
Wondering about the link between intelligence and meaning - headalgorithm
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/beautiful-minds/are-intellectuals-suffering-a-crisis-of-meaning/
======
bitexploder
I think modern society suffers from a lack of life philosophy. I don't think
it gets much better than ancient greek philosophy. There are no new
fundamental insights into the human condition in 3000 years. Epictetus talks a
lot about tranquility, which is neither happiness or sadness, but staying
centered. It doesn't matter how you feel, feelings are just an appearance in
consciousness. What matters is that you move forward with your purpose,
something you define outside of the day to day grind.

Happiness and sadness are fleeting for most people. If you chase happiness to
the exclusion of boredom and fulfilling a greater purpose there will be a
reciprocal crash where there can be no happiness. This is why Epictetus
cautioned us to always view happiness with just as much skepticism as sadness.
Not to become boorish, but to maintain a state of being that you can rely on
every day.

To that point, intellectuals have always had this struggle. When you value
mastery over purpose and you don't find a point of tranquility in your life
there will always be a struggle. Intellectuals and smart people often spend a
lot of time worrying on externalities they can't control. It is the curse of
high awareness / intellectual capability. There is only so much you can
possibly change and influence. This is why being a billionaire doesn't
drastically alter your happiness. Even with billions of dollars you are still
stuck in a mortal shell with the same brains and bodies as the rest of us.

Also, MENSA is a self selected group and I have never held a high opinion of
it.

~~~
fsloth
I would hold compassion in higher esteem than stoic virtue. Remember that
society where stoics came from considered enslavement as good and natural and
feeding people to animals as good sport.

That's not to say Epictetus does not have lots of worthwhile things to say,
but that there are other facets to living a good life in addition to what was
stoics prescribed.

~~~
Balgair
Oh man, Emperor Commodus[0] is a perfect example of this. Commodus was the
first emperor to be 'born in the purple'. His father was Emperor Marcus
Aurelius. Yes THAT Marcus Aurelius, the stoic of all stoics. Commodus was
likely insane and participated in daily gladiatorial combat against people and
animals already behanded or hamstrung before the fight (so as to not actual
pose a threat to the emperor), slaughtering hundreds. He was drowned in the
bath by his wrestling partner. His death kicked off the year of the five
emperors and civil war in the empire.

So, even when the prime example of stoic philosophy, Marcus Aurelius, is given
the sole reigns of power to the prime example of an empire at it's height,
Rome in the Nerva–Antonines, it falls apart at the hands of familial
duty/love.

One thing to remember about Romans is that there is not 'thesis' to them. They
did whatever they needed to do at the time. For example: look at the Roman
Honor of the Republic days. It was fierce, passionate, and swift. Any slight
was dealt with in total violence and societal honor was worth much more than
your life. Compare that to the stoics, where nothing could 'slight' a person,
only their internal life was important, and society was to be nearly
forgotten. The Romans were, if anything, adaptable to the extreme, which is
why they lasted nearly 2000 years.

[0][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodus)

------
gipp
> Their giftedness as potential group consisted of 198 members of Mensa.
> Membership in Mensa is granted to individuals who score at the 98th
> percentile or higher on recognized standardized measures of intelligence.

And almost exclusively _sought_ by those lacking in other forms of achievement
or sense of identity. Doesn't really seem like a sample that would be
generalizable in the way the article presents it.

~~~
ProAm
> And almost exclusively sought by those lacking in other forms of achievement
> or sense of identity.

Careful, that generalization can be used almost anywhere (like on HN). Warily
scream into the abyss.

~~~
simias
I'm not really sure HN is really comparable to Mensa but at any rate it
doesn't invalidate what the parent is saying. If an article was talking about,
say, programmers in general while only sampling HN users it would probably
suffer from a heavy bias as well.

~~~
__s
I worked remotely for the first few years of my career. I assumed most
programmers would be like HN, as reflected by my one other friend who
programmed & also happened to read HN. Then I began working in an office with
programmers, & was shocked to realize most programmers don't want to go on a
forum after work that'll often discuss programming..

------
useful
It feels good to learn something at the intro/hobby level. It provides an easy
dopamine hit.

In order to become an expert in the population it requires a mastery that is
hard. It requires a few orders of magnitude more effort with less and less
reward as you become more and more competent.

Collectors of basic intro knowledge could be looking for something they enjoy
but there are a large portion of people who do it because it feels good to
learn. This is a trap for smarter people and I'm sure everyone knows the
career academic with a multitude of academic degrees or a friend with a new
hobby every month.

I think everyone should try to be a in the top 1-10% of some pursuit at some
point in their lives to see the amount of effort and planning it takes to be
at the top of something. You don't have to stay at the top. It makes you
appreciate the people at the top of things more because you more easily
recognize the effort it takes to be great. Too much of society is focused on
the natural ability or luck involved to be at the top. It could be argued that
a PHD is this, but I believe that its sort of forced because there are
economic and structural motivations that are available that aren't the same as
only having a personal motiviation.

~~~
zanny
When I was in high school I was playing World of Warcraft arena competitively
and got top .5% (the highest general rank) in seasons 1-4, later on multiple
characters in multiple brackets.

As I approached college I realized that I had done something that, if I had
dedicated myself to almost anything else, would have resulted in me being a
masterful expert at it. By the time I was 17 (I played WoW from 13-17,
2004-2008) I had put over 8,000 hours into that game. I spent a quarter of my
life playing it for that four year period.

It was, of course, an insanely massive waste of time in hindsight. I went from
scripting and building custom maps in Neverwinter Nights to playing in
Blizzards theme park for a few years where the most coding I managed was hex
editing the game models and changing a few labels in addon scripts. I was a
directionless dysphoric teenager who had an interest in computers but no real
ambition or friends at the time so distraction was tantalizing. It absolutely
cost me opportunities to go to more prestigious universities I could have
likely qualified for it if I had applied myself to the discipline of getting
into elite schools instead of topping ladder ranks.

I like to think I came out of that black hole of my life at least knowing the
value of dedication. Its only really more recent that I finally came to terms
with the total realities of distraction, including writing this post on HN
right now. At least this is at the tail end of my 30 minute break from coding
this afternoon, so now I'll be getting back to work.

------
smallgovt
I've found that this 'crisis of meaning' is driven by having personal values
that are based on extrinsic criteria.

That is, when you value things that are based on things outside your control
e.g. social validation, financial success, you will struggle to be happy.

When you value things that are intrinsic e.g. integrity, contribution,
creativity, you will have a much better shot at staying happy.

The problem with 'intellectuals' is that they are more often pulled into the
rat race where you are chasing extrinsic things. Also, they often value
'intelligence' itself, which makes you feel bad when you realize that the
world is filled with smarter people. Also, intelligence deteriorates as you
age.

~~~
2019ideas
>when you value things that are based on things outside your control e.g.
social validation, financial success, you will struggle to be happy.

These are outside our control? I found both were achieved by choosing to be an
engineer and going above and beyond.

~~~
paganel
Yes, they are outside of your control but you just don’t realize it yet. The
“financial success” aspect can become a thing of the past pretty quickly if a
dot-com crash were to happen again or if the next recession were to bring the
FANGs back into “normal companies” territory when it comes to their total
valuation, and I assume the “social validation” aspect will become a thing of
the past for most computer programmers pretty soon, especially if AI will end
up consuming even more existing jobs among other the general populace.

------
temp1928384
As someone who works in tech, the misery I feel on a fairly regular basis is
experiencing first hand the disconnect between the stereotypical "change the
world for the better" Koolaid narrative and the reality of what I was actually
working on and enabling, which is not necessarily 1) purely good for the world
and 2) always that "innovative".

The happiest employees I see (at least outwardly) are those that fully buy in
to the Koolaid and do not consider the nuance of what a company or technology
enables.

~~~
state_less
I've had a difficult time finding meaning in the same things as others do. If
I spot inconsistencies, I lose faith and get the opposite reaction than those
who are receiving something from it.

It's when I let go of the search for meaning that I find something like
contentedness. I often find myself falling back into the hunt, but sometimes
thinking about the vastness of space and time, the interwoven causality of the
external and 'my' internal mind, there is some release.

Hope that helps partner. Maybe I'll see you on down the trail temp1928384.

------
duxup
I'm not sure the lack of meaning here would just apply to intellectuals. It
talks about finding a job in the world that is something that makes them
happy. That would seem to apply to everyone, and I'm not sure has much to do
with intellectual ability.

It talks about expectations placed on gifted children and what that 'might'
do, but failure for anyone else can be terrible too.

I'm just not sure when you get to the outcomes being gifted or intellectual or
whatever term they want to use, is all that different from anyone else.

~~~
kokokokoko
I think, and I'm generalizing, when we start discussing people in the higher
percentages of intelligence, they are more apt to be able to more accurately
conceptualize the scope of their life and the lives of those around them
within the greater fabric of existence.

I've always been a believer in the idea that belief in a higher power was the
genetic mutation that allowed humans to gain significant higher intelligence
than other animals, as well as language, while still functioning productively
and altruistically. People with significantly higher levels of intelligence
are much less likely to believe in a higher power.

I also speculate that this is why there tends to also be a hard upper bounds
of intelligence and why we have such a significant amount of people in the
middle of the bell curve with very similar levels of intelligence.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _this is why there tends to also be a hard upper bounds of intelligence and
> why we have such a significant amount of people in the middle of the bell
> curve_

This is true by definition for any randomly-generated trait which can be
measured on a single dimension.

~~~
drilldrive
Yes, but the question is in part of why is the bell curve centered where it is
today? Time was not against our side in the past, in that we had plenty of
time to evolve for stronger intelligence criteria. Thus there must be a
counterbalance for intelligence for general populations. Today I am curious as
to what the average IQ of parents, weighted per number of children the parents
have, is in comparison to the average IQ of the population.

~~~
zanny
You don't evolve for the sake of it, thats not how natural selection works.
Evolution, espeically in the short order time spans it takes for things like
humans to evolve from our last common ancestor with chimps, requires strong
environmental pressure to see rapid change such as the development of language
or our large brains.

We evolved until we outcompeted our relatives (its why we are the only homo
left) and until we were the apex species of our biosphere. After that the
pressures were much more diffuse over the nebulous optimization space of "what
makes humans have more babies".

It should be completely unsurprising that our brains are functionally only as
smart as they need to be to be able to handle complex language, social
interaction, planning, and spatial / self awareness. With some slight bias
upwards over the millennia - probably moreso from more caloric availability,
in the same way we have gotten markedly taller in 300 years mostly from just
being food rich and nutrition aware, than from genetic drift from natural
selection.

To evolve substantially larger brains past what we already had would have been
evolutionarily contrary to fitness. Bigger brains require more calories,
moreso endanger the mothers in child birth (and our births are already
extremely dangerous due to just that), required more developmental time to
mature (15-25 years is insane in terms of developmental maturity in nature)
and would have had minimal or no competitive advantage (complex reasoning
skills aren't really valuable when all you are born into or will ever have is
a tiny tribe and the tactic of exhausting gazelle all day for dinner).

~~~
drilldrive
The only problem that I have with this line of reasoning is why we ended up
being capable of complex thinking processes at all, though I do suppose then
that is answered by how rare such an evolutionary line is (with a 'success
state' of one).

Going back to the second question of mine, is it feasible to see a divergence
on the genetic basis over time amongst humans, in that the top academics tend
to marry amongst themselves, and we have the strongest meritocratic system
available that has been ever known to man? Looking at the Nobel Sperm Bank,
there is some evidence of such a divergence already in place.

------
salawat
Everyone is really, most just can't map their emotions to a mindshare or set
of words which accurately describes the condition.

You've got a large number of people looking at their lives and seeing that
this whole system that has been constructed around them seems to do more to
stifle any attempt at meaningful change or self-determination.

Seeking a change of career outside of minimum wage gets locked away behind
expensive licensure. Attempts to improve one's space gets locked away behind
permits, and tax reassessment, and other bureaucratic hurdles.

Looking back at history one can't help but feel a bit of envy that somehow our
ancestors _were_ more free. Or perhaps just less prone to despair due to a
naturally more tightly bound worldview.

I'm not making any comments on the objective truth or falsehood of historical
circumstances, just pointing put that many feel helpless in the face of the
sheer size and breadth of the waves and problems that can seemingly pop up out
of nowhere at a moment's notice.

This extends to the meaninglessness of work. You can try to advance a cause,
say environmental activism, but actually end up being able to objectively
measure that you're doing more harm than good in the process of being able to
just get people to admit there is a problem.

The scale of modern problems are just so large it seems like the only winning
move is not to play at all, over and over again.

~~~
invalidOrTaken
>The scale of modern problems are just so large it seems like the only winning
move is not to play at all, over and over again.

This is a bit of a drive-by comment and I apologize for that, but I've spent a
lot of time thinking about "only-winning-move-is-not-to-play" games, and
wanted to share what I've learned.

OWMINTP games seem imposing and impossible when we talk about them, but often
their solution comes from outside the game. And the great thing is that often
these games don't constitute the whole of our lives, which means we can focus
on other games. Eventually OWMINTP games can get solved from the outside,
which is great, because we live outside.

Anyway: unasked for, and kind of off-topic, but I wanted to share.

~~~
salawat
I appreciate the comment, and agree with your viewpoint. It's somewhat of an
interesting area of thought of mine as well.

The difficulty is what counts as "outside" of the civilized world as we've
built it, and if we found it, would we find ourselves in a crisis of the sort
faced by Mr. Savage in Huxley's Brave New World? A natural man woefully
equipped to survive in the unnatural world we've built around ourselves, but
at the same time unable to return to living in a more natural state by virtue
of what he'd become in trying to adapt?

Natural man facing unnatural problems he is powerless to solve due to his
maladaptation to the world he has wrought, yet unable to escape or return to
whence he came.

It's like some nightmarish Hotel California conundrum.

------
BucketSort
Here you go intellectuals -
[https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/#MeanUse](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/#MeanUse)

Intellectuals often have a "crisis of meaning" because they are dancing in
that space of what things are and how they relate to each other. When you
maintain a practice of doing that, you often can't help but apply that same
process with yourself as the object. You can shred your identity quite quickly
if you have some mental ability, and if you mess with your identity, you mess
with what your life means ... i.e. how you wish to be used.

------
devoply
Obviously they are, just look at Philosophy. After Nietzsche and nihilism the
whole Anglo world turned away from the continental school to the analytical
school. Everything became mechanical. The whole meaning of life in essence
became production and consumption... which is followed by an aura of doom and
gloom. People stopped having children because they can't balance their needs
of consumption with need of taking care of other people. They became isolated
again for the same reasons.

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
I don't know if that's necessarily obvious. You say all that with a great deal
of finality - a Marxist scholar would say that's due to the shift in means of
production, and a postmodernist would say it's all become that way because of
relativity.

------
WrtCdEvrydy
For anyone looking into it, the book 'Bullshit Jobs' deals with some of the
underlying issues in this article like meaning in life not being reflected for
a full 8 hours of you day.

------
fsloth
Whole Mensa concept is based on the abuse of a tool. IQ was deviced as a
method to discern - excuse my language - idiots from normies, not to identify
geniuses from a general population. I don't doubt those that pass Mensa
gauntlet are not fast, but a high IQ is a very narrow and barren method define
giftedness.

The fact that it has been used in that specific usage time and again does not
really vindicate it in any way.

But ok, so the sampling is of Mensa members in general. That's fine, like the
article states the targeted population is difficult to sample as it is.

~~~
FabHK
The historical motivation for developing that tool has no bearing on its
current capabilities and use, though, right?

~~~
fsloth
I.Q. is a statistical tool. It has some correlations when applied to large
populations ( i.e criminality correlates negatively with us I.Q. while
longevity correlates positively).

The problem with this that its value in analyzing a single individual is not
so obvious - on an individual level there is so much ‘noise’ that when
assessing the capabilities of an individual an I.Q. test should be considered
a small advisory component of a larger suite of research. The specific problem
is that I.Q. is often used like a horoscope or hand reading to predict an
individuals capability to perform in some arbitrary context. So where is it
applicable, then? For example, if individual has problems at school and they
score low on I.Q. they _might_ be good candidates for some supportive
measures. And if they score really high it can lead a psychologist to consider
other remedies. This is proper use of the tool - it provides additional data
points to a professional.

But you shouldn’t use I.Q. alone to filter people in the general context. I
know some school systems at least used do this and it’s fucking _retarded_
application of this measure. The fact that the people who thought it was a
great idea to use I.Q. as a general filter probably scored high on the scale
themselves should tell how much one should trust I.Q scores.

To misquote a certain judge - Genius is like hard porn. I don’t know how to
define it precisely or mathematically but I know it when I see it.

------
rubicon33
> "Having high levels of cognitive complexity doesn't assure that one will
> actually be motivated to utilize their cognitive ability. High achievement
> is more likely to be associated with high levels of motivation."

This pretty much sums up my life. Times where I have had motivation, I have
succeeded greatly. Times where I have not, I stagnate and don't move forward.

Unfortunately, motivation is fleeting. It's as though my brain is hyper
sensitive to novelty. If I can find something I find interesting, I am granted
immense motivation and focus. But that quickly dwindles.

~~~
braunshedd
> "Unfortunately, motivation is fleeting. It's as though my brain is hyper
> sensitive to novelty"

Not to toot my own horn, but I struggled with this myself and ended up
'inventing' my own psuedo life-philosophy 'Experientialism'[1]. You might find
this an interesting way of going about the problem.

[1] [https://braunshedd.com/philosophy-and-metaphysics/what-is-
ex...](https://braunshedd.com/philosophy-and-metaphysics/what-is-
experientialism/)

~~~
rubicon33
Enjoyed that writeup. Definitely got me thinking about the general notion of a
life philosophy, and the utility in adopting one. I am guilty of literally
rolling some dice for major life decisions, since, most of life to me appears
random anyway.

That said, Experientialism would have been great to adopt when I was 20. Maybe
I would be filming a travel channel on YouTube or something. Nowadays, I need
to adopt a life philosophy that helps me to regular, focussed, great work. Not
sure yet what that is...

------
rexgallorum2
If I reflect upon the life outcomes of the truly gifted people I have kept up
with, I can divide them into a few broad categories:

-A few went on to have stellar careers in academia, science, medicine, law, IT, engineering, or other fields.

-Some had more modest aims and settled for more ordinary work--big fish in small ponds.

-Some got stuck closer to the bottom of the socio-economic ladder--some are creative types and/or have a history of addiction and self-destructive habits.

I don't think there is any question that highly intelligent people learn new
things quickly and grasp complex, nuanced, abstract concepts better and more
readily than most other people, but the connection between intelligence and
achievement, much less happiness and mental well being, is far from clear. An
awful lot of very bright people simply fall through the cracks, and we will
probably never know how many.

I would guess that most profoundly gifted people are pretty lonely. There just
aren't enough of them around, and at times it must be like seeing colors
nobody else can see.

------
woliveirajr
> This finding highlights the critical difference between happiness and
> meaning in life. While happiness and life satisfaction has more to do with
> getting what you want and feeling good, meaning is more related to
> developing a personal identity, expressing the self, and consciously
> integrating one's past, present, and future experiences.

Even happiness and satisfaction isn't permanent. Their volatility and
inconstancy are the perpetual attraction of "doing things". That's one reason
that even some ultra-high-quality people feel boredom: if you don't have
anything to do in the next day, you won't be proud of yourself. Be it simple
goals ("I have everything, so I want a bigger yacht, buy exclusive clothes
from that small door in that small street, have a dinner at the top of the
Eiffel tower"), that money can buy, or something that your next-island-
millionaire-neighbor has done and you haven't.

------
mcguire
" _Their most striking finding was substantially diminished levels of
meaningfulness and subjective well-being among the giftedness as potential
group compared to both the giftedness as achievement group and the control
group. Also, in comparison to the giftedness as achievement group, the
giftedness as potential group reported more demotivating experiences in
school, and they perceived work as much less meaningful and joyful._ "

If you assume "achievement" is based on "giftedness" plus luck, this seems to
imply that perceptions of meaningfulness and well being are based essentially
on luck. I suspect that there is something wrong with our success-fascinated
culture.

Or, possibly not. Promoting success by emphasizing it might be worth the cost
to those who just didn't happen to succeed.

------
neatcoder
> Their giftedness as potential group consisted of 198 members of Mensa.
> Membership in Mensa is granted to individuals who score at the 98th
> percentile or higher on recognized standardized measures of intelligence.

I have always been curious why a group like Mensa International is relevant in
today's society. Does an IQ test like the one Mensa requires has any relevance
or correlation with performance in real life career or society?

~~~
cm2012
IQ is actually one of the most correlated things to future income prediction.
I think only parent income predicts it better.

~~~
coldtea
Not exactly.

"In his recent book Hive Mind economist Garett Jones argues that the direct
effect of IQ on personal income is modest, and that most of the benefits of
higher IQ flow from various spillover effects that make societies more
productive, boosting everyone’s income. This, he says, explains the “IQ
paradox” whereby IQ differences appear to explain a lot more of the economic
differences between nations than within them." (...) “Fans of g would do well
to look at the labor lit: 1 IQ point predicts just 0.5% to 1.2% higher wages.”
He has also said that, in terms of standardized effect sizes, IQ accounts for
only about 10% of variance in personal income (a correlation of ~0.32).

At some very crude levels (at the extremes) it fares better (e.g. someone
below 90 would not do very well) but in general is nowhere near
representative.

[https://medium.com/incerto/iq-is-largely-a-
pseudoscientific-...](https://medium.com/incerto/iq-is-largely-a-
pseudoscientific-swindle-f131c101ba39)

~~~
throwawaymath
I'm glad you actually cited something, because online discussions of IQ tend
to be ridiculously fraught with baseless speculation and poorly substantiated
opinions. Thanks for the link, will have to dig into it.

As a counterpoint, there are a few meta-surveys which suggest that
_individuals_ with higher IQs _generally_ have better[1] long term outcomes. I
emphasize individual here because your source appears to be analyzing it at
the level of economic productivity and industrial output at the national level
(but correct me if I'm wrong).

Here are a few sources I've read, which have been aggregated (with light
commentary) by gwern:

1\. [https://www.gwern.net/Hunter](https://www.gwern.net/Hunter)

2\. [https://www.gwern.net/iq](https://www.gwern.net/iq)

3\. [https://www.gwern.net/Iodine](https://www.gwern.net/Iodine)

_________________

1\. This is weaselly, but "better" is difficult to define in a message board
comment.

------
apples_oranges
If anyone is suffering from a lack of meaning I would recommend "War and
Peace" by Tolstoy, specifically the plot around Pierre Bezuchov.

~~~
maxxxxx
Working through it gave my life meaning for quite a while :)

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
"I gotta get this damn book done"?

~~~
maxxxxx
The worst was keeping all the names straight.

------
hathawsh
Intellectuals suffering from a crisis of meaning should ask themselves a
sincere question: do I rely on relative intelligence as the core of my
identity? When you frame the question that way, a number of obvious problems
with that identity come to the surface:

\- You will never be the smartest person in the room in every subject. There
is simply too much to know, you'll never know it all, and others are better at
learning different things.

\- Being smart is no guarantee of success. To be successful, it's more
important to learn how to interact, influence, delegate, etc.

\- Any kind of identity based on comparison with other people is doomed. You
will age, your ego will take a hit when someone else seems better, etc.

Everyone needs a stable identity. A more sure identity for intellectuals is to
define yourself as someone who cares. As an intellectual, you probably enjoy
solving problems and you are probably capable of great empathy. Build up those
qualities in yourself without comparing yourself to others. That's a way to
happiness.

~~~
stcredzero
_You will never be the smartest person in the room in every subject._

If you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room. If you
seek to always be the smartest person in the room, you have a personality
problem which is holding you back.

~~~
PavlovsCat
> If you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room.

Or you're simply alone. There may not be an "i" in "team", but there's two of
them in "thinking".

> The salvation of the world depends only on the individual whose world it is.
> At least, every individual must act as if the whole future of the world, of
> humanity itself, depends on him. Anything less is a shirking of
> responsibility and is itself a dehumanizing force, for anything less
> encourages the individual to look upon himself as a mere actor in a drama
> written by anonymous agents, as less than a whole person, and that is the
> beginning of passivity and aimlessness.

\-- Joseph Weizenbaum

------
randcraw
I'm impressed that people with IQs of 150 are 4X more likely to suicide.
That's sobering. I'd like to know how this has trended over the past century.
And if it applies to other forms of talent than just IQ.

I also like the OP's division between giftedness as potential vs as
achievement. I've know far more gifted folks who belonged to the first group
more than the second. That dichotomy nicely captures the importance of drive
to the full expression of any natural gift. Far fewer gifteds are comparably
hard chargers, in my experience.

It's likely that before today's "age of quantitation", fewer gifteds were as
aware of the gap between their talent and its lack of expression. Or maybe
their attention was focused elsewhere -- on family, duty, or other life
endeavors that were unaffected by the gift.

------
PavlovsCat
> _Every powerful state relies on specialists whose task is to show that what
> the strong do is noble and just and, if the weak suffer, it is their fault.
> In the West, these specialists are called "intellectuals" and, with marginal
> exceptions, they fulfill their task with skill and self-righteousness,
> however outlandish the claims, in this practice that traces back to the
> origins of recorded history._

\-- Noam Chomsky

> _If I devote myself to other pursuits and contemplations, I must first see,
> at least, that I do not pursue them sitting upon another man’s shoulders. I
> must get off him first, that he may pursue his contemplations too. See what
> gross inconsistency is tolerated. [..] After the first blush of sin comes
> its indifference; and from immoral it becomes, as it were, unmoral, and not
> quite unnecessary to that life which we have made._

\-- Henry David Thoreau, "Civil Disobedience"

> _Totalitarianism, however, does not so much promise an age of faith as an
> age of schizophrenia. A society becomes totalitarian when its structure
> becomes flagrantly artificial: that is, when its ruling class has lost its
> function but succeeds in clinging to power by force or fraud. Such a
> society, no matter how long it persists, can never afford to become either
> tolerant or intellectually stable. It can never permit either the truthful
> recording of facts or the emotional sincerity that literary creation
> demands. But to be corrupted by totalitarianism one does not have to live in
> a totalitarian country. The mere prevalence of certain ideas can spread a
> kind of poison that makes one subject after another impossible for literary
> purposes. Wherever there is an enforced orthodoxy - or even two orthodoxies,
> as often happens - good writing stops._

[..]

> _No tirades against "individualism" and the "ivory tower", no pious
> platitudes to the effect that "true individuality is only attained through
> identification with the community", can get over the fact that a bought mind
> is a spoiled mind. Unless spontaneity enters at some point or another,
> literary creation is impossible, and language itself becomes something
> totally different from what it is now, we may learn to separate literary
> creation from intellectual honesty. At present we know only that the
> imagination, like certain wild animals, will not breed in captivity._

\-- George Orwell, "The Prevention of Literature"

------
graphememes
I wonder how those who have the ability and know-how to transition jobs and
roles, who stay in their current situation that doesn't have an impact.

It is something that haunts my mind. How can you sit, working in a location
that you know is not furthering anything, has no fruitful outcome, and is not
going to change or push the needle in any way. The ship is sinking and you
refuse to budge, but it's not your ship. You have no ties to this ship. The
are others reaching out a hand saying, hey, look, our ship is actually stable;
making change. Yet, the person still decides to stay aboard against all
intellectual odds. Is it fear? Is it stubbornness or pride?

I'll never know.

Note: This only is about those who can change careers or jobs easily, in high-
tech locations, where it occurs frequently. Against that, they stay, on a
sinking ship. This post only refers to them, as I can easily understand others
in a similar situation but with no way out or the ability to create a way out
due to circumstance.

------
temp1928384
As a self-proclaimed "slight smarter than average" human being the biggest
challenge I face on a day-to-day basis is a tendency to become jaded. I have
no idea how to fix that but it makes daily life suffocating in many ways.

------
charliesharding
I recently started going to church again and I've been enjoying it. While I
still have issues with it (as do many who go), I think mainstream culture has
thrown out the baby with the bathwater when it comes to religion as it does
provide a good framework for finding meaning in your life.

I don't think I'm alone either - Jordan Peterson's rise to popularity is
testament to people craving the kind of moral wisdom that is contained in the
bible. I've also come to like the idea of original sin; we all make mistakes
and as long as you recognize them as mistakes, you can still be a good person
by trying to do right.

~~~
user-x
Interesting point. I also think there is a sense of predestination that comes
with a believe in God. This can have a reassuring effect when it comes to
worrying about if you're on the right track in life (the track to "meaning").
I have read that some psychologists hypothesize this sense of predestination
is what (in part) causes lower suicide rates among religious folks vs. non-
religious folks.

Even though I'm aware of these positive effects, I still can't bring myself to
believe in any God. I was raised atheist and I've always felt like a believe
in the supernatural doesn't mix with an intellectual, scientific view on the
world. This is of course completely due to my upbringing; there are plenty of
great scientists who believe. I think this is an interesting inner conflict
which I'm sure I share with many others.

~~~
robterrin
There are plenty of religions that offer a more flexible interpretation of
"God" that might better suit your world view. You may want to check out
Quakerism, the Bahá'í Faith and Buddhism. These are just three that come to
mind, but there are many more.

I would also add that predestination is a particularly Calvinist protestant
belief. Many religions that rely on good works, such as Jesuit Catholicism and
Quakerism can provide meaning and sense of purpose without the offensive
belief that one has no self determination or choice about being a good person
in life.

------
ralusek
Do stuff you're proud of until you die. What's more to think about?

~~~
abdulhaq
Do good until you die. Attaching pride to it is a mistake if it leads to
arrogance.

~~~
ralusek
Fine. "Do good things that you're proud of while maintaining your humility."

If you remove pride, you remove meaning, unfortunately. Virtue of the Mean,
baby. Yin, Yang. Larry David, Lena Dunham.

There can be no light without the dark of the void.

------
kingkawn
That we ever felt certain we knew what things meant was the problem that’s
being cured.

I am optimistic that the subculture of memes attempting to produce
inspirational and philosophical thought, although now perhaps mostly mired in
cliche, is the grandest crowd-sourced thought experiment in history. It will
evolve as the lowest common denominator is raised in complexity and I think
will eventually surpass in intellectual insight all previous systems of
thought by virtue alone of the number of people contributing and contemplating
its output.

------
demircancelebi
I've concluded that the question we are trying to answer is "What's the
meaning of life?", but there is no reason for us to assume that that question
is the ultimate question. Most probably, there are more important questions we
are not yet aware of, and one can find meaning in the search of such
questions.

------
saberience
I definitely identify as an intellectual. I spend a lot of time reading books,
especially the classics and older philosophy texts, and I definitely identify
with this article and the general premise.

For me personally, the hard thing is reading the thoughts of Plato, Seneca,
Marcus Aurelius, etc. and then trying to understand how we had such amazing
thinkers 2000 years ago and that we don't seem to have moved any further at
all in the year 2018. Yes, of course science and technology have progressed,
but our human behaviors have not improved. In fact, we seem to have regressed
and now have Donald Trump as President and Theresa May in the UK, trying to
pull the country out of Europe due to rampant xenophobia.

Anti-intellectualism, anti-science, anti-vaxx, climate change denial, rampant
capitalism at the expense of our souls. It seems like the default goal of the
Westerner is to get rich enough so that they can narcotize themselves against
all the pain and fear of the future which is underlying our society.

Southern California, where I live, is a place where your instagram "image"
seems more important than whether you're actually a good person. People spend
more of their time glued to their screens scrolling on Insta or Facebook
seeing other people's portrayed lives and obsessing over their likes and
follows. Working long days so you can afford the next step up on the car
ladder or housing ladder, so you can get some temporary satisfaction before
that fades and you start the ladder again.

I think if Socrates or Plato or Aristotle were to time travel to this future,
Socrates would be sharing his hemlock with them before they committed group
suicide.

~~~
JackFr
>For me personally, the hard thing is reading the thoughts of Plato, Seneca,
Marcus Aurelius, etc. and then trying to understand how we had such amazing
thinkers 2000 years ago and that we don't seem to have moved any further at
all in the year 2018.

Seems like pretty good evidence that people are deeply flawed, sinful
creatures.

~~~
zanny
People are blank slates forged by the society around them.

Nobody is inherently evil, not even a socio or psychopath. People are made
evil, ignorant, anti-intellectual in the ways they come to interpret and
interact with the world.

Its more evidence that the collective societies we have built aren't anything
worth revering yet, at least not the ones "on top" of global culture today.

------
nathias
Intelligence can stop you from believing in something obviously false,
education in science can cure some of the naive and false methodology and
epistemology of common sense, but neither can be a substitute for philosophy.

------
tanilama
All they need is a small dosage of existentialism. Life is indeed meaningless
by itself, we are born to reproduce, meaning is what you choose to attach to
it.

------
lainon
In the common parlance, it is often said that power corrupts, but this
generally applies to people who are personally unstable and spiritually
undisciplined, and so once they escape the corset of social obligation, they
act out their suppressed inner fantasies with deranged results. The flip side
of power is that it teaches a form of compassion, a "tough love," that comes
from the necessity of motivating people, because motivating people is both a
matter of strict external force and gentler internal reward. If you're going
to lead people into battle or business or a volunteer effort, you need to show
them that their task is just and there is no other way, but also make them
feel a sense of empowerment and world-remaking importance in their job, so
that they see it as not only necessary but beneficient to society and self.

People are raw material. They come to you a mixed bag: they have strengths,
and weaknesses, and fears as well as ambitions. Most of them do not know how
to channel their ambitions, so if not given reason to think otherwise, will
become egocentric and either seize power, or disclaim it entirely and retreat
into personal worlds of amusements and fetishes. On the other hand, if their
ambitions are given a clear path and a reason to exist, they can exponentially
increase their productivity and acumen simply by the fact of being inspired
toward their task. Among other things, this explains how throughout history
small groups of men and women have changed the world radically, and how
sometimes a smaller army or business can crucify its competitors: its people
are more focused and believe in their task more than the opposition.

Although amplified by the modern world, throughout history most people have
spent their day to day existence in a state of slight depression. The simplest
reason for this is that very few of us get to live a life where we are a
constant focus of attention, and so we labor mostly unknown except to a few
close friends and our families, whose praise means a lot to us, yet, we would
prefer to be more widely influential. Further, because life is a long and
winding road in which it is necessary to make errors in order to learn the
foundations of successes, all of us will have some failings and embarassments
lurking in the past. We prefer not to mention them in public, but whenever we
consider our next move, doubt arises in the form of these past memories, much
like beating a dog with a stick when it soils the carpet will convince it in
the future to remember pain and associate it with that act. Our own histories
literally condition us to depression.

What amplifies this depression in the modern time is the sheer size of our
society, and its general course downward, which even the dumbest among us seem
to have noticed. We notice such things on a subliminal level more than an
articulated one, since to understand the situation in structure and words
requires knowing more of it than most lives will see let alone analyze. Since
our society is huge, and seems so far beyond our control or even understanding
that it is inexorably going to do what it does, most are slightly depressed by
their lack of influence on changing a worsening situation. Among the
intelligent, it is recognized that masses of morons will undo whatever they
achieve, or worse, turn it into a dumbed-down version of itself, missing
meaning but preserving appearance. This keeps even the best among us
depressed.

The catalyst of change for this situation can be a seemingly miniscule change
in belief. People now believe they cannot change themselves or the world, and
that things will continue as they have been; if given the knowledge that not
only are things invisibly changing, but that the future favors this change,
and that they can be the implements of such alteration, people will become
inspired and find belief in the future. The same energy that fuels their
depression can propel their hard work and brilliant invention in remaking the
world. Another way to view this is that depression is the result of one's
energy having no outlet, thus it works against the individual by creating
internal chaos. Give people an outlet that they believe will have positive
results, and they will move the world. It is for this reason that stubborn
assholes such as this writer believe that as has happened in the past, a small
group of determined people will change our world yet again. People of the
world, your time is coming.

And time is on our side. Every day we grow stronger and more disciplined, the
errors of society bear it and its lackeys further into oblivion, crushing them
under the weight of a design which is doomed by its own contradictions to
failure. Each day that we do not give in and do not parrot their rhetoric,
ours is seen more clearly by others, and more respected. And with each passing
day, more of the failures of our current civilization come to light, and more
people look for alternate answers, perhaps not to act on directly but to
support covertly or simply as vessels for their hope of a better future. When
people become inspired, they gain a nearly godlike status in their ability to
think clearly, act decisively, and make each choice correctly the first time.
In this state, the errors and stumbling confusion that hampers us in daily
life is minimized, and replaced with a state of pure function that comes of a
lack of spiritual doubt about one's course. People of earth, your fortunes are
changing.

If you've got a modicum of intelligence, you are probably depressed, and you
were probably born depressed: society is against you, as it wants to dumb down
every aspect of its function to the point where you will be a misfit and your
best efforts will not be appreciated even when successful. You are surrounded
by idiots, and thanks to democracy and consumerism and popularity, they do
have greater power than you - for now. You have no faith in the rotted process
of our society, or its calcified judgment, or even life itself, perhaps, for
it has delivered you to this state. Yet this is changing, and the same force
of life - call it nature, God, or chance; your pick - has brought this cycle
toward the beginnings of a close. You must have faith in the process of living
and the change it can bring, because at that point, you can see yourself as an
agent of this change. As a wise man once said, "I don't know if what I'm doing
will make things better, but I feel better working toward something in which I
believe." That outlook requires leaving behind the comfort of feeling you
cannot change anything, so contenting yourself with distractions like
television, drugs, novelty music and social pressures.

We live in a world of a lack of absolutes. We cannot "prove" what we're doing
is right any more than those who oppose us can, but we can make a firm stand
with statements of personal experience and wisdom such as "I prefer" and "I
believe."

------
earthwrldshaman
they have been, since ancient Greece..

------
crimsonalucard
It's just us millennials who lack meaning. The whole intellectual thing is
just arrogance.

------
forgottenpass
Nope. Their problem is narcissism. The system told them they were gifted, and
they grew up to find out the world isn't a blowjob parade. How anyone handles
that defines their character.

