Would you like to be cleverer?

[TheGreatIndoors]

Hello

I watch The Big Bang Theory and Young Sheldon and muse about whether my life would be better if I were super-clever.

Imagine being able to really and truly understand complex subjects eg physics and philosophy. Being inside your own head would be really interesting!

But your life is frustrating because most people don't understand you or your ideas or just talk crap basically, as far as you are concerned.

I suppose it must be like me living my life surrounded my monkeys rather than other humans. Presumably you would have to actively seek out a small pool of other super-intelligent humans. (Your colleagues at NASA or whatever)

In the programme of course life is harder for Sheldon as he has social difficulties.

Would you like to be cleverer?

Is there anyone who wishes they were LESS clever?!

Sometimes they say that ignorance is bliss after all! Maybe OVERthinking about concepts like the meaning of life/the universe makes one miserable?!

Nope, I'm clever enough. More ambition or drive, maybe. But I'm happy as I am tbh.

I don’t think knowing a lot about a couple of subjects means that you live inside your own head necessarily. There are plenty of less intelligent people trapped inside their own heads believing in chemtrails etc.
As the Dunning-Kruger hypothesis suggests, the more you know, the greater your awareness of what you don’t know. Achievement in a field is satisfying but I don’t think there’s a point where your brain really changes. Being dead wrong about something feels exactly the same as being right about it, after all.

No I don't. Intellectual ability has it's downsides.

Having your first existential crisis even before primary school. The constant questioning, intrusive thoughts, internal dialogue that never switches off. The low level bullying because you're just a bit different. The ability to see straight through people, know their intentions and fairly accurately predict the outcome of most situations is tedious in the extreme. Inevitably you end up introverted , even If you don't necessarily have a natural proclivity for it.

Exactly this. Apparently though a previous poster thinks I can just turn it down.

I guess so. I would like to be much better at maths and resent that I had a rubbish maths teacher at school. The problem I now have in my 40s is that I really struggle to retain information, so it doesn’t matter how much I read about something I usually forget it because of the brain fog.

I wouldn't like to be super clever like Sheldon and the others if i am honest. I reckon i am clever enough, what I do lack though is the ability to concentrate and focus on anything that doesn't interest me. Like a pp i would like a little more drive too.

I have a stupidly high IQ but I find it pretty meaningless tbh. My brain is exceptionally good at certain types of task, but I also have adhd, which means that I can struggle with stuff that other people might find really basic. I would love to have my brain without all of the obstacles that adhd puts in my way, but that doesn't seem to be an option. This leaves me feeling permanently frustrated by the perception that I only ever use a tiny fraction of my full capacity.

I certainly don't feel the need to only hang out with people who have similar IQs. A lot of my friends are very clever, to be sure, but I also have very dear friends who are not necessarily clever in an academic sense but have other strengths which I value. I certainly don't feel like I'm surrounded by monkeys!!! I'm a human being, first and foremost, and not some kind of alien brain.

Nope. I'm already clever. What I'd like is to have to ability to actually do with it.

I did well in school without ever having to put the work in. GCSE's and A-levels were a breeze.

And then University hit and I just floundered. Suddenly I needed to put the work in to understand stuff and succeed and I just didn't know how to do it, really struggled to ask for help. I ended up leaving Uni with a 3rd.

And for the last 20 years I've worked to below what I know what I could achieve, if I really had the ambition to do it.

Don't get me wrong, I'm happy, and I'm financially comfortable, I don't really have a desire to earn loads of money or scale the heights of my industry. But I do sometimes wonder what I'd have done with my life if I'd pushed myself more.

To be honest, that sounds more like a lack of confidence rather than a lack of intelligence.

I’m very clever (Oxford double first, three postgraduate degrees including a DPhil, and write prize-winning books), emotionally intelligent, pick up languages easily, and have an extremely good memory and wide general knowledge, but I’m always fascinated by different types of intelligence which are alien to mine. Like bodily intelligence — people who are astonishing dancers, or potters, or who ride beautifully, or build a beautiful, durable drystone wall. Or the kind of footballing intelligence that can visualise trajectories. Or chess intelligence fascinates me.

I'm clever enough. I understand things easily, I have good problem-solving skills and a good memory.
What I lack is good judgement. In particular, I am an astoundingly poor judge of character.

Very Intelligent, charismatic people with no moral compass are the most dangerous. Happily, there doesn't seem to be too many of them

Many of those end up the subject of true crime cases. And perhaps we don't hear about too many of the really clever, criminally successful ones because they've learned how to blend in and not get caught.

I'm plenty clever, but I do wish I could just switch my brain off sometimes. Also, my cleverness sadly doesn't extend to certain things. For example, I am very, very bad at anything spatial and I have to go somewhere about 30 times before I can remember the way!

I think those are all symptoms of other issues rather than inevitable consequences of high IQ to be honest.

Ha, me too!!! It's like that bit of my brain is just completely missing!

I think that being perceived by others as clever makes one's failures more embarrassing, as people have higher expectations.

I think they're also more likely to openly judge a clever person for doing something stupid, as they don't feel they're punching down if they feel the person generally has the mental capacity to behave in a less stupid way.

I'm autistic and have ADHD (both late-diagnosed) but am quite accomplished in many ways (academically, career-wise, etc), so it makes it even more embarrassing when I can't do basic human things like telling left from right or keeping on top of admin.

I am highly intelligent though. I have always put those symptoms down to that.

You look perfectly literate from where I'm sitting if that helps. And the fact you use MN for pleasure is great. My brother really struggled with reading so point blank refused to read books.

I am in theory smart (I have a law degree) but I absolutely failed MISERABLY the one time I went to an Escape Room!

It's a shame if that has stopped you seeking help for them, because not all or perhaps even most highly intelligent people experience this kind of suffering.

Good supplementary question. Do you wish you were a psychopath? You'd achieve lots but never experience real love. Or true sadness I suppose.

I think it's harder for an intelligent woman to find a suitable partner.

I have zero in common with a man who is essentially a knuckle-dragger.

I would like a better memory and to organise my thinking more clearly.

As for being super clever, I don't know if I'd like that.

At the risk of sounding arrogant, I'm fairly accomplished academically. I have a Master's degree in computer science, and I'm a senior software developer now. I also have an undergrad degree in a creative subject. In my twenties I had a bit of success in one area of creative writing (I mean, not enough to make a full-time living, but some professional work). I was always that girl with the top marks in exams, best grades in the class, etc.

However, in more "real-life" stuff I'm an absolute idiot. I can't drive because I get too distracted to be safe on the road. I have the navigational skills of a drunk housefly. I say weird inappropriate shit all the time, I lose things all the time, I'm messy, I'm clumsy. I once broke my foot whilst on my own in an empty room.

So I think that what I'm saying is I'm fine academically but I would LOVE more common sense and to have a better grasp of real-world / spatial skills that seem to come so naturally to many other people.

(why yes I AM waiting on an ADHD assessment, thank you for asking).

I have a high IQ but am dyslexic which means I problem solve way above my academic weight but have a very different way of thinking, it puts people off. It makes it really hard to fit in unless I keep my thoughts to myself and hide who I am. So if I wanted to be academically cleverer I'd probably want to ditch the dyslexia first but then I wouldn't have met a handful of really interesting people either if I didn't think in the way I do. So no, I don't want to change that.

I also find it hard to meet like minded men, I'm very attracted to intelligence of any kind. I'm not Sheldon Cooper type intelligent at all of course that's very rare and he would drive me nuts with his personality. Young Sheldon is a difficult watch for me though, I started to think the writers knew of my childhood at one stage in the early seasons, so many of the same and similar situations and reasons why I did things, it was worrying.

There are lots of different intelligences out there, musical, emotional, academic, etc. Most people have a gift in something like this and soft skills like emotional intelligence is so very undervalued in our society. I'd opt to be better at soft skills and music, I would love to be good at those things.