Another way to frame this topic: intelligence doesn't always lead to impact, and impact is what matters.
Example: I met a ton of trivia "nerds" through a friend a few years ago. They had all met at an Ivy League college, they were clearly "smart" in that they knew a lot of information and could follow a logical argument but somehow none of them were able to use their smarts for anything practical. They had jobs you didn't need to be that smart for, and their personal lives were sort of messy. I didn't really know what to make it them at the time, now I think they had the "smarts" but they didn't have the "drive" so their brains sort of did them no good.
Another example: Plenty of people are constantly frustrated that they are misunderstood. "I am so smart but I can't get anything done around here because everyone's an idiot." Some people go through their whole life believing this. Luckily I had a job that disabused me of this and taught me to communicate my ideas clearly and persuasively to others. But without that, without the ability to persuade people of your ideas, you might as well not have them.
> Another way to frame this topic: intelligence doesn't always lead to impact, and impact is what matters.
Impact is a great way of putting it. There are plenty of really smart and creative people who will never produce anything impactful in their life. Impact in my opinion is really all about time-sensitivity and sprinkling of genius. The impact may not even resonate fully with the public in the person's lifetime either. Nikola Tesla being a prime example of this. A lot of very incredible people tend to be VERY open to new ideas. John Dee comes to mind in particular. When he could find no more wisdom in science, he looked to the occult. Nikola Tesla I believe also was quite interested in the occult as well. While I wouldn't consider the occult "out there" by any stretch nowadays, it's a good example unorthodox ideas can come from.
> Plenty of people are constantly frustrated that they are misunderstood. "I am so smart but I can't get anything done around here because everyone's an idiot."
I've found that kind of thinking tends to be the reason why some of those people are misunderstood. When your frame for interacting with people is setup like that, it's not unreasonable to assume one would put up conversational barriers to confirm their own bias of "everyone's an idiot."
They understand that, they just don't want to pick up the Sisyphean task of trying to convince idiots. So instead they give up. Giving up doesn't mean that people stop complaining though, they know how to solve the problem but they don't want to do the work, it is called venting and most humans do it.
In that case I would question the smarts of someone who spends too much time focused on things they do not intend to change.
There comes a point where "raw" intelligence (if a real thing) must be tempered with the wisdom necessary to marry rubber and road, as it were. If you don't apply your staggeringly large intellect (/s?) to the problem of interfacing with other people, yet you persist putting yourself in situations where you must deal with that problem, what benefit has that intellect conferred?
You know, you sound like you are one of those people you describe yourself? Is that how you came to this realization?
Ask yourself, what is the goal with your current comment? And how does being snide achieve that goal? If the goal is to make fun of people and feel good about yourself, then you are doing a good job! And then you should understand how those people you describe feel, because they feel exactly as you feel now, wasting time making fun of things you have no intention or care to change or spread.
But if you want people to listen then you really need to get better at tempering what you say.
>They understand that, they just don't want to pick up the Sisyphean task of trying to convince idiots
I think that's a pretty bad attitude and it doesn't get anyone anywhere.
If I write Java code into my Python interpreter, I am not gonna say "dumb fucking Python can't understand what I mean" - I am gonna recognize that I am speaking the wrong language for the job.
Same if I am speaking to someone who "isn't as brilliant as I am" (or likely, has another set of priorities, context, focus, etc.) - I need to start with that reality, and then think about - how do I make this person care, how do I share with them what they need to understand, etc. There's a definite skill to this that is acquired with conscious practice and experience.
If you start off assuming that others aren't smart because they didn't connect to what you are so sure you explained so clearly, rather than questioning what is it about your explanation that didn't click with them, you're fucked.
There's also different types of "smarts". I think ability to memorise or generally know a lot is very different from noticing patterns or understanding of how things work and relate to each other.
Especially nowadays, there's Google, you don't need to memorise a lot as you can just check everything.
I think even Einstein said that "don't memorise what you can quickly check up" or had a similar sentiment.
Very often trivia kings and queens don't know how to apply that knowledge practically and a lot of knowledge has benefits just to appear intelligent to other people.
Also not to mention street smarts, emotional intelligence, leadership int and many other aspects.
What made Einstein special to me is his ability to imagine how things work together and then he and or his mind kept endlessly obsessing over it to reach further and further conclusions. Essentially trying to create a model of the world and or trying to simulate in mind whatever is happening and which can lead to greater insights of what is causing what.
I think true understanding is being able to imagine and predict how something works as opposed to memorising a lot of information about the thing.
> communicate my ideas clearly and persuasively to others
How do you get the ability to do this? I've been attending a book club with a small number of friends and even in these casual settings I wish I could communicate my ideas better.
I have found that asking others about their concerns helps me understand my own, and also helps build a rapport with the other, which itself helps your own confidence in your communication skills, and helps inculcate domain knowledge. The more you know where others stand on an issue, and why, helps you to draw parallels and distinctions with your own beliefs and positions on an issue. The rapport and conversational dynamics you explore help you tailor your message so that your words and feelings are heard and felt, even if not shared.
It's okay to say you have a point you don't know how to express. Talking around a topic is called beating around the bush colloquially, and in that common usage it's seen as wasting the listener's time if unwanted or unwarranted, but it serves an important function in itself. It's how you flush the ideas/birds out without upsetting/endangering yourself or others.
Believe in yourself, and in your ideas. You both are valid. Your earnestness in your desire to express yourself better is the social proof!
> It's okay to say you have a point you don't know how to express. Talking around a topic is called beating around the bush colloquially, and in that common usage it's seen as wasting the listener's time if unwanted or unwarranted, but it serves an important function in itself
Agreed. When I do that, I call it out explicitly. I often say something like this in a meeting: "I haven't thought about how to articulate this too much, but I agree it's worth discussing. Mind if I 'talk at you' for a min and see where it gets us?"
I wouldn't ever call it "beating around the bush" because it creates the impression you're wasting time and that's not what you should want, but saying upfront "hey I am gonna consciously ramble a bit and we'll circle up on the synthesis" often buys you some runway to do that.
> I wouldn't ever call it "beating around the bush" because it creates the impression you're wasting time and that's not what you should want, but saying upfront "hey I am gonna consciously ramble a bit and we'll circle up on the synthesis" often buys you some runway to do that.
The link I posted about the etymology of the phrase is interesting for this very reason, as it’s a bit of a misnomer. Beating around the bush is safer than beating the bush itself, as you have to get that much closer to the unknown that may be lurking inside said bushes.
listen, listen, listen. The biggest step I took towards being able to interface my ideas with others was to first listen to their ideas, problems, needs, whatever it is they wanted to talk about. You have to make what's important to them important to you before you can do it the other way around - and it's for a bunch of reasons. in attempting to empathize with them you'll have ideas about what they could be doing better to communicate to you (and not make the same mistakes when you're the one talking). You'll build trust in yourself by genuinely caring about their business, and you'll learn what's important to them, which is really the thing you're eventually going to try to plug your ideas into.
The magic sauce that makes this work, though, is being genuine. Do the emotional work to really give a damn about the other people around you; which is a lot harder than I think people give credit for, but monumentally more beneficial.
> How do you get the ability to do this? I've been attending a book club with a small number of friends and even in these casual settings I wish I could communicate my ideas better.
It's hard. And it depends on the people. With the most logical people, it's easiest for me, I just slow myself down and break down my argument into small pieces. Like in the book club, you may be tempted to say "I think the author's secret message is X" and people go "huh?" But if I go - "there's a line that says A.. do y'all remember this line?" - they say "yes" - "well, this line jumped out at me as weird, because of B. Do y'all agree that it's an unusual way to say it?" - "yup" - "so I was thinking, why is this weird to me, and I realized the only way B would be true is if C were true. Does that make sense to you guys" - "yup" - "ok, so if the author is saying C is true, I wonder if he is saying it to teach us X. Does that seem crazy?" "nope that makes sense"
Basically, you walk people from A to B to C and then the leap to X is clean and people can follow the whole chain. If you just say "it's X" they go "huh?"
The reason this is hard is because you yourself may not know why you decided X, and others may not reach that conclusion for a ton of different reasons. So forcing yourself to articulate your own logic to yourself is step 1, walking others through it is step 2.
A related thing is - in my experience, you can NEVER over-communicate. Like, it's tempting for me to skip A,B,C because I read them, I assume others read them and must have interpreted the same thing, so it feels condescending to start there, but in reality it's never a problem - people either say "yup, it's great to know we're seeing the same thing" or very often "actually, we missed that."
I hope this helps. That's just one type of scenario. All this gets harder when emotions or egos are involved, so dealing with that is hard.
Actually one more tip - the art of TLDR - people often make their point in a rambling way, surfacing a bunch of stuff that is confusing. More is not always better, but to be able to synthesize it all into a digestible narrative is really important if you want people to get it.
(TL;DR: learn to notice aesthetic; learn to acquire perspective; get out of your head.)
What's worked for me:
0. General advice
- No negative self-talk!
Find more constructive ways to communicate your ideas _even to yourself_. "I wish I could communicate my ideas better" -> "Here's an idea I felt I did not communicate well, this time, in this context. Why do I feel this way? How could I have presented myself better? (Where can I gain competence?)"
- Write and rubber ducky!
Writing and rubber ducking are methods for practicing the linguistic aspects of communication. While verbalizing to the duck, play with the timbre, cadence, tone, etc., of your voice. Record yourself and listen to it. Have problems finding material to verbalize? Pick a poem. Memorize it. Recite it. This is, in my opinion, the calisthenics of social practice.
- The person with the most developed opinion of you- is you!
"He who despises himself will still respect his skills as a despiser." ~ Nietzsche, "Beyond Good And Evil" (paraphrased, can't be arsed to cite it just now)
_You_ might notice every failure of your communique, but then again: you have an ideal for your communique. A goal, a reason, a vision of how it ought to manifest. To everyone else, however, it's an utterance like any other. The ultimate measure of your effectiveness isn't how closely you manifest your idea, but how much of an impact (and of what kind) it has on the audience.
=== 1. Practice, practice, practice. ===
It's a skill, like any other; and like any other, you succeed to the level and quality of your training. If you want to "get better at talking to people," then go talk to people; if you want to "get better at talking to people, in a book club, with a small number of friends" then do that!
How to do the first (i.e., practice speaking to people)? Communication is both observational and "applicative," in that you apply yourself in the actual doing. This suggests a good path in itself: practice your observations and also practice the doing.
How to observe strangers? (in a socially-conscious way?) The easiest way is to be conscientious of your interactions. I got started by making mental notes, pushing myself to take note of the most simple and basic details. "Oh, her nails are purple;" "It's midday and he's wearing shorts;" "He has a GameStop tag on his keyring." The simpler you can break down a situation, the more data you have for a fuller analysis.
Of course, simply having data does not an analysis make. Even with a habit of conscientiousness, I found myself struggling to derive actionable insights. Why? Likely because I was leaning too heavily on poor tools to make my analyses. This was during a phase in my life where I was very concerned with reducing as much as I could to logical and rational principles, including my interactions with others. "Assuming that people's statements reflect their internal state, that their internal state is logically consistent, and further assuming that some particular data X is included in their analysis, I can reasonably conclude that (by their statement) they must internally position themselves thusly with regards to X." This is a good general example of my internal dialogue during this period; it was helpful in some ways, fatal in many others. I now believe that there is no decision funnel you can induce, explicitly or otherwise, which makes this line of thinking safe.
I've since abandoned this project of rationalizing, because a key assumption I made was that every healthy, moral, person must have a logically consistent internal state. Indeed, I considered logical consistency to be a prerequisite for any kind of morality. I now believe this foolish; whereas I previously considered Man to be the rational animal, I'm now of the opinion that Man is much closer to the aesthetic animal.
This was a key insight for me. It has directly led to the most socially productive period of my life (which I'm thankfully still enjoying).
What does 'the aesthetic animal' entail? That people are, at base, motivated by their sensibilities. I take the most basic statement of logic to be equation: "this is that;" more specifically- "this is this." I believe the most basic statement of aesthetic is: "this pleases some sensibility I have."
People reveal their sensibilities- their aesthetic- with their genuine smiles, their sincere fashions, their honest jokes. Take note of these; my analytical habit these days is to capture as much of someone's aesthetic as I can. Again, it starts with conscious conscientiousness and observation.
=== 2. Perspective, perspective, perspective ===
You are distinct from every other person. I like to keep myself in perspective with counting the number of "distinction points" by which I differ from another. My love for the Beatles is one such point; that I know Sgt. Peppers' Lonely Hearts Club Band by heart, but none of their other albums, is another. That I program, when and how I started, what I'm doing now (with which languages)- all of these, too, and even the breakfast I had.
Don't try to store all this state at all times; just develop a habit and method of counting, and apply it where appropriate. Of course, the method, the habit, the application, understanding in which contexts it's appropriate: all of these are skills, too!
This is how I attempt to understand the differences between my perspective and others. From there, I spend a lot of my downtime acquiring alternate perspectives. I find Nietzsche ("Beyond Good And Evil") helpful to this end. (NOTE: I explicitly disavow and condemn Nietzsche's misogyny.) "Tuesdays With Morrie" is indispensable, in my opinion; specifically, Morrie's advice to embrace emotions. All of them.
Allow yourself to be embroiled in your feelings, until it finds its natural conclusion. Then practice conjuring your emotions, and be conscientious with your emotions. Observe their onsets and evolutions- _not_ to rationalize them, but to explore your own sensibilities and aesthetic.
Once you've made a habit of these observations and conjurations, seek out stimuli that alter your perspective, and then practice your perspective. Imagine how your relation to that stimuli might change if you were elsewise distinct. Conjure the emotions that you feel inherent to that you-but-else, and explore them as your own.
I treat it like a game; to these ends, the methods of acting are instructive.
This helps me explore a wider, but still woefully limited, aesthetic space. That, in turn, helps my conscientiousness of aesthetic (of both mine and others). Further, with my method of distinction, it gives me a much richer insight into how I perceive the aesthetics of others.
=== 3. Accept your mistakes, acknowledge your success ===
The possibility of failure is a precondition of any endeavor. Unfortunately, social failures can be particularly impactful to certain dispositions. Social failure can mean embarrassment, self-doubt, stigmatization, and (perhaps worst of all) emotional fallout in others.
An anecdote: I decided, for a period, to exercise my sense of humor. I visited a male cousin of mine, shortly after he had taken a new wife. His lot in life had been unhappy til then, filled with struggles and poverty. My visit was on the heels of his release from a half-year prison sentence. Imagine my happy surprise when I approached his address, to find a rather generous estate! Great land, a beautiful home, healthy children... I said to them- he and his wife- "What great success! But, I have to ask: who died and left you this land?"
She meekly replied, "My ex-husband."
It took me a while to feel comfortable making jokes. I was absolutely mortified for months thereafter. The mortification is appropriate! But it's not reasonable, nor healthy, to avoid an entire category of expression over a mistake- even such a horrid mistake as that. Perhaps _especially_ even for such a mistake. Accept it, take the L, and be more conservative in those expressions for a time thereafter: but don't define yourself by your missteps.
Likewise, acknowledge tho successes you have. Ultimately, only you can define what success looks like, and your successes must be operationalized to the context- but cherish these memories. Meditate upon them. Try to embrace the graces that led to it, on your end and the audiences'; yet, at the same time, refute the desire to embody these graces. Do not define yourself by your successes, either.
Ultimately: get out of your head and learn to love the strangeness of your fellow humans :) we are all a unique vintage, some more delicious than others (and a few that spoiled on the vine) yet all worthy of at least one honest snifter.
=== Recommended Materials ===
Nietzsche (specifically, "Beyond Good and Evil" [again, I categorically disavow his misogyny.])
"Tuesdays With Morrie," Mitch Albom
=== The Extremely Unorthodox ===
I recommend psychedelics.
Talk to your doctor, your therapist, your spiritual mentor, the neighbors' dog- whomever can help ease your mind. If you have any doubts, don't do it! And, of course, responsibly indulge where legal and when you are safe.
I also recommend "escorts," of any gender.
Not for the sex, but because escorts are by-and-large social professionals. Perhaps the _most_ social professional. They are experts of aesthetic, masters of perspective. Pay their fees, reassure them that they need not disrobe, and just go off. Ask all those little questions that you usually dare not vocalize. They've experienced stranger. It helps you exercise failure modes in a significantly safer space. "Adult entertainers" and bartenders are also choice for this.
> Another way to frame this topic: intelligence doesn't always lead to impact, and impact is what matters.
Which leads to the example of my career, and the illustration of the two "tech worlds" that now exist. As a "programming engineer," I've written a lot of software tools for other engineers that have expanded the boundaries of what was possible to achieve in usual timeframes. I've (mostly) worked as a programmer in engineering departments, and once the word of these kinds of projects get out, they often get shut down or taken over by IT proper. This has happened either because MY management was psychopathic, or OTHER management was MORE psychopathic.
As a single full-stack developer, I've proven multiple times that I can launch a company-wide-impacting project at 100x the man-speed of a bog standard, outsourced, waterfall-managed IT project. I suspect embarrassment at this fact is why my projects have had such terrible luck politically. And this is my point: the human side -- the politics -- will always trump talent. If you don't "grease the wheels," you're going to have a bad time.
> Luckily I had a job that disabused me of this and taught me to communicate my ideas clearly and persuasively to others.
I have found it even worse than this. Despite clarity, people often hate feeling like you understand things at a level they will never. Sometimes, it's the clarity itself that puts people on their heels. Case in point: My boss and I just asked a group to add an API to get ONE PIECE of data from another, long-established, already-API-driven web site. After SEVERAL meetings about this, they finally came back with an implementation date TWO YEARS after we started asking. Another group on the other side of the world asked ME to implement an API in MY application, to get entire TABLES of information. I did it in 2 days. I cannot stress hard enough that management and other people hate, hate, HATE seeing this sort of discrepancy in ability. But what am I supposed to do? Delay my delivery by months just to make people feel better? Heck, maybe I should.
We nerds like to think that the tech world should be a meritocracy. On the internet of the 90's, it was. PG continues to live in a world where he can elevate insight above politics with money. Many, here, work in companies with proper technical tracks, which rewards insight handsomely. I don't (and won't move). And if you don't, you have to do yourself a favor and deal with that reality, and learn how to play the political game. It's the political game that will determine your impact, and "gate" your technical ability. It sucks to write that out, but it's a truism of the world.
I know a ton of smart people who get nothing done, not due to being surrounded by idiots but rather due to depression and anxiety(which anecdotally seems to hit harder when the person is smart for some reason).
Smart people are also very lazy. I've always been an underachiever and am just as happy writing emacs lisp to do cool things as I am to reengineering some mess at work. Still get paid the same amount. I do good work but I don't overextend myself. This is how i've avoided burning out after 30 years.
Sometimes the best way to persuade someone regarding an idea is to actually implement the idea without their knowledge and then present it to them for review.
We are talking about software, right? Only cost and liability around this is usually your time. I've only been scolded for writing a program a few times in my career.
"I am so smart but I can't get anything done around here because everyone's an idiot."
It's a thing. It's demoralizing to work with people who often make more than you do and are terrible at the craft and don't even look to improve. That along with obsessing about making me train "backups" in case I leave. I'm on my 4th backup now. They all left after I trained them.
Example: I met a ton of trivia "nerds" through a friend a few years ago. They had all met at an Ivy League college, they were clearly "smart" in that they knew a lot of information and could follow a logical argument but somehow none of them were able to use their smarts for anything practical. They had jobs you didn't need to be that smart for, and their personal lives were sort of messy. I didn't really know what to make it them at the time, now I think they had the "smarts" but they didn't have the "drive" so their brains sort of did them no good.
Another example: Plenty of people are constantly frustrated that they are misunderstood. "I am so smart but I can't get anything done around here because everyone's an idiot." Some people go through their whole life believing this. Luckily I had a job that disabused me of this and taught me to communicate my ideas clearly and persuasively to others. But without that, without the ability to persuade people of your ideas, you might as well not have them.