[Closed] Realising you aren't actually very intelligent...

I'm currently trying to understand gravitational wave detection, at the bog-basic level at which it is pitched by the wonderful Janna Levin. It's hopeless. I am altogether too stupid and should stick to law.

🙂

Can you explain why computer programming takes such a variable time to demonstrate intelligence level?

When I mentioned it I was assuming thick people would give up in 5 minutes and intelligent people would stick at it. Of course a desire to learn programming isn't mutally exclusive to either group.

Apparently I'm intelligent according to the tests etc but I seem to be making it a life's work to prove them wrong 😆

Another one who cruised through school doing enough to keep up with the rest of the class, partly through laziness and partly through no real ambition but mainly so as not to stand out. I was a bully-magnet enough as it was! Since being in the world of work I've realised that a lot of people are very, very stupid on some things but brilliant at other stuff whereas others seem to have it all. The odd person has nothing going on between their ears but most people can do something well, it's finding that thing that's difficult.

Sometimes I do wish I knew more when around friends and randoms that have a good grasp of certain subjects. I learnt a while back that if I don't know something it's best to say nothing rather than say something stupid, saying stuff for comedic effect works but you sort of need an understanding of the subject to make that work so on the whole I stay quiet and nod at appropriate times. The rest of my time I'm perfectly happy in my own simple little world of work, food, sleep and bikes 8)

To those who think stw is a hive of great minds... it's really just a hive of great googlers.

How do you measure it? My stepson is doing incredibly well in his medicine course (doing an MSC for his 4th year, top progress test results etc) and I discovered recently he didn't know his shoe size. We got him measured at a shoe shop and found his converse shoes were 1.5 sizes too big. Is that thick?

Im with you OP... but

I reckon you have to be quite intelligent, to realise that you aren't.

Well, thats what I tell myself to make myself feel better... 🙄

I learned my limitations fast enough when at school: hard work would have got me to Oxbridge, but zero work got me to Durham. I preferred the zero work camp. And then found myself surrounded by plenty of very smart people who were also prepared to work hard!

It took becoming a lawyer to discover an ability to graft (though in fairness I went into an area of the law where intellectual ability ranks pretty low: M&A - once described by a colleague as the second hand car sales of the legal world).

I'll never learn....

trip to the local tescos will make you feel much smarter.

Clever is knowing tomatoes are a fruit.
Intelligence is knowing never to put tomatoes in a fruit salad.

It's all relative though, I've always been an academic under-achiever compared with my brother but I also know a lot of people both less intelligent and less knowledgeable than me (also lots the other way around of course).

Mind you I find as I get older the ability to hold a lot of information in my head seems to be getting worse. I'm not sure if that's lack of intelligence as such but it's frustrating to work with a few people that seem to perfectly recall complex technical discussions from months ago when I sometimes struggle to remember something more straightforward from the week before.

It's the won't thinkers that annoy me. The refusal to engage their brains. It seems to be a growing trend.

I also remind myself that I once sorted my 26 and 29 in spare inner tubes out and marked the 26's with a 6 and the 29ers with a 9.

To the OP - are you sure you're not an introvert rather than not intelligent? Those behaviours sound much more like the former... Lots of books on how to cope/change if you want to and it's bothering you.

I work in academia, have an MA, MSc and a PhD, and still get the imposter syndrome thing - but some people you meet in this field really are genii/geniuses...

The admin girl in our office was moaning about the size of her email inbox the other day. "I've got thirteen hundred emails!" she said. A couple of minutes later she says, "Oh no, I got that wrong, it is actually one thousand three hundred, that is not so bad!"

My wife just submitted her 20,000 word dissertation for her Masters (dermatology of the fanny), she did this in 12 months during her evenings, despite working more than full time and us having a busy house of three young kids. It contains lots of big words that I cannot pronounce, let along understand, as well as lots of truly disgusting photos.

Post graduate degrees don't make you intelligent, at the last academic lab I worked at - half of the PhD students and post docs read the Daily Mail and voted conservative, despite working in environmental sciences. What's even worse with these kinds of low grade academics, is that they've been reasonably right all their lives (eg during exams) and so they carry that attitude that they are always right - to all of their ridiculously misinformed opinions.

If there's one thing that I can't stand more than being around a bunch of inbred UKIP voters, it's being around academics who vote against their own best interests and take pride in that fact.

I'd describe myself as being of above average intellect, but I'm no genius. However I also have a reasonable degree of common sense, whereas my 'genius' mate - I wouldn't rely on him to find his way home at night even with the aid of a map; his head's far too full of Nobel prize winning levels of medicinal chemistry research to worry about fundamental stuff.

The other 'intelligence' - is emotional intelligence. And I've had the misfortune to work with a few who have none of it, no self awareness to be able to say the right thing at the right time (equally - a spectacular ability to say the wrong thing instead).

I'd rather someone with a bit of all three than someone who has one in spades but none of the others.

I teach some amazingly bright students - 10% of our second year students got OxBridge offers - who remind me that I'm not as clever as I'd like to be.

The student who sat 5 A levels, getting A*s in all of them, plus an extra 3 maths modules for fun and three maths Step papers (getting 1s in two of them and a grade higher, which most people don't even know exists, in the third) was one of last year's highlights.

Being supa-intelligent doesn't make life any easier. My cycling buddy has an Oxford degree and he's a physician at the top of his game but he can't adjust a headset, struggles with simple bike maintenance and needs me to tell him how to fix things that go wrong in his house.

There are many directions of intelligence, as said above.
There are some who whiz through a cryptic crossword but can't start a sudoku, and vice versa. Logic and verbal agility seem to be opposed in many cases, and mechanical aptitude and emotional intelligence are different things altogether.

My late uncle was a prof at Edinburgh University. He had to call his wife to dislodge the soap when it had dried stuck to the basin: that task was beyond him.

Doing an MSc in Pure/Applied Maths was where I found my limit, the course was Approximation Theory lead by M J Powell (Cambs Uni). Up until that point I had found Maths really trivial and then suddenly I was struggling to keep up. The lecturer would skip so many steps I spent ages working out how he got from one formula to another and only just barely comprehended what was going on. Passed the module but I wouldn't say I really understood what we were actually proving (which was proving under what circumstances approximation methods converged or diverged).

NB You can buy his book if you're really keen: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Approximation-Theory-Methods-M-Powell/dp/0521295149#reader_0521295149

I think there is a huge disparity between academic intelligence and real world intelligence.

By that I mean there are many people with a string of letters after their name that can't hold a conversation in a gathering of people outside of their chosen subject. These folk may be super intelligent gods amongst their peers, but to mr public they would appear normal or indeed sometimes stupid as the sense of reality is lost.

May be a slightly biased view (as I am 45 on Friday), but real intelligence is more of a jack of all trades - master of none type person imho.

As the years pass people gain a lot of knowledge and experience. If they can use this in life and know how to find out the things they need to know but don't - then to me they are intelligent.

I'm not sure about older and wiser, as I still want to do ride my bike like I did in my twenties. The theory is that I am now old and wise enough to know where I went wrong before, so it should be easy peasy now.

Then my body reminds me I'm not in my 20s 😆

I agree with you there twonks, the people who really amaze me are polymaths. You know, the kinds of people who remind you of an 18th century gentleman. Of which there are few and far between these days, I meet few truly well read people, as modern academics discourages it. The thing is, it's sadly these people who end up doing really amazing interdisciplnary work.

I recently saw a short piece on the inventor of the super soaker water pistol, Lonnie Johnson. Now that guy is a proper bona fida genius, the academic intelligence of Stephen Hawking with the practical application of Colin Furze. It was interesting that he considered his education, as a black man in the 60's he was denied access to white university's, better than his ivy league colleagues, as he wasn't pampered but taught to problem solve through adversity.

Sitting with my brother-in-law and sister-in-law last night (who have come to visit from LA where they work in space science) and listening to them explain to my very inquisitive 7 year old how the universe was formed, how life was formed, how elements exist, how the universe bends time etc etc etc

To those who think stw is a hive of great minds... it's really just a hive of great googlers.

yep. take the one thing you know a lot about, you may not be an expert but you have years of experience in this one thing but are intelligent enough to know that your peers in that field know more (even if they are lacking in some areas that you are stronger)
then look at the instances when that is the subject of STW posts...
it’s mostly internet forum bullshit from desk worriers.

i think the key is knowing yourself and what you are capable of. i couldn’t even muster a gcse in English or maths and the 24hr clock bamboozles me past 13:00hrs am i thick as sh1te? no especially when i hear the banal drivel in pubs/other peoples workplaces/the vox pop soundbites from people in the street during brexit etc.

i know plenty of people with doctorates, some are absolutely useless

My wife just submitted her 20,000 word dissertation for her Masters (dermatology of the fanny), she did this in 12 months during her evenings, despite working more than full time and us having a busy house of three young kids. It contains lots of big words that I cannot pronounce, let along understand

and does she do some absolutely ridiculous things that make you question her sanity? 🙄

i had a pretty bad education, no exams were sat. i was a fool.
but i have done pretty good. can talk well to folk on all levels, never feel intimidated by people more educated.
i have found in life people with loads of letters after theit names, dont have much common sense.

[url= https://c4.staticflickr.com/4/3064/2631547523_bdde18ae18_b.jp g" target="_blank">https://c4.staticflickr.com/4/3064/2631547523_bdde18ae18_b.jp g"/> [/img][/url][url= https://flic.kr/p/51xnp2 ]Me likey![/url] by [url= https://www.flickr.com/photos/peter_atkin/ ]Peter Atkin[/url], on Flickr

and does she do some absolutely ridiculous things that make you question her sanity

well she married me for a start.

There are so many different types of intelligence though.

I am reasonably intelligent, have got a decent degree in mechanical engineering and have a decent amount of common sense, but I am absolutely rubbish at debating or talking about things. I really admire people who's brain is able to come up with witty retorts at the drop of a hat etc.

The other thing I struggle with is applying my knowledge, seizing opportunities & having confidence in my abilities. So - for me, I'd rather trade a bit of my intelligence for some of these other abilities to be honest, which would make me more able to make use of the intelligence I do have.

Some people are musically gifted, some are amazing with practical stuff and using their hands, some people are great at looking at the bigger picture, while others hone in on the detail.
I think the important thing is to find what you are good at. I'm still looking..... 😆

I think there is a huge disparity between academic intelligence and real world intelligence.

This - we have an educational system that places huge emphasis on analytical ability and doing well in exams above anything else. Which is fine if you want to be an academic, but means that qualities like emotional intelligence, common sense etc, which are often what you need in the real world, aren't recognised or rewarded.

What you end up with are people who might be brilliant at solving complex analytical problems or writing academic-style reports, but haven't got the faintest idea of how to interact effectively with other people, lead a team or, quite often, change a freakin' lightbulb.

Meanwhile our obsession with academic achievement makes it much harder for people with qualities not recognised by our educational system to get into positions where the qualities they do have would be valuable.

Yes, to an extent, if does even out, but if your educational system is a gateway filter for many careers and you have a hierarchy dominated by people who've been through it themselves, it's not really surprising that our idea of what intelligence is tends to be quite a narrow one.

He wrote, in an over-educated, over-thinking, analytical sort of way... 😐

we have an educational system that places huge emphasis on analytical ability above anything else

And we have a media and culture that places huge emphasis on ignoring facts and scientific evidence in favour of opinions, feelings, half-baked ideas and emotions.

So it all evens out 😉

So it all evens out

All part of the same problem. Because our academic system is essentially about game playing - it's all adversarial crap, look at sports science and its endless changing orthodoxies for a good example - people who rise to the top - Gove, Johnson and similar dicks - will do whatever it takes to circumvent arguments that contradict their own narrow interest in 'winning' the argument. If that means ignoring facts and manipulating the media / public, then it's all good.

If they were people with genuine compassion for others and empathy and some care for the country as a whole, they might just consider things beyond their own self-interest and that of their peer group.

What you end up with are people who might be brilliant at solving complex analytical problems or writing academic-style reports, but haven't got the faintest idea of how to interact effectively with other people,

A few people have alluded to folk like this. I wonder what percentage of those being discussed are Aspie, that sounds like very stereotypical traits.

the people who really amaze me are polymaths.

I used to work with one. He was incredible (and almost certainly an undiagnosed Aspie). Knew everything from Latin to computer networking to particle physics. Last I spoke to him, he'd taken it upon himself to learn Russian. No reason, just fancied the challenge.

He was also an alcoholic, a devout Christian, had an entirely carnivorous diet and had anger management issues (or at least, he claimed to have).

Interesting chap. It'd be boring if we were all the same I suppose.

I did enjoy watching my sister, who's extremely academically bright etc. (Oxford, consultant psychiatrist now), topping up the engine oil in her old mini with a tea spoon down the dip stick hole for a good 5 minutes before pointing out the filler cap.

stumpy01

There are so many different types of intelligence though.

I am reasonably intelligent, have got a decent degree in mechanical engineering and have a decent amount of common sense, but I am absolutely rubbish at debating or talking about things. I really admire people who's brain is able to come up with witty retorts at the drop of a hat etc.

The other thing I struggle with is applying my knowledge, seizing opportunities & having confidence in my abilities. So - for me, I'd rather trade a bit of my intelligence for some of these other abilities to be honest, which would make me more able to make use of the intelligence I do have.

Some people are musically gifted, some are amazing with practical stuff and using their hands, some people are great at looking at the bigger picture, while others hone in on the detail.
I think the important thing is to find what you are good at. I'm still looking...

Stumpy, you and I sound very alike....any intelligence i may possess is subjugated by the fact i'm very introverted,(self deprecating username?).

Is all a game anyway, narcissism/sociopathic tendencies are all you really need to succeed in life.

A few people have alluded to folk like this. I wonder what percentage of those being discussed are Aspie, that sounds like very stereotypical traits.

The student I mentioned above wasn't Aspie but his mum worked with people with Aspergers so he knew a lot about it. He used to diagnose other students in his classes - he did further maths, physics and computing, so wasn't short of candidates.

...anyone else?

No. I'm very intelligent.

Realising you aren't actually very intelligent...

......not a problem for me as I've never considered myself to be intelligent. Set the bar low and then it aint a problem!

I always try to ensure i'm the cleverest person in the room.

Mostly by locking myself in the toilet.

What you end up with are people who might be brilliant at solving complex analytical problems or writing academic-style reports, but haven't got the faintest idea of how to interact effectively with other people, lead a team or, quite often, change a freakin' lightbulb.

I used to share a house with a guy with a Masters Degree in Biochemisty or something very similar. He bought some new wiper blades for his car and spent ages faffing with them before throwing them in the bin as they didn't fit. I fished ten out and had them on in 30 seconds flat.
I chose not to go to uni. I didn't want to, hated school and couldn't see the point. Nearly 30 years later I know that was the right choice and I've never once regretted that decision. I could have passed whatever degree I liked and that's good enough for me.

MrSmith - Member

To those who think stw is a hive of great minds... it's really just a hive of great googlers.

yep. take the one thing you know a lot about, you may not be an expert but you have years of experience in this one thing but are intelligent enough to know that your peers in that field know more (even if they are lacking in some areas that you are stronger)
then look at the instances when that is the subject of STW posts...
it’s mostly internet forum bullshit from desk worriers.

There's obviously a certain amount of black-belt cutting and pasting going on, but if you look at, e.g. the long-running threads on things like photography, or "last thing you made" threads, or the shed-building clique, or just commonsense solutions to simple mechanical problems that would have the likes of me baffled, there's quite a breadth of intelligence and creative thinking of different types to be found on here.

At some point a long long time ago, I came to realise that my grammar school and university education bore practically no resemblance to who I am today (or have been for ~20 years), due to life's lottery of infinite possibilities.

Doing an MSc in Pure/Applied Maths was where I found my limit, the course was Approximation Theory lead by M J Powell (Cambs Uni). Up until that point I had found Maths really trivial and then suddenly I was struggling to keep up.

I went to uni with a 17yr old lad doing pure mathematics combined with philosophy. I could have a crack at all the other work the housemates were doing, law, physics, engineering etc, but not that, utter mystery to me and most of the world.

He could have gone into a career in that world but the jobs are few and far between and your colleagues would be somewhat 'challenging'.

I'm not a deep thinker but I am damn fast at thinking, this gets me into and out of trouble in equal measure.

Seems a lot of people think that having an academic education means that you are shit at practical things.

I have a Masters degree in Physics, but I can also fix things in the garage and fit wiper blades and a whole host of other things. Practical skills and academic skills are orthogonal - you can have one, both, or neither.

Njee your awesomeness went down 2437% when you told me who you worked for. Still leaves several thousand per cent though

😆

False accusation, less than 1,200% representative!

I went to uni with a 17yr old lad doing pure mathematics combined with philosophy. I could have a crack at all the other work the housemates were doing, law, physics, engineering etc, but not that, utter mystery to me and most of the world.

Maths is a weird one - at A-level I found mechanics and statistics very straightforward, but pure maths just wouldn't sink in. Ended up getting AA-U in the different modules, C overall. Not needed anything beyond GCSE maths since I don't think 😕

I have lots of degrees, but really really wish I could be more of a handyman.

I also have little-to-no wit. Thinking on my feet is a real challenge, but I write very good books and papers.