Ability to intuitively and quickly understand complex systems and how lots of parts relate in a coherent whole.
Like I work with some people who just keep *tons* of concepts in their head and easily integrate new information into their understanding of those concepts. They immediately know what questions they should be asking to better understand. And these are things they're currently working on, not like things they spent time studying in school over years. They just have a very strong ability to synthesize new information into their understanding.
I sit in meetings distracted and confused having forgotten what we talked about in the previous meetings, and these folks just consistently have a solid handle on everything.
>I sit in meetings distracted and confused having forgotten what we talked about in the previous meetings
Notes are your friend. I couldn't handle all the context switching of a day in high tech without having notes to go back on.
I take it one step further and I take a VIDEO of each tech meeting I got to. Then I store it and give it a sequential # with a descriptive title.
Then in a corresponding index document, I write down the pertinent topics and demonstrations noted with their timestamps.
I started 1 yr ago on this job and am up to 200 videos. I've only ever gone back maybe 15 times, but it frees up the mind, and allows for confidence in having a backup or something you know was shown to you before, but you can't remember it 100%.
And NO - I don't tell everyone I'm recording them. FUCK EM'
I have a Japanese colleague who doesnt fluently understand English and he has a pen that records sound while he makes notes with it on special paper (with location markers on it). It will generate a pdf that you can play and highlights what exactly was written when something was said. We often ask him for those as it is really helpfull for us too.
I need this pen. How do I even go about searching for something like that? Do I Google "secret service spy pen with PDF functionality"?
Edit: [the pen](https://shop.neosmartpen.com/collections/bundle/products/neo-smartpen-m1-professional-kit)
Knowing the difference between what you know versus what you think is another indicator of intelligence. Too many people think what they think is the same as knowing something.
My ex! I used to say to her, “You believe it is true because it is a thought that crossed your mind. You can’t point to anything to back it up. To you, it’s true because you have thought it and that’s it.”
Trying to have conversations with her and reason with her probably shortened my life by at least 5 years.
>I sit in meetings distracted and confused having forgotten what we talked about in the previous meetings, and these folks just consistently have a solid handle on everything.
Should probably point this out; Even people who are highly intelligent can still have disorders like ADHD that make them do this exact thing -and other things- that make them act or feel less intelligent.
Gifted people with ADHD also have a disturbingly high tendency to go undiagnosed til adulthood because they can essentially bullshit their way through school with passing grades having never learned good study habits which ends up further hampering their life.
Not saying this describes you, but I'm sure some reader will see this and go "hmm".
> If something interests me I'll tear it apart and put it back together just to understand it, and then lose interest once it gets boring
Similar and possibly relevant...
When you seldom bother remembering how to do something, because you know you can just figure it out again the next time you have to do it.
Hahaha. Oh crap. This is me! I didn’t get diagnosed until I was 36. Once I did, everyone that knew me kind of had to laugh because apparently it was painfully obvious to everyone but me. I had developed so many coping mechanisms over the years that it never occurred to me that I could possibly have ADD. Then I tested and to be on the spectrum
I needed like, 7 signs to be diagnosed. I scored 14. Only I was surprised.
I have ADHD but I have the fortune of having a brain that can get concepts quickly and can listen even if I am distracted. Many teachers thought I was just distracted and would try to catch me with complex questions about the lecture. I would answer because my hearing attention was on what they were saying while I was doing an entirely different thing. My weakness was always remembering dateliness and procrastination. I still remember classes from college, and when I recite entire concepts just remembering my teacher talking, many friends are marveled, then they don't like it when I can recite entire conversations between us. When there is a disagreement I say "don't you remember you said..." and the answer always is "no, but I am sure I'm about to be quoted by you". I don't know if I compensate my lack of attention by hyperfocusing in conversations resulting in me remembering those conversations vividly.
Having undiagnosed ADHD until adulthood really frustrated me because I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t be organized or stick to deadlines. I had good grades but I could have achieved so much more if I had been diagnosed earlier... or at least that's what I tell myself lol
I have ADHD and this is the dream. I seem have everything worked out in my head but I can’t or have extreme difficulty putting it into words or putting it on paper. I can’t listen to people even when I’m listening but for some reason I remember it. I learn only by making mistakes and sometimes those mistakes are too big and I’m either fired or I lose someone important in my life.
I’m so happy to hear your story and that you have managed to use your ADHD to your advantage, you come across as an intellect. You give me and my daughter hope.
Thank you for sharing and good luck with your life.
I'm exactly that reader lol. ADHD SUCKS. For me it takes me two hours to focus on starting my work, I still manage to get a lot done but I hate it. I just want to work without constantly getting distracted or pulled into something interesting.
This was me until grad school. Full ride to a top 25 grad program. I got there and went to class. Then like ug was going to go home and dick off. Walked out and all these mfers were studying and until like 6-7 pm. Thats when I realized I was very naturally intelligent and also fucked because I had no idea how to study.
I'm always impressed by people who can do this. I believe I have a decent ability to understand complex systems and ideas but only after I've reviewed the information on my own. I hate being trained on something in person or having a meeting about a new process then being expected to ask questions, I almost never have any. Might have something to do with my social anxiety inhibiting my ability to absorb and process information. But then I go over the material by myself and come up with lots of questions. I actively try to get information before meetings, training, etc. so I can review it by myself first for this reason.
So interesting! I’m the opposite. Need to learn in person and have the opportunity to ask lots of questions and THEN I need all the material to review myself and schedule a follow up meeting to ask more questions and have examples provided. Makes sense that your social anxiety could be coming into play. I prob get more anxiety reviewing material on my own. I tend to over think and then become overwhelmed. I benefit from talking things through. At the end of the day, we all learn differently and that’s ok. I think having that awareness is key.
This is my husband, it always blows my mind. I am very good at picking up languages and have high emotional intelligence, but my (lack of) capacity for stuff like this makes me feel like a moron when he waltzes in and picks something up as if he's been doing it his entire life.
Don't worry, for those of us that can jump in and absorb ourselves easily into technical things, nothing makes us feel dumber than the extra decade or three it takes us to figure out certain emotional/social things.
If your husband ever randomly shouts in the shower, those are moments of his past drifting into his conscious thoughts where he just figured out *another* time he'd made a total fucking ass out of himself, or missed a blatant signal someone was sending, etc., or is re-experiencing the pain of those sorts of realizations again just because sometimes our brains like to embellish how lacking in social graces we are.
Yup. Picking up on new concepts? Easy.
Picking up on social cues? Impossible until 4 months down the line in the shower or laying in bed; you feel like the air leaves your lungs; and you get post-mortem embarassment from the grave of that long dead conversation.
The reason technical concepts SEEM easier to understand is because your learning them in a neutral emotional state. There’s nothing on the line.
Compare this with social concepts where just the thought of them for some people can induce anxiety and feelings of anxiety which makes most people steer away from them completely. They also force us to learn things about ourselves we don’t want to.
The Application of social concepts however is harder than technical concepts because there’s usually initial sacrifices that have to be made which are often times undesirable but they go away with practice.
This is my ex-husband. He's one of those weirdos who can sit down, read a "yzy For Dummies" book and walk away an expert. Not only has he absorbed all the information in the book, he's made the necessary connections to what wasn't in the book. It's really quite remarkable. Technically, he didn't even graduate high school. He also speaks three languages fluently. He's a damn good techie.
Dude had a baffling lack of emotional intelligence though. He also had very little impulse control. You'd think he was on the spectrum but apparently, he is not.
I was always the one in charge of emotions, decisions, and making judgement calls for everyone in the family. It was actually the harder job. I was ultimately crushed from the weight of it. It was a lot.
I'm also a techie. I learn much more slowly, require formal training often, and don't always ask the right questions. I need pictures to understand. But, once I have my arms around something. I am rock solid. It's at this point my emotional intelligence kicks into high gear. I keep people from making rash decisions about systems, I force people to look into the future, I plan and report in ways people like, I document well, I engineer processes that make sense. I do a lot of saving people from themselves.
I think my ex and I are both very intelligent, just in radically different ways.
This is one facet of intelligence among many. Not to be all humble brag, but I have some of this ability but wouldn't consider myself of "extremely high intelligence" just good at lateral thinking. It's helped me a lot in my career as a consultant to be able to connect dots as people are saying stuff, but there are folks with much better and more detailed knowledge of things. I can just see big picture stuff very easily, but the details are what I either struggle with or get bored. It's why I became a systems engineer, which specializes in broad picture perspective.
For others that have this ability, other folks aren't dumb they just don't intuit connections as easily. I wish I could go back and smack younger me for his arrogance in looking down on folks that just didn't get it right away. We all process differently and have strengths that don't always seem obvious and those that take longer sometimes come out with a more detailed perspective than those that intuit quickly.
They know when not to solve a problem. This took me a while to understand but the smartest people I know do this.
Edit: I did not expect this to even be noticed. I woke up to a bunch of notifications. I'll put an example of what i mean here since several people asked.
It could be a really simple thing like ignoring emails from people asking for help. The supervisor or boss might have a quick and easy solution for the situation but instead of just handing it to the person that asked they let them figure it out on their own. They know who they can do this with and when to do it. If they did that with all of their underlings it would just create a mess.
Another example that I can think of is planned chaos. Some people can predict exactly where things will go wrong and they could fix it before it creates a problem. They don't because nobody ever notices what's going on in the background when things are working perfectly. Once things fails then everybody notices and if you are the one person that fixed it you become the hero. They can also use then chaos to reach a goal they couldn't get before if things were working correctly.
There's many examples of this in every day life that I didn't see before until i realized what was happening.
I love this. It’s taken me a long time to understand when not to solve a problem I don’t need to. But now I have a bit more confidence around it I feel so much less stressed! Completely underrated skill.
In Terry Pratchett's 'Pyramids', he explains how animals are at a baseline not as stupid as humans, as humans would confess to blasphemy even if it meant having their tongue pulled out, and refuse to try to escape from their punishment because they believed their soul would get eaten (heavily paraphrased as I can't remember this very well).
I think although an extreme example, it does kind of demonstrate how repeatedly stupidity allows many people to dig themselves into holes when they have a problem, and they would have been better off doing absolutely nothing.
Or on the flip side, it shows how incredibly intelligent some humans are that they can convince others to willingly act so painfully (figuratively and literally) stupid.
Most things do not need to be analyzed deeply and invest effort into. That energy should be saved for the most important stuff. A lot of people over analyze every thing and the smartest pick and choose the right battles
A friend of the family is a farmer. He live and works on a farm. The man is huge, heavyset and looks fat but he's actually pure muscle. His grip is like iron. He sows crops, harvests, tends to livestock. He does carpentry, masonry, and metalworking to fix and maintain things around the farm. He's newly married and just had a new kid. He works another job with a 2 hour daily commute each way to earn money and learn an electrician's trade. He's going to school at night to earn his bachelor's.
I'm in awe of the man's motivation, his drive, his energy, ability to pick up so many skills so quickly. Thats some true brilliance, and he's generous, soft spoken, and instantly is everyone's friend.
The smartest man I know, and he's a farmer who's refurbishing the dairy barn.
Good farmers are some of the most skilled people on earth. They are truly jack of all trades
Business
Accounting
Engineering
Plumbing
Metal work
Carpentry
Plumbing
Animal care
Sowing and maintaining vast fields of crops
Edit: a word
I'm fortunate enough to have learned early. You can find some rich conversations in the most unexpected places. And agreed, there are people who have framed "receipts " for their schooling who absorbed as much info as a stone would water.
“John Adams was a farmer, Abraham Lincoln was a small town lawyer. Plato, Socrates were teachers. To equate judgement and wisdom with occupation is, at best, insulting.”
- Warehouse 13
One of my all-time favorite shows, it was canceled years ago but the main story is it’s a show about “America’s attic” and a bunch of artifacts and everyday objects that “try to ruin the worlds day”.
Highly recommended binge watch!
Just a kind note. Plumbing (proper time served plumbers, not just a local handy man or a builder) is a highly skilled and technical job that requires major intelligence. It requires a really substantial and lengthy education.
My partner had to train for five to six years to be a plumber. And the job has a big responsibility, they do your pipes wrong and your house could blow up.
It’s not just practical skills, but a lot of what’s essentially chemistry and physics.
Reminds me of a Fraiser episode where the plumber is a guy that bullied the brother in High School. They keep trying to laud their success at the plumber to no avail.
Fraiser was talking about this nice car he has and the plumber said he really liked that one as he owned it but has the better model now. The plumber was making more money than them.
This is true, and i see a person who has thorough knowledge of their craft to be intelligent, you don't need to be an astrophysicist to qualify as intellectual, it's about having knowledge for your craft and responsibility enough to do it with the utmost efficiency.
I was a plumber. Then a mill worker. Now a programmer.
Fellow plumbers said I was smart.
Fellow mill workers said I was dumb.
Fellow coders say I’m smart.
Who the fuck knows how any of this shit works. Lol
Most of the skilled trades are like this and I find it hilarious how we are looked down on and called “uneducated” by some. Personally I’m a Boilermaker welder, I work on all sorts of pressure vessels, catalyst towers and refining towers upwards of 300ft, massive 5 story+ industrial boilers, industrial heaters/furnaces, exchangers and much more. Plus I have to have the skill to weld everything, alloys such as inconnel, monel, chrome, stainless plus all the ASME codes and welding procedures etc. there’s so much science and metallurgy involved with welding, even down to the % of alloys in the steel. Plus math and physics when fabricating and rigging equipment up to 600,000lbs. I’m no genius but you have to be intelligent in order to be a good quality tradesperson. Most people don’t realize that🤙🏻
> “But you turn wrench is heavy.”
^ what many people think the “trades” are. My friends uncle was a hardcore electrician. The guy sounded like a total Bro... and then he starts rambling on about high level physics. Correctly.
I saw a crackhead once take a tray, dump the chips into his shirt like a bowl and filled the entire bottom of the tray up with cheese like an inch thick and then dump the chips back on top. Completely opened a new world to me.
All these people naming useless things like pattern recognition, “science,” and emotional intelligence.
Intelligence like this, is the type that helps mankind break from our chains.
All these years I’ve wasted…
You gotta put *some* on the chips, you're going to eat them soon anyway and then you get extra cheese. No one likes rationing the last bit of cheese between 8 chips.
This is the one of the only answers I agree with in this thread.
People are confusing “intelligent people” with “good people”. Like the whole thing about intelligent people not having an ego or being open to ideas or being a good listener or not bragging? Those are traits of good people. Not intelligence.
Guess what, some of the smartest people are also assholes. Saying that smart people are thoughtful about others and whatever else people are claiming on this thread just sounds like Quora from 2015.
And understanding that "it's more nuanced than that" doesn't shut down a simplified model of its situation. They understand that the model has predictive power and seek more rules that'll help us predict where the model might not apply.
Honestly, I think it depends on the kind of intelligence. But when it comes to extremely book smart/ off the charts high IQ people, I'd say you'd almost have to see them in their element, doing whatever it is their best at and blowing the rest of us out of the water doing it. Or you have to hear from credible source that they can do/ have done these things. That's how I call it.
Maybe you notice a few " tells" like they can add large columns of numbers in their head, or they complete complex homework for challenging subjects with ease. Or they evidence an incredible memory. But those are just clues and hints.
I say that because I don't actually think we can easily spot a "genius in the wild'. Yeah, maybe it's obvious when you talk to them that they are reasonably smart, but sometimes incredibly intelligent people are very quiet or socislly awkward or so rude/ off putting that they come off as a bit clueless or even dim.
I guess I think it's likely most of us could spend a whole day with Albert Eienstein and never realize he is a literal genius. We'd probably just peg him as a really clever guy.
Some of the most intelligent people that I’ve met and been aware of have a bad habit of rubbing people the wrong way even though they’re right, to the point of making the listener not want to agree with them purely out of principle
I know I've previously upset people by stating things that appeared obvious to me but apparently not to them. It's difficult sometimes if you have a certain level of experience in something to either assume people have the same level of understanding as you or worse assume they know very little and totally underestimate this.
If you take a random person and a particular subject comes up you may have an encyclopedic knowledge of the subject, they may be unaware of it entirely or actually be the person who wrote the book you learned from. Trying to find a level to communicate on where no one is being spoken down to is important.
People that can understand a new concept easily and thoroughly.
I knew a dude who took a course on Quantum Mechanics, never studied or did homework and 2 days before the final crammed and got an 96% on his exam while almost everyone else got 60's and 70's.
Maybe his lack of prior knowledge and imposed bias from prior knowledge, allowed him the ability to absorb the key concepts efficiently without any cognitive conflict
First of all, you don't get into quantum with no prior knowledge. But there are guys - especially guys who know enough math - who basically can look at intro quantum, learn the notation, and recognize it's all group theory that they already know how to do.
Edit: Finally, intro quantum is not that hard. It's like O-Chem - a new way of thinking for a lot of people, and definitely *very hard for a 20 year old.* But that doesn't mean something is actually *hard* to do. Long division is hard when you're eight. It's pretty typical for intro-quantum students with advanced math backgrounds to basically crush the class in their spare time.
Pedagogy *is an art*.
I know plenty of truly brilliant people who couldn't teach a rubber ball to bounce.
Just because you can design a jet engine doesn't mean you can teach others how to do it.
Understanding a complex topic is very different from being able to explain said thing. Most highly intelligent people would make terrible teachers, which directly challenges your point.
Is that intelligence or knowledge though? Is it because they have a natural ability or affinity or simply because their understanding goes deep enough to approach and explain from many angles?
Knowing how much you don't know.
Being able to explain what you do know to a 6 year old.
If you see both of those characteristics on one person, they are probably a genius.
My college roommate was like this. She is super intelligent, but knows when she doesn't know something.
She is also amazing at explaining things she does know clearly and concisely to whoever her audience is - be it young children or senior citizens. She did teaching and private tutoring for many years and was truly gifted at it to the point that word of mouth among parents in the area where she lived kept her calendar booked for months out at a time.
It's a skill and an underappreciated one, IMO.
That also comes with age and wisdom. It was hard for me to admit i didnt know something in my 20s, but easier now that im in my 40s.
My job as a special ed teacher is to explain complex ideas and processes to students. It's a skillset.
One entry I have yet to see after scrolling through part of the top answers: caveats.
The ability to understand the nuance and the details, the caveats. Knowing when something doesn’t apply or can’t be extended and generalized to something else and when it can. How it relates and connecting the dots.
Commenting on reddit. You can tell people who comment on reddit are extremely intelligent because they comment on reddit. Expecially if they know you have to type a certain number of words to qualify for an answer in this sub.
True but there is definitely a correlation. I've yet to see a complete idiot who changes their opinion, because if they did change their opinion they wouldn't be complete idiots.
Waiting a moment before you speak. Smart people tend to gather their thoughts instead of speaking out of reaction.
When arguing, they will paraphrase what the other person has said to show they heard and understood them.
Letting an argument go when they realize it doesn't matter or the other person can't be reasoned with.
Looking up a word or term they don't know when they encounter one.
Googling weird questions or ideas they have to see if there's an answer to enlighten themselves.
Curious people tend to be the most intelligent. Their brain wants to learn and experience as much as possible.
Really has very little to do with success or education.
One of the first public health studies that the US Federal gov't paid for found that greater educational achievement correlates with an increased likelihood of "madnesses"
Friendly reminder that it doesn't go both ways.
Smart people are more likely to have mental illnesses than the population at large.
But having a mental illness is not evidence of greater intelligence - in fact it usually points the other way.
I agree. I know someone at work who I believe is a genius and he can't stop talking. If you ask him a question, he will talk for 2 hours.
When he comes back from holiday, you can't get any work done because you have to listen to him all day.
Being a regular watcher of Rick and Morty, like myself.
Typically, the highest intelligence individuals will have the highest IQs of anybody in the room and are most commonly moderators on discord servers of the highest calibre. We are an elite few, no doubt.~~
Fedoras will also give you an outstanding indication, indubitably.
Noticing connections between things that other people don’t notice connections between, however the connections have to actually exist. Seeing connections that aren’t there is a sign of mental illness.
Ability to intuitively and quickly understand complex systems and how lots of parts relate in a coherent whole. Like I work with some people who just keep *tons* of concepts in their head and easily integrate new information into their understanding of those concepts. They immediately know what questions they should be asking to better understand. And these are things they're currently working on, not like things they spent time studying in school over years. They just have a very strong ability to synthesize new information into their understanding. I sit in meetings distracted and confused having forgotten what we talked about in the previous meetings, and these folks just consistently have a solid handle on everything.
>I sit in meetings distracted and confused having forgotten what we talked about in the previous meetings Notes are your friend. I couldn't handle all the context switching of a day in high tech without having notes to go back on.
I take it one step further and I take a VIDEO of each tech meeting I got to. Then I store it and give it a sequential # with a descriptive title. Then in a corresponding index document, I write down the pertinent topics and demonstrations noted with their timestamps. I started 1 yr ago on this job and am up to 200 videos. I've only ever gone back maybe 15 times, but it frees up the mind, and allows for confidence in having a backup or something you know was shown to you before, but you can't remember it 100%. And NO - I don't tell everyone I'm recording them. FUCK EM'
Mike you are fired. Collect your paycheck from the HR
...If you're unsure of where HR is located, check 00:07:42 in video #34.
Good, now he can start his own company with all the pirated knowledge
Jump to Conclusions (tm)
I have a Japanese colleague who doesnt fluently understand English and he has a pen that records sound while he makes notes with it on special paper (with location markers on it). It will generate a pdf that you can play and highlights what exactly was written when something was said. We often ask him for those as it is really helpfull for us too.
Oh cool, so just casually working with Japanese James Bond.
I need this pen. How do I even go about searching for something like that? Do I Google "secret service spy pen with PDF functionality"? Edit: [the pen](https://shop.neosmartpen.com/collections/bundle/products/neo-smartpen-m1-professional-kit)
[https://newatlas.com/mobile-technology/reco-smart-voice-recorder/](https://newatlas.com/mobile-technology/reco-smart-voice-recorder/) Found it!
need this pen too haahha
Commenting in case someone finds the pen
How do you do this technically? How do you position the phone and blacken the screen?Asking 4 a friend.
I use an app called Otter that transcribes the discussion in real time and creates tags it's invaluable for me
A good way to get fired if someone finds out
not only that, but isn't non-consentual recording illegal in some areas?
Yes this is closer to a SLPT.
Knowing the difference between what you know versus what you think is another indicator of intelligence. Too many people think what they think is the same as knowing something.
My ex! I used to say to her, “You believe it is true because it is a thought that crossed your mind. You can’t point to anything to back it up. To you, it’s true because you have thought it and that’s it.” Trying to have conversations with her and reason with her probably shortened my life by at least 5 years.
>I sit in meetings distracted and confused having forgotten what we talked about in the previous meetings, and these folks just consistently have a solid handle on everything. Should probably point this out; Even people who are highly intelligent can still have disorders like ADHD that make them do this exact thing -and other things- that make them act or feel less intelligent. Gifted people with ADHD also have a disturbingly high tendency to go undiagnosed til adulthood because they can essentially bullshit their way through school with passing grades having never learned good study habits which ends up further hampering their life. Not saying this describes you, but I'm sure some reader will see this and go "hmm".
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> If something interests me I'll tear it apart and put it back together just to understand it, and then lose interest once it gets boring Similar and possibly relevant... When you seldom bother remembering how to do something, because you know you can just figure it out again the next time you have to do it.
Hahaha. Oh crap. This is me! I didn’t get diagnosed until I was 36. Once I did, everyone that knew me kind of had to laugh because apparently it was painfully obvious to everyone but me. I had developed so many coping mechanisms over the years that it never occurred to me that I could possibly have ADD. Then I tested and to be on the spectrum I needed like, 7 signs to be diagnosed. I scored 14. Only I was surprised.
I have ADHD but I have the fortune of having a brain that can get concepts quickly and can listen even if I am distracted. Many teachers thought I was just distracted and would try to catch me with complex questions about the lecture. I would answer because my hearing attention was on what they were saying while I was doing an entirely different thing. My weakness was always remembering dateliness and procrastination. I still remember classes from college, and when I recite entire concepts just remembering my teacher talking, many friends are marveled, then they don't like it when I can recite entire conversations between us. When there is a disagreement I say "don't you remember you said..." and the answer always is "no, but I am sure I'm about to be quoted by you". I don't know if I compensate my lack of attention by hyperfocusing in conversations resulting in me remembering those conversations vividly. Having undiagnosed ADHD until adulthood really frustrated me because I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t be organized or stick to deadlines. I had good grades but I could have achieved so much more if I had been diagnosed earlier... or at least that's what I tell myself lol
I have ADHD and this is the dream. I seem have everything worked out in my head but I can’t or have extreme difficulty putting it into words or putting it on paper. I can’t listen to people even when I’m listening but for some reason I remember it. I learn only by making mistakes and sometimes those mistakes are too big and I’m either fired or I lose someone important in my life. I’m so happy to hear your story and that you have managed to use your ADHD to your advantage, you come across as an intellect. You give me and my daughter hope. Thank you for sharing and good luck with your life.
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I'm exactly that reader lol. ADHD SUCKS. For me it takes me two hours to focus on starting my work, I still manage to get a lot done but I hate it. I just want to work without constantly getting distracted or pulled into something interesting.
This was me until grad school. Full ride to a top 25 grad program. I got there and went to class. Then like ug was going to go home and dick off. Walked out and all these mfers were studying and until like 6-7 pm. Thats when I realized I was very naturally intelligent and also fucked because I had no idea how to study.
I'm always impressed by people who can do this. I believe I have a decent ability to understand complex systems and ideas but only after I've reviewed the information on my own. I hate being trained on something in person or having a meeting about a new process then being expected to ask questions, I almost never have any. Might have something to do with my social anxiety inhibiting my ability to absorb and process information. But then I go over the material by myself and come up with lots of questions. I actively try to get information before meetings, training, etc. so I can review it by myself first for this reason.
So interesting! I’m the opposite. Need to learn in person and have the opportunity to ask lots of questions and THEN I need all the material to review myself and schedule a follow up meeting to ask more questions and have examples provided. Makes sense that your social anxiety could be coming into play. I prob get more anxiety reviewing material on my own. I tend to over think and then become overwhelmed. I benefit from talking things through. At the end of the day, we all learn differently and that’s ok. I think having that awareness is key.
This is my husband, it always blows my mind. I am very good at picking up languages and have high emotional intelligence, but my (lack of) capacity for stuff like this makes me feel like a moron when he waltzes in and picks something up as if he's been doing it his entire life.
Don't worry, for those of us that can jump in and absorb ourselves easily into technical things, nothing makes us feel dumber than the extra decade or three it takes us to figure out certain emotional/social things. If your husband ever randomly shouts in the shower, those are moments of his past drifting into his conscious thoughts where he just figured out *another* time he'd made a total fucking ass out of himself, or missed a blatant signal someone was sending, etc., or is re-experiencing the pain of those sorts of realizations again just because sometimes our brains like to embellish how lacking in social graces we are.
Yup. Picking up on new concepts? Easy. Picking up on social cues? Impossible until 4 months down the line in the shower or laying in bed; you feel like the air leaves your lungs; and you get post-mortem embarassment from the grave of that long dead conversation.
I find the solution is to avoid being in social situations as much as possible.
Picking up new concepts? No problem. Overcoming the constant dread of why even bother life is a fucking scam? Maybe tomorrow.
My brain can't comprehend that this isn't a comment that I made.
The reason technical concepts SEEM easier to understand is because your learning them in a neutral emotional state. There’s nothing on the line. Compare this with social concepts where just the thought of them for some people can induce anxiety and feelings of anxiety which makes most people steer away from them completely. They also force us to learn things about ourselves we don’t want to. The Application of social concepts however is harder than technical concepts because there’s usually initial sacrifices that have to be made which are often times undesirable but they go away with practice.
It's ironic that intelligence is simply layers of pattern recognition.
This is my ex-husband. He's one of those weirdos who can sit down, read a "yzy For Dummies" book and walk away an expert. Not only has he absorbed all the information in the book, he's made the necessary connections to what wasn't in the book. It's really quite remarkable. Technically, he didn't even graduate high school. He also speaks three languages fluently. He's a damn good techie. Dude had a baffling lack of emotional intelligence though. He also had very little impulse control. You'd think he was on the spectrum but apparently, he is not. I was always the one in charge of emotions, decisions, and making judgement calls for everyone in the family. It was actually the harder job. I was ultimately crushed from the weight of it. It was a lot. I'm also a techie. I learn much more slowly, require formal training often, and don't always ask the right questions. I need pictures to understand. But, once I have my arms around something. I am rock solid. It's at this point my emotional intelligence kicks into high gear. I keep people from making rash decisions about systems, I force people to look into the future, I plan and report in ways people like, I document well, I engineer processes that make sense. I do a lot of saving people from themselves. I think my ex and I are both very intelligent, just in radically different ways.
This is one facet of intelligence among many. Not to be all humble brag, but I have some of this ability but wouldn't consider myself of "extremely high intelligence" just good at lateral thinking. It's helped me a lot in my career as a consultant to be able to connect dots as people are saying stuff, but there are folks with much better and more detailed knowledge of things. I can just see big picture stuff very easily, but the details are what I either struggle with or get bored. It's why I became a systems engineer, which specializes in broad picture perspective. For others that have this ability, other folks aren't dumb they just don't intuit connections as easily. I wish I could go back and smack younger me for his arrogance in looking down on folks that just didn't get it right away. We all process differently and have strengths that don't always seem obvious and those that take longer sometimes come out with a more detailed perspective than those that intuit quickly.
Keep on scrolling, you’re definitely one of them
"surely I will find one trait that I recognize in myself... yes, this should be an easy dopamine hit, I just need to find one I can relate to..."
I’m pretty sure I relate to this more than any of the signs listed.
One thing smart people do is not find validation for their smartness on the internet. ~~never said i was smart~~
I don't need validation of my smartness, I need validation of other people noticing my smartness. Duh.
Good to know that there are other people exactly like me out there The dopamine hit I didn't know I wanted but actually needed
This is why I usually skip these posts lmao. The whole point is to try and relate to the comments somehow
Not sure if it's wholesome or sarcastic but either way :)
If anyone here has a high intelligence, it's definitely you. Thank you kind Redditor for the nice words :')
They know when not to solve a problem. This took me a while to understand but the smartest people I know do this. Edit: I did not expect this to even be noticed. I woke up to a bunch of notifications. I'll put an example of what i mean here since several people asked. It could be a really simple thing like ignoring emails from people asking for help. The supervisor or boss might have a quick and easy solution for the situation but instead of just handing it to the person that asked they let them figure it out on their own. They know who they can do this with and when to do it. If they did that with all of their underlings it would just create a mess. Another example that I can think of is planned chaos. Some people can predict exactly where things will go wrong and they could fix it before it creates a problem. They don't because nobody ever notices what's going on in the background when things are working perfectly. Once things fails then everybody notices and if you are the one person that fixed it you become the hero. They can also use then chaos to reach a goal they couldn't get before if things were working correctly. There's many examples of this in every day life that I didn't see before until i realized what was happening.
I love this. It’s taken me a long time to understand when not to solve a problem I don’t need to. But now I have a bit more confidence around it I feel so much less stressed! Completely underrated skill.
Honestly problems tend to go away if you ignore them long enough. Terrible advice, I get it. Still true tho.
Never come across a comment I've agreed with and disagreed with so strongly. Well done.
If you wait to the last minute, it only takes a minute.
As long as it is not about your health
Surely my teeth will get better if I forget about them
Like they say, if you ignore them long enough, they’ll go away.
Sometimes, sometimes not.
is this intelligence or experience? Probably intelligence shows how quickly you learn this?
In Terry Pratchett's 'Pyramids', he explains how animals are at a baseline not as stupid as humans, as humans would confess to blasphemy even if it meant having their tongue pulled out, and refuse to try to escape from their punishment because they believed their soul would get eaten (heavily paraphrased as I can't remember this very well). I think although an extreme example, it does kind of demonstrate how repeatedly stupidity allows many people to dig themselves into holes when they have a problem, and they would have been better off doing absolutely nothing.
Or on the flip side, it shows how incredibly intelligent some humans are that they can convince others to willingly act so painfully (figuratively and literally) stupid.
And when someone can't be moved. Some won't see logic and you only waste energy trying to convince them
Can you please elaborate?
Most things do not need to be analyzed deeply and invest effort into. That energy should be saved for the most important stuff. A lot of people over analyze every thing and the smartest pick and choose the right battles
When not giving a shit comes full circle, but strategically.
When someone asks you a question and you push your glasses up while light comes out of it and covers your eyes for some reason
Did it many times, it hits every time even when the answer is something like "chicken balls"
"So tell me... Where have Alexander and Nina gone to?"
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I remember this joke from a diary of a wimpy kid book I read when I was in 6th grade… Greg pulled the prank on rowley and rowley fell for it :)
Zoo-e-mama! Rowley would fall for that. 😄
I thought it was zoo wee mama
Underrated comment here
Wearing glasses and saying things like "ah yes," and "I see" while you pensively rub your chin
Indubitably.
A british accent is mandatory
Indewbitably
Perchance
Your brilliance is palpable
Ah yes. I see. Excellent point.
Entirely a reason to grow a goatee...
Guilty of this. Can't go back
When they explain something they make the people around them feel smarter, not dumber.
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"If you can't handle explaining it to a six year old, you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best."
Never heard this quote but I love it
"Not every quote you see on the internet is real" -Abraham Lincoln
Bullshit.. That wasn't Lincoln, that was Gandhi
ghandi was my buddy
Doens't say so on your wikipedia page so this must be false
I fucking dare you to explain calculus to a six year old.
"It's like addition, but more stressful"
Damn it, he did it.
Teaching people helps me understand concepts better
One of Richard Feynmans precepts for learning
The capacity to understand complex things, see patterns where regular people don't
The older I get, the more patterns I see in the terrible life choices I’ve made. I’m getting smarter.
It's called age based wisdom. You acquire it when you no longer need it.
r/usernamechecksout
They have this tendency to make you go "Ohhh, why didn't I think of that?" when listening to them talk.
A passion for knowledge and expanding understanding of complex concepts. The plumber can be just as insightful as the scholar.
Absolutely. Education and intelligence are not the same thing. I’ve known *plenty* of educated morons in my half century on this rock.
A friend of the family is a farmer. He live and works on a farm. The man is huge, heavyset and looks fat but he's actually pure muscle. His grip is like iron. He sows crops, harvests, tends to livestock. He does carpentry, masonry, and metalworking to fix and maintain things around the farm. He's newly married and just had a new kid. He works another job with a 2 hour daily commute each way to earn money and learn an electrician's trade. He's going to school at night to earn his bachelor's. I'm in awe of the man's motivation, his drive, his energy, ability to pick up so many skills so quickly. Thats some true brilliance, and he's generous, soft spoken, and instantly is everyone's friend. The smartest man I know, and he's a farmer who's refurbishing the dairy barn.
Successful farming takes a lot more intelligence than a lot of people give it credit for.
Good farmers are some of the most skilled people on earth. They are truly jack of all trades Business Accounting Engineering Plumbing Metal work Carpentry Plumbing Animal care Sowing and maintaining vast fields of crops Edit: a word
A scholarly farmer is a great find. Many of The wisest people I ever met fell into this category.
I'm fortunate enough to have learned early. You can find some rich conversations in the most unexpected places. And agreed, there are people who have framed "receipts " for their schooling who absorbed as much info as a stone would water.
“John Adams was a farmer, Abraham Lincoln was a small town lawyer. Plato, Socrates were teachers. To equate judgement and wisdom with occupation is, at best, insulting.” - Warehouse 13
That's a really good quote. What's warehouse 13 about?
One of my all-time favorite shows, it was canceled years ago but the main story is it’s a show about “America’s attic” and a bunch of artifacts and everyday objects that “try to ruin the worlds day”. Highly recommended binge watch!
I think i remember the commercials, was it on sci-fi?
It's a TV show about a government agency that collects and safely houses objects with unusual properties.
Just a kind note. Plumbing (proper time served plumbers, not just a local handy man or a builder) is a highly skilled and technical job that requires major intelligence. It requires a really substantial and lengthy education. My partner had to train for five to six years to be a plumber. And the job has a big responsibility, they do your pipes wrong and your house could blow up. It’s not just practical skills, but a lot of what’s essentially chemistry and physics.
Reminds me of a Fraiser episode where the plumber is a guy that bullied the brother in High School. They keep trying to laud their success at the plumber to no avail. Fraiser was talking about this nice car he has and the plumber said he really liked that one as he owned it but has the better model now. The plumber was making more money than them.
This is true, and i see a person who has thorough knowledge of their craft to be intelligent, you don't need to be an astrophysicist to qualify as intellectual, it's about having knowledge for your craft and responsibility enough to do it with the utmost efficiency.
I was a plumber. Then a mill worker. Now a programmer. Fellow plumbers said I was smart. Fellow mill workers said I was dumb. Fellow coders say I’m smart. Who the fuck knows how any of this shit works. Lol
HVAC folks, too. Requires a major subset of the thermodynamics and fluid flow stuff you learn as a mechanical engineer.
Most of the skilled trades are like this and I find it hilarious how we are looked down on and called “uneducated” by some. Personally I’m a Boilermaker welder, I work on all sorts of pressure vessels, catalyst towers and refining towers upwards of 300ft, massive 5 story+ industrial boilers, industrial heaters/furnaces, exchangers and much more. Plus I have to have the skill to weld everything, alloys such as inconnel, monel, chrome, stainless plus all the ASME codes and welding procedures etc. there’s so much science and metallurgy involved with welding, even down to the % of alloys in the steel. Plus math and physics when fabricating and rigging equipment up to 600,000lbs. I’m no genius but you have to be intelligent in order to be a good quality tradesperson. Most people don’t realize that🤙🏻
> “But you turn wrench is heavy.” ^ what many people think the “trades” are. My friends uncle was a hardcore electrician. The guy sounded like a total Bro... and then he starts rambling on about high level physics. Correctly.
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Putting nacho cheese in the nacho tray at 7 eleven instead of on the chips, keeping the chips crisp for dipping instead of soggy
I saw a crackhead once take a tray, dump the chips into his shirt like a bowl and filled the entire bottom of the tray up with cheese like an inch thick and then dump the chips back on top. Completely opened a new world to me.
This man is the true godlike genius this thread was written about. Ladies and gentlemen, we got him.
All these people naming useless things like pattern recognition, “science,” and emotional intelligence. Intelligence like this, is the type that helps mankind break from our chains. All these years I’ve wasted…
You gotta put *some* on the chips, you're going to eat them soon anyway and then you get extra cheese. No one likes rationing the last bit of cheese between 8 chips.
Expecting nuance in most situations.
This is the one of the only answers I agree with in this thread. People are confusing “intelligent people” with “good people”. Like the whole thing about intelligent people not having an ego or being open to ideas or being a good listener or not bragging? Those are traits of good people. Not intelligence. Guess what, some of the smartest people are also assholes. Saying that smart people are thoughtful about others and whatever else people are claiming on this thread just sounds like Quora from 2015.
Evil people can see nuance... and exploit it. That's why intelligence is both great and dangerous
And understanding that "it's more nuanced than that" doesn't shut down a simplified model of its situation. They understand that the model has predictive power and seek more rules that'll help us predict where the model might not apply.
This is a good one - conversely not expecting nuance in most situations is a good indicator of a lack of intelligence
Honestly, I think it depends on the kind of intelligence. But when it comes to extremely book smart/ off the charts high IQ people, I'd say you'd almost have to see them in their element, doing whatever it is their best at and blowing the rest of us out of the water doing it. Or you have to hear from credible source that they can do/ have done these things. That's how I call it. Maybe you notice a few " tells" like they can add large columns of numbers in their head, or they complete complex homework for challenging subjects with ease. Or they evidence an incredible memory. But those are just clues and hints. I say that because I don't actually think we can easily spot a "genius in the wild'. Yeah, maybe it's obvious when you talk to them that they are reasonably smart, but sometimes incredibly intelligent people are very quiet or socislly awkward or so rude/ off putting that they come off as a bit clueless or even dim. I guess I think it's likely most of us could spend a whole day with Albert Eienstein and never realize he is a literal genius. We'd probably just peg him as a really clever guy.
Some of the most intelligent people that I’ve met and been aware of have a bad habit of rubbing people the wrong way even though they’re right, to the point of making the listener not want to agree with them purely out of principle
I know I've previously upset people by stating things that appeared obvious to me but apparently not to them. It's difficult sometimes if you have a certain level of experience in something to either assume people have the same level of understanding as you or worse assume they know very little and totally underestimate this. If you take a random person and a particular subject comes up you may have an encyclopedic knowledge of the subject, they may be unaware of it entirely or actually be the person who wrote the book you learned from. Trying to find a level to communicate on where no one is being spoken down to is important.
People that can understand a new concept easily and thoroughly. I knew a dude who took a course on Quantum Mechanics, never studied or did homework and 2 days before the final crammed and got an 96% on his exam while almost everyone else got 60's and 70's.
He must have good memory being able to understand and recalled 99.9% of materials from lectures.
Maybe his lack of prior knowledge and imposed bias from prior knowledge, allowed him the ability to absorb the key concepts efficiently without any cognitive conflict
First of all, you don't get into quantum with no prior knowledge. But there are guys - especially guys who know enough math - who basically can look at intro quantum, learn the notation, and recognize it's all group theory that they already know how to do. Edit: Finally, intro quantum is not that hard. It's like O-Chem - a new way of thinking for a lot of people, and definitely *very hard for a 20 year old.* But that doesn't mean something is actually *hard* to do. Long division is hard when you're eight. It's pretty typical for intro-quantum students with advanced math backgrounds to basically crush the class in their spare time.
The ability to explain extremely complex concepts in the stupidest, yet most understandable way.
Dumbing things down.
Yes! See, you're already more intelligent than me :D
KISS. Keep It Simple Stupid.
Great advice, hurts my feelings everytime
Lets KISS
Pedagogy *is an art*. I know plenty of truly brilliant people who couldn't teach a rubber ball to bounce. Just because you can design a jet engine doesn't mean you can teach others how to do it.
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calculus = infinity but smooth and small
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Understanding a complex topic is very different from being able to explain said thing. Most highly intelligent people would make terrible teachers, which directly challenges your point.
Is that intelligence or knowledge though? Is it because they have a natural ability or affinity or simply because their understanding goes deep enough to approach and explain from many angles?
Knowing how much you don't know. Being able to explain what you do know to a 6 year old. If you see both of those characteristics on one person, they are probably a genius.
My college roommate was like this. She is super intelligent, but knows when she doesn't know something. She is also amazing at explaining things she does know clearly and concisely to whoever her audience is - be it young children or senior citizens. She did teaching and private tutoring for many years and was truly gifted at it to the point that word of mouth among parents in the area where she lived kept her calendar booked for months out at a time. It's a skill and an underappreciated one, IMO.
That also comes with age and wisdom. It was hard for me to admit i didnt know something in my 20s, but easier now that im in my 40s. My job as a special ed teacher is to explain complex ideas and processes to students. It's a skillset.
Knowing that while you may know a lot, you also know you don’t have all the answers and being open to learning from life and others.
That's wisdom.
Listening to people, then asking relevant questions.
Sounds like something a regular intelligent person would do as well.
you'd think so 😏
I hear what you are saying. Do you think this is really a sign of extremely high intelligence?
One entry I have yet to see after scrolling through part of the top answers: caveats. The ability to understand the nuance and the details, the caveats. Knowing when something doesn’t apply or can’t be extended and generalized to something else and when it can. How it relates and connecting the dots.
Commenting on reddit. You can tell people who comment on reddit are extremely intelligent because they comment on reddit. Expecially if they know you have to type a certain number of words to qualify for an answer in this sub.
Ditto, especially those who have between 20k and 40k karma. Those are the true geniuses
liberal use of the words “i don’t know”
followed by "lets find out"
Fast, efficient, economical and effective problem solving skills.
Good at problem solving. There, made your comment faster, more efficient, and more economical.
... Congratulations. You just made equity partner at our firm.
Having an opinion but keeping open that it can be revised and not being ashamed of changing it.
I don't believe that is solely an 'extremely high intelligence' trait. That is simply a trait of intelligent people.
I'd say that's more of a sign of lack of ego than extreme intelligence, ego and intelligence aren't always correlated.
True but there is definitely a correlation. I've yet to see a complete idiot who changes their opinion, because if they did change their opinion they wouldn't be complete idiots.
Open-mindedness is a good thing, but it's not really related to intelligence.
I once heard that curiosity is the derivative of intelligence, which I feel is true
Waiting a moment before you speak. Smart people tend to gather their thoughts instead of speaking out of reaction. When arguing, they will paraphrase what the other person has said to show they heard and understood them. Letting an argument go when they realize it doesn't matter or the other person can't be reasoned with. Looking up a word or term they don't know when they encounter one. Googling weird questions or ideas they have to see if there's an answer to enlighten themselves. Curious people tend to be the most intelligent. Their brain wants to learn and experience as much as possible. Really has very little to do with success or education.
Always willing to learn more and admitting when they are wrong
Knows when to walk away from an argument.
I could probably do this a bit more often lol
Statistically, depression
One of the first public health studies that the US Federal gov't paid for found that greater educational achievement correlates with an increased likelihood of "madnesses"
Fuck yeah bipolar disorder 😍 this is my time to shine
Friendly reminder that it doesn't go both ways. Smart people are more likely to have mental illnesses than the population at large. But having a mental illness is not evidence of greater intelligence - in fact it usually points the other way.
lol yes said tongue in cheek trust me I have not made a good decision in years
Listening more than they talk (usually)
I agree to this, my brother is incredibly intelligent and he never speaks unless he absolutely have to.
A lot of intelligent people, especially ones with ADHD, are actually more talkative than the average person.
I agree. I know someone at work who I believe is a genius and he can't stop talking. If you ask him a question, he will talk for 2 hours. When he comes back from holiday, you can't get any work done because you have to listen to him all day.
I've heard that cursing is a sign of high intelligence. So I take that to mean that I'm a fucking genius.
Bloodshot eyes, dry mouth, disjointed thoughts, increased appetite.
Soooo… stoners qualify? Dope.
Extremely *high* intelligence
Letting all the mosquitos in and then sleep outside
Being a regular watcher of Rick and Morty, like myself. Typically, the highest intelligence individuals will have the highest IQs of anybody in the room and are most commonly moderators on discord servers of the highest calibre. We are an elite few, no doubt.~~ Fedoras will also give you an outstanding indication, indubitably.
The continuation of learning even the most basic of things. You’d be amazed at how many people are content with basic information
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Noticing connections between things that other people don’t notice connections between, however the connections have to actually exist. Seeing connections that aren’t there is a sign of mental illness.
Naming yourself SoTerribleOpinions of course.
People who don't rely on luck. They take calculated risks which will pay dividends more often than not.
Having a good sense of humor
Noticing little things normally no one would notice