4 ms·

Hey, not to get too dark about this, but I'm going to offer an alternative hypothesis that isn't quite as rosy as your flattering interpretation: I grew up in

Hey, not to get too dark about this, but I'm going to offer an alternative hypothesis that isn't quite as rosy as your flattering interpretation: I grew up in an abusive alcoholic household. I had 18 years to really refine my "subtle cue" radar to try to guess whether or not it was going to be a calm night or a wild night of yelling and screaming. It's often not as conscious of a process as the situation this past weekend was. As a brutal example, I had a partner a long time ago who, as it turned out, was having an affair. I started having anxiety attacks but couldn't explain what they were about. In an attempt to try to figure it out, I kept a journal of my thoughts every time it happened, but I couldn't find any kind of correlation. At some point the attacks just stopped and I was happy... When the affair was finally revealed and after the dust had settled a bit, I pulled out my journal and we sat down together and put together a timeline. Every single anxiety attack lined up with one of the times she was out with the other guy, and I think we worked out that there was only one time they had been together where I didn't have an anxiety attack. Pretty much perfect correlation, but I had no clue _why_ it was happening until ~6 months after they had stopped the affair. At any rate, yeah, you're spot on about the tuning. It's definitely tough to rationalize what's going on sometimes, and it does definitely come from deep inside the subconscious. I'm just torn on whether I like it being characterized as a "deep subconscious intelligence" or whether it might be better called "a powerful survival mechanism refined by two decades of (mostly) verbal and (occasional) physical abuse"

robocat 5y ago
Thank you for your story - it is an exact example of the talent and you don’t seem to know what the cues were. I guess the question is: do most people with abusive childhoods learn better spidy-senses? Perhaps you are exceptionally talented (smart) in that area. Is there a standardised test? How can you judge yourself against others? How do you go to a course to improve? I think of intelligence as the ability to integrate subtle information and come up with a correct answer. Intelligence is usually seen as something rational, but I certainly see it as mostly subconscious. I try to be broad minded when looking for smart people as some of the smartest don’t appear to be on the surface (hidden/crypto smarts): the skill to recognise subtle fashions, the skill to correctly read complex human situations, the skill of pruning, etcetera. Usually the skills are not taught, instead a brain just picks it up. If I wanted to get better at reading people, what do I need to do to get my brain tuned in? I know that the usual routes we are taught are poor: e.g. reading a book about how to ski.
- tonyarkles 5y ago
  I love the questions and wish I had answers! I honestly have the same problem with my software career too… from around 8 years old, programming was kind of my escape from the world. I self-taught a ton from library books, and then the Internet when we finally got dialup at home in ‘97. First installed Linux in ‘98. There was no learning plan, I just picked it all up along the way until ‘02 when I started undergrad. Just like your questions about learning how to be better at reading people, I have absolutely no idea how to teach someone to think about software the way I do; I’ve been asked many times! To further complicate things with learning or teaching any of these, I also was diagnosed with ADHD last year at age 37. Retrospectively, that makes perfect sense based on teacher feedback, report cards, getting 50s and 95s in the same semester… I’m sure that that also contributed to how this weird brain all got assembled, but damned if I can explain it. Edit: thank you for this! I don’t think I’ve ever really made some of these connections before!

robocat 5y ago

Thank you for your story - it is an exact example of the talent and you don’t seem to know what the cues were. I guess the question is: do most people with abusive childhoods learn better spidy-senses? Perhaps you are exceptionally talented (smart) in that area. Is there a standardised test? How can you judge yourself against others? How do you go to a course to improve? I think of intelligence as the ability to integrate subtle information and come up with a correct answer. Intelligence is usually seen as something rational, but I certainly see it as mostly subconscious. I try to be broad minded when looking for smart people as some of the smartest don’t appear to be on the surface (hidden/crypto smarts): the skill to recognise subtle fashions, the skill to correctly read complex human situations, the skill of pruning, etcetera. Usually the skills are not taught, instead a brain just picks it up. If I wanted to get better at reading people, what do I need to do to get my brain tuned in? I know that the usual routes we are taught are poor: e.g. reading a book about how to ski.

tonyarkles 5y ago
I love the questions and wish I had answers! I honestly have the same problem with my software career too… from around 8 years old, programming was kind of my escape from the world. I self-taught a ton from library books, and then the Internet when we finally got dialup at home in ‘97. First installed Linux in ‘98. There was no learning plan, I just picked it all up along the way until ‘02 when I started undergrad. Just like your questions about learning how to be better at reading people, I have absolutely no idea how to teach someone to think about software the way I do; I’ve been asked many times! To further complicate things with learning or teaching any of these, I also was diagnosed with ADHD last year at age 37. Retrospectively, that makes perfect sense based on teacher feedback, report cards, getting 50s and 95s in the same semester… I’m sure that that also contributed to how this weird brain all got assembled, but damned if I can explain it. Edit: thank you for this! I don’t think I’ve ever really made some of these connections before!