I had the good fortune of having dyslexia and ADD before they tested these kinds of things, and eventually went on to become a high school dropout. Ultimately I went to university, got five degrees including a PhD from Yale. I published two papers in Nature journals now cited together over 250 times. One, a single author paper, overturned 10 years of high profile theory and originally caused a falling out with my advisor, a MacArthur fellow and one of the giants of Yale. Having grown up never feeling smart I was always intellectually humble and assumed I was wrong. I found my new theoretical discovery because I noticed an anomaly -- apparently others had encountered before, but swept it under the carpet. I on the other hand assumed I must have done something wrong and so I kept digging until I Worked out the answer. If you're too smart you can also be too confident in your own abilities to extrapolate and interpolate.
There's a lot here that resonates with me beyond matters of intelligence.
In my spare time I'm a contact juggler. If you don't know what that it is, it involves rolling balls around the body. David Bowie in Labyrinth is usually a good reference point.
And I'm good at it. I'm good at it because I've been doing it for nearly a decade and I've put in the hours. I don't think I learned particularly quickly, or even particularly well, but I stuck with it and worked hard to improve. I'm not shy about telling people that, but many still seem to assume it's some form of innate talent, no matter how much I reassure them otherwise.
It's as though people would rather accept their own status quos rather than believe that effort and commitment is enough to improve their lot. Yes, it might take years to reach a level of skill in a given discipline, but those years will pass anyway. Wouldn't it be nice to have something more to show for all that time than a depression on the sofa in front of the tv?
That's consistent with my experience as a musician. I'm no prodigy. I don't have a musican background. When I started out, I couldn't sing in tune and I couldn't clap in time. All I did was dick around on the guitar on and off for over a decade. I've gotten pretty good at it just by sucking at it for a long time, and reducing the suckage one little bit at a time.
Professional musicians simply do the same thing, but far more intensively, rigorously, systematically. Hours and hours of practice day after week after month after year.
EDIT: Also, to be fair, I think what stops a lot of people is– when they start out, they really suck, and they simply can't envision the path from sucking to being good. Because it involves many qualitative transformations. The mythologizing we do of successful people doesn't help. We get told this story about how all the people at the top one day discovered that they loved something so much that they wanted to work on it really hard forever. If this narrative changed, I think more people would get good at more things.
Scott Adams, of Dilbert fame, talks about this in his last book. From memory, I believe he postulates that there are two kinds of people when it comes to cultivating talent.
The first kind is the one who is willing to try the same thing over and over and over. An example of this is learning to spin a basketball on your finger. If you're willing to try it a thousand times, eventually you will get very good at it.
The second kind is less patient and gets bored repeating things. So for them it's more about constantly learning something new.
I don't know that these are mutually exclusive, but perhaps people lean toward one form over the other.
I remember the painful feeling in college of solving problems in reverse. That is to say; when presented with a problem, there are no intrinsic reasons propelling me to solve it with any meaningful gusto. Only extrinsic motivators like getting a paper in on time, or adding another small jigsaw piece to the body of knowledge I must somehow cache in my head until exam time.
An utter waste of time and not relevant to the real world. That is why I dropped out.
The writing can be repetitive but the core ideas and science IMO should be read and understood by everyone especially those who think that talent is solely innate.
While this is a good read. I think what differentiates the top 5% of the bell curve(people at MIT) in terms of success is probably different from what differentiates the rest of the bell curve.
For instance what accounts for the variation in play between a bunch of 7 foot tall basketball players is not what separates them from a gentleman of 5'5. Most research backs this up. The gap in achievement between an IQ of 115->130 is far large than 145->160.
I actually don't think the divide is between smartness and hard work, it is between smartness and originality. Originality is the wedge and hard work is the sledge hammer. All smartness provides is a torch to find the wedge in the darkness of our ignorance.
This is actually closer to what Grothendieck writes in Recoltes et Semailles:
"Yet it is not these gifts, nor the most determined ambition combined with irresistible will-power, that enables one to surmount the "invisible yet formidable boundaries" that encircle our universe. Only innocence can surmount them, which mere knowledge doesn't even take into account, in those moments when we find ourselves able to listen to things, totally and intensely absorbed in child play."
I love this analogy. One of my former professors once explained pure mathematics as a pitch black room, and writing proofs is like wandering around in that room looking for a light source -- often stubbing a few toes along the way. Once a proof is complete, a light has illuminated the room for others to enter safely. The mathematician often finds the room boring and moves on to another pitch black room.
The hard work is wandering around in the dark. Intelligence is the ability and willingness to wander around.
Great metaphor, but I think smartness is something even lesser than a torch. Creativity, it seems, is the torch that helps you find the right wedge. Smartness is probably what tells you to look for a wedge in the first place.
All my life I heard from people "you're so smart, you have so much potential, but you need to try" while I failed through school due to challenges focusing, and, frankly, giving a shit. In the end, I carried this "you're so smart, but" attitude around with me to both my benefit and detriment.
I have no CS degree but have elbowed my way (often with a distinct lack of grace, in retrospect) into the industry as a software developer. I now somehow work at a place that prides itself on intense meritocracy, famous for its grueling elitist interviews .... and the impostor syndrome is intense. But when I look around, most of the people around me do not seem so much 'more intelligent' as 'more adapted for the school-grades / work-politics system' which the interview process / promo process selects for.
To me intelligence and smartness are clearly cultural phenomenon. Yes some people are more adapted to certain types of intellectual activity, but whether those things are 'smart' or not is questionable to me.
As a parent I often get frustrated with myself when I instinctually reward my children with comments like "you're so smart". Unfortunately they struggle with focusing, behavioural compliance, etc. in similar ways to me, while their intellectual and artistic curiosity is intense -- I know they have a long uphill battle ahead of them.
I should add that one of the most frustrating things for me is to stand in the microkitchen at work and listen to the (overwhelmingly male, white, middle class background) engineering/CS grads around me bitch about garbage worker strikes or unions in general, while they snack on organic chocolate and pat themselves on the back for having run the gauntlet of HS/university/interview-process. To me, the world of unskilled labour and precarious employment seems only a mis-step or two away...
Being smart (and intelligence in general - I dont know if we need to establish exactly what definition we use for that, but something like an ability to quickly see and adjust to logical patterns) is a great secondary ability in my view.
You can simulate a lot of actually useful abilities by being smart. Being smart doesnt have a lot of value in and of itself, once you're over some certain threshold though.
Getting stuff done, not being a dick to people (or even possibly getting along with them), following up on commitments - that's abilities that are useful. Being smart can let you find easier ways of doing so, but it doesnt have any meaning in and of itself.
The truly smart people I know seem to know that and tend to be a bunch of slightly weird, but nice, people. The people who want to be admired for their cleverness (or admired in general) typically don't (and typically aren't as smart, in my experience).
You shouldn't praise children for being smart, but for trying hard or working hard or doing a good job. Because being smart is not something they control, but working hard is
The older I get, the more wise I get, the more I believe in the above statement. As in, not having the mental capacity or brain-power to muse over inequities both in personal and worldly topics is a less emotionally affective position to be in. I grew up in a protestant Christian faith, and while I don't actively participate, I do reflect often on some of the teachings (mostly the Beatitudes) and literature, and only in my 20s did I realize that "Eating the apple from the tree of life" is pretty much a metaphor for our evolutionary development into consciousness, of "knowing right and wrong" as a species.
Intelligence? It's a curse as much as it is a blessing. Folks can disagree with that assertion if they'd like. From my personal studies in literature and philosophy though, I think it's a pretty common understanding amongst a certain tier of thinkers. My apology if I come off sounding a little elitist, but intelligence is a bell curve, and, to quote the famous Demotivational poster, "Not everybody gets to be an astronaut when they grow up."[0]
A physics professor in college used to say "learning is a spiral" - you go around and around a concept a few times, getting closer to understanding each time. I quite liked that as a model for learning - don't get demoralized if you don't hit the target on the first pass.
What I've noticed is that hard work doesn't bear the same fruit for everyone. I worked my ass off in university. I knew others who did too, but they accomplished far more with fewer mistakes. I've also met people who were dedicated in their studies and just seemed to hit the wall with grasping some concepts in math. It was really painful to see this, they weren't lazy or unmotivated, but they often had understanding that fell short of their enthusiasm. It's not just "hard work." Innate talent exists that cannot be compensated by effort, optimistic mindset etc.
"“Before I put a sketch on paper, the whole idea is worked out mentally. In my mind I change the construction, make improvements, and even operate the device. Without ever having drawn a sketch I can give the measurements of all parts to workmen, and when completed all these parts will fit, just as certainly as though I had made the actual drawings. It is immaterial to me whether I run my machine in my mind or test it in my shop."
i'm betting practice/hard work didn't give him that ability. could you imagine trying to compete with him in school? good luck.
One must be careful of conflating the distinct effects of expectations of intelligence and intelligence itself. The former exerts psychological pressure[0], the latter is a catalyst for success. It's often possible to have one without another.
While the article was interesting, I wonder if the 50% of dropouts is really caused by people feeling like they are not smart enough. I've met quite a few people who dropped out of good PhD programs, but most of them dropped out because they felt like they weren't in love with research and didn't think it made sense over going into industry and making a lot more money. I met one person who got into a top 10 program but never intended to finish his PhD; he just wanted to get a free Master's.
On the other hand I also have heard from many that grad school is the first time many students have to see a therapist and deal with depression.
It's funny how it seems that only really smart people do the hard work required for winning Nobel Prizes, Fields Medals and other such distinctions.
Average people are just lazy, that's why they don't succeed!
I think that a large part of it are psychological / personality factors - how much pleasure do you find in thinking, learning new things, solving problems.
We see so much of the smart vs hard work argument. It seems heavily biased towards the argument of hard work. But, I wonder if there a way to quantify and measure so that we might be able to get an objective argument?
I've read similar things before, and totally agree with them, but surely 'the ability to work hard and persevere' varies a lot from person to person according to genetics and environmental factors?
According to Dunning-Kruger effect, and expert should consider his accomplishments trivial in hindsight. Grothendieck and Gauss were mathematicians, not psychologists. It's likely that the predicate of the article is then completely wrong.
Then there is also the impostor syndrome, many students are likely to feel not smart enough.
And then there is the cultural taboo around smartness. Taking pride in ones ability is socially accepted as long as that ability is not intellectual. So in a way idea like this turns into twisted logic: "I'm smart, my laziness in college shows it." And now you get to do that sweet guilt tripping for feeling too smart. There is difference between pride and arrogance. So this self deprecation seems bit needless.
What if we don't consider pride as a sin, but as natural phenomena in range of human emotion. Maybe pride is inevitable for ego? Now if that is true, what should a good student to be proud of? What if being openly proud of your intellect is healthy after all?
According to Dunning-Kruger effect, and expert should consider his accomplishments trivial in hindsight.
All of the graphs in that paper still showed a positive correlation between actual and self-perceived skill. Self-perception was just compressed into the range of around 50% to around 75%, instead of the full 0% to 100% of their measurement scale.
Why would an expert consider his/her accomplishments trivial? I thought that Dunning Kruger just implied people who aren't good think they are much better than they are, but people who are experts would already know they are better than most.
Dunning-Kruger is a trend in data. It tells you nothing about what you should do, and you're way off base by suggesting that it does. It's a measurement, not a morality.
> `The brain is ultimately just a muscle. Make it stronger by working it out.'
I like the analogy that things are "muscles". It concisely captures various phenomena that I've observed: the brain is a muscle, willpower is a muscle, trust (in another person) is a muscle ...
One more important thing to notice is, the illusion of 'smart', 'evil genius' or 'magic' appears from the fact that beyond a point of learning your skills grow exponentially in proportion to your practice/work. The initial grunt work, which is boring, tiring and mentally exhausting without offering much results is a right of passage you need to take reach those levels.
I've had this repeatedly told to me about how some person who was an perceived an idiot/slow mover has now suddenly become very talented, achieved much or gotten rich. Oh well, that's because all exponential curves look dead until they actually start to rise, and from there on they indeed look magical in their output.
This looks like a re-hash of the findings published in a 2008 book by Malcolm Gladwell called "Outliers - The Story of Success". He's the one that made the 10,000 hour theory popular.
This broadcasts an encouraging message. While I still think actual success depends on a good deal of sheer luck, we needn't despair because we're missing some irreplaceable gift. Even in this respect, all humans are created equal.
[+] [-] rdlecler1|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] taliesinb|10 years ago|reply
Funny, I think I remember reading this paper when I was playing with a-life around 2009.
How did this Yale giant respond when you explained your concerns? And after you published?
[+] [-] kalms|10 years ago|reply
It also sounds a bit like impostor syndrome.
[+] [-] iMark|10 years ago|reply
In my spare time I'm a contact juggler. If you don't know what that it is, it involves rolling balls around the body. David Bowie in Labyrinth is usually a good reference point.
And I'm good at it. I'm good at it because I've been doing it for nearly a decade and I've put in the hours. I don't think I learned particularly quickly, or even particularly well, but I stuck with it and worked hard to improve. I'm not shy about telling people that, but many still seem to assume it's some form of innate talent, no matter how much I reassure them otherwise.
It's as though people would rather accept their own status quos rather than believe that effort and commitment is enough to improve their lot. Yes, it might take years to reach a level of skill in a given discipline, but those years will pass anyway. Wouldn't it be nice to have something more to show for all that time than a depression on the sofa in front of the tv?
[+] [-] visakanv|10 years ago|reply
Professional musicians simply do the same thing, but far more intensively, rigorously, systematically. Hours and hours of practice day after week after month after year.
I once transcribed a post I read about this called The Mundanity of Excellence, by Daniel Chambliss: http://www.visakanv.com/blog/2014/01/the-mundanity-of-excell...
EDIT: Also, to be fair, I think what stops a lot of people is– when they start out, they really suck, and they simply can't envision the path from sucking to being good. Because it involves many qualitative transformations. The mythologizing we do of successful people doesn't help. We get told this story about how all the people at the top one day discovered that they loved something so much that they wanted to work on it really hard forever. If this narrative changed, I think more people would get good at more things.
[+] [-] drumdance|10 years ago|reply
The first kind is the one who is willing to try the same thing over and over and over. An example of this is learning to spin a basketball on your finger. If you're willing to try it a thousand times, eventually you will get very good at it.
The second kind is less patient and gets bored repeating things. So for them it's more about constantly learning something new.
I don't know that these are mutually exclusive, but perhaps people lean toward one form over the other.
[+] [-] anon4|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] enginnr|10 years ago|reply
An utter waste of time and not relevant to the real world. That is why I dropped out.
[+] [-] wellpast|10 years ago|reply
http://mindsetonline.com/whatisit/about/
The writing can be repetitive but the core ideas and science IMO should be read and understood by everyone especially those who think that talent is solely innate.
[+] [-] 1812Overture|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mekal|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ph33r|10 years ago|reply
https://www.reddit.com/r/confession/comments/nxdzz/im_not_as...
[+] [-] JamesBarney|10 years ago|reply
For instance what accounts for the variation in play between a bunch of 7 foot tall basketball players is not what separates them from a gentleman of 5'5. Most research backs this up. The gap in achievement between an IQ of 115->130 is far large than 145->160.
[+] [-] matsur|10 years ago|reply
http://www.vanadac.com/~dajhorn/novelties/ESR%20-%20Curse%20...
[+] [-] Nimitz14|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danieltillett|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vzcx|10 years ago|reply
"Yet it is not these gifts, nor the most determined ambition combined with irresistible will-power, that enables one to surmount the "invisible yet formidable boundaries" that encircle our universe. Only innocence can surmount them, which mere knowledge doesn't even take into account, in those moments when we find ourselves able to listen to things, totally and intensely absorbed in child play."
http://www.fermentmagazine.org/rands/promenade11.html
[+] [-] chrisdbaldwin|10 years ago|reply
The hard work is wandering around in the dark. Intelligence is the ability and willingness to wander around.
[+] [-] tatx|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] loblollyboy|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cmrdporcupine|10 years ago|reply
I have no CS degree but have elbowed my way (often with a distinct lack of grace, in retrospect) into the industry as a software developer. I now somehow work at a place that prides itself on intense meritocracy, famous for its grueling elitist interviews .... and the impostor syndrome is intense. But when I look around, most of the people around me do not seem so much 'more intelligent' as 'more adapted for the school-grades / work-politics system' which the interview process / promo process selects for.
To me intelligence and smartness are clearly cultural phenomenon. Yes some people are more adapted to certain types of intellectual activity, but whether those things are 'smart' or not is questionable to me.
As a parent I often get frustrated with myself when I instinctually reward my children with comments like "you're so smart". Unfortunately they struggle with focusing, behavioural compliance, etc. in similar ways to me, while their intellectual and artistic curiosity is intense -- I know they have a long uphill battle ahead of them.
[+] [-] cmrdporcupine|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jib|10 years ago|reply
You can simulate a lot of actually useful abilities by being smart. Being smart doesnt have a lot of value in and of itself, once you're over some certain threshold though.
Getting stuff done, not being a dick to people (or even possibly getting along with them), following up on commitments - that's abilities that are useful. Being smart can let you find easier ways of doing so, but it doesnt have any meaning in and of itself.
The truly smart people I know seem to know that and tend to be a bunch of slightly weird, but nice, people. The people who want to be admired for their cleverness (or admired in general) typically don't (and typically aren't as smart, in my experience).
[+] [-] vasilipupkin|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 6stringmerc|10 years ago|reply
The older I get, the more wise I get, the more I believe in the above statement. As in, not having the mental capacity or brain-power to muse over inequities both in personal and worldly topics is a less emotionally affective position to be in. I grew up in a protestant Christian faith, and while I don't actively participate, I do reflect often on some of the teachings (mostly the Beatitudes) and literature, and only in my 20s did I realize that "Eating the apple from the tree of life" is pretty much a metaphor for our evolutionary development into consciousness, of "knowing right and wrong" as a species.
Intelligence? It's a curse as much as it is a blessing. Folks can disagree with that assertion if they'd like. From my personal studies in literature and philosophy though, I think it's a pretty common understanding amongst a certain tier of thinkers. My apology if I come off sounding a little elitist, but intelligence is a bell curve, and, to quote the famous Demotivational poster, "Not everybody gets to be an astronaut when they grow up."[0]
[0]Link to photo I found via Google search: http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0535/6917/products/potentia...
[+] [-] ahussain|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nether|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mekal|10 years ago|reply
"“Before I put a sketch on paper, the whole idea is worked out mentally. In my mind I change the construction, make improvements, and even operate the device. Without ever having drawn a sketch I can give the measurements of all parts to workmen, and when completed all these parts will fit, just as certainly as though I had made the actual drawings. It is immaterial to me whether I run my machine in my mind or test it in my shop."
i'm betting practice/hard work didn't give him that ability. could you imagine trying to compete with him in school? good luck.
[+] [-] fengwick3|10 years ago|reply
[0] http://web.stanford.edu/dept/CTL/cgi-bin/academicskillscoach...
[+] [-] rifung|10 years ago|reply
On the other hand I also have heard from many that grad school is the first time many students have to see a therapist and deal with depression.
[+] [-] davidiach|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] omtose|10 years ago|reply
>for succeeding in graduate school
[+] [-] pzone|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] RivieraKid|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] personjerry|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] refrigerator|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vlehto|10 years ago|reply
Then there is also the impostor syndrome, many students are likely to feel not smart enough.
And then there is the cultural taboo around smartness. Taking pride in ones ability is socially accepted as long as that ability is not intellectual. So in a way idea like this turns into twisted logic: "I'm smart, my laziness in college shows it." And now you get to do that sweet guilt tripping for feeling too smart. There is difference between pride and arrogance. So this self deprecation seems bit needless.
What if we don't consider pride as a sin, but as natural phenomena in range of human emotion. Maybe pride is inevitable for ego? Now if that is true, what should a good student to be proud of? What if being openly proud of your intellect is healthy after all?
[+] [-] tbrownaw|10 years ago|reply
All of the graphs in that paper still showed a positive correlation between actual and self-perceived skill. Self-perception was just compressed into the range of around 50% to around 75%, instead of the full 0% to 100% of their measurement scale.
[+] [-] rifung|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|10 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] kolinko|10 years ago|reply
http://www.talyarkoni.org/blog/2010/07/07/what-the-dunning-k...
[+] [-] Retra|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tome|10 years ago|reply
I like the analogy that things are "muscles". It concisely captures various phenomena that I've observed: the brain is a muscle, willpower is a muscle, trust (in another person) is a muscle ...
[+] [-] agumonkey|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yetanotheracc|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kamaal|10 years ago|reply
I've had this repeatedly told to me about how some person who was an perceived an idiot/slow mover has now suddenly become very talented, achieved much or gotten rich. Oh well, that's because all exponential curves look dead until they actually start to rise, and from there on they indeed look magical in their output.
[+] [-] Sealy|10 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outliers_(book)
Its a #1 Best-Seller on Amazon: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Outliers-Story-Success-Malcolm-Gladw...
[+] [-] tempodox|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] octatoan|10 years ago|reply
It seems timezones matter a lot. :)
[+] [-] gypsy_boots|10 years ago|reply