When I was in school, there wasn't a framework for what is more recently referred to as "twice exceptional." This means that a student is gifted and disabled. ADHD and autism fall into this category.
Gifted students have different needs, and the school environment does not force them to develop the skills they need to succeed as an adult.
Twice exceptional students tend to use a lot of energy just trying to exist, which also prevents skill development. They look like smart students who "don't apply themselves", even if they are putting on their best effort.
> Most gifted children are, in fact, gifted in only one or two areas, often underperforming in others, though not necessarily because they’re unable.
It’s orthodox in education research, widely accepted, widely observed that kids who are REALLY good at one or two things wind up, when you measure them, good at everything.
Imagine if people saw only a few different colors, and few saw the whole rainbow. Those who saw red would point to the trees and discuss the fine aspects of apples there, while the rest would have no clue or wonder why they care. Empathy is a color some see more than others. Timeliness is a color. Indexing life tasks and items to where they should be or how efficiently that can be organized is a color. Math and problem solving are colors that some find a lot more compelling than others.
You are extremely fortunate if the colors you see brightly are commonly seen by others or a part of a self-training loop like math, Montessori games, programming, and language. You have it harder if your favorite subject requires funding to practice, such as chemistry/advanced physics, etc. And you’d better learn how to make millions or billions if you like space stuff or care for gatekeeper-protected disciplines like some niche academia, medicine, regulated stuff, etc.
That said, the world changed recently. GPT4 came out those who have deep interests have a sparring partner they’ve never had before. I doubt it’s anywhere in their priority list, but OpenAI can probably run a fantastic networking mesh for people with niche interests. They’d have to keep the spam /obscenities out, but a group chat for anyone in a topic would be fun and a voice group lounge would be even more amazing. ChatGPT would beat facebook and much other social media for the gifted audience. It’s already the best teacher available (if you discount errors and hallucinations, which are on the decline).
I suspect these educators would probably also be impressed by the intellect of a LLM trained on philosophy books and classic literatures.
Wow, its answers are of a high level quality!
When people read books on certain topics, they start talking the talk.
E.g. “The fatal flaw, as I understand it, in Kant’s deontological ethical system is his disregard of consequentialism.”
Did the kid come up with that himself, or is he just regurgitating, verbatim, a judgment penned by some author he read somewhere? How much of it does he understand?
Might it not be that Georgios is just playing with philosophy and literature in the way, in Billy Joel's "Piano Man", the "waitress is practicing politics"? I.e. picking up talking the talk to sound intelligent and informed. E.g. memorizing some political opinion overheard from one group of customers of the bar, and repeating that later within earshot of another group.
> I discovered Georgios had an IQ of 145, a score in the top 1.33% for the test he took. Put simply, that meant that he was several “mental years” ahead of his peers. If a teacher taught fifty students a year for forty years, they would only meet two or three children with his raw ability.
Unless I'm mistaken, this appears to be off by an order of magnitude.
On the usual IQ scale 145 is 99.865 percentile. In 2000 (50 per year x 40 years) you would expect 2.7 with that IQ or higher, so that part seems right.
I think what is going on is that when it says "top 1.33% for the test he took" it is referring to some test given to children who are already known or expected to have high IQs, and on that test people with IQs of 145 are 98.67 percentile.
Using the standard definition of IQ (mean 100, std dev 15), 145 is +3 standard deviations, so that should be in the top 0.135%, which is consistent with the 2-3 students per career number.
I'm not sure where the article got the 1.3% number, it could be either a decimal point error, or this could be a specific test that's primarily given to gifted students and so both numbers could be correct.
Not to mention that such an IQ is not simply several "mental years" ahead of people who are at 100, it's a qualitative difference to which the 100 cannot catch up.
AFAIK 145 IQ is three standard deviations above the mean in a normal distribution, and only 0.3% will have that score or higher, so I think the article is off by a factor of about 4.
My kids are approaching school age and I worry about them for this reason.
Our state is getting school districts to remove all advanced classes and gifted programs. All in the name of equity. Last year they got rid of all of the advanced math classes in our district because the number of minority students was too low.
Thankfully when I grew up we had enough money for me to go to a private school where they had all of these advanced programs. I would have gone crazy without them.
I'm a hardcore liberal. But... It feels like there's a brand of liberal out there now that has a totally different idea of what equity is and how we should get there to the point where I find I need to sometimes fight on the side of the more conservative parents in our school district. I don't understand how educating smart people became something that my own side hates and fights against.
> Our state is getting school districts to remove all advanced classes and gifted programs. All in the name of equity. Last year they got rid of all of the advanced math classes in our district because the number of minority students was too low.
The public schools I attended while growing up did not have funding for advanced classes. Students who were far ahead in classes with the “gen pop” were pushed into the role of unofficial teacher aides, charged with helping our struggling peers through the class content. It was hugely demoralizing as a student and discouraged doing well.
Similar things are happening in the Bay Area. One thing you can do is get involved with the school board, who oversee the administrators. Another thing you can do is be persistent with the current administrators. It took years of seemingly-useless conversations, but eventually they let my kid do math independently. I assume that I won’t have to push as hard the second time around (I have 2 kids), since I’ve already proven that (1) yes, my child actually is that far ahead, and (2) I am not going to give up.
I’m happy to chat further with parents that are dealing with this. Contact in profile.
We had a school district near me cancel these for a different reason. All the asian parents were pushing kids hard to get into the gifted program and with preparation the test differences between the students was not significant, i.e. they found many more "gifted" than they had space for. It was also proving stressful for the kids.
I have been told that Vonnegut wrote "Harrison Bergeron" as a kind of parody of right-wing thought about left-winger ideas of equality, but it's definitely entered into the realm of "1984 was a warning, not a manual, people."
You will understand it once you realize that the modern progressive movement has abandoned the liberal principles that we grew up with. They have now adopted a Maoist political philosophy.
> At his last school, the philosophy teacher had become irritated. Deciding Georgios was a show-off, he shouted at this meek boy. After that, Georgios never raised his hand again.
> Several teachers told me, “I don’t know how you do it!” By which they meant tolerating Georgios’ odd behaviour. The truth though is that I didn’t always do it. Much of the time, Georgios' clinginess was as irritating to me as it was to them.
As it happens, just before I read this article I had an exchange with GPT-4 about combinatorial mathematics [1]. I wanted to see how feasible it would be to learn about the subject by interacting with it. While I haven’t double-checked everything it told me, I was struck once again by its infinite patience with my questions. It is an amazing resource for students of all kinds—not just gifted ones.
Addendum: Some conversations I had with it about philosophy—the area of interest of the student in the linked article—are at [2]. Again, GPT-4 showed no irritation whatsoever with my questions.
I am again reminded of Huxley's 'Brave New World'.
There was of course the Alphas and the Betas - and the Gammas, Deltas and Epsilons beneath them.
However the very gifted were lifted from this caste system, and placed on the islands, where they might direct the future (or at least that is my somewhat dim recollection/interpretation).
School is a very strange place for the exceptionally gifted student, even moreso if neurodiverse. The student can get 100% on tests and essays with ease, yet cannot understand basic human interactions.
From the perspective of an autistic, ex-teacher who had his IQ measured as "somewhere over 170". I probably have ADHD as well, but a psychiatrist friend says diagnosis fails with people with ridiculously high IQs.
BTW, high IQ = good at solving certain kinds of problem, not a measure of the quality of a person.
It would be nice to see something about gifted people that didn't conflate that with, or allude to, or even mention, ADHD, autism, or other 'neural deficiency'. Some people are just super bright, not just analytically but emotionally/empathically too - get over it.
Unfortunately, just having done that track, it's hard because _a lot_ of the gifted kids I was in class with had some kind of issue. Maybe not being neurodivergent, but there was a lot of mental health issues and obsessive behavior. Being just a standard human who smart was a minority position. It's interesting to me, because at my university those kids didn't have a high presence at all and I'm not sure if college was just biased against them a la gifted burn out stereotype or if I lived in a bubble
And on the other side, having autism, ADHD, etc doesn't necessarily mean you're a super smart child prodigy either. Some people have those diagnoses and are just of normal intelligence, just as some gifted people are neurotypical.
we could also start developing other frame-works for identifying anomalies on intelligence... and treat them accordingly!
a high intelligent logic-oriented-nerd trying to create a big deal isn't much without a high intelligent designer and so on; to the heck this obsession with STEM at the pedagogic world
Serving students like Georgios is one of the things the Soviet Union did very well (of course, there was still discrimination against eg Jews).
In the US, it’s not only disrupted by the activists briefly mentioned in the article, but by the mediocre part of the elite that would rather have such a system not exist or be easily gamed/rigged than to have it exist and their child not in it. Given the more classist nature of life in the UK I’m sure this is even moreso a factor there.
Before this comment section fills with people self diagnosing themselves as geniuses: I feel this.
This post is going to sound pedantic and annoying because … that is what Aspergers does to you.
I can write dozens of pages of highly analytical and technical text without making mistakes in real time. I can speed read complex texts and memorize them with a high degree of precision.
From the “language” perspective I feel highly gifted and unusual. Not so much on the mathematical side. I almost have a disability with mathematics.
I have taught myself advanced skills and switched careers multiple times without the required degrees. Worked at the top companies in the world with PhDs and others.
However. I feel constantly discriminated against and treated like I am stupider than I am. And when people listen to me talk, they get incredibly threatened.
It has taken me years to understand that being around me and listening to me talk, reason and analyze is THREATENING to people.
I have had situations where, even after a few meetings where I felt I was just “talking about how things are” the other person left HATING me.
The way I express myself is perceived almost like being hit with a physical object. I believe I have Aspergers (have tested very highly for it).
I will tell you - it is INCREDIBLY CAREER LIMITING.
I have given up trying to work in the normal world. It just doesn’t work for me. The pattern always repeats - I join a company, I get targeted and singled out and ganged up on.
If you are like me it is like being incredibly advantaged while being incredibly disadvantaged at the same time.
It’s like being Usain Bolt except your sprinting lane has an obstacle course in it while everyone else gets to run in a normal lane.
The obstacle course is DELIBERATELY put there. It is human nature to instantly identify existential threats: People who are unusually more talented than them and take them out.
I have learned, and am adapting.
Unfortunately, if you want to succeed in this world you have to play a set of games, these are games that I really don’t want to play.
If I have to play them, I am going to try to play outside the system.
I have realized that all the advice which most people follow that works for them does not work for me.
I do things completely differently and have to come up with my own strategies about how to operate.
Here is the other reality: If you are very talented and gifted, NO ONE WILL NOTICE AND TELL YOU.
That sounds completely weird but it is true.
No one in my entire life, aside from a few offhand comments, took me aside and went: “uhhh…you are in a completely other category than these people and do not belong here. Do this instead.”
Instead it is the isolation - I do not understand why no one wants to interact or include me, and it happens very fast. Most people get a whiff and go “I have no idea what to do with this and don’t want to be around it.”
If I may help - I am not Asperger, but I know several and have worked with them. I am also "on the spectrum", as are a big chunk of my friends and family. Based on these experiences, it is not that others feel threatened. It's just that we don't have very good social graces, and others find that off-putting. But there is some good news, we can get better:
Me: I read "How To Win Friends And Influence People" by Dale Carnegie when I was a teen, and it changed my life.
Other: (laughs) It obviously didn't work because you're terrible at social graces!
Me: Yeah, but you didn't know me before I read that book!
So there is hope, but reading a book won't work miracles. It's a lifelong struggle with me to learn social graces.
A nice side effect of being "on the spectrum" myself is I enjoy working with people like that, including Aspergers, because I understand where their lack of social graces comes from and it doesn't bother me in the least.
> I can write dozens of pages of highly analytical and technical text without making mistakes in real time. I can speed read complex texts and memorize them with a high degree of precision.
> From the “language” perspective I feel highly gifted and unusual. Not so much on the mathematical side. I almost have a disability with mathematics.
I feel this. “Rough draft? LOL why? I can write a perfectly-structured paper beginning-to-end without having to re-arrange so much as a paragraph, and I don’t make grammatical errors or spelling mistakes that I don’t catch instantly. What’s the point of all these ‘writing steps’?”
Around age 35 I started occasionally making errors in typed text, and not noticing until re-reading it. Leaving out words. I started substituting homophones! I never, ever did that at all, before! Aging sucks.
[edit] I feel, specifically, the brilliant-at-language and hindered-at-math thing, that is. The rest of this, I’d say you’re a fair bit brighter than me. I just took to language naturally very early and have crazy-good spatial reasoning. I feel dyslexic trying to read math, though. I do OK as long as things are algorithm-focused, which is why I can have a career as a programmer, but when it’s equations and proofs, forget about it.
I've got a similar problem but for a different cause. I'm guessing that my intelligence is normal, but my theory of mind instincts are probably better than average. I get a very good idea what people want on an individual by individual basis.
However, my ability to tap into the social zeitgeist is pretty close to zero.
The end result is that I get along fantastically with most people because I can anticipate what they want. But I get along terribly with people who want me to fit in with the social rules that they are playing by. What they want is for me to act normal. And I don't know what that is.
It manifests very similar to what you're describing. After a relatively short period of time certain people get very tuned off by me and they become easily frustrated by my actions.
My theory is that they're diligently playing by the social rules and then I come in, break all of the rules right in front of them, and then I get a mostly positive reception because it's what most of the room wanted anyway (just done in kind of a funny way).
I don't really have a solution.
[At least for me things get really interesting whenever I interact with sales people. As far as I can tell like 90% of that profession runs on everyone following the appropriate social scripts. I barely understand them so thus far I've not encountered a sales tactic that actually works on me. Occasionally they get really desperate as their best plays get met with awkward silence or declining their bad deal.
The flip side is that they don't understand me either so asking for what I want doesn't seem to work. I just have to hope I'm able to find something that makes do. ]
> I can write dozens of pages of highly analytical and technical text without making mistakes in real time. I can speed read complex texts and memorize them with a high degree of precision. From the “language” perspective I feel highly gifted and unusual. [...] And when people listen to me talk, they get incredibly threatened
If your language skills are as advanced and analytical as you claim, then you should apply that innate skill to the problem of finding ways to communicate without making people feel threatened. For instance, tailor (limit) your vocabulary for your audience and don't correct other people's inconsequential errors. And of course refrain from telling people about how brilliant you are.
If you can't manage the above, then maybe you should recognize that you're not actually as brilliant as you think. This realization could give you a bit more humility and that in turn could help you interact with other people.
> I have had situations where, even after a few meetings where I felt I was just “talking about how things are” the other person left HATING me.
This is very familiar to me. There are things nobody talks much about because they are obvious and everybody knows them already. There are also things that nobody talks about because everyone is lying to themselves about it and actually believe are not true (though some part of their brain unconsciously knows it). If you aren't one for the lies, you can mistake one of the latter for the former, and you will think that you are just stating the obvious, but really you just stepped on a landmine. Has happened to me many times.
>Here is the other reality: If you are very talented and gifted, NO ONE WILL NOTICE AND TELL YOU.
I haven't had this experience. In any group dynamic that lasts long enough, there's usually at least a few folks making self-deprecating jokes about their intelligence in comparison, or someone explicitly asking for advice "from the big brain" or something similar.
Humor is usually involved, but I'm assuming that's just a way to make a potentially socially risky observation in a more acceptable manner.
Recruiters / management are sometimes more comfortable making blunt assessments of intelligence / talent than peers. To an extent, that's part of their job, so never having gotten that feedback professionally would seem odd.
I concur with some of my sibling comments but decided to reply to you directly. I hope you give yourself some slack. My advice is simple and terse. Express yourself more tersely. Listen maybe more than you speak. Write your feelings and reactions down instead and then throw it away. Maybe choose to raise those opinions effectively another time. It's direct advice but I hope it helps. That's my take based on what you've written here.
Life is hard for everyone. I think it’s dramatically easier in some ways for people with particular talents.
Beautiful people have certain things easier but others harder. Highly intelligent people are the same way. I think it’s like playing the game on easy mode but has some random side quest every so often.
I’d surely not wish the ending of Flowers for Algernon on myself just in order to avoid the quests.
Yeah? Well I, for one, would like to spend more time engaging with people like you. Some of the obvious steps are helpful (eg: "read Less Wrong" was an excellent step some years ago). But I would just like to point out that there ARE some people who would like to interact with those who are very bright and a little bit focused.
> I have had situations where, even after a few meetings where I felt I was just “talking about how things are” the other person left HATING me.
If you mean this in a way where your saying hard truths or telling it like it is, then yeah, its annoying to listen to. Especially without it being asked for.
> However. I feel constantly discriminated against and treated like I am stupider than I am. And when people listen to me talk, they get incredibly threatened. It has taken me years to understand that being around me and listening to me talk, reason and analyze is THREATENING to people. I have had situations where, even after a few meetings where I felt I was just “talking about how things are” the other person left HATING me.
Have those people actually told you this, or is it a conclusion you came to on your own? I ask because your comment pattern-matches quite strongly for me to "mildly autistic person who doesn't realize they're constantly making failed status plays". Here are a few lines that stood out
---
> I can write dozens of pages of highly analytical and technical text without making mistakes in real time. I can speed read complex texts and memorize them with a high degree of precision. From the “language” perspective I feel highly gifted and unusual.
"I'm highly gifted and unusual" is much stronger than "I'm a good technical writer."
> It’s like being Usain Bolt except your sprinting lane has an obstacle course in it while everyone else gets to run in a normal lane.
As before, but even worse. Usain Bolt is the fastest sprinter in the world. He's quite literally one in eight billion. You are not.
> I have taught myself advanced skills and switched careers multiple times without the required degrees. Worked at the top companies in the world with PhDs and others.
Having worked with PhDs is not impressive in itself. There are thousands of college sophomores who can say the same.
There are workplaces that carry some serious cachet (though bringing them up unprompted will burn most of it), but vague references to "top companies" won't cut it, and makes me think it's less "fellow at Microsoft Research" and more "software engineer at Microsoft". Which is a fine thing to be - but also a perfectly normal thing to be.
---
If your coworkers are getting the same vibe I am, then they're treating you like you're stupider than you really are because you come off as someone who wants to be seen as smarter than they really are. They're annoyed, not threatened.
[+] [-] growingkittens|2 years ago|reply
Gifted students have different needs, and the school environment does not force them to develop the skills they need to succeed as an adult.
Twice exceptional students tend to use a lot of energy just trying to exist, which also prevents skill development. They look like smart students who "don't apply themselves", even if they are putting on their best effort.
[+] [-] doctorpangloss|2 years ago|reply
It’s orthodox in education research, widely accepted, widely observed that kids who are REALLY good at one or two things wind up, when you measure them, good at everything.
[+] [-] everybodyknows|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SamPatt|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] khzw8yyy|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dzink|2 years ago|reply
You are extremely fortunate if the colors you see brightly are commonly seen by others or a part of a self-training loop like math, Montessori games, programming, and language. You have it harder if your favorite subject requires funding to practice, such as chemistry/advanced physics, etc. And you’d better learn how to make millions or billions if you like space stuff or care for gatekeeper-protected disciplines like some niche academia, medicine, regulated stuff, etc.
That said, the world changed recently. GPT4 came out those who have deep interests have a sparring partner they’ve never had before. I doubt it’s anywhere in their priority list, but OpenAI can probably run a fantastic networking mesh for people with niche interests. They’d have to keep the spam /obscenities out, but a group chat for anyone in a topic would be fun and a voice group lounge would be even more amazing. ChatGPT would beat facebook and much other social media for the gifted audience. It’s already the best teacher available (if you discount errors and hallucinations, which are on the decline).
[+] [-] saagarjha|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kazinator|2 years ago|reply
Wow, its answers are of a high level quality!
When people read books on certain topics, they start talking the talk.
E.g. “The fatal flaw, as I understand it, in Kant’s deontological ethical system is his disregard of consequentialism.”
Did the kid come up with that himself, or is he just regurgitating, verbatim, a judgment penned by some author he read somewhere? How much of it does he understand?
Might it not be that Georgios is just playing with philosophy and literature in the way, in Billy Joel's "Piano Man", the "waitress is practicing politics"? I.e. picking up talking the talk to sound intelligent and informed. E.g. memorizing some political opinion overheard from one group of customers of the bar, and repeating that later within earshot of another group.
[+] [-] gnicholas|2 years ago|reply
Unless I'm mistaken, this appears to be off by an order of magnitude.
[+] [-] tzs|2 years ago|reply
I think what is going on is that when it says "top 1.33% for the test he took" it is referring to some test given to children who are already known or expected to have high IQs, and on that test people with IQs of 145 are 98.67 percentile.
[+] [-] HALtheWise|2 years ago|reply
I'm not sure where the article got the 1.3% number, it could be either a decimal point error, or this could be a specific test that's primarily given to gifted students and so both numbers could be correct.
[+] [-] kazinator|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] riwsky|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pdonis|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] light_hue_1|2 years ago|reply
Our state is getting school districts to remove all advanced classes and gifted programs. All in the name of equity. Last year they got rid of all of the advanced math classes in our district because the number of minority students was too low.
Thankfully when I grew up we had enough money for me to go to a private school where they had all of these advanced programs. I would have gone crazy without them.
I'm a hardcore liberal. But... It feels like there's a brand of liberal out there now that has a totally different idea of what equity is and how we should get there to the point where I find I need to sometimes fight on the side of the more conservative parents in our school district. I don't understand how educating smart people became something that my own side hates and fights against.
[+] [-] wait_a_minute|2 years ago|reply
wtf
[+] [-] _kobayashiMaru|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gnicholas|2 years ago|reply
I’m happy to chat further with parents that are dealing with this. Contact in profile.
[+] [-] orochimaaru|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hipadev23|2 years ago|reply
It's definitely not a simple dichotomy. But yes, liberals who want everyone and everything to be mediocre have the loudest voices right now.
[+] [-] 6gvONxR4sf7o|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] at_a_remove|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fallingknife|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nradov|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tkgally|2 years ago|reply
> Several teachers told me, “I don’t know how you do it!” By which they meant tolerating Georgios’ odd behaviour. The truth though is that I didn’t always do it. Much of the time, Georgios' clinginess was as irritating to me as it was to them.
As it happens, just before I read this article I had an exchange with GPT-4 about combinatorial mathematics [1]. I wanted to see how feasible it would be to learn about the subject by interacting with it. While I haven’t double-checked everything it told me, I was struck once again by its infinite patience with my questions. It is an amazing resource for students of all kinds—not just gifted ones.
Addendum: Some conversations I had with it about philosophy—the area of interest of the student in the linked article—are at [2]. Again, GPT-4 showed no irritation whatsoever with my questions.
[1] https://gally.net/temp/20240107combinatorialmathematics/inde...
[2] https://youtube.com/@Tom_Gally_UTokyo?si=qDZzPkPcFAC4Tvfc
[+] [-] somewhereoutth|2 years ago|reply
There was of course the Alphas and the Betas - and the Gammas, Deltas and Epsilons beneath them.
However the very gifted were lifted from this caste system, and placed on the islands, where they might direct the future (or at least that is my somewhat dim recollection/interpretation).
[+] [-] Perenti|2 years ago|reply
From the perspective of an autistic, ex-teacher who had his IQ measured as "somewhere over 170". I probably have ADHD as well, but a psychiatrist friend says diagnosis fails with people with ridiculously high IQs.
BTW, high IQ = good at solving certain kinds of problem, not a measure of the quality of a person.
[+] [-] somewhereoutth|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] iteria|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] KittenInABox|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CM30|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] luqtas|2 years ago|reply
a high intelligent logic-oriented-nerd trying to create a big deal isn't much without a high intelligent designer and so on; to the heck this obsession with STEM at the pedagogic world
[+] [-] opportune|2 years ago|reply
In the US, it’s not only disrupted by the activists briefly mentioned in the article, but by the mediocre part of the elite that would rather have such a system not exist or be easily gamed/rigged than to have it exist and their child not in it. Given the more classist nature of life in the UK I’m sure this is even moreso a factor there.
[+] [-] lapcat|2 years ago|reply
Philosophers? I think not: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_in_the_Soviet_Union
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] anonreeeeplor|2 years ago|reply
This post is going to sound pedantic and annoying because … that is what Aspergers does to you.
I can write dozens of pages of highly analytical and technical text without making mistakes in real time. I can speed read complex texts and memorize them with a high degree of precision.
From the “language” perspective I feel highly gifted and unusual. Not so much on the mathematical side. I almost have a disability with mathematics.
I have taught myself advanced skills and switched careers multiple times without the required degrees. Worked at the top companies in the world with PhDs and others.
However. I feel constantly discriminated against and treated like I am stupider than I am. And when people listen to me talk, they get incredibly threatened.
It has taken me years to understand that being around me and listening to me talk, reason and analyze is THREATENING to people.
I have had situations where, even after a few meetings where I felt I was just “talking about how things are” the other person left HATING me.
The way I express myself is perceived almost like being hit with a physical object. I believe I have Aspergers (have tested very highly for it).
I will tell you - it is INCREDIBLY CAREER LIMITING.
I have given up trying to work in the normal world. It just doesn’t work for me. The pattern always repeats - I join a company, I get targeted and singled out and ganged up on.
If you are like me it is like being incredibly advantaged while being incredibly disadvantaged at the same time.
It’s like being Usain Bolt except your sprinting lane has an obstacle course in it while everyone else gets to run in a normal lane.
The obstacle course is DELIBERATELY put there. It is human nature to instantly identify existential threats: People who are unusually more talented than them and take them out.
I have learned, and am adapting.
Unfortunately, if you want to succeed in this world you have to play a set of games, these are games that I really don’t want to play.
If I have to play them, I am going to try to play outside the system.
I have realized that all the advice which most people follow that works for them does not work for me.
I do things completely differently and have to come up with my own strategies about how to operate.
Here is the other reality: If you are very talented and gifted, NO ONE WILL NOTICE AND TELL YOU.
That sounds completely weird but it is true.
No one in my entire life, aside from a few offhand comments, took me aside and went: “uhhh…you are in a completely other category than these people and do not belong here. Do this instead.”
Instead it is the isolation - I do not understand why no one wants to interact or include me, and it happens very fast. Most people get a whiff and go “I have no idea what to do with this and don’t want to be around it.”
[+] [-] WalterBright|2 years ago|reply
Me: I read "How To Win Friends And Influence People" by Dale Carnegie when I was a teen, and it changed my life.
Other: (laughs) It obviously didn't work because you're terrible at social graces!
Me: Yeah, but you didn't know me before I read that book!
So there is hope, but reading a book won't work miracles. It's a lifelong struggle with me to learn social graces.
A nice side effect of being "on the spectrum" myself is I enjoy working with people like that, including Aspergers, because I understand where their lack of social graces comes from and it doesn't bother me in the least.
[+] [-] wharvle|2 years ago|reply
> From the “language” perspective I feel highly gifted and unusual. Not so much on the mathematical side. I almost have a disability with mathematics.
I feel this. “Rough draft? LOL why? I can write a perfectly-structured paper beginning-to-end without having to re-arrange so much as a paragraph, and I don’t make grammatical errors or spelling mistakes that I don’t catch instantly. What’s the point of all these ‘writing steps’?”
Around age 35 I started occasionally making errors in typed text, and not noticing until re-reading it. Leaving out words. I started substituting homophones! I never, ever did that at all, before! Aging sucks.
[edit] I feel, specifically, the brilliant-at-language and hindered-at-math thing, that is. The rest of this, I’d say you’re a fair bit brighter than me. I just took to language naturally very early and have crazy-good spatial reasoning. I feel dyslexic trying to read math, though. I do OK as long as things are algorithm-focused, which is why I can have a career as a programmer, but when it’s equations and proofs, forget about it.
[+] [-] Verdex|2 years ago|reply
However, my ability to tap into the social zeitgeist is pretty close to zero.
The end result is that I get along fantastically with most people because I can anticipate what they want. But I get along terribly with people who want me to fit in with the social rules that they are playing by. What they want is for me to act normal. And I don't know what that is.
It manifests very similar to what you're describing. After a relatively short period of time certain people get very tuned off by me and they become easily frustrated by my actions.
My theory is that they're diligently playing by the social rules and then I come in, break all of the rules right in front of them, and then I get a mostly positive reception because it's what most of the room wanted anyway (just done in kind of a funny way).
I don't really have a solution.
[At least for me things get really interesting whenever I interact with sales people. As far as I can tell like 90% of that profession runs on everyone following the appropriate social scripts. I barely understand them so thus far I've not encountered a sales tactic that actually works on me. Occasionally they get really desperate as their best plays get met with awkward silence or declining their bad deal. The flip side is that they don't understand me either so asking for what I want doesn't seem to work. I just have to hope I'm able to find something that makes do. ]
[+] [-] lupusreal|2 years ago|reply
If your language skills are as advanced and analytical as you claim, then you should apply that innate skill to the problem of finding ways to communicate without making people feel threatened. For instance, tailor (limit) your vocabulary for your audience and don't correct other people's inconsequential errors. And of course refrain from telling people about how brilliant you are.
If you can't manage the above, then maybe you should recognize that you're not actually as brilliant as you think. This realization could give you a bit more humility and that in turn could help you interact with other people.
[+] [-] fallingknife|2 years ago|reply
This is very familiar to me. There are things nobody talks much about because they are obvious and everybody knows them already. There are also things that nobody talks about because everyone is lying to themselves about it and actually believe are not true (though some part of their brain unconsciously knows it). If you aren't one for the lies, you can mistake one of the latter for the former, and you will think that you are just stating the obvious, but really you just stepped on a landmine. Has happened to me many times.
[+] [-] SamPatt|2 years ago|reply
I haven't had this experience. In any group dynamic that lasts long enough, there's usually at least a few folks making self-deprecating jokes about their intelligence in comparison, or someone explicitly asking for advice "from the big brain" or something similar.
Humor is usually involved, but I'm assuming that's just a way to make a potentially socially risky observation in a more acceptable manner.
Recruiters / management are sometimes more comfortable making blunt assessments of intelligence / talent than peers. To an extent, that's part of their job, so never having gotten that feedback professionally would seem odd.
[+] [-] teenthrowaway88|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sokoloff|2 years ago|reply
Beautiful people have certain things easier but others harder. Highly intelligent people are the same way. I think it’s like playing the game on easy mode but has some random side quest every so often.
I’d surely not wish the ending of Flowers for Algernon on myself just in order to avoid the quests.
[+] [-] mcherm|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tayo42|2 years ago|reply
If you mean this in a way where your saying hard truths or telling it like it is, then yeah, its annoying to listen to. Especially without it being asked for.
[+] [-] nyssos|2 years ago|reply
Have those people actually told you this, or is it a conclusion you came to on your own? I ask because your comment pattern-matches quite strongly for me to "mildly autistic person who doesn't realize they're constantly making failed status plays". Here are a few lines that stood out
---
> I can write dozens of pages of highly analytical and technical text without making mistakes in real time. I can speed read complex texts and memorize them with a high degree of precision. From the “language” perspective I feel highly gifted and unusual.
"I'm highly gifted and unusual" is much stronger than "I'm a good technical writer."
> It’s like being Usain Bolt except your sprinting lane has an obstacle course in it while everyone else gets to run in a normal lane.
As before, but even worse. Usain Bolt is the fastest sprinter in the world. He's quite literally one in eight billion. You are not.
> I have taught myself advanced skills and switched careers multiple times without the required degrees. Worked at the top companies in the world with PhDs and others.
Having worked with PhDs is not impressive in itself. There are thousands of college sophomores who can say the same.
There are workplaces that carry some serious cachet (though bringing them up unprompted will burn most of it), but vague references to "top companies" won't cut it, and makes me think it's less "fellow at Microsoft Research" and more "software engineer at Microsoft". Which is a fine thing to be - but also a perfectly normal thing to be.
---
If your coworkers are getting the same vibe I am, then they're treating you like you're stupider than you really are because you come off as someone who wants to be seen as smarter than they really are. They're annoyed, not threatened.
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] CharlesGELUK|2 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] zubairq|2 years ago|reply