[preston4tw]

I'm currently 35 and I was ID'd as a gifted child, so this paper caught my attention. There's a section that discusses outcomes based on whether gifted children were allowed to skip grades or not, and my personal experience largely matches what is described for what would be my group, the nonaccelerands:

"Several of the nonaccelerands have serious and ongoing problems with social relationships. These young people find it very difficult to sustain friendships because having been, to a large extent, socially isolated at school, they have had much less practice in their formative years in developing and maintaining social relationships. Six have had counseling. Of these, two have been treated for severe depression. If educators were made responsible to ethics committees, as are researchers, such developmentally inappropriate educational misplacement would never be permitted."

I wonder how this group is doing these days. I wonder if the runners of the study ever considered introducing members of this group to the others to form a support group.

[benibela]

I was both, not enough accelerated and too much accelerated.

I went normally through school and all the standard classes. However, I also started studying computer science at the university when I was 13 years old.

That is really bad for socializing. In school, I had to deal with the usual problems of dealing with ordinary kids, and at university I could only socialize with full-grown adults, who do not care much for a teenager.

Also frustrating, when I turned 18, I had almost finished my university degree, but was also still going to highschool. It would have been better to skip school grades. Now I am 30 and basically never had a social relationship

[Viliam1234]

Acceleration is better than nothing. But schools specifically for high-IQ kids would be even better -- there you could be with kids your age who would simultaneously be your intellectual peers.

Unfortunately this idea is politically unacceptable in most places. People don't want to help form an "elite" (especially if they or their kids couldn't be a part of it).

[gowld]

Maybe the concept would be more accepted if the nation didn't have a legacy of intentionally depriving tens of millions of citizens of education based on the color of their skin, and if elites didn't grow up to hoard the nation's wealth for themselves and disregard the needs of the majority. Trustworthiness matters.

[sokoloff]

Nothing like sacrificing today's academically-elite kids of non-elite parents for yesterday's elites' actions. (Today's kids of elite parents will do fine either way, of course.)

[TomMarius]

Why does it matter - can't it be a private (nonprofit) school?

[Viliam1234]

The exact details depend on a country, but generally there are two kinds of problems:

Financial -- In some countries, the public schools are fully financed from taxes, but private schools only get a fraction of that money, and the rest needs to be paid by parents. So even a school that has the same expenses and does not try to generate profit, could still be too expensive for many parents.

Curricular -- In some countries, private school doesn't necessarily mean that you are allowed to teach things differently than the public schools. You may spend the extra money to have larger classrooms or larger playground, fewer kids in the classroom, pay the teachers higher salary (ha ha, never happens), buy fancy uniforms for the kids, or just put the money in your pocket as a profit. But you are still required to teach the curriculum dumbed down for the average kids. So, yes, the kids could get smarter peers, but they still couldn't leverage it into getting better education.

The thing is that most people would agree that all kids should get "equal service" for taxpayer money, and the rich kids should be allowed to pay for "extra service" if they want to. However, you have two different interpretation of what "equal service" means. It can either mean that each child gets education proportional to their abilities, or it can mean that each child gets education proportional to the average child's abilities.

It's not like teaching gifted kids more advanced curriculum is inherently more expensive. You could use the same building, have the same amount of kids in the classroom, pay teachers the same salary... the only difference would be progressing 10 pages of the textbook in time the average school progresses 5 pages. But some people still insist that it's not fair for gifted children to get more education on taxpayer dime, even if the costs are exactly the same.

[DoreenMichele]

Anecdotally, participating in a support group for parents of gifted kids is often therapeutic for the parents, who finally come to terms with a lot of their childhood baggage.

I've suggested at times that if you don't have kids, you could join one anyway and just lurk. It's not like they can check if you actually have kids.

[PebblesRox]

Raising Poppies is a fun facebook group that fits this bill. https://m.facebook.com/groups/RaisingPoppies/

[madaxe_again]

I’m 36, had a recorded IQ at school in the 180s, and was refused acceleration until I “socially adapted” to my classmates, which was challenging, as their interests (eg. football, wrestling, lads mags, pop music, sport, sport, sport) barely intersected with mine (eg. sciences, philosophy, coding, art, jazz & classical music). I was accelerated, eventually, but only by one year - at my prep school, I had been two years ahead, but I spent a regrettable year in the American “educational” system which meant I entered secondary school with my age cohort, as a commoner rather than a scholar, as scholarship exams were not available for overseas entrants at the time.

This was at boarding school. I was in detention incessantly, as I was bored out of my wits, and would do stuff like wandering out of an exam after 15 minutes, as I was done and damned if I was going to spend another three hours twiddling my thumbs, and I would disagree with teachers when they were flat-out wrong - that really pissed people off - I wasn’t such a blowhard as to vocally disagree over debatable or tenuous points, just factual error.

I would fake illnesses so I would end up in the sanatorium, where I would have time to read, and the opportunity to hang out with the several other bright kids from other houses who had established the same methodology for respite. Fond memories of hanging out in our dressing gowns, playing chess and having actual conversations with people I could relate to. Sadly, of the four of us, one is dead, one is in an institution, one is me, and the other survivor fled for the hills and writes children’s science books.

School was an education in contempt. I remain convinced that the majority of people are idiots, with the equivalent of a flickering strip lamp for a mind, and nothing I see in the world around me dispels that thought. I am somewhat socially isolated - I have precious few friends near my age, instead most of them being three or four decades my senior - as, in similar fashion to my experiences at school, I have little in common with my supposed peers - they have not started businesses, or travelled extensively (package holidays to Marbella do not count as travel - hiking to Turkmenistan does), or stopped to think about the human condition. Older people of moderately high intelligence have at least had the time to gain some experience and perspective, and I can relate to them - but this means my “in-group” is scattered to the winds, and I see them annually at best.

Anyway. This member of that group is doing ok - I struggle with depression and anxiety, but a hyperactive 15 years has allowed me to exit the bullshit-mill and live the life I want - in the countryside, learning new things about nature daily, with mountains of books, and time to do what I want.

As it happens, I made my escape with one of the few people I could relate to at school - moderately smart guy, somewhere in the 150s, but a hard graft type who brute forced his way to knowledge - admirable in his own way. We drifted apart after school, but fate or somesuch brought us to a nexus where starting a business together was practically inevitable.

In all honesty, if I hadn’t been able to escape the manufactured world, I don’t think I’d be writing this now, I would have killed myself by this point.

As to a support group - problematic. Part of the impact of being surrounded by idiots is to take your intellectual supremacy for granted. I find myself sparring with anyone remotely my equal, as my identity is inextricably tied to being the smartest guy in the room/building/city.

I do, of course, dissemble, and very, very rarely speak my mind as I have here - and I thoroughly expect this to be an unpopular post.

Prideful, no, but self-protective, yes - when there’s no other social identity available to you you take what you can get.

[tomc1985]

How can an attitude of intellectual superiority amount to any good? I too was identified gifted (and while I've never had an IQ test I was probably never in the 180s) and while I share your frustrations with normies, dwelling on my perceived intellectual differences with the world has done me no good. It certainly didn't help win me any friends. Being intelligent isn't all chess and quantum physics; there are lots of people in your ballpark that wouldn't come anywhere near fitting your description of a like mind.

I've found life to be much more enjoyable by intentionally avoiding people like myself. For highminded intellectual stuff there is plenty conversation to be had here on the net. Befriending and hanging out with a diverse group of misfits from all manner of backgrounds has proven to be much more fulfilling and while, yes, sometimes they can be stupid, and sometimes it is hard to find things in common outside of the reasons the group stays together, I've learned to see it as opportunities for further interpersonal growth.

If someone dedicates their life to filling their head with obscure knowledge they're just a nerd, no matter how much more intelligent they are than those around them. People may, collectively, be morons, but most individuals are surprisingly perceptive in at least a few areas, and while the prodigies in my life are indeed smart, I've spent enough time around them to know they would still be fish out of water for 90% of what life could possibly throw at them. I hope that your lamentations are formed after you've sussed these qualities out of the folks you lament.

[eezurr]

>How can an attitude of intellectual superiority amount to any good?

Can't speak for the OP, but it's not attitude, it' acknowledging/accepting my own reality and circumstances, and the consequences of that. When people feel threatened by intelligence (or anything), then intelligence becomes "superior". Humans are still animals deep down.

For me, it's my mix of curiosity and logic. If I don't dumb that down people become really uncomfortable. I've only met a handful of people in my life who enjoy their snow globe worlds being shaken. I've developed this dumbed-down mask that I have to wear all the time; mix in some obsessive personality traits-- interactions with people are like walking around with an old, dry wooden stake up the ass. Im very stiff.

Even this simple question is complicated. Are you projecting an attitude because you feel threatened (or you remember how others felt threatened)? Is it an attitude if the OP is being their true self? Is it an attitude if the OP speaks factually about their situation? Is it an attitude when the ego attaches itself to ones words, and did you assume as much?

I generally agree with everything else you said. I think you are touching on intelligence vs wisdom (life experience) in your last paragraph. Can you point out other places on the net where intellectual people congregate?

If anyone who reads this is looking for some online comradery, shoot me an email. username to fastmail. Im working on undoing all the choices I made that created my isolated/independent life.

[tomc1985]

Indeed. I think a lot of (successful) gifted folks wear that mask. And it's entirely possible that I misread OP. But I'd challenge the 'factual' aspect of his assertions because I've met a lot of people who express similar sentiment. A high general intelligence implies mastery of life itself; if one is capable of learning quickly then I would think problems like feeling isolated are something that they find a solution for, as it requires exactly the kind of snow-globe shaking that you're referring to

As for specific places, Slashdot used to have a lot of good conversation. Usenet too, back in its day. Nowadays I think most of the good talk happens on small, individually-run forums and, to a lesser extent, reddit. Personally I have thrown my lot in with the burner crowd, as the group's 'leave no trace' ethos and emphasis on independence, survivalism, sarcasm, sexuality, gifting, and performance art is right up my alley. (Plus we have excellent taste in music, if I do say so myself ;)

[Viliam1234]

"A high general intelligence implies mastery of life itself"

It increases the chance, but "implies" is too strong word here. High IQ doesn't magically overcome all obstacles.

How easily can you overcome isolation, that depends a lot on what opportunities you have. The same opportunities don't exist in every city, or every country. For a high-IQ kid it can make a lot of difference whether other high-IQ kids live in their neighborhood, or in their school.

For example, most of my teenage socialization was in a local math club. Well, it was a lucky coincidence that the math club existed in my city. (And another lucky coincidence that I knew about it.) Without it, I would have to settle for an option that would fit me much less. I know because I tried to find other places to socialize, and they just weren't as good for me.

Online communities can be great, but it's not the same as also having an offline community. Imagine a small forum you like. How much better would it be if those people lived next to you, so you could e.g. go for a trip together. Well, some of them probably happen to live next to people with similar interests, and some of them don't. Luck is an important component here. (Yeah, as an adult you could move to a different city. For a teenager this is less of an option.)

[madaxe_again]

I don’t dwell on this stuff, I just live my life - but given that this is the topic of discussion here, I thought my account might be of some relevance. I’m not claiming that my outlook is a good one, but I’m pretty damn certain it’s an outcome of what the paper describes.

As to knowledge, it isn’t an ends in itself - but each mote builds a greater whole and reveals hitherto unseen patterns - and those patterns allow inductive and deductive leaps to new hypotheses, which may prove useful.

[hutzlibu]

"I've found life to be much more enjoyable by intentionally avoiding people like myself"

Sure, that is a smart thing to do. That way, you can always feel superior, if you do not meet intelectual equals in daily life...

(I know, you did not mean that. I was a bit self mocking, whether this was sub consciously a decision for myself, but may apply to you, too?)

[mnky9800n]

It's common though right? There worst thing you can do is tell a kid they are brilliant. They think they always have to be brilliant and escape hardship because it might mean they aren't brilliant.

[Viliam1234]

> There worst thing you can do is tell a kid they are brilliant.

Other approaches also have their problems. I was raised in a very egalitarian spirit, and thinking of myself as somehow better than others was a taboo for me for a long time.

As a consequence, I had a few blind spots. For example, I noticed that in some situations certain kinds of people become hostile to me, for reasons I couldn't understand. I didn't know what I did wrong, and when I tried to be nicer or more open towards them it usually just made things worse.

Then one day a friend with good social skills explained to me: "They see that you are better than them, so they feel threatened, and they attack you to feel safer. And when you respond with kindness, that makes them feel even more threatened, because it seems their attack didn'd hurt you at all (although it actually did)." My mind was completely blown, because I didn't see myself as better, so I didn't realize others could see me that way. But the explanation matched the facts, for example that the hostility usually increased after I have succeeded at something (even something unrelated to them).

Also, the theory is that if you don't tell your kid they are brilliant, they will attribute their success to hard work, which will motivate them to work even harder. What happened instead was that people around me who didn't perceive me as brilliant, attributed my success to pure luck (because they saw I actually wasn't working that hard). So no matter how often I won the math olympiad, I was always told that I am not really good at math, that I merely got lucky, but soon the regression to the mean would teach me my place (and that if I actually understood math, I would know what "regression to the mean" means, and I wouldn't argue back). This was very frustrating, because it seemed that no matter what I do, people will find an excuse because I do not fit their stereotype; and that thought definitely didn't motivate me to work harder. (Actually, only now as I write this comment, it occurred to me that maybe I didn't fit their stereotype because perhaps I was smarter than the usual math-gifted kids they used to work with.)

I would recommend telling your kids the truth according to your best knowledge. Manipulation can backfire, even well-intentioned one.

[mnky9800n]

I'm not arguing for manipulation, just the truth. But we have to realize that children are not small versions of adults. They have different cognitive abilities and processes than adults.

[hutzlibu]

Yet so many parents want their children to be brilliant and push them by all means to be.

I like the Montessorie approach, "every child is a genius"

(does not at all mean, they are all the same, nor all have the potential to be rocket scientist. But it is a negation of the primitive evaluation approach of, this kid is very gifted, this kid is mediocre and this kid sucks. Societey needs lots of different talents, who can all be brilliant at what they do, but less likely if they got labeled as loosers from the start)

[sumgocko]

Yes, specialization is a good thing, and there are many dimensions on which you can measure talent. However, the correlation between some of these dimensions (mathematical ability, reading comprehension, recall, etc.) has been found to be about 0.4. That still leaves room for individual diversity of talent, but makes it clear that not everyone gets the same amount of points to invest into the skill tree.

Saying that everyone is a genius just devalues the word.

[tomc1985]

My parents did this. I really wish they hadn't. It fucked with my ego well into my thirties.

[tomc1985]

More that it's difficult to find people that are as good conversationalists as they are at whatever topics they're good at. Luckily, smart people are a pretty diverse set, so all one has to do is keep trying

[ramraj07]

So let's get this straight, "hiking to Turkmenistan" means you're a world-savvy individual but taking packaged tours means you're pedestrian drivel?

It's very hard to confirm if you're trolling or if you truly belong to /r/im14andthisisdeep, but let's assume the latter. Hiking to Machu pichu doesn't make you smart. Either you don't subscribe to personal responsibility towards global warming or you do but can't see the irony in smoking a few tons of carbon in the name of "enlightenment" which apparently you can only find half way across the world. Both ways, the lack of sophistication in your part shines bright. How exactly is hiking in a forest in a poor country different from going to Bangkok to get salvation from ping pong balls?

Several of your comments are in similar vein - everyone is not stupid, they just don't insticntually care about factual education; a good fraction of people are smarter than you in their own ways. Even if they're not, it behooves us to respect the average human with some basic respect (which would likely include not comparing them to lamps).

Perhaps you're a smart person and perhaps you're trying to cure cancer as several of my similarly smart colleagues kept insisting for years when I was doing my PhD. However, they just couldn't get their heads out of wherever to start seeing the bigger picture and I sincerely hope for your sake and the world's sake that you do. We will all benefit if smart people start becoming that much more humble. Assuming you really are 180 smart, whatever the triangle-inside-square-puzzle-hell that means.

[rriepe]

Go easy on him. Most "gifted" kids are children of narcissists, ending up with schizoid/schizophrenic or CPTSD-style presentations. The "prodigy child" narrative is there entirely to flatter the parent. Or at least this was true for my cohort. It's really hard to get out from being on the wrong side of this. Narcissistic parenting is insipid and in many ways contagious. If you don't end up with that batch of problems, you end up being a narcissist yourself.

It's huge in tech too-- plenty of people interview at companies whose names are effectively magic spells which will make them "good enough" for their parents stories to their friends.

And he's sorta right about the travel thing-- you can buy a lot of people's esteem by buying a plane ticket and being coddled by hotels and tour guides for a couple weeks. You can even call it an "adventure" and nobody will correct you. Narcissists are crazy about signalling their status with travel, so children of narcissists tend to hate it for that reason.

[madaxe_again]

My parents were the antithesis of pushy, but were definitely narcissists - “why can’t you just be normal” was the standard refrain, as believe me, they hated being hauled up in front of the headteacher or being sent dismal missives over my behaviour just as much as I did. I made them look bad, as academic achievement was not important to them - popularity was. They’d organise absolutely agonising social events for me in an attempt to fix me, which just drove me further into the woods.

No narcissism here, mostly just self-loathing.

[rriepe]

I've studied this a lot. Narcissism and self-loathing are the same thing. The trick is that the self is malleable and can include others (family and close friends).

It's a pay-it-forward system where the kid gets stuck in the vice, with nobody in the system below him/her to pay it forward/downward to (you might have heard this as "shit rolls downhill").

So for the kid it's actual self-loathing, since there's no other candidate in the extended self to disqualify with high standards (like "just being normal"). This kid (it's usually just one of the kids) is called the scapegoat.

Read Pete Walker's book on cPTSD. I bet it will rock your entire world.

[madaxe_again]

Interesting - and yes, watching the disparity with my equally intelligent 7 year junior sib was a particularly galling experience - she was forgiven for her actions, I think mostly as our parents had given up caring by that point - and she has a similar but different set of traumas.

I’ll read it, thanks - perspective is always very welcome. Just read the synopsis and that alone speaks to me.

[madaxe_again]

> smoking a few tons of carbon

That’s the point of hiking. I travel overland almost exclusively, and only fly when there’s absolutely no alternative, and the journey is one of time sensitivity and necessity.

And yes, walking off the beaten track opens your eyes to far more than a beach holiday.

I am nothing but humble in my daily life, and my friends come from all walks of life, but I thought that sharing this experience might be insightful or helpful for some.

[zwaps]

Don't apologize for sharing your thoughts. This is not a platform where people are easily offended or needlessly oppositional. You're not offending anyone, I think I speak for most people when I say we'd like you to be better. Even if I don't believe what you wrote is the truth in your heart, the system has failed you.

To add, travel is significantly inferior to embedding yourself completely in a state for at least six months. Travel can not replicate such experiences. I would never count my travels - no matter how off the beaten path - as experience comparable to living in a different cultural framework. Those instances, especially during formative years, are much more valuable.

[madaxe_again]

Re: travel, indeed - context is king. I’ve lived in six countries for years at a time over the years, and am now six months into a new one - still learning the language and getting to grips with everything, but it’s great, even if our house flooded and our car washed away - escaped with our lives from the raging torrent, so it’s just been an exercise in patience, mopping, and masonry.

We travel for long periods, ambling around a corner of the globe - the last few years have seen four months in Uruguay, six months in the stans, six months in the Balkan states, and six months pottering about the indochinese peninsula. This is why I view most people’s idea of travel with some disdain - showing up somewhere and banging around the sights isn’t travel, it’s stamp collecting.

I find it helpful, as it all provides context - and the different biases and beliefs people hold are just fascinating - particularly when you find them beginning to rub off on you.

[dTal]

>School was an education in contempt. I remain convinced that the majority of people are idiots, with the equivalent of a flickering strip lamp for a mind, and nothing I see in the world around me dispels that thought.

And here is the rub. You should not hold contempt for people you perceive as less intelligent than you. Your value system places intelligence above all else, and conveniently that puts you nicely at the top. But, for example, have you ever spent meaningful time around people nicer than you? It's a great way to learn humility. Almost everyone has something to teach you, if you let them - the scale of human experience is wider than will fit into a single life.

I think that many intelligent people note that people instinctively dislike them, and rationalize it away as "threatened by my superiority". But in fact I believe it's far more often the case that intelligent people are just off-puttingly arrogant. They smell your contempt, better than you probably realize.

Be humble. Be nice. And magically you will enjoy spending time with people, and vice versa.

[nitrogen]

Be humble. Be nice. And magically you will enjoy spending time with people, and vice versa.

Unfortunately for young gifted people, there is no reciprocity here. It might get better with age and probably varies with location, but as a kid, if you act naturally smart other kids will bully you. If you later act dumb other kids will think you are condescending and will bully you. Either way you learn just to avoid everyone.

[1bc29b36f623ba8]

This is the one thing that cannot be emphasized enough. Smart kids simply don't fit into modern society. Any kid who's ever tried to point out errors in the text book to their teachers can probably attest to that; teachers prefer silent and obedient kids and don't care much for that one odd-ball who whines about X or Y being wrong in the 10 year-old textbooks you need to use anyway.

[apotheon]

I think a lot of the arrogance that develops in some smart kids is a result of being shunned for being right. Kids often start out trying to help others by pointing out how something could be better, get socially (sometimes physically) beaten up for it, then develop into condescending assholes as a defense mechanism.

You need to give better advice than this to people when they're five, when they actually need it.

I learned early on that being right was no defense, and that no matter what happened I would always be blamed. These were the wrong lessons, but society at large was the wrong teacher, so I guess we're even.

This doesn't stop when we stop being kids. In the so-called "adult" world, people make some of the stupidest decisions imaginable on a daily basis, and refuse to acknowledge any errors in their choices no matter how they're brought up. Helping other people turns out to be an exercise not only in futility, but in masochism as well.

I've been called "justifiably arrogant" in the past. I've been condescending. I've come out the other side, and now basically think of myself as kind of mediocre. I used to look around at how people make much worse decisions than me about the important stuff and feel a little comforted by the idea that at least I'm doing better than them. Now, it just makes me sad, because I realize I kinda suck, but 98% of people make me look good by comparison.

I've learned to "go along to get along" to some extent, with people who don't matter to me. The people who do matter to me are the people with whom I can be honest, because honesty is a great way to get yourself in a lot of social trouble otherwise.

Mostly, what it comes down to, is that basically everybody sucks, smart or not, and everybody wants to believe "My shit doesn't stink." There's a grave injustice afoot when someone actually has a good idea, by way of applying some native intelligence and learned rationality to a problem, and gets punished for it, though -- and native intelligence helps people realize they're getting burned at the stake over someone else's superstitions, thus making "smart kids" bitter, dismissive, and lonely.

I'm generalizing a lot. Exceptions abound.

[zwaps]

This is supposed to be helpful:

First, it reads as if you are horribly insecure and / or lonely. Your need to signal superior intelligence to convince us of your self-worth is a sad state of mind, and, from my experience (I am also "gifted" so this means something to you), denies you a lot of meaning and happiness. I also realize you seek to display your bitterness. It doesn't hurt us, though. Not in the way you think. Rather, it's just me being sad you had to go through all that and become all that.

Second, your need to insult or demean others makes you extremely unlikeable, even to people who would have something to offer to you and who would live up to being a worthwhile companion. There are probably more people like you around than you realize, but many would have little interest to engage with you.

Lastly, there are areas of life where I am sure you lack a lot of experience (I am not going to speculate what applies to you, but things like genuine love or being loved, sincere pain, war, near death, creating a human life, ending a human life, crushing poverty, decadent mind-blowing hour long intercourse and many more things may come to mind). Your standards, especially that quip about travel, may really seem laughable to someone else. Just so you know.

I hope you get better, sincerely.

Edit: My reading of your further comments make me think I should have written this less confrontational, but let it fill the urge you had. In any case, what I mean is that I sympathize. I do think you could get to a place where you're less trapped by your past.

[madaxe_again]

Thanks, and no worries, my original post was... raw. Representative of my inner weltanschauung, but not of the self I present and project, and not intended to signal anything, just to provide context. The intent was to share the unspoken unspeakables for others who might share these experiences but are more self-censorious, as most in this position are.

As to experience, I have lived what feel like many lifetimes - I have loved and been loved (I’m married to a woman who challenges me, and I wouldn’t have it any other way), I’ve had the most spectacular pain, emotional and physical - the senseless deaths of dear friends, severe and life-threatening illnesses (writing a will at 26 thinking it’ll be needed imminently is a bag of laughs), I’ve lived in abject penury, while desperately trying to keep the lights on for my sister, after our parents split and both absconded, leaving us alone in the U.K. at 17 and 11, respectively. I took a life, accidentally, as a young child, and it haunts me still. I could create life, but I won’t, as I carry a fistful of genetic disease. Hour-long? You’re not trying ;)

I’m working on leaving behind my baggage, but like The Luggage it does rather like to follow me - therapy is helping, and this is actually part of it - I am under instructions to talk about this stuff, openly and honestly, and to see that people aren’t as judgmental as the wounded child within believes.

As to travel - slow travel opens the mind to so many possibilities, so many ways of living, what matters to people, how they differ, how they’re the same. The scenery is just the backdrop for the infinite theatres of human experience.

Oh, and I absolutely am insecure. Confidence oozes from my ears, as far as others are concerned, but inside its little but doubt, guilt, and shame.

Anyway. Thanks. I really do appreciate the reply.

[apotheon]

> I am under instructions to talk about this stuff, openly and honestly, and to see that people aren’t as judgmental as the wounded child within believes.

In my experience, you should prepare to be disappointed. Judgementalism is how people survive in a world that rewards niarcissism; they judge others to be inferior to give themselves the strength to go on. It's an arms race.

Intellectually, I understand that people are mostly crap. Emotionally, I keep making the mistake of trusting people's supposed good intentions when I feel like I've gotten to know them, and finding out that, once again, they're judgemental assholes who will fabricate tales to tell themselves so they can absolve themselves of meaningful guilt.

There are good people, non-judgemental people, caring people, who can sympathize with you and who deserve your trust (assuming you're a well-meaning person, as I suspect from what I've read here). From your description of some aspects of your life, it seems you've found one or two, and I'm happy to hear it.

Mostly, people want to tell you fairy tales about the good in the world. Most of it is pretty mediocre; even middling is a stretch. It's not distributed evenly, though, and it's worth holding out hope. I was lucky enough to meet one of those rare lights in my early teens, and we're still in touch. I was lucky enough to meet several others along the way, and I charish their influences on my life. I'm lucky enough to live my life with one now, and for quite a few years up to this point. They make it all worthwhile.

[zwaps]

I'm glad you could use your talents to build what seems to be an exceptional life. In truth, I'd rather have you with more self-confidence and pride than less. Perhaps you'll find some less academic but skilled people to learn from. I was humbled (in a good way) by exceptional master craftsmen when I took up machining - especially older ones that honed their skills for decades. Paradoxically, this made me more confident in my intelligence and the skills I had acquired. Perhaps because I focused less on my given talents, and more on the things I actually did.

[preston4tw]

I relate to a lot here which is why I wondered about a support group. I've come close to self destructing a number of times but lucked out. I also struggle with depression, anxiety, and substance abuse.

By 7th grade I would ignore whatever was happening in class and read escapist fantasy fiction instead, while I was still bothering to attend school. The same year I decided school wasn't for me and refused to attend. My mother (single parent) didn't really know how to handle the situation, but after a lengthy conflict between us we eventually came to an agreement where I would be dual enrolled in high school and the junior college where she worked. I think roughly half way in to my first year of high school I walked off campus and never came back, and ended up enrolled in junior college full time. I ended up wasting years failing half the classes I enrolled in at the junior college, basically incapable of engaging with higher education. I was fortunately able to launch a career in tech. It began by working as a student assistant in the computer lab and working my way up from there.

I feel fortunate that I was born in the era I was born in and ending up in tech. I can't imagine what my life would have been otherwise without the internet or the tech world. Tech keeps me somewhat engaged and provides financial security which is such a blessing.

Tech also seems to be disproportionately populated with hard working and intelligent individuals, so it's easier to find others to befriend, relate to, and converse with. I've also come to value raw intellectual ability less and value outcomes more, which has been a useful lens to self direct how I engage with others. Telling someone their ideas are bad because $REASONS turns out to be remarkably counter productive, regardless of any factual basis. Unsurprisingly a lot of people don't want to work with someone that thinks they're stupid. I still struggle with how to engage with others though. I've tried acting as an educator but that seems to come off condescendingly, ending back at the same place of no one wanting to work with someone that thinks they're stupid. More often I find myself not engaging, hoping that some people might learn from experience, and otherwise just doing my own thing.

At any rate, thanks for sharing.

[eezurr]

A lot of what you said speaks to me. I tried moving to a small city surrounded by nature, but the intense isolation I felt even surrounded by anyone there just scuttled me into a deeper depression and I swam back to NYC after 2 years. I dearly miss my nightly bike rides to quietly watch the moon play with the flickering water of the lake.

But being here doesn't help me too much because awhile ago I worked my way into independent/isolated situation where I can support my self working part time from home. I get to see glimpses of other big inner worlds here and it gives me hope I'll have a chance to meet them.

My parents did not want or love me. My grades fluctuated in high school as I was unfocused/depressed. Creativity was my escape. Ended up graduating with a B-, decided not to go to college. Have done a fair amount of traveling (mostly local) and car camping around the US. I would move into the mountains in a heartbeat if I wouldn't be completely alone there.

>"I remain convinced that the majority of people are idiots, with the equivalent of a flickering strip lamp for a mind" This gave me a good laugh, so true. But it really depends where you live. It seems like all the bright lights move to a city to manufacture mirrors :D

[mjayhn]

If you're really interested in this there are large vanlifer/vandweller communities all over specifically so that people don't get lonely and to help one another out and establish that sense of community. /r/vandwelling /r/vanlife there are discords, etc.

The slow/internet is my problem. I'm pretty close to living in the mountains apart from that.

[madaxe_again]

The ancient mill we bought here (Portugal) was dirt cheap, in part because there was no internet access or power - so I built a mast atop a nearby hill to relay 4G down to the house, and put together solar power - we’ve got a ~100Mbps connection and more power than we can use.

Also, starlink and all that could really change things - although my telescope doesn’t love it.

And... I’ve found similar spirits in this endeavour - it takes a certain type to be willing to go try bootstrapping a homestead, and they usually have interesting stories and knowledge to share. Today I learned that motor oil is a good belt-and-braces wood treatment, and how to repair a dam, from a local farmer we’re getting to know.

Having a language barrier is pretty handy - it takes away a lot of the frustration I find in slow interactions by adding a bucketload of cognitive overhead.

[DoreenMichele]

I was doing volunteer work with The TAG Project when they decided to add a list for highly, exceptionally and profoundly gifted. They called it TAGPDQ for pretty darn quick because no one actually wants to admit to looking for a support group for the upper echelons of giftedness.

It was hard to get conversation going there. I was the lead mod and I succeeded, but after I left, conversation petered out and it's rare for an email to show up on the list these days. (As far as I know, I'm still subscribed to that list.)

People have a super hard time talking about the sorts of problems you describe, but it's a really common story for highly gifted kids.

[madaxe_again]

It’s because the usual, and entirely understandable reaction to talking about this is “oh you think you’re better than me” hostility.

The easiest thing is to just be an island. There’s a reason that people like me are called “eccentric”, because too much time in your own company inevitably results in social drift.

[DoreenMichele]

I was one of the top three students of my graduating high school class. I was constantly held up by teachers as basically the person to hate at school.

They would act like they were good teachers because I knew so much and act like other kids were just lazy and should "be more like me and just study more" which wasn't at all fair or accurate.

In eighth grade, I was friends with a Hispanic boy. The class was given the chance to do a thing for extra credit and it involved decoding something. Not only did he speak English as a second language, he had no idea what the thing actually was.

I got in trouble for telling him it's a letter substitution puzzle. I didn't know because I was smart. I knew because my father did the Crypto quote in the newspaper every single morning and would drag everyone else into it when he couldn't do it easily.

It was an early lesson in how unfair the world is. He had no hope at all of getting the extra credit because he had too many things stacked against him.

Anyway, I had few friends at school and it was a toxic social environment. I gave up a National Merit Scholarship in part to escape the toxic BS and figure out who I was other than some toxic asshole as taught to me by the school system as a survival mechanism.

If you have no friends and everyone hates you, yes, you learn to Lord it over everyone that "at least I'm smarter than you" as the only defense mechanism you have.

I finally found a thing that explains that it's our strengths that limit us. I've had enough serious problems in life that I've gotten to escape the prison the school system actively built for me, but it wasn't at all easy.

[Viliam1234]

> It’s because the usual, and entirely understandable reaction to talking about this is “oh you think you’re better than me” hostility.

Yes. You try to describe how you got hurt, and people think that you are just bragging. (How exactly are you supposed to describe the social consequences of your higher intelligence without ever mentioning the fact?)

Then they look at some dysfunctional mechanism you developed as a result of your pain, and they conclude that you are a bad person and therefore you actually deserved it.

[gowld]

Calling people "string lamps" is not describing how you are hurt, it is bragging in the tackiest way.

[apotheon]

You appear to have the empathy of a moldy cheese sandwich.

[tudorw]

Islands can have bridges or tunnels if you're so inclined :)

[erikerikson]

Coming to consciousness in a world of people that gets angry with you when your thoughts challenge them too much (and you were just trying to set context), withhold the majority of social experiences and needs from you, and decide you are magic but to be subjected as fantastically exploitable because they have social control is hard. Add that they simply don't know what to do with you, how to support or challenge you, and decide basically that you're not worth the challenge you present. You have to not only survive facing bigger challenges and thoughts without the support and canned solutions most receive but you have to do it largely alone with a smaller set of your needs met.

I suggest you aren't surrounded by idiots but by people that are normal and mostly doing their imperfect best. The idiots are on the far other side of the bell curve and there are fewer of them. Imagine for a bit trying to survive as them with as little understanding as they have and the limited scope of perspective. You'd struggle and develop heuristics and tribes to survive too. I don't expect this to help much but perhaps you can find some grace when you interact. Speaking for myself, the frustration and anger I used to feel on that interface was corrosive to myself and I prefer the increased peace I have now.

I have found it an existence I would not consent to but I also care too much about some of the people in my life to opt out.

[lionhearted]

I'm probably a standard deviation or so below you — I've met 2-3 people like you; it's really incredible and refreshing to converse with those people. I'll be making an argument, "Premise A, Premise B, Premise C..." and they'll often just just derive that I'm going to say D, E, F therefore G. On, like, quite novel arguments. When it's happened, I've always been like - wow. It's really incredible.

Two thoughts.

(1) I wonder if you could frame learning to communicate and get satisfaction from interactions with merely "quite smart" people as a challenge worth pursuing. You could brush up on negotiation, sales, rhetoric, poetics, etc. Perhaps slowly start converting those domains' messy forest of heuristics into some principles and equations, if your mind works that way. If you were able to, for instance, detect someone lying to preserve their own self-image around something they felt ashamed of, and then were able to navigate that to help them both renounce the lying without feeling bad about it and help them reintegrate their self-image around the concept — that sort of that is immensely cognitively demanding to be able to do, and it's pro-social (you might not care, some people do, but at least it's not pathological in any way)... in any event, that'd increase the amount of cognitive processing you'd be forced to do in any given interaction by an order of magnitude or two, which might make those interactions become enjoyable. You'd also rapidly become massively liked and trusted.

(2) With your intellectual horsepower, if you were willing to, you could absolutely seek out and cultivate a dozen or so people on your level cognitively. It'd take a while — you'd need to think through exactly what environments you navigate at what times and in what ways, how introductions get made to you, etc — but if you were to meet ~1000 people in a thoughtful thought-through way, then I'm sure you'd find at least a dozen or so close friends and peers to associate with. It'd be a multi-year project, but not incredibly time-demanding on any given day or week. I imagine it'd be worth it.

My two cents. Seems like it'd be terribly unfortunate and much less satisfying to not be able to fully actualize and explore all that raw capacity with other good people.

[madaxe_again]

Like I said, I dissemble, and I think do it well - what I presented here was what goes on inside my head - not how I interact in my daily life. If you met me in person, you’d find an affable guy who people generally want to know and spend time with - but the problem is that I don’t generally want to spend time with them. My relative isolation is my choice, as I find a lot of sociality extremely mundane. I can only have the same “profound” conversations so many times.

I find being stoned out of my gourd is a good way to slow myself down enough that I don’t find myself bored and frustrated. Typical, I know.

I do have a circle, but they really are scattered to the winds - and I think that works, as they’re similar in their lack of desire to spend too much time with people. I’m happily married to a woman who I think might actually be smarter than me, although her education was poor - but she doesn’t put me on a pedestal, and has no bones with telling me I’m wrong. It’s incredibly refreshing. I feed her knowledge, she feeds me ideas, and together we achieve things.

You say it’s a pleasure when someone makes an inductive leap, but I find that it usually pisses people off - instead, I leave one ear listening for anything unexpected in what they’re saying, let them say their piece while I delve through the topic with the rest of my attention, and then respond - although I do catch myself far too often finishing people’s thoughts, still - speech is just so slow.

As to the “soft” side of things - I was the CTO and sales lead at my business until I ran out of novel problems to solve, and left, as we’d built a self-sustaining machine - sold tens of millions of pounds of our software over the years, and it was my shoulder clients would want to cry on, as part of my curse is understanding people far too damn well - hence my analogy to lightbulbs, insulting as it may be - the psychology of others is generally predictable, en masse or singularly. I also write fiction, which to my shock and surprise got published late last year. Like most of my output, I saw it as no damn good - but apparently people like it enough to pay money for it. Bizarre.

Anyway - I appreciate the input!

[mnky9800n]

You sound like a peach.

[madaxe_again]

To the dead comment:

Oh, I respect and empathise with everyone, even those I actively detest - but I also pity them, and can’t help but see them as poor fools who know not what they do - and as a result my politics sit firmly on the socialist side. I don’t think it’s fair that we have such ridiculously uneven distribution of intelligence, or wealth - and we can only address one of those.

I can’t claim that my psychology is either good or correct, but it is what it is.

As to “I think I have the world figured out” - I absolutely don’t. It’s an intractable and fascinating system, with more variables than one would believe possible. I’ll likely never have it figured out, and that’s ok - it gives me an indefinite wonder to contemplate.

I am, generally, quite happy being isolated - it saves me frustrating conversations with people who take offence at my observations, and is protective for my psychological well-being.

[slfnflctd]

Thank you for participating so much in this thread. I've gone through similar things in childhood, but took the 'other' path and ended up significantly lower-functioning than I thought I would be or was expected to-- drinking too much, avoiding people and responsibilities, generally just trying to scrape by on my own terms. You could say the system failed me, but it's usually not so simple... I also failed myself, and was impeded by a drive my parents instilled in me to seek 'higher knowledge' through religion, and later drugs (the latter leads one back to the former too easily sometimes). I was in my mid twenties before I finally came back around to a materialistic world view.

Fortunately, I have a partner who - in part resulting from their own childhood obstructions - is incredibly supportive, as well. It chills me to think of all the kids out there who feel trapped in an inscrutable world that doesn't seem to understand them. I like to think putting your words out there helps some.

[coleifer]

>my friend, I call him "150".

Yikes

[otabdeveloper4]

I'm pretty sure that the idea that 'sustaining friendships' is an absolute need, and that not having friends is some sort of disease that needs to be 'fixed', is an American cultural quirk.

It's okay to not have friends.

[emteycz]

No, it is widely believed around the world, and it's coming from research around child development, mostly done in the east (European nordic and former communist states).

[otabdeveloper4]

As far as I know, America is the only place in the world where they'll try to "fix" a kid that doesn't have friends.

(Of course there is also the overarching American tendency to try and "fix" any person that doesn't fit some predetermined robotic mold.)

[TomMarius]

I am a Czech kid who got psychological consulting at school because I had no friends; and that was 15 years ago in a backwards city, it's a norm today.

AFAIK it's also very common in (western, on top of the formerly communist eastern part) Germany, Austria and Netherlands in addition to the countries I said before.

I wouldn't call it fixing though, they're treating it as a symptom, and there are no molds, just the understanding that socialization is extremely important for child's development, which is also why we have mandatory (publicly funded) kindergarten for at least one year before school begins, and most kids are going from 3 years old for 3 or 4 years - we even have people that determine whether the child is socially ready to move to school and if not, the kid stays a year more in kindergarten (again, my personal experience, and at least half the kids I know had it the same).

Note the German etymology of the word kindergarten; it's been studied and practicioned for a long time here.

[twomoretime]

I've long thought that Asperger's and tail end IQ can be really difficult to distinguish. They may be one and the same. And unlike autism, Asperger's apparently responds well to the right stimulation. And I think programming fits that niche well enough that "smart" people disproportionately code when they come across the opportunity.

It could be that Asperger's is distinguished from autism by being a condition acquired by high IQ when improperly stimulated or undersocialized.

[notechback]

Just to point out that all autism spectrum disorders have quite a spectrum. Some Asperger's cases are barely able to function, others excell in various fields.

[twomoretime]

Yes, and the spectral nature of autism makes it an easy mistake to make if it turns out that Asperger's is actually separate from autism.

It's not like we know anything with certainty here. AFAIK there is known cause for either condition. Plenty of speculation.