7 ms·

"Smart" isn't something you are, it is what you do. People who accomplish amazing things do so almost completely because of passion, hard work, time management

"Smart" isn't something you are, it is what you do. People who accomplish amazing things do so almost completely because of passion, hard work, time management, good taste, determination, working on the right problems, etc. In CS grad school, I have seen many absolutely brilliant people who accomplish nothing. In school, they were used to being able to get every math question right, while doing it in their heads. However, when working on real problems in the real world, this sort of raw brainpower (as measured by an IQ test or SAT or whatever) has amazingly little benefit. There is some small threshold, and on the whole it is helpful, but it doesn't mean much. You can do the math on the number of people walking the earth currently with IQ scores higher than Einstein. If you want to do great things, here is how: Keep learning new subjects, keep finding new problems, talk to other talented minute, work hard, and enjoy yourself. Worrying about being "smart" is a lame excuse. The "smartest" man in the world is this guy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Michael_Langan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Michael_Langan

anovaskulk 18y ago
I'd have to disagree with that. There is actually quite a high threshold, as should be obvious, from the percentage of people doing great things. You may not notice it, if you live in your own little isolated world. Yes, you can be very intelligent, and incompetent; but no, you cannot be competent, able to get stuff done, and not intelligent.
- lliiffee 18y ago
  I think you make a good point. In saying the threshold is low, I am probably biased by my peer group. Although... it is so hard to separate "smartness" from "passion". Particularly as people get older, someone who is passionate and keeps investing in themselves by learning new things will blow past someone with faster neurons that rests on their innate talents, rather than challenging themselves.
- dasil003 18y ago
  Yes, but what's the threshold? Someone with an IQ of 100 can be very successful. I agree you can't be a luminary like the Woz, but holding yourself to that standard is like expecting to win the lottery. You can be plenty rich, successful, accomplished, etc without being an infamous figure. People are successful for all different reasons, and the best anyone can do is put themselves out there and take advantage of opportunities. The minute you convince yourself that are not smart enough or too lazy or whatever, then you're just committing to failure—most likely because psychologically safe—which is stupid because no one has the recipe for success. Chase your dreams!
  - anovaskulk 18y ago
    What's success? What does it mean in and of itself? Certainly, they can be successful, but at what? Not likely anything great.
    - unalone 18y ago
      See, but you treat "success" and "great" like objective things. Everybody thinks different things for them. If you're like me and think that greatness is a few-times-in-a-century thing, then look at the people who achieve it, you'll be astonished. Some of my big-list people aren't people you'd expect at all. Bill Watterson, who was by all accounts keep-to-himself in school. Samuel Beckett, who entered college as a cricket fiend and slowly gravitated towards writing. Nobody tries to be great. There's the limit. Few average-minded people will attempt anything extraordinary. Few smart people will, for that matter. And if you don't try, you don't do it. That said, none of the great works I've seen in my life are things I've felt to be beyond me. Do you feel otherwise? Do you look at things and feel like you could not, at birth, have entered a path of life capable of producing those things? The things I think are beyond me are beyond me by choice. I won't ever write virtuoso piano music, because I don't want to spend 20 years learning to play the piano well enough to write that stuff. But if I really, really wanted to, I could, given enough time. The problem is that few people realize that. They see something complex and decide they could never do that, not realizing that the more you know the simpler it seems.
- unalone 18y ago
  I disagree with that threshold. When I was younger I thought it made sense: I was put into gifted and talented, and I developed an insane elitism that I used to denounce pretty much everybody around me for not having the same intellect. As I got older, I realized: it's not like that. People are very rarely stupid. Most people are very bright and just don't care to apply themselves. Again and again, as a kid, I'd come across situations with bullies and go with the lie that the bullies were stupid and jealous. Then in high school, I'd realize that some of those bullies were very bright, clever, and talkative, and that my own actions towards other kids could be perceived as bullying, when to me it was more a good-natured hazing. I started to realize that even the stoner deadheads that I thought were entirely mindless were in fact intelligent people who knew they were ruining their lives and just didn't care. From the people I've seen, the idea of exclusive intelligence is not as true as most people think it is. I've met people with higher IQs than me who seem less intelligent than I am, because they weren't raised in the way I was, and so went around laboriously working on schoolwork without ever once finding their own interests. For me, that was the height of unintelligence: doing things without asking why. On the other hand, I know one or two people I used to think were stupid going out and doing some pretty impressive things, not because they were particularly bright, but because they kept at something longer than other people did. The line about genius being 99% perspiration keeps coming up in my mind during this conversation. Most people have good ideas: one statement I read says everybody has three million-dollar ideas every year. We've all thought of cool things and then seen somebody else making a fortune of that cool thing. The difference between that person and the rest of the people with that idea is that that person knew what to do with his idea. The idea itself wasn't uncommon, but its realization was. Most people don't do great things because most people don't care to do great things. They never try once. Look at the startups you see here. Most of them are interesting, most of the coders have good things in mind. But how many would you call great? Even the really good coders rarely take on anything monumental.
  - Hexstream 18y ago
    "We've all thought of cool things and then seen somebody else making a fortune of that cool thing." Stop! Stop! Now I feel less special!
  - 18y ago

anovaskulk 18y ago

I'd have to disagree with that. There is actually quite a high threshold, as should be obvious, from the percentage of people doing great things. You may not notice it, if you live in your own little isolated world. Yes, you can be very intelligent, and incompetent; but no, you cannot be competent, able to get stuff done, and not intelligent.

lliiffee 18y ago
I think you make a good point. In saying the threshold is low, I am probably biased by my peer group. Although... it is so hard to separate "smartness" from "passion". Particularly as people get older, someone who is passionate and keeps investing in themselves by learning new things will blow past someone with faster neurons that rests on their innate talents, rather than challenging themselves.
dasil003 18y ago
Yes, but what's the threshold? Someone with an IQ of 100 can be very successful. I agree you can't be a luminary like the Woz, but holding yourself to that standard is like expecting to win the lottery. You can be plenty rich, successful, accomplished, etc without being an infamous figure. People are successful for all different reasons, and the best anyone can do is put themselves out there and take advantage of opportunities. The minute you convince yourself that are not smart enough or too lazy or whatever, then you're just committing to failure—most likely because psychologically safe—which is stupid because no one has the recipe for success. Chase your dreams!
- anovaskulk 18y ago
  What's success? What does it mean in and of itself? Certainly, they can be successful, but at what? Not likely anything great.
  - unalone 18y ago
    See, but you treat "success" and "great" like objective things. Everybody thinks different things for them. If you're like me and think that greatness is a few-times-in-a-century thing, then look at the people who achieve it, you'll be astonished. Some of my big-list people aren't people you'd expect at all. Bill Watterson, who was by all accounts keep-to-himself in school. Samuel Beckett, who entered college as a cricket fiend and slowly gravitated towards writing. Nobody tries to be great. There's the limit. Few average-minded people will attempt anything extraordinary. Few smart people will, for that matter. And if you don't try, you don't do it. That said, none of the great works I've seen in my life are things I've felt to be beyond me. Do you feel otherwise? Do you look at things and feel like you could not, at birth, have entered a path of life capable of producing those things? The things I think are beyond me are beyond me by choice. I won't ever write virtuoso piano music, because I don't want to spend 20 years learning to play the piano well enough to write that stuff. But if I really, really wanted to, I could, given enough time. The problem is that few people realize that. They see something complex and decide they could never do that, not realizing that the more you know the simpler it seems.
unalone 18y ago
I disagree with that threshold. When I was younger I thought it made sense: I was put into gifted and talented, and I developed an insane elitism that I used to denounce pretty much everybody around me for not having the same intellect. As I got older, I realized: it's not like that. People are very rarely stupid. Most people are very bright and just don't care to apply themselves. Again and again, as a kid, I'd come across situations with bullies and go with the lie that the bullies were stupid and jealous. Then in high school, I'd realize that some of those bullies were very bright, clever, and talkative, and that my own actions towards other kids could be perceived as bullying, when to me it was more a good-natured hazing. I started to realize that even the stoner deadheads that I thought were entirely mindless were in fact intelligent people who knew they were ruining their lives and just didn't care. From the people I've seen, the idea of exclusive intelligence is not as true as most people think it is. I've met people with higher IQs than me who seem less intelligent than I am, because they weren't raised in the way I was, and so went around laboriously working on schoolwork without ever once finding their own interests. For me, that was the height of unintelligence: doing things without asking why. On the other hand, I know one or two people I used to think were stupid going out and doing some pretty impressive things, not because they were particularly bright, but because they kept at something longer than other people did. The line about genius being 99% perspiration keeps coming up in my mind during this conversation. Most people have good ideas: one statement I read says everybody has three million-dollar ideas every year. We've all thought of cool things and then seen somebody else making a fortune of that cool thing. The difference between that person and the rest of the people with that idea is that that person knew what to do with his idea. The idea itself wasn't uncommon, but its realization was. Most people don't do great things because most people don't care to do great things. They never try once. Look at the startups you see here. Most of them are interesting, most of the coders have good things in mind. But how many would you call great? Even the really good coders rarely take on anything monumental.
- Hexstream 18y ago
  "We've all thought of cool things and then seen somebody else making a fortune of that cool thing." Stop! Stop! Now I feel less special!
- 18y ago