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> But there are smart people who get all this stuff "easily" (previous practice, exposure). Or, simply by virtue of being more intelligent. Life is not fair, a

• chitowneats 4y ago
  Same thing with passing a football or nailing a technical ice skating routine. You can either do it, or you can't. Practice helps but is not a panacea, unfortunately. Find another occupation, friend. You are owed nothing.
  • progman32 4y ago
    Or a better teacher. The limiting factor isn't necessarily the student.
    • chitowneats 4y ago
      So we should ensure equal opportunity to ice-skating lessons, in perpetuity, for all humans? Just in case?
      • qotgalaxy 4y ago
        [dead]
      • eyelidlessness 4y ago
        Yeah dawg! That sounds like basic decency that doesn’t cost much to anyone who’d be harmed. Also it’s a general principle of meritocracy. You can’t merit anything without access to merit it!
        • chitowneats 4y ago
          LMFAO do you have any idea how much it costs to operate an ice-skating rink? How about in a place like Los Angeles, California? Apparently not. Or you're trolling me. In that case, well done friend.
          • eyelidlessness 4y ago
            Your objection was to equal opportunity to lessons. We’re not talking about operating ice skating rinks for the public. We’re talking about allowing all people to be taught by teachers.
      • progman32 4y ago
        No, I find that position rather absurd. I'm not talking about entitlement. I was reacting to a train of thought started two posts up: > There just was not enough time dedicated to dissecting how to parse word problem, look for patterns, map it to a framework. It was basically left to the student to figure it out in 1 week based on 3-4 homework problems. My position is that, perhaps, it is counterproductive to tell people who have some trouble in this environment to "find another occupation" based on such a limited measure of performance. We've never defined what the occupation is in this exchange, so perhaps I'm just unintentionally talking past you. I'm certainly biased. The autodidacts I've worked with (who intentionally dropped out of the rigid, unforgiving environment of academia) have been among the biggest contributors on teams I've participated in. In environments more suited to them, they learn just as fast as folks with a more traditional background. In these instances, the occupation was fine. The teacher needed to be swapped out.
        • robertlagrant 4y ago
          > In environments more suited to them, they learn just as fast as folks with a more traditional background. In these instances, the occupation was fine. The teacher needed to be swapped out. You're assuming it's the teacher's fault. That will be true in some cases, but it may impossible to tell at the time. What will be true in others is that the person (like me) was far more motivated by work than academia, and university at the age of 18 wasn't appropriate.
    • whywhywouldyou 4y ago
      Sometimes this is true. But sometimes the limiting factor really is the student. In my own experience I've seen fellow students put in less than half the effort I did (I watched them copy homework assignments in groups 30 minutes before class, spend a lot of time trying to track down last years exams, etc etc), and then have the nerve to complain afterwards that the exams were too hard.
      • xyzzyz 4y ago
        I’ve seen fellow students put a quarter of time on studying that I did (they spent the rest studying all the other advanced stuff that I didn’t even have time to look at), and get top scores on exams and effortlessly explain everything to us mere mortals. Life simply is not fair.
        • deleted 4y ago
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  • SoftTalker 4y ago
    Yes, it's a combination of passion and ability. The super-achievers in any field have both.
  • haswell 4y ago
    Even the NFL needs backup quarterbacks. There are examples in almost every profession that highlight the value of a spectrum of capability.
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    • chitowneats 4y ago
      Backup quarterbacks in the NFL is actually the worst possible example you could've given here. How many of those do you think they need relative to the population ? What level of play do you imagine they have to exhibit? Unflagged remix yayy yayyyeee
      • haswell 4y ago
        The point is that even in the NFL, there's a wide and very visible gap between the top and bottom levels of quarterback play, and that's taking into account that these players (including the backups) are already considered the best of the best. I only mentioned the NFL because I was riffing on your comment about throwing footballs, but agree that it's generally a stretched analogy. The extreme scarcity at the top of most professional sports and the resulting lack of utility/career viability outside of the big leagues doesn't compare well to most vocations. The argument also assumes the only reason someone plays football is to play in the NFL. I invested significant time learning to skate because I enjoy it, not because I think I'll become a professional hockey player.
    • cvwright 4y ago
      Backup NFL quarterback is a pretty damn elite job. There are what, 50 or 60 of them in the world? Vs dozens of NCAA div 1 starters who graduate every year.
• bglazer 4y ago
  Hard disagree on the idea that research should be the exclusive domain of some special tier of “top” research. Certainly there are varying degrees of aptitude for the skills of research. That said, there are infinitely more questions than there are geniuses. Many of these questions are of pressing importance for humanity. I’m very glad there are people working on them who didn't quit because they failed a problem set.
  • TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
    Working on them does not mean they will be able to solve them, or even to contribute to solving them.
• eyelidlessness 4y ago
  > Or, simply by virtue of being more intelligent. Life is not fair … > If you are pursuing a research career, and you observe other students putting similar amounts of effort, but obtaining much better results, understanding things more quickly and getting better ideas, you should probably just drop out. That seems drastic even without accounting for untold ways people enter any stage of life with disadvantages. I mean, I don’t know what I’m talking about in terms of research, just a fairly demanding professional life for >20 years. But dropping out isn’t the first and only advice I would give anyone who feels they aren’t performing as well as they perceive their expectations or just the performance of their peers.
  • xyzzyz 4y ago
    In your professional life, you are encountering people who are already heavily preselected, most recently by the hiring process, earlier by hiring and promotion processes of their previous companies, yet earlier by graduation requirements of their school, earlier by admission requirements, etc. People who should drop out, have already dropped out long before they met you, so you don't meet those very often, and thus the advice to drop out is not the one that you often give, but in fact this is the advice that most people have to hear before they ever meet you.
    • eyelidlessness 4y ago
      I’m certain you’ve misguessed important aspects of my professional life. I’m also certain there are many people I’d love to work with and see have a chance to succeed. Some get this advice before I have a chance to intervene, which is bad. Many just get discouraged before anyone could sway them so blatantly at all, or don’t even have the opportunity to try. Your point was intelligence, right? How intelligent is it to just categorically exclude people based on their disadvantages? How intelligent is it to presume every systemic thing that came before you was right? How intelligent is it to encourage everyone to think the same way you do on the subject and discourage anyone from being more willing to take chances with people they feel more comfortable mentoring or training than you do?
    • imtringued 4y ago
• jrm4 4y ago
  Genuine question. Does this kind of "weeding out" actually have any value in the real world, or is it just gatekeeping slash carnival-prizes?
  • xyzzyz 4y ago
    Yes, of course. Some people will produce valuable research, and others will produce worthless papers nobody will ever read. The society is funding the entire activity, so it has vested interest in ensuring that as much money goes towards the former as possible, and as little as possible towards the latter. This is to me so obvious, that framing this in terms of “carnival prize” is literally incomprehensible. Research careers are not prizes or sinecures, they are positions of trust and responsibility. Scientists are paid for the value they are expected to produce, and if they produce less value than someone else would have in their position, they shouldn’t be there in the first place.
    • anthomtb 4y ago
      > Research careers are not prizes or sinecures, they are positions of trust and responsibility. Scientists are paid for the value they are expected to produce, and if they produce less value than someone else would have in their position, they shouldn’t be there in the first place. And getting into these positions of trust and responsibility should be based on your own definition of "smart enough", correct?
      • xyzzyz 4y ago
        If you read what I said with even a modicum of good will and charity, you'll observe that I recommended that people who don't keep up drop out on their own initiative, instead of being culled by "my own definition of smart enough". I was offering advice, not demanding some explicit policy be introduced and maintained. If you aren't fit to cut it, you'll drop out at some point anyway, and it's best for you if you drop out sooner rather than later: you'll be much happier to have dropped out at 24 than be denied tenure at 3rd tier school at age 38, failing to build wealth and start a family up till that point.
• haswell 4y ago
  > and you observe other students putting similar amounts of effort, but obtaining much better results, understanding things more quickly and getting better ideas, you should probably just drop out I'm sorry, but even if this is true under some circumstances, this seems like terrible general advice, and only matters if your only goal is to reach the top echelons of your field. That doesn't mean there is no room for "average" researchers. This is a binary mindset that ignores the value of the discipline and seems like gatekeeping with no apparent benefit. And struggling relative to your peers can happen for many reasons unrelated to core intelligence.
  • WalterBright 4y ago
    My career advice is usually: 1. draw a circle around the things you enjoy doing 2. draw a circle around the things that pay well 3. draw a circle around the things you're good at The intersection is your best career path. I tried to be a musician. Epic failure. I tried sports. Catastrophic failure. I tried sales. Monumental failure. Persisting in those endeavors as a career is akin to beating my head on a rock. People are different. Viva la difference.
    • progman32 4y ago
      This is a good starting point. I suspect some of the disagreements in this comment section stem from the difference in mindset between people for whom classwork either directly applies to or closely resembles their intended career path, and others for whom a lot of classwork (like my statistics courses) appear simply as a rigid gate to gaining access to their best career. Perhaps a solution to the problem is better societal acceptance of trade schools, but at least in my area a university degree is a surer shot. Even if the degree is just a tool to then go do something completely different.
      • WalterBright 4y ago
        I also reject the idea that everyone has the same ability. They don't. Everyone is different. I find when doing a collaborative project, partnering with someone just like me won't work. I need to find someone with complementary skills. Someone strong in the areas I'm weak in, and vice versa.
• theGnuMe 4y ago
  Some of the best scientists were and are unconventional late bloomers. Real science isn’t exam based. I’ve found that those who get the top grades at top schools can utterly fail to develop any novel research. In fact it’s a huge problem. Many grants proposals are largely ‘me too’ derivative works. This is why grad school hinges not on grades and exams but on actual research.
  • xyzzyz 4y ago
    > Some of the best scientists were and are unconventional late bloomers. Sure, but that's beside the point. The funding is limited, and, what's even worse, if we spread it too thin, best scientists will leave to make millions on the wall street instead. At some point, a decision must be made as to who gets to proceed in the research career, and who is cut. Sometimes the apparent mediocrities will turn out to be late bloomers, and cutting them would be a net loss. However, and this is critical, you do not know who will be a late bloomer until they actually are. Late bloomers do not know that either, of course. In practice this means that when it comes to make a decision, you, and every other reasonable person, will pick someone who looks good on paper over someone who looks mediocre, but has a chance of becoming a late bloomer. Doing otherwise would be reasonable only if mediocrities tended to have on average better output in the long term than people who look good on paper, but that would only cause us to revisit what the metrics of what makes one look good on paper, because they would clearly then be wrong. They aren't: by and large, people who do well in exams tend to do better in actual research than people who suck at exams, even though the exams don't actually resemble actual research much. In short, when you bring up potential loss of cutting late bloomers, you should not forget about best scientists who never became one, because they were outcompeted by a mediocrity who never became a late bloomer. > Many grants proposals are largely ‘me too’ derivative works. Yes, and to me this is a sign that too many people are involved in research. If we suffer from deluge of mediocre, derivative work, we should make the standards higher and put more wood behind fewer arrows, not push more mediocrities into the career.
    • theGnuMe 4y ago
      I disagree. Many phds go into industry which makes technological progress faster. While Funding for some research is limited but it is in our interest to train more scientists rather than less. The millions on Wall Street are applied physicists and mathematicians. This is a weird claim to make about being the best. Their research is easily computerized or you spend billions building particle accelerators. Science is not zero sum.
• Galanwe 4y ago
  > Or, simply by virtue of being more intelligent. Life is not fair, and some people do have it easier than others I'm really not convinced this is the case when reaching higher level education. My experience is that "being smart" is an advantage for the first years - say up to bachelor - at which point there is no magic: if you don't work, you won't get your exams. This is in part because most exams will test not only your raw understanding, but also your practical experience at solving quickly/intuitively all the little pieces leading to the solution. And that can only be achieved in time if you're comfortable with this mental gymnastic, which comes with practice. > If you are pursuing a research career, and you observe other students putting similar amounts of effort, but obtaining much better results, understanding things more quickly and getting better ideas, you should probably just drop out Come on... I am a firm believer that exams test skill sets that are only partially correlated to being actually good at job X - even if X is fundamental research.
  • xyzzyz 4y ago
    > My experience is that "being smart" is an advantage for the first years - say up to bachelor - at which point there is no magic: if you don't work, you won't get your exams. Yes, if you don't put in the effort, you won't achieve very much, but this doesn't mean that being smart is not an advantage. It is, both early and late. It is clearly advantageous to both be smart and put in the effort over just putting in the effort. In fact, if you read my comment carefully, you'll observe that I explictly pointed that out, here: > and you observe other students putting similar amounts of effort Next, > I am a firm believer that exams test skill sets that are only partially correlated to being actually good at job X - even if X is fundamental research. Again, if you read my comment carefully, you'll observe that I never mentioned exams. I discussed > obtaining much better results, understanding things more quickly and getting better ideas, which is what you do in actual research, not just exam studying. I would really appreciate it if you read what I say more carefully, and respond to what I'm actually claiming, instead of what you incorrectly believe I am.
  • poulpy123 4y ago
    Actually you can find people that are really "smarter" that others, who get things noticeably quicker, even in research. Although as you note, being smarter isn't enough at university level. But in any case they are a too small sample to make the modern science work, and most of the scientists are, well, average people maybe "smarter" than the average people but not by very much. What makes the difference is interest, motivation and opportunities. And I say that as a former scientist that decided he wasn't smart (and interested) enough but who met many non-scientist smart people in his life
• yowlingcat 4y ago
  Experimental technique development and pushing the cutting edge of current state of the art techniques is a phenomena you can see everywhere in human society. It is there in every field of creative endeavor humans engage in, which I would say research is one of. Not only would I say that research isn't special, but I would also say that, just like every other field of creative endeavor that doesn't intrinsically bring a lot of money, those who write the checks (and those who focus on currying their favor) call the shots and sit at the center of influence networks and control the flow and direction of creative production. It's not that I disagree with your fairly broad conclusions (that intrinsic variation in human capability exists) but I don't know if you are accurately describing intelligence, academics, the corporate world, or any of the things based on how you are interrelating them in your comment. I take issue with what I see to be a lot of odd presumptions in your comment: (1) the concept of general human intelligence (which maps cleanly across all capabilities) is only realistic (1a) it can be be cleanly measured (1b) it can be used to neatly order disciplines by practitioner intelligence, and (1c) it is immutable (2) the bounded class-like environment usably maps performance to a capability to successfully conduct research in an unbounded academic research environment, and (3) some suitably generic conception of "intelligence based capability" exists which can accurately rank various fields of theoretical or applied research skills (4) that if you rank these fields of research by the intelligence level of its average practitioners, academic research requires world class intelligence, higher than what is demanded by startups and the corporate world, with starting a family dead last I think each of these assumptions are very optimistic, and the conclusion, that not everyone is meant to be world class, is trivially correct enough to be empty. Of course not everyone is meant to be world class; that is the definition of world class, that its individuals rank first in the world. It doesn't tell you anything about how people get there, or what you can actually do to influence your ability or that of someone else to get there. In every one of the fields you actually talked about (athletics, research, startups, corporate world), it's not enough to just have raw biological ingredients for high performance. It is a combination of: a) raw biological ingredients in the candidate to have capacity for some specific mastery b) exposure, growing up, to what that specific mastery looks like c) oversight, tutelage and mentorship by senior practitioners with demonstrated world class specific mastery d) a cohesive strategy guiding a playbook of tactics (likely designed in combination with c) to keep rate of skill improvement consistently high enough to efficiently approach e) intentional, consistent, effective practice by the candidate f) a pipeline of high value opportunities to develop in the course of pursuing mastery As with research, these are the raw ingredients necessary for success in any field of creative endeavor humans engage in. The vast majority of these factors do not include the biological "raw intelligence" -- and it's not that it's useless, it's that it is necessary but insufficient. And so you can and will often see practitioners with differentially somewhat less raw chops and somewhat more tenacity or discipline outperform and develop better mastery than practitioners with the converse. Plenty of geniuses failed to achieve anything with that genius besides misery and zero outcomes. It takes a lot more than just being smart to truly be world-class at anything in 2022.
• deleted 4y ago
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• watwut 4y ago
  > and you observe other students putting similar amounts of effort, but obtaining much better results, understanding things more quickly and getting better ideas, you should probably just drop out Sorry, but that would be just dumb. The starting point matter awful lot. I remember multiple things that were super difficult to me and I was slow, until I learned some missing piece and it clicked. Then I became good. Initial struggle does not mean anything. There is such a thing as talent, but fixing your preexisting knowledge and calculating exercises will move you up into "it is not an effort to learn further" category awful often.
• cycomanic 4y ago
  Funny thing, as a researcher myself one thing the main thing that makes you successful in my experience is a high frustration threshold. While there are some truly brilliant people, even then run into roadblocks, dead ends etc.. It makes sense you are venturing out into the unknown (that's what research is really), not giving up when getting stuck is what makes people achieve something.
  • kwhitefoot 4y ago
    Didn't Einstein say something like the reason he worked out General Relativity first was that he stayed with the problem longer rather than that we was actually smarter than all the others in the field? And there is Edison's aphorism, something like "Invention is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration." There is plenty to do for those who are not the absolute smartest.
• Gatsky 4y ago
  You're getting some flack for this comment, but others have said similar things: https://www.google.com.au/books/edition/_/__CnDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PT22 https://www.google.com.au/books/edition/_/__CnDwAAQBAJ?hl=en... "I took six undergraduate mathematics courses. Until my junior year I encountered no one who seemed to have a greater aptitude for mathematics than mine. It had always been my easiest subject in high school, and I had been chided there by a classmate for writing my final exam with a fountain pen. Before I discovered physics, trigonometry and differential and integral calculus were my greatest intellectual pleasures. But my final mathematics course as an undergraduate was differential equations and the instructor gave me only a B. I'm sure he recognized that I was competent — I had worked every problem in the book — but he had to give the A's to the obviously brilliant students, who were now closing in on me. If I had decided to become a professional mathematician, as I easily could have, I would have made the traumatic discovery that there were many people my age who were far more talented mathematically than I could ever be. The world of mathematics and theoretical physics is hierarchical. That was my first exposure to it. There's a limit beyond which one cannot progress. The differences between the limiting abilities of those on successively higher steps of the pyramid are enormous. I have not seen described anywhere the shock a talented man experiences when he finds, late in his academic life, that there are others enormously more talented than he. I have personally seen more tears shed by grown men and women over this discovery than I would have believed possible. Most of those men and women shift to fields where they can compete on more equal terms. The few who choose not to face reality have a difficult time." Adventures of a Physicist, Luis W Alvarez
  • haswell 4y ago
    What he’s describing here is quite a departure from “quit as soon as you notice your peers are better than you”. Being intellectually honest with yourself is still important, but if that’s what the parent comment was advocating, it did so poorly.
    • xyzzyz 4y ago
      Note that I said “you should probably drop out”, not “you need to drop out as soon as you notice others are better”. This shows that there is hardly a way I could have advocated it better, as people like you, or others in this thread (read their responses to me and mine to them) will misread it anyway, and instead argue against a straw man. Additional reason is that if I hedged my opinion and tried to predict and answer to all possible critiques, the comment would be way too long and nobody would read it anyway, including the pre-written response to the point they made in reply.
• TrackerFF 4y ago
  Sometimes, or maybe many times even, it boils down to lack of prerequisite knowledge. Most classes simply do not hammer down how important prerequisites are, and how easy it is for students to get stuck simply because they haven't read enough of the required topics. Of course - if you are a very high-IQ individual, you sheer intellect can get you by. I know such people, that have been able to solve problems without previous knowledge, simply by going at it with logic and pattern recognition. But if you're average, that's not going to be the case. I've been a TA, and seen students jump from severely underperforming, to becoming A students - because they finally understood something / had the "Aha!" moment in something which kept them back.
• imtringued 4y ago
  You know it is completely normal to not know things? According to you we should just let old people do everything because they got to spend more time on this planet and never let inexperienced young people do anything even if that means they never gain experience.
  • defrost 4y ago
    You may want to reread the comment you're replying to. Paraphrasing what they said as "According to you we should just let old people do everything" is completely incorrect. Their comment was more in line with "if your peers, whether younger or older, are learning faster than you, maybe this career is not for you". That is certainly something to discuss further - but it is not the comment you made it out to be. Attention to detail is a useful trait to develop.
• tristor 4y ago
  > you observe other students putting similar amounts of effort, but obtaining much better results, understanding things more quickly and getting better ideas, you should probably just drop out. I had the opposite experience when I went through college. I was the one that was so far ahead of everyone else, and I realized that college was a complete waste of my time and my money (I was working and sold many of my things to pay for college out of my own pocket so I wouldn't take debt). I went and cold-sat three certification exams, started applying for contract jobs, and dropped out of college as soon as I had a reasonable offer. I had originally intended to stay in academia and do research, but I realized it was going to be an absolute grind and I wouldn't be able to connect with my peers socially or intellectually. I found a place in industry, put myself out of my comfort zone and grew a lot, and I definitely do not regret ditching academia and going into industry.