This post seems based on some questionable assumptions. IQ is not the ultimate metric of intelligence and may at best measure only one facet of intelligence.
On a related note, I recommend David Robson’s book The Intelligence Trap.
There seems to be a certain amount of “Autistic Spectrum Disorder” mixed in with this. I imagine there are a few papers published with this comparison in mind.
This was my feeling too.. I suspect there's enough overlap between those people who are interested in completing IQ tests, and those on the spectrum to create the same effect mentioned by the author.
I found their comment about small talk particularly reflects this; My experience is that I can't engage in it with strangers as it feels like forced dumb chat, with the end result that a lot of people I casually interact with end up treating me like I'm mentally retarded.
I tend to be a critic of IQ and (non-applied) psychology in general, but there must be something of value here.
I've experienced something similar to what is described here, and I know many others who experience it too. The highly intelligent people I've known who are also high achievers tend to have an exceptional work ethic, and yes many (but not all!) come from relatively privileged backgrounds.
Communication problems may in some cases be linked to autism spectrum disorders, but in other cases highly intelligent people are actually exceptional communicators.
However, I would agree with those who point out that intelligence is manifold and encompasses far more than the narrow logical puzzles found in IQ tests. Some people who are not even remotely 'book smart' seem to possess acute intelligence of another kind.
Disclosure: Yes, I read Nassim Nicholas Taleb (who is pretty popular here I think).
The communication range is a great point, one I've never considered before. It's the reason I enjoy the comments on HN so much: for once, a good deal of the discussion is in my communication range, and the rest is above it, pushing me higher, rather than encouraging me to sink below.
I think this is one reason alcoholism is so common among high IQ people, including several of my relatives who are very social. They socialize but they always drink beforehand. The drink lowers the effective IQ, bringing them into a much wider communication range. I had the same experience just the other day.
Of course. I said one of the reasons, not the only reason. I just wish I could connect with more people without drinking. There are a few people I can do that with, but they're few and far between.
I tried giving all my friends psychedelics, but most of them preferred the beer. I'll have to keep looking.
mdma is the most common (and thus somewhat well researched), but there are quite a few, though barely any of them legal (or rather: not yet illegal in the case of most "research chemicals", RC for short).
Except presumably everyone else at the party is also drinking alcohol. Are you saying people with low IQ can drink alcohol and be unaffected, or that people with high IQ are lightweights?
Assuming that at some point people pass out (equivalent IQ=0), there will always be a moment when the effective IQ of any two people will match, no matter the initial IQ.
A quick search on "communication range" returns as first result a post [1] calling it a myth.
"Hollingworth was writing specifically about leadership, and in childen, but Towers extrapolates the point to claim that any kind of ‘genuine’ communication is impossible across a 30 IQ point gap"
You can't be that smart, if you don't figure out how to bridge the "communication range". Showing that IQ is a much too narrow measurement of puzzle solving ability, not related to being smart in real world situations.
You are conflating definitions, specifically making the mistake that IQ=smart. Tabooing "IQ" and "smart" [1], we can say:
Her hypothesis is that people who have some quantified ability to solve math/logic/verbal problems, find it universally easy to communicate with people with similar ability for solving such problems, assuming you control for other factors like quantified communication ability or quantified emotional intelligence etc.
Put this way, there is no obvious internal contradiction in her hypothesis, whatever the empirical support for it might be.
> People with over 152 are effectively 'The Excluded', routinely finding their thoughts to be unconvincing in the public discourse and in productive environments. If placed in a leadership position, they will not succeed.
> The trick is to find your own tribe. It took me forty years to find mine. The group of people where you really can feel yourself belonging, where you can be one of all. Only then will you succeed.
Then again, the closest thing I have? Is some tinfoil hat folks - which absolutely makes financial success harder. Lets be honest - I'm not interested in the world Google, twitter, and facebook have built.
Networking means exposure. Networking online? Means exposure to the kind of analytics that would necessarily be dangerous for anyone of a politically radical bend. Given the choice between this, today and a more decentralized and socially horizontal world? Its a no-brainer.
The Boss can't do what I can, why is he making more money off my work than I am? Perhaps the right one can offer an environment to foster growth - but very few really commit to that perspective.
Sorry, Im not going to have 50-80% of my waking life dictated by someone who cant grok my work. Cant grok the ethics. Cant grok why I would want better for us all.
Especially when any hypothetical resume is redacted by the 5th Ammendment? They dont really want the best and brightest anyway. No wonder CozyBear is booming while tech companies struggle to find talent. There is no avenue for entry! The same people, concepts, even products just get recycled over and over with mimimal refinement.
I've worked hard to learn to communicate more effectively. Simple, Trump-like sentences. This initially limited my intellectual vocabulary, but complex ideas can be broken down. Hell, this how you "demonstrate mastery" to the rest of humanity. Obverse clustering of verbal clauses overloads most readers' comprehensive processing faculties - thus becomes the fastest way to be denied a job, regarding the inciting article. So we learn or give up.
Mediocrity wins either way. This world has a whole lot of locked doors - we decided not to live there anymore. Where is my link to the hacker manifesto? Even that's woefully out of date.
There are people who seem to affect the qualities, habits, and quirks of 'highly intelligent' people, yet are probably not particularly brilliant (or even above average) themselves, except perhaps in some social sense. Any thoughts on that? Can you differentiate between the two without reference to IQ? If so, how? Do these people pay the same price for their quirks, and if so, are they better able to compensate? Are they likely to be more successful at whatever they do by appropriating the trappings of intelligence? Think of it as a thought experiment.
Here's another question for you: without reference to IQ or academic achievement, what qualities would you associate with intelligence, or perceive as indicators of intelligence? Have you ever had a hard time figuring out if someone is really bright or not?
Usually the rate at which someone learns something is a good indicator. For a child that could be the rules of chess. For an adult it could be how long it takes to understand the parameters of a well designed job interview question.
> Have you ever had a hard time figuring out if someone is really bright or not?
How do you define bright?
Assuming bright to mean able to achieve post-grad honors:
I feel like you could easily distinguish if someone is bright or not within a few minutes of chatting.
I think that regardless of the subject of discussion, there are a number of strong indicators in the way a person speaks. One example is confidence: very rarely have I met a person I'd call intelligent that is also absurdly confident in their beliefs.
I realise my above statement is highly interpretable. What I mean is intelligent people seem to allow for their assumptions to be flawed, and be open to being proven wrong, about stuff that they can be proven wrong on (i.e. belief about a mathematical postulate versus belief in an objective truth such as global warming is real).
If someone is not bright, then when you start discussing a topic that is outside their everyday experience (i.e. not their job, not their hobby), they only have three options: (1) ignorance and indifference "huh?" "I don't know, this seems stupid/boring", (2) repeating a statement they heard from TV or radio, but unable to e.g. explain what that really means, what would be the consequences thereof, and (3) just saying something completely random.
A bright person would be able to admit their lack of knowledge in the topic, but then do some independent thinking, or ask additional questions, or... something.
Not applying intelligence on real-world aspects that will make you successful is very much non-intelligent.
Likewise, not being able to effectively communicate with a variety of people shows a lack of analysis, learning, etc.
IOW, people feeling in the situation that their "IQ" is unfairly treated should level up, by broadening their conception of intelligence and also applying it in more contexts.
Maybe success lies in being able to achieve your goals and realise your visions. If you decide to drop out and herd sheep, are you a good shepherd, or the laughing stock of the herding world?
A common weakness (and one I sometimes share) is looking for exciting, new, and intellectually stimulating things to do, when seemingly boring, repetitive and hard work is actually called for.
A common example: startup founders who'd prefer to build new features (or worse, explore new tech stacks!) instead of the boring work of sales and marketing.
Absolutely. High intelligence and the thirst for novelty and stimulation that often comes with it can make it hard to focus on anything for very long. It also makes people lazy. You learn as a kid that you can achieve a lot with minimal or no effort, so you develop terrible work habits (or none at all). Bright kids who are brought up with a very strong work ethic are far more likely to be high achievers or at least successful at their chosen vocation. This work ethic is often a cultural thing...
I can only speak to the Marine Corps, but there is a pretty structured/meritocratic method for being promoted.
At least for the enlisted ranks, your promotion potential is dependent on a couple of factors: how many people of a particular rank for any given job field are needed, your personal fitness scores, rifle range proficiency, professional military education completion, etc.
There is a certain degree of subjectivity, as you are given what are called "proficiency and conduct" ratings in the earlier ranks. In the mid-later ranks, you are given performance evaluations. Those evaluations are at least partly based off the factors I described above, though.
Interestingly, when you put in for promotion at the mid-later ranks, the people who make the selection are not in your chain of command. You put together a package and the decision is made by a board consisting of third parties.
In the earlier ranks, your performance/ratings is compiled into a score, then each month the Marine Corps issues a total scoring that must be met in order to be promoted.
It is by no means a perfect system, but it seemed mostly fair. It is also incredibly complicated, so I apologize if I did not do the explanation justice.
Oh, this is an easy one. When people say a child is talented they mean he or she is a good learner. But a talented adult is a good do-er. High potential people who fail to make an impact are stuck in child-mode, because that is what they were always praised for.
> Or they realised that praise is meaningless and 'making an impact' is overrated.
indeed, by success people usually mean make lots of money, is this the definition of success to a High IQ person? maybe, but perhaps it means why can't I solve Fermats last theorem or something they think is important.
Or put it this way - smart people will only solve the problems smart people see as problems.
> Or put it this way - smart people will only solve the problems smart people see as problems.
Or I would say 'as interesting' and we know it can be hard to find intersections of interesting and well paying.
The habit I formed was enjoying using creative connections. Unfortunately there's lots of reasonably well paying posts for repeating yourself and it's easy to be complacent in your career and have hobbies instead.
I can't imagine how boasting about superiority working out in well in the end. There has to be an Aesop's Fable short story for this.
Bragging about being smarter is a standing invitation to receive passive aggressive behavior from others. People will unfairly try to find flaws, and who can blame them? They're acting innately better than their peers - while at the same time not being wise enough to be humble / modest.
I also worry it ends up having a person with potential ending up hiding behind a cryptic / abstract facade, afraid of failing when not being an instant prodigy at a new skill. Don't we will have to work our way up and build a track record of some sort?
What does being intelligent mean anyway?
Ultimately, if someone wanted to be recognized as smart, wouldn't at least some "normal IQ people?" have to understand and appreciate the value of something they synthesized/made?
This isn't about boasting, nor it's about "wanted to be recognized as smart". You can be as humble as you honestly can, up to the point of avoiding showing achievements to other people for fear of their reactions (and believe me, I know this very well. You learn to behave like that quite fast), and yet the communication problems will persist. It's difficult not to become a misfit, to feel like you are fundamentally different to the people around you. The article mentions that your arguments won't convince "average" people, and neither do theirs convince us; this is also something I also feel deeply.
I guess I can't complain much; at least I got a good job. For a very modest definition of success I could even consider myself "successful".
it’s just a bit funny that you included the parenthetical about your own experience, which mostly just serves to make sure you are also labeled as “very smart”. your whole
point could be made in general without signaling this to the reader. :)
I know :). I actually hesitated, because of that. To be honest I ended writting and sending it just because this is Hacker News and such things are much better received here. In Reddit, for example, I wouldn't have bothered.
Also, I'm not "very smart". I have a high IQ, which might be correlated but it's a different thing. EDIT: I strongly believe that a high IQ means, above all, a fundamentally different way of thinking. Which might make you smart, and which is the main cause of the communication problems.
Most people that you meet are so concerned about what you think about them that they'll barely spend a thought on what they think about you. So if you get bad reactions to showing your achievements, the problem might be that the other person feels like you are diminishing them in comparison.
From my experience, the trick is to always focus on the emotional side of things. If you say that you feel super happy because project X worked out as planned, the other person can easily relate to that by telling you about their project Y that worked out well.
You might not understand (or care about) the details of each other's achievement, but the emotions why you enjoy talking about it should be pretty much universal.
> The trick is to find your own tribe. It took me forty years to find mine. The group of people where you really can feel yourself belonging, where you can be one of all. Only then will you succeed.
That was a spot on answer. But this last bit was the best, mainly because it universal. We all - high IQ on down - need others to be more successful.
I suspect this answer is missing an underlying point - high IQ is correlated with high ego. I find that there are wicked smart people in this world, who have also managed to overcome their own egos, and who get along well with anybody. They don't feel that there are topics that are beneath them, or that people are lesser beings because they like TV shows. They might not like the same things, but they accept people's differences.
The way I explain it to my kids is that your intelligence is just like the color of your hair. You are born with it. You can take actions to change it, to some extent. But there is zero reason to judge anybody for it. People are who they are.
Fully agree. I've met many high-IQ people who treat normal humans with a sort of "I'm better than you" disdain. And, obviously, being too arrogant will make communication difficult.
Anyone can learn to communicate in a simpler way, otherwise nobody would be able to train a dog. However doing so in most communications is not only tiring, but also has some pernicious psychological effects.
The problem is not about using simple words (which I totally support, BTW), but the speed and complexity of grasping new concepts. Having to decompose, simplify and slowly explain each element of a concept, vs. just saying the thing once and the other person building on it. One is tedious and makes you think everyone is an idiot, the other is an actual conversation.
It's not just having to use simple words, but also simple concepts, simple topics, etc.
The real problem is that talking this way is exhausting. As if someone told you that e.g. you are not allowed to use words containing the letter "m". It is certainly possible, but it requires constant attention to something other than the idea you are trying to convey.
Talking this way feels quite different from talking to someone who uses the same style as you.
I would say that it all boils to "topic relevance". What is relevant enough to foment communication is too divergent in different IQ levels. That brings miscomunication and specially boredom.
I feel like this is a complicated topic. Two common reasons spring to mind....
1) Intelligent but interested in things which are not necessarily eat paths to becoming successful according to society i.e. R&D
2) Low emotional intelligence and therein poor social skills. Humans rely heavily on social connections and collaboration to drive value. I’ve often see clever people who think they are better than others but do not have the ability to get on. Some intelligent people think they are extremely logical but their decision making is often emotionally charged.
IQ tests measure specific abilities but not all abilities.
As for the definition of success, that depends on the individual.
For example, to be successful in academia correlates reasonably well with IQ. However, success in sales far less so. Many successful artists also have high IQ due to their spatial and creativity traits, however that doesn't mean that they'll attain high levels of profit from their art. Programmers often have high IQ, but that doesn't guarantee executive suite jobs with their high salaries and lots of perks.
111 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 161 ms ] threadOn a related note, I recommend David Robson’s book The Intelligence Trap.
https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/files/blogger2wp/2Meth...
I've experienced something similar to what is described here, and I know many others who experience it too. The highly intelligent people I've known who are also high achievers tend to have an exceptional work ethic, and yes many (but not all!) come from relatively privileged backgrounds.
Communication problems may in some cases be linked to autism spectrum disorders, but in other cases highly intelligent people are actually exceptional communicators.
However, I would agree with those who point out that intelligence is manifold and encompasses far more than the narrow logical puzzles found in IQ tests. Some people who are not even remotely 'book smart' seem to possess acute intelligence of another kind.
Disclosure: Yes, I read Nassim Nicholas Taleb (who is pretty popular here I think).
I think this is one reason alcoholism is so common among high IQ people, including several of my relatives who are very social. They socialize but they always drink beforehand. The drink lowers the effective IQ, bringing them into a much wider communication range. I had the same experience just the other day.
Or it just disinhibits them and lowers social anxiety. It's not the most widely used social lubricant for nothing.
I tried giving all my friends psychedelics, but most of them preferred the beer. I'll have to keep looking.
Frankly, I'd have to drink to endure anyone who thinks in this manner.
"Hollingworth was writing specifically about leadership, and in childen, but Towers extrapolates the point to claim that any kind of ‘genuine’ communication is impossible across a 30 IQ point gap"
[1] http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/neuroskeptic/2017/08/31/my...
Her hypothesis is that people who have some quantified ability to solve math/logic/verbal problems, find it universally easy to communicate with people with similar ability for solving such problems, assuming you control for other factors like quantified communication ability or quantified emotional intelligence etc.
Put this way, there is no obvious internal contradiction in her hypothesis, whatever the empirical support for it might be.
[1] https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Rationalist_taboo
On the contrary, I had a strong feeling that the person who asked the question, and the woman who answered it, were doing this.
> The trick is to find your own tribe. It took me forty years to find mine. The group of people where you really can feel yourself belonging, where you can be one of all. Only then will you succeed.
Then again, the closest thing I have? Is some tinfoil hat folks - which absolutely makes financial success harder. Lets be honest - I'm not interested in the world Google, twitter, and facebook have built.
Networking means exposure. Networking online? Means exposure to the kind of analytics that would necessarily be dangerous for anyone of a politically radical bend. Given the choice between this, today and a more decentralized and socially horizontal world? Its a no-brainer.
The Boss can't do what I can, why is he making more money off my work than I am? Perhaps the right one can offer an environment to foster growth - but very few really commit to that perspective.
Sorry, Im not going to have 50-80% of my waking life dictated by someone who cant grok my work. Cant grok the ethics. Cant grok why I would want better for us all.
Especially when any hypothetical resume is redacted by the 5th Ammendment? They dont really want the best and brightest anyway. No wonder CozyBear is booming while tech companies struggle to find talent. There is no avenue for entry! The same people, concepts, even products just get recycled over and over with mimimal refinement.
I've worked hard to learn to communicate more effectively. Simple, Trump-like sentences. This initially limited my intellectual vocabulary, but complex ideas can be broken down. Hell, this how you "demonstrate mastery" to the rest of humanity. Obverse clustering of verbal clauses overloads most readers' comprehensive processing faculties - thus becomes the fastest way to be denied a job, regarding the inciting article. So we learn or give up.
Mediocrity wins either way. This world has a whole lot of locked doors - we decided not to live there anymore. Where is my link to the hacker manifesto? Even that's woefully out of date.
How do you define bright? Assuming bright to mean able to achieve post-grad honors:
I feel like you could easily distinguish if someone is bright or not within a few minutes of chatting.
I think that regardless of the subject of discussion, there are a number of strong indicators in the way a person speaks. One example is confidence: very rarely have I met a person I'd call intelligent that is also absurdly confident in their beliefs.
I realise my above statement is highly interpretable. What I mean is intelligent people seem to allow for their assumptions to be flawed, and be open to being proven wrong, about stuff that they can be proven wrong on (i.e. belief about a mathematical postulate versus belief in an objective truth such as global warming is real).
If someone is not bright, then when you start discussing a topic that is outside their everyday experience (i.e. not their job, not their hobby), they only have three options: (1) ignorance and indifference "huh?" "I don't know, this seems stupid/boring", (2) repeating a statement they heard from TV or radio, but unable to e.g. explain what that really means, what would be the consequences thereof, and (3) just saying something completely random.
A bright person would be able to admit their lack of knowledge in the topic, but then do some independent thinking, or ask additional questions, or... something.
Likewise, not being able to effectively communicate with a variety of people shows a lack of analysis, learning, etc.
IOW, people feeling in the situation that their "IQ" is unfairly treated should level up, by broadening their conception of intelligence and also applying it in more contexts.
I am not saying becoming an ascetic monk is a better or worse choice, just that people will try to maximize different things.
A common example: startup founders who'd prefer to build new features (or worse, explore new tech stacks!) instead of the boring work of sales and marketing.
Wait what ? Anybody has experience/comment on that ?
(I'm not trying to dismiss anything, genuinely curious !)
At least for the enlisted ranks, your promotion potential is dependent on a couple of factors: how many people of a particular rank for any given job field are needed, your personal fitness scores, rifle range proficiency, professional military education completion, etc.
There is a certain degree of subjectivity, as you are given what are called "proficiency and conduct" ratings in the earlier ranks. In the mid-later ranks, you are given performance evaluations. Those evaluations are at least partly based off the factors I described above, though.
Interestingly, when you put in for promotion at the mid-later ranks, the people who make the selection are not in your chain of command. You put together a package and the decision is made by a board consisting of third parties.
In the earlier ranks, your performance/ratings is compiled into a score, then each month the Marine Corps issues a total scoring that must be met in order to be promoted.
It is by no means a perfect system, but it seemed mostly fair. It is also incredibly complicated, so I apologize if I did not do the explanation justice.
Or they realised that praise is meaningless and 'making an impact' is overrated.
indeed, by success people usually mean make lots of money, is this the definition of success to a High IQ person? maybe, but perhaps it means why can't I solve Fermats last theorem or something they think is important.
Or put it this way - smart people will only solve the problems smart people see as problems.
Agreed, but we all know smart people who are unhappy and can’t quite figure out why.
I should have included “fulfil their personal goals” along with make an impact.
Or I would say 'as interesting' and we know it can be hard to find intersections of interesting and well paying.
The habit I formed was enjoying using creative connections. Unfortunately there's lots of reasonably well paying posts for repeating yourself and it's easy to be complacent in your career and have hobbies instead.
/end
Bragging about being smarter is a standing invitation to receive passive aggressive behavior from others. People will unfairly try to find flaws, and who can blame them? They're acting innately better than their peers - while at the same time not being wise enough to be humble / modest.
I also worry it ends up having a person with potential ending up hiding behind a cryptic / abstract facade, afraid of failing when not being an instant prodigy at a new skill. Don't we will have to work our way up and build a track record of some sort?
What does being intelligent mean anyway?
Ultimately, if someone wanted to be recognized as smart, wouldn't at least some "normal IQ people?" have to understand and appreciate the value of something they synthesized/made?
I guess I can't complain much; at least I got a good job. For a very modest definition of success I could even consider myself "successful".
Also, I'm not "very smart". I have a high IQ, which might be correlated but it's a different thing. EDIT: I strongly believe that a high IQ means, above all, a fundamentally different way of thinking. Which might make you smart, and which is the main cause of the communication problems.
From my experience, the trick is to always focus on the emotional side of things. If you say that you feel super happy because project X worked out as planned, the other person can easily relate to that by telling you about their project Y that worked out well.
You might not understand (or care about) the details of each other's achievement, but the emotions why you enjoy talking about it should be pretty much universal.
That was a spot on answer. But this last bit was the best, mainly because it universal. We all - high IQ on down - need others to be more successful.
The way I explain it to my kids is that your intelligence is just like the color of your hair. You are born with it. You can take actions to change it, to some extent. But there is zero reason to judge anybody for it. People are who they are.
Would an intelligent person use such meaningless, imprecise exaggeration? Maybe we shouldn't conflate IQ with general intelligence?
My writing coach always told me “Anyone can say anything if you give them enough words.”
Some people love to use big college words. I think it makes them feel superior. It’s hard to speak simply and clearly.
The real problem is that talking this way is exhausting. As if someone told you that e.g. you are not allowed to use words containing the letter "m". It is certainly possible, but it requires constant attention to something other than the idea you are trying to convey.
Talking this way feels quite different from talking to someone who uses the same style as you.
Smart people usually never learn to work hard.
1) Intelligent but interested in things which are not necessarily eat paths to becoming successful according to society i.e. R&D
2) Low emotional intelligence and therein poor social skills. Humans rely heavily on social connections and collaboration to drive value. I’ve often see clever people who think they are better than others but do not have the ability to get on. Some intelligent people think they are extremely logical but their decision making is often emotionally charged.
As for the definition of success, that depends on the individual.
For example, to be successful in academia correlates reasonably well with IQ. However, success in sales far less so. Many successful artists also have high IQ due to their spatial and creativity traits, however that doesn't mean that they'll attain high levels of profit from their art. Programmers often have high IQ, but that doesn't guarantee executive suite jobs with their high salaries and lots of perks.