To me it is chess. I know how the piece move but that is it.
Chill man. There’s loads of types of smart. Some people are great at chess, others have an intuitive feel of how a ball moves in the air, or how musical notes harmonize, or how equations collapse into simple forms, or how color or smell evokes emotion, or how ingredients work together to create pleasant texture and flavors, or how materials fold under the strike of a hammer, …
Point is, while you may not be smart in one area, there’s always areas to explore. Who knows, you may be a savant in your field. Enjoy the journey and appreciate the diversity.
I hate that people don’t recognize the depth of what intelligence can be. You alluded to athletic intelligence, but there’s so many more. Emotional intelligence is a big buzzword, but just being a kind person is a reflection of that type.
Some of the most insufferable people I’ve ever met are “smart” but holy shit would I prefer to spend my time with someone else.
I don’t think there is a great way to quantify intelligence, but IQ and MENSA ain’t it. And chess is just boring. I’m not good at it because I don’t want to be.
Some people are very smart at writing smart things like you !
You don’t. If you’re even entertaining the thought that there is more to learn than what you already know you are displaying intelligence. Stupid people “know” they’re NOT stupid and intelligent people constantly question their own intelligence. This is why a grown adult with the reading age of a 12yr old can spend twenty minutes online and become the world’s foremost authority on… 5G, vaccines, international geo politics, chemtrails, why the Nazi party were “ackshully” socialist etc. etc.
What is smart… I mean, most of us Lemmy tech people are good at computers but completely useless and may even despise other activities such as dancing, singing, acting, psychology, and so on.
Never forget that the school system evaluates how good of a worker you can be, not how good of a human you can be. The entire system is just built for economic growth, not your happiness. In fact, you consume more when you are feeling like shit.
A bit of a side note, I know, but it’s all connected to a bigger picture, so…
Calculus III kicked my ass.
Calculus in general is beyond my ability
I was good at math until Cal III when I hit the wall. I’ve forgotten almost all of what I learned, though. So I’m not really good at math anymore. Unless you enter certain career paths, most people won’t need to use advanced math in their day-to-day. I bet you’re good at some non-math stuff.
Cal III was fun it was just a bunch of multivariable differentials. Cal II though sucked thanks to all the integration processes.
I live on the Earth, home to humans. Every human I’ve met, heard, or read about has been pretty stupid about something. I can’t imagine that I’d be the sole exception, so if I had to guess I’m not smart.
More to the spirit of the question, for me it has to do with programming. I love programming, I went to school for it and learned a ton. It really covers a wide breadth of applications, and you can make anything happen with a computer if you’re determined enough. And, like any field, there’s general knowledge as well as deeper specializations.
If you’re not into programming, know that there’s a divide in every application between what’s called the Back End and the Front End. The front end is what the user interacts with, and ultimately is an interface for the back end which actually runs the application.
I don’t know if it would still be considered accurate, but in school we’d joke about how the back end is more complex (more services to integrate with), and the front end is easier because it’s all about look and feel. Generally speaking, people develop an affinity for one or the other and then further specialize based on that.
I can’t seem to pick up a front end framework to save my life. The thing that the self-described smart kids called easier is wayyy more complicated than it looks. I have a lot of training, I’m skilled in multiple languages, and I can whisper the secret words that open up the database. But I don’t know if I could Hello World my way through a React app if there was a gun to my head.
Everyone is smart about something but dumb about most things
one of the smarter folks of western civilisation history said “i know that i do kot know” so maybe asking yourself whether you are or are not smart is all it takes
Reading a book that explains a book I don’t understand and failing to understand either at the end.
Sounds like at least one of the books in question is shit
Or the subject matter is advanced.
I’ve read a lot of material on quantum physics and it’s still mostly word salad to me.
Right, I was expecting the earlier one to be a work of fiction
No no philosophy :(
You’re not dumb if you fail to understand a book of philosophy. Very few are as straightforward as Das Kapital for example.
I’ll agree with that. Convoluted nonsense for the sake of being convoluted is very rarely good writing. There’s some stuff with more complexity and longer developing story-lines, but the minute to minute reading should still flow even if you don’t see how the big picture is going to develop.
On chess, there is a moment in 2001: a Space Odyssey wherein HAL and Frank Poole are playing chess. A more attentive person than me pointed out HAL cheated. I paused and looked at the board forever. I almost gave up. I thought I would never figure it out. Finally figured it out! I have never felt so smart for wasting so much time.
Chess is all about pattern recognition: you don’t spend time actually coming up with your answer to the question(best move). 99% of the questions are already solved and most of the time it’s about figuring out what question is the board asking and giving the answer.
Because others have gone out if their way not to be reliant on me specifically.
People never let me plan things, people treat me like a child, people always ask other to double check only my work, etc…
The worst thing is its a positive feed back loop. People think you’re dumb and don’t give you any opportunities, less opportunities means less experience, less experience means you appear less competent, being less competent makes people believe you’re dumb.
I don’t know which people you are talking about, but if it’s adults and you are a kid, then there are some reasons behind that… :)
My kid planned a trip to Croatia with his friends and they managed to book flights that made them spend the entire night at airports, because they wanted the cheapest price.
Counting in that they had to buy airport food and hardly slept at all, and came home wrecked and had to sleep all day, meant that not only did they pay more for the trip than directs flights would have cost, they also lost a day when getting back to sleep and rest…
I mean, it’s fine, but it shows inexperience and unwillingness to listen to adults who may have good ideas… :)
Not really an answer to your question, just wanted to say intelligence isn’t a one-dimensional thing. You can practically be a master on any one field but lack basic abilities in accomplishing what other people do every day. Or the other way around, you’re not particularly good at one thing that’s commonly attributed to intelligence, like chess or maths, but be highly intelligent or skilled in other things. And for me that includes social intelligence, being able to remember a lot of stuff, being handy or having a grasp for music, or anything. I think I’m alright in various things. But I regularly observe people being very good at something. Like scientists and I can barely read what the math even does. Or the lady at the bakery who remembers things about the personal lives of like >200 grandmas and which kind of bread they buy every week. In turn, I know like a 200 facts about Linux networking. But I couldn’t do what she does, even if I tried.
I was tested as a child and had an iq of 164 at 10 years old. For my entire childhood every adult treated me like I was smarter than them and in most cases I was. I was in gifted and accelerated classes and excelled.
I know I’m not smart because from the headstart in life I got I went on to barely graduate from high school, drop out of community college twice, never hold a job for longer than 18 months, and have more gaps on my resume than experience.
That’s all because you’re bored. The world isn’t geared for genius level intelligence.
or even… I’m slightly above average, they put me in honors classes etc. functionally because I played Magic School Bus games as a kid and showed up to 2nd grade already knowing what an herbivore was, I got more boring homework to do for my entire adolescence. Whatbreally doomed me was “academically gifted” math class was just skipping a grade and my math pe4formance never recovered.
I know I’m not smart because I seem to have trouble retaining and/or recalling information. I’ll understand the concepts then, but fuck me if I try to recall it months later. Also I remember things wrong, my partner (who has an excellent memory) calls me out on it all the time.
Intelligence is not easily quantifiable (dont you dare get me started on IQ) so its pointless to worry about how you stack up in one area. Ive met a genius nurse who cant spell restaurant without spell check. I know engineers who cant visualize a 2D drawing in to 3D space. I think im pretty smart, lots of conceptual thinking comes naturally to me but I hate chess. It doesnt make sense to me. I suggest thinking about what you are good at, rather than what you’re not.
