4 ms·

Does he consider himself a failure? Some percentage of very intelligent people just don't care about "success". They have rich inner lives and hobbies and inter

Does he consider himself a failure? Some percentage of very intelligent people just don't care about "success". They have rich inner lives and hobbies and interesting friends, if they can find some. It could be that he's found a job that doesn’t cause him much stress, that he excels at compared to his colleagues, and allows him to pay for the pleasures of being alive. Much of pure math is the pursuit of difficult problems that may or may not be of any use to anyone. You ever hear this line: "Winning the Fields medal tells you two things about a person, that they were capable of achieving great things and that they didn't." It's not clear to me that he would have contributed more to the world had he become some high-status academic. Different goals lead to different outcomes, regardless of innate ability.

sz4kerto 12y ago
One always has to look at the whole person to understand whether he performs relatively well or not. The guy I was talking about is extremely risk averse. That makes steep careers quite difficult. But all in all, he's probably a happy person. Another example: MENSA says I'm way inside the top 1% when it comes to IQ tests (I didn't want to say 'intelligence'). I don't think I'm in the top 1% most successful people in my current environment, but that's all right as I'm coming from a poor village from a postcommunist country, and everything that comes with it (lack of good education, etc.). So compared to that, I'm doing all right, but naturally it's very difficult to catch up with people who could go to Stanford or Oxford. Not because it's difficult to learn the 'hard science stuff' -- I interviewed many Oxbridge guys and they're not that better than the others when it comes to hard tech/science knowledge. However, they're much better in social skills, self-confidence, usually have better network, family connections, etc. And those things matter a lot. And I'm a big believer of luck and randomness. Since I've got a kid I wonder how do we even survive, life is so risky, starting from the birth itself. Anyway, I think perspective gives you more happiness. At least it did for me.
- Dewie 12y ago
  > And I'm a big believer of luck and randomness. Indeed. Like, for example, being born with a high IQ?
  - sz4kerto 12y ago
    Yes, absolutely. Brains, geolocation, family, this is all just blind luck.
pervycreeper 12y ago
>You ever hear this line: "Winning the Fields medal tells you two things about a person, that they were capable of achieving great things and that they didn't." Would you mind explaining this a little bit more, please? I would imagine that significant or groundbreaking mathematical discoveries qualify as "great things" by someone's reckoning.
- gjm11 12y ago
  But not by the reckoning of whoever coined that phrase. Most work in pure mathematics -- even outstandingly brilliant work done by outstandingly brilliant people -- is never useful outside pure mathematics. If you regard pure mathematics as very valuable in its own right, that's no problem. But if you care mostly about practical benefits, you might think that someone with the mental characteristics needed to win a Fields Medal would have done better to use that wonderful brain for something that benefits the world more. (For my part, I'm glad that some people with wonderful brains use them to enrich pure mathematics, because I happen to love pure mathematics. But I think those more practically minded people have a point.)
  - pervycreeper 12y ago
    >Most work in pure mathematics -- even outstandingly brilliant work done by outstandingly brilliant people -- is never useful outside pure mathematics. Perhaps this is untrue on a timescale of decades or centuries.
    - gcr 12y ago
      Applications mine from pure math all the time. See this SO answer for a wide range of other fields' problems that were solved with pure math. I see things from cryptography, graphics, distributed computing, chemistry, ... http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/280530/can-you-provide-me-historical-examples-of-pure-mathematics-becoming-useful http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/280530/can-you-provi... The list is expansive if you care to look for it.
      - 12y ago

sz4kerto 12y ago

One always has to look at the whole person to understand whether he performs relatively well or not. The guy I was talking about is extremely risk averse. That makes steep careers quite difficult. But all in all, he's probably a happy person. Another example: MENSA says I'm way inside the top 1% when it comes to IQ tests (I didn't want to say 'intelligence'). I don't think I'm in the top 1% most successful people in my current environment, but that's all right as I'm coming from a poor village from a postcommunist country, and everything that comes with it (lack of good education, etc.). So compared to that, I'm doing all right, but naturally it's very difficult to catch up with people who could go to Stanford or Oxford. Not because it's difficult to learn the 'hard science stuff' -- I interviewed many Oxbridge guys and they're not that better than the others when it comes to hard tech/science knowledge. However, they're much better in social skills, self-confidence, usually have better network, family connections, etc. And those things matter a lot. And I'm a big believer of luck and randomness. Since I've got a kid I wonder how do we even survive, life is so risky, starting from the birth itself. Anyway, I think perspective gives you more happiness. At least it did for me.

Dewie 12y ago
> And I'm a big believer of luck and randomness. Indeed. Like, for example, being born with a high IQ?
- sz4kerto 12y ago
  Yes, absolutely. Brains, geolocation, family, this is all just blind luck.

pervycreeper 12y ago

>You ever hear this line: "Winning the Fields medal tells you two things about a person, that they were capable of achieving great things and that they didn't." Would you mind explaining this a little bit more, please? I would imagine that significant or groundbreaking mathematical discoveries qualify as "great things" by someone's reckoning.

gjm11 12y ago
But not by the reckoning of whoever coined that phrase. Most work in pure mathematics -- even outstandingly brilliant work done by outstandingly brilliant people -- is never useful outside pure mathematics. If you regard pure mathematics as very valuable in its own right, that's no problem. But if you care mostly about practical benefits, you might think that someone with the mental characteristics needed to win a Fields Medal would have done better to use that wonderful brain for something that benefits the world more. (For my part, I'm glad that some people with wonderful brains use them to enrich pure mathematics, because I happen to love pure mathematics. But I think those more practically minded people have a point.)
- pervycreeper 12y ago
  >Most work in pure mathematics -- even outstandingly brilliant work done by outstandingly brilliant people -- is never useful outside pure mathematics. Perhaps this is untrue on a timescale of decades or centuries.
  - gcr 12y ago
    Applications mine from pure math all the time. See this SO answer for a wide range of other fields' problems that were solved with pure math. I see things from cryptography, graphics, distributed computing, chemistry, ... http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/280530/can-you-provide-me-historical-examples-of-pure-mathematics-becoming-useful http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/280530/can-you-provi... The list is expansive if you care to look for it.
    - 12y ago