Comments by "Digital Footballer" (@digitalfootballer9032) on "Veritasium"
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IQ is a strange thing. It's definitely an indicator on your ability to learn and understand new and complex matters. A high IQ alone will not get you through life successfully, there are people with average or below average IQs that are more ambitious, more socially adept, or just plain willing to put in the extra work to learn something complex even if it is harder for them.
I have an extremely high IQ, I've taken a number of tests and it has put it anywhere from the mid 140's up to in excess of 160. I usually just say 150 because I tend to like to round down if not entirely positive. I don't think I'm better than anyone else because of it, I wouldn't want to be any other way, but yet also it makes some things in life difficult. I was an average student in school overall but an absolute whiz at math. I have an average job with a very average income, I am an accountant, and a fairly low paid one at that but I work for a small business and I like my job. I am not necessarily better at my job than the others. I'm descent but experience means a lot and other more experienced people on the job know more than I do. My curse is that where an average person can pass by studying and excel by studying very diligently, I can pass by doing nothing, and excel by studying an average amount, but since it was always easier to do nothing that's what I did. I got B's without ever cracking a book, so why bother trying for an A when a B was essentially automatic. Yes, a piss-poor attitude.
Where the high IQ thing can burn you also is where most people want to talk about sports and entertainment and current events, I like to talk about philosophy and the universe and existential stuff and most people have no interest. I bury myself in channels about this kind of stuff and comment on it. But I am also very extraverted and have a very good social life. I manage that by restraining my "inner geek". It's a very odd existence to say the least. Some might accuse me of being lazy but I'm not, I am actually a very hard worker, I am just not ambitious. My dad always used to say "that's good enough" was my favorite saying.
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Sounds to me like you have what they used to call attention deficit. I have it too, and I also have an IQ around your level. It's actually very common among highly intelligent people. The reason is because you are thinking on a different level than everyone else around you, so all the stuff geared towards them is uninteresting to you, so you drift off, and you don't care. Your school fucked up bad handling it like they did. You should have been sent off to a small focused gifted group, not special ed. It's a sad story and I can only say I'm sorry you went through it. Brilliant minds, unfortunately, are often tortured minds. Society is built around conformity, especially in institutions like education, and is geared towards keeping all the "normies" in line. They have a hard time handling someone different. I didn't suffer the same circumstances you did, however I can somewhat relate because though while they always recognized that I was gifted intellectually, they constantly labeled me as a "bad attitude" and always wanted to "counsel" me. People like us are just square pegs in a sea of round holes. There is nothing wrong with us, it's just that idiots don't know how to handle it.
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The system doesn't like a creative person. The system likes a nice well-oiled cog in the giant wheel. Creativity is too disruptive to routine, to bureaucracy, to tedium...all things the system and the wardens of the system like. Work for any large company and this is clear as day. When i worked for one of the world's largest banks, I of course immediately befriended the other "Winston Smith's/Neo's" in the machine. We would often joke about how many roadblocks to success, creativity, or progress the upper management would throw at us. Most kept their heads down and just went along with it because it was easier. I got out of there when I could.
But the bank is just one of so many things like this in the world. Public schools are the same way. It took me having kids to see it happening to them to realize it happened to me way back in the 1980's and 90's as well. The most brilliant, talented, artistic, what have you, all stifled because these types cause too many disturbances in the Matrix. I came to the conclusion years ago that life would be easier as an average intelligence, obedient, uncreative, unquestioning individual. But really who wants to live such a tedious life? Not me. If I had it to do all over again I actually wouldn't change much. Being more of a round peg certainly would have made my childhood and young adulthood easier, but I'm a square peg and proud of it and always will be, even if it makes things more difficult, if life isn't at least a little challenging it's a bore.
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I am convinced, as a 40-something year old person, that life's monotony and uniformity as you get older is part of the reason. When you are young, every year is something different, you are in a different grade in school, you do different activities, and you discover new things all the time because you haven't been around that long. Once you hit your 30's or so, for most people, things tend to be the same week after week, year after year. Many people are in monogamous relationships. Many have jobs where they do similar things every day, year after year. There is no new challenge to look forward to each year. It sounds depressing, but it is true. I have found however, that changing jobs to one where I interact with different people every day has slowed things down a bit for me.
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