9 ms·

You can't not be what you are. At least, not yet :-)

palish 18y ago
That's the thing -- I have to be. At least, I have to believe I can be something I'm not. Because if I truly am stuck with this brain, with this inability to be smart, as smart as John Carmack or Trevor Blackwell or Steve Wozniak, then I will be unable to realize my visions of the future, of potential creations, of new awesomeness, and the one thing I feel I cannot live with being is a consumer rather than a producer. In short, what I am is an overpowering urge to be anything else.
- anovaskulk 18y ago
  If you can be something better, then you're not what you think you are. Are you just speaking hypothetically, or do you really think you are unable to be smart? Because if you do think that, chances are you're wrong. > In short, what I am is an overpowering urge to be anything else. Join the club.
  - palish 18y ago
    A friend was answering some programming/logic questions for a potential employer. In addition to a many good programming questions, there was also this logic question: "A man was sentenced to death, but the king wanted to give him a last chance. He asked the man to choose from one of the three knights that were there. One of the knights was the Knight of Life, and he always told the truth. The second Knight was the Knight of Death, and he always told lies. The third knight was the Knight of the Dungeon. He sometimes lied and sometimes told the truth. If the man chose the Knight of Death, he would be executed before sunset. If he chose the Knight of Life, he would be acquitted and set free right away. If he chose the Knight of the Dungeon, he would spend the rest of his life imprisoned in the Dungeon. The man was allowed to ask the three knights one question each. Thus, he asked the fat knight, "What is the name of this tall knight?" The reply was, "He is the Knight of Life." He asked the small knight, "What is the name of this tall knight?" The reply was, "He is the Knight of Death." Then he asked the tall knight, "Who are you?" "I am the Knight of the Dungeon" was the reply. After that, the man was able to correctly choose the Knight of Life, and was set free immediately. Who is the Knight of Life, and who are the other two knights?" This puzzle seemed beautiful to me because it was so pure. If you can understand English, then you have the potential to solve it. My friend solved it in about forty seconds, according to him. I solved it in over twenty minutes, and only after being wrong once. I am an extremely slow programmer. I have had the good fortune of being around many productive programmers, so I know this to be the case. I used to make excuses as to why I was so. But in the end, it doesn't really matter; I am wrong 90% more often than I am correct, and I act stupidly most of the time. My memory is so horrible that I routinely forget the start of the sentences I am writing. I often re-read what I write (be it English or C++) over ten times before I am satisfied it means what I meant. My mathematical skills are a wash. (I still don't even understand the meaning and utility of 'e', and not for lack of trying.) My mind's eye is blind; I find it almost impossible to imagine what a given figure should look like, if I am about to draw it, so something such as Paul's painting http://bookshop.gfu.net/AxCMSTemplates_GFU/pics/products/0133708756.jpg http://bookshop.gfu.net/AxCMSTemplates_GFU/pics/products/013... seems nothing short of magic. My hand-eye coordination is decent, but not great. My reflexes are decent, but not great. So in summary, I feel I am decent, but not great; but I have an overwhelming appetite to be great. I don't want to give up on becoming a genius, and I don't want to believe that I cannot become one just because I wasn't born one.
    - unalone 18y ago
      So the first guy can't be telling the truth, because the third guy gives a different answer and the Life gives the truth. So he's dungeon or death. Second guy might be telling the truth, since the Death would lie. Or the THIRD knight might be telling the truth if he IS dungeon. If the second guy is lying, that means we know the two liars and the third must be Life. But he says he isn't. Therefore, the second knight is Life, the third is Dungeon, and the first is Death. But solving a puzzle isn't genius. It's logic. Some people spend much more time with logic than others: programmers have lots of games like these. The Blue Eyes puzzle comes to mind as a particularly hard one. Similarly, the more people program, the more they learn mental shortcuts that let them be more productive. Time fixes everything, and the best attribute to fix things is passion. You've got that. You just need to make sure to unfailingly look for whatever your goal is, and to learn everything you need to pursue it. Remember: there's more to building something than programming.
      - palish 18y ago
        There is more to genius than passion. I have experienced so many situations where I truly believed the equivalent of "0 is equal to 1". When someone points out why this cannot be the case, I usually sit in stunned silence while I review my reasoning. When I find the flaw, it seems inane that I could have missed it. Let me try to prove this from a different direction. You've probably heard of Henry Molaison, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HM_(patient) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HM_(patient) ... His hippocampus was surgically removed, rendering him unable to form new memories. Do you truly believe it would have been possible for him to build Quake 3 just because he was overwhelmingly passionate about doing so?
        unalone 18y ago
        You know the line about genius being perspiration? That one's very much true. That's why context matters so much. So I solved that puzzle quick-ish. But then, as a kid I played logic games to pass time. Other kids would play sports, and I'd pore through books of puzzles and solve them. So suddenly I'm able to do that. But it means that now, as a freshman at the gym, I'm operating as a near-pathetic level. For Christmas I got two 30-pound weights because that's a level that's easy for bench and hard for curls. But compared to my roommate? That's nothing. He does 50s for light workout. It's because he's spent much more time doing that than me. There are always impediments. The best trick is to figure out how best to work around them and do what you want anyway. Figure out where you best fit in to the process of creation. Look at the top Apple team. Steve Jobs and Tim Cook and Jony Ive - the three I know of best - are quite different people. Jobs is hotheaded. Cook is known for incredible stamina but he's not a design guy. Ive is all design, nothing else. They're very different people who excel at doing a few things very well, and they work together to create their brilliant products.
- unalone 18y ago
  Then try and understand that there's no such thing as average intelligence, only different intelligence. People learn different things differently. Part of it's context, background. Part of it's just how minds work. Jobs had a foster father that was apparently very aggressive, and he inherited that trait. He had an open mind, certainly was good at learning from things, but some of his personality he got from the people who raised him. Nothing is immediate. Everything takes years and years of work. So whatever you want to do, start now! Begin learning. Learn everything. If you ever have a question, or wonder why something is the way it is, ask! You'll learn more, more, more, and eventually you'll find a question without an answer. That's when you begin work. Forgive me for being immodest and talking about myself, but that's the story I know and I hope it helps. When I was really young, I was surrounded by books, and learned how to read when I was 2 or 3. I'd read quite a lot by middle school, and so when we were asked to write things, I wrote by copying a lot of the things I'd read from different sources. Some people called it a matter of intelligence, but it wasn't: I had just read a lot, and so had a wide palette to blatantly steal from. At the same time, I had computers around since I was an infant, but I'd never really learned about things like forums until I was about 13 - which from some stories is pretty damn old online! From there, though, I learned a lot about communities, and tried making my on site two years later. It was all a matter of timing: if I'd discovered forums at 19, my first site would have launched a lot later. As it happens, now I'm working on a site for writers, and I'm combining a lot of the things I've learned in the past to make it happen. Passion's the real key, and from what you've written you've got that. Now you need to make that passion last. You can just go out and start trying things, but be warned in advance that they won't seem impressive at first. Each one gets a little bit better. And the more perspective you've got, the more this happens. Something you thought was perfect seems awful once you see things other people have made - I know this happens in both writing and web design, and I'm sure it must happen in every other field imaginable. It'll take time; nothing happens overnight. Not even for child prodigies: Mozart spent 6 years immersed in music before he became a prodigal violinist, after all, and he had a father who'd spent his life learning the craft that Mozart learned and then mastered. Never let generalizations stop you from getting something done. Don't worry about intelligence. Worry about doing things, thinking things. Let other people compliment you after the fact, and if you get things done they will. Focus your effort on accomplishment and you'll be guaranteed to succeed.
- lliiffee 18y ago
  "Smart" isn't something you are, it is what you do. People who accomplish amazing things do so almost completely because of passion, hard work, time management, good taste, determination, working on the right problems, etc. In CS grad school, I have seen many absolutely brilliant people who accomplish nothing. In school, they were used to being able to get every math question right, while doing it in their heads. However, when working on real problems in the real world, this sort of raw brainpower (as measured by an IQ test or SAT or whatever) has amazingly little benefit. There is some small threshold, and on the whole it is helpful, but it doesn't mean much. You can do the math on the number of people walking the earth currently with IQ scores higher than Einstein. If you want to do great things, here is how: Keep learning new subjects, keep finding new problems, talk to other talented minute, work hard, and enjoy yourself. Worrying about being "smart" is a lame excuse. The "smartest" man in the world is this guy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Michael_Langan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Michael_Langan
  - anovaskulk 18y ago
    I'd have to disagree with that. There is actually quite a high threshold, as should be obvious, from the percentage of people doing great things. You may not notice it, if you live in your own little isolated world. Yes, you can be very intelligent, and incompetent; but no, you cannot be competent, able to get stuff done, and not intelligent.
    - lliiffee 18y ago
      I think you make a good point. In saying the threshold is low, I am probably biased by my peer group. Although... it is so hard to separate "smartness" from "passion". Particularly as people get older, someone who is passionate and keeps investing in themselves by learning new things will blow past someone with faster neurons that rests on their innate talents, rather than challenging themselves.
    - dasil003 18y ago
      Yes, but what's the threshold? Someone with an IQ of 100 can be very successful. I agree you can't be a luminary like the Woz, but holding yourself to that standard is like expecting to win the lottery. You can be plenty rich, successful, accomplished, etc without being an infamous figure. People are successful for all different reasons, and the best anyone can do is put themselves out there and take advantage of opportunities. The minute you convince yourself that are not smart enough or too lazy or whatever, then you're just committing to failure—most likely because psychologically safe—which is stupid because no one has the recipe for success. Chase your dreams!
- Marcvs 18y ago
  Look. Even your brain is just an organ and so it can adapt to demand—to a certain extent, however its actual limits are debatable. Right now, it is only used to do what you use it to. When you try anything more demanding, it’s almost as if you physically feel its pain of incapacity, but so much only for the first time you try. Yes, try learning new things; as things you might not believe you could eventually master. (Pick something you would really love knowing or being able to.) Get introductory tutorials and go really slow; make sure you grasp one thing before you move to another. Repeat. Don’t let yourself be put off by initial difficulty. If you persist, you might slowly feel a kind of “lightening up”. You might eventually surprise yourself by approaching even everyday little “problems” in new and ingenious ways, stunned by how “stupid” you must have been not seeing those solutions previously.

That's the thing -- I have to be. At least, I have to believe I can be something I'm not. Because if I truly am stuck with this brain, with this inability to be smart, as smart as John Carmack or Trevor Blackwell or Steve Wozniak, then I will be unable to realize my visions of the future, of potential creations, of new awesomeness, and the one thing I feel I cannot live with being is a consumer rather than a producer. In short, what I am is an overpowering urge to be anything else.

anovaskulk 18y ago
If you can be something better, then you're not what you think you are. Are you just speaking hypothetically, or do you really think you are unable to be smart? Because if you do think that, chances are you're wrong. > In short, what I am is an overpowering urge to be anything else. Join the club.
- palish 18y ago
  A friend was answering some programming/logic questions for a potential employer. In addition to a many good programming questions, there was also this logic question: "A man was sentenced to death, but the king wanted to give him a last chance. He asked the man to choose from one of the three knights that were there. One of the knights was the Knight of Life, and he always told the truth. The second Knight was the Knight of Death, and he always told lies. The third knight was the Knight of the Dungeon. He sometimes lied and sometimes told the truth. If the man chose the Knight of Death, he would be executed before sunset. If he chose the Knight of Life, he would be acquitted and set free right away. If he chose the Knight of the Dungeon, he would spend the rest of his life imprisoned in the Dungeon. The man was allowed to ask the three knights one question each. Thus, he asked the fat knight, "What is the name of this tall knight?" The reply was, "He is the Knight of Life." He asked the small knight, "What is the name of this tall knight?" The reply was, "He is the Knight of Death." Then he asked the tall knight, "Who are you?" "I am the Knight of the Dungeon" was the reply. After that, the man was able to correctly choose the Knight of Life, and was set free immediately. Who is the Knight of Life, and who are the other two knights?" This puzzle seemed beautiful to me because it was so pure. If you can understand English, then you have the potential to solve it. My friend solved it in about forty seconds, according to him. I solved it in over twenty minutes, and only after being wrong once. I am an extremely slow programmer. I have had the good fortune of being around many productive programmers, so I know this to be the case. I used to make excuses as to why I was so. But in the end, it doesn't really matter; I am wrong 90% more often than I am correct, and I act stupidly most of the time. My memory is so horrible that I routinely forget the start of the sentences I am writing. I often re-read what I write (be it English or C++) over ten times before I am satisfied it means what I meant. My mathematical skills are a wash. (I still don't even understand the meaning and utility of 'e', and not for lack of trying.) My mind's eye is blind; I find it almost impossible to imagine what a given figure should look like, if I am about to draw it, so something such as Paul's painting http://bookshop.gfu.net/AxCMSTemplates_GFU/pics/products/0133708756.jpg http://bookshop.gfu.net/AxCMSTemplates_GFU/pics/products/013... seems nothing short of magic. My hand-eye coordination is decent, but not great. My reflexes are decent, but not great. So in summary, I feel I am decent, but not great; but I have an overwhelming appetite to be great. I don't want to give up on becoming a genius, and I don't want to believe that I cannot become one just because I wasn't born one.
  - unalone 18y ago
    So the first guy can't be telling the truth, because the third guy gives a different answer and the Life gives the truth. So he's dungeon or death. Second guy might be telling the truth, since the Death would lie. Or the THIRD knight might be telling the truth if he IS dungeon. If the second guy is lying, that means we know the two liars and the third must be Life. But he says he isn't. Therefore, the second knight is Life, the third is Dungeon, and the first is Death. But solving a puzzle isn't genius. It's logic. Some people spend much more time with logic than others: programmers have lots of games like these. The Blue Eyes puzzle comes to mind as a particularly hard one. Similarly, the more people program, the more they learn mental shortcuts that let them be more productive. Time fixes everything, and the best attribute to fix things is passion. You've got that. You just need to make sure to unfailingly look for whatever your goal is, and to learn everything you need to pursue it. Remember: there's more to building something than programming.
    - palish 18y ago
      There is more to genius than passion. I have experienced so many situations where I truly believed the equivalent of "0 is equal to 1". When someone points out why this cannot be the case, I usually sit in stunned silence while I review my reasoning. When I find the flaw, it seems inane that I could have missed it. Let me try to prove this from a different direction. You've probably heard of Henry Molaison, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HM_(patient) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HM_(patient) ... His hippocampus was surgically removed, rendering him unable to form new memories. Do you truly believe it would have been possible for him to build Quake 3 just because he was overwhelmingly passionate about doing so?
      - unalone 18y ago
        You know the line about genius being perspiration? That one's very much true. That's why context matters so much. So I solved that puzzle quick-ish. But then, as a kid I played logic games to pass time. Other kids would play sports, and I'd pore through books of puzzles and solve them. So suddenly I'm able to do that. But it means that now, as a freshman at the gym, I'm operating as a near-pathetic level. For Christmas I got two 30-pound weights because that's a level that's easy for bench and hard for curls. But compared to my roommate? That's nothing. He does 50s for light workout. It's because he's spent much more time doing that than me. There are always impediments. The best trick is to figure out how best to work around them and do what you want anyway. Figure out where you best fit in to the process of creation. Look at the top Apple team. Steve Jobs and Tim Cook and Jony Ive - the three I know of best - are quite different people. Jobs is hotheaded. Cook is known for incredible stamina but he's not a design guy. Ive is all design, nothing else. They're very different people who excel at doing a few things very well, and they work together to create their brilliant products.
unalone 18y ago
Then try and understand that there's no such thing as average intelligence, only different intelligence. People learn different things differently. Part of it's context, background. Part of it's just how minds work. Jobs had a foster father that was apparently very aggressive, and he inherited that trait. He had an open mind, certainly was good at learning from things, but some of his personality he got from the people who raised him. Nothing is immediate. Everything takes years and years of work. So whatever you want to do, start now! Begin learning. Learn everything. If you ever have a question, or wonder why something is the way it is, ask! You'll learn more, more, more, and eventually you'll find a question without an answer. That's when you begin work. Forgive me for being immodest and talking about myself, but that's the story I know and I hope it helps. When I was really young, I was surrounded by books, and learned how to read when I was 2 or 3. I'd read quite a lot by middle school, and so when we were asked to write things, I wrote by copying a lot of the things I'd read from different sources. Some people called it a matter of intelligence, but it wasn't: I had just read a lot, and so had a wide palette to blatantly steal from. At the same time, I had computers around since I was an infant, but I'd never really learned about things like forums until I was about 13 - which from some stories is pretty damn old online! From there, though, I learned a lot about communities, and tried making my on site two years later. It was all a matter of timing: if I'd discovered forums at 19, my first site would have launched a lot later. As it happens, now I'm working on a site for writers, and I'm combining a lot of the things I've learned in the past to make it happen. Passion's the real key, and from what you've written you've got that. Now you need to make that passion last. You can just go out and start trying things, but be warned in advance that they won't seem impressive at first. Each one gets a little bit better. And the more perspective you've got, the more this happens. Something you thought was perfect seems awful once you see things other people have made - I know this happens in both writing and web design, and I'm sure it must happen in every other field imaginable. It'll take time; nothing happens overnight. Not even for child prodigies: Mozart spent 6 years immersed in music before he became a prodigal violinist, after all, and he had a father who'd spent his life learning the craft that Mozart learned and then mastered. Never let generalizations stop you from getting something done. Don't worry about intelligence. Worry about doing things, thinking things. Let other people compliment you after the fact, and if you get things done they will. Focus your effort on accomplishment and you'll be guaranteed to succeed.
lliiffee 18y ago
"Smart" isn't something you are, it is what you do. People who accomplish amazing things do so almost completely because of passion, hard work, time management, good taste, determination, working on the right problems, etc. In CS grad school, I have seen many absolutely brilliant people who accomplish nothing. In school, they were used to being able to get every math question right, while doing it in their heads. However, when working on real problems in the real world, this sort of raw brainpower (as measured by an IQ test or SAT or whatever) has amazingly little benefit. There is some small threshold, and on the whole it is helpful, but it doesn't mean much. You can do the math on the number of people walking the earth currently with IQ scores higher than Einstein. If you want to do great things, here is how: Keep learning new subjects, keep finding new problems, talk to other talented minute, work hard, and enjoy yourself. Worrying about being "smart" is a lame excuse. The "smartest" man in the world is this guy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Michael_Langan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Michael_Langan
- anovaskulk 18y ago
  I'd have to disagree with that. There is actually quite a high threshold, as should be obvious, from the percentage of people doing great things. You may not notice it, if you live in your own little isolated world. Yes, you can be very intelligent, and incompetent; but no, you cannot be competent, able to get stuff done, and not intelligent.
  - lliiffee 18y ago
    I think you make a good point. In saying the threshold is low, I am probably biased by my peer group. Although... it is so hard to separate "smartness" from "passion". Particularly as people get older, someone who is passionate and keeps investing in themselves by learning new things will blow past someone with faster neurons that rests on their innate talents, rather than challenging themselves.
  - dasil003 18y ago
    Yes, but what's the threshold? Someone with an IQ of 100 can be very successful. I agree you can't be a luminary like the Woz, but holding yourself to that standard is like expecting to win the lottery. You can be plenty rich, successful, accomplished, etc without being an infamous figure. People are successful for all different reasons, and the best anyone can do is put themselves out there and take advantage of opportunities. The minute you convince yourself that are not smart enough or too lazy or whatever, then you're just committing to failure—most likely because psychologically safe—which is stupid because no one has the recipe for success. Chase your dreams!
Marcvs 18y ago
Look. Even your brain is just an organ and so it can adapt to demand—to a certain extent, however its actual limits are debatable. Right now, it is only used to do what you use it to. When you try anything more demanding, it’s almost as if you physically feel its pain of incapacity, but so much only for the first time you try. Yes, try learning new things; as things you might not believe you could eventually master. (Pick something you would really love knowing or being able to.) Get introductory tutorials and go really slow; make sure you grasp one thing before you move to another. Repeat. Don’t let yourself be put off by initial difficulty. If you persist, you might slowly feel a kind of “lightening up”. You might eventually surprise yourself by approaching even everyday little “problems” in new and ingenious ways, stunned by how “stupid” you must have been not seeing those solutions previously.