6 ms·

Unfortunately, after seeing Ed's previous breakdown on Hacker News (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5361056 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5361056),

by Cabal 13y ago

Unfortunately, after seeing Ed's previous breakdown on Hacker News (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5361056 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5361056), I have to see comments like this in a new light.

michaelochurch 13y ago
-1547. How in the name of a million fucks is that a breakdown? That sounds like a breakthrough. He's being honest about his atypical and unfortunate trajectory. I wish more people had the fucking cojones to be that way about their setbacks and rejections. Silicon Valley's tolerance of failure is paper-thin and a "heads, I win; tails, you lose" mentality. It means, "it's morally okay for me to fail you". It justifies fast firing and VC caprice, but if you actually fail, you're every bit as ostracized like PNG garbage as in any other society. On edw519's so-called "breakdown": The guy's been handed a shit sandwich by life-- when your IQ passes 150, conflicts with authority are inevitable; it comes to you looking for fights, and if you don't see it that way, then your IQ is not over 150 and probably not even 140 because every genuine 150+ I have ever met has experienced that-- and he keeps working his ass off and doing the right thing. Balls of Steel. You know how fucking hard it is to keep working your ass off when every signal coming your way is negative? How fucking brutal it can be to keep believing in yourself in a world where people avoid the sick, unlucky, or unpopular with no concern as to whether it's their fault? I have a lot of respect for winter travelers like 'edw519 and Abraham Lincoln. Summer traveling is nice, but you only get a sense of the real landscape if you go when the trees are bare.
- pkteison 13y ago
  The beginning was good, but when you claimed that smart people are certain to not get along with authority you went way out on an unsupported limb. I personally think passion and drive correlate to conflict a lot stronger than intelligence does; plenty of smart people know how to choose their battles and bite their tongues, and the suggestion that if they do they must not be super smart is just outrageous.
  - michaelochurch 13y ago
    Around 130, you start to question and dislike authority, but you can still hold back. At 150, authority comes to you looking for fights (even if you don't do anything to it) because you make it insecure about its inherent illegitimacy and moral emptiness. Actual 150s are pretty rare: about 43 per 100,000 people. http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=3.333+sigma http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=3.333+sigma
    - obviouslygreen 13y ago
      I'm interested to know whether this IQ conflict theory is actually based on something or whether it's coming from your posterior.
      - michaelochurch 13y ago
        Experience and observation. Don't discount them. The first person to say the sky was blue was going out on a limb, too. What if everyone else saw an orange sky?
        obviouslygreen 13y ago
        I'm not discounting them; I'm also not just nodding vacantly. But comparing your observations to widely-accepted facts like the color of the sky doesn't exactly scream rationality. Your assertion is that people with high IQ (which we're taking your word for, as well as the accuracy of the tests that we're assuming they took and shared the results with you) actually had the government after them in numerous enough occasions to be statistically significant. We're further assuming that you're right in that this is generalizable beyond your sample set (which is how big?), and then that there's no sample bias going on that would make your observations irrelevant to most populations. I don't see any reason to believe that what you've seen can actually be called representative. No, just because there isn't a study behind it doesn't mean it isn't true. But that also means you have no grounds beyond "experience and observation" to make your statement, and when you're giving basically no useful data on how you reached your conclusion, no rational person would call this a useful or valid generalization. A hypothesis worthy of testing, perhaps. But that's all it is.

by Cabal 13y ago

michaelochurch 13y ago

-1547. How in the name of a million fucks is that a breakdown? That sounds like a breakthrough. He's being honest about his atypical and unfortunate trajectory. I wish more people had the fucking cojones to be that way about their setbacks and rejections. Silicon Valley's tolerance of failure is paper-thin and a "heads, I win; tails, you lose" mentality. It means, "it's morally okay for me to fail you". It justifies fast firing and VC caprice, but if you actually fail, you're every bit as ostracized like PNG garbage as in any other society. On edw519's so-called "breakdown": The guy's been handed a shit sandwich by life-- when your IQ passes 150, conflicts with authority are inevitable; it comes to you looking for fights, and if you don't see it that way, then your IQ is not over 150 and probably not even 140 because every genuine 150+ I have ever met has experienced that-- and he keeps working his ass off and doing the right thing. Balls of Steel. You know how fucking hard it is to keep working your ass off when every signal coming your way is negative? How fucking brutal it can be to keep believing in yourself in a world where people avoid the sick, unlucky, or unpopular with no concern as to whether it's their fault? I have a lot of respect for winter travelers like 'edw519 and Abraham Lincoln. Summer traveling is nice, but you only get a sense of the real landscape if you go when the trees are bare.

pkteison 13y ago
The beginning was good, but when you claimed that smart people are certain to not get along with authority you went way out on an unsupported limb. I personally think passion and drive correlate to conflict a lot stronger than intelligence does; plenty of smart people know how to choose their battles and bite their tongues, and the suggestion that if they do they must not be super smart is just outrageous.
- michaelochurch 13y ago
  Around 130, you start to question and dislike authority, but you can still hold back. At 150, authority comes to you looking for fights (even if you don't do anything to it) because you make it insecure about its inherent illegitimacy and moral emptiness. Actual 150s are pretty rare: about 43 per 100,000 people. http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=3.333+sigma http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=3.333+sigma
  - obviouslygreen 13y ago
    I'm interested to know whether this IQ conflict theory is actually based on something or whether it's coming from your posterior.
    - michaelochurch 13y ago
      Experience and observation. Don't discount them. The first person to say the sky was blue was going out on a limb, too. What if everyone else saw an orange sky?
      - obviouslygreen 13y ago
        I'm not discounting them; I'm also not just nodding vacantly. But comparing your observations to widely-accepted facts like the color of the sky doesn't exactly scream rationality. Your assertion is that people with high IQ (which we're taking your word for, as well as the accuracy of the tests that we're assuming they took and shared the results with you) actually had the government after them in numerous enough occasions to be statistically significant. We're further assuming that you're right in that this is generalizable beyond your sample set (which is how big?), and then that there's no sample bias going on that would make your observations irrelevant to most populations. I don't see any reason to believe that what you've seen can actually be called representative. No, just because there isn't a study behind it doesn't mean it isn't true. But that also means you have no grounds beyond "experience and observation" to make your statement, and when you're giving basically no useful data on how you reached your conclusion, no rational person would call this a useful or valid generalization. A hypothesis worthy of testing, perhaps. But that's all it is.