[ap22213]

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

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

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

[clairity]

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

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

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

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