11 ms·

Is high IQ as much a burden as a blessing?

53 points by quoderat 17y ago

dws 17y ago
"You're not living up to your potential" is a Red Queen's game that having a high IQ doesn't help.
ComputerGuru 17y ago
When I was a child, I was leafing through Parade when I came across "Ask Marilyn" and read about her having the "world's highest IQ." Several Sundays later when I'd gotten the gist of the whole thing, I asked my mother: "but what does she do?" I was totally and utterly perplexed. Here was a woman smarter than Einstein and Hawking squandering away her intelligence on such downright silly matters. You don't need an IQ of 230 to write a newspaper column... you just don't. It pissed me off then, but I never gave it much attention... Since then I've left the States and totally cast her out of mind. But when the topic comes up, I just shrug and guess that this is God's way of showing us that you don't need to be the world's most intelligent in order to accomplish something, because sometimes the biggest "geniuses" amongst us are the biggest idiots in reality. An IQ like that applied to literally anything under the sun other than a newspaper column could yield huge benefits to humanity. It doesn't matter what - anything she likes. History, psychology, chemistry, physics, math, computers, English, philosophy, anything. But she didn't. And that pisses me off like crazy. Because I don't have her IQ but I work day and night hoping to make this world a better place.... and there she is, showing off her IQ as if at the World Fair to make petty gains as a household celebrity, a freak of nature rather than one of the luckiest people on the planet.
- Eliezer 17y ago
  Here was a woman smarter than Einstein and Hawking Oh hell no. She just tests well. The best candidate for "highest g-factor in the history of time" is probably John von Neumann.
  - tokenadult 17y ago
    "In 1985, Guinness World Records accepted that she had answered every question correctly on an adult Stanford-Binet IQ test at the age of just 10, a result that gave her a corresponding mental age of 22 years and 11 months, and an unearthly IQ of 228." This is totally bogus, because the Stanford-Binet Form L-M, an IQ test I also took as a child, was never, ever normed on a sample of adults. Not once, not ever. The L-M is strictly a child IQ test, and poorly normed for children also. The names in the test scoring manual for mental age levels (X number of years plus Y level of months) were GUESSES, and it is plain that they are guesses set in such a manner that they grossly overestimate the IQ scores of many L-M test-takers (yes, possibly including me). In any event, the L-M is now obsolete. The Stanford-Binet L-M was reviewed in the Buros Mental Measurements Yearbook, a standard reference book available in most university libraries and in better-stocked public libraries. volume 7. A citation to the Buros review can be found in a compilation volume about mental tests (Keyser & Sweetland 1984). A complete reprint of that review can be found in the one-volume compilation by Buros (1975). David Freides (1970), then associate professor and now professor of psychology at Emory University, began his review by saying, "My comments in 1970 are not very different from those made by F. L. Wells 32 years ago in The 1938 Mental Measurements Yearbook. The Binet scales have been around for a long time and their faults are well known." Professor Freides continued with a critique of the assumptions underlying the design of the test, and specifically mentioned clinical situations in which SB L-M scores should not be taken at face value. He concluded his review with the Latin phrase "Requiescat in pace," indicating he thought the test was moribund in 1970.
- pg 17y ago
  I don't think it's anything so serious as God's way of showing us anything. IQ tests don't measure intelligence perfectly, especially at the higher ranges. If millions of people take IQ tests, there will be a few who are super-good at whatever they do measure. Occam's razor says she is one of them. I remember taking an official IQ test in 5th or 6th grade. One of the questions was how many feet there were in a mile. I kid you not. It happened that I was a runner, so I knew a lap around the track was 440 yards. 440 x 4 = 1760, 1760 x 3 = 5280. But even at the time I remember thinking, how could intelligence possibly depend on that kind of random domain knowledge?
  - rms 17y ago
    >I remember taking an official IQ test in 5th or 6th grade. There is still inherent cultural bias in IQ tests, but it's definitely not that bad anymore. There's also a big difference between group IQ tests, which some states administer alongside achievement tests in elementary school and are basically completely worthless for measuring anything at all, and actual IQ tests, done one on one with a psychologist. Normal IQ tests don't measure very high, to be certified with a 200+ IQ you need to take a test that looks more like a Putnam Competition test than anything else.
    - pg 17y ago
      The test I took was the type done one on one with a psychologist.
      - rms 17y ago
        Yes, because the group IQ tests are lumped in with achievement tests kids often have no idea that it is different from the other achievement tests, whereas the psychologist tests certainly stand out. Looks like NYC public schools recently adopted a group IQ test after years of using the real thing... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otis-Lennon_School_Ability_Test http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otis-Lennon_School_Ability_Test Also see this comment from Ronald Hoeflin (an author of multiple super IQ tests) about verbal intelligence. http://www.eskimo.com/~miyaguch/ultra.html http://www.eskimo.com/~miyaguch/ultra.html >A comment on verbal intelligence: Some people wonder about the value of verbal items as a measure of "intelligence," since trying such items seems to involve little or no intellectual effort. From the purely statistical standpoint, many studies repeatedly showed that verbal intelligence, including the sheer size of one's vocabulary, has one of the highest correlations of any type of test item with overall intelligence as measured by tests containing a wide variety of test items. See for example the book Intelligence in the United States, published around 1958, for ample documentation. On the purely intuitive level, one might say that learning a language, including vocabulary, is for the child like decoding hieroglyphics. The brighter child will master this decoding process far more readily than the average child. Later, of course, one can artificially boost the size of one's vocabulary, but cleverly designed tests of verbal intelligence can get around this problem by relying on somewhat atypical verbal items that one would be unlikely to pick up through a "vocabulary improvement" course but that a gifted child would be likely to have picked up if he has been reasonably inquisitive -- and isn't inquisitiveness an important part of intelligence? Finally, to use a computer analogy, a powerful computer without adequate software (analogous to verbal intelligence in humans) would be relatively unproductive no matter how powerful the hardware. -- RKH He has one more test that is publicly posted. http://www.eskimo.com/~miyaguch/titan.html http://www.eskimo.com/~miyaguch/titan.html
- 10ren 17y ago
  When I'm coding something challenging, I have trouble keeping it clear in my head. I have to break things down into sections and try to extract the core problem from the noise - but that's not enough. I then have to build it in stages, adding a layer at a time of complexity. Sometimes I had the wrong model, and have to go back. I do discover things, and see more as I go. So now I can solve problems that I'm not smart enough to solve: a self-transcendence. I sometimes think someone smarter than me could just see* this. It's a frustrating and discouraging thought. Like you, my only answer is: but they're not*.
  - windsurfer 17y ago
    I took that IQ test in grade 3 and 6 (I live in Canada) and I scored in the 99th percentile. That means I have a "genius" level IQ. I'm not a great coder, but I can tell you that I also have trouble keeping things clear in my head, and I do exactly as you describe. Perhaps that skill of breaking down problems is what IQ is measuring?
    - 10ren 17y ago
      Thanks, I feel much better! I ranked highish on an IQ test book, 130-150 (however reliable that is). I love your hypothesis of what IQ measures, though unfortunately I don't think it's true. But do I think the "skill of breaking down problems" is one thing that actual accomplishment measures. It also seems to me that even a 230 IQ person is limited to what they can grasp instantly, if they lack this skill. Perhaps if their high IQ removes their motivation for acquiring this skill, it might explain why the accomplishments of some high IQ folk aren't commensurate with their IQ. 230 IQ sounds awesome, but just what can such a person grasp at once? Is it like someone with very long legs, so a step for them is a giant leap for anyone else...? If so, it isn't much good if they can't string steps together. If they can't combine their steps, a crawling baby will effortlessly outdistance them.
  - nostrademons 17y ago
    Even people who do "just see" things eventually have to learn to break things down into pieces and solve them bit by bit. As you get older and acquire more expertise, the complexity of problems you solve gets higher, until it reaches a point where nobody can hold it in their head. When I was a kid, I used to piss off my teachers by just writing down the answers on all my tests & homework. They'd always say "Show your work!" and I'd say "What work? I just know what the answer is", and most of the time it'd be right. When I wrote computer programs, I'd pace around for a bit until I'd figured out everything, then sit down at the computer and type it in. When I solved physics problem, I'd memorize the problem statement, go take a shower, mull it over, and write down the solution when I came out. This worked until my freshman year of college. And then it started to not work - half the time, it'd work great and I'd be done with my homework in no time, but half the time I just wouldn't be able to solve the problem at all. And then it started to not work at all, and I basically failed at solving anything. So I had to learn the same skills of breaking things down and solving them piece by piece that everyone else already knew. Laboriously. At the age of 20, when most people had figured it out by 12. I'm certainly more effective now for having learned them though, as I tend to get stuck much less often. It's still frustrating though, because I can't shake the feeling that I'm dumber now than I was at 13. I don't even know if I can still solve things just by looking at them anymore - so much of my work requires small, incremental changelists and clawing my way up the technology ladder. For someone who'd built so much of my identity on always knowing the answer (terrible idea BTW, never build your kid's ego up on their intelligence), this was a really bitter pill to swallow.
- scott_s 17y ago
  She is not a "genius" in how I use the term. Abnormally high IQ scores, by their nature, often speak of a brain too general to be of much use. “Effectively,” said Rust, “you are mastering far too many things.” Broadness, though, is what Savant craves. “Reading all about these subjects,” she says of her work, “I am becoming amazingly informed to a superficial extent.” I use "genius" to describe a person who has studied a particular area with a level of dedication, creativity and success such that they are orders of magnitude above even others in their field.
  - tokenadult 17y ago
    I use "genius" to describe a person who has studied a particular area with a level of dedication, creativity and success such that they are orders of magnitude above even others in their field. That is actually the standard definition of "genius" in current psychological literature, other than that most of those authors would say, "several standard deviations above" rather than "orders of magnitude above." One of the leading authors on "genius" as psychologists define that term is Dean Keith Simonton, whose articles are sometimes submitted here to HN. See http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=488231 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=488231 for a previous submission. Simonton and many other authors (e.g., Arthur Jensen) note that the IQ threshold to be a "genius" in currently accepted professional sense of that term is not particularly high, perhaps only an IQ of 120 on a currently normed, properly validated test. Lots of creativity and lots of hard work, besides IQ, go into making a genius.
- AndrewDucker 17y ago
  It pisses you off that someone does something that makes them happy rather than doing something that you think they should? Really?
- amichail 17y ago
  She's probably doing what she wants to do. What's the problem?
- Ardit20 17y ago
  * but I work day and night hoping to make this world a better place* The best thing about life is that we are all different yet the same. Perhaps she does not care about saving the world and perhaps not caring about making the world a better place is better. Perhaps not. Her choice dude, got nothing to do with you. Take your anger with the newspapers who made her a freak of nature and perhaps lured her into writing a column as a practical instant way of using her intelligence. If you read the article the barrister clearly mentions that he, they, were looking for a way to "cash in on this" and as it happens that way is to write a stupid column. Who cares, you don't need a high IQ to improve the world. I doubt the inventor of penicillin was the person with the highest IQ in the world and he has done a lot for humanity.
- alexfarran 17y ago
  It's her mind, she can do what she wants with it. She doesn't owe anyone for it.
Eliezer 17y ago
Blah blah blah whine whine whine. If you don't like it, get yourself a lobotomy.
- hc 17y ago
  did you read this? the focus of the article is not on people who "feel burdened" by high IQs; it is about possible negative side effects of intelligence. (isn't this what _you_ get paid to think about? this comment is hilariously ironic...)
rms 17y ago
Errol Morris interview with the "smartest man in the world." Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ak5Lr3qkW0&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ak5Lr3qkW0&feature=relat... Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mfbUhs2PVY&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mfbUhs2PVY&feature=relat... Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QA0gjyXG5O0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QA0gjyXG5O0 (Good interview, but the best one Errol Morris did with his tv series was the one with the mob lawyer. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLEe496IS1o http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLEe496IS1o And the movie Fog of War, of course.)
pmjordan 17y ago
Intriguing article. I'm undecided about the usefulness of IQ tests, but I'm avoiding taking any at all, which I suppose puts me in the "anti" camp. If I took one, I suspect the result would either go to my head if it's high (for some unknown value of "high") or be heartbreakingly disappointing, with nothing in between. Which is somewhat silly I suppose, particularly as it contradicts the idea that it's not a useful measure. (as a background: I'm often assumed to be the smartest person out of pretty much any group of people I happen to find myself in, which brings with it a whole slew of expectations and social awkwardness. It's a vicious cycle in that once people notice it, my reputation eventually precedes me. As a result I regularly feel the need to "flee" from jobs, clubs, cities, etc. and "reset" everyone's expectations. I'm finding freelancing/consulting easier than holding a job. And yet there's the nagging pressure of expectation from family, etc. that I "live up to my potential")
banned_man 17y ago
In childhood, it's bewildering but not so bad. In adolescence, it's awful. In adulthood, it's good, so long as you're able to get past your shitty teenage years. The transition point (from disadvantage to benefit) is, on average, late college. One would expect it to happen earlier, but what usually happens in college (even, if not especially, in elite ones) is that the less talented half emerge as social leaders, not because there's any persisting malice toward smart people, but because they had better previous experiences.
- tokenadult 17y ago
  Or perhaps because those other people who become social leaders had other skill sets not tapped by IQ tests. This idea is just about as old as IQ testing itself. Lewis Terman was the author of the IQ test that Marilyn of Ask Marilyn took when she was a kid, and that I took when I was a kid. Here's what he had to say about the limitations of IQ tests: "There are, however, certain characteristics of age scores with which the reader should be familiar. For one thing, it is necessary to bear in mind that the true mental age as we have used it refers to the mental age on a particular intelligence test. A subject's mental age in this sense may not coincide with the age score he would make in tests of musical ability, mechanical ability, social adjustment, etc. A subject has, strictly speaking, a number of mental ages; we are here concerned only with that which depends on the abilities tested by the new Stanford-Binet scales." (Terman & Merrill 1937, p. 25)
  - banned_man 17y ago
    I'm talking about high intelligence rather than high IQ. So, I guess I'm technically answering the question, "Is high intelligence a blessing or a curse", rather than that question about IQ specifically. In truth, I don't care much about IQ per se; the discussion of intelligence is a more interesting debate.
    - tokenadult 17y ago
      What is your definition of "high intelligence"? This is an interesting issue discussed in Keith Stanovich's new book, http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=9780300123852 http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=97803001238... which you probably would enjoy reading, as I did.
tokenadult 17y ago
As Stephen Hawking says about IQ: "Q: What is your I.Q.? "A: I have no idea. People who boast about their I.Q. are losers." http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/12/magazine/12QUESTIONS.html http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/12/magazine/12QUESTIONS.html
- bd 17y ago
  "Symptoms of the disorder first appeared while he was enrolled at Cambridge; he lost his balance and fell down a flight of stairs, hitting his head. Worried that he would lose his genius, he took the Mensa test to verify that his intellectual abilities were intact." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Hawking#Illness http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Hawking#Illness
  - tvon 17y ago
    While an interesting snippet, I don't see how it relates to the comment you responded to.
    - queensnake 17y ago
      -- he obviously cared about his IQ /at the time/ if he took the test. If he really didn't care he could have just tackled some physics problem and seen if it felt the same (or something).
      - tokenadult 17y ago
        And subsequently he appears to have decided that having actual accomplishments as a physics researcher and as a popular author on science is much more significant than his IQ score. In other words, what he thinks after he learned more and had real-world experience is that boasting about IQ is for losers, as he said in the much more recent interview.
      - zck 17y ago
        There's a difference between caring about -- or knowing -- one's IQ, and boasting about it.
robotrout 17y ago
I believe that it can be a psychological burden, and possibly be a cause for much unhappiness. Not as a direct result of the IQ, but because of the expectations of yourself and others. From an early age, I became aware of the positive reactions I got from people when I spoke about science or math. I believe that this pushed me towards these fields. After two decades of being a successful engineer, it occurs to me that another path might have brought just as much satisfaction, and quite possibly more. My own son at one year, is impressing the hell out of me with what he understands already. I want to cushion him from having his future brainwashed into him by admiring do-gooders. I want to give him the freedom to become a fisherman or a farmer or anything else, without feeling like he's letting down mankind or himself. We're the ones who make IQ a burden, but recognizing that fact, I think, can be freeing.
- berntb 17y ago
  When he can read, give him the book by Freeman Dyson's son on kayaking. 1/2 :-)
rjurney 17y ago
As an insecure geek, I reject any intelligence test for which I am not the top scorer. :)
- frig 17y ago
  Probably the most perceptive comment in this thread.
  - rjurney 17y ago
    Considering the negative karma for such a silly statement...
known 17y ago
burden, if you are an employee. blessing, if you are an entrepreneur.

53 points by quoderat 17y ago

dws 17y ago

"You're not living up to your potential" is a Red Queen's game that having a high IQ doesn't help.

When I was a child, I was leafing through Parade when I came across "Ask Marilyn" and read about her having the "world's highest IQ." Several Sundays later when I'd gotten the gist of the whole thing, I asked my mother: "but what does she do?" I was totally and utterly perplexed. Here was a woman smarter than Einstein and Hawking squandering away her intelligence on such downright silly matters. You don't need an IQ of 230 to write a newspaper column... you just don't. It pissed me off then, but I never gave it much attention... Since then I've left the States and totally cast her out of mind. But when the topic comes up, I just shrug and guess that this is God's way of showing us that you don't need to be the world's most intelligent in order to accomplish something, because sometimes the biggest "geniuses" amongst us are the biggest idiots in reality. An IQ like that applied to literally anything under the sun other than a newspaper column could yield huge benefits to humanity. It doesn't matter what - anything she likes. History, psychology, chemistry, physics, math, computers, English, philosophy, anything. But she didn't. And that pisses me off like crazy. Because I don't have her IQ but I work day and night hoping to make this world a better place.... and there she is, showing off her IQ as if at the World Fair to make petty gains as a household celebrity, a freak of nature rather than one of the luckiest people on the planet.

Eliezer 17y ago
Here was a woman smarter than Einstein and Hawking Oh hell no. She just tests well. The best candidate for "highest g-factor in the history of time" is probably John von Neumann.
- tokenadult 17y ago
  "In 1985, Guinness World Records accepted that she had answered every question correctly on an adult Stanford-Binet IQ test at the age of just 10, a result that gave her a corresponding mental age of 22 years and 11 months, and an unearthly IQ of 228." This is totally bogus, because the Stanford-Binet Form L-M, an IQ test I also took as a child, was never, ever normed on a sample of adults. Not once, not ever. The L-M is strictly a child IQ test, and poorly normed for children also. The names in the test scoring manual for mental age levels (X number of years plus Y level of months) were GUESSES, and it is plain that they are guesses set in such a manner that they grossly overestimate the IQ scores of many L-M test-takers (yes, possibly including me). In any event, the L-M is now obsolete. The Stanford-Binet L-M was reviewed in the Buros Mental Measurements Yearbook, a standard reference book available in most university libraries and in better-stocked public libraries. volume 7. A citation to the Buros review can be found in a compilation volume about mental tests (Keyser & Sweetland 1984). A complete reprint of that review can be found in the one-volume compilation by Buros (1975). David Freides (1970), then associate professor and now professor of psychology at Emory University, began his review by saying, "My comments in 1970 are not very different from those made by F. L. Wells 32 years ago in The 1938 Mental Measurements Yearbook. The Binet scales have been around for a long time and their faults are well known." Professor Freides continued with a critique of the assumptions underlying the design of the test, and specifically mentioned clinical situations in which SB L-M scores should not be taken at face value. He concluded his review with the Latin phrase "Requiescat in pace," indicating he thought the test was moribund in 1970.
pg 17y ago
I don't think it's anything so serious as God's way of showing us anything. IQ tests don't measure intelligence perfectly, especially at the higher ranges. If millions of people take IQ tests, there will be a few who are super-good at whatever they do measure. Occam's razor says she is one of them. I remember taking an official IQ test in 5th or 6th grade. One of the questions was how many feet there were in a mile. I kid you not. It happened that I was a runner, so I knew a lap around the track was 440 yards. 440 x 4 = 1760, 1760 x 3 = 5280. But even at the time I remember thinking, how could intelligence possibly depend on that kind of random domain knowledge?
- rms 17y ago
  >I remember taking an official IQ test in 5th or 6th grade. There is still inherent cultural bias in IQ tests, but it's definitely not that bad anymore. There's also a big difference between group IQ tests, which some states administer alongside achievement tests in elementary school and are basically completely worthless for measuring anything at all, and actual IQ tests, done one on one with a psychologist. Normal IQ tests don't measure very high, to be certified with a 200+ IQ you need to take a test that looks more like a Putnam Competition test than anything else.
  - pg 17y ago
    The test I took was the type done one on one with a psychologist.
    - rms 17y ago
      Yes, because the group IQ tests are lumped in with achievement tests kids often have no idea that it is different from the other achievement tests, whereas the psychologist tests certainly stand out. Looks like NYC public schools recently adopted a group IQ test after years of using the real thing... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otis-Lennon_School_Ability_Test http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otis-Lennon_School_Ability_Test Also see this comment from Ronald Hoeflin (an author of multiple super IQ tests) about verbal intelligence. http://www.eskimo.com/~miyaguch/ultra.html http://www.eskimo.com/~miyaguch/ultra.html >A comment on verbal intelligence: Some people wonder about the value of verbal items as a measure of "intelligence," since trying such items seems to involve little or no intellectual effort. From the purely statistical standpoint, many studies repeatedly showed that verbal intelligence, including the sheer size of one's vocabulary, has one of the highest correlations of any type of test item with overall intelligence as measured by tests containing a wide variety of test items. See for example the book Intelligence in the United States, published around 1958, for ample documentation. On the purely intuitive level, one might say that learning a language, including vocabulary, is for the child like decoding hieroglyphics. The brighter child will master this decoding process far more readily than the average child. Later, of course, one can artificially boost the size of one's vocabulary, but cleverly designed tests of verbal intelligence can get around this problem by relying on somewhat atypical verbal items that one would be unlikely to pick up through a "vocabulary improvement" course but that a gifted child would be likely to have picked up if he has been reasonably inquisitive -- and isn't inquisitiveness an important part of intelligence? Finally, to use a computer analogy, a powerful computer without adequate software (analogous to verbal intelligence in humans) would be relatively unproductive no matter how powerful the hardware. -- RKH He has one more test that is publicly posted. http://www.eskimo.com/~miyaguch/titan.html http://www.eskimo.com/~miyaguch/titan.html
10ren 17y ago
When I'm coding something challenging, I have trouble keeping it clear in my head. I have to break things down into sections and try to extract the core problem from the noise - but that's not enough. I then have to build it in stages, adding a layer at a time of complexity. Sometimes I had the wrong model, and have to go back. I do discover things, and see more as I go. So now I can solve problems that I'm not smart enough to solve: a self-transcendence. I sometimes think someone smarter than me could just see* this. It's a frustrating and discouraging thought. Like you, my only answer is: but they're not*.
- windsurfer 17y ago
  I took that IQ test in grade 3 and 6 (I live in Canada) and I scored in the 99th percentile. That means I have a "genius" level IQ. I'm not a great coder, but I can tell you that I also have trouble keeping things clear in my head, and I do exactly as you describe. Perhaps that skill of breaking down problems is what IQ is measuring?
  - 10ren 17y ago
    Thanks, I feel much better! I ranked highish on an IQ test book, 130-150 (however reliable that is). I love your hypothesis of what IQ measures, though unfortunately I don't think it's true. But do I think the "skill of breaking down problems" is one thing that actual accomplishment measures. It also seems to me that even a 230 IQ person is limited to what they can grasp instantly, if they lack this skill. Perhaps if their high IQ removes their motivation for acquiring this skill, it might explain why the accomplishments of some high IQ folk aren't commensurate with their IQ. 230 IQ sounds awesome, but just what can such a person grasp at once? Is it like someone with very long legs, so a step for them is a giant leap for anyone else...? If so, it isn't much good if they can't string steps together. If they can't combine their steps, a crawling baby will effortlessly outdistance them.
- nostrademons 17y ago
  Even people who do "just see" things eventually have to learn to break things down into pieces and solve them bit by bit. As you get older and acquire more expertise, the complexity of problems you solve gets higher, until it reaches a point where nobody can hold it in their head. When I was a kid, I used to piss off my teachers by just writing down the answers on all my tests & homework. They'd always say "Show your work!" and I'd say "What work? I just know what the answer is", and most of the time it'd be right. When I wrote computer programs, I'd pace around for a bit until I'd figured out everything, then sit down at the computer and type it in. When I solved physics problem, I'd memorize the problem statement, go take a shower, mull it over, and write down the solution when I came out. This worked until my freshman year of college. And then it started to not work - half the time, it'd work great and I'd be done with my homework in no time, but half the time I just wouldn't be able to solve the problem at all. And then it started to not work at all, and I basically failed at solving anything. So I had to learn the same skills of breaking things down and solving them piece by piece that everyone else already knew. Laboriously. At the age of 20, when most people had figured it out by 12. I'm certainly more effective now for having learned them though, as I tend to get stuck much less often. It's still frustrating though, because I can't shake the feeling that I'm dumber now than I was at 13. I don't even know if I can still solve things just by looking at them anymore - so much of my work requires small, incremental changelists and clawing my way up the technology ladder. For someone who'd built so much of my identity on always knowing the answer (terrible idea BTW, never build your kid's ego up on their intelligence), this was a really bitter pill to swallow.
scott_s 17y ago
She is not a "genius" in how I use the term. Abnormally high IQ scores, by their nature, often speak of a brain too general to be of much use. “Effectively,” said Rust, “you are mastering far too many things.” Broadness, though, is what Savant craves. “Reading all about these subjects,” she says of her work, “I am becoming amazingly informed to a superficial extent.” I use "genius" to describe a person who has studied a particular area with a level of dedication, creativity and success such that they are orders of magnitude above even others in their field.
- tokenadult 17y ago
  I use "genius" to describe a person who has studied a particular area with a level of dedication, creativity and success such that they are orders of magnitude above even others in their field. That is actually the standard definition of "genius" in current psychological literature, other than that most of those authors would say, "several standard deviations above" rather than "orders of magnitude above." One of the leading authors on "genius" as psychologists define that term is Dean Keith Simonton, whose articles are sometimes submitted here to HN. See http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=488231 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=488231 for a previous submission. Simonton and many other authors (e.g., Arthur Jensen) note that the IQ threshold to be a "genius" in currently accepted professional sense of that term is not particularly high, perhaps only an IQ of 120 on a currently normed, properly validated test. Lots of creativity and lots of hard work, besides IQ, go into making a genius.
AndrewDucker 17y ago
It pisses you off that someone does something that makes them happy rather than doing something that you think they should? Really?
amichail 17y ago
She's probably doing what she wants to do. What's the problem?
Ardit20 17y ago
* but I work day and night hoping to make this world a better place* The best thing about life is that we are all different yet the same. Perhaps she does not care about saving the world and perhaps not caring about making the world a better place is better. Perhaps not. Her choice dude, got nothing to do with you. Take your anger with the newspapers who made her a freak of nature and perhaps lured her into writing a column as a practical instant way of using her intelligence. If you read the article the barrister clearly mentions that he, they, were looking for a way to "cash in on this" and as it happens that way is to write a stupid column. Who cares, you don't need a high IQ to improve the world. I doubt the inventor of penicillin was the person with the highest IQ in the world and he has done a lot for humanity.
alexfarran 17y ago
It's her mind, she can do what she wants with it. She doesn't owe anyone for it.

Eliezer 17y ago

Blah blah blah whine whine whine. If you don't like it, get yourself a lobotomy.

hc 17y ago
did you read this? the focus of the article is not on people who "feel burdened" by high IQs; it is about possible negative side effects of intelligence. (isn't this what _you_ get paid to think about? this comment is hilariously ironic...)

rms 17y ago

Errol Morris interview with the "smartest man in the world." Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ak5Lr3qkW0&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ak5Lr3qkW0&feature=relat... Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mfbUhs2PVY&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mfbUhs2PVY&feature=relat... Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QA0gjyXG5O0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QA0gjyXG5O0 (Good interview, but the best one Errol Morris did with his tv series was the one with the mob lawyer. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLEe496IS1o http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLEe496IS1o And the movie Fog of War, of course.)

pmjordan 17y ago

Intriguing article. I'm undecided about the usefulness of IQ tests, but I'm avoiding taking any at all, which I suppose puts me in the "anti" camp. If I took one, I suspect the result would either go to my head if it's high (for some unknown value of "high") or be heartbreakingly disappointing, with nothing in between. Which is somewhat silly I suppose, particularly as it contradicts the idea that it's not a useful measure. (as a background: I'm often assumed to be the smartest person out of pretty much any group of people I happen to find myself in, which brings with it a whole slew of expectations and social awkwardness. It's a vicious cycle in that once people notice it, my reputation eventually precedes me. As a result I regularly feel the need to "flee" from jobs, clubs, cities, etc. and "reset" everyone's expectations. I'm finding freelancing/consulting easier than holding a job. And yet there's the nagging pressure of expectation from family, etc. that I "live up to my potential")

banned_man 17y ago

In childhood, it's bewildering but not so bad. In adolescence, it's awful. In adulthood, it's good, so long as you're able to get past your shitty teenage years. The transition point (from disadvantage to benefit) is, on average, late college. One would expect it to happen earlier, but what usually happens in college (even, if not especially, in elite ones) is that the less talented half emerge as social leaders, not because there's any persisting malice toward smart people, but because they had better previous experiences.

tokenadult 17y ago
Or perhaps because those other people who become social leaders had other skill sets not tapped by IQ tests. This idea is just about as old as IQ testing itself. Lewis Terman was the author of the IQ test that Marilyn of Ask Marilyn took when she was a kid, and that I took when I was a kid. Here's what he had to say about the limitations of IQ tests: "There are, however, certain characteristics of age scores with which the reader should be familiar. For one thing, it is necessary to bear in mind that the true mental age as we have used it refers to the mental age on a particular intelligence test. A subject's mental age in this sense may not coincide with the age score he would make in tests of musical ability, mechanical ability, social adjustment, etc. A subject has, strictly speaking, a number of mental ages; we are here concerned only with that which depends on the abilities tested by the new Stanford-Binet scales." (Terman & Merrill 1937, p. 25)
- banned_man 17y ago
  I'm talking about high intelligence rather than high IQ. So, I guess I'm technically answering the question, "Is high intelligence a blessing or a curse", rather than that question about IQ specifically. In truth, I don't care much about IQ per se; the discussion of intelligence is a more interesting debate.
  - tokenadult 17y ago
    What is your definition of "high intelligence"? This is an interesting issue discussed in Keith Stanovich's new book, http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=9780300123852 http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=97803001238... which you probably would enjoy reading, as I did.

tokenadult 17y ago

As Stephen Hawking says about IQ: "Q: What is your I.Q.? "A: I have no idea. People who boast about their I.Q. are losers." http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/12/magazine/12QUESTIONS.html http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/12/magazine/12QUESTIONS.html

bd 17y ago
"Symptoms of the disorder first appeared while he was enrolled at Cambridge; he lost his balance and fell down a flight of stairs, hitting his head. Worried that he would lose his genius, he took the Mensa test to verify that his intellectual abilities were intact." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Hawking#Illness http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Hawking#Illness
- tvon 17y ago
  While an interesting snippet, I don't see how it relates to the comment you responded to.
  - queensnake 17y ago
    -- he obviously cared about his IQ /at the time/ if he took the test. If he really didn't care he could have just tackled some physics problem and seen if it felt the same (or something).
    - tokenadult 17y ago
      And subsequently he appears to have decided that having actual accomplishments as a physics researcher and as a popular author on science is much more significant than his IQ score. In other words, what he thinks after he learned more and had real-world experience is that boasting about IQ is for losers, as he said in the much more recent interview.
    - zck 17y ago
      There's a difference between caring about -- or knowing -- one's IQ, and boasting about it.

robotrout 17y ago

I believe that it can be a psychological burden, and possibly be a cause for much unhappiness. Not as a direct result of the IQ, but because of the expectations of yourself and others. From an early age, I became aware of the positive reactions I got from people when I spoke about science or math. I believe that this pushed me towards these fields. After two decades of being a successful engineer, it occurs to me that another path might have brought just as much satisfaction, and quite possibly more. My own son at one year, is impressing the hell out of me with what he understands already. I want to cushion him from having his future brainwashed into him by admiring do-gooders. I want to give him the freedom to become a fisherman or a farmer or anything else, without feeling like he's letting down mankind or himself. We're the ones who make IQ a burden, but recognizing that fact, I think, can be freeing.

berntb 17y ago
When he can read, give him the book by Freeman Dyson's son on kayaking. 1/2 :-)

rjurney 17y ago

As an insecure geek, I reject any intelligence test for which I am not the top scorer. :)

frig 17y ago
Probably the most perceptive comment in this thread.
- rjurney 17y ago
  Considering the negative karma for such a silly statement...

known 17y ago

burden, if you are an employee. blessing, if you are an entrepreneur.