Others have touched on this, but ultimately the most vital trait a person can possess is perseverance and a bias for action. I would gladly work with a mediocre person who works relentlessly at improving their skills and figuring out solutions. I don’t enjoy working with “gifted” people who have plenty of ideas and few actions to show for it. Intelligence can make you risk averse, and you’re useless if you’re too afraid to take any action.
bias for action
Bezos intensifies
Which is the curse, built in risk aversion. 🥴
Boy I sure wish I had a 6 hr video explaining the incredibly racist origins of the Bell curve which has no value at all scientifically speaking, perhaps even by a Liverpudlian narrator of sorts
You might need to elaborate. I’m confused at the Bell curve (which is a visual representation of the normal distribution) not having any value at all.
The Central Limit Theorem guarantees that the normal distribution will show up all over the place. To say that it has no value scientifically is simply false.
i am making a joke about the youtuber skullboi shaun and his very longform essay methodology, especially this video on the bell curve book
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a bell curve is just a normal distribution lol
do you mean the BOOK “The Bell Curve”? the frenology book? yeah i think most of us here get that frenology is racist
do you mean the racist origins behind IQ?
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I’m in this picture and it makes me keenly aware of what I could accomplish if I didn’t just coast by
Go with what makes you happiest, most often more effort can lead to less rewards. Ultimately you have to find your comfort zone.
wise words. I started just playing to my strengths a few years ago, instead of overachieving for the nebulous award of being “the best”, and my life has gotten immensely more fulfilling.
my current employer isn’t asking me to be the best in my field, just good at what I do, and that feels great. I get shit done, and don’t feel the need to constantly reinvent the wheel. or feel the stress of failure when something is over my head.
I’m in this picture too, but the red part
AscendedMeme.jpg: Being Dumb | Being Gifted | Being Just Smart Enough to Coast by Easily in life while enjoying it.
We all think we are there, it’s not a good mentality. No judgement, I am with you
Had the top conversation in third grade. Have spent the rest of my life in the blue zone.
I avoided it by coasting, they did testing in kindergarten and I realized fast I didn’t want the attention. Especially being treated like a trophy by my dad.
Do I regret coasting now, of course. Do it for your self-confidence, later in life you’ll be happier you did.
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This is funny, but even the most intelligent people are inflicted with this. Don’t let it keep you down, we cannot be good at everything.
Its been consistently self-reported by Harvard students. And another effect is present, too - excellence leads to being placed in competitive environments, where everyone else is just as excellent. And this can make brilliant people feel stupid.
No we’re not, you’re just in the blue zone. Us greens are quite happy.
Found the red
Intelligence also doesn’t necessarily translate to actual success. I’ve been through numerous assessments as a child that confirmed I am comfortably in the “green zone” (if measured by IQ, that is), but I also have pretty severe ADHD so I can only really make use of my brain for short periods of time.
I can get a week’s worth of work done in a day, but only once a week, and I spend the rest of the week wondering where I’d be if only I could work like that every day. I was also a decent student in school/uni but never near the top of the class, because I couldn’t bring myself to study for anything more than a few days before the exam.
Well, there necessarily need to also exist below average Harvard students. Its probably more of a shock to have the one thing you might have been proud of, being rather smart, be taken away once you get there and realize you are probably at most average and have to find a new identity
But its just an illusion.
Who wants to bet that most commenters will place themselves in the blue zone?
Thankfully I can look down on everyone as I’m firmly at the top of that curve.
Is it surprising that people like that gravitate to a place like this?
No it’s not and it’s also weird to treat that percentile as if people in it are extremely rare. People who fall in the blue area (noticably higher than average intelligence, but not exceptional) are about 15% of the population. The problem is that people somehow feel attacked if someone claims themself to be clever and it’s accepted to shame them for that.
A lack of self-awareness does come with its perks.
Ah, the Asperger’s Zone
Show this comic to 100 people and almost all will think they’re in the blue zone.
This is like those ADHD memes which just list every one of life’s inconveniences or challenges as some kind of “symptom.”
Everyone has these feelings, it’s not a curse, it’s just life.
As demonstrated by the comments in this thread.
I guess you didn’t realize that pretty much every ND diagnostic criteria is something that pretty much every human experiences to some degree or another, but people who experience them to levels where it negatively impacts their life can get diagnosed and treated so that they can attempt to live a “normal” life. It’s not some big gotcha you just figured out, it’s part of the actual diagnostic criteria for the conditions.
Can’t find the source right now, but some tweet compared it to peeing. Everybody has to pee, but when you have to go 30 times a day, there is obviously something different about you.
Sure, and an earache can be nothing or a symptom of a brain tumor. That’s the problem with a bunch of people self diagnosing based on WebMD or memes.
Can you not try to drag ppl with ADHD thru the mud? Odds are you really don’t know what you’re talking about.
Fully agree. It’s strange that people think that being aware of ones deficits is beholden to people of above average intelligence. Being aware of your own limitations is a pretty basic human trait.
Everyone has these feelings
Not me!
Being gifted only refers to intelligence most of the time. But intelligence alone won’t make a person excel at their field. You can be among the most intelligent people but still stay in the blue zone.
I think excellence comes to be when intelligence meets motivation, purpose, creativity, social skills or other factors.
And when it comes to the blue zone resilience would be a key factor. If one is intelligent of course you realize your faults quicker as well. However it takes resilience to keep going in the face of your own doubt.
That’s why in the real world people who are very convinced of themselves and their own ideas will get far even if not gifted at all.
Agreed with most of your post but uhhhhhhh
That’s why in the real world people who are very convinced of themselves and their own ideas will get far even if not gifted at all
Confidence isn’t as good for finding the truth or good solutions as it is for tricking other people’s brains into thinking that you’re a reputable source of information. If you mean “will get very far” as in “capable of raising through the ranks of a hierarchy, regardless of what they actually do with their position later” or “capable of establishing their own little flat-earth cult”, then sure, a confident dumb person can achieve that. Not sure that’s something to be celebrated though.
Absolutely agree. I meant exactly what you said.
This just reads like a post about how you should be a good little capitalist slave.
Or you could read it as critical of capitalism.
“motivation, purpose, social skills, creativity” arguably all valued more under socialism/communism (admittedly there’s a lot of semantics going on under the hood here). Which is why so much tallent goes to waste as grist in the capitalist mill.
They don’t mention a job once. “Field” can refer to study, or anything else.
Imagine how mediocre you’d have to be to reply like that.
You don’t think weren’t “gifted, motivated” people in Soviet communist Russia?
Sooo mediocre. That’s why it reads like a dumb capitalist plug.
In Soviet Russia everyone is excellent
Holy shit guys, I get the anti work rhetoric, but you’re essentially saying “don’t work hard for anything, just live by coasting”. I really hope this pendulum stops swinging and finds a happy medium
Yeah, I don’t really give a shit anymore. After covid, and seeing how my country treated it as political, and how people are disposable, why would I want to try? I have a job, they think I’m good at it, and it keeps a roof over my head.
I’ve been making other people large piles of money off of my work my entire adult life and I just don’t care anymore.
I’ve had jobs where I didn’t try before, and I just got super bored. My above comment isn’t even necessarily regarding jobs, it’s regarding putting in effort in life. It applies to personal projects etc too. I have an issue with procrastination because of my childhood, and I find it really satisfying when I can actually focus and get a project done.
If you get enjoyment out of doing fuck all, then more power to you, but myself and many others actually enjoy doing things.
on the topic of iq, i have a lot of problems with the way people seem to interact with the concept. there’s a bunch of assumptions all baked into it:
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iq is a variable that actually exists in nature
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people’s iq is static and follows a standard distribution
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iq tests are capable of objectively measuring or at least approximating this variable
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this variable is a good stand-in or even synonymous with cognitive ability
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cognitive ability is univariate or single-faceted, able to be described with a single number
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cognitive ability equates to or correlates with usefulness, happiness, sociability, success, whatever
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finally, that any of this really matters, like in a materially impactful way, or is something that we should focus on
it’s not that each of these statements is 100% wrong, it’s that each shouldn’t be assumed to be true. but the way i usually see iq invoked kinda just uncritically runs with all of them, contained within a neat little ideological package.
also a pet theory i like (that isn’t actually true or provable) is that gifted programs are meant to remove children deemed smarter from their communities and funnel them into middle management and academia, so they don’t become agitators for change in their communities and workplaces
That could be true, but I think only if there’s a systemic effort to diagnose and put those children into specialized establishments. Where I’m from, it doesn’t appear to be the case.
Get back to your green region you smart guy, we’re having a moment of melancholy over arbitrary metric here.
IQ is like the difference between a CPU and a GPU expressed in one number. You should rather care for your strengths and weaknesses.
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Yeah, the less stupid you are, the more you realize how stupid you really are.
The smart kid who’s just not smart enough to achieve the big goals and should always suffer from what could have been,living an average life.
I like the term “twice exceptional”. All of my biggest strengths are aspects of myself that come with tradeoffs. For 20 years straight, I was praised for the strengths and scolded for the tradeoffs. Motherfucker, you can’t enjoy how quickly I learn things I’m interested in and also treat me like I’m lazy when you expect me to sustain equal amounts of interest in 10 different things that bore me and I fail. You can’t enjoy all the art and tech I make and then get annoyed when it’s difficult to break me out of a hyperfixation.
I firmly believe that the tortured artist stereotype is bullshit. There’s nothing about being an artist that requires you to be miserable. But we sure do treat people like shit when their brains work differently.
The later half is so true, early on when you’re a statistical anomaly you can get special treatment, but once you become a small problem or the skill backfires they blow up as if it couldn’t have been seen coming. They expect 100% efficiency like you’re a battery to sap and don’t care how it affects you mentally.
I still suffer from this. Promising early start, intense self-confidence issues and depression by the end.
Many such cases!
Doubt is a sign of intelligence. Which can sometimes lead to confidence issues. Just try to keep things in perspective and not let doubt keep you from taking calculated risks. It’s when we allow ourselves to become paralyzed that things regress. A lot of it is environment as well so there’s no simple answer but I can assure you thet you’re not alone.
I think I needed to hear this, thank you
The secret is we’re all gifted and talented in our own ways. Our society is structured to benefit and work for a specific kind of gifted and talented. You got to an early start, and then when it was determined your talents weren’t profitable, the problem was framed as you wasting them instead or the system failing you.
Not to mention our current identification of gifted and talented is basically just “So you know how that one kid has ADHD and his lack of structure in their home life results in poor grades? Well we put them in the remedial class. There we will teach them coping and organization skills. Meanwhile, this other kid? They also have ADHD but we don’t realize it because their grades are fantastic. Turns out their home life is stressful in a specific way that means they get good grades, but they don’t really know why or what structure is helping them. I school we will put them in the gifted and talented class. There, they’ll be in an unstructured environment where they can learn and explore at their own pace and OH NO NOW THEY’RE ANXIOUS AND UPSET BECAUSE THEY DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO BECAUSE THEY WERE THRIVING IN THE STRUCTURE OF A REGULAR CLASSROOM”
Our education system is not based on individual need and instead on assuming everyone is basically the same, just more or less advanced
I definitely identify with the second kid. Being tossed around so much because they tried to figure me out and failed definitely doesn’t help. “You’re good! But not good enough.”
I reject uniform distribution theory and only recognize the graph that looks like a pair of torpedo titties.
I can’t unsee it now.
