> I’ve had one interview where I had to do multiplications really quickly, whilst shouting my name, and doing such-and-such random thing every five minutes.
I think the whole “I would stand up and walk out of that interview” trope is a little overused but … I would stand up and walk out of that interview. Was that a real situation?
I write about doing high-risk, impactful and neglected science. Particularly in physics, biophysics and biosecurity. Ex-Cambridge Maths. Ex-Goldman. Currently at hedge fund but no finance content here.
Judging by this person's bio, I am sure he is not actually slow, at least not as defined by IQ. You don't land those jobs and credentials by being slow. Getting a quant job for example requires being able to think fast on one's feet to answer interview questions.
I think it's more like his working memory speed is not up to his satisfaction or subjectively he feels slow, but relative to everyone else or general population, he is not actually slow, much in the same way a runway model may feel fat due to body dysmorphia, but is not actually fat.
My first real struggle with slow processing time was when I started to play competitive volleyball in high school.
the vast majority of people who try a sport will suck at it, and many are still bad even with practice, hence why so few become pro. it has nothing to do with mental slowness.
It's like when Einstein felt he was bad at physics or math. No, he was brilliant at it, but he thought he was not good enough to solve the problem he wanted to solve, which had also vexed everyone else too.
Nice read. As another commentator mentioned, this is a great real-world application of Kahneman's 'Thinking, Fast and Slow.' The author's examples illustrates how leaning into System 2 thinking can be a powerful strength, not a weakness.
> Over time, I’ve noticed that my friends, split between the ‘quick-witted people’, and the ‘non quick-witted people’ seem to have similar levels of achievement. This is really a comment about distributions. If you select a skill, like math or career or whatever, and look at distribution quick-witted people vs the slow-witted people, then it appears that those distributions actually overlap.
I went through an autism assessment about a year ago. Part of that was getting an IQ test. I scored well in Verbal Comprehension and Perceptual Reasoning, but struggled more in Processing Speed. This was accounted for by giving two scores, the Full Scale IQ, and the General Ability Index (GAI). The GAI deemphasizes the processing speed, as raw speed to an answer usually isn't that important these days. I was told the having a larger gap between these numbers is one indication that autism might be in the picture.
You may have ADHD. I’ve never described myself as dim-witted, because I’ve never viewed it so negatively, but your description fits me exactly. Even down to the spatial awareness thing and biographical details like switching from math to theoretical physics in college.
I eventually got diagnosed as an adult with ADHD, and got treatment. Stimulants help me be significantly more “quick-witted” to use your terms. I would rather describe “being slow” as being in a constant state of distraction, which prevents me from being efficient with the task at hand. Stimulants fix this.
However having grown up scatterbrained, some aspects of it are now architectural in my brain and aren’t changed by slightly modifying the brain chemistry. I now see that as a superpower through, as it gives me a different perspective for seeing problems, and is great for strategic thinking. Stimulants just give me focused control over it and the ability to turn it off and on as the need arises.
I have thought of myself as a slow thinker but have shifted to the view that it's more about myself putting a higher value on the thoughts that inherently take time to reach.
Other, "quicker" people are satisfied with superficial ideas and sometimes don't even care about factual correctness. But when I finally form my opinion, it is always very considered. When quick people are questioned it's often evident that depth is lacking.
So I am slow only because I do alot more processing, simply put.
I can relate 100%. It affects how I perform in coding interviews, and I also need to work around it in my job.
I also have ADHD and a lot of this matches Dr Russell A Barkley's description of ADHD, particularly when he describes it as a performance and executive function disorder - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzBixSjmbc8eFl6UX5_wW.... ADHD includes much more but this "slow thinking" seems to be a prominent feature.
I think it can be an error labeling people as "fast" or "slow". I had similar self doubts to the OP during my PhD, where so many people around me would say they "got" a concept and I was just feeling behind. But a few years in, while desperately trying to "catch up" I realized a good portion of the time I was just misinterpreting. Even those tasks aren't as well defined as the OP suggests.
There's another dimension that often is not acknowledged: depth. People have different thresholds at where they're comfortable talking about a topic or saying they "understand". I also don't think there's a strong correlation with the person's intelligence, if anything, a slight bias towards "slower" people being smarter.
- Dumb people might have low thresholds as they are unaware of depth.
- Smart people will have low thresholds because they do better thinking out loud or are just saying they think they have enough to launch off of.
- Dumb people might be slow because they haven't thought about the thing very much.
- Smart people might be slow because they are considering different depths.
You'd never judge how fast someone can run without stating the distance. Your 100m sprint time isn't going to tell us much about your 400m time nor your marathon time, and vise versa.
We all think fast and slow at times (intended), and we're all 4 people in the above list on different topics. I think we should just make sure we're judging people at the right race. The trouble is despite standing in front of you, talking face to face, you don't know if in that time they've run a few meters or a few kilometers. I think we'd all do better if we worried a little less about speed. If your destination is nowhere, you get there in the same time regardless of your speed.
>I guess if you take a long time to do something, people kind of forget that you're there.
This is so true sadly, group conversations are very exhausting to me. It is a constant back-and-forth and if you want to say something you need to do it "quick" or the topic shifts.
>Also, my ‘processing time’ in conversation is slow. So I’ve realised that I’m better off focusing on writing as a way to communicate. Writing to me feels more suited towards slow, patient thinkers.
I feel the same way, I try to avoid arguments (like something political with friends (harmless, don't worry)) because it takes me too long to say what I want to say, and my sentences jump around awkwardly trying to express the point I want to make. I was also made fun of in school due to that... Also I tend to mispronounce some words then which makes it even more awkward. People often think that if you don't respond to an argument in two seconds you "lose"...
This also got waaay worse when I first drifted into burnout two years ago (still have, not recovered).
> This is so true sadly, group conversations are very exhausting to me. It is a constant back-and-forth and if you want to say something you need to do it "quick" or the topic shifts.
The exhausting part is that most people like to talk at least as much as they listen, which is hard to do in a group setting.
It also takes me longer to understand things and it takes me longer to get to delivery than many of my peers.
However, I have consistently noticed that the quickness comes at the price of a shallow understanding, and the delivery is also often lacking in those who move fast.
For me, I have to really grok the thing I'm focussing on. I have to internalise it somehow and build a mental model. Once I've done that I am actually faster and more productive than the ones who leap on things quicker.
I’ll admit that taking a pause and planning isn’t one of my best strengths - I focus too much on experimenting and iteration. I’d love to have OP as a coworker - complementary problem-solving styles.
I'm going to propose an alternative explanation. This distinction doesn't exist, or at least not the way it seems.
The "fast thinkers" aren't thinking. They're just doing. Everyone is not only capable of this, but probably behave this way several times a day on certain tasks without realizing it or how it seems to others.
This is beyond mere practice towards a narrow goal. Certain topics just click better due to seemingly unrelated, yet deeply integrated life experiences.
It's not something to worry about since, as the article states, it doesn't affect outcomes much. If anything, "fast thinking" creates blind spots.
I resonate highly with this. Especially when brainstorming ideas with my manager. He's very quick with suggestions, and I am always saying ehhh I don't know let me think about it. I have realized that him giving me ideas quickly to iterate on is beneficial because I am always able to refine it.
I still do think it is a deficiency in some sense as I would have loved to be one of those guys who could just grok stuff instantly and contribute quicker
I have always felt that my verbal recall skills and the size of my lexicon do not correspond strongly to the quality of my ideas.
Which is unfortunate because I believe most people over-index on these attributes. folks with extremely high wit and low/average critical thinking, I.e Russel Brand types are extremely persuasive due to their ability to be so _accurate_. But accuracy doesn't matter if you're not shooting at the right target. We confuse accuracy with truthfulness. It is some sort of cognitive fallacy our brains short circuit to.
The best folks in our position can do is find work that allows our results to speak for us. And yes, write. Find the time to write. Strategically position yourself such that the battleground is async written text.
I also thought about this a lot. Some things about slow thinking are great. I truly believe that it helped me thrive as a software developer.
But social interactions are awkward. I can't really come up with things to say easily and lots of times I can't respond in ways to keep the conversation going. Only after the fact I get lots of ideas of what I could have said. I'm truly impressed about others who can just come up with interesting or funny things to say on the spot.
I'm a tad older, so I stopped caring about it and just accepted my slow thinking. But I'm sure that I also missed out on a lot of opportunities regarding friendships or work. I still think, that others perceive me as awkward or just not fun and it's hard to just ignore that.
Funnily my wife is completely opposite to me and we have the greatest time.
you can try getting into improv comedy to develop this sort of skill. I'm also generally a slow thinker, but i dont actually think we think slower, I think we have too high a barrier for what we allow ourselves to say. We're afraid of making a mistake or saying something stupid, but most people just blurt out the first thought that percolates from their subconscious.
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[ 4.4 ms ] story [ 69.7 ms ] threadI think the whole “I would stand up and walk out of that interview” trope is a little overused but … I would stand up and walk out of that interview. Was that a real situation?
Judging by this person's bio, I am sure he is not actually slow, at least not as defined by IQ. You don't land those jobs and credentials by being slow. Getting a quant job for example requires being able to think fast on one's feet to answer interview questions.
I think it's more like his working memory speed is not up to his satisfaction or subjectively he feels slow, but relative to everyone else or general population, he is not actually slow, much in the same way a runway model may feel fat due to body dysmorphia, but is not actually fat.
My first real struggle with slow processing time was when I started to play competitive volleyball in high school.
the vast majority of people who try a sport will suck at it, and many are still bad even with practice, hence why so few become pro. it has nothing to do with mental slowness.
It's like when Einstein felt he was bad at physics or math. No, he was brilliant at it, but he thought he was not good enough to solve the problem he wanted to solve, which had also vexed everyone else too.
Are you familiar with System 1 and System 2?
https://thedecisionlab.com/reference-guide/philosophy/system...
I eventually got diagnosed as an adult with ADHD, and got treatment. Stimulants help me be significantly more “quick-witted” to use your terms. I would rather describe “being slow” as being in a constant state of distraction, which prevents me from being efficient with the task at hand. Stimulants fix this.
However having grown up scatterbrained, some aspects of it are now architectural in my brain and aren’t changed by slightly modifying the brain chemistry. I now see that as a superpower through, as it gives me a different perspective for seeing problems, and is great for strategic thinking. Stimulants just give me focused control over it and the ability to turn it off and on as the need arises.
Other, "quicker" people are satisfied with superficial ideas and sometimes don't even care about factual correctness. But when I finally form my opinion, it is always very considered. When quick people are questioned it's often evident that depth is lacking.
So I am slow only because I do alot more processing, simply put.
I also have ADHD and a lot of this matches Dr Russell A Barkley's description of ADHD, particularly when he describes it as a performance and executive function disorder - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzBixSjmbc8eFl6UX5_wW.... ADHD includes much more but this "slow thinking" seems to be a prominent feature.
Does not list those other qualities.
Reality is that some people are better and some are worse. No need to make half assed excuses about that.
There's another dimension that often is not acknowledged: depth. People have different thresholds at where they're comfortable talking about a topic or saying they "understand". I also don't think there's a strong correlation with the person's intelligence, if anything, a slight bias towards "slower" people being smarter.
You'd never judge how fast someone can run without stating the distance. Your 100m sprint time isn't going to tell us much about your 400m time nor your marathon time, and vise versa.We all think fast and slow at times (intended), and we're all 4 people in the above list on different topics. I think we should just make sure we're judging people at the right race. The trouble is despite standing in front of you, talking face to face, you don't know if in that time they've run a few meters or a few kilometers. I think we'd all do better if we worried a little less about speed. If your destination is nowhere, you get there in the same time regardless of your speed.
This is so true sadly, group conversations are very exhausting to me. It is a constant back-and-forth and if you want to say something you need to do it "quick" or the topic shifts.
>Also, my ‘processing time’ in conversation is slow. So I’ve realised that I’m better off focusing on writing as a way to communicate. Writing to me feels more suited towards slow, patient thinkers.
I feel the same way, I try to avoid arguments (like something political with friends (harmless, don't worry)) because it takes me too long to say what I want to say, and my sentences jump around awkwardly trying to express the point I want to make. I was also made fun of in school due to that... Also I tend to mispronounce some words then which makes it even more awkward. People often think that if you don't respond to an argument in two seconds you "lose"...
This also got waaay worse when I first drifted into burnout two years ago (still have, not recovered).
The exhausting part is that most people like to talk at least as much as they listen, which is hard to do in a group setting.
However, I have consistently noticed that the quickness comes at the price of a shallow understanding, and the delivery is also often lacking in those who move fast.
For me, I have to really grok the thing I'm focussing on. I have to internalise it somehow and build a mental model. Once I've done that I am actually faster and more productive than the ones who leap on things quicker.
The "fast thinkers" aren't thinking. They're just doing. Everyone is not only capable of this, but probably behave this way several times a day on certain tasks without realizing it or how it seems to others.
This is beyond mere practice towards a narrow goal. Certain topics just click better due to seemingly unrelated, yet deeply integrated life experiences.
It's not something to worry about since, as the article states, it doesn't affect outcomes much. If anything, "fast thinking" creates blind spots.
I have always felt that my verbal recall skills and the size of my lexicon do not correspond strongly to the quality of my ideas.
Which is unfortunate because I believe most people over-index on these attributes. folks with extremely high wit and low/average critical thinking, I.e Russel Brand types are extremely persuasive due to their ability to be so _accurate_. But accuracy doesn't matter if you're not shooting at the right target. We confuse accuracy with truthfulness. It is some sort of cognitive fallacy our brains short circuit to.
The best folks in our position can do is find work that allows our results to speak for us. And yes, write. Find the time to write. Strategically position yourself such that the battleground is async written text.
But social interactions are awkward. I can't really come up with things to say easily and lots of times I can't respond in ways to keep the conversation going. Only after the fact I get lots of ideas of what I could have said. I'm truly impressed about others who can just come up with interesting or funny things to say on the spot.
I'm a tad older, so I stopped caring about it and just accepted my slow thinking. But I'm sure that I also missed out on a lot of opportunities regarding friendships or work. I still think, that others perceive me as awkward or just not fun and it's hard to just ignore that.
Funnily my wife is completely opposite to me and we have the greatest time.