I learned a lot about my cultural assumptions on the meaning of high intelligence when I traveled from the United States to Taiwan to study the Chinese language twenty-eight years ago. Here in the United States, I had imbued the idea that high-IQ people are disliked because they are smart, and that above a certain IQ, a person has no hope of having a friendship relationship with a person of average IQ. (I especially got that idea from a short story by Philip K. Dick
I read when I was in ninth grade, but in fact this idea that high IQ causes an inherent social gulf is commonplace in Western literature on education of gifted children.)
I got a big surprise when I arrived in Taiwan. I found out that in east Asia, the cultural assumption is that there are few finer uses for intelligence than getting along with other people. It is expected that anyone who is generally smart will be able to make friends with lots of people. (This emphasis comes straight from the writings of Confucius and the successor Confucian philosopher Mencius, which I studied in the original literary Chinese as part of my language studies.) It helps, of course, that Chinese-influenced culture in general also honors literacy and intellect in a way that is not quite as direct or pervasive as in Western culture, but the main point is that the 知識分子 ("intellectual") is a person who has his own responsibility to get along with other people and lead society (by EXAMPLE) so that all of society is harmonious. Once I learned not to whine to myself so much about how people don't appreciate me because I'm so smart (doesn't it sound gauche to hear me say that?), I learned to appreciate my fellow human beings a lot more, and succeeded in making more friends. I'm glad I went overseas to learn a new perspective, a perspective that helps me now that I am back in the United States. Confucius had a great saying about how to appreciate other people and learn from all of them: 三人行，必有我師焉 ("wherever three persons are walking, my teacher is surely among them"). I can learn from anyone in my environment, and I can make friends with more people than I realized at first.
I think there's a bit of confusion here. People up to roughly 90th percentile or so intelligence will be able to use their smarts to make more friends, get along better with others, etc. The problem that Paul Graham is talking about is the 10% above the 90th percentile, who are sufficiently different from the average as to make relating to normal people difficult. Not coincidentally, the intelligence of Congressmen averages around 90th percentile.
And if anything, that argument might suggest the upper 10% should almost have the lower 90 enthralled. Society is a fundamentally mental event. To claim you're more skilled than 90% of it and still fail to succeed is to not really be telling the whole s story.
Which is fine. Maybe you don't care about other people enough to invest. Maybe you've decided to spend time elsewhere. Just stop trying to be so holy that you can't overcome the challenge of learning about and appreciating others.
"And if anything, that argument might suggest the upper 10% should almost have the lower 90 enthralled."
People in the top 20% of intelligence (the interval centered around the optimal 90th percentile for leadership) do dominate society. Virtually every CEO, every Congressman, every Senator, every President, every general, etc. etc. etc. is in that top 20%. See the Mainstream Science on Intelligence statement (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mainstream_Science_on_Intellige...).
Actually the people between the 90th and 95th percentile are the ones who have difficulty getting along. Those above the 95th percentile understand how society works and are as Confucius described, "the ones that lead society (by example) so that all of society is harmonious."
I've met people from both categories.
The smartest geeks I know have no trouble fitting into society, one of them is leading a startup that has received over a million dollars in VC funding. They work on serious, possibly disruptive and hard project. (double emphasis on hard)
On the other hand, the rather large group of geeks I know who have trouble fitting into society work on not-so-important projects, usually things like flash games, simple web apps, etc. Some of these geeks (the ones who outwardly call themselves smart) suffer from illusory superiority (some even intentionally complicate their code so that others find it hard to understand, as a show of intellectual superiority; see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_superiority)
The fact, is these socially-challenged geeks aren't so smart after all; they don't put much effort socializing with people, and then they whine and complain how they don't fit it.
The reason why this doesn't happen in Asia as often, is because the culture doesn't permit it. In America, you can sort of get away by denoting yourself as a geek and refraining from social activity. In Asia, since that is seen very badly (much worse than the comical portrayal of geeks we have here); these kids are forced to go out and socialize.
"Those above the 95th percentile understand how society works and are as Confucius described, "the ones that lead society (by example) so that all of society is harmonious.""
This isn't actually true. If you look at the SAT scores of Congressmen, Senators, etc., they average below 95th percentile. Many are above 95th, but the average is below 95th.
"The smartest geeks I know have no trouble fitting into society, one of them is leading a startup that has received over a million dollars in VC funding."
Citing anonymous friends is not evidence.
"The fact, is these socially-challenged geeks aren't so smart after all; they don't put much effort socializing with people, and then they whine and complain how they don't fit it."
That's a complete non-sequitur. What does that have to do with intelligence or lack thereof? It's perfectly possible to be smart and not socialize much. It's also possible to be dumb and not socialize much. It's like saying the Unabomber was dumb because he killed two dozen people. Killing two dozen people makes you evil, certainly, but it doesn't make you dumb (the Unabomber was actually a math professor at Berkeley before he went insane).
10% above the 90th percentile, who are sufficiently different from the average as to make relating to normal people difficult.
[citation needed]
There is no confusion at all on my part. I knew what subset of the population I was writing about (perhaps an even narrower subset than the original Paul Graham article, the first of his I ever read, was about) when I started typing. I specifically disagree with "as to make relating to normal people difficult." If high-IQ people have a social problem, as perhaps they especially do in certain parts of American culture, I invite them to use their high IQ to engage in problem-solving.
" If high-IQ people have a social problem, as perhaps they especially do in certain parts of American culture, I invite them to use their high IQ to engage in problem-solving."
It doesn't work that way. The way humans usually solve social problems is through asking, "how would I react if I were in the other person's place"? We have specific biological structures, like mirror neurons (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_neuron), that are set up to do that. However, this only works if the person being modeled is similar to the modeler. Because of this, there are actually a ton of factors that can make relating to other people difficult, not just intelligence (like culture, age, socioeconomic class, mental strengths and weaknesses, etc.)
I am in that 10% of 10% above the 90th percentile of the population. I have zero problems getting people to like me, however I find little of interest in "average" people.
But, being smart only get's you so far. There are plenty of ways people can diverge from the norms of society and intelligence is just one of them. Develop some hobby's more interesting than television and suddenly we have something to talk about.
Comments
I learned a lot about my cultural assumptions on the meaning of high intelligence when I traveled from the United States to Taiwan to study the Chinese language twenty-eight years ago. Here in the United States, I had imbued the idea that high-IQ people are disliked because they are smart, and that above a certain IQ, a person has no hope of having a friendship relationship with a person of average IQ. (I especially got that idea from a short story by Philip K. Dick
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_K._Dick
I read when I was in ninth grade, but in fact this idea that high IQ causes an inherent social gulf is commonplace in Western literature on education of gifted children.)
I got a big surprise when I arrived in Taiwan. I found out that in east Asia, the cultural assumption is that there are few finer uses for intelligence than getting along with other people. It is expected that anyone who is generally smart will be able to make friends with lots of people. (This emphasis comes straight from the writings of Confucius and the successor Confucian philosopher Mencius, which I studied in the original literary Chinese as part of my language studies.) It helps, of course, that Chinese-influenced culture in general also honors literacy and intellect in a way that is not quite as direct or pervasive as in Western culture, but the main point is that the 知識分子 ("intellectual") is a person who has his own responsibility to get along with other people and lead society (by EXAMPLE) so that all of society is harmonious. Once I learned not to whine to myself so much about how people don't appreciate me because I'm so smart (doesn't it sound gauche to hear me say that?), I learned to appreciate my fellow human beings a lot more, and succeeded in making more friends. I'm glad I went overseas to learn a new perspective, a perspective that helps me now that I am back in the United States. Confucius had a great saying about how to appreciate other people and learn from all of them: 三人行，必有我師焉 ("wherever three persons are walking, my teacher is surely among them"). I can learn from anyone in my environment, and I can make friends with more people than I realized at first.
I think there's a bit of confusion here. People up to roughly 90th percentile or so intelligence will be able to use their smarts to make more friends, get along better with others, etc. The problem that Paul Graham is talking about is the 10% above the 90th percentile, who are sufficiently different from the average as to make relating to normal people difficult. Not coincidentally, the intelligence of Congressmen averages around 90th percentile.
And if anything, that argument might suggest the upper 10% should almost have the lower 90 enthralled. Society is a fundamentally mental event. To claim you're more skilled than 90% of it and still fail to succeed is to not really be telling the whole s story.
Which is fine. Maybe you don't care about other people enough to invest. Maybe you've decided to spend time elsewhere. Just stop trying to be so holy that you can't overcome the challenge of learning about and appreciating others.
"And if anything, that argument might suggest the upper 10% should almost have the lower 90 enthralled."
People in the top 20% of intelligence (the interval centered around the optimal 90th percentile for leadership) do dominate society. Virtually every CEO, every Congressman, every Senator, every President, every general, etc. etc. etc. is in that top 20%. See the Mainstream Science on Intelligence statement (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mainstream_Science_on_Intellige...).
Actually the people between the 90th and 95th percentile are the ones who have difficulty getting along. Those above the 95th percentile understand how society works and are as Confucius described, "the ones that lead society (by example) so that all of society is harmonious."
I've met people from both categories.
The smartest geeks I know have no trouble fitting into society, one of them is leading a startup that has received over a million dollars in VC funding. They work on serious, possibly disruptive and hard project. (double emphasis on hard)
On the other hand, the rather large group of geeks I know who have trouble fitting into society work on not-so-important projects, usually things like flash games, simple web apps, etc. Some of these geeks (the ones who outwardly call themselves smart) suffer from illusory superiority (some even intentionally complicate their code so that others find it hard to understand, as a show of intellectual superiority; see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_superiority)
The fact, is these socially-challenged geeks aren't so smart after all; they don't put much effort socializing with people, and then they whine and complain how they don't fit it.
The reason why this doesn't happen in Asia as often, is because the culture doesn't permit it. In America, you can sort of get away by denoting yourself as a geek and refraining from social activity. In Asia, since that is seen very badly (much worse than the comical portrayal of geeks we have here); these kids are forced to go out and socialize.
"Those above the 95th percentile understand how society works and are as Confucius described, "the ones that lead society (by example) so that all of society is harmonious.""
This isn't actually true. If you look at the SAT scores of Congressmen, Senators, etc., they average below 95th percentile. Many are above 95th, but the average is below 95th.
"The smartest geeks I know have no trouble fitting into society, one of them is leading a startup that has received over a million dollars in VC funding."
Citing anonymous friends is not evidence.
"The fact, is these socially-challenged geeks aren't so smart after all; they don't put much effort socializing with people, and then they whine and complain how they don't fit it."
That's a complete non-sequitur. What does that have to do with intelligence or lack thereof? It's perfectly possible to be smart and not socialize much. It's also possible to be dumb and not socialize much. It's like saying the Unabomber was dumb because he killed two dozen people. Killing two dozen people makes you evil, certainly, but it doesn't make you dumb (the Unabomber was actually a math professor at Berkeley before he went insane).
How do you look at the SAT scores of congressmen and senators?
10% above the 90th percentile, who are sufficiently different from the average as to make relating to normal people difficult.
[citation needed]
There is no confusion at all on my part. I knew what subset of the population I was writing about (perhaps an even narrower subset than the original Paul Graham article, the first of his I ever read, was about) when I started typing. I specifically disagree with "as to make relating to normal people difficult." If high-IQ people have a social problem, as perhaps they especially do in certain parts of American culture, I invite them to use their high IQ to engage in problem-solving.
" If high-IQ people have a social problem, as perhaps they especially do in certain parts of American culture, I invite them to use their high IQ to engage in problem-solving."
It doesn't work that way. The way humans usually solve social problems is through asking, "how would I react if I were in the other person's place"? We have specific biological structures, like mirror neurons (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_neuron), that are set up to do that. However, this only works if the person being modeled is similar to the modeler. Because of this, there are actually a ton of factors that can make relating to other people difficult, not just intelligence (like culture, age, socioeconomic class, mental strengths and weaknesses, etc.)
I am in that 10% of 10% above the 90th percentile of the population. I have zero problems getting people to like me, however I find little of interest in "average" people.
But, being smart only get's you so far. There are plenty of ways people can diverge from the norms of society and intelligence is just one of them. Develop some hobby's more interesting than television and suddenly we have something to talk about.