
Where Do the Failed 0.1% Go? (2015) [pdf] - lainon
http://www.t3x.org/files/vidya_324-325_NH_reprint.pdf
======
japhyr
_Teachers disliked him, because they knew how easily he picked up
information._

I'm a teacher, and this is one of the things that frustrates me deeply about
our education system. I welcome students like this; they're so much fun to
work with. But I usually have to make them feel accepted before I can begin to
work with them. I teach in a small alternative high school, and by the time
bright students get to me, they're often used to being shut down for picking
things up quickly and not having to do homework.

I met a really bright and interesting guy once who told me about his
experience in first grade. His teacher gave everyone a math workbook, and he
was really excited to be learning math. He finished the workbook in a day or
two, and excitedly brought it to his teacher, expecting to be given another
workbook. Instead she glared at him and said something along the lines of, "I
can't believe you cheated on your math workbook in first grade!" She gave him
another copy of the same workbook and told him to do start over, and that
she'd be watching him. He thought to himself, "Well that sucked, but she'll
watch me do it this time and know I can do it." So he did, but this time she
just got mad at him and said something like, "I don't have anything else for
you to do, so here's another copy of the workbook. Don't finish this so
quickly."

He learned what so many bright kids learn: if you learn things too quickly and
speak up, you'll just make the adults around you mad and they'll give you more
meaningless work to do. I know there are many teachers who handle bright kids
really well, but as a system we fail many kids. These effects last years, and
often times decades.

~~~
ryandrake
It's not that the teachers _dislike_ him, it's that they are frustrated that
he is not following the curriculum and conforming to the lesson sequence and
timeframe planned for.

I found US public school education was not about learning and mastery. It's
about conformity and obedience. Learning the subject matter is secondary--the
key to succeeding at this institution is to do things in the expected way, at
the expected pace, even if it is mind-numbingly verbose and slow. It's a hack:
You learn the expectations and do the bare minimum of what is precisely
expected, because both less than and greater than the bare minimum will be
penalized. I had a rough time in school until I grokked this hack.

Do your homework. It's easy of course, just takes a long time to do since so
much gets assigned. The point of doing homework is not to learn, it's to show
obedience--you were told to do the homework and you did it.

Show your work. It doesn't matter if you can do division in your head, kid.
You're expected to write down the specified intermediate steps so just turn
your brain off and do it. The point is to follow the prescribed process, not
to master the subject.

Class participation. This is a gift to the outgoing/popular/sports kids to
inflate their grades. Just figure out how many times you need to say something
in order to get full credit, then raise your hand and say something (anything,
it usually doesn't matter) that amount of times.

Public schooling is a series of hoops that you need to jump through at no
slower or faster than the prescribed pace. The smart kids figure this out. The
REALLY smart kids tend not to figure it out unfortunately.

~~~
cmrdporcupine
Unfortunately all these 'lessons' mimic skills that will be needed by adults
in the corporate world. Work in groups even when they're dysfunctional, show
off and write lots of supporting documentation to get yourself promoted, and
learn to tolerate seemingly arbitrary or broken management decisions.

~~~
ryandrake
I don't know if it's unfortunate. It's certainly by design. The societal
purpose of public schooling is to prepare the future service workers and
corporate drones of America to follow procedures and not get too curious. The
(pre-determined) future leaders of America have their own track with
private/prep schools, tutors, and Ivy League higher-ed, where the
focus/purpose is, I would imagine, very different.

~~~
fjdlwlv
This is a silly myth. The privileged upper class don't get a special better-
designrf education, they get a professional network that puts them in power
regardless of their education. There's no special high school class that
teaches "skills for becoming a CEO or a Congressperson".

~~~
wnevets
While true, those that come from real money aren't sitting a class room with
30+ other students.

~~~
mathperson
no they also do so. its just that the class is more like 20 and the teacher is
very good. -source have sat in public school (also a VERY well funded publisc
school) class with friends with parent's net worth > 90 million

------
itnAAnti
I know of at least two other people from small towns whose IQ and life stories
are similar to those shared in the article. I think high IQ individuals
becoming isolated, social outcasts is more common in small towns, where
accelerated curriculums and gifted and talented programs are more rare.

If you know a highly gifted child, refer them to the Davidson Academy, a free
public school for the profoundly gifted.
[http://www.davidsonacademy.unr.edu](http://www.davidsonacademy.unr.edu)

The Davidson academy is free to attend, and they can coordinate providing IQ-
appropriate curriculum and work to the child's school for students who cannot
attend in-person. Finally, there are paid, online options as well.

A friend of mine works at Davidson, and they have elementary age kids taking
physics classes alongside master's degree students. When they say "profoundly
gifted", it's not hyperbole.

Getting gifted kids into programs where they are surrounded by people like
them can go a long ways towards helping them learn social skills. They may
never be socially normal in larger society, but they can find friends,
meaning, and happiness that can lead to a productive and brilliant career and
life.

~~~
ap22213
Got any resources for preschools?

I've got a serious pending problem with my youngest. She's 18 months old and
already on par with an average 4-5 year old (and even older in some ways).
It's really freaking my wife and I out - we cannot keep up with her curiosity
and motivation to learn - we just don't have time or resources. We're worried
that by the time she starts school, she's going to be so far ahead that she
won't be able to relate to the other kids. She already has issues with other
18-24 month olds - she call's them babies and treats them like so. No idea
what to do.

I just want her to be able to hang out with kids like herself and do what kids
do. I'm not interested in turning her into a super-genius or putting pressure
or her or training her or any of that. I'd rather her just be free and follow
her mind for as long as possible.

~~~
ap22213
By the way, although my wife and I are fairly intelligent, neither of us are
as intelligent as our parents. For instance, my father apparently taught
himself to read and write at around 2 and started to teach himself logic and
algebra soon after. At 3, he wrote a math / philosophy paper detailing a
complex cosmology and metaphysics in which he used logical arguments to
disprove God.

He never did much with his life - got into a lot of trouble as an adolescent
and eventually settled down as a laborer. For the past 20 years he's been a
recluse and sits in his studio apartment playing FPS games all day.

It's an issue of resources. As a kid, he also lived on a large rural farm, so
he had no resources to do anything else. Many of my other family members are
intelligent too, but they all grew up poor and ended up being poor later in
life. It makes me sad.

~~~
clairity
this tells me that knowing you're smart can be more of a problem than being
smart with no outlet, which fits nicely into my anecdata-backed perceptions.
=)

e.g., i've known smart people who have gone on to have ordinary lives and it
doesn't seem to have lessened their quality of life. sure, society at large
didn't get as much benefit, but individual flameouts are probably one of the
reasons we don't fully optimize for maximum societal contribution.

i've also known smart people for whom knowledge of their high intelligence has
not only been a burden but a hindrance to their personal success and
fulfillment.

the global optimum is probably not made of a bunch of local optima methinks.

------
narrator
Warning! /r/iamverysmart post ahead! I normally wouldn't engage in this, as
it's extremely poor manners and terribly arrogant, but it's on topic here and
I think other potential /r/iamverysmart posters might benefit, so here goes:

One of the problems of being intelligent is learning how to tolerate and
accept boredom. I used to rebel against being bored and being ahead of the
class. I would think: "this is all so easy and why isn't anybody interested in
anything interesting?"

Once I learned that dealing with boredom is basically the price you pay for
fitting in things improved a lot. I deal with a lot of friendships that are
profoundly boring just so I can have people to talk to and socially interact
with. I don't complain. I don't patronize. I just go through the motions so I
can cargo cult my way to a social life. I lowered my expectations on
everything and everybody to absolutely nothing and it works great.

I overhear other people's conversations and I think to myself: "how can these
people even put up with that level of conversation?. They must be pretending
to be entertained!" Then I remember all about the boring world out there where
people go about their daily lives talking all day about boring stuff.

After all this boring interaction I'll occasionally go to a Deep Learning
study group and we'll read the latest paper. Very smart people will analyze
the paper and leave me a little disconcerted that there are people that I can
engage with intellectually and be challenged and entertained by in a sincere
way. Anyway, that's just my two cents about the world for the disgruntled
/r/iamverysmart crowd out there, whether you actually are or not. :)

~~~
throwaway942
Throwaway for obvious reasons.

I do not mean this comment as a brag. Far from it.

I am one of these people - I tested with an incredibly high IQ (nearly 200 at
the time, though I know that fades). I graduated with a 4.2 GPA, and a 3.9
average (because on semester I chose to 'punish' my mother who was taking
credit for my high grades, and got a D just to prove it)

I have a very hard time with life in general. People bore me to tears. You
have to repeat and dumb down everything for them all the time. Most jobs are
mind numbingly dull.

Unlike the people in this article, I had support. My grandfather was similar
to me, and taught me some basic coping mechanisms. They have largely worked,
and I've learned how to survive with a nearly perfect memory (oh god the
horror, I wouldn't inflict it on anyone) and what I like to call an incredibly
high idle.

I make enough to get by, and the company I work for seems pleased with me.
Been there 16 years so far, always resistent to anything beyond a simple lead
type position. Thank god my management usually recognizes that I am VERY bad
at dealing with people, and lets me get back to solving problems in my very
quiet and dark office.

The coping that works for _me_ is split attention. If I'm simultaneously
listening to two or more musical pieces, working on different problems on
different computers and screens, and fiddling with something (like a pen or
something), I can get through a day.

If for some reason I'm restricted down to a single source of input (like just
a laptop), I basically go completely mad. My mental energy level is far too
high, and the frustration of waiting for the computer to keep up causes me to
get angry beyond reason.

My life is a fucking hell, and I also spend a lot of time contemplating
suicide. The imaginative and interesting methods help occupy some cycles.

~~~
Frondo
I have known/worked with a few people who, in confidence, expressed something
similar to what you just said, about having to "dumb everything down" for
everyone around them.

They were bright, of course, I wouldn't quibble with that, but they were also
really lousy communicators. It wasn't so much that everyone around them was
just a dum-dum, but that they weren't very good at explaining things. They
seemed to misattribute those folks not understanding them to people being
dumb, not their inability to express ideas.

~~~
throwaway942
Sometimes that is certainly part of it. Do you go out of your way to explain
calculus or particle physics to children?

Or do you simply not bother?

When a person has spent their entire life trying to communicate whatever they
were excited about to people who are only interested in the fad du jour, they
don't develop the skills to communicate well once they _do_ find people bright
enough to understand.

For example, go walk around MIT, Harvey Mudd, or Cal Poly and see how poorly
freshmen do with their initial social gatherings.

You personally are probably extremely smart (this is HN after all, where I
seek refuge from the total fucking paste eaters of the world) - but that just
means that you were dealing with someone who had never had an opportunity to
learn those communication skills. Unlike you, presumably.

~~~
CalRobert
"Cal Poly " \- as a Cal Poly alum this wasn't really my experience. Of course,
with thousands of people in the incoming class, experiences will vary. Most of
my social connections were through choir.

~~~
csa
I imagine he meant Cal Tech.

~~~
CalRobert
His comment specifically said "Cal Poly".

------
matt_wulfeck
I'm going to put this out there. Gifted children need mentors more than they
need teachers who understand their abilities. There are many things that will
make them struggle in school, and without a mentor to be there with them
offering advice and keeping them grounded then there's going to be the same
issues popping up over and over with each new year.

What we need is a sort of Big Brother/Sister program but not for at-risk
children in the traditional sense, but highly gifted children who will be lost
without someone to help guide them through the problems they'll face in early
life.

~~~
rch
We also need to educate parents about the potential benefits of a mentor
program. It can be particularly difficult to convince people in the top
quintile that they are ill-equipped for any task related to their children.

------
quickben
From a limited dataset: They get by. Find balance. When you ask them for a
coffee, they tell you they don't have the $5 to take the subway to meet you
and are very sorry for that.

Some have other problems they are trying to work around, and all their energy
goes to that and not inventing the next quantum equation.

They drop out of being the hottest developers in the software industry, they
stop being the top performers in the financial sector.

They can get back, but it requires support. Our western society isn't
optimized for such support but for grinding the rest down.

So, it's not where they go, it's how do the rest of us, help them?

~~~
nils-m-holm
Author of the article here: yes, the most interesting question is, what can we
do to help?

The article makes some suggestions. Short version:

Spread awareness, especially among professionals (medical doctors,
psychiatrists, etc). I have seen lots of high-IQ/highly sensitive people who
got _terrible_ advice from psychologists and psychiatrists. Educate those
professionals, so at least they don't do any damage.

Also: a communication platform for troubled high-IQ folks would be great! I
would do it myself, but I'm bad at both, IT and social networking.

~~~
stephengillie
So tell the experts that they're wrong, and that they are ignorant about part
of their field? That sort of behavior rarely has a beneficial outcome, and can
appear egotistical.

> _When one of them learned that their high IQ might cause some of the trouble
> they experienced, they once again looked for professional help, only to find
> out that the problem is widely unknown out there._

How did they learn of this - that their IQ might cause some of these troubles
- what was their authoritative information source? Essentially, they've found
multiple professional authorities who dispute the information they heard
somewhere and chose to believe.

\---

Learning and technical skills have always been easy for me, understanding
people less so. I got an undergrad business degree _specifically_ to
understand why businesses do some of the nonsensical things they do. What I
learned is that companies are essentially just organizations of humans, money,
and things - and humans do all kinds of 'nonsensical' things because we are
humans.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
There's a surprising dearth of research into the challenges faced by gifted
people.

As a topic, it does get some - not much - attention in both psychology and
psychiatry. But it's considered a specialised field far out of the mainstream.

------
metacomments
I was one of those "gifted left behind" students. Majority of my family never
completed high school and no one in my family went to college. High school was
the bare minimum requirement to work at the local furniture factory and that
is where you were expected to work after graduation (college was out of scope
us simple folks).

My high school barely offered any AP courses, didn't prepare students for the
SAT (I didn't know what it was) and despite having nearly a 4.0 GPA
(unweighted, since I never took any AP courses) the "best" college I was told
I could attend was a local nearby liberal arts school. I had no guidance on
where to go to college nor any preparation.

I showed talent at an early age but there were simply no resources for me. I
ended up going to a community college, had nearly a 4.0 GPA (taking mostly
STEM courses) and a guidance consoler recommended I apply for a prestigious
university located in the state. I told her I couldn't do that as I knew I
wouldn't be accepted, told her the acceptance rate is too low. She tried to
push really hard for me apply and said I would get in. I declined. Instead I
went to a much lower ranked university (looking back on it I could have gotten
into the initial school) and ended up doing research there. The research led
to a publication but for one reason or another my GPA dropped and continue to
drop each semester (had A+s, As in some courses, Ds in others). I received
help from no one and had no support system.

Ended up transferring to a larger school. Started over there, GPA continued to
suffer (was dealing with a lot) and graduated. Despite my low GPA I was
accepted to a highly ranked graduate school and was offered a fellowship,
teaching assistant ship and research assistantship, but I also received a job
offer with a much higher starting salary. My family was in such need at this
time I had to accept the job over graduate school.

After working in industry I developed a new interest and decided I wanted to
go back into academia. At this moment in my life I'm preparing to make the
switch. I enrolled in a well-ranked university taking pre-req courses in the
new field and currently pulling off a 4.0 GPA. I plan to apply to graduate
school shortly.

Most of my friends had more of a straight path into graduate school.

~~~
user837387
I imagine you want to keep this private so could you at least name the nearest
town to where you grew up? Just trying to find out if this is in America or
another country. Your story is very familiar. Unfortunately your family seems
to be taking advantage of your goodwill. I know because I've experience it
myself. They get into all sorts of trouble and then they expect you to drop
everything and to sacrifice everything to help them. Good luck.

~~~
metacomments
USA.

------
owenversteeg
Anyone else fascinated by the "window of comprehension" mentioned in the
article? It's really fascinating to me. As the article says, it's the idea
that "no meaningful communication is possible among people not sharing a
common window of 30 IQ points."

I have no idea how true it is, but it's a really interesting idea. At least in
my experience it's a probabilistic thing: as people get more different in IQ
communication becomes harder, with a few exceptions.

What do you all think?

~~~
scandox
I was certainly very interested in this concept. I admit my instant reaction
was one of complete repugnance. Human communication comprises a huge array of
different things, the minority of which have to do with abstract reasoning. IQ
is a very specific measure of one aspect of human intelligence.

In a sense this concept (the window of comprehension), reductive as it seems,
would be more likely to reinforce the problems the individuals mentioned have,
by emphasizing human communication as an intellectual rather than a social
activity.

In general my experience of very intelligent people is that they have an
excellent ability to interact with people of all types, including people with
relatively undeveloped powers of abstract thought. After all understanding
context is to my mind a strong indicator of intelligence.

On the other hand I'd be interested to hear more from people of very high IQ
on this topic - if they think they can get their ideas across to me over the
30 point barrier

~~~
rabidrat
The key here is "meaningful". I'm not sure about 145 talking to 115, but I can
imagine that 115 talking to 85 would be downright painful. We would just not
care about the same things.

~~~
scandox
Thought experiment: you're the last two humans. You've an IQ of 115 and the
other person has an IQ of 85.

In my imagination a hell of a lot of that difference would become meaningless
within the first week or so.

------
ssono
Warning, I might not be as smart as I think I am and this may be irrelevant. I
am a college student who has coasted his entire life. My father is a professor
and probably the only reason I am not socially isolated. From my
experience(which may or may not be relevant) being this gifted is a lot like
living an RPG.

.The person you are when interacting is nothing but a character. You have to
fake engagement, interest, and ability in order to have friends or you can be
alone.

.You need to give your life some long term goal otherwise no work has meaning
because it serves no use. However, say your goal is to cure cancer you know
you have to do well in school and social to later gain access to the resources
necessary for your goal. An RPG without a quest is no fun.

------
tobyjsullivan
I'm trying to figure out how realistic the mentioned concept of a "window of
comprehension" actually is. This [paper? article? post?] only has one external
reference - to another document from the same group[1]. That short document,
in turn, makes unsupported claims that "Studies have shown that there is a
“window of comprehension” of about 30 IQ points."

A quick Google search didn't provide anything further in support of the idea;
just some references to the concept from the same group.

Is this a real thing? It would be fascinating if it were, for many different
contexts.

[1]
[http://www.triplenine.org/portals/0/PublicDocs/Vidya/vidya_3...](http://www.triplenine.org/portals/0/PublicDocs/Vidya/vidya_320-321_MF_reprint.pdf)

~~~
teilo
I am highly skeptical of this as well. It is certainly not my experience. I
sometimes catch myself getting impatient and irritable when I am attempting to
communicate with some one of low-to-average intelligence (I'm around 150), but
if anything my ability to engage in abstract and metaphorical thinking helps
me paint pictures to explain complex things to people.

Part of the problem, I think, is that this may well be true for people who
have certain personality profiles, in particular if they have poor emotional
intelligence. But I do not believe this speaks to some intrinsic
"impossibility" but rather social barriers to effective communication,
barriers that can, with effort, be overcome.

If one is self-reflective enough to be able to recognize how arrogant they
sound to to others, learns humility, patience, and the value of human life
other than one's own, communication is not a problem. It just takes more
effort.

But I will say this: I constantly have to ask the question, "I know what they
literally said, but what did they actually mean?" Because if I don't I come
off like a prick.

~~~
csa
I think you hit the nail on the head with your comment on emotional
intelligence and communication.

That said, does the ability to empathize and communicate with someone outside
of that window mean that it doesn't exist? I know that when I go full speed
with someone at my level, it sounds like a foreign language to some of my
peers. They understand the words we say, but they don't really understand the
conclusions, implications, etc.

Note that I am not sure I agree with the hard interpretation of the author of
the article (specifically, "no meaningful communication is possible among
people not sharing a common window of 30 IQ points"). That said, I do think
that there are some fundamental differences in how people outside of a
30-point range perceive the world.

------
jondubois
I think introversion may be partly to blame. I can relate to a lot of the
things about the people in this article.

That said, over many years, I managed to train myself to act extroverted.
Recently, someone even accused me of being a "social, networking type" which
they probably meant as an insult but it was actually a massive compliment to
my life's work ;p

~~~
rev_bird
I may be misunderstanding what you're referring to, but I just wanted to point
out that "introversion" doesn't mean "misanthropic." In a nutshell,
introversion/extroversion just refers to what effect social interaction has on
you: Does being with people energize you, or leave you drained? For example,
I'm most certainly an introvert, but I love meeting up with friends for an
evening---the "introvert" part is that at a certain point, I just want to
leave and go sit in a quiet room. Interaction is _tiring_ , not unpleasant.

Anyway, I'm wandering: My point was, I'm not sure you've trained yourself to
"act extroverted," just to be more social than your "comfort zone" would
normally allow.

------
WhitneyLand
I don't agree with his approach for a few reasons:

1) The 145 cutoff seems arbitrary. A kid at 135 doesn't get help? Plus
constantly speaking about a number feels a little uncomfortable on the side of
elitism.

2) Poverty is not mentioned as a problem to address. Roughly there are 40,000
people in the US this smart - living below the poverty line. Can you imagine
the boost if they all hit potential?

3) And crime? We've got thousands of criminals with an IQ >= 145. And as De
Niro said, they're not doin' thrill-seeker liquor store holdups with a "Born
to Lose" tattoo on their chest.

4) All the assumptions could be wrong. I was in this group, and barely made it
out of high school, failed out of college a couple of times. But the problem
wasn't school, my teachers were mostly nice. I had learned poor homework
discipline combined with having a severe fear of failure.

Point is when people don't meet potential, there are a dizzying number of
reasons, each with their own twists. How do you know which?

------
shoefly
IQ means little if you do not have the ambition, drive, and courage to be
more.

I have known many people with superior IQs working in brainless jobs. They
would not leave or consider another way of life. Actually, one did. I was her
best friend. She loved kids. I planted little hints that she would make a
great teacher. She watched me go through college. Once she saw me do it, she
decided she could do it to. She went for two years, took on a double load, and
graduated at the top of her class. She is now a middle school teacher. Not
making great money, but she loves her job.

------
D-Coder
The paper says, "Of course, high-IQ societies exist, but then most of their
members appear to be rather successful and hence limited in their
understanding of people who never achieved much, if anything, in life."

Some people join high-IQ societies _because_ they haven't achieved a lot, and
any society where they share an important attribute is a place where they can
fit in. And Mensa, at least, has a good deal of support for gifted children.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Right; Mensa demographic is high-IQ non-achievers. Kind of the point - a club
where you can feel appreciated even though you don't find that anywhere else.

~~~
mikeash
69% of Mensa members make more than $50,000/year, and 47% of them make more
than $75,000/year. I'm sure they have some non-achieving members but it
doesn't look like their main demographic.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
That sounds sort of average or even below. The Elks club probably looks like
that. For the top 2% intelligent people in the world, that counts as non-
achieving. Working in a bookstore or running a gas station is not what you'd
expect from geniuses.

~~~
mikeash
Median income in the US is not quite $52,000, so Mensa is somewhat above
average.

~~~
mcguire
That's the median household income; i.e. two incomes. The median personal
income is more like $30,000.

~~~
mikeash
Whoopsie. Thanks for pointing that out.

------
caseymarquis
That high school drop out story hits close to home.

My advice is to get a low level job at a smaller company that has a department
which does interesting or highly technical work. Start talking to their
IT/Technical/Whatever staff and let them know you work on x/y/z in your free
time.

In my case I did a good deal of free work after hours (100+ hour weeks) before
actually moving to a full time programming position (50 hour weeks), but it
was worth it considering it completely turned my career prospects around.

Being on the other side of things now, most companies are starving for good
people.

------
lolc
Starting to teach helped me immensely. I've learned a lot about how other
people relate to the world. Just having an advanced understanding of something
is useless in many situations unless you're able to communicate this
understanding to other people so they can share it.

------
pfarnsworth
Someone I know was tested at an IQ of 145. She placed #1 in her city (the
capital city of the country) for high school entrance exams among tens of
thousands of students. She is now a VP in her mid-30s of a Fortune 100 company
and on track to be CFO. However, her goal is to be a CFO in the next 5 years,
and I have no doubt she will accomplish that.

------
twmisanthrope
Interesting read.

Personally, I feel like I'm somewhere on this spectrum, but perhaps not as far
along as your two examples. Depending on my choices over the next couple
years, it could go either way, I think.

I have terrible OCD and anxiety, and usually spend 1-2 days a week dealing
with that problem alone. But thankfully my job is flexible and well-paid
enough that I can still live pretty comfortably.

More than anything else (and embarrassingly), I sympathize with your examples'
misanthropy and consequent social isolation.

In my opinion, being almost completely subject to disciplinary structures such
as work and school for most of their lives makes most people pretty
uninteresting. I can't say that I've done lots of super interesting things
myself (working on it!), but unfortunately that doesn't really help me feel
better about my peers.

I also dislike the kind of social interactions social media seems to
encourage. For me, the need to constantly seek or maintain approval of a wide
audience of people is extremely unbecoming. Being an introvert, I also can't
really deal with the 'little bits of social interaction sprinkled over time'
pattern. But unfortunately, it seems that social media now dominates patterns
of social relations, so it seems that I have to deal with that somehow...

------
losvedir
Is the focus on "High IQ" helpful here? Why would the treatment for ADHD,
Depression, Social Anxiety, etc, be any different for them than someone with a
lower IQ?

~~~
nils-m-holm
Because in some cases it's none of the above; it's just not fitting in, and
getting "treated" for being different is often the beginning of a long and sad
history of self-blame and isolation.

------
teilo
I am in this category, but have a completely different experience. For one I
did not get tested until late in life (and discovered I had an IQ of ~150
according to the Mensa standard admissions test), and for another I was in
private school all the way through high school.

So I believe what made the difference for me was a combination of not growing
up with that ultra-gifted stigma, attending a school with very small classes
(sometimes I was the only student in a given class), and having a great deal
of socialization with intelligent adults. I still had a lot of difficulty
relating to others my age, and thus made few lasting friends.

I also did my best to shy away from any attempt to classify me as a genius. I
didn't feel like a genius (whatever that means), and didn't want to be
considered one. This, in part, is why I didn't bother to get tested until into
my 40s.

------
ArcticCelt
Many of the symptoms described there looked like ADHD (of course I am not
making a real diagnostic). High intelligence and lack of motivation leads to
underachievement.

------
AnonTemp
Was in the 99.9 percentile as a child and enjoyed gifted classes until high
school where I was exceptionally bored and hardly applied myself. I ended up
at a lower-ranked state university where I am able to try a little harder
(thanks STEM), though it still doesn't feel rewarding being so far ahead of
your classmates. Fortunately, my campus life is much more social than my more
ambitious hs friends' campuses, although I do often feel intellectually
alienated.

I really have to thank HN for providing a stimulating community. The high-
quality resources and discussions here have made my life much more pleasant;
as a community you've improved my outlook drastically. Thanks. (Do any of you
relate? If you have any advice, let me know!)

~~~
zemotion
One of my friends left school to pursue a professional career at 18, did it
rather successfully and then retired after a few years to go back to school.
He decided to go back via community college but it bored him to tears. The
teaching was terrible and none of his peers seemed worth talking to. Then he
started looking at the online recordings that good schools put up of their
classes, realized the gap in teaching quality and decided to transfer to a
vastly better school. He's been much happier since.

It's easy for us to blame or be indignant about our environments, but
sometimes I also think it's our own responsibilities to go find the places in
the world that would work for us.

I personally like finding hobbies and pursuing them relentlessly with the goal
of becoming the best in the world. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.
But I usually enjoy myself and get to meet some really remarkable people I
wouldn't have otherwise.

------
dsjoerg
Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth has a lot of useful resources for
parents and others wondering about the needs of smart kids and what can be
done for them.

[http://cty.jhu.edu/](http://cty.jhu.edu/)

They helped us with my daughter.

~~~
jpt4
Having attended five Summers worth of residential CTY programs, I attest and
affirm that nothing - university, private organizations, or autodidactism -
has yet exceeded the intensity of immersion in an environment of pure learning
that I experienced there.

------
mcguire
I am not sure I buy that this is related to the intelligence of the children
involved. To match those two stories, I can probably identify a half dozen
others with the same rough trajectory, minus the comments about how bright
they are and how they could pass at school without trying. The problem isn't
that they're screwed by the system, educational or otherwise. The problem is
that they never figured out how to interact with other people, for whatever
reason.

I have considerable sympathy because I, too, have difficulties interacting
with other people. But there's much more to it than "he's so smart that he's
frustrated and bored with everyone and everything."

Then there's this:

" _Finally, a platform for those extraordinarily gifted people who failed to
find a place in life could be helpful. Of course, high-IQ societies exist, but
then most of their members appear to be rather successful and hence limited in
their understanding of people who never achieved much, if anything, in life.
Of course, sympathy and understanding is also present in many who did better,
and exchange with those can also be very helpful._ "

Successful, intelligent people, particularly those who join "high iq
societies", tend, in my experience, to have little empathy with those who they
see as less intelligent, which is partially defined as less successful.

------
frozen11b
I took and passed Algabra in the 6th 7th 8th and 9th grade. I slept in class
usually didn't do the home work and got A's on most every test. But the
teachers all felt I wasn't ready for harder math as they thought I wasn't
mature enough. I didnt realize till years latter that this turned me from a
bright excited student to lazy, lethargic and not wanting to challenge myself
academically. Ended up graduating with a 1.8 gpa and a 1380 SAT score. Ended
up joining the army, Infantryman, paratrooper and a Sergent by 21 years of
age. Now I'm 34 and feel in some ways that if teachers had allowed me to
progress and encouraged me earlier instead of being punished for not showing
work or doing homework that was essentially busy work,I would have applied my
self fully then instead of in the Army. As proud of I am of my service and
having been a wartime team leader in the infantry at 21, maybe I would have
gone to college first and not had to suffer from various medical and metal
issues at the age of 34 from my military service. /rant over.

Edited for typos as I'm half blind and proffreding sucks.

------
rurban
Contrary to the op's post there does exist tons of studies and literature for
those very few high IQ children and teens with social problems.

The biggest and most wellknown study is the MHP Marburger Hochbegabtenprojekt
from the 80ies.

First, the problem rate is very very low (the 0.1%): "The study concludes with
popular stereotypes. As a result, characteristics such as outsiders,
aggressiveness, concentration problems, which are often attributed to high-
achievers and high-IQ teens in popular media, are mere prejudices."

[https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marburger_Hochbegabtenprojekt](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marburger_Hochbegabtenprojekt)
[http://www.angelfire.com/art/gregorbrand/Roststudie.html](http://www.angelfire.com/art/gregorbrand/Roststudie.html)

Another official german paper is "Zu Entwicklungsschwierigkeiten hochbegabter
Kinder und Jugendlicher in Wechselwirkung mit ihrer Umwelt"

------
zerr
Nobody mentioned Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)?

~~~
kosma
I was surprised too, especially considering how hard it is to discern ASD
symptoms caused by high IQ from high IQ caused by ASD. I fall in the middle of
that Venn diagram, and unless there's some sort of miraculous scientific
breakthrough in that area, I doubt I'll ever know for sure.

~~~
alexpoulsen
I had social anxiety. Got counseling around 3-4 years ago. Even though I was
never formally diagnosed, my mother always thought I was somewhere on the
Autism spectrum. Not enough to really hinder me at everything, but enough to
make me socially incapable.

I've never taken an IQ test but I think I would score fairly high.

I've had a similar experience with the dumbing down in classrooms. (Probably
many times before this but I have a memory that is totally shit at some things
but great at others) So I'm taking a beginner programming class at college in
python. About half way though the semester I finished the class barely working
hard. I could have done in 2-4 weeks had I went through it as fast as
possible. There was another session that was a bit faster but I was the first
to finish by far. Some of the things other people struggled with kinda amazed
me. Things I would do in 30 minutes to an hour they might take 3 plus days
including the professor really helping them. Any time I tried to help, I
quickly got frustrated since I wasn't going to tell them how exactly to do it.
Also I taught myself nearly all the course material.

This was at an engineering/art/business private college (which only had a comp
sci minor) which I'm transferring away from to do computer programming.

------
jstewartmobile
The problem is they _knew_ they were smarter than everyone else.

When you've pulled a number that tells you you're smarter than everyone else,
it becomes _really_ easy to use your IQ as a binky and disengage from reality.
This will stunt your development in so many ways. It's the genetic lottery
equivalent of squandering it all on coke and whores.

If we wanted to fix this, I think the first lesson in gifted classes should
be: "You're a Special Snowflake, but life is still going to suck." Basically,
teach them that the rest of the world only cares about you in terms of what
you bring to the table, that no man is an island, and that bringing things to
the table is usually a dirty job no matter how smart you are.

------
throw2016
With child prodigies often in sports, music, arts it easy to see and recognize
the talent.

But 'smart' as a word out of context on its own is vague, subjective and can
say many things.

How do we distinguish between 'smart' and those who may simply have a high
opinion of themselves or are being pushed by parents with extra training, and
the pressure itself on children of unrealistic expectations.

If you leave it vague you risk creating a whole victimhood mentality of
individuals who think they are entitled but the world, schools, teachers etc
has somehow conspired to deny them.

I think its important to be explicit in these discussion about terms like
'smart', their context and what is being referred to.

------
re_todd
I remember taking a programming course many years ago at a community college.
I finished an assignment, which wasn't too hard, and decided to go on to an
advanced, unassigned topic. The instructor came into the lab, and so I asked
her to clarify something. She was visibly irritated with me and told me to
stick to the assignment, then stormed out. I felt like a horrible person and
kept asking myself "what is wrong with you?". Months or years later I realized
I need to stop feeling guilty. I had not harmed anyone, and I think she did
know the answer to the question I had asked.

------
caconym_
My experience in school matches that of "The Guy" pretty closely. To this day
I still am not quite sure what to make of it; I went to private schools that
were probably more challenging than other places I could have been, and I
obviously learned a massive amount just being there doing _some_ of the work
(to say nothing of the social education), but I just could not make myself
care enough to get good grades, especially in classes where homework was
weighted heavily.

It's not like I was doing anything worthwhile instead. Playing video games,
mostly, and running around in the yard during the summer rather than
completing the "summer math packet" and prescribed readings. I always doubly
dreaded the end of summer, because I'd never done the homework. I think the
constant dread of the moment of reckoning when homework was to be turned in,
and I was empty-handed, gave me a serious sort of imposter-ish syndrome that
persists to this day. Back then I was constantly having doors closed on me
because of my slacking, and while I am quite successful now in my career I am
still reticent to try opening doors because I'm wired to assume they will be
locked.

Anyway, it turned out that I can actually be a functional member of society
and a valuable worker (software engineer, natch). But my basic incompatibility
with school made it a real crapshoot whether I'd get the opportunity to prove
my worth; if it wasn't for a lucky break getting an internship referral from a
professor who liked me, my life would probably look very different right now.
I'd probably be dead, honestly; I don't take care of myself well when I'm in a
depressed and aimless mode.

What to take away from this, I don't know (which is frustrating). I don't know
what my IQ is, and I don't really care at this point in my life, but I'm
certainly not the sort of scintillating Von Neumann-esque intellect that you
hear about a lot in threads like this. I'm not sure what a path to some
"school for the gifted" would have looked like for me, whether I would have
been accepted or not, and whether that would have "unlocked my true potential"
or just left me in the same situation with the added wrinkle of material so
difficult that I couldn't BS through it anymore (I started to really run into
this in higher-level university classes).

I _am_ smart, though, and I want to have kids and I assume they'll be smart
too. I'd like to know how they can avoid the same pitfalls that held me back
earlier in life, because if they can, I think they could be much more
successful than I've been.

~~~
henrikschroder
> I'd like to know how they can avoid the same pitfalls that held me back
> earlier in life

There's a lot of studies around gifted kids that show that if you praise them
for _results_ , they grow up like you (and me), very risk-averse, only
applying themselves if they _knew_ they would succeed.

Instead, you should praise kids for effort. Reward work, not just punish non-
work, as was done to you.

Even if you're clever, sometimes you just have to sit down and do boring-ass
tasks, and it's a very useful adulting skill to have.

------
chetanahuja
I'm currently facing this problem as a volunteer. I'm teaching coding to my
son's 4th grade classroom and there are about 5 or so kids out of 30 who
finish everything assigned really fast and have to wait for the others to
catchup. On the other end of the spectrum, there are aoubt 4-5 kids who need
some extra help while the rest of the class has moved on.

I'm not a teacher by profession but this little volunteer effort has given me
a lot of appreciation for how hard the teacher's job is (and also what a
insufferable little snot I must have been as a kid)

~~~
csa
For the fast kids, create your lessons with extensions. You can google it for
more details on how to do this skillfully, but an extension is basically
building something extra onto your first task. Note that good extensions are
not busy work -- they typically either lead to the creation of a cool product
or they introduce a new and related concept. Either way, good extensions are
ones that motivate the middle kids to try to get to the extensions phase.

For the extra-help kids, the best thing to do during class is to have them
work with a friend who got it. Sometimes their peers can communicate the key
ideas better than you can. After the class, you can review the problematic
ideas with them and/or give them extra problems for them to work on (if they
are interested). You will win them over if you can review those extra problems
with them at a later time (e.g., before the next class).

------
alexpetralia
I hate to sound trite, but intelligence (for which IQ is a proxy) is not only
factor for success. Social skills will always be required - it seems like your
two examples lacked these.

~~~
Axiverse
I actually think this is exactly the point. He is talking about how these
people are highly intelligent but not successful because society isolates them
and doesn't give them the opportunity and motivation to learn those skills in
the appropriate window.

This is kind of the opposite of students that are underperforming that don't
get the attention to help them keep up. Instead these are students that can
overperform, but don't get the challenges, validation, and motivation - the
general positive feedback - that will help them grow and succeed. Instead they
are meet with disapproval and neglect since teachers both dislike them asking
hard questions (thus challenging their authority among already hard to control
kids) and don't have time to give them the attention they need (since they are
most focused on the largest median group).

------
gersh
How could I meet these gifted, socially-isolated people? I'd be interested in
Skype or Google Hangouts. Email me.

------
Mikeb85
I can relate somewhat. Good student, got good grades with about zero effort,
did good in extracurriculars, but found most academic-related things to be
very boring (it was mostly memorization of facts with zero critical thinking).
Most of my friends worked menial jobs or sold drugs, and while I did graduate
high school and stay out of serious trouble, instead of university I got a
restaurant job and partied, abused alcohol and drugs and lived a pretty
interesting life. Excelled at work, rising to the top of the local food scene
very quick, then got married and went to university at the behest of my wife
who didn't like the restaurant lifestyle. Well, married life was boring, got
restless, eventually we fell out and split (she wanted the white picket fence
and everything, I wanted to just experience life with a fun partner), now I
travel, gamble, trade stocks and sometimes will do a stint at restaurants my
friends own just because it's fun. Oh, and programming, the wife hated that,
she didn't see the point in creating programs and scripts that didn't 'make
money' (never mind all the stock-picking and economic-analyzing scripts that
kind of did make me money...).

Guess the point is that a 'typical' life isn't for everyone. I can finish my
degree rather easily and get a permanent office job, but why? I'd rather be in
Paris one day, the Caribbean the next, abusing substances and partying with a
bunch of hot girls than slaving away for a boss at a job that is comically
easy, where I have to slow down just to avoid the onslaught of extra work
there'd be if I were to actually give a shit and try.

And honestly, I have friends who have money and things. I have money, less
things, and I don't really feel like I miss out. No house? No stress. My car
is a 4 door compact and not a BMW with leather seats? It still drives, is warm
in the winter, and has less problems. I didn't finish my degree? Half my
friends with degrees are unemployed now anyhow thanks to the shit local
economy. With more debt. Speaking of which, I live in a place where, to be
honest, all the 'good' jobs which once existed for educated people are never
coming back (the degree which I'm a semester away from completing is in
Economics fyi).

People need to change their idea of what success is. The robots are coming for
all your jobs anyway, we'll need to deal with it. In the future, either we'll
all be engaging in intellectual pursuits living on a guaranteed income, or
living in dystopian future where the holders of capital lord over the rest of
us who scrounge for scraps in an alternative economy (look at Brazil to see
how massive inequality manifests itself).

Anyhow, just the musings of someone who others say has under-achieved, but has
stopped giving a fuck. We all die, 'success' is overrated. We need to get back
to having relationships and living life.

------
awinter-py
these symptoms sounds like career burnout

------
AlphaWeaver
[2015]

------
kutkloon7
I would argue that discouraging very smart or technical people is typical for
Western countries, and even more typical for the US. In Asian countries, the
culture is much more favourable towards the smart and technical people (and,
unfortunately, also much more competitive).

I always read a lot about the shortage of people in STEM fields, and teachers.
The US education system is absolutely horrible. I had to explain how
percentages work to a university student (not a bad university either).
However, teachers still have a terrible salary, and teaching anything lower
than university level is not a respected profession.

~~~
tdb7893
Teaching has a low salary because we have too many teachers. It would be
strange to pay them more when there are already way more people who want to
teach than there are jobs. The only reason to pay more would be to try to get
higher quality teachers but I doubt an increase in pay will really increase
quality much.

~~~
japhyr
It might not increase quality initially, but it would make a difference in the
long run. I know many bright people who don't consider teaching because they
can have a much more comfortable life, both financially and bureaucratically,
in other fields.

I also know many people who leave teaching early in their careers because of
the relatively low pay and frustrating bureaucracy. I've been a teacher for 20
years. It was deeply frustrating early in my career to meet teachers who were
near the end of their careers, did a terrible job, and got paid almost twice
what I made.

This issue also varies widely throughout the country. I teach in Alaska, and
pay here is decent. But there are parts of the country where I'd take a $20k+
cut in salary, without a corresponding cost of living change.

