I was told that when I went to college I would realize that I’m not that smart. Instead I met a bunch of people who got depressed because they weren’t as good as I was. I tried to explain to them that I was a freak who was masking so hard that I collapsed from exhaustion whenever I got home, and they shouldn’t try to compare themselves to me because the part of my brain that does logic ate the part that reads faces and understands how talking works. I wanted them to understand that there was a lot that came naturally to them that I would never be able to do easily.
yay, no dunning kruger for me! hold up, oh no
Submitted 5 months ago by graphito@sopuli.xyz to memes@sopuli.xyz
Comments
Leate_Wonceslace@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 months ago
SuddenDownpour@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
Humble autism.
possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 5 months ago
“IQ” and other intelligence tests are incredibly flawed. The biggest issue is that intelligence is very hard to define. Not to mention the IQ test comes from racist origins and was used for immigration testing for a long time.
nelly_man@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Well the origins were laudable, it’s just that it was shortly thereafter extended for racist means. Binet and Simon wanted to see if they could devise a test to measure intelligence in children, and they ultimately came up with a way to measure a child’s mental age.
At the time, problem children who did poorly in school were assumed to be sick and sent to an asylum. They proposed that some children were just slow, but they could still be successful if they got more help. Their test was meant to identify the slow children so that they could allocate the proper resources to them.
Later, their ideas were extended beyond the education system to try to prove racial hierarchies, and that’s where much of the controversy comes from. The other part is that the tests were meant to identify children that would struggle in school. They weren’t meant to identify geniuses or to understand people’s intelligence level outside of the classroom.
rustydrd@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
This is a good and nuanced take, thank you for taking the time to write it down. Piggybacking on this, if anyone wants to dive more deeply into the subject of psychological measurement, there’s an excellent book by Derek Briggs about this: Historical and Conceptual Foundations of Measurement in the Human Sciences: Credos & Controversies.
possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 5 months ago
I think labeling kids as slow can be problematic depending on the context. We are all good at different things. If a kid needs help in math get them help but don’t treat them as inferior. If a kid has no self worth then they have no motivation to get better. Separating them from there pears is incredibly humiliating and can cause trauma.
Bezzelbob@lemmy.world 5 months ago
We know this, the issue is until a more comprehensive test comes around, the IQ test is the best we have, also measuring general pattern recognition can be pretty useful as a “quick and sweet” measure since pattern recognition is the base for all other forms of intelligence
possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 5 months ago
Why do we even need such a test? It seems like you shouldn’t place people into arbitrary categories. Intelligence can’t really be defined. A test that looks for intelligence is always going to be biased and discriminatory.
It reminds me of social scoring and even of ethnic cleansing in the worse case. People shouldn’t have there lives defined by a test.
vga@sopuli.xyz 5 months ago
Why then does IQ predict success?
Wirlocke@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 months ago
I imagine it’s because the attributes that IQ measure could be the same as we use to measure success.
Effectively if your test is based on the skills needed for STEM, and the STEM fields have jobs with high pay and respect, then you’re likely to be considered “successful”. But the same person could be awful at communication, politics, the arts, and just be ignorant at large to how the world works. They may even be hyper specialized to their field but lack the flexibility in their intelligence to understand other STEM fields (I hear physicists are guilty of this).
Another, simpler answer, could just be that already wealthy people have better access to stable education, so they were already successful in many ways.
trashgirlfriend@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Because it also correlates with parental wealth, better access to education, etc.
Kids with better off parents get better school/tutoring from a young age > get better IQ scores > go on to better colleges > have better creds and connections> success.
possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 5 months ago
It very much doesn’t
DriftinGrifter@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 months ago
can confirm did well on an iq test whilst absolutely sloshed in school
son_named_bort@lemmy.world 5 months ago
School said I was gifted but I think I was just a big fish in a small pond.
ouRKaoS@lemmy.today 5 months ago
“Gifted” in school basically just means “above average” and as we all know…
Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
–George Carlin
OpenStars@discuss.online 5 months ago
Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de 5 months ago
i mean, “gifted” is basically doublespeak for “on the neurodivergence spectrum” and society just fucking hates neurodivergent people.
It’s not really that we’re aware of our deficiencies, it’s that society makes us feel bad for things that are completely natural and should be viewed as sidegrades mostly.EatATaco@lemm.ee 5 months ago
I don’t follow this at all.
My son is in the gifted program. He is also one of the most socially intelligent people I’ve ever met. Makes friends easily, is a natural leader, shows kindness and acceptance towards all people, and adults frequently comment to me how mature he is when interacting with them. He is well accepted by society and moves around in it with ease.
I also think you’re missing the point. Are you familiar with the dunning Kruger effect? It’s the idea that smart people are better at recognizing their own shortcomings because they are smart, and less intelligent people aren’t smart enough to realize all of their shortcomings.
Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de 5 months ago
Hi! Assuming that neurodivergent people can’t be socially intelligent is kind of offensive, neurodivergence is a wide spectrum and it manifests differently for everyone.
Also, just because someone seems good at something doesn’t mean it’s not a massive effort for them, read up about masking :)
SuddenDownpour@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
shows kindness and acceptance towards all people, and adults frequently comment to me how mature he is when interacting with them
None of this is rare for people on the spectrum.
Makes friends easily, is a natural leader
Contrary to popular belief, autistic people don’t have trouble to make friends on a vacuum, they have communication problems with non-autistic people. If your kid is on the gifted program…
Don’t take any of this as offense. I’m autistic and I’m finding my way to thrive in life. It just would have been easier if I had been given the appropriate resources instead of being discriminated against.
areyouevenreal@lemm.ee 5 months ago
You can be mature, well liked, and have leadership and people skills and still be a neurodivergent. Neurodivergent is a very broad category nowadays. People with things like ADHD and ASPD often end up being CEOs or self-employed. They are in fact overrepresented in those kinds of jobs. Not every neurodivergent person is socially inept or immature, to think otherwise is frankly abelism.
Heck even I used to be considered mature and capable at one point. Could never get away from being considered weird though.
MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca 5 months ago
I see what you’re going for here, and I disagree.
You’re saying that “gifted” refers to someone who is neurodivergent. Implying that neurodivergent people are gifted. I assert that gifted people are more likely to be neurodivergent. Not the other way around.
Look, I know tons of people diagnosed with all sorts of neurodivergent brains who are pretty worthless when it comes to being “gifted”.
I do however, also know plenty of gifted people who have discovered that they are in fact, neurodivergent.
I’m just saying.
Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de 5 months ago
i’m not saying that neurodivergent people are “gifted”, i’m saying that the term “gifted” is a euphemism and i don’t like the term.
It’s a way to ignore the issue of people being different and needing individualized treatment, instead saying that they’re “gifted” as if they’re just blessed by god to do better in school, which is a toxic idea.
We shouldn’t call kids “gifted” and give them the next year’s textbook, we should recognize that it’s extremely likely they’re neurodivergent and need a diagnosis and different adjustments depending on the person. One person might just need a separate room to study in, one person might need permission to sit in the back with headphones on listening to music, one might need an extra teacher who personally helps them out.
brbposting@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
Thought I read something somewhere like:
the most common thing in the world is unapplied intelligence
Must be butchering it pretty badly if Google’s blank
Bezzelbob@lemmy.world 5 months ago
This is so true, the modern education system (at least here in America) was designed to create wage slaves. Raise your hand to talk, and take a piss, never teach them anything useful like taxes, laws, or banking, make them just smart enough to fill out paper work. And the sad part is that it worked
edgemaster72@lemmy.world 5 months ago
I’m in this picture and I don’t like it.
lightnegative@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Me too, the red band on the left hand side
Linkerbaan@lemmy.world 5 months ago
“The Woods Would Be Very Silent If No Birds Sang Except Those Who Sang Best”
samus12345@lemmy.world 5 months ago
His last name is DROP TABLE Students;–.
klemptor@startrek.website 5 months ago
Little Bobby Tables
samus12345@lemmy.world 5 months ago
That’s what they call him.
Colour_me_triggered@lemm.ee 5 months ago
Trust me, the same thing applies to the green region.
ChexMax@lemmy.world 5 months ago
BuT yOuR pOtEnTiAl!..
Green region comes with a higher propensity for self “medicating” as well. Honestly makes me feel like less of a failure because I may be useless but at least I’m not an alcoholic?
eatthecake@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Are you saying my self medicatory alcoholism makes me green?
Excellent!
Omniraptor@lemm.ee 5 months ago
I’m useless and not an alcoholic but looking back it would have been better for me to self medicate somehow and stay in school instead of dropping out.
Restaldt@lemmy.world 5 months ago
The awwwwtism range
brygphilomena@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Now we’re going to put you in the
special edgifted school program.Duamerthrax@lemmy.world 5 months ago
fml
Aceticon@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Oh, man, somebody actually thinks the “excellence” part of the curve isn’t plagued by things like how much easier is to spot all the ways things can cause problems down the causality chain (guess what, when it’s easy and natural to, for every action being considered, see 3 or more links down the chain of possible consequences, one always finds risks and negatives) and associated tendency for paralysis by analysis or simply the being quite abnormal compared to most people.
In my experience the perfect spot of the curve when it comes to felling good about oneself in this one human characteristic is to be what I call an “entry level genious” - a barelly into the genious IQ, just about intelligent enough to feel more intelligent than th majority of people one encounters but not so intelligent one is aware of the limits of intelligence and how little even genious adds to one’s overall capabilities (and example of this would be Elon Musk), or in other words, on what is pretty much the peak Dunning-Krugger point of Intelligence.
NikkiDimes@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Bro really said Elon Musk
burgersc12@mander.xyz 5 months ago
Elon Musk is obviously such a genious that he was forced to buy Twitter. He tried to play it to his benefit and screwed himself over.
graphito@sopuli.xyz 5 months ago
I understand the allure of grass being greener on other side but I think you’re simply buying the image that salespeople selling/projecting.
It’s not even expensive skill to learn: it takes few months of training to learn how to project “entry level genius” vibe but once you dig in there you’ll see the edges of hologram.
If you think salespeople are actually successful ones, sales dept is always hiring 😉… I wonder why 😳
Aceticon@lemmy.world 5 months ago
I’m thinking more Startup Founders and highly specialized Tech salespeople, rather than run-of-the-mill salespersons.
People with a grifter kind of personality is maybe a better way to describe the kind of people I mean.
The best do think of themselves as highly capable and competent because the best seller there is absolutelly believes in what they’re pitching - it’s smilar to how in Theatre, the best acting involves the actors literally feeling as if that situation was trully happenning to them.
IMHO the best way to deceive others is to first deceive yourself (though what I’ve seen more commonly done is avoiding knowing too much about something and in too much detail so that one is not even aware of the risks and pitfalls and only knows the positives) because of how amazingly truthfull that makes one sound.
Olmai@lemmy.world 5 months ago
The green part only exists in a dreamer’s mind, it’s blue all the way
psud@aussie.zone 5 months ago
there’s no such thing as two standard deviations
CPMSP@midwest.social 5 months ago
As I’ve said before, G&T when you’re young means MANY G&T’s when you’re older.
graphito@sopuli.xyz 5 months ago
OK, I just had 5 Ginn tonics, how much more?
nifty@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Eh ignoring the fact that someone with privilege doesn’t need to worry about g&ts at any age. As always, being skilled or talented is a necessity for the working class
Let’s not fall into some delusion that the ruling class is full of excellent or above average IQ/EQ people
areyouevenreal@lemm.ee 5 months ago
They are talking about the alcoholic beverage in the second G&T
Zehzin@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Skill issue
graphito@sopuli.xyz 5 months ago
oh mighty, become my employer and bestow on me all the right skills that made you successful
Zehzin@lemmy.world 5 months ago
No because I don’t have skills nor am I successful.
ClockNimble@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Don’t worry everyone. Blue is exactly the same as green, but colored differently. As someone in the blue, friends with green.
FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 5 months ago
I was put in GT classes in middle school because I went to a (shitty) private school where every kid went on to GT. Somehow I struggled through GT until those classes weren’t offered anymore (sophomore year of high school) and I hated every minute of it and was really bad at what they wanted me to do.
If I could do it over again, I would beg my parents not to put me in GT classes.
MehBlah@lemmy.world 5 months ago
I had a guy in my class. We shared a first name and middle name. If he was going to school today he would have had a IEP. My high school guidance counselor who also created the class schedules was in a feud with my parents about some trivial thing. She knew but didn’t care she swapped my almost by name doppelgangers schedules. Poor dude got stuck in advanced classes and they stuck me in the the regular classes. I didn’t say anything since I hated the advanced classes. I had straight A’s for the first time in my life. Unfortunately at around five weeks in they decided to swap us since my parents found out and of course the teachers knew it was a ‘mistake’. I told them I wanted to stay in the regular classes but of course that simply wasn’t possible. I could have had a high grade point in high school but since they insisted I had to be in the advanced classes where maintained a B to C grade in everything except computer science and physics. I know why I sucked in all the other classes today but back then I had that ‘keen awareness of my own deficiencies’. My parents were so busy having their childish feuds that they refused to get me help for my problems.
I wonder how many of those who would fall in the blue area represented here have some form of Executive Dysfunction or as in my case additional issues?
psud@aussie.zone 5 months ago
When I was a primary school kid we didn’t have gifted and talented classes. Kids who were ahead of the class could continue doing more and more advanced maths, move onto the next year’s work, though in 6th grade the problems only went up to advanced 6th grade. I don’t know what you would do if you were smart but unsatisfied with maths, I guess you’d be disruptive.
TheOakTree@lemm.ee 5 months ago
What does the GT stand for? I’m unfamiliar with the acronym, as it seems schools across the nation use different terms to describe the same thing.
FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Gifted and Talented.
dutchkimble@lemy.lol 5 months ago
E-sports are really catching on I wouldn’t have minded some training in school!
shneancy@lemmy.world 5 months ago
i think blue should be either extended or completely replace green, “excellence” is not given just because you’re smart
givesomefucks@lemmy.world 5 months ago
You don’t understand how much green sucks…
An intellectual disability is 2 standard deviations from the mean (that’s 30 points).
For someone that’s 100, about 2% of humans are 30 points lower than them.
If you’re at the tail of the green?
Congrats, about 84% of the world’s population is at least 30 points below you. For bonus points, you won’t even know your IQ because it’s like measuring a mile with a foot long ruler. You can get a guesseatimate, but to really measure it just isn’t worth it. A Wechsler would already take 4+ hours to get that high of a score.
It’s basically Idiocracy. And just like the movie, a lot of the time when you try to explain stuff that sounds basic “don’t use Gatorade on plants” you only get insults and get told plants crave electrolytes.
Like, people say people in green like drugs because of “novelty seeking behavior”…
It’s not that, it’s because living in Idiocracy fucking sucks, and there are a couple things that can be done to level the playing field, and most of them are pretty enjoyable too.
And it’s not even rare. A 145+ IQ is about 1 in 1200 people, that’s about as frequent as people who are trans.
shneancy@lemmy.world 5 months ago
oh i’m painfully aware of how much it sucks to be in the green, friend :| i am not a fan, so often i wish i was just fucking stupid. Grass greener, haha, on the other side and all, but fuck man, those people look so happy, or at least not outwardly miserable. I wish i could feel the same level of joy as a himbo/bimbo “discovering” that an essential oil or perhaps a pretty rock can cure them of everything and curse their enemies at the same time!
The drug thing is a “green” thing huh? lmao good to know. It is funny how drunk/high/tripping me is roughly the same as a sober average person, bit less agile physically of course but about as fast at thinking, kind of baffling how, unless i’m absolutely smashed, people don’t even realise that i’m under the influence of something
and yeah, living in this self destructive and hateful world is a nightmare. I can see so many ways in which things could get better for everybody, and yet they never do, and shit keeps getting worse. Cruelty seems to be the point. I could go on for a hot while about the state of the world and how being “diagnosed as smart” (how i call it) fucking sucks on so many levels, but i’d rather not make my day any worse, my mental health has been making sweet love to the bottom of the mariana trench lately, it seems.
Though the worst thing about being diagnosed as smart is either 1) congratulations! your fast brain can think of 20 things to be anxious about in 5s flat at any time of day! no you can’t control it fuck you or 2) the frustration you feel when something doesn’t make sense, in such a way that the only explanation seems to be that whoever was making the decisions was either plain dumb or intentionally an asshole, which isn’t a satisfying explanation at all
Etterra@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Oh hey, throw in some crippling depression and overwhelming cynicism and I’m there too.
leaky_shower_thought@feddit.nl 5 months ago
second place or (second region from peak) is apparently a hard place to be.
in alternate mindsets, it’s all fine – you are what defines you.
PugJesus@lemmy.world 5 months ago
I’m in this entire comment section and I don’t like it
Ironfacebuster@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Hahaha!
🙁
SuddenDownpour@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
Giftedness easily becomes a social disability if your environment isn’t good for it. The education system isn’t ready to handle you constantly being ahead of the class? Get ready to sleep in school as the best years to take advantage of it pass by. Your topics of interest are too complex for everyone else around? Have fun enjoying your friendships less than everyone else. You don’t mask your intelligence? Here, have 10 lottery tickets to get bullied, no, you can’t return them. Congratulations, you graduated from college. Do you have the money for a masters degree? Oops, guess you studied for nothing. Got into debt and got a masters, but the job market isn’t booming? Do you have rich parents, or rich friends? Aw shucks, guess you couldn’t network your way into the type of job you would have liked.
Being intelligent helps, if you’re patient, hard-working, and have the means to look out for the less conventional options, but not so much as one would instinctively think.
gibmiser@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Was everything super easy for you? Congrats, you never learned how to struggle and persist and you get discouraged easily. Good luck growing your skills and knowledge now…
scops@reddthat.com 5 months ago
Hey that’s me! I coasted through high school and got to college having no work ethic or ability to really study material that I almost, but not quite had down. Dropped out senior year to work in IT, got fired a year later, and had to move back in with my parents for almost a year before I went back and finished my degree and got a new job.
It was very humbling
flamingo_pinyata@sopuli.xyz 5 months ago
Oh I feel this so much. There’s a range of jobs and environments where I do really really well. But the way most organizations are structured I can never find a place where my strengths are desirable in the long term.
And selling myself is not one of my strengths.
xpinchx@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Try smaller businesses maybe? Corporate isn’t for everyone.
I got hired for two simple tasks and quickly realized the company (being small) was lacking in a lot of areas I specialize in or am passionate about. I started doing all these extra things and I got a lot of recognition and $$$ in return. I also don’t hate my job, it’s a small team and we all get along great.
Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de 5 months ago
absolutely one of the worst parts of having an invisible disability is having to be your own advocate, it’s so fucking exhausting having to constantly defend and promote yourself.
Sabata11792@ani.social 5 months ago
This never goes away, but it at least got me a job.
Aceticon@lemmy.world 5 months ago
In my experience, the expectations of most people about “gifted” level intelligence seem to be shaped shaped by things like movies and are wholly unrealistic.
Even a twice as fast CPU is no guarantee that the software running in it is any good or appropriate for any one task.
BorgDrone@lemmy.one 5 months ago
Reminds me of this comic, in Dutch but the translation is right below it (for all the dumbasses who can’t read Dutch)
AlolanYoda@mander.xyz 5 months ago
Oh! I’m in the beginning stages of learning Dutch, but there were several words I didn’t know, which made me feel extra stupid. Well done!
GBU_28@lemm.ee 5 months ago
If your undergrad offers you zero income opportunities, you weren’t so gifted after all