
“I'm not smart enough.” - acoleman616
https://yourfirst.io/im-smart-enough/
======
hedgew
Many people are genuinely not "smart" enough. Saying they are, is likely to
cause suffering and waste resources, on both personal and societal levels.
It's also insulting towards the intellectually disabled.

"I'm not smart enough" is not always a cop-out, or "a (lame) excuse". It can
be a sign of maturity, and a cause of significant respite. Knowing your limits
allows those who are intellectually limited to pursue tasks suitable to them,
and still be satisfied with life (even though they haven't created Facebook or
Pinterest).

Even for the more gifted of us, knowing your limits might lead to a happier
life..

~~~
toddan
Exactly people are different, some are smarter than others. Otherwise
everybody would be an engineer or medical doctor or some other high status
high paying job.

This whole mentality that everybody are born equal in mental capacity is a
likely cause of stress and depression among many people today.

People are born tall, small, fat, skinny, smart, supid. Just find your level
and optimize your own happiness.

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steven777400
The thing is, there are definitely different levels of persistence required
and that's obvious to most people who struggle. When I was school, I almost
never studied, and even skipped class with some regularity. Still got good
grades. It just wasn't hard. It didn't take persistence.

Fast forward. Now my wife is in school and she studies like crazy hours every
day and still doesn't absorb the material well. It takes her tremendous
persistence and she is frustrated by people in her class who, like me, could
just roll in having glanced over the material and do well.

That said, I agree with the meat of the article. I used to say "I'm not smart
enough" to do things like work at "Big Software Corp" or invent novel
algorithms, etc. Now I'm more honest and I'll admit "I'm too lazy" to do those
things.

~~~
innguest
> Now I'm more honest and I'll admit "I'm too lazy" to do those things.

I used to think that too. "I'm just too lazy". But in comparison to what? The
protestant work ethic? Are you really "too lazy" or is it just that you're
happy with who you are but like everyone else are still bullied by societal
pressure into feeling guilty for not wanting "more" or having more ambitions?

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joeblau
When I go to places, I just tell people I'm a garbage man or "waste disposal
engineer." That's usually a super quick conversation.

But to your point, engineering is just persistent and consistent effort. Most
people don't want to put the time and effort to really learn the science.

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serve_yay
It is a copout. But, the next step is realizing that this is one way people
prevent change from occurring, change is uncomfortable and scary. I don't
think it's particularly empathetic to get upset at people's common thought
processes, even when they are bad. Try to remember we're all humans and life
is hard and everyone is already trying.

Also keep in mind that the person saying it may mean it more as flattery -
i.e., it may be a polite lie and they don't really think that. And of course,
"I'm not smart enough to do that" is more polite to say than "that sounds
boring and I'm super not interested".

------
jackmaney
When I tell people of my background in mathematics, the second most common
reaction is along the lines of "I'm not smart enough" (the most common is the
old canard of "I hate math! My old math teacher, Mr. So-and-so, dropped my
older sister into a wood-chipper! Feet first!" etc, etc, etc). In a lot of
these cases, "I'm not smart enough to do math" was really just a proxy for "I
hate math and am uncomfortable talking about it".

It wouldn't surprise me if that was the case for at least some of the people
described by the author.

------
wspeirs
"I'm not smart enough" is, I think, 50% "I'm too intimidated by what I don't
know" and 50% "I don't care enough to overcome the initial learning curve."

~~~
exodust
Jeez, maybe they're just not smart enough as they say. Why complicate matters
by denying what is actually a sound conclusion?

Or are we so politically correct now we can't acknowledge variation in mental
capacity - particularly working with numbers and logic.

I think it's maybe 10% intimidated, 10% lack of motivation, 80% not smart
enough.

------
kefka
Precisely. Programming relies heavily on using others' talents and code and
abilities.

For example, I wouldn't know how to do face recognition quickly. But thanks to
OpenCV and QT, I was able to make
[https://github.com/jwcrawley/uWho](https://github.com/jwcrawley/uWho)

I leveraged the code that was written to allow me to go a tiny bit further.

------
CmonDev
Thomas Edison was not in a position to judge geniuses, but yes, Tesla did work
hard.

------
jimkri
I get this all the time. People ask me what I am doing in school and I tell
them I am majoring in Business Management with a Computer Science minor.

All people hear is the Computer Science part and every conversation people
say, "Oh you must be smart," or "I could never do that."

My response is always, "Nope I am not crazy smart. I just really love
computers and I keep at it." People always associate CS with being a genius, I
am no genius. I am just a hard headed guy who loves computers, and will always
keep trying to get better at whatever I am doing no matter how many times I
fail.

------
sarciszewski
Conversely to the article, I am _certainly_ not smart enough to tell someone
how to build their own Facebook or Pinterest. That requires more than
programming skill; a combination of marketing, business sense, and user
experience.

I'm a backend/appsec guy. No way in hell would I do that. It would be arrogant
and end in disaster.

That's what teams are for.

------
pianowow
The Venn diagram in this article really bothers me. Venn diagrams aren't meant
to show the makeup of a whole. This should be a pie chart. The diagrams
implies that there are more persistent people than inspired people, not that
you need more persistence than inspiration.

------
strathmeyer
Some are persistent at programming, not looking for programming jobs or
kissing up to bad people.

------
fjcarrero
I say, If you really want it, you go and you get it, period

------
Dewie
If they don't feel smart enough, that is just going to be compounded by
joining a programming community. _Smartness_ is the status symbol to these
(us?) people, so get ready for a lot of subtle and not-so-subtle comparisons
of people's academic record, what tier of university they went to, what
inherent _hardness_ of problem's they have worked on, whether or not they
started programming before they could talk, who is working with a
language/ecosystem that are seen as intellectually inferior/lazy, whether they
are part of the mythical "10X" ũbermensch[1] develeopr, whether or not school-
work came _effortlessly_ to them, and so on. No, of course the tone is not as
obvious as "I'm smarter than you, or I'm less smart because X, Y, Z". But the
underlying tone is clear enough. The best way in these communities is to
compliment their smarts, or imply that they are smarter than you. The perfect
way to insult them is to insult their intelligence. The common currency is
_brains_.

If they don't feel _smart enough_ , maybe what they mean is that they expect
to end up on the bottom of the status hierarchy. And that might be a bit too
rough to want to go through with. Especially if you have other interests,
aptitude or talents.

[1] Yeah, umlaut-fail.

