> In time I found being called intelligent didn’t help me in business.
Also won't help you get a date. The reasons are not uncorrelated.
Beyond a certain level of intelligence (which varies depending on your industry--it can be very high in some fields) what helps you in business is empathy: being able to assess what someone wants and being able to use the analytical skills you do have to give them that.
> Also won't help you get a date. The reasons are not uncorrelated.
Depends on the girl. Depends on you also. The label "Intelligent" as it applies to tech is slightly correlated with other traits like social awkwardness, spending 8 hours of your room locked in a room looking at fast moving flashing objects, inability to talk about anything else than those things. Be interesting. Highlight decorrelation. Acquire dates.
> what helps you in business is empathy: being able to assess what someone wants and being able to use the analytical skills you do have to give them that.
Oh for sure, this is true even in Academia. I was supposed to go do my PhD with a guy who was at the top of his field. Incredible mathematician/engineer. Guy was an asshole. My research advisor at that time told me straight out that he thought that would be a bad idea. Much later, I found out that every one of his students left one year after. So he spends most of his days studentless, publishing papers alone. This leads to lack of tenure: scaling of paper publishing requires additional resources.
I'm speaking based on the premise of the article: "To clarify, I don’t mean people don’t value intelligence. They don’t value when it’s their most important value."
The author's argument is that people in business don't value an IQ score in the abstract. But they do value qualities like "gets things done" which are often result of 1) figuring out someone's problem; and 2) applying intelligence to solve that problem. In dating, being "interesting" is often the result of 1) figuring out what makes someone tick; and 2) applying intelligence to impress that person on their own terms.
I don't completely agree with the author's premise. However, there are enough people who act like lab rats; they spend their life optimizing certain parameters: becoming really good coders, mathematicians, getting high scores on standardized IQ tests. They however also utterly fail at solving life's problems (relationships at work, elsewhere). The label "intelligent" as applied to these people doesn't necessarily always mean they get things done.
> The label "Intelligent" as it applies to tech is slightly correlated with other traits like social awkwardness, spending 8 hours of your room locked in a room looking at fast moving flashing objects, inability to talk about anything else than those things.
Because intelligence takes practice, and being interesting and social takes practice, and there are only so many hours in a day. There is a meme among some circles of nerds that goes like "while they were drinking and partying in high school and college, we were studying and acquiring skills". This is totally wrong-minded: the people partying were acquiring skills too.
The important point for the awkward and unsociable to remember is that those skills really are just skills, like any other; some people might be more or less "talented", but no matter what you are still going to need practice. If you spent your life exclusively acquiring abstract problem solving skills, perhaps it is time to step back, and round out your skill set.
> Because intelligence takes practice, and being interesting and social takes practice, and there are only so many hours in a day.
That is not an excuse for anything though. No one has enough time. Everyone makes do. Heinlein's quote on what human beings should do is relevant here.
Also won't help you get a date. The reasons are not uncorrelated.
Well, yes and no. High cognitive ability is correlated with an ability to deconstruct the input-output responses of females.
However, it's also correlated with referring to "flirting with girls" by such absurd phrases as "deconstruct the input-output responses of females".
The trouble is that demonstrating social intelligence in real life requires a lot of dealing with ambiguity, situations where there is no one right answer, frustration, blurred lines, rejection, and other stuff that male geeks tend not to handle as well as the average male who doesn't overthink stuff as much.
> The trouble is that demonstrating social intelligence in real life requires a lot of dealing with ambiguity, situations where there is no one right answer, frustration, blurred lines, rejection, and other stuff
I argue this is the nature of every hard problem. A math PhD involves dealing with ambiguity, broken proofs and rejection. Recalibrating yourself to become aware of social cues is not hard. It is also not simple. It is not a matter of not overthinking (As much as you choking in a tech interview is not a matter of overthinking).
The over-thinking story is just one of many rationalizations. "I can't do well because I am too smart, see?"
People get frustrated when they are bad at something. The options are to get better or not. It is tempting to rationalize not practicing as being caused by something out of your control.
This seems more of a rationalization of the fear of smart people. In its own way, it even seems to celebrate the "jockish" ideal of the sociable but not very smart person.
I really don't think it does. I think the author rightly points out that while intelligence (as we measure it - ie an ability to solve abstract problems) is useful in particular situations (generally involving complicated technical work), it's not the limiting factor which determines success in other areas. I think the message to take away from this is that if people describe you as "intelligent", you shouldn't rest on your laurels. Intelligence is just a small part of the toolkit required to be successful in business.
The reality is that in the real world you need other skills to succeed in business. The article linked resonates with my experiences in large, engineering dominated companies. Those who rise to the top do so not because of their technical skills but because of their ability to work with people. Those with poor social skills don't move up the hierarchy. Of course technical skills remain important even up the chain - a project manager needs to be able to understand what's happening below him - but there is far less need for the ability to solve complicated or abstract problems.
Success is measured in a lot of ways, and this is just applied to business. In other areas (perhaps academia, large companies which value techical work, open source projects) intelligence correlates more directly with success.
This article is conflating "calling someone smart" and "implying the person has bad social skills".
If you have good social skills, they'll be evident as soon as you are introduced to someone, no matter how you are initially described. Look that person in the eye & shake their hand (or do whatever culture dictates you do). That's more of an impression than what someone else says.
Even if the way you are described is what sticks out most, and your intelligence is stronger than your social skills or experience, that does not imply (and I really don't think most infer) that you have "negative" social skills. You could have "good" social skills (or experience) that is just outweighed by "excellent" intelligence, or even neutral social skills.
A sample comparison: When you say someone has a nice personality, is does not mean they're also ugly.
You're talking about logical possibilities -- yes it is logically possible that someone could be called smart when their best quality is actually tap dancing. Author is talking about why people introduce you as the smart guy, and not the friendly guy or the guy who gets shit done. Because they are speaking a code, of sorts, in that they are attempting to portray you in a positive light but your intelligence is actually not a highly-valued trait.
If, when asked "what did you think of that woman you saw last night?" your response is that she has a nice personality then yes, people will assume she is homely. If you were excited about her looks, your answer (it's assumed) would've been about how attractive she is. Maybe you meant to describe her personality irrespective of her looks, but that's not how people will interpret your message.
Communicating is about talking to people in a way that they understand you. So you could sit there cross-armed and insistent that you are not insinuating anything against her looks, as there is no logical interpretation of your statement which requires that conclusion. But, then, you would probably be the person this post is most for.
I tend to agree; I wouldn't start a business at least solely with my most intelligent acquaintances. I'd start a business with people who are intelligent enough, social, motivated, and perhaps slightly dysfunctional and have something to prove. If you're a HN reader type, you don't need another you in order to start a successful business, you need a !you.
There is definitely a law of diminishing returns in a lot of cases with intelligence. People who are just that tiny bit too bright are, not to put to fine a point on it, a bit strange.
99% of anything you want to achieve in business or life you need to work through people to achieve, so people skills are just as important.
Do stats exist on the reasons YC start-ups failed? From my casual reading of news.yc it seems most start-ups in general fail due to social shortcomings, not failures from inability to solve technical issues.
The tech world in general has some bias against what it takes to be a social person. See talks about meritocracy and engineers running the planet. There is definitely a lack of respect for the effort and ability it takes to actually deal with people, which is what most of life involves.
One seemingly unhelpful answer is that the only way a startup ever fails is by the founders giving up.
But when you consider startups like AirBnB, who at one time were selling politician-themed breakfast cereal, maybe it is the simple truth. Never give up; never fail.
> One seemingly unhelpful answer is that the only way a startup ever fails is by the founders giving up.
> But when you consider startups like AirBnB, who at one time were selling politician-themed breakfast cereal, maybe it is the simple truth. Never give up; never fail.
In a different context, I can easily see a thread here on HN talking about how most start-ups fail because their founders are simply not smart enough. Not in this context, though.
The label smart is very unhelpful. I am practiced in abstract problem solving, and I spend a good deal of time at it, so I am good at it. I am practiced at debate and dispute, and spend a good deal of time at it, so I am pretty good at it too. I spend less time socializing with people, so I am not quite as good at it.
The brain is elastic; we are smart at what we practice, and it is good to sit down and practice your weaknesses as well as your strengths. Someone with really high level interpersonal skills is just as much a genius, they just practiced social gatherings and influence and such instead of, dunno, debugging linux configurations or learning set theory or whatever.
Also, when in a debate or argument with someone, focus on your end goal. Which is more important - winning the argument (or saving face) or getting your objective achieved?
The same way you learned to code: by doing it a lot. You might need to practice extra hard, and it might be extra frustrating, because you might have less talent in that area, but it is just a matter of going out and doing it, and then doing your best to learn from your mistakes.
Not saying that the reading materials and so on are bad, they are just useless without actual experimentation.
The root of the issue is in the reason that an entrepreneur is perceived of as smart.
Clients who think you are smart because you provided them an excellent service for less money than they think its value should be is good. I do data recovery jobs that work out like this.
Clients who think you are smart because you provide a solution that causes them to make a lot more money than they paid you is good. I do web design/promotion jobs that increase conversions which seem to fall into this category.
These are a completely different perception of smart than the kind generated from books I wrote or public speaking that I've done.
This is my experience as an entrepreneur who may not be as smart as some people think YMMV.
Hmmm ... I'm pretty sure I've seen Elon Musk, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Sebastian Thrun, Marissa Mayer referred to as blindingly intelligent. Doesn't seem to be a handicap.
Edit: upon further reflection, I think the operative statement is 'rocket scientist'. I suspect that being introduced as a 'rocket scientist' is in fact a handicap because 'rocket science' has a connotation of being a kind of useless knowledge (i.e. what can you do with that). Other the other hand, think about how people react to someone being introduced as a 'computer genius'? Lots of people will find that very interesting because there are lots of practical and profitable things you can do if you're a 'computer genius'.
Without getting into the other people, I hear Musk being described as "ballsy" or "visionary" far more often than I hear him being described as intelligent. I think everyone assumes he is intelligent, but that's not the primary characteristic people talk about.
Author has written about this subject in a peculiar and roundabout way. All he is saying is that being intelligent isn't enough: become known for putting your intelligence to work, producing results, and being easy/good to work with.
If people call you intelligent first, they are probably unable to say anything better about you. For that proposition I think we can ignore the few people who, by virtue of having ther genius manifested in the world already, do sometimes get called out for their intelligence.
Do we think there is a correlation that works the other way? I.E if you are very pleasant and socially skilled will people underestimate your intelligence?
Awhile ago I realized that it was extremely detrimental to think of myself first and foremost as a "smart" person. Not because that self-image was directly harmful to me in business/the real word (though I don't doubt that it was), but because it reinforced very bad behavior on my part.
In order to protect my image of being smart, I would avoid situations where I could make mistakes or appear less intelligent than I thought I was. And so I wouldn't try new things, and I would stay away from any activities that could "out" me as not actually being smart. Its really a vicious cycle, and the result was that I was far less productive & useful than I should have been.
Now I try to project an image of being hard-working instead. It frees me from having to constantly worry about messing up -- all that matters is that I get the job done. And I think I'm much better for it.
I think the problem with thinking of yourself first and foremost as a "smart" person, is that there is always someone else smarter out there, then who are you when you meet them?
I agree with your post, that thinking encourages a lot of 'just stay in my small pond' behavior that's not really a good way to go through life
It's great to hear someone talk about this. I've struggled with the same situation my entire life. When I was a kid I was constantly told by adults how bright I was, that I could do anything if I applied myself, and it became this odd burden despite the clear advantages of whatever smarts I may possess.
I've always wondered what my adult life would be like if a different perspective had been pushed on me as a child. Something different than 'you should be doing this at this level because you're so bright, you can do X without much effort even'. I'm hoping to not make the same mistake with my child.
>In order to protect my image of being smart, I would avoid situations where I could make mistakes or appear less intelligent than I thought I was.
This only happens if you adopt the deterministic mindset that one is born smart.Things get easier if you subscribe to the growth mentality that one can increase her intelligence if she works at it.
I agree. There are three issues here, all somewhat related.
First, there's flattery. An investor or boss who puffs you up with "you're so smart" is often trying to create a context where you feel embarrassed by anything but a 120% effort. It works like a charm on the clueless, talented young people that VCs love.
Second, there's validation as a show of power. When someone says of you, "this guy is smart", what he might be saying is, "I have the power to validate or invalidate a person around here, and you're my guy-- if you keep in line."
Third, it can be a way of damning with faint praise. "He's smart" often means, "he has so much potential", which always comes with an implicit "but". It's much more effective to sabotage someone's reputation with continuing faint praise than to come out with an obvious attack, which just makes you (if you're the attacker) look like a bitter asshole. If you really want to ruin someone's reputation, you always make it look like you're defending that person (against negative social proof that comes "from the ether" because you just made it up). It's like spreading a rumor by denying something. "He clearly has issues with women but I doubt he's a rapist."
Then again, most of the time people are just saying what they think at face value and there aren't any hidden motivations. I wouldn't read too much into being called "smart". Often it means just that.
Still, it is a hard campaign to get out of the Smart Kid mentality (with all the risk-averse mediocrity and approval-seeking that entails) and get more toward a Maker mentality. It's taken me 30 years, and I still have to summon the courage to, e.g., put something in open source. Ultimately, though, every ex-"wunderkind" must learn that a Smart Kid is still just a kid. It's not something to make a career out of.
> Not many parts of life need intelligence and those that do tend to be low-level areas where people work alone, like science and engineering
I'm sorry, what? Neither science nor engineering is a solo endeavor. You still need to work with your colleagues if you want to succeed. Just think about it, how many science or engineering papers have you read which only had one author listed?
I would be worried if someone felt that "being intelligent" was a primary ability of yours - not because others think it reflects badly on your other abilities, but rather because it isn't an important ability in itself and I expect that a part of being intelligent is realising that intelligence isnt important in itself, it is just an ability that lets you make better use of your other abilities, and that can also act as a proxy for some other abilities (as in - you can use intelligence to simulate other, useful abilities).
Stereotyping, there is a group of people who are convinced they are intelligent and that it is important to be intelligent - those guys are usually not actually that good at abstract problem solving. Someone who truly is good at it tends to be more laid back about it, and wouldnt consider it a big deal or important.
51 comments
[ 4.7 ms ] story [ 115 ms ] threadAlso won't help you get a date. The reasons are not uncorrelated.
Beyond a certain level of intelligence (which varies depending on your industry--it can be very high in some fields) what helps you in business is empathy: being able to assess what someone wants and being able to use the analytical skills you do have to give them that.
Depends on the girl. Depends on you also. The label "Intelligent" as it applies to tech is slightly correlated with other traits like social awkwardness, spending 8 hours of your room locked in a room looking at fast moving flashing objects, inability to talk about anything else than those things. Be interesting. Highlight decorrelation. Acquire dates.
> what helps you in business is empathy: being able to assess what someone wants and being able to use the analytical skills you do have to give them that.
Oh for sure, this is true even in Academia. I was supposed to go do my PhD with a guy who was at the top of his field. Incredible mathematician/engineer. Guy was an asshole. My research advisor at that time told me straight out that he thought that would be a bad idea. Much later, I found out that every one of his students left one year after. So he spends most of his days studentless, publishing papers alone. This leads to lack of tenure: scaling of paper publishing requires additional resources.
The author's argument is that people in business don't value an IQ score in the abstract. But they do value qualities like "gets things done" which are often result of 1) figuring out someone's problem; and 2) applying intelligence to solve that problem. In dating, being "interesting" is often the result of 1) figuring out what makes someone tick; and 2) applying intelligence to impress that person on their own terms.
Because intelligence takes practice, and being interesting and social takes practice, and there are only so many hours in a day. There is a meme among some circles of nerds that goes like "while they were drinking and partying in high school and college, we were studying and acquiring skills". This is totally wrong-minded: the people partying were acquiring skills too.
The important point for the awkward and unsociable to remember is that those skills really are just skills, like any other; some people might be more or less "talented", but no matter what you are still going to need practice. If you spent your life exclusively acquiring abstract problem solving skills, perhaps it is time to step back, and round out your skill set.
That is not an excuse for anything though. No one has enough time. Everyone makes do. Heinlein's quote on what human beings should do is relevant here.
Well, yes and no. High cognitive ability is correlated with an ability to deconstruct the input-output responses of females.
However, it's also correlated with referring to "flirting with girls" by such absurd phrases as "deconstruct the input-output responses of females".
The trouble is that demonstrating social intelligence in real life requires a lot of dealing with ambiguity, situations where there is no one right answer, frustration, blurred lines, rejection, and other stuff that male geeks tend not to handle as well as the average male who doesn't overthink stuff as much.
I argue this is the nature of every hard problem. A math PhD involves dealing with ambiguity, broken proofs and rejection. Recalibrating yourself to become aware of social cues is not hard. It is also not simple. It is not a matter of not overthinking (As much as you choking in a tech interview is not a matter of overthinking).
People get frustrated when they are bad at something. The options are to get better or not. It is tempting to rationalize not practicing as being caused by something out of your control.
The reality is that in the real world you need other skills to succeed in business. The article linked resonates with my experiences in large, engineering dominated companies. Those who rise to the top do so not because of their technical skills but because of their ability to work with people. Those with poor social skills don't move up the hierarchy. Of course technical skills remain important even up the chain - a project manager needs to be able to understand what's happening below him - but there is far less need for the ability to solve complicated or abstract problems.
Success is measured in a lot of ways, and this is just applied to business. In other areas (perhaps academia, large companies which value techical work, open source projects) intelligence correlates more directly with success.
If you have good social skills, they'll be evident as soon as you are introduced to someone, no matter how you are initially described. Look that person in the eye & shake their hand (or do whatever culture dictates you do). That's more of an impression than what someone else says.
Even if the way you are described is what sticks out most, and your intelligence is stronger than your social skills or experience, that does not imply (and I really don't think most infer) that you have "negative" social skills. You could have "good" social skills (or experience) that is just outweighed by "excellent" intelligence, or even neutral social skills.
A sample comparison: When you say someone has a nice personality, is does not mean they're also ugly.
If, when asked "what did you think of that woman you saw last night?" your response is that she has a nice personality then yes, people will assume she is homely. If you were excited about her looks, your answer (it's assumed) would've been about how attractive she is. Maybe you meant to describe her personality irrespective of her looks, but that's not how people will interpret your message.
Communicating is about talking to people in a way that they understand you. So you could sit there cross-armed and insistent that you are not insinuating anything against her looks, as there is no logical interpretation of your statement which requires that conclusion. But, then, you would probably be the person this post is most for.
99% of anything you want to achieve in business or life you need to work through people to achieve, so people skills are just as important.
The tech world in general has some bias against what it takes to be a social person. See talks about meritocracy and engineers running the planet. There is definitely a lack of respect for the effort and ability it takes to actually deal with people, which is what most of life involves.
But when you consider startups like AirBnB, who at one time were selling politician-themed breakfast cereal, maybe it is the simple truth. Never give up; never fail.
> But when you consider startups like AirBnB, who at one time were selling politician-themed breakfast cereal, maybe it is the simple truth. Never give up; never fail.
This is magical thinking.
The brain is elastic; we are smart at what we practice, and it is good to sit down and practice your weaknesses as well as your strengths. Someone with really high level interpersonal skills is just as much a genius, they just practiced social gatherings and influence and such instead of, dunno, debugging linux configurations or learning set theory or whatever.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Win_Friends_and_Influenc...
Also, when in a debate or argument with someone, focus on your end goal. Which is more important - winning the argument (or saving face) or getting your objective achieved?
Much better is to learn psychology, courses are available free on Coursera, Udacity and EDx.
You can spend your time doing a psychology course, but I'm not sure that would make you a more affable person.
Not saying that the reading materials and so on are bad, they are just useless without actual experimentation.
Clients who think you are smart because you provided them an excellent service for less money than they think its value should be is good. I do data recovery jobs that work out like this.
Clients who think you are smart because you provide a solution that causes them to make a lot more money than they paid you is good. I do web design/promotion jobs that increase conversions which seem to fall into this category.
These are a completely different perception of smart than the kind generated from books I wrote or public speaking that I've done. This is my experience as an entrepreneur who may not be as smart as some people think YMMV.
Edit: upon further reflection, I think the operative statement is 'rocket scientist'. I suspect that being introduced as a 'rocket scientist' is in fact a handicap because 'rocket science' has a connotation of being a kind of useless knowledge (i.e. what can you do with that). Other the other hand, think about how people react to someone being introduced as a 'computer genius'? Lots of people will find that very interesting because there are lots of practical and profitable things you can do if you're a 'computer genius'.
my unscientific response.
If people call you intelligent first, they are probably unable to say anything better about you. For that proposition I think we can ignore the few people who, by virtue of having ther genius manifested in the world already, do sometimes get called out for their intelligence.
In order to protect my image of being smart, I would avoid situations where I could make mistakes or appear less intelligent than I thought I was. And so I wouldn't try new things, and I would stay away from any activities that could "out" me as not actually being smart. Its really a vicious cycle, and the result was that I was far less productive & useful than I should have been.
Now I try to project an image of being hard-working instead. It frees me from having to constantly worry about messing up -- all that matters is that I get the job done. And I think I'm much better for it.
Have you not heard of it before?
Edit: Just realized SA has erected a paywall... That article used to be available in full, but apparently isn't anymore.
I agree with your post, that thinking encourages a lot of 'just stay in my small pond' behavior that's not really a good way to go through life
I've always wondered what my adult life would be like if a different perspective had been pushed on me as a child. Something different than 'you should be doing this at this level because you're so bright, you can do X without much effort even'. I'm hoping to not make the same mistake with my child.
This only happens if you adopt the deterministic mindset that one is born smart.Things get easier if you subscribe to the growth mentality that one can increase her intelligence if she works at it.
First, there's flattery. An investor or boss who puffs you up with "you're so smart" is often trying to create a context where you feel embarrassed by anything but a 120% effort. It works like a charm on the clueless, talented young people that VCs love.
Second, there's validation as a show of power. When someone says of you, "this guy is smart", what he might be saying is, "I have the power to validate or invalidate a person around here, and you're my guy-- if you keep in line."
Third, it can be a way of damning with faint praise. "He's smart" often means, "he has so much potential", which always comes with an implicit "but". It's much more effective to sabotage someone's reputation with continuing faint praise than to come out with an obvious attack, which just makes you (if you're the attacker) look like a bitter asshole. If you really want to ruin someone's reputation, you always make it look like you're defending that person (against negative social proof that comes "from the ether" because you just made it up). It's like spreading a rumor by denying something. "He clearly has issues with women but I doubt he's a rapist."
Then again, most of the time people are just saying what they think at face value and there aren't any hidden motivations. I wouldn't read too much into being called "smart". Often it means just that.
Still, it is a hard campaign to get out of the Smart Kid mentality (with all the risk-averse mediocrity and approval-seeking that entails) and get more toward a Maker mentality. It's taken me 30 years, and I still have to summon the courage to, e.g., put something in open source. Ultimately, though, every ex-"wunderkind" must learn that a Smart Kid is still just a kid. It's not something to make a career out of.
I'm sorry, what? Neither science nor engineering is a solo endeavor. You still need to work with your colleagues if you want to succeed. Just think about it, how many science or engineering papers have you read which only had one author listed?
Stereotyping, there is a group of people who are convinced they are intelligent and that it is important to be intelligent - those guys are usually not actually that good at abstract problem solving. Someone who truly is good at it tends to be more laid back about it, and wouldnt consider it a big deal or important.