
On Being Smart (2009) [pdf] - jonnybgood
http://sma.epfl.ch/~moustafa/General/onbeingsmart.pdf
======
rdlecler1
I had the good fortune of having dyslexia and ADD before they tested these
kinds of things, and eventually went on to become a high school dropout.
Ultimately I went to university, got five degrees including a PhD from Yale. I
published two papers in Nature journals now cited together over 250 times.
One, a single author paper, overturned 10 years of high profile theory and
originally caused a falling out with my advisor, a MacArthur fellow and one of
the giants of Yale. Having grown up never feeling smart I was always
intellectually humble and assumed I was wrong. I found my new theoretical
discovery because I noticed an anomaly -- apparently others had encountered
before, but swept it under the carpet. I on the other hand assumed I must have
done something wrong and so I kept digging until I Worked out the answer. If
you're too smart you can also be too confident in your own abilities to
extrapolate and interpolate.

~~~
taliesinb
[http://msb.embopress.org/content/4/1/213.abstract](http://msb.embopress.org/content/4/1/213.abstract)
for anyone else who is interested.

Funny, I think I remember reading this paper when I was playing with a-life
around 2009.

How did this Yale giant respond when you explained your concerns? And after
you published?

~~~
rdlecler1
When I reported my findings to him he told me to stop what I was doing. I
couldn't even get him to read the paper. This guy was a giant, and he
completely dismissed it. And so I went out and got it published solo. About 8
months later I was doing a bioinformatics analysis on what they called junk
DNA at the time. We came to very different conclusions about what we would
find--my hypothesis was based on my research, his hypothesis on his research.
When it was all done, I was right, and that work him up. This was a couple
weeks before my dissertation defense and to be honest I wasn't even sure I was
going to pass. When he introduced me he got up in front of the faculty and
role a story of a 'boy who slated a dragon' and praised me for my intellectual
courage and apologized. Unfortunately the damage was already done. I had been
a Ronin for most of my academic career, still unformed, and not as brilliant
at others. It would take me months to do what others could learn in days or
weeks and I didn't want to risk a life of a low paying and money post doc and
so I left academia.

~~~
xaa
What a shame. With that kind of CV, you could easily have jumped straight to
staff scientist or possibly assistant prof by looking outside the Ivies, as
informatics skills are heavily in demand now. Also, if you're willing to
collaborate with wet-lab biologists, there are nearly limitless opportunities
to easily keep funded and have the respect of your peers (again, because
informaticians are really needed to analyze all the data that's being
generated nowadays).

But I have heard that for people who did PhDs at an Ivy, they are often
unwilling to look outside them, as if it were some kind of failure. I'm not
sure if that applies to you, but I think it takes a similar form of humility
to the kind described in this article to realize that you can do good science
and make a good career for yourself without always publishing in top-tier
journals and working at top 10 institutions.

~~~
rdlecler1
I did try. I even applied to second tier Universities in Asia. It's really not
that easy. It's a very very competitive market. When you graduate you're broke
and you don't have a lot of money so you can't wait around. As well,
universities take a percentage of your grant money so they prefer to hire
researchers that require expensive equipment. Finally to get a faculty
position, even at a third tier university, you're going to have to have a
sponsor on the faculty. The more novel your research is, the less likely
you're going to find someone who sees you as a collaborator.

------
iMark
There's a lot here that resonates with me beyond matters of intelligence.

In my spare time I'm a contact juggler. If you don't know what that it is, it
involves rolling balls around the body. David Bowie in Labyrinth is usually a
good reference point.

And I'm good at it. I'm good at it because I've been doing it for nearly a
decade and I've put in the hours. I don't think I learned particularly
quickly, or even particularly well, but I stuck with it and worked hard to
improve. I'm not shy about telling people that, but many still seem to assume
it's some form of innate talent, no matter how much I reassure them otherwise.

It's as though people would rather accept their own status quos rather than
believe that effort and commitment is enough to improve their lot. Yes, it
might take years to reach a level of skill in a given discipline, but those
years will pass anyway. Wouldn't it be nice to have something more to show for
all that time than a depression on the sofa in front of the tv?

~~~
visakanv
That's consistent with my experience as a musician. I'm no prodigy. I don't
have a musican background. When I started out, I couldn't sing in tune and I
couldn't clap in time. All I did was dick around on the guitar on and off for
over a decade. I've gotten pretty good at it just by sucking at it for a long
time, and reducing the suckage one little bit at a time.

Professional musicians simply do the same thing, but far more intensively,
rigorously, systematically. Hours and hours of practice day after week after
month after year.

I once transcribed a post I read about this called The Mundanity of
Excellence, by Daniel Chambliss: [http://www.visakanv.com/blog/2014/01/the-
mundanity-of-excell...](http://www.visakanv.com/blog/2014/01/the-mundanity-of-
excellence-by-daniel-chambliss/)

EDIT: Also, to be fair, I think what stops a lot of people is– when they start
out, they really suck, and they simply can't envision the path from sucking to
being good. Because it involves many qualitative transformations. The
mythologizing we do of successful people doesn't help. We get told this story
about how all the people at the top one day discovered that they loved
something so much that they wanted to work on it really hard forever. If this
narrative changed, I think more people would get good at more things.

~~~
iMark
The learning period is a good point. Contact juggling has a rather cliff-like
learning curve and many people don't progress because of it.

A supportive environment makes a world of difference. I hsf people around
early on to who offered constructive advice and encouragement and that made
all the difference.

~~~
mitchtbaum
> A supportive environment makes a world of difference. I had people around
> early on to who offered constructive advice and encouragement and that made
> all the difference.

One of my dad's greatest pieces of advice he gave me came as we drove back
from a wrestling match I lost, like every single one before that one. As I
hung my head in tired shame, he said, "people show more character in defeat
than in victory."

~~~
triplesec
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just
the same;

Rudyard Kipling, If.
[http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/175772](http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/175772)

------
ph33r
The best thing I've ever read online about 'being smart' came from a Reddit
comment:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/confession/comments/nxdzz/im_not_as...](https://www.reddit.com/r/confession/comments/nxdzz/im_not_as_smart_as_i_thought_i_was/c3d91jl)

~~~
JamesBarney
While this is a good read. I think what differentiates the top 5% of the bell
curve(people at MIT) in terms of success is probably different from what
differentiates the rest of the bell curve.

For instance what accounts for the variation in play between a bunch of 7 foot
tall basketball players is not what separates them from a gentleman of 5'5\.
Most research backs this up. The gap in achievement between an IQ of 115->130
is far large than 145->160.

~~~
burkaman
There was a study posted here recently that disagrees with you:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10488998](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10488998)

The summary is that very intelligent people do not seem to have any unique
genetic or environmental factors that explain that, they just happen to be at
the edge of the bell curve. This is not true of very unintelligent people;
there are lots of genetic and environmental factors that can decrease
intelligence.

From the abstract: "We found that high intelligence is familial, heritable,
and caused by the same genetic and environmental factors responsible for the
normal distribution of intelligence."

------
danieltillett
I actually don't think the divide is between smartness and hard work, it is
between smartness and originality. Originality is the wedge and hard work is
the sledge hammer. All smartness provides is a torch to find the wedge in the
darkness of our ignorance.

~~~
vzcx
This is actually closer to what Grothendieck writes in Recoltes et Semailles:

"Yet it is not these gifts, nor the most determined ambition combined with
irresistible will-power, that enables one to surmount the "invisible yet
formidable boundaries" that encircle our universe. Only innocence can surmount
them, which mere knowledge doesn't even take into account, in those moments
when we find ourselves able to listen to things, totally and intensely
absorbed in child play."

[http://www.fermentmagazine.org/rands/promenade11.html](http://www.fermentmagazine.org/rands/promenade11.html)

~~~
delish
Wow! I've been looking for an english translation of Recoltes et Semailles for
a while. I see now it's easily reachable by google (oops), but still, thanks!

------
cmrdporcupine
All my life I heard from people "you're so smart, you have so much potential,
but you need to try" while I failed through school due to challenges focusing,
and, frankly, giving a shit. In the end, I carried this "you're so smart, but"
attitude around with me to both my benefit and detriment.

I have no CS degree but have elbowed my way (often with a distinct lack of
grace, in retrospect) into the industry as a software developer. I now somehow
work at a place that prides itself on intense meritocracy, famous for its
grueling elitist interviews .... and the impostor syndrome is intense. But
when I look around, most of the people around me do not seem so much 'more
intelligent' as 'more adapted for the school-grades / work-politics system'
which the interview process / promo process selects for.

To me intelligence and smartness are clearly cultural phenomenon. Yes some
people are more adapted to certain types of intellectual activity, but whether
those things are 'smart' or not is questionable to me.

As a parent I often get frustrated with myself when I instinctually reward my
children with comments like "you're so smart". Unfortunately they struggle
with focusing, behavioural compliance, etc. in similar ways to me, while their
intellectual and artistic curiosity is intense -- I know they have a long
uphill battle ahead of them.

~~~
cmrdporcupine
I should add that one of the most frustrating things for me is to stand in the
microkitchen at work and listen to the (overwhelmingly male, white, middle
class background) engineering/CS grads around me bitch about garbage worker
strikes or unions in general, while they snack on organic chocolate and pat
themselves on the back for having run the gauntlet of HS/university/interview-
process. To me, the world of unskilled labour and precarious employment seems
only a mis-step or two away...

~~~
vasilipupkin
it's possible, but let's not ignore the heritable / family aspect of this. In
my family noone has done unskilled labor going back to 19th century at least
and possibly earlier. So it's fair to say I am not in danger of that. But I
agree with your point that a bit of compassion from those more fortunate
wouldn't hurt

~~~
magic_beans
Absolutely not fair to say you're not in danger of some catastrophic life
event that'll force you into unskilled labor.

~~~
vasilipupkin
the probability of me personally having to do unskilled labor is so
excruciatingly low that we can ignore it for all practical purposes. Doesn't
change the need for empathy, etc.

------
6stringmerc
"Ignorance is bliss."

The older I get, the more wise I get, the more I believe in the above
statement. As in, not having the mental capacity or brain-power to muse over
inequities both in personal and worldly topics is a less emotionally affective
position to be in. I grew up in a protestant Christian faith, and while I
don't actively participate, I do reflect often on some of the teachings
(mostly the Beatitudes) and literature, and only in my 20s did I realize that
"Eating the apple from the tree of life" is pretty much a metaphor for our
evolutionary development into consciousness, of "knowing right and wrong" as a
species.

Intelligence? It's a curse as much as it is a blessing. Folks can disagree
with that assertion if they'd like. From my personal studies in literature and
philosophy though, I think it's a pretty common understanding amongst a
certain tier of thinkers. My apology if I come off sounding a little elitist,
but intelligence is a bell curve, and, to quote the famous _Demotivational_
poster, "Not everybody gets to be an astronaut when they grow up."[0]

[0]Link to photo I found via Google search:
[http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0535/6917/products/potentia...](http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0535/6917/products/potentialdemotivator.jpeg?v=1414017238)

~~~
DarkTree
I will say too, that as I got older I bit more and more into "Ignorance is
bliss" being a true statement. Knowing both good and bad results in many
emotional responses. The problem is that emotional responses, when they are
negative, are often perceived as bad. However, the past couple of years I've
begun to flip that assertion by maintaining the idea that any emotion
perceived is beneficial, valuable, and makes you feel alive. Feeling alive, in
my opinion, is one of those ultimate gifts that a human can have. My
conclusion is that, while ignorance is bliss, I would much rather feel both
the power and beauty of the spectrum of emotional responses. They are equally
valuable and enlightening.

~~~
6stringmerc
Very nice insight, and I thank you for sharing. As a musician and writer, I've
never really shied away from dealing with emotions, as they can influence so
much in 'tone' (in the case of sound) or 'behavior' (in the case of fictional
characters). You're right about emotions being valuable and enlightening,
that's a nice way of putting it. Upon reflection, I think maybe what I was
striving to convey is that even as a smart person, a caring person, and with
time to think things through, there's still the reality of life to confront -
as in, thought and good will alone can't change the world for the better. It's
difficult trying to 'fight the good fight' (in whatever form it may be - daily
social interactions, actions with consequences, etc), and honestly, not very
rewarding in a practical sense. I guess it's the burden for some to be borne
many years after they're born!

------
ahussain
A physics professor in college used to say "learning is a spiral" \- you go
around and around a concept a few times, getting closer to understanding each
time. I quite liked that as a model for learning - don't get demoralized if
you don't hit the target on the first pass.

------
nether
What I've noticed is that hard work doesn't bear the same fruit for everyone.
I worked my ass off in university. I knew others who did too, but they
accomplished far more with fewer mistakes. I've also met people who were
dedicated in their studies and just seemed to hit the wall with grasping some
concepts in math. It was really painful to see this, they weren't lazy or
unmotivated, but they often had understanding that fell short of their
enthusiasm. It's not just "hard work." Innate talent exists that cannot be
compensated by effort, optimistic mindset etc.

~~~
mekal
agreed. take tesla for example:

"“Before I put a sketch on paper, the whole idea is worked out mentally. In my
mind I change the construction, make improvements, and even operate the
device. Without ever having drawn a sketch I can give the measurements of all
parts to workmen, and when completed all these parts will fit, just as
certainly as though I had made the actual drawings. It is immaterial to me
whether I run my machine in my mind or test it in my shop."

i'm betting practice/hard work didn't give him that ability. could you imagine
trying to compete with him in school? good luck.

------
fengwick3
One must be careful of conflating the distinct effects of expectations of
intelligence and intelligence itself. The former exerts psychological
pressure[0], the latter is a catalyst for success. It's often possible to have
one without another.

[0] [http://web.stanford.edu/dept/CTL/cgi-
bin/academicskillscoach...](http://web.stanford.edu/dept/CTL/cgi-
bin/academicskillscoaching/why-does-the-duck-stop-here/)

------
rifung
While the article was interesting, I wonder if the 50% of dropouts is really
caused by people feeling like they are not smart enough. I've met quite a few
people who dropped out of good PhD programs, but most of them dropped out
because they felt like they weren't in love with research and didn't think it
made sense over going into industry and making a lot more money. I met one
person who got into a top 10 program but never intended to finish his PhD; he
just wanted to get a free Master's.

On the other hand I also have heard from many that grad school is the first
time many students have to see a therapist and deal with depression.

------
davidiach
It's funny how it seems that only really smart people do the hard work
required for winning Nobel Prizes, Fields Medals and other such distinctions.
Average people are just lazy, that's why they don't succeed!

~~~
omtose
I think you've missed that part

>for succeeding in graduate school

------
RivieraKid
I think that a large part of it are psychological / personality factors - how
much pleasure do you find in thinking, learning new things, solving problems.

~~~
dan00
Fear takes every kind of pleasure. So the fear of not looking smart, not
feeling smart, might be already enough to dislike certain kind of things.

But there's certainly also a difference in people without fear - like you said
- how much they get a "kick" from learning new things.

~~~
vlehto
I'd claim the fear can be just irrational. Maybe learned behavior, you we
afraid of doing homework once. The next time you remember that experience and
it becomes grueling experience. After some time you have learned to fear, but
there is not really anything you are afraid off.

Or there is, but you don't know it. Humans are really good at inventing
explanations for their feelings and believing those explanations.

I think just acknowledging that it's fear is good first step.

------
personjerry
We see so much of the smart vs hard work argument. It seems heavily biased
towards the argument of hard work. But, I wonder if there a way to quantify
and measure so that we might be able to get an objective argument?

~~~
calibraxis
As a concept, "intelligence" bundles together a huuge number of concepts. In
my programming job, at different times I apparently must use different parts
of this bundle to be effective; using useful parts at the wrong times can
lower my effectiveness.

And a lot of it is sensitive to social context. In a culture which prioritizes
ads over immortality research, massive intellectual potential is unrealized
because bullshit jobs are alienating. Would you work harder to serve banner
ads (which you likely block), or cheat death and usher a new era of human
civilization? ([http://strikemag.org/bullshit-
jobs/](http://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/))

~~~
geomark
I like that. But he says a couple of dumb things. Like _" It’s not entirely
clear how humanity would suffer were all private equity CEOs, lobbyists, PR
researchers, actuaries, ..."_ Sure, some of those jobs do seem to add no
value. But be careful what you include in a BS jobs list, because if you
understand why insurance is important then you might realize that actuaries do
something kind of important.

And then there's this _"...success mobilizing resentment against school
teachers, or auto workers (and not, significantly, against the school
administrators or auto industry managers who actually cause the problems)..."_
because if those bad managers and administrators would just keep giving bigger
raises the unions wouldn't have to shut down businesses and schools.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
Graeber included a standard for bullshit in the article: does _the worker_
feel like their job is bullshit, _knowing what they do and what the output
is_?

~~~
geomark
Ah yes. So actuaries feel like their jobs are BS even though they are sort of
important. Oh well.

------
refrigerator
I've read similar things before, and totally agree with them, but surely 'the
ability to work hard and persevere' varies a lot from person to person
according to genetics and environmental factors?

~~~
kamaal
To persevere is not a static unchanging quantity in itself. Its something you
build over time. You start with the bare minimum, and it gets stronger with
every failure.

If you look Usain Bolt and think I could never undergo such a brutal training
regime, you must know Usain Bolt couldn't either. It takes a lot of tiny
little failures to build that kind of mental stamina.

------
vlehto
According to Dunning-Kruger effect, and expert should consider his
accomplishments trivial in hindsight. Grothendieck and Gauss were
mathematicians, not psychologists. It's likely that the predicate of the
article is then completely wrong.

Then there is also the impostor syndrome, many students are likely to feel not
smart enough.

And then there is the cultural taboo around smartness. Taking pride in ones
ability is socially accepted as long as that ability is not intellectual. So
in a way idea like this turns into twisted logic: "I'm smart, my laziness in
college shows it." And now you get to do that sweet guilt tripping for feeling
too smart. There is difference between pride and arrogance. So this self
deprecation seems bit needless.

What if we don't consider pride as a sin, but as natural phenomena in range of
human emotion. Maybe pride is inevitable for ego? Now if that is true, what
should a good student to be proud of? What if being openly proud of your
intellect is healthy after all?

~~~
rifung
Why would an expert consider his/her accomplishments trivial? I thought that
Dunning Kruger just implied people who aren't good think they are much better
than they are, but people who are experts would already know they are better
than most.

~~~
slavik81
Impostor Syndrome may be a better fit for that than Dunning Kruger:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome)

------
tome
> `The brain is ultimately just a muscle. Make it stronger by working it out.'

I like the analogy that things are "muscles". It concisely captures various
phenomena that I've observed: the brain is a muscle, willpower is a muscle,
trust (in another person) is a muscle ...

~~~
agumonkey
Even more ultimately, muscles are brains.

------
kamaal
One more important thing to notice is, the illusion of 'smart', 'evil genius'
or 'magic' appears from the fact that beyond a point of learning your skills
grow exponentially in proportion to your practice/work. The initial grunt
work, which is boring, tiring and mentally exhausting without offering much
results is a right of passage you need to take reach those levels.

I've had this repeatedly told to me about how some person who was an perceived
an idiot/slow mover has now suddenly become very talented, achieved much or
gotten rich. Oh well, that's because all exponential curves look dead until
they actually start to rise, and from there on they indeed look magical in
their output.

------
Sealy
This looks like a re-hash of the findings published in a 2008 book by Malcolm
Gladwell called "Outliers - The Story of Success". He's the one that made the
10,000 hour theory popular.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outliers_(book)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outliers_\(book\))

Its a #1 Best-Seller on Amazon: [http://www.amazon.co.uk/Outliers-Story-
Success-Malcolm-Gladw...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Outliers-Story-Success-
Malcolm-
Gladwell/dp/0141036257/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1447248863&sr=8-1&keywords=malcolm+gladwell+outliers)

------
tempodox
This broadcasts an encouraging message. While I still think actual success
depends on a good deal of sheer luck, we needn't despair because we're missing
some irreplaceable gift. Even in this respect, all humans are created equal.

------
octatoan
I posted this yesterday:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10539083](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10539083)

It seems timezones matter a lot. :)

~~~
gypsy_boots
If you haven't already seen it, here's an interesting article about ideal
times to post to HN: [http://silverman.svbtle.com/the-best-time-to-post-on-
hacker-...](http://silverman.svbtle.com/the-best-time-to-post-on-hacker-news)

------
andersonfreitas
"It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer".
Albert Einstein

------
mlpinit
There's a book called "Thinking, Fast and Slow" that mentions some of the
concepts covered here.

------
gypsy_boots
> The brain is ultimately just a muscle. Make it stronger by working it out

This seems like such an empowering way to look at learning, and one I think
many of us are prone to forget. Even masters don't just arrive at their
talent, they too have to work at it, over and over, day after day.

~~~
henrikeh
It is, however, also ultimately wrong to state the brain is "just a muscle".
In "Make it stick" they mention some research into this aspect: practice of a
specific mental skill has little influence on other mental skills.

As with all analogies it should not be taken too far.

~~~
gypsy_boots
Agreed, maybe it would be more clear to take out "just" and emphasize that the
brain is a muscle.

> practice of a specific mental skill has little influence on other mental
> skills

Care to elaborate on this? I'm trying to imagine what you mean here.

~~~
purpled_haze
> emphasize that the brain is a muscle.

Instead, maybe emphasize that the brain _is similar to_ a muscle. Speaking
metaphorically could be confusing to some.

