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> Also won't help you get a date. The reasons are not uncorrelated. Depends on the girl. Depends on you also. The label "Intelligent" as it applies to tech is

by eshvk 13y ago

> Also won't help you get a date. The reasons are not uncorrelated. Depends on the girl. Depends on you also. The label "Intelligent" as it applies to tech is slightly correlated with other traits like social awkwardness, spending 8 hours of your room locked in a room looking at fast moving flashing objects, inability to talk about anything else than those things. Be interesting. Highlight decorrelation. Acquire dates. > what helps you in business is empathy: being able to assess what someone wants and being able to use the analytical skills you do have to give them that. Oh for sure, this is true even in Academia. I was supposed to go do my PhD with a guy who was at the top of his field. Incredible mathematician/engineer. Guy was an asshole. My research advisor at that time told me straight out that he thought that would be a bad idea. Much later, I found out that every one of his students left one year after. So he spends most of his days studentless, publishing papers alone. This leads to lack of tenure: scaling of paper publishing requires additional resources.

rayiner 13y ago
I'm speaking based on the premise of the article: "To clarify, I don’t mean people don’t value intelligence. They don’t value when it’s their most important value." The author's argument is that people in business don't value an IQ score in the abstract. But they do value qualities like "gets things done" which are often result of 1) figuring out someone's problem; and 2) applying intelligence to solve that problem. In dating, being "interesting" is often the result of 1) figuring out what makes someone tick; and 2) applying intelligence to impress that person on their own terms.
- eshvk 13y ago
  I don't completely agree with the author's premise. However, there are enough people who act like lab rats; they spend their life optimizing certain parameters: becoming really good coders, mathematicians, getting high scores on standardized IQ tests. They however also utterly fail at solving life's problems (relationships at work, elsewhere). The label "intelligent" as applied to these people doesn't necessarily always mean they get things done.
kazagistar 13y ago
> The label "Intelligent" as it applies to tech is slightly correlated with other traits like social awkwardness, spending 8 hours of your room locked in a room looking at fast moving flashing objects, inability to talk about anything else than those things. Because intelligence takes practice, and being interesting and social takes practice, and there are only so many hours in a day. There is a meme among some circles of nerds that goes like "while they were drinking and partying in high school and college, we were studying and acquiring skills". This is totally wrong-minded: the people partying were acquiring skills too. The important point for the awkward and unsociable to remember is that those skills really are just skills, like any other; some people might be more or less "talented", but no matter what you are still going to need practice. If you spent your life exclusively acquiring abstract problem solving skills, perhaps it is time to step back, and round out your skill set.
- eshvk 13y ago
  > Because intelligence takes practice, and being interesting and social takes practice, and there are only so many hours in a day. That is not an excuse for anything though. No one has enough time. Everyone makes do. Heinlein's quote on what human beings should do is relevant here.

by eshvk 13y ago

rayiner 13y ago

I'm speaking based on the premise of the article: "To clarify, I don’t mean people don’t value intelligence. They don’t value when it’s their most important value." The author's argument is that people in business don't value an IQ score in the abstract. But they do value qualities like "gets things done" which are often result of 1) figuring out someone's problem; and 2) applying intelligence to solve that problem. In dating, being "interesting" is often the result of 1) figuring out what makes someone tick; and 2) applying intelligence to impress that person on their own terms.

eshvk 13y ago
I don't completely agree with the author's premise. However, there are enough people who act like lab rats; they spend their life optimizing certain parameters: becoming really good coders, mathematicians, getting high scores on standardized IQ tests. They however also utterly fail at solving life's problems (relationships at work, elsewhere). The label "intelligent" as applied to these people doesn't necessarily always mean they get things done.

kazagistar 13y ago

> The label "Intelligent" as it applies to tech is slightly correlated with other traits like social awkwardness, spending 8 hours of your room locked in a room looking at fast moving flashing objects, inability to talk about anything else than those things. Because intelligence takes practice, and being interesting and social takes practice, and there are only so many hours in a day. There is a meme among some circles of nerds that goes like "while they were drinking and partying in high school and college, we were studying and acquiring skills". This is totally wrong-minded: the people partying were acquiring skills too. The important point for the awkward and unsociable to remember is that those skills really are just skills, like any other; some people might be more or less "talented", but no matter what you are still going to need practice. If you spent your life exclusively acquiring abstract problem solving skills, perhaps it is time to step back, and round out your skill set.

eshvk 13y ago
> Because intelligence takes practice, and being interesting and social takes practice, and there are only so many hours in a day. That is not an excuse for anything though. No one has enough time. Everyone makes do. Heinlein's quote on what human beings should do is relevant here.