5 ms·

> the kinds of problems most people have seem trivially simple to me This sounds a bit narcissistic. If you think other people's problems are trivial, maybe yo

by jakobe 13y ago

> the kinds of problems most people have seem trivially simple to me This sounds a bit narcissistic. If you think other people's problems are trivial, maybe you're just not being empathic enough to understand their full scope. If everything looks like it follows simple patterns, maybe you just aren't looking close enough. When you learn something new, there's often this point where you feel you understand it all. If you're a quick learner, you will reach this point quickly. But things only seem simple because you don't understand them fully yet. You have to continue learning, specialising, looking at the details, and only then will you learn that the subject isn't quite as simple as you thought. You get bored when you figure out what kind of car someone has, or what color their furniture has. You think you have them all figured out. But if you continue talking to these shallow people, you might see there's something beyond these superficial details.

bane 13y ago
> This sounds a bit narcissistic. I know. That's the trouble with talking about growing up or being highly intelligent, you end up sounding like a narcissistic prick. Even saying something like "I've tested in the top 1-2% of dozens of aptitude and intelligence tests" sounds like I'm lording it over those who haven't. But I don't think it's really all that different than saying "I'm taller than 99% of the population". Except tall people, or people with some other exceptional attribute can get together and commiserate about their exceptional attribute without the kinds of social stigma attached to it that intelligence does. It's very hard to have an honest discussion about being smart without diving into lots of euphemisms and using lots of humbling verbiage. Most people's problems are simple. They just don't want to fix them because the emotional cost for them is high. So they endlessly try to find ways to solve their problems with the minimum of emotional impact and they make no progress. Getting past your own emotions to make forward progress with your life is the best skill almost anybody can make with respect to solving the problems in their life. It's not easy, and I don't mean to minimize the impact emotions have. It was definitely a difficult skill for me to learn (and I'm still learning it). But take money, every single person's money problem is solved with the very simple "don't spend more than you earn". Yet there are literally hundreds of thousands of pages written on financial advice and dealing with personal debt. We think it's a complicate topic, and we treat it like it is, but it's not. I've found that most problems people deal with are similar. I'm pretty overweight, and when I think it's a problem, I come up with all kinds of excuses about it and how to solve it and endlessly mill about not doing anything. But it's hilariously simple for me to solve: exercise more, eat less. But I struggle with it like many people struggle with money or relationships or whatever.
- dclara 13y ago
  Looks like you have extremely high IQ. But IQ is not the only merit leading towards a successful and fulfilling life. When you think most problems people deal with are simple and similar. Take your example, overweighted. You think the solution is simple: exercise more, eat less. Usually it's from an engineer's brain. But probably, you forgot to take your excuses into consideration, that's why you over simplified it. Then you struggled with it like many other people. If you do take all of the aspects into consideration, it's no longer simple any more. When you easily felt bored after you have learn something new, I think it's lacking of depth to learn it more or to find more fundamental problems in it before you skip it. I agree with you in most of the points, but I wish I could see that you can really dive into something and make it a big different for the world. If you cannot find anything with enough challenge for you, you may want to visit here: http://kck.st/JNqv8z http://kck.st/JNqv8z because most people think that they are overwhelmed.
  - bane 13y ago
    > exercise more, eat less. Usually it's from an engineer's brain. But probably, you forgot to take your excuses into consideration, that's why you over simplified it. Then you struggled with it like many other people. If you do take all of the aspects into consideration, it's no longer simple any more. But it is, that's my point. If I went out and jogged instead of being on HN, and cut my portions by 25-30%, I'd be fit as a fiddle. But I simply don't do it because <excuses>. There's nothing complicated about it at all.
    - dclara 13y ago
      Losing weight is not that simple. A short term effect can be made easily. But after a while, your bad habit will drive you back and even your body will feel better to stay at a certain weight, refuse to reduce more. The worse case is it usually bounces back. So short term weight loss does not count. This is a problem that so many people are fighting against, and mostly we are losing. Exercise may help, eat less may help, they are not ultimate solutions. The fundamental thing or the root cause is that our metabolism becomes slow which tends to accumulate more fat, and the energy being absorbed from food is not enough per meal, so we tend to eat more. Increasing the quality of food without junk, all organic and fresh, no transgenes, no trans-fat, is the ultimate solution along with regular exercise. But we may not be able to afford or be willing to pay the cost for staying healthy. It has a long term impact.
mamcx 13y ago
Perhaps is "seem (ie: Look to me) trivially simple" instead of "are trivially simple". I find very hard to be in a "regular" conversation. Bored/dislike me pop, realities, and the normal kind of conversation that people have. Even if I understand that some of that conversations are important or are NOT stupid, still, I can't plug in. Neither talk by phone, or use any kind of chat or social app (even before all that NSA stuff!). Boy, how I regret pass my time in a library, all days, all the time...
- dclara 13y ago
  Sounds not too bad. But what kind of productive things do you do in a library all days?
  - mamcx 13y ago
    Reading. A lot. Pick a book, read (not always fully!), next. Probably I finish all the comics, history, science sections* * The library was mid-sized, and that was the section for kids. Next I move to the full big one, but then I have get out of school, need work, and that kill it...
benched 13y ago
Or maybe that's just what it's like to be smarter than most people. Your comment seems completely full of shit to me, but I'm sure it's because I'm not empathizing enough.

by jakobe 13y ago

bane 13y ago

> This sounds a bit narcissistic. I know. That's the trouble with talking about growing up or being highly intelligent, you end up sounding like a narcissistic prick. Even saying something like "I've tested in the top 1-2% of dozens of aptitude and intelligence tests" sounds like I'm lording it over those who haven't. But I don't think it's really all that different than saying "I'm taller than 99% of the population". Except tall people, or people with some other exceptional attribute can get together and commiserate about their exceptional attribute without the kinds of social stigma attached to it that intelligence does. It's very hard to have an honest discussion about being smart without diving into lots of euphemisms and using lots of humbling verbiage. Most people's problems are simple. They just don't want to fix them because the emotional cost for them is high. So they endlessly try to find ways to solve their problems with the minimum of emotional impact and they make no progress. Getting past your own emotions to make forward progress with your life is the best skill almost anybody can make with respect to solving the problems in their life. It's not easy, and I don't mean to minimize the impact emotions have. It was definitely a difficult skill for me to learn (and I'm still learning it). But take money, every single person's money problem is solved with the very simple "don't spend more than you earn". Yet there are literally hundreds of thousands of pages written on financial advice and dealing with personal debt. We think it's a complicate topic, and we treat it like it is, but it's not. I've found that most problems people deal with are similar. I'm pretty overweight, and when I think it's a problem, I come up with all kinds of excuses about it and how to solve it and endlessly mill about not doing anything. But it's hilariously simple for me to solve: exercise more, eat less. But I struggle with it like many people struggle with money or relationships or whatever.

dclara 13y ago
Looks like you have extremely high IQ. But IQ is not the only merit leading towards a successful and fulfilling life. When you think most problems people deal with are simple and similar. Take your example, overweighted. You think the solution is simple: exercise more, eat less. Usually it's from an engineer's brain. But probably, you forgot to take your excuses into consideration, that's why you over simplified it. Then you struggled with it like many other people. If you do take all of the aspects into consideration, it's no longer simple any more. When you easily felt bored after you have learn something new, I think it's lacking of depth to learn it more or to find more fundamental problems in it before you skip it. I agree with you in most of the points, but I wish I could see that you can really dive into something and make it a big different for the world. If you cannot find anything with enough challenge for you, you may want to visit here: http://kck.st/JNqv8z http://kck.st/JNqv8z because most people think that they are overwhelmed.
- bane 13y ago
  > exercise more, eat less. Usually it's from an engineer's brain. But probably, you forgot to take your excuses into consideration, that's why you over simplified it. Then you struggled with it like many other people. If you do take all of the aspects into consideration, it's no longer simple any more. But it is, that's my point. If I went out and jogged instead of being on HN, and cut my portions by 25-30%, I'd be fit as a fiddle. But I simply don't do it because <excuses>. There's nothing complicated about it at all.
  - dclara 13y ago
    Losing weight is not that simple. A short term effect can be made easily. But after a while, your bad habit will drive you back and even your body will feel better to stay at a certain weight, refuse to reduce more. The worse case is it usually bounces back. So short term weight loss does not count. This is a problem that so many people are fighting against, and mostly we are losing. Exercise may help, eat less may help, they are not ultimate solutions. The fundamental thing or the root cause is that our metabolism becomes slow which tends to accumulate more fat, and the energy being absorbed from food is not enough per meal, so we tend to eat more. Increasing the quality of food without junk, all organic and fresh, no transgenes, no trans-fat, is the ultimate solution along with regular exercise. But we may not be able to afford or be willing to pay the cost for staying healthy. It has a long term impact.

mamcx 13y ago

Perhaps is "seem (ie: Look to me) trivially simple" instead of "are trivially simple". I find very hard to be in a "regular" conversation. Bored/dislike me pop, realities, and the normal kind of conversation that people have. Even if I understand that some of that conversations are important or are NOT stupid, still, I can't plug in. Neither talk by phone, or use any kind of chat or social app (even before all that NSA stuff!). Boy, how I regret pass my time in a library, all days, all the time...

dclara 13y ago
Sounds not too bad. But what kind of productive things do you do in a library all days?
- mamcx 13y ago
  Reading. A lot. Pick a book, read (not always fully!), next. Probably I finish all the comics, history, science sections* * The library was mid-sized, and that was the section for kids. Next I move to the full big one, but then I have get out of school, need work, and that kill it...

benched 13y ago

Or maybe that's just what it's like to be smarter than most people. Your comment seems completely full of shit to me, but I'm sure it's because I'm not empathizing enough.