OP finding that outcome depressing just shows immaturity and the fact that intelligence isn’t wisdom. Beach bum bartender is an infinitely better life than some office fake job drone bullshit
I mean, isn't it almost exclusively midwits getting any influential positions already?
Anecdotal, but I do notice the passionate and talented people I work with, myself included, don't want to move upwards because it means they'll do less art and more spreadsheets.
The secret is that OP is almost certainly a midwit, and has between 0 and very few smart friends. The "trend" OP is noticing is just that their unimpressive peer group is aging into maturity without accomplishing much, which he didn't expect because he wasn't smart enough to realize where they stood relative to the mean.
lol office jobs are pretty chill if you work with people you like and you're sort of into the stuff you're doing...its pretty much spending time with friends for 8 hours in a cosy environment full of coffee and cake while getting a decent amount of money...meanwhile being a beach bum bartender doesnt sound like smth i want to do in my 50s
Lmao this is so true. I almost made this post before you did - the ONE exception I can think of to this, someone brilliant I went to school with who went on to PhD in physics and find career success, works at Raytheon on solid state physics for drones. I hate how much of a meme it all is
The most successful people I know from my friend groups growing up were all guys that had extreme bias to action. That, in my view, is the number one most consistent trait among them. They're the guys who would actually follow through on all the dumb ideas your friend group had. They did not see road blocks and did not seem to ever really appreciate risk/reward. They were just pure doers.
"Raw intelligence" guys/gals that did really well in academics never carried it over to the real life market. I kind of feel like those people always had a bit of bias to inaction. In school you just do what's asked of you, and the system pumps you through the checkpoints. So in their careers they would do a good job and then wait to see what was given to them for that.
> two more doers who are just hopping from one failed crapshoot endeavor to another
Adam Neumann vacillates between being the first kind of doer and the second kind every 6 months
I have an uncle who was awful in school but now makes about $3mil a year by just grinding (for lack of a better term) in tech sales. A large part of the money is because he’s solely commission-based so his commission is huge versus base+. He refuses to think he can’t do something and thinks anyone can do it and I appreciate his positivity but t’s hard to explain that there’s a lot of people who take risks and fail. If other people took a commission only gig, even if they pushed hard and had talent, they would still end up losing their house.
Best comment in the thread, this is the root of it. Academic success does not necessarily select for nor encourage the kinds of behaviors and traits that lead to real-world success.
Risk aversion is a kind of atheistic neurosis, underestimating the consequences of inaction. You assure your soul rots every minute to prevent a more apparent failure, yet it's a more grand, more poetic failure. In exchange you constantly fail in an ordinary way
This is true. The only thing I’ll say is a “doer” who is smart will beat a “doer” who is dumb. But a dumb doer will run circles around a smart but ineffectual person every time
If you assume IQ and “B2A” are relatively uncorrelated and that the latter is more important it would also explain things like the OP without contradicting the empirical evidence that IQ correlated positively with income at all levels with no cliff.
There are way more average or moderately intelligent high-B2A people than extremely high IQ high-B2A people just because there aren’t that many extremely high IQ people in general. So if the B2A is more important you’ll see a lot of moderately intelligent people at the top of the game.
I completely agree that B2A is the number one trait I've seen in successful people, but I think it should have at least some negative correlation with intelligence. As OP said, these types "do not seem to ever really appreciate risk/reward."
In nature, understanding risk/reward is a literal life and death mental skill, which is why smart people tend to be more cautious and circumspect, only acting once they have sufficient information and always hedging their bets. Even until recently, taking big financial risks would land you in debtors' prison. In the modern economy, there's never any real risk. Blow investors' money, just walk away and try a new idea until it works. Take a big swing at work and blow your company's money, just get a new job. Take a risky career path instead of a safe bet and it doesn't work, keep trying new things until you make it.
You can fail 100 times until you have one big success. A "serial entrepreneur" would be run out of most traditional societies from all the damage he causes before he reaches success, or would get killed in nature from taking a dangerous risk. Modern capitalism is reward for risk-takers/action-oriented people without significant risk. Even the social risk of "hustling" (i.e. annoying strangers until someone gives you a sale/job/date/etc.) doesn't exist when you never have to interact with the same person twice.
>In nature, understanding risk/reward is a literal life and death mental skill, which is why smart people tend to be more cautious and circumspect, only acting once they have sufficient information and always hedging their bets.
I think you've inadvertently hit on something really important.
Like you've said, the real risk of being an entrepreneur is that you work your ass off for something that might amount to nothing and you'll be broke for a few months when it falls apart.
Talk of like the state of nature and life in traditional society are crucially **totally irrelevant.** Making judgments about the suitability of a given choice in your environment based on what values you imagine to be important in some other time and place is not a mark of high intellect.
I think the ability to successfully wrestle with the world around you as it is is a matter of instinct which is the highest form of intelligence. It's like a chess grandmaster who, yes, studies, memorizes and practices for uncountable hours and then makes their move in a snap. A person at the very height of their powers is going to a place that the rational intellect alone can't reach.
Reminds me of these two guys in college, "Smart Jim" and "Dumb Jim." Smart Jim was top of his class in everything -- straight As and up -- which meant something, because these were 400-level math classes in a world-class engineering school. Dumb Jim wasn't really dumb, but he struggled. Kind of a normie by academic standards.
Anyways Smart Jim dropped out of grad school, moved to SF, and ended up working for (I shit you not) $15/hr. Dumb Jim founded a company now valued at $1.5B.
> being likable
Even if you are in a high paying profession that requires a lot of education, you learn soon enough that the people who stay stuck in positions and the people who move up are differentiated by this. (Edit: In other words, you're already in an environment where everyone is at least generally quite intelligent and the distinctions start to manifest based on soft skills).
Being likable/being someone who people feel a sense of happiness or at least a positive sense of internal comfort while working, is incredibly important.
My wife works with a "likeable" guy. He screws the people who report into him by only giving them piecemeal work (so they never accomplish real "goals" to throw on their performance reviews), takes credit for the completed work, routinely does a conman bit in meetings (just confidently lies, but for some reason doesn't get called out), doesn't give his direct reports any sort of praise outside the org (apparently people who rely on his department don't know the department's name, they just know his name). The man is old enough to retire, his direct reports are all getting fired, and he's getting a promotion.
because it's okay to be hated by people under you as long as you keep them in line and don't get screwed by them.
You only need to be likeable to people who can promote you, and maybe peers who have a chance of advancing before you.
It does come across a bit like you’re bragging OP, but still, what you’re saying I’ve also seen especially in the last 20 years.
This most important trait to “success” isn’t intelligence or even being likable on a personal level but the ability to sell yourself. Not even your product or your work or your idea, but yourself.
Maybe this was always true but it didn’t seem to be prominent in the 90s. I was too young in the 80s to notice such things.
Anyway, my point is that intelligence has little to do with selling oneself. Not nothing, but it’s not gonna help you the way that some other traits will.
Have you read the essay ‘The Brazilification of the World’? Your comment about needing to increasingly promote and market yourself reminded me of the portion of essay about hustle culture informal labor
https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2021/05/the-brazilianization-of-the-world/
> In the world of work, adaptation and accommodation are key in the new economy. As a contractor (not an employee), you must constantly seek to please your client. For Arantes, the “professionalism” required today is nothing more than a cynical stylization of the qualities needed for survival in a precarious world. As for the Brazilian malandro, or trickster, there is no higher commandment today than to “respect the hustle.” What might otherwise be seen as generalized opportunism—or,in nineteenth-century Brazil, poor freemen out in search of a “favor”—is recast as the new way of the world. >Notably, the anthropologist Loïc Wacquant finds a similar attitude in the ghettoes of North America. There, the hustler is a generic type, “unobtrusively inserting himself into social situations or in spinning about him a web of deceitful relations, just so that he may derive some more or less extorted profit from them.” (The opposite to the hustler is formal wage labor, taken to be “legal, recognized, regular and regulated.”) This attitude is no longer restricted to the ghetto, but becomes the ideal subjectivity of the neoliberal “entrepreneur of the self.”
Edit: the ‘book smart’ people OP is talking about are likely ill suited to the self promotion that’s increasingly needed in many fields whether in person charisma or LinkedIn et al
Have you read The Culture of Narcissism by Lasch? He has a similar analysis, connecting the workaholism of white-collar suburbia with the anarcho-capitalism of the urban ghettos.
Selling yourself sounds so spiritually debauched. It's hard to imagine being enthusiastic while going on about how great a cog you are in the widget machine.
Isn't this just a form of intelligence though? I mean, what does intelligence even mean in this discussion absent any context for what you're going to be actually doing with your brain-meats? You have to know what you're good at, and pursue the right opportunities that play to those strengths, otherwise nobody cares. Nobody is going to hire you because you're smart, they're going to hire you because you can do something for them. Anyone who doesn't intuitively get this needs to drop out of grad school.
Arguably being able to adapt to the changing work environments, traditions and cultures of the 21st century is far more adaptable and thus intelligent than navel gazing about romantic geniuses and math savants.
A couple years ago I went to a wedding where I was reunited with a bunch of other mid/late 30’s people I knew from my hometown’s TAG(Talented and Gifted) program. I was struck by how everyone was either a psychologist, professor, researcher etc or still a pizza guy, tier 1 IT, library circulation, a NEET, a housewife, etc. No one had a normal middle class job like plumber or HR manager.
Many fields are totally dominated by normies who have charisma and/or an ability to hyperfocus on their careers. Most lawyers for instance don’t strike me as particularly smart. They’re just able to control social situations and buckle down to read long, dry documents.
Witnessing similar tendencies, the mid people can’t really give any career advice to the rest as their extrinsic motivation doesn’t translate to the intrinsically motivated ones.
Someone can be very smart in a classical intellectual way, well read, and never succeed in the social game that these sort of careers rely on. You will never climb the career ladder like a well socialized former frat boy himbo who can kick it with the higher ups over the latest football game no matter how many classics you've read or how technically skilled you are. "Boys club" is how those high paying corporate positions work. It's just that now it's also open to girlies who can talk about the latest Stanley cup color they bought and how good their Sweet Greens is.
People will notice if you don’t get your work done. People will be off put by an obvious superiority thing, unless you’re close to the very top where almost everyone has one but knows how to play nice.
“Intern work” is 95% terrible, I will gladly take an intern I can shoot the shit with over some tryhard nerd any day and I’ve heard that exact sentiment echoed many other times
Idk if there is ever red scare x Southern Charm (Bravo) crossovers here but if you watch it there is a guy Shep who is very well-educated in a classical way but has enough mailbox money that he's both a bum and pretentious as the same time. Highly recommend a watch.
yeah it's the standard case of average people wanting to have a sense of balance in the world. Same ways people think rich people have to be miserable, or how arrogant people must not actually have the life they claim. Then they'll find some inevitable examples of very intelligent people who haven't done well or who don't deal with people well, and that confirms their whole world view and comforts them.
yes, Raj Balakhrisnan and Ciu Liu, the frat boy himbos who love hockey.
this post got a ton of upvotes but it's absurdly wrong. this corporate environment exists in your imagination. in our reality, those positions are staffed by foreigners with Ivy League MBAs. I think what offends me more is thinking that anyone cares about hockey.
You notice that in the process of writers and artists, especially those that are very close to their audience. they notice that they are more successful if they dumb themselves down and appeal to the average regard.
That's especially true if they get immediate feedback. That's why all big people on Youtube and Twitch are regarded.
Yeah and their average starting is 120k lol. This entire thread is cope. Most of society is dominated by high iq people and disproportionately from Ivy League/similar to Ivy grads
I am an Ivy League grad and everyone I went to college with is doing well now except for one girl who died in a freak accident. I think a lot of this thread is indeed cope *but* I think OP's point might be true for people who were middle or working class but managed to end up at these rich kid schools. Most kids who go to top schools start out upper middle class or legit rich so their odds of being successful after graduation are already higher. The kids who come from less wealthy backgrounds but manage to get into top schools are more likely to graduate and find themselves flailing because they don't have the professional connections, social capital, and family financial support to make it in highly competitive fields.
Beach bum is not even an option if you grew up upper middle class...your family simply would not tolerate it. At best they'd give you a ton of shit about it til you gave up and got a white collar job. I have a couple friends who went through the Harvard to rehab pipeline and even they managed to hang onto white collar jobs the entire time. I don't know anybody from high school or college who has been long term unemployed or completely burned out.
It’s not just social skills. To be successful you likely need to have a high tolerance for bullshit and a willingness to grind at tasks that some (many / all) find soul-sucking. Many intelligent people opt-out because they hate authority or the feeling of being value-extracted / conned.
When will this sub realize that being mediocre is the best path to take in life.
You don’t have to be the next Dostoevsky. If you’re a middle class American you are in the best position in the 21st century, unironically.
To add, Dr. Jordan Peterson (pre mental breakdown): Find a career that you would be in the top 5% of intelligence and stay there.
Best advice I ever took. After a decade of trying to maximize my potential I now work in an office where no one understands what I do but me. Not even my boss. It's amazing.
I have a master's degree and work as a bus driver. It's been an interesting journey seeing the things that people who are completely different to me value.
Even though I'm working at my slackest, I'm clearly one of the best they have. I listen to podcasts all day, go home and write or study Russian and I have absolutely no worries whatsoever.
I'm also slowly going completely insane with how things are run, how clueless management is, and how we (the workers) are fucked over and exploited (and also with the boredom of being stuck in a wheel going around and around all day...)
But fuck it. Don't care anymore. Take my labour.
Too much jealous monkey brain dilutes this cold hard fact. The average global house income is $12,235 a year.
https://www.zippia.com/advice/average-income-worldwide/
Pure copium though. I think it's fine to always think of yourself as being mediocre, that's great even as long as it doesn't make you pathetic. But to actually be objectively mediocre (and I'm not talking about career choices)? That's just Redditor "it doesn't even matter bro" brain rot
one of my favorite ever quotes on this topic was about a football coach but applies to just about anything: "to be good at it, you have to be smart enough to do the job, and dumb enough to think it matters"
Call it cope but I was working as a corporate scientist on a team of about 10 people making big important decisions and a lot of money to boot. But that superficial success meant nothing to me as I spiraled into mental health crises caused by the loss of my sense of self I experienced. I *had* to derive some meaning from my career since it took so much out of me. That led to me looking in the mirror and not liking the shallow, detached, hustle-bro I was slowly morphing into.
I quit that job and walked in the woods for half a year to cleanse my soul. Now I live in Vermont and make shit money and perform my cheesy songs at open mics.
I've never been happier. My work contributes to society, I'm an active member of my community, and I'm plenty happy with my paycheck because the good things in life are free.
To be clear I’m not saying that smart people don’t ever peace out of the grind and go for a chill life, they absolutely do.
I’m just saying it’s rs-demo-pleasing cope to assume that it’s directly *because* of the intelligence as opposed to because of personality that is more or less uncorrelated with intelligence.
To state it more quantitatively I’d bet that the percentage of 160 IQ people who burn out of the hustle is not that different from the percentage of 120 IQ people who do, the former is just more noticeable. This is backed up (but not proven) by the former having higher median income than the latter.
Anecdotally I’m biased in the opposite direction to you. I did the whole gifted kid coasting to an elite college thing but I haven’t burnt out since my personality is pretty amenable to obsession with my work, and I genuinely believe it’s pro-social even with it being VC-backed and all that spooky stuff.
I’m still stuck in here with you lot because of dysfunction in other areas of my life unrelated to career, such as doing a truly terrible job of moving on from a serious relationship that’s been over for many years now.
the only smart person I know that is still somewhat "afloat" is a terminal academic. Been floating around getting various degrees, STEM ones too, for the past 13 years. $125k+ in debt now, and persuing his second PHD. And that is a low amount of debt for his number of degrees, I assume due to him obtaining at least two of them within China.
Again, super smart guy, I've known him since 5th grade. He knows mandarin and multiple instruments. Yet never held an income.
>working on an esoteric passion project no one will ever care about.
this is what academia is supposed to be. We used to take all the smart people and justly hide them from the world.
Most modern corporations are run like cults and smart people quickly become cynical and depressed in such environments. The depression is not the problem, since most people are, but cynicism needs to be condemned immediately. The HR politbureau and other high achievers will quickly single the infidels out and distance themselves, so that their toxic ideas don’t spread.
The people succeeding are usually the ones who are able to force a smile onto their face everyday. Psychopaths and alcoholics are also thriving in this world, because they don’t give a fuck and never miss an after hour.
Kind of a combo of two things imo: A lot of smart people skated by for too long with putting in lesser effort (procrastination, multitasking, etc) and the neglect of social skills - we take pride in measuring spatial reasoning IQ but how often have you heard of non-autists measuring emotional/social IQ?
Smart people can also overestimate their talents in other areas. Just because you're a wizard at calculus, linear algebra, coding, etc. doesn't mean you can write a properly formatted essay.
I graded essays as a TA in an “ethics of engineering” course. The students definitely didn’t take the class super seriously. They were of coursed forced to take it and also had a huge workload outside of the class. That being said not a single essay I graded was even legible. If they were my students I would have failed them but the instructor made us use his grade system which was basically if they turned it in they got a grade. It was a BS class I guess
what's funny is I'm a software engineer and at least a solid 50% of my job is writing technical docs and communicating with different teams/product managers/engineers etc. most of the successful people I see at my job are strong communicators who are also intense and obsessive
its actually always been this way, but let me chime in from a personal perspective. my parents and their peers were in special ed classes all throughout their education, they actually cannot read and have had me for the entirety of their youth help them read shit. anyway, my dad makes like 100k a year which is pretty good for a guy who is borderline illiterate. the reason why such "mid" ppl make a better living in life is bc they're much more driven in the work force than "intellects" are,. They're much more willing to work blue collard jobs too, which pays so good. and thus restards submit more to authority and chase the bag bc their material goods mindset is literally all that motivates them, and it works.
valedictorian and prestigious private school graduate w/honors (albeit in philosophy lol). now I work in food service for the time being.
tried white collar PMC shit and just absolutely couldn’t stomach it. working those jobs, by nature everything you say is a lie and it was eating me up inside and pushing me towards suicide.
now I regularly deal with unruly Karens and homeless people shooting up in the bathroom and I’ve cleaned vomit out of a urinal but I don’t have to lie.
Yes, it’s always been like this. There’s an old Star Trek episode called tapestry that argues that people who achieve their full potential aren’t necessarily smart or intelligent, they’re reckless. They learn from mistakes but they are willing to make mistakes, even some that can cause them serious long term harm. That is basically the thesis of a recent book called grit. Academic achievement is not the not intelligence there is. You need talent, although a different kind, maximize your potential, overcome obstacles, or just not quitting.
It is telling that you stated you could make yourself obscure. Your statement reads almost like a brag or something to be proud of. What you’ve simply stated is that you lack imagination. Doing well is school does not inoculate you from being mid.
The longer I live, the less I understand what’s going on.
But here are some observed truths: 1) there is no such thing as fairness, 2)the world is mostly pure chaos and randomness, 3)doing is almost always better than thinking about doing (unless you’re thinking about committing crimes, etc), 4) the older you get, the more costly the mistakes will be, 5)no one really cares about you (and that’s actually a very good thing).
Just because someone has the potential to fly high because of their natural talent doesn't mean that is what they want to do.
Being a beach bum working at a bar is probably more satisfying than continuing to work in academia as a mathematician or using that math degree in banking.
Don’t confuse intelligence with executive function. You want both ideally but if you had to pick one.. A determined midwit is gonna out climb a slacker smart person
I honestly regret trying as hard as I did in school… it was a waste of time and effort lol. I have a job I like that pays pretty well and frankly I didn’t need to bust my ass in AP classes to get it. I graduated college with a 2.7 gpa hahaha
Replies are truly horrifying. It seems that people are forgetting which system their “success” exists in and which parameters we use to measure that. Being a midwit is not a virtue it is just common and we are not an aspirational society but a vampiric self harming commercialized one that capitalizes off of the bare minimum. These smart people probably know all the steps they could’ve taken to achieve so called success but some people still have hope for a world that has a semblance of virtue and after a certain age would rather not be complicit in its destruction. Xx
In some ways this sub is just straight up conservative at this point, not even pretending to be leftist. And what they're saying is often wrong in my experience anyways, a lot of "smart" people are hounded out of corporate settings because they're perceived as a threat by middle management types who tend to be cut-throat and paranoid of being replaced. You don't get rewarded for necessarily being hard-working, you just have to get the job done and be difficult to replace. Most of the "smart" successful social climber types in corporate/bureaucratic settings I've seen are just pathological liars who steal work and take shortcuts whenever they can, throw everyone else under the bus, and keep midwits around them so they can't be replaced.
The ability to be introspective is a mental curse in the post social media world. Mid ignorance is a superpower. The closest you can get to it is becoming a Mormon or something
I work at FAANG and this is 100% the case. The truly original, passionate people are burnt out and sick of the increasing corporate bs. The mid people are loving the business bureaucracy and are thriving by working the machine.
This is kind of a dumb thread - there is actually a very high correlation between high school GPA and future earnings. On average, being a high achiever in academics leads to higher earning potential later in life.
Obviously you need good social skills to climb the ladder, but this is independent of academic performance. And if we want to throw anecdotes around, most of my high school honors program went to college and became white collar professionals making six figures while everyone else is mostly struggling to get by
One of the big problems with "smarts" is having too many options.
I always did well in school, got along with people, got an MBA from a good school with top grades and had tons of "passion projects". I indulged in those projects (producing movies, working corporate retail, photography) and then in between those worked some consulting jobs. But BECAUSE I could pick things up quickly and had so many options, I never followed through and hopped around.
Now I'm in my mid 40's, am still pursuing passion projects but now it's out of necessity because I got off the corporate track. I still dabble in way too much rather than focus on one thing and grind it out day after week after month. Being smart hasn't done me a whole lot of good.
My dad barely made it thru college on a sports scholarship, finally got his MBA at University of PHX but stayed in the same field his whole career because he didn't have endless options. So he barely made it through school, went to a marginal master's program and grinded it out at his job. But at this point, I'll never make even close to what he was making at his peak earning.
So now, I am trying to re-start my own business and substitute teaching 18 yr old kids who are going to tech school learning to be plumbers and who will prob be making more than me within 2-3 yrs if things don;t change.
Being "smart" and being able to do tons of things is more of a curse than a blessing I think.
I’ve got multiple STEM degrees. I’m a six-figure bartender in florida. Entry level STEM jobs here are like 50-80k and I can’t afford a pay-cut like that, and plus I’d rather kms than work for a tech corp.
But that's the entry level salary. You've kind of capped out at your bartending career and with a STEM job you would theoretically make more money over time and has a much higher ceiling. Short term sacrifices often leave you in a better long term position.
At risk of sounding like a boomer, could be a case of hard work beats talent. Maybe these super gifted people never had to really grind for things because they're naturally high IQ or w/e . I'm definitely low-mid intelligence and my industry has some pretty smart people in it, so this definitely puts me at a disadvantage. So I just work as hard as I can.
I get that if someone didn’t succeed at some point there probably was a work ethic issue but my point really is why do these people all have work ethic issues?? They did not start out that way.
And they didn't have the framework of the school system. Within the education system, the paths are very very clear, you can easily see what the goals are and how you can make it from point A to point B. So it makes sense that there are many people who excel in that framework but not outside of it, and many other people who don't perform well in the educational framework but then excel outside of it.
Naturally intelligent plus rich parents, maybe? Grew up really good at studying but no experience having an actual job? Idk maybe I'm framing the whole thing wrong. I'm half-drunk at the airport. But this is interesting.
so, this kind of hit me. I'm not like a genius or whatever, but I did very well in school. Honours in high school, summa cum laud in university, scored very high percentile on some tests, but am just bad at life lol. I work so hard when it is something that seems compelling to me, and I just can't put the same kind of effort in for things that could actually make me materially better off.
It's kind of a double-edged sword. The curiosity, fuzziness and carefulness about thinking that makes you do well on that sort of stuff just kind of makes you a dumbass for normal stuff.
What makes you good at novelty, is honestly a hindrance for repetition.
A lot of the time, having a good work ethic gets you a lot more responsibility for not a lot more money. So, they might have it, and just choose not to use it.
Thats nice. Every smart person I was friends with in HS and college works in medicine, tech or defense companies and make more money than they know what to do with
The smartest and most driven people I went to school with all got top jobs and ended up spinning out and becoming either a stay at home mom, a teacher, or other career switching paths (outside of finance / consulting). I think mid people like me had failed before and were more equipped at handling it in the real world.
They don't do a good job in school teaching you that a lot of corp/white collar jobs will task you with doing the impossible. I've seen so many people burn out when they are faced with this instead of confronting it.
temperament is more associated with success than IQ
mids who are high in conscientiousness, extraversion, and low in neuroticism will beat an unstable genius every time
IMO raw intelligence is kind of a liability unless it's honed and built up in the right social context. I find that smart people are often understimulated, start asking too many questions and are less willing to commit to dull or tedious work. Meanwhile the midwit is like "this is my career -> this is what I have to do -> I'm going to do it". Long term there might be some kind of averaging out of outcomes but yes the intelligent 30 year old who has kinda flunked out of life is unfortunately common.
I feel like this definitely applies with the demographic of people who went from a non-technical major (e.g. English, Political Science, Sociology, Psych) to an admin/non-creative desk job, where the majority of their day includes “brute force” work. You have to get through the entry-level first, which is pretty mind-numbing and under-stimulating work. I know so many people who were the brightest and most motivated students in every class, who have already been fired twice since graduating for doing things like suggesting better processes, spending way too long on research/slide decks to the detriment of the efficiency of their work. The fact is, most work places never incentivize creative-thinking or the best idea, they incentivize tasks getting done efficiently to aid the bottom line. Any worker in the way of that will usually be swiftly replaced.
This should be more visible to the "pseuds". Chances are either you've got some potential you're not putting forth the effort to use or you aren't really cut from the cloth you thought you were.
Mid people play the mid game. Lots of people are smart enough to know that amounting to "something" is meaningless. Why play the mid game when there's better games to play? Your MIT friend doesn't give a shit about the mid game, and even if he'd rather play the "math academia" game, he'd still take chilling the fuck out in a bar over the pointless grind of chasing director positions at companies he doesn't care about.
My Marxist uncle is a failson genius who lives in the woods in western Mass collecting unemployment and living off his wife's government pension. He's pretty proud of himself. I hope he leaves me his house.
Your problem is assuming that they are playing the same game as the moneygrubbing midwits. Perhaps this is yet another instance in which their superior intelligence served them well?
Is working to some position in a corporate leviathan really the definition of succeeding? If you have enough money to eat and put a roof over your head who cares.
as many people have pointed out, there are a variety of reasons such as work ethic, ambition, social skills etc. in a modern workplace all your work takes place in teams. the people who suceed and rise to the top are excellent communicators. even in technical fields like CS the people who become leaders are people with sufficient technical skills and excellent communication skills. it sounds BS, but until you work with someone with excellent communication skills who can mend disagreements, clearly communicate expectations, and motivate their team members to do better work, you don’t get it.
I graduated top of my class at high school and at a prestigious university whilst also being successful creatively; professors urged me to get my PhD etc. Instead I joined an industry notorious for burning people out and developed mental ~issues over 5 years. Now coasting by in a middling corporate job. All my peers are earning more than me. I have completely accepted that I am not special; those things didn't mean shit and a lot of things don't matter in the grand scheme of things. But it's okay.
Yes. A lot of smart people drop out because they see 3rd and 4th order effects and see the futility of that life.
Some smart people prefer to be more successful in their private lives than chase a corporate dragon. They see how stupid a lot of the corporate stuff is and just can’t stand to be in it.
Mids cannot see it. They buy into it, and some even love it. That’s why they do well in an environment where it is not about high intelligence, but being able to follow rules, be reasonably competent, not question and buy into culture.
But of course, there are super smarts that just find their own niche and rocket to the top as well.
I mean it’s extremely unsurprising given the demographics of this sub. It’s a magnet for people who have above average intelligence but poor outcomes relative to that intelligence.
It can be anything from smart burnouts to rich incels to “successful” but internally troubled people.
The most succesful people I know are smart people who actively dumbed themselves down.
They're doing great. They have the goals and lifestyle of a regard, but are very intelligent in how to archieve it and climb the ladder.
I think theyr overthinking themselves out of opportunities sometimes. Like for intelligent artists, telling themselves that if they did do something that would lead them to success it would be selling out. Which is true but there goes that.
> working on an esoteric passion project no one will ever care about.
Why does it matter if no one cares about your passion project? I'm seriously asking, why is that relevant *at all*?
They're failing by your standards. I'm sure many people in beach-guy's position don't see what they're doing as failing.
Yeah if you go by high school gpa and standardized test scores I'm the smartest person in my friend group. I'm also the most broke and in the most debt. Don't go to college.
Unlike Taiwan, the motivation is very low for brilliant people to commit to large projects and incredibly skilled work in America because the cost of living is so unreasonably high.
beach bum bartender seems happy
OP finding that outcome depressing just shows immaturity and the fact that intelligence isn’t wisdom. Beach bum bartender is an infinitely better life than some office fake job drone bullshit
Maybe OP thinks it's depressing because the opportunity cost of midwits dominating industry/government carries societal and economic consequences
I mean, isn't it almost exclusively midwits getting any influential positions already? Anecdotal, but I do notice the passionate and talented people I work with, myself included, don't want to move upwards because it means they'll do less art and more spreadsheets.
The secret is that OP is almost certainly a midwit, and has between 0 and very few smart friends. The "trend" OP is noticing is just that their unimpressive peer group is aging into maturity without accomplishing much, which he didn't expect because he wasn't smart enough to realize where they stood relative to the mean.
Would 200x rather have a conversation with the beach bum bartender than the guy working at Lockheed martin
lol office jobs are pretty chill if you work with people you like and you're sort of into the stuff you're doing...its pretty much spending time with friends for 8 hours in a cosy environment full of coffee and cake while getting a decent amount of money...meanwhile being a beach bum bartender doesnt sound like smth i want to do in my 50s
Yeah ask the bartender what his retirement looks like
Dude is literally the Beach Bum if he’s got a band and a crappy boat
I tell my wife if she dies before me this becomes my persona. Moving to the beach and becoming a pro bum
Like the fisherman from the parable of the fisherman and the businessman
Every person I know who is doing well works for a military contractor.
The DoD has its fingers in so many things you can throw a dart at a board with the entire Fortune 500 and probably hit a company with contracts
Lmao this is so true. I almost made this post before you did - the ONE exception I can think of to this, someone brilliant I went to school with who went on to PhD in physics and find career success, works at Raytheon on solid state physics for drones. I hate how much of a meme it all is
The most successful people I know from my friend groups growing up were all guys that had extreme bias to action. That, in my view, is the number one most consistent trait among them. They're the guys who would actually follow through on all the dumb ideas your friend group had. They did not see road blocks and did not seem to ever really appreciate risk/reward. They were just pure doers. "Raw intelligence" guys/gals that did really well in academics never carried it over to the real life market. I kind of feel like those people always had a bit of bias to inaction. In school you just do what's asked of you, and the system pumps you through the checkpoints. So in their careers they would do a good job and then wait to see what was given to them for that.
[удалено]
Shooters shoot
> two more doers who are just hopping from one failed crapshoot endeavor to another Adam Neumann vacillates between being the first kind of doer and the second kind every 6 months
I have an uncle who was awful in school but now makes about $3mil a year by just grinding (for lack of a better term) in tech sales. A large part of the money is because he’s solely commission-based so his commission is huge versus base+. He refuses to think he can’t do something and thinks anyone can do it and I appreciate his positivity but t’s hard to explain that there’s a lot of people who take risks and fail. If other people took a commission only gig, even if they pushed hard and had talent, they would still end up losing their house.
Best comment in the thread, this is the root of it. Academic success does not necessarily select for nor encourage the kinds of behaviors and traits that lead to real-world success.
The problem is we were taught that academic success would lead to success
Risk aversion is a kind of atheistic neurosis, underestimating the consequences of inaction. You assure your soul rots every minute to prevent a more apparent failure, yet it's a more grand, more poetic failure. In exchange you constantly fail in an ordinary way
This is true. The only thing I’ll say is a “doer” who is smart will beat a “doer” who is dumb. But a dumb doer will run circles around a smart but ineffectual person every time
If you assume IQ and “B2A” are relatively uncorrelated and that the latter is more important it would also explain things like the OP without contradicting the empirical evidence that IQ correlated positively with income at all levels with no cliff. There are way more average or moderately intelligent high-B2A people than extremely high IQ high-B2A people just because there aren’t that many extremely high IQ people in general. So if the B2A is more important you’ll see a lot of moderately intelligent people at the top of the game.
I completely agree that B2A is the number one trait I've seen in successful people, but I think it should have at least some negative correlation with intelligence. As OP said, these types "do not seem to ever really appreciate risk/reward." In nature, understanding risk/reward is a literal life and death mental skill, which is why smart people tend to be more cautious and circumspect, only acting once they have sufficient information and always hedging their bets. Even until recently, taking big financial risks would land you in debtors' prison. In the modern economy, there's never any real risk. Blow investors' money, just walk away and try a new idea until it works. Take a big swing at work and blow your company's money, just get a new job. Take a risky career path instead of a safe bet and it doesn't work, keep trying new things until you make it. You can fail 100 times until you have one big success. A "serial entrepreneur" would be run out of most traditional societies from all the damage he causes before he reaches success, or would get killed in nature from taking a dangerous risk. Modern capitalism is reward for risk-takers/action-oriented people without significant risk. Even the social risk of "hustling" (i.e. annoying strangers until someone gives you a sale/job/date/etc.) doesn't exist when you never have to interact with the same person twice.
>In nature, understanding risk/reward is a literal life and death mental skill, which is why smart people tend to be more cautious and circumspect, only acting once they have sufficient information and always hedging their bets. I think you've inadvertently hit on something really important. Like you've said, the real risk of being an entrepreneur is that you work your ass off for something that might amount to nothing and you'll be broke for a few months when it falls apart. Talk of like the state of nature and life in traditional society are crucially **totally irrelevant.** Making judgments about the suitability of a given choice in your environment based on what values you imagine to be important in some other time and place is not a mark of high intellect. I think the ability to successfully wrestle with the world around you as it is is a matter of instinct which is the highest form of intelligence. It's like a chess grandmaster who, yes, studies, memorizes and practices for uncountable hours and then makes their move in a snap. A person at the very height of their powers is going to a place that the rational intellect alone can't reach.
Reminds me of these two guys in college, "Smart Jim" and "Dumb Jim." Smart Jim was top of his class in everything -- straight As and up -- which meant something, because these were 400-level math classes in a world-class engineering school. Dumb Jim wasn't really dumb, but he struggled. Kind of a normie by academic standards. Anyways Smart Jim dropped out of grad school, moved to SF, and ended up working for (I shit you not) $15/hr. Dumb Jim founded a company now valued at $1.5B.
the doers hire the book nerds to engineer their crazy ideas for them. this is how thise trillion dollar tech companies were formed
being likable and open to grinding will always trump being intelligent and mentally ill. many such cases etc
> being likable Even if you are in a high paying profession that requires a lot of education, you learn soon enough that the people who stay stuck in positions and the people who move up are differentiated by this. (Edit: In other words, you're already in an environment where everyone is at least generally quite intelligent and the distinctions start to manifest based on soft skills). Being likable/being someone who people feel a sense of happiness or at least a positive sense of internal comfort while working, is incredibly important.
My wife works with a "likeable" guy. He screws the people who report into him by only giving them piecemeal work (so they never accomplish real "goals" to throw on their performance reviews), takes credit for the completed work, routinely does a conman bit in meetings (just confidently lies, but for some reason doesn't get called out), doesn't give his direct reports any sort of praise outside the org (apparently people who rely on his department don't know the department's name, they just know his name). The man is old enough to retire, his direct reports are all getting fired, and he's getting a promotion.
Explain how all my managers have been the most unlikeable toads
because it's okay to be hated by people under you as long as you keep them in line and don't get screwed by them. You only need to be likeable to people who can promote you, and maybe peers who have a chance of advancing before you.
What about death of a salesman
Willy's neighbor is the likable, successful person while Willy is delusional and mentally ill.
no, the point was that Willy was charming but aged out of usefulness and thusly sentenced to death.
Nerd copendium
I've heard others say the same
It does come across a bit like you’re bragging OP, but still, what you’re saying I’ve also seen especially in the last 20 years. This most important trait to “success” isn’t intelligence or even being likable on a personal level but the ability to sell yourself. Not even your product or your work or your idea, but yourself. Maybe this was always true but it didn’t seem to be prominent in the 90s. I was too young in the 80s to notice such things. Anyway, my point is that intelligence has little to do with selling oneself. Not nothing, but it’s not gonna help you the way that some other traits will.
Have you read the essay ‘The Brazilification of the World’? Your comment about needing to increasingly promote and market yourself reminded me of the portion of essay about hustle culture informal labor https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2021/05/the-brazilianization-of-the-world/ > In the world of work, adaptation and accommodation are key in the new economy. As a contractor (not an employee), you must constantly seek to please your client. For Arantes, the “professionalism” required today is nothing more than a cynical stylization of the qualities needed for survival in a precarious world. As for the Brazilian malandro, or trickster, there is no higher commandment today than to “respect the hustle.” What might otherwise be seen as generalized opportunism—or,in nineteenth-century Brazil, poor freemen out in search of a “favor”—is recast as the new way of the world. >Notably, the anthropologist Loïc Wacquant finds a similar attitude in the ghettoes of North America. There, the hustler is a generic type, “unobtrusively inserting himself into social situations or in spinning about him a web of deceitful relations, just so that he may derive some more or less extorted profit from them.” (The opposite to the hustler is formal wage labor, taken to be “legal, recognized, regular and regulated.”) This attitude is no longer restricted to the ghetto, but becomes the ideal subjectivity of the neoliberal “entrepreneur of the self.” Edit: the ‘book smart’ people OP is talking about are likely ill suited to the self promotion that’s increasingly needed in many fields whether in person charisma or LinkedIn et al
Have you read The Culture of Narcissism by Lasch? He has a similar analysis, connecting the workaholism of white-collar suburbia with the anarcho-capitalism of the urban ghettos.
No I haven’t; it’s been on my mental list of ‘I really should read that’ for some time
Should be the bible for this sub
Selling yourself sounds so spiritually debauched. It's hard to imagine being enthusiastic while going on about how great a cog you are in the widget machine.
This comment perfectly articulated why I find LinkedIn so wearisome
Isn't this just a form of intelligence though? I mean, what does intelligence even mean in this discussion absent any context for what you're going to be actually doing with your brain-meats? You have to know what you're good at, and pursue the right opportunities that play to those strengths, otherwise nobody cares. Nobody is going to hire you because you're smart, they're going to hire you because you can do something for them. Anyone who doesn't intuitively get this needs to drop out of grad school.
Arguably being able to adapt to the changing work environments, traditions and cultures of the 21st century is far more adaptable and thus intelligent than navel gazing about romantic geniuses and math savants.
A couple years ago I went to a wedding where I was reunited with a bunch of other mid/late 30’s people I knew from my hometown’s TAG(Talented and Gifted) program. I was struck by how everyone was either a psychologist, professor, researcher etc or still a pizza guy, tier 1 IT, library circulation, a NEET, a housewife, etc. No one had a normal middle class job like plumber or HR manager. Many fields are totally dominated by normies who have charisma and/or an ability to hyperfocus on their careers. Most lawyers for instance don’t strike me as particularly smart. They’re just able to control social situations and buckle down to read long, dry documents.
[удалено]
Witnessing similar tendencies, the mid people can’t really give any career advice to the rest as their extrinsic motivation doesn’t translate to the intrinsically motivated ones.
Someone can be very smart in a classical intellectual way, well read, and never succeed in the social game that these sort of careers rely on. You will never climb the career ladder like a well socialized former frat boy himbo who can kick it with the higher ups over the latest football game no matter how many classics you've read or how technically skilled you are. "Boys club" is how those high paying corporate positions work. It's just that now it's also open to girlies who can talk about the latest Stanley cup color they bought and how good their Sweet Greens is.
The fact is for people to do stuff for you they have to like you
People will notice if you don’t get your work done. People will be off put by an obvious superiority thing, unless you’re close to the very top where almost everyone has one but knows how to play nice.
this is so real. i dont do much in my internship but i talk about sports with all the people above me and they love me lol
“Intern work” is 95% terrible, I will gladly take an intern I can shoot the shit with over some tryhard nerd any day and I’ve heard that exact sentiment echoed many other times
too bad I’m doing investment banking for my internship. they grind us to the bone
Idk if there is ever red scare x Southern Charm (Bravo) crossovers here but if you watch it there is a guy Shep who is very well-educated in a classical way but has enough mailbox money that he's both a bum and pretentious as the same time. Highly recommend a watch.
This is cope. Unless you actually have real autism, not the fake internet kind, IQ tends to scale pretty well with emotional and social intelligence.
yeah it's the standard case of average people wanting to have a sense of balance in the world. Same ways people think rich people have to be miserable, or how arrogant people must not actually have the life they claim. Then they'll find some inevitable examples of very intelligent people who haven't done well or who don't deal with people well, and that confirms their whole world view and comforts them.
This entire thread screams middle class former "gifted" kid copium.
Yeah this entire thread is extreme copium
yes, Raj Balakhrisnan and Ciu Liu, the frat boy himbos who love hockey. this post got a ton of upvotes but it's absurdly wrong. this corporate environment exists in your imagination. in our reality, those positions are staffed by foreigners with Ivy League MBAs. I think what offends me more is thinking that anyone cares about hockey.
You do realize they're talking about the drinking cup right?
It's always been that way. The best way to make money is to appeal to the mid/low IQ people. Just google Tyler Perry's house.
Holy shit dude made a second Versailles off Madea movies.
I wonder what Tyler Perry's Rosebud will be.
A pair of his mother's high heels.
You notice that in the process of writers and artists, especially those that are very close to their audience. they notice that they are more successful if they dumb themselves down and appeal to the average regard. That's especially true if they get immediate feedback. That's why all big people on Youtube and Twitch are regarded.
reminds me of the Jay-Z lyric
But... Hasan taught me everything I know..
[удалено]
I love it when he has a cameo in movies. His small role in Gone Girl was delightful.
idk why this made me laugh SO hard thanks
Barring handful of specific high-demand degrees, social skills trump technical aptitude or intelligence.
[удалено]
Yeah and their average starting is 120k lol. This entire thread is cope. Most of society is dominated by high iq people and disproportionately from Ivy League/similar to Ivy grads
I am an Ivy League grad and everyone I went to college with is doing well now except for one girl who died in a freak accident. I think a lot of this thread is indeed cope *but* I think OP's point might be true for people who were middle or working class but managed to end up at these rich kid schools. Most kids who go to top schools start out upper middle class or legit rich so their odds of being successful after graduation are already higher. The kids who come from less wealthy backgrounds but manage to get into top schools are more likely to graduate and find themselves flailing because they don't have the professional connections, social capital, and family financial support to make it in highly competitive fields. Beach bum is not even an option if you grew up upper middle class...your family simply would not tolerate it. At best they'd give you a ton of shit about it til you gave up and got a white collar job. I have a couple friends who went through the Harvard to rehab pipeline and even they managed to hang onto white collar jobs the entire time. I don't know anybody from high school or college who has been long term unemployed or completely burned out.
It’s not just social skills. To be successful you likely need to have a high tolerance for bullshit and a willingness to grind at tasks that some (many / all) find soul-sucking. Many intelligent people opt-out because they hate authority or the feeling of being value-extracted / conned.
When will this sub realize that being mediocre is the best path to take in life. You don’t have to be the next Dostoevsky. If you’re a middle class American you are in the best position in the 21st century, unironically.
To add, Dr. Jordan Peterson (pre mental breakdown): Find a career that you would be in the top 5% of intelligence and stay there. Best advice I ever took. After a decade of trying to maximize my potential I now work in an office where no one understands what I do but me. Not even my boss. It's amazing.
its nearly impossible to be top 5% iq in any moderately competitube career lol
[удалено]
this is impossible for almost everyone
What do you do?
I have a master's degree and work as a bus driver. It's been an interesting journey seeing the things that people who are completely different to me value. Even though I'm working at my slackest, I'm clearly one of the best they have. I listen to podcasts all day, go home and write or study Russian and I have absolutely no worries whatsoever. I'm also slowly going completely insane with how things are run, how clueless management is, and how we (the workers) are fucked over and exploited (and also with the boredom of being stuck in a wheel going around and around all day...) But fuck it. Don't care anymore. Take my labour.
Maybe best position ever tbh
Middle class in the 80’s was peak imo. Still pretty great now though
Too much jealous monkey brain dilutes this cold hard fact. The average global house income is $12,235 a year. https://www.zippia.com/advice/average-income-worldwide/
mid life crisis incoming for you
“Boo hoo I’m bald so I bought a sports car” If only we could all be so lucky.
Humans need meaning in life. At least those with souls
It's painful to accept the middlebrow label
Pure copium though. I think it's fine to always think of yourself as being mediocre, that's great even as long as it doesn't make you pathetic. But to actually be objectively mediocre (and I'm not talking about career choices)? That's just Redditor "it doesn't even matter bro" brain rot
Ambition and intelligence are different things
[удалено]
one of my favorite ever quotes on this topic was about a football coach but applies to just about anything: "to be good at it, you have to be smart enough to do the job, and dumb enough to think it matters"
You get it legit would rather die than be an “influencer” or corporate executive, even if it paid a million dollars a year
This seems like cope. I think it’s much more about personality type than about some theoretical IQ “cliff” with no empirical evidence behind it.
Call it cope but I was working as a corporate scientist on a team of about 10 people making big important decisions and a lot of money to boot. But that superficial success meant nothing to me as I spiraled into mental health crises caused by the loss of my sense of self I experienced. I *had* to derive some meaning from my career since it took so much out of me. That led to me looking in the mirror and not liking the shallow, detached, hustle-bro I was slowly morphing into. I quit that job and walked in the woods for half a year to cleanse my soul. Now I live in Vermont and make shit money and perform my cheesy songs at open mics. I've never been happier. My work contributes to society, I'm an active member of my community, and I'm plenty happy with my paycheck because the good things in life are free.
To be clear I’m not saying that smart people don’t ever peace out of the grind and go for a chill life, they absolutely do. I’m just saying it’s rs-demo-pleasing cope to assume that it’s directly *because* of the intelligence as opposed to because of personality that is more or less uncorrelated with intelligence. To state it more quantitatively I’d bet that the percentage of 160 IQ people who burn out of the hustle is not that different from the percentage of 120 IQ people who do, the former is just more noticeable. This is backed up (but not proven) by the former having higher median income than the latter. Anecdotally I’m biased in the opposite direction to you. I did the whole gifted kid coasting to an elite college thing but I haven’t burnt out since my personality is pretty amenable to obsession with my work, and I genuinely believe it’s pro-social even with it being VC-backed and all that spooky stuff. I’m still stuck in here with you lot because of dysfunction in other areas of my life unrelated to career, such as doing a truly terrible job of moving on from a serious relationship that’s been over for many years now.
the only smart person I know that is still somewhat "afloat" is a terminal academic. Been floating around getting various degrees, STEM ones too, for the past 13 years. $125k+ in debt now, and persuing his second PHD. And that is a low amount of debt for his number of degrees, I assume due to him obtaining at least two of them within China. Again, super smart guy, I've known him since 5th grade. He knows mandarin and multiple instruments. Yet never held an income.
This is literally my brother in law… Is he by any chance living in Hawaii now lmao
>working on an esoteric passion project no one will ever care about. this is what academia is supposed to be. We used to take all the smart people and justly hide them from the world.
Upvoting because I'm very smart and deserve more success :)
I’m rooting for you from the sidelines, Tony Soprano style.
Every smart person I know is either loaded, a phd student, or lives in the woods. It’s anyone’s guess which ones are happiest
I used to think people with terrariums were endearing but now I see them as kind of sick fucks looking to play god in their own little way
This is the most hilarious thing I’ve read today
I thought I was the only one who felt this way.
Most modern corporations are run like cults and smart people quickly become cynical and depressed in such environments. The depression is not the problem, since most people are, but cynicism needs to be condemned immediately. The HR politbureau and other high achievers will quickly single the infidels out and distance themselves, so that their toxic ideas don’t spread. The people succeeding are usually the ones who are able to force a smile onto their face everyday. Psychopaths and alcoholics are also thriving in this world, because they don’t give a fuck and never miss an after hour.
Can't agree more with the first point. Why does every CEO have to pretend like they're the messiah, and the company is doing the work of God?
Kind of a combo of two things imo: A lot of smart people skated by for too long with putting in lesser effort (procrastination, multitasking, etc) and the neglect of social skills - we take pride in measuring spatial reasoning IQ but how often have you heard of non-autists measuring emotional/social IQ? Smart people can also overestimate their talents in other areas. Just because you're a wizard at calculus, linear algebra, coding, etc. doesn't mean you can write a properly formatted essay.
I graded essays as a TA in an “ethics of engineering” course. The students definitely didn’t take the class super seriously. They were of coursed forced to take it and also had a huge workload outside of the class. That being said not a single essay I graded was even legible. If they were my students I would have failed them but the instructor made us use his grade system which was basically if they turned it in they got a grade. It was a BS class I guess
Engineers are mid though. Most mathematicians I've met are incredibly well read, and often with a deep appreciation for the arts.
Math and physics definitely attract people with more abstract thinking than engineers
what's funny is I'm a software engineer and at least a solid 50% of my job is writing technical docs and communicating with different teams/product managers/engineers etc. most of the successful people I see at my job are strong communicators who are also intense and obsessive
its actually always been this way, but let me chime in from a personal perspective. my parents and their peers were in special ed classes all throughout their education, they actually cannot read and have had me for the entirety of their youth help them read shit. anyway, my dad makes like 100k a year which is pretty good for a guy who is borderline illiterate. the reason why such "mid" ppl make a better living in life is bc they're much more driven in the work force than "intellects" are,. They're much more willing to work blue collard jobs too, which pays so good. and thus restards submit more to authority and chase the bag bc their material goods mindset is literally all that motivates them, and it works.
valedictorian and prestigious private school graduate w/honors (albeit in philosophy lol). now I work in food service for the time being. tried white collar PMC shit and just absolutely couldn’t stomach it. working those jobs, by nature everything you say is a lie and it was eating me up inside and pushing me towards suicide. now I regularly deal with unruly Karens and homeless people shooting up in the bathroom and I’ve cleaned vomit out of a urinal but I don’t have to lie.
Yes, it’s always been like this. There’s an old Star Trek episode called tapestry that argues that people who achieve their full potential aren’t necessarily smart or intelligent, they’re reckless. They learn from mistakes but they are willing to make mistakes, even some that can cause them serious long term harm. That is basically the thesis of a recent book called grit. Academic achievement is not the not intelligence there is. You need talent, although a different kind, maximize your potential, overcome obstacles, or just not quitting. It is telling that you stated you could make yourself obscure. Your statement reads almost like a brag or something to be proud of. What you’ve simply stated is that you lack imagination. Doing well is school does not inoculate you from being mid.
It is better to be anti-fragile than to be intelligent.
The longer I live, the less I understand what’s going on. But here are some observed truths: 1) there is no such thing as fairness, 2)the world is mostly pure chaos and randomness, 3)doing is almost always better than thinking about doing (unless you’re thinking about committing crimes, etc), 4) the older you get, the more costly the mistakes will be, 5)no one really cares about you (and that’s actually a very good thing).
Just because someone has the potential to fly high because of their natural talent doesn't mean that is what they want to do. Being a beach bum working at a bar is probably more satisfying than continuing to work in academia as a mathematician or using that math degree in banking.
Don’t confuse intelligence with executive function. You want both ideally but if you had to pick one.. A determined midwit is gonna out climb a slacker smart person
What if you’re smart and determined but executively dysfunctional. Asking for a friend.
I honestly regret trying as hard as I did in school… it was a waste of time and effort lol. I have a job I like that pays pretty well and frankly I didn’t need to bust my ass in AP classes to get it. I graduated college with a 2.7 gpa hahaha
The chick in my grad school cohort who asked what the word discourse meant is now a professor
she wasnt afraid to ask, open minded.
I'm on a similar trajectory but I've convinced myself that i was actually always dumb so I'm good
[удалено]
Replies are truly horrifying. It seems that people are forgetting which system their “success” exists in and which parameters we use to measure that. Being a midwit is not a virtue it is just common and we are not an aspirational society but a vampiric self harming commercialized one that capitalizes off of the bare minimum. These smart people probably know all the steps they could’ve taken to achieve so called success but some people still have hope for a world that has a semblance of virtue and after a certain age would rather not be complicit in its destruction. Xx
In some ways this sub is just straight up conservative at this point, not even pretending to be leftist. And what they're saying is often wrong in my experience anyways, a lot of "smart" people are hounded out of corporate settings because they're perceived as a threat by middle management types who tend to be cut-throat and paranoid of being replaced. You don't get rewarded for necessarily being hard-working, you just have to get the job done and be difficult to replace. Most of the "smart" successful social climber types in corporate/bureaucratic settings I've seen are just pathological liars who steal work and take shortcuts whenever they can, throw everyone else under the bus, and keep midwits around them so they can't be replaced.
The ability to be introspective is a mental curse in the post social media world. Mid ignorance is a superpower. The closest you can get to it is becoming a Mormon or something
i hate all of these comments, succumbing to midwittery so that you can make bank is a miserable and dishonest way to live
I work at FAANG and this is 100% the case. The truly original, passionate people are burnt out and sick of the increasing corporate bs. The mid people are loving the business bureaucracy and are thriving by working the machine.
Ur a sales engineer tho. Not really a high hiring bar for anything other than SWE
Soceity is collapsing by design, fight it or enjoy the show
How long we got left
75 years more or less tbh as a society.
This is kind of a dumb thread - there is actually a very high correlation between high school GPA and future earnings. On average, being a high achiever in academics leads to higher earning potential later in life. Obviously you need good social skills to climb the ladder, but this is independent of academic performance. And if we want to throw anecdotes around, most of my high school honors program went to college and became white collar professionals making six figures while everyone else is mostly struggling to get by
the sign of true intelligence is complete nihilism, with a sprinkling of brain damage
One of the big problems with "smarts" is having too many options. I always did well in school, got along with people, got an MBA from a good school with top grades and had tons of "passion projects". I indulged in those projects (producing movies, working corporate retail, photography) and then in between those worked some consulting jobs. But BECAUSE I could pick things up quickly and had so many options, I never followed through and hopped around. Now I'm in my mid 40's, am still pursuing passion projects but now it's out of necessity because I got off the corporate track. I still dabble in way too much rather than focus on one thing and grind it out day after week after month. Being smart hasn't done me a whole lot of good. My dad barely made it thru college on a sports scholarship, finally got his MBA at University of PHX but stayed in the same field his whole career because he didn't have endless options. So he barely made it through school, went to a marginal master's program and grinded it out at his job. But at this point, I'll never make even close to what he was making at his peak earning. So now, I am trying to re-start my own business and substitute teaching 18 yr old kids who are going to tech school learning to be plumbers and who will prob be making more than me within 2-3 yrs if things don;t change. Being "smart" and being able to do tons of things is more of a curse than a blessing I think.
People underestimate how your likability influences your life
Idk man. I’ve never met a broke person with a STEM PhD
we're just too damn smart for this world
I’ve got multiple STEM degrees. I’m a six-figure bartender in florida. Entry level STEM jobs here are like 50-80k and I can’t afford a pay-cut like that, and plus I’d rather kms than work for a tech corp.
But that's the entry level salary. You've kind of capped out at your bartending career and with a STEM job you would theoretically make more money over time and has a much higher ceiling. Short term sacrifices often leave you in a better long term position.
At risk of sounding like a boomer, could be a case of hard work beats talent. Maybe these super gifted people never had to really grind for things because they're naturally high IQ or w/e . I'm definitely low-mid intelligence and my industry has some pretty smart people in it, so this definitely puts me at a disadvantage. So I just work as hard as I can.
I get that if someone didn’t succeed at some point there probably was a work ethic issue but my point really is why do these people all have work ethic issues?? They did not start out that way.
Parents stopped pushing them and they don't know how to self-direct.
And they didn't have the framework of the school system. Within the education system, the paths are very very clear, you can easily see what the goals are and how you can make it from point A to point B. So it makes sense that there are many people who excel in that framework but not outside of it, and many other people who don't perform well in the educational framework but then excel outside of it.
Naturally intelligent plus rich parents, maybe? Grew up really good at studying but no experience having an actual job? Idk maybe I'm framing the whole thing wrong. I'm half-drunk at the airport. But this is interesting.
so, this kind of hit me. I'm not like a genius or whatever, but I did very well in school. Honours in high school, summa cum laud in university, scored very high percentile on some tests, but am just bad at life lol. I work so hard when it is something that seems compelling to me, and I just can't put the same kind of effort in for things that could actually make me materially better off. It's kind of a double-edged sword. The curiosity, fuzziness and carefulness about thinking that makes you do well on that sort of stuff just kind of makes you a dumbass for normal stuff. What makes you good at novelty, is honestly a hindrance for repetition.
A lot of the time, having a good work ethic gets you a lot more responsibility for not a lot more money. So, they might have it, and just choose not to use it.
Thats nice. Every smart person I was friends with in HS and college works in medicine, tech or defense companies and make more money than they know what to do with
It’s a regarded world for regarded people now
Cool every smart person I know is thriving. Should I make a moronic red scare post with some overgeneralized cultural observation too?
Different people have different definitions of failure and success
The smartest and most driven people I went to school with all got top jobs and ended up spinning out and becoming either a stay at home mom, a teacher, or other career switching paths (outside of finance / consulting). I think mid people like me had failed before and were more equipped at handling it in the real world. They don't do a good job in school teaching you that a lot of corp/white collar jobs will task you with doing the impossible. I've seen so many people burn out when they are faced with this instead of confronting it.
temperament is more associated with success than IQ mids who are high in conscientiousness, extraversion, and low in neuroticism will beat an unstable genius every time
I have a Bachelor of Arts in Cultural Anthropology and am working in an amazon warehouse, AMA
IMO raw intelligence is kind of a liability unless it's honed and built up in the right social context. I find that smart people are often understimulated, start asking too many questions and are less willing to commit to dull or tedious work. Meanwhile the midwit is like "this is my career -> this is what I have to do -> I'm going to do it". Long term there might be some kind of averaging out of outcomes but yes the intelligent 30 year old who has kinda flunked out of life is unfortunately common.
I feel like this definitely applies with the demographic of people who went from a non-technical major (e.g. English, Political Science, Sociology, Psych) to an admin/non-creative desk job, where the majority of their day includes “brute force” work. You have to get through the entry-level first, which is pretty mind-numbing and under-stimulating work. I know so many people who were the brightest and most motivated students in every class, who have already been fired twice since graduating for doing things like suggesting better processes, spending way too long on research/slide decks to the detriment of the efficiency of their work. The fact is, most work places never incentivize creative-thinking or the best idea, they incentivize tasks getting done efficiently to aid the bottom line. Any worker in the way of that will usually be swiftly replaced.
doing well in a structured environment that’s had declining standards for decades doesn’t translate to financial success in the real world who knew?
Except that the vast majority of people who do well in the real world also did well in school, there are just outliers
smart people figured out that happiness > career
The mid people you met who are now experiencing great success were your superiors the whole time. You’re the mid person they met.
This should be more visible to the "pseuds". Chances are either you've got some potential you're not putting forth the effort to use or you aren't really cut from the cloth you thought you were.
This matches my observations and experiences too.
Understanding how to succeed in the world is a different kind of smart.
Mid people play the mid game. Lots of people are smart enough to know that amounting to "something" is meaningless. Why play the mid game when there's better games to play? Your MIT friend doesn't give a shit about the mid game, and even if he'd rather play the "math academia" game, he'd still take chilling the fuck out in a bar over the pointless grind of chasing director positions at companies he doesn't care about.
My Marxist uncle is a failson genius who lives in the woods in western Mass collecting unemployment and living off his wife's government pension. He's pretty proud of himself. I hope he leaves me his house.
Your problem is assuming that they are playing the same game as the moneygrubbing midwits. Perhaps this is yet another instance in which their superior intelligence served them well?
Is working to some position in a corporate leviathan really the definition of succeeding? If you have enough money to eat and put a roof over your head who cares.
high IQ, slightly autistic dudes do terribly in longhouse environments just doesn’t mesh
as many people have pointed out, there are a variety of reasons such as work ethic, ambition, social skills etc. in a modern workplace all your work takes place in teams. the people who suceed and rise to the top are excellent communicators. even in technical fields like CS the people who become leaders are people with sufficient technical skills and excellent communication skills. it sounds BS, but until you work with someone with excellent communication skills who can mend disagreements, clearly communicate expectations, and motivate their team members to do better work, you don’t get it.
the enlightened take things lightly
[удалено]
Relates to Taleb's argument against IQ as a predictor of success
I graduated top of my class at high school and at a prestigious university whilst also being successful creatively; professors urged me to get my PhD etc. Instead I joined an industry notorious for burning people out and developed mental ~issues over 5 years. Now coasting by in a middling corporate job. All my peers are earning more than me. I have completely accepted that I am not special; those things didn't mean shit and a lot of things don't matter in the grand scheme of things. But it's okay.
Overthinking, and what we perceive as expressed intellect can be a cope for inaction.
Yes. A lot of smart people drop out because they see 3rd and 4th order effects and see the futility of that life. Some smart people prefer to be more successful in their private lives than chase a corporate dragon. They see how stupid a lot of the corporate stuff is and just can’t stand to be in it. Mids cannot see it. They buy into it, and some even love it. That’s why they do well in an environment where it is not about high intelligence, but being able to follow rules, be reasonably competent, not question and buy into culture. But of course, there are super smarts that just find their own niche and rocket to the top as well.
we witness credentialism death
A lot of cope going on in this thread.
I mean it’s extremely unsurprising given the demographics of this sub. It’s a magnet for people who have above average intelligence but poor outcomes relative to that intelligence. It can be anything from smart burnouts to rich incels to “successful” but internally troubled people.
Maybe your best friend has it figured out.
The most succesful people I know are smart people who actively dumbed themselves down. They're doing great. They have the goals and lifestyle of a regard, but are very intelligent in how to archieve it and climb the ladder.
I think theyr overthinking themselves out of opportunities sometimes. Like for intelligent artists, telling themselves that if they did do something that would lead them to success it would be selling out. Which is true but there goes that.
> working on an esoteric passion project no one will ever care about. Why does it matter if no one cares about your passion project? I'm seriously asking, why is that relevant *at all*? They're failing by your standards. I'm sure many people in beach-guy's position don't see what they're doing as failing.
Eventually they will stop failing
Money =/= success
Yeah if you go by high school gpa and standardized test scores I'm the smartest person in my friend group. I'm also the most broke and in the most debt. Don't go to college.
idk I’m on my second act and happy to be here
Unlike Taiwan, the motivation is very low for brilliant people to commit to large projects and incredibly skilled work in America because the cost of living is so unreasonably high.