with a guy who used to be a repo man for rent-to-buy rims.
• supernova87a 5y ago
  I'm a few years out of grad school, working at a tech company, and single. I came from an academic background where talking about interesting ideas and concepts was the norm. I had a pretty uncommon career path into tech and I'm not some coder. My experience is that when you're in my position, it's getting harder and harder (with age) to find people who are interested in talking about ideas, entertaining the curiosities in life without some agenda/getting offended by the controversial ones, talking about possibilities and concepts (rather than objects). Like having conversations on advanced mode with people who are similar. Often times at parties, when I get bored, I think of a quote, "Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events/things. Small minds discuss wine." It's getting more and more common that I find people just wanting to talk about wine. Or the equivalent. Stuff that's completely forgettable after you leave the party. I mean that stuff is fine, and there's nothing wrong with talking about good food you've had, some articles you've read, movies seen, etc. too. And to be funny and engaging while talking about it. It just feels like... after you're done talking about that, what then? Or if I do meet people who are intellectually interesting, how to get more connected or where to take it after a chance meeting and pleasant chat? That said, what do I have to offer at this stage of my life either, to a stranger? I'm unmarried, so I don't have kids or the mortgage to talk about. I'm not a CEO or someone powerful. Also I'm single -- what are people supposed do with that? Don't have a lot of great reasons for anyone to want to go out of their way to spend more time with me after even an interesting 30 min conversation, without some other excuse. We're not all living close together in shared housing to make intellectually stimulating conversations natural and prolonged. People have their lives to lead, not sit around talking about theoretical ideas. To contact the few people I've found who are interesting would be... how? "Would you like to schedule a get-together again for a conversation date?" It's not going to get easier either. Probably in a few years I'll be the really odd guy. Eh, it's a life choice I've made, I realize that too -- to be more interested in ideas and experiences than say... people. I figure I'd better find some interesting hobbies to make up for the lack of intellectual stimulation. But deeper, what am I working towards? For whom? So, sometimes I think of changing jobs just to see more of the world and gather experiences to be able to have more intellectually stimulating conversations. Learn about VC? Hear about more companies? Where/how? Yeah, it's a bit of a problem sometimes to ponder.
• honkycat 5y ago
  This feels like it belongs on /r/iamverysmart. I hate to break it to you: you are not nearly as smart as you think you are. You can't talk to a single person at the party who has an interesting world-view, experience, or education? Isn't that the heart of creating characters? Empathy and experience? It's fine to not enjoy socializing but acting like it is because you are too creative and smart for everyone else is delusional. When I go to parties I talk to people about ethics and philosophy and creating music and creativity and cooking, and I trade stories from my past and make jokes. Acting like watching a lecture on YouTube or reading your thousandths book is somehow superior to talking to living breathing humans because "ideas" is bizarre. You can do both. Read a lot of books and also socialize.
  • btheshoe 5y ago
    Maybe the communities you're a part of are different?
  • foobiekr 5y ago
    I basically agree with this, but honestly there’s actually a big snob factor as well. Some of the best post-age-forty conversations I’ve had came out of me asking someone, “what do you find hard in that job?” The more hands on the better. And these things - these kinds of discussions - aren’t generally available on YouTube lectures or whatever. In person you can get people to drop the facade or the spin and just talk.
  • R0b0t1 5y ago
  • hungryforcodes 5y ago
    In my late 20s I moved from a relatively uneducated city to one with 5 universities and an intense intellectual culture. I went from being intellectually alone to being super stimulated and connected with people intellectually. So while I appreciate your point of view, sometimes you ARE just living in an intellectual waste land.
  • the_only_law 5y ago
    It took me a few minutes of browsing this guy’s blog to determine what sort of “intellectual” this guy is, and I can’t say in surprised to find it on HN.
• ike0790 5y ago
  I’ve never related more to an article…
• ausbah 5y ago
  from this thread and the far-too-many-hours I've spent on Reddit - obviously these feeling are not uncommon, but the tone in which this stuff is presented always reeks of unearned superiority like I think its great that people like OP have enjoyment and passion for "intellectual pursuits", but most other people don't. you have an interest, and like most other interests, people aren't going to share your interest because they have their own, different interests. so don't be surprised when you try to pivot the conversation, people don't want to talk about like it sucks you can't share your interest with those close to you, that's a problem most everyone has, but when it's on the topic of "intellectual pursuits" or whatever - articles like this it always read as "I'm smart, everyone else is dumb, woe is me" that may not be what people like OP are intending - but the problem is others just have different passions and priorities than you and are turned off when you want to discuss only what interests you. I'm certain most could have such a conversation with someone like OP, but why would they when their tone smells like "smarter than tho" because they want to talk about esoteric philosophy or abstract ideas at a college party if one want to get rid of this "loneliness" you either need to find a community of like-minded others (see the internet) or introduce conversation topics in a more mutually interesting manner instead of wishing for others to meet you where you are I write this as someone who has been on both sides of the conversation
  • RubyRidgeRandy 5y ago
    I agree. There was a TIL thread on Reddit a few years ago about how smarter people are usually more depressed -- low and behold everyone in the comments was lamenting over how cursed they were to carry the burden of their intellect. No one really pointed out that if you were on one of the most popular websites on the planet in a default subreddit, chances were you were pretty average with average intelligence. We fetishize intelligence too much as a society and too many don't understand what it really is and how it can differ. It's nice to imagine a world where we valued empathy as much as intelligence.
    • geenew 5y ago
      not to sound superior but it's "lo and behold" :)
• No0neReally 5y ago
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• JohnJamesRambo 5y ago
  What pops in my head is what is the point of all the self-indulgent reading and learning if it just dies with you inside your head when you pass away? It’s just masturbation. I see both sides of the answer, as I too love solitude. Probably best to share it with others and teach others so it can make the human race better. But that sweet reverie of being alone!
• adnmcq999 5y ago
  If so smart then why the derivative thesis?
• microtherion 5y ago
  OP is basically a "Wish I was at Home / They Don't Know" meme in essay form: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/i-wish-i-was-at-home-they-dont-know https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/i-wish-i-was-at-home-they-don... Smoothly ditching a party they don't feel stimulated by is not the worst strategy in the world. But some people I know have the skill of finding a subject of conversation with practically everyone they meet at a party. One of them has literally talked to British Royalty, yet seemed to have no difficulty holding a conversation with a man with limited education, some substance abuse issues, and assorted other difficulties in life. It seems to me that this is a valuable skill to aspire to. And if at first glance nobody at the party seems to have anything in common with you — maybe that's all the more of an opportunity to hear about views and experiences outside one's usual circles?
  • moksly 5y ago
    The ability to speak to anyone doesn’t necessarily mean that you never feel lonely at parties. Good conversation is a two way street after all, and if you can’t find someone to challenge or interest you, then you can talk to people all night and not really get anything out of it. I think we all know that feeling, even those who aren’t as “gifted” socially as others. I don’t think the solution is what the author does though. I mean, If you really can’t find someone interesting to engage with at any party or social event… I mean it’s a cliche to say this, but maybe it’s you?
    • medimikka 5y ago
      > The ability to speak to anyone doesn’t necessarily mean that you never feel lonely at parties The ability to extract valuable entertainment or information from all conversations is, though. I am no expert in this, and I have actively fled from conversations that started to center on someone's hobby horse without much escape or diversion, but I know people who can enter a conversation on anything and, even just by asking smart questions, emerge better from them. I envy those people.
      • watwut 5y ago
        You can still feel lonely while asking those questions and keeping other party engaged. Because it is one way discussion. You are saying things to engage and fun the other person. But you yourself is not getting connected nor feeling like you are engaged or expressing yourself. I mean, it can be fun and enjoyable, but it does not help loneliness, no more then business meeting.
• trabant00 5y ago
• wenmoon 5y ago
  suggestion: try to learn more about the people themselves instead of the current events they are reading
• tinyhouse 5y ago
  I think the author needs to spend time with people they actually like to be around. That's the key of enjoying social gatherings. Obv what these people like to talk about would correlate with how much they enjoy being around them, but it's not the only factor.
• pealco 5y ago
  In my experience, people like this are dilettantes, who actually have a very shallow understanding of these "ideas" that they're so in love with. They confuse _having heard_ of Obscure Subject with _understanding_ Obscure Subject. If you happen to have a deeper understanding of Obscure Subject and try to engage them in conversation about it, it goes nowhere.
• nestorD 5y ago
  My solution to that problem is to have friends with which I love to spend time. Either due to their very different background, to the brilliance of their mind or to their deep kindness and love for all things around them. Getting there did take work, a friendship has to be cultivated and nourrished, but it is worth it.
• camillomiller 5y ago
  This reads like a very childish piece, something I would have written at 16 when nobody in my little province town would read the same hard books I liked, or listened to the same intellectually stimulating music as me. People are different and from that difference comes knowledge. What OP is missing is the interesting different point of views he missed from leaving all of those parties early. I’m honestly a bit surprised about how this piece got so high on here. I guess that caters to a lot of our inevitable self-entitlement as an online community
• bsder 5y ago
  The biggest change that someone like this needs to make is to simply take an interest in what other people are doing. Yes, a lot of people simply vegetate in front of media. Sure, avoid them. However, when you find someone who does something be interested in what they do. Even if you think it's boring as hell, if they find it interesting, engage them on it. First, you will be surprised how often you find out that it isn't as boring or straightforward as you thought. Second, the topic will eventually turn to something else that you will probably find far more interesting. Finally, you will get a reputation as someone interesting to engage with. And that opens the doors to even more interesting people because they people standing around thinking "man the people at this party are boring" will want to engage with you.
• raffraffraff 5y ago
  Not the same as the article, but very similar... I know someone who has social anxiety that drives them from social events, but also makes it difficult for them to do small talk. So instead, they read. A lot. Literature, science, philosophy, gardening... That's where the next problem comes in. They find some fascinating fact and think "this is so interesting, next time I'm tongue tied, I'll remember to mention it!". That's when they realise that most people want to talk about what they ate for breakfast, who won the sports event, what their 6 year old said to teacher, whether some famous person is an asshole or not. Not a lot of people want to get down into the belly of a complex subject, debate the finer points of some issue. And that's fine, but my friend just can't do that type of conversation for more than a minute or two before going completely blank and then making some excuse for moving on. Worse, there are people who take offence at intellectual conversation. Anything from mild annoyance ("huh? What are you talking about?") to outright insult ("Oh, somebody swallowed a dictionary" / "You think you're so smart") As someone else pointed out, you can go online and try to find like minded people, but that can be so toxic. And not just the wider internet, but specialist groups that have a lot in common. Why, a knitting group ended up front page on the internet a while back because they tore each other apart in the middle of some purity spiral.
  • Lio 5y ago
    It's one kind of soul crushing to realise that the thing you find so fascinating is not something random others can or want to engage with. It's quite another to find out later you've been ridiculed to others for trying to discuss it at all. :D Before the internet this kind of "nerd bashing" was just the standard way of the world and you would probably grow a thicker skin without realising it. Life became a bit more colourful and interesting when we could connect with people all over the world. It really was a seismic shift for a lot of people.
  • jkaptur 5y ago
    > That's when they realise that most people want to talk about what they ate for breakfast… This is said pejoratively, but people want to talk about these things because it allows for a two-sided conversation, rather than a unasked-for lecture from someone who’s read ten Wikipedia pages on the topic. > Not a lot of people want to get down into the belly of a complex subject My experience is the opposite. People love to do this, when 1) they know something about the topic AND 2) you are genuinely interested in their thoughts. The “sports event” probably has more complexity and depth than you expect. Why not (literally) meet people where they are?
• iamleppert 5y ago
  It’s far more likely that the OP is lacking in social skills. People are not two dimensional, and people who are who you find at most parties. Conversations in a social setting have a certain protocol to them. They start out with small talk, that’s how you learn someone’s mannerisms, personality, flow, etc. without having to actually concentrate on the details of what you’re talking about. You read their subtle cues to learn how to interact with them. Not everyone is matched appropriately and I find it takes a lot of effort, especially emotional effort to connect with someone you don’t know for the first time, at a party where there are a lot of distractions. Have you ever noticed people who glide effortlessly from person to person, and who are able to talk to anyone? Seek those people out and study how they interact with other humans. Having good social skills is just as important as being well read, maybe even more so. A good book can be entertaining but it only takes a chance encounter to meet a life long friend, form a beneficial relationship, or meet a romantic partner. Part of me wonders if the OP were to meet one of the authors of the books he reads at a party, would he be able to interact with them? Probably not, and that’s my point exactly. You’re going to go to a lot of parties in life, if you give up on them you are depriving yourself of valuable life experience. It has nothing to do with books or how smart you are.
  • crate_barre 5y ago
    Eh, maybe? A lot of people usually find that one good friend or life partner that they spend most of their time with. If you don’t find those important connections, socializing will inevitably become a lonely experience. Groups have always been a disappointment. I suppose it’s antisocial, but trying to get your dose of social from groups constantly is extremely exhausting in the long run. Way too much posturing all around, and often just observing the dynamics of groups is, again, exhausting. Just recently I saw hierarchical dynamic where everyone was sucking up to one person. Whatever, i mean, I can accommodate a few of that human bullshit from time to time, but color me antisocial for just wanting to not do that regularly. Socializing is demoralizing at times. Some of us are really not pack animals.
  • josefrichter 5y ago
    No, it’s not far more likely. The author didn’t say he had trouble socializing with people. He just said he found the conversations with majority of them intellectually shallow, so there’s no strong urge to stay around those people, even though they’re friends.
• larsrc 5y ago
  Sounds like OP does like company as long as it's interesting. Parties are not where you'll find that. Seek out the places that attract book lovers and idea people. Go to conferences and conventions. Find the people there who are hoping to find people like you. A real-life conversation with a passionate and well-read person is utterly unlike online interaction. Travel as much as you can afford to find these people, and come up with glorious plans for world domination together!
• josefrichter 5y ago
  Sounds like the author is INTP personality type, if you believe in that classification system. I personally have the same problem. Luckily I am ENTP, which means I quite enjoy a good party with shallow conversations. It also stimulates diffuse thinking, so often a brilliant idea kicks in out of nowhere at 2am. Also the party lets me forget for a while that feeling of intellectual loneliness that’s otherwise ubiquitous. There’s a saying that small minds discuss people, average minds discuss events, great minds discuss ideas. It’s very true.
  • BlueTemplar 5y ago
    INTPs have another out : multiclass as Bard ! https://youtu.be/sJaYxwge_m8 https://youtu.be/sJaYxwge_m8
• harshadwaj 5y ago
  The 'quick exiting the party' approach works if you are of this kind and alone. If your spouse/family is different, it complicates things. The trick I have found helpful is to 'fake' enjoying the small conversations or force myself to take occasional breaks from feeling the need for intellectual stimulation and allow myself to indulge in the group. This also has worked positively by preventing being outcasted. It has been a win-win for all of us. As I age, I am tired to find the right group instead has settled for 1-2 like minded people whom I can converse on complex topics.
• porker 5y ago
  Why is Perell so popular in techie-ish circles? His writing is a cross between the New Yorker and undergrad essays, and reminds me of oratory - it feels substantial and meaningful but peel back the surface and there's little behind it. He has a course that outside SV is hard to afford (the time-unlimited writing one is over 10% of the annual take-home pay of a senior software engineer in the UK), a massive twitter and mailing list following - and what else that makes his output so popular?
  • suction 5y ago
    I also wondered about that, must be an US thing.
• erikbye 5y ago
  While I can resonate with the author's sentiment, his thoughts on the matter seem callow and slim. What he calls 'intellectual loneliness' smells simply of a craving for socializing with like-minded ones. Whether intellectual or not. Our (author, HN demographic) idea of fulfilling discourse might tend to gravitate toward the intellectual, but whether the convo revolves around intellectual or philistine ideas, I think that feeling of loneliness or alienation is shared and common to all unable to engage with like-minded denizens.
• jwmoz 5y ago
  Introversion. Not intelligence.
• gexla 5y ago
  Leaving a party early because of "intellectual loneliness" is like giving up on dating because you feel that potential dates <insert made-up reason for them not liking you>. I feel there's just a low likelihood that in any single encounter, that the person is going to be interested in going where you're going. That could be conversations, dating and similar. Putting your stuff on Twitter is going to get the engagement you're looking for because you have a higher hit rate when you have thousands of viewers. When dating, you probably won't get that specific person to talk to you, but among a large pool, you'll likely find someone who reaches "good enough" territory. Doing parties right is just improv. Go in with a "yes, and..." style of conversation. If you're learning something, it's about doing better at the improv. Otherwise, just have fun and play.
• Mizza 5y ago
  Some of you are clearly going to the wrong parties. “The best parties are a wild mixture of people. Take some actresses, a bearded painter, your visiting friends from Brussels, a politician, a hairdresser, and then toss them all together. It’s especially important to have all age groups. Of course I wouldn’t want to have hippies come crawling in with unwashed feet, but all the younger people I know are bright and attractive and have something to say and they dress like human beings. Another important party secret is I always add a splash of vodka to everything. Nobody knows and everyone ends up having a wonderful time.” - Joan Crawford
  • boffinism 5y ago
    Man, I miss those parties sometimes. I also don't miss the 3am night bus home, already hung over, with the creeping realisation that I spent all night spouting bullshit and may have accidentally committed to joining an extremist political party and/or cult. So, swings and roundabouts
  • swaggyBoatswain 5y ago
    Ah yeah that's how my friend described my first house warming... "A giant melting pot" Friends from my hometown. Friends in my new city. Random people I met at a meetup and bars. Some elderly neighbors
• hilbert42 5y ago
  "Intellectual loneliness is a challenge that many people feel, but nobody talks about." From my experience I've found that to be true throughout my life. One of my best ways of learning is to be in discussion or debate with others but in practice it's just so hard to achieve in practice. Both here on HN and elsewhere I often try to engage others in debate but to little or no avail, as discussion is often over before it's hardly begun and everyone's moved on to another topic. For whatever reason, these days very few seem to want to expend the effort to get involved in long debates or intellectual arguments and I think that this is a terrible shame as we all need to hone our thoughts and ideas by bouncing them off others - and they don't necessarily form immediately. Weeks may pass by the time we reformulate our thoughts in response to someone's idea or proposition and by then it's often impossible to respond at all let alone in any adequate way. Nothing typifies this problem more than the comments to most websites - and posts to HN are no exception. Irrespective of the importance or relevance of a subject or topic, it's all but discussed out and dead after 24 hours, and then after a week or two site moderators inevitably kill any further discussion by stopping new posts. To me, closing further discussion on subjects is the antithesis of what the internet should be all about. Why closing ongoing discussion on websites is such a common practice has always been a mystery to me. (You'd think those running websites would want and welcome ongoing discussion but seemingly not.) In many ways the internet has made intellectual loneliness even more acute, whilst it's provided us with a fecundity of information and ideas upon which we may ponder it's never really been good at letting us gain full intellectual enjoyment from those ideas through ongoing participation. Whilst we may participate in superficial ways through Twitter etc. we're still lonely. For many, short term shallow participation isn't a substitute for ongoing intellectual stimulation and fulfillment.
  • tux3 5y ago
    I'd also like to see a platform where discussions/debate can meaningfully continue beyond a day or two, but the problem inherent in long discussions is the format results in terrible signal/noise ratio if you let it run for too long. Think of traditional forum threads with hundreds of pages. Closing discussions after some time is just a practical matter. When posts are organized by chronology, or even by vote count, discussion cannot scale beyond a few hundred posts without becoming very hard to navigate. Look at the incentive a new participant has when choosing whether to post in a new or an old thread. A post added deep down a reply chain, or at page 100 of a forum will have very little visibility, it'll be lost in the noise compared to a post in a fresh thread. I think the way discussion platforms organize information is far from perfect, and noise/visibility/organization is really what puts a practical limit on ongoing discussions.
• lordnacho 5y ago
  I talk to my kid about this. He's only turning 10 this year but he has solidly intellectual interests. His problem is all the little classmates are into football, and he isn't. I've told him he simply needs to wait for his friends to grow up. When I was his age, it was not apparent which of my classmates was going to interested in nerd stuff either. It's a thing to wait for, and you're lucky to find one or two other people who are actually into things. I had a lot of friends growing up, but only a small group who were into the same interests. Here's the thing though. If your interests are intellectual, you can turn almost anything in that direction. You don't know it yet when you're a child, but just about every interesting thing in the world can be viewed with an intellectual lens. For instance football and sports in general. The variety of data is so large that people who manage sports teams analyse numbers to decide who the put on the field and how to play them. I have a friend who uses this kind of data to make money, despite him having zero interest in those sports. Sports data talk is also something that makes your input to discussions a bit less tired than the usual tropes people put out. Business is another one of those topics where being a bit analytical and opening your eyes creates interesting conversations. Finally, if people just don't want to think, they want to feel. Everyone has an emotional life and often at parties that's what they want to exercise. Get used to talking about ordinary things about life. Family, work, relationships. This is just surface scratching in many ways. You kinda need someone's bio to get an idea of what they care about, so get used to giving your own spiel and listening to others.
• boffinism 5y ago
  Counterpoint: OP sucks at talking about the ideas that interest them, which is why all their attempts at conversation about those ideas are unsatisfying. They prefer monologue to dialogue, but it's not a failing in how dialogue works, or their interlocutors.
• larve 5y ago
  I used to feel like the OP in my teens and early twenties, and then put conscious effort into learning how to listen and talk to people. As I grow older, I am able to find deep intellectual stimulation talking to almost anybody, the prerequisite being that there is some kind of quieter spot at the party itself to allow for conversation. The "trick" I use to get to that point is to always steer the conversation so that I can learn something new with the next question I am asking, and let the conversation flow from there. Even with people who don't have any deep intellectual pursuits, don't read books, they have lived, come from somewhere, have family, kids, have experiences you didn't have, all of which are surely deep enough to keep your interest for 15 minutes. It's hard to give much more input without knowing the kind of parties the author is attending in the first place. Living in a bigger US city, almost every event I've been going to (which I'm going to call "parties for nerds"), I feel like the ruffian while people discussing science, art, politics, and I can have a grand time just sitting there and not interacting at all, just taking it in. And it might totally be the case that the author just doesn't like being around people, but framing it through the lense of intellect is missing out on the richness of people out there.
• gexla 5y ago
  Adaptability is key. Some may go to a party to "hook up." Some may go to a party to score some drugs. Some may go to a party to network. The author of the article goes to the party to have intellectual conversations. The author didn't get his intellectual conversations, but he could have wrote the same article about coming up dry in scoring some drugs. I feel the author is missing an opportunity to practice creative adaptation in these parties. Don't go into the party with a specific frame. Instead, try on different frames as you speak with different people. Maybe create frames which you have never attempted. Or just wing it and see how it turns out. If you make it about any one thing, you'll be disappointed, but you'll also miss an opportunity to make that moment of life interesting rather than a disappointment by going in with a more fluid presence. Don't forget about how to play.
• selfhifive 5y ago
  Spot on. Just talking to the page refreshes the mind.
• gunfighthacksaw 5y ago
  So THIS is what aalewis is up to these days! (/s)
• mkl95 5y ago
  I used to feel like OP, but over time I have found that I'm not actually bored by some kind of intellectual loneliness. What actually happens is that our brains are excited by different things. I spend most of my time solving software problems for a living and playing difficult videogames. It doesn't mean I'm smarter than someone who'd rather be hanging out at some party, it just means our brains crave different inputs.
• w_t_payne 5y ago
  I am hugely excited and energised by discussions of how we can make artificial intelligence safer and more reliable; how we can ground our symbolic requirements both in real-world phenomena and also in the sub-symbolic representations learned by the massively over-parameterised machine learning tools that are currently in vogue; and I am fascinated by how we can use synthetic data and domain randomisation to bridge those divides and achieve that symbol grounding. Even in technical communities, it's hard to find people who are as engaged, excited and energised by those topics as I am. In 'everyday' life, people either disengage and switch off immediately, or react in a (presumably defensive) mocking and derisive manner. It's only by spreading our net further, by reaching out to a global community of academics, scientists, engineers and founders that we can build ourselves a more sympathetic and engaged social network, and that we can fully satiate both our social and our intellectual needs.
  • andreyk 5y ago
    You pointed out just a few topic that you are interested in... Surely you can find online communities interested in this niche and discuss it there?
    • w_t_payne 5y ago
      Yes, and that's exactly what I do. It's also what the OP is advocating for.
• gandutraveler 5y ago
  In a social gathering, the most common shared interest between us is what dictates the discussions. So larger the group, lamer/dumber the discussions are going to be unless it's a forum where like-minded people gather. I personally think 3-4 is the right group size to have any meaningful discussions. I'm not an introvert nor an extrovert and I do agree with OP however I've found that adding some parts of such non intellectual social meetings in life helps our mental state as well.
• u2077 5y ago
  I come to HN because of the wide variety of in-depth content. Not everything I read is related to tech, and some articles I can’t fully understand, but that doesn’t make them less interesting. I believe everyone has interesting stories to be told, but they may not come up often in conversation. As others have mentioned, people use small talk because both sides can contribute to the conversation. It’s one thing to want to discuss all these interesting things you’ve read, it’s another to expect everyone to be interested in the same things as you and turn away from them.
• ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
  I'm very much an introvert. I like people, and I like new venues and adventures. I can do quite well at socializing. I have a fairly wide social graph (in the meatspace). But it is tiring for me, as is a lot of stimuli. Just the way my brain works. I won't go into why. It just is, and will never be fixed; only accepted. I used to work for a Japanese company, and made many, many trips to Tokyo. I went regularly, for over 20 years. Tokyo is "External Stimuli Central." I would always come back from these trips, utterly exhausted.
• rodrigosetti 5y ago
  People are interesting regardless of how many books they read.
• JuanTono 5y ago
  "I have a confession to make: I leave most parties early because I’d rather read a book." It sounds a bit cliche, in Mexico we call it "mamador". By other side, the point that he mentions about feeling more connected with an internet audience is one of the main advantages of internet... Infinite leverage and the possibility to find or even create an audience. But, social skills are important too so is a skill that we have to develop.
• Axien 5y ago
  This is the opposite of intelligence. Intelligent people find a lot of things interesting and love learning. An intelligent person will find any profession or hobby interesting, and thus everyone is interesting. Saying everyone is a bore is a hallmark of a lack of intelligence. You are basically saying “I only have a very narrow set of topics I find interesting. I’m so void of intellectual curiosity, I’m not interesting in expanding my mind or knowledge into other topics.”
  • slothtrop 5y ago
    I think many intelligent people are prone to depression, and it may manifest itself in this fashion. It is not as simple as rationalizing your way out of it. Nothing here indicates they don't love learning.
  • jstx1 5y ago
    > Intelligent people find a lot of things interesting and love learning. No, I think being interested in things is a completely different dimension from intelligence. You can be average in intelligence and extremely high in being interested. Or you can be high in intelligence and very depressed, then you don't have interest in anything.
    • Axien 5y ago
      Studies show people who love learning and find many things of interest correlate with high intelligence.
      • rsanek 5y ago
        Do you have a source for this? Interested to read about how they measure curiosity / love of learning
  • raindropm 5y ago
    We all have field of knowledge that we interest, and something we don't. I think it's more about the lacking of people to talk and share the same interest as your aka the same "tribe", than the amount of curiosity. Trust me, people who don't keen on learning won't write a blog post like this. Overthinking, overanalyzing and full of self-doubt is the sign of intelligence. :)
• nathias 5y ago
  Wherever you go, there you are.
• andreyk 5y ago
  "It’s built on a paradox where you feel alive when you’re learning on the Internet but soul-crushed when you try to talk about those same ideas with friends and family" Sounds like this person needs better friends with whom they can have good conversations? This is not that deep...
• taneq 5y ago
  My man needs to discover his tribe. If you can't be "surrounded by ideas" and "get a second rush of energy from mind-altering [conversation], and have to decide between following a rabbit hole until 3 am or going to sleep so I can be well-rested the next day" at a party when that's what floats your boat, you need to be going to different parties. Source: Most of the parties I go to are full of my own weird passionate curious kind of people and that 3am rabbit hole is where most of those end up. Good at going to bed early, we are not.
• pezzana 5y ago
  The crux of the author's idea seems to be this: > Intellectual loneliness is a challenge that many people feel, but nobody talks about. It’s built on a paradox where you feel alive when you’re learning on the Internet but soul-crushed when you try to talk about those same ideas with friends and family. The author doesn't say, but it would be very illuminating to know, what happens when the author meets with the authors of the books and internet works they admire so much? Do they hit it off instantly? Or does the whole thing feel disappointing in the end? Also, I don't see the "paradox" in preferring the Internet. It's part of a pattern when you zoom out a bit.
• slothtrop 5y ago
  I've changed my mind on this idea. Being surrounded by very intelligent people (or, similar ones to myself) has never made me feel any less lonely than would other people. I think our expectations qua relating to others are out of step with reality, and I also think we're mistakenly attributing some of these feelings to there being too few like-minded people. Ultimately I've come to find that little differences make others interesting and fun to be around. Notwithstanding that people have different social needs, realistically, meeting them is not the hard part, provided you aren't withdrawing from engagement. I meet most of my social needs just by having a romantic partner, and I was profoundly lonely on and off for over a decade. There are other factors at work in my view. When we're in a bad spot it is difficult to parse and make sense of what is wrong. We view the world through the lens of our emotions and feeling depressed doesn't seem practically distinguishable than feeling lonely. This is a vulnerable state because we can get stuck in loops informed by cognitive distortions, by untruths. A matter-of-fact approach to improving wellness -- a foundation of CBT principles, healthy regimen (including sunlight and D3) and diet -- I think quells these pangs enough to allow more mental clarity in working through it. In my case, a better foundation as described did most of the work, but I subsequently resolved to kick a porn addiction (can lead to lower baseline levels of dopamine, which makes you unmotivated), and find a bit more meaning in projects and work, rather than allocating as much time to social media / consumption. All of which to say, particularly if you are single, it's important to get out there and talk to people, but don't expect that to be a silver bullet for dealing with that sense of loneliness and lack of meaning. At the least it can offer moral support, but in those cases when other people aren't making you feel better, I expect that a lack of social contact isn't the problem to fix (or, not the only one).
• mettamage 5y ago
  I get what he means and a part of me is like this at well. However, I do like partying (both drunk and sober), here is why: - Dancing a lot means I am working out - It allows me to play a bit with my identity to people (you know jump up and down out of excitement instead of a normal handshake) - In fact, it allows for play (I sometimes bring a scarve to parties and play rope jump with it or limbo dancing) - I get to study/observe drunk people and drunk group dynamics from a distance or as a part of it (by being drunk myself) - I get to meet people and hear their perspective. Emotionally that means I feel like I am walking a few steps in their shoes - In rare cases, I can have a deep intellectual conversation with people but there are better venues for meeting people in order to have intellectual conversations Partying and network events and the like is simply not for everyone and that’s okay. I hope the author has a few friends where he can have amazing conversations with
• ayroblu 5y ago
  Wow the hot takes on this are terrible, the OP is basically describing the difference between scripted and unscripted and unrelated discussion. Scripted is obviously more refined, e.g. a book, unscripted and unrelated e.g. casual discussion can be less engaging and is a different experience. Different people like different stuff, we don’t have to all love the same stuff. And we especially don’t need to hit out at the OP because y'all think you're superior to them cause y'all love socialising geez
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• uvdn7 5y ago
  First of all, I would like to focus on the post/idea itself but not the author. Accusing an idea is less sound because of one's judgement of the author makes little sense to me. A lot of the comments on this thread talks about "social skills", "learning from people", etc. But reading books itself is a way of communicating with people over space and time. If you focus on the efficiency and ROI, reading classic books will probably inspire you more than talking to a random person at a party. The OP's complaint about "mindless conversations about the news" seems justified in my opinion. Amusing Ourselves to Death is a good book on the topic. Don't Look Up is also a good movie on the topic.
  • Invictus0 5y ago
    Focusing on efficiency and ROI in this context is just kinda gross. As if other people are some resource to be extracted and consumed; as if life is some function to be gradient-descended to achieve some maxima. Would you rather have a glass of <your favorite drink> by the fire with <your favorite intellectual> or would you rather sit alone and read their book at home?
    • uvdn7 5y ago
      You are right. I am not saying relationships are less important. I do believe relationships are more important to most. “Focusing on ROI” is just a presumption for the next statement. One also doesn’t have to focus on relationships all the time.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• kingkawn 5y ago
  alternate title; the loneliness of embracing condescension as a personality
• josefrichter 5y ago
  Just a technical note: far too many posts here assume that the OP is also the author of that article. That's rarely the case, isn't it?
• freetanga 5y ago
  Fascinating discussion, but I have a flight to catch in the morning. Bye! (Goes home and eats a bucket of ice cream while perusing Tik Tok)
• viburnum 5y ago
  I read this and wondered who this fascinating person must be, what terribly interesting subjects they must be interested in, and was disappointed to discover it’s just ordinary business stuff.
• giardini 5y ago
  "But when evening comes I return home and go into my library. At the door I take off my muddy everyday clothes. I dress myself as though I were about to appear before a royal court as a Florentine envoy. Then decently attired I enter the antique courts of the great men of antiquity. They receive me with friendship; from them I derive the nourishment which alone is mine and for which I was born. Without false shame I talk with them and ask them the causes of their actions, and their humanity is so great they answer me. For four long and happy hours I lose myself in them. I forget all my troubles; I am not afraid of poverty or death. I transform myself entirely in their likeness". Niccolo Machiavelli, Lettere (ed. by G. Lesca (Florence, 1929) pp. 88-90. This famous passage was written during Machiavelli's banishment from Florence. During the day Machiavelli trapped birds, visited the local inn occasionally and gambled with the locals. David Perell has many brothers in his self-imposed exile.
• lee 5y ago
  It doesn't sound like he has "intellectual loneliness". Instead, it sounds like he's unopen to the ideas or interests of others and has a very narrow set of interests. It is both possible to be a great intellectual AND have an ability to appreciate the company of others. The world isn't full of just interesting ideas but also events and people too. It sounds like he's unable to expand beyond "intellectualism" as the only worthwhile thing to do. That's fine if that's his choice...but there's a certain smugness he carries with that attitude.
• eternityforest 5y ago
  I have the opposite experience around other programmers. They always have some new code idea and I'm always lost. They'll be telling me about some algorithm they used in a weekend project and I'll just be thinking "Doesn't Excel already do that" or "I'm not a systems programmer, nobody writes their own sorting algorithm in JS" And then they never do much other than code, so conversation topics are usually depressing politics, code, or more code, but the code doesn't feel like code, it feels like philosophy in machine readable form. Sometimes I think I'd enjoy a real dedicated web dev job, just to be on a full team of people who focused on UIs and features and best practices, instead of toy apps and computer science I don't understand, and an endless quest to simplify down to the stone age.
• Grismar 5y ago
  Nothing wrong with loving learning, but I can't help but think "You need better friends". Personally I was in the best space in my university years, plenty of intelligent people around, almost all of them more knowledgeable than myself in many areas, so never a boring conversation if you can get people talking. And part of learning is testing your ideas and understanding with others, after all.