People are social animals. I think as analytical people we forget this aspect of our humanity a lot.
So you need to feed that social part of yourself without doing, time-consuming and mostly pointless things, like getting drunk with the guys and watching naked women dance. If you dig naked women dancing, get HBO. Or just surf the net.
As a consultant, I go through phases of alone down-and-working hacking, when I'm not on a big contract, and working full-time with other people trying to help them when I am on a big contract.
I've found that both of these lifestyles have something positive and negative about them. I need social interaction, yet I crave just doing my own thing and being left alone also. I've found that since I don't value my social needs, I sometimes end up taking just whatever comes along, instead of actively planning. This spontaneity is cool when you're 20. But it gets less and less cool the older you get, for some reason. (Usually after you end up with a decade of spending your free time and you've in the same spot, with the same people, doing the same things you were ten years ago.)
In the past, this has sometimes led to be hanging out with people who are, or at least think they are, exciting. If I were you, I'd find something bigger than yourself to believe in and get involved with it. Church, Boy Scouts, civic groups, environmental groups, politics -- something that you find both intellectually stimulating and where you have a lot of social interaction. Make yourself do this, because you will not think that it will work until you actually do it.
And give up the I'm-so-smart routine. Trust me, you're an idiot like the rest of us, just in a different way. So you have lots factual recall ability? Aside from a promising future as a game show contestant, who cares? People with a great recall ability can be some of the most annoying people on the planet to deal with. Trust me, I'm one of them! Meet people where they are, and relate to them in an honest manner that you both can handle. Sounds like you've got a big of overly-done self importance thing going on. Once again, finding something more important than you and humbly trying to contribute to it could make you more of a person that really is smart and interesting and exciting people, like myself, would want to hang out with. (grin)
Life is about you putting stuff into it, not sitting on your ass waiting to see what comes out of it and then criticizing what you get by default. Sorry to rag on you so much -- you probably don't deserve it, but geesh, you're 30. Get a better attitude and lifestyle already.
Agreed. You (the OP) need to be socialized. :-) There is a phenomenon I call the "Engineering Dance", where engineers and similar types go through a kind dominance ritual on first meeting, probing to see who is the most expert. This doesn't work in most social situations; most people dont like it.
My SO has a masters in math and a minor in CS, but we dont talk about my work much at all. She's a painter; we talk about painting. I enjoy it because I'm learning a lot. I suggest finding a nontechnical interest and become good at it: music, art, literature. You dont have to be an artist or musician, just knowledgeable.
Enlist a woman in the reclamation project. Their social skills really are better than ours, especially the extroverts. Dont look for a GF to do this. Enlist a sister or friend. The two of you can throw a barbecue or the like for the expanded set of friends.
Most people have a socially adept friend. Use said friend for introductions.
All social groups do the "engineering dance" it's just the engineers do it nonviolently and are better able to decipher intellectual capabilities without damaging their ego.
It's a natural law. It's supply and demand. Chickens for example will fight over food if it is not dispersed on the ground so they can all get to it. They will fight and establish a hierarchy so they can all get to the food in an orderly manner. Lions do it. The males eat first because they are strongest, and on and on.
The difference with Engineers is that they see the world is full of opportunity for them so there is no lack of demand for their talents.
I've seen the "violent" approach with some of the less intelligent bosses I've had. They'll try to fire you or damage your reputation within the organization. The more intelligent bosses give positive incentives to remain and treat their people well.
The propensity to rule by force is inversely proportional to IQ. This is true at all levels of biology from amphibians to nation states.
Let me say: I think that getting a girlfriend who will up and tell you when you are being an ass (later on, in private) is one of the best things you can do!
"Engineering Dance" -- Guilty as charged! Brilliant name for it.
the engineering dance is hugely annoying. my preferred mode is socratic--ask a lot of questions, stake out a minimal position--but with engineer types this is usually misinterpreted as accepting the other person's superior expertise. whereupon said expert proceeds to shut his ears down and hold court.
over a period of several weeks i can steer the mode of conversation around, but for casual encounters i have more or less accepted the subordinate position.
I definitely agree on the girlfriend, but from my experience that's even more difficult than learning social graces. It takes a perceptive woman to realize that underneath is a really good guy that just needs some help. Young women are often as dense in their own way as hackers. It took me years and the experience of a bad marriage to become acceptable to a good woman.
Agreed, it took me years of being a jerk to women plus the good fortune of an ex turning into a friend and smacking me with the truth.
My solution also involved perception, but on my part. I was able to spot the potential in a quiet, wallflowery girl at a party. Now I am blessed with a a very sweet, patient, intelligent, perceptive, and demurely sexy girlfriend.
Another piece of advice -- all you nerdy guys out there who check off all the races except "African American" on dating site preferences -- do yourself a favor and stop it. There's lots of really cute nerdy gals out there who just happen to have a bit more melanin.
I laugh at the engineering dance anymore and mock those who try to engage me in it. Most of them are so intensely into it they don't even recognize the 'meta' joke I'm making at their expense.
Its lots of fun in interviews. Some wannabe alpha dork trying to catch me in programming language/electronics trivia is the best. In a group interview with their peers watching them, some of them getting what game I'm playing, is incredibly entertaining. Try it if you get a chance.
Well then, you just need to introduce yourself to yourself. :-)
My old neighborhood was very close knit with lots of neighborhood functions. Our responsibility was the Halloween party. Me ex knew the wives of everyone, VC's, congressmen, academics, and just plain neighbors. The party was so popular that strangers from 15-20 miles away asked to be invited. We divorced and both moved away. I told one of my daughters that I missed the closeness of the old neighborhood. She told me that my ex was the social glue. It's just an ordinary neighborhood now.
My suggestion is to throw occasional, family friendly celebrations (not the standard cocktail party) with a couple of other co-hosts. Family friendly, because the SO's greatly expand the contacts. If there isn't a readily available occasion, celebrate Guy Fawkes day or something suitably oddball. If you make it potluck, it isnt even expensive. It's easy to get a reputation for gatherings of interesting people (except for maybe DC and Manhattan :-).
That's a pretty good response. Intelligence has nothing to do with intellectual abilities. 'Idiot savants' can do brilliant and amazing things. The smartest people in the world have trouble remembering where they put their glasses. Some people can recall every detail of every minute of their lives.
People are simply different. The people that feel that they are smarter than others are often way down the line. The really smart people are the ones that want to learn everything from everyone.
As it turns out, when you're always trying to be the teacher, you miss out on many of life's lessons.
That's a very good point. Perhaps that also adds to the nonviolence of the Engineering Dance. Less intelligent people want to maintain power by being the top dog and more intelligent people want to learn from those above them and therefore be the bottom dog where there is more room to grow and "move up" so to speak.
If you take it a step further, there's always things that people are better at than you. Accordingly, you are constantly learning from everyone around you.
Unless you're always the smartest person in the room.
Intelligence has nothing to do with intellectual abilities.
I don't think this is quite accurate, but it's vague, and I can't really tell which one of these you are ascribing your examples to. In any case, intelligence and intellectual ability are multi-faceted. The ability to recall random facts may be a facet of intellectual ability, but it is tangential to intelligence. The ability to comprehend, and to be creative and synthesize new ideas, are both an aspect of intellectual ability and an aspect of intelligence. They do have something to do with one another, but in your defense, I don't think they are the same thing.
The really smart people are the ones that want to learn everything from everyone.
Agreed. But this hits on a conundrum I and a lot of geeky friends I have run into; this desire to learn everything from everybody can irritate people. It can lead to asking questions that probe for a deeper understanding, but instead elicit a scathing response demanding that I or whoever stop judging the person and what they believe. The usual reaction I have is confusion, and a wondering how asking questions can be turned into passing judgment. I can see how, if one is not careful, having this happen enough can breed a sort of smug prejudice that people who react this haven't thought about much of anything. It might be accurate for some, but assuming it for those that are not will force you to miss on many of life's lessons, as spkthed pointed out.
Your examples are accurate, but they miss the point: there is some correlation between different intellectual abilities, such that being good at math does predict being good at detecting analogies, or understanding a document (just not as well as it predicts being good at specific kinds of math).
People are different, but some people are generally smarter. Doesn't mean that someone generally smart, but bad at X, can pretend to be better at X.
I hesitated to comment on this post for a long time but I think you're pretty much completely off base.
I don't really see how the first 3 paragraphs has anything to do with the problem that I'm having, and I think that for some reason you've just assumed that I don't have hobbies (!?).
As for the "give up the I'm-so-smart routine", I've already explained what I meant several times elsewhere so I don't think I need to get into it again, but needless to say, I think you've completely misinterpreted what I was trying to convey. To be honest, I think that paragraph of yours sounds more arrogant than anything in my first post. But then again, sometimes things just get lost in translation.
The last paragraph sounds incredibly condescending. "Get better attitude and lifestyle"? It really sounds like you're trying to say that you live a "better" life and have a better attitude than what I have, even though the only thing you know about me is my age, what I did last night and a personal issue that I'm trying to understand for myself.
As I said, much of this can be attributed to misinterpretation on both sides. Obviously we could go back and forth clarifying various aspects of our posts but I don't really see the value in that. I prefer just to take some of the lessons I posted elsewhere under this submission and work from there.
What can I say? I'm a karma whore. I just restate the obvious and bask in the upvoting love. ;)
Seriously though, I thought long and hard about hitting the submit button. Too many times somebody comes to the group with an honest question and then we rag all over them. It's easy to be critical! As hackers we are really good at finding faults.
But I tried to put myself in his shoes. After all, he came for some feedback. I thought the best thing to do was try to give it to him as honestly and as kindly as I could.
The feeling is mutual! Look forward to meeting you as well some day.
> > give up the I'm-so-smart routine. Trust me, you're an idiot like the rest of us
> What can I say? I'm a karma whore. I just restate the obvious and bask in the upvoting love.
It's weird that insulting the OP and myself is a method of karma whoring. Anyway, downvoted for being so pessimistic and then calling your ideas "obvious" which is arrogant (and moments after you implied the OP is arrogant by saying he overestimates himself). Also "trust me" is a non-argument that makes you sound slimy.
I think you misunderstood what I've said, or I wasn't clear enough.
In my opinion, I added nothing much of value aside from simply re-assembling the ideas everybody else already had. Arrogance was never my intention. I'm simply saying I don't see much new that I added. It's a reply to a complement -- thanks, but it wasn't that big of a deal. This type of sentence construction happens all the time in normal conversation.
If you're insulted, I apologize. I'm also confused. Where are you in any of the parents of this comment for me to insult you? You've got one comment on the page, and as far as I can tell, it's not even related to any of mine.
And saying I sound slimy is out-of-bounds. I'll end this here. I replied simply because I have no idea what in heck you're talking about and thought maybe I had done a poor job of explaining myself.
"an idiot like the rest of us" insults me. I am one of the rest of us but prefer not to be called an idiot.
Regarding arrogance, saying your ideas are obvious (obviously true) is arrogant. Whether you intend for the statement to be arrogant is irrelevant to whether it is arrogant.
Saying things are "out of bounds" and therefore refusing to consider them is out of bounds in rational conversation.
My guess is: none of this is you communicating poorly or me misunderstanding. Rather, it's that your statements have meanings beyond the ones you had in mind while writing them.
I really appreciate the effort, but I think you've misinterpreted some key things. Much of what you said doesn't really apply to me or the problem I'm having. I don't blame you, after all you only had my input to go on. Your feedback was valuable to me in trying to improve my communication skills though.
So you need to feed that social part of yourself without doing, time-consuming and mostly pointless things, like getting drunk with the guys and watching naked women dance. If you dig naked women dancing, get HBO. Or just surf the net.
As a consultant, I go through phases of alone down-and-working hacking, when I'm not on a big contract, and working full-time with other people trying to help them when I am on a big contract.
I've found that both of these lifestyles have something positive and negative about them. I need social interaction, yet I crave just doing my own thing and being left alone also. I've found that since I don't value my social needs, I sometimes end up taking just whatever comes along, instead of actively planning. This spontaneity is cool when you're 20. But it gets less and less cool the older you get, for some reason. (Usually after you end up with a decade of spending your free time and you've in the same spot, with the same people, doing the same things you were ten years ago.)
In the past, this has sometimes led to be hanging out with people who are, or at least think they are, exciting. If I were you, I'd find something bigger than yourself to believe in and get involved with it. Church, Boy Scouts, civic groups, environmental groups, politics -- something that you find both intellectually stimulating and where you have a lot of social interaction. Make yourself do this, because you will not think that it will work until you actually do it.
And give up the I'm-so-smart routine. Trust me, you're an idiot like the rest of us, just in a different way. So you have lots factual recall ability? Aside from a promising future as a game show contestant, who cares? People with a great recall ability can be some of the most annoying people on the planet to deal with. Trust me, I'm one of them! Meet people where they are, and relate to them in an honest manner that you both can handle. Sounds like you've got a big of overly-done self importance thing going on. Once again, finding something more important than you and humbly trying to contribute to it could make you more of a person that really is smart and interesting and exciting people, like myself, would want to hang out with. (grin)
Life is about you putting stuff into it, not sitting on your ass waiting to see what comes out of it and then criticizing what you get by default. Sorry to rag on you so much -- you probably don't deserve it, but geesh, you're 30. Get a better attitude and lifestyle already.