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Do extreme talents always come with extreme difficulties?



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Atali




 
 
    
 

Post Thu, Dec 16 2010, 7:38 pm
Yet another gifted-thread spin-off (sorry).

One thing that I have noticed throughout my life is that it seems that people can generally be divided into two groups. One group of people (the majority) are above-average in some areas and below average in others. The second group of people have extreme talents in some areas and extreme difficulties in others.

It seems almost like a pendulum. The higher that the pendulum swings to one side, the higher it swings to the other.

Is this true in general? Does anyone here know anyone that is gifted in a particular area that does not have extreme difficulties in another area?
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sequoia




 
 
    
 

Post Thu, Dec 16 2010, 7:40 pm
How extreme are we talking about?

I know people who are math geniuses who have perfectly normal social and personal lives. By the time someone is in their mid-twenties, if not earlier, all that stuff doesn't matter anymore. A phd is hard work no matter how much of a genius you are.
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Atali




 
 
    
 

Post Thu, Dec 16 2010, 7:45 pm
sequoia wrote:
How extreme are we talking about?

I know people who are math geniuses who have perfectly normal social and personal lives. By the time someone is in their mid-twenties, if not earlier, all that stuff doesn't matter anymore. A phd is hard work no matter how much of a genius you are.


What stuff doesn't matter? Both intelligence and social skill matter throughout life.

The difficulties do not have to be social. One can be a math genius and have a learning disability in another area, like writing, or severe ADD.
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Simple1




 
 
    
 

Post Thu, Dec 16 2010, 7:51 pm
Atali wrote:
sequoia wrote:
How extreme are we talking about?

I know people who are math geniuses who have perfectly normal social and personal lives. By the time someone is in their mid-twenties, if not earlier, all that stuff doesn't matter anymore. A phd is hard work no matter how much of a genius you are.


What stuff doesn't matter? Both intelligence and social skill matter throughout life.

The difficulties do not have to be social. One can be a math genius and have a learning disability in another area, like writing, or severe ADD.


The Outliers book explains it well - you only need to be smart enough. After that increased intelligence doesn't necessarily help, and what is just as important is that they have social and street smarts.

I am forgetting the Jewish saying, (was it Pirkei Avos, Mishlei or Koheles or somewhere else), that says Increased intelligence brings more worries.
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HindaRochel




 
 
    
 

Post Fri, Dec 17 2010, 1:05 am
At some point what matters more is EQ, emotional intelligence. Above average to genius is fine, but really it doesn't make one's life better or worse as long as one can do what one needs to do in order to live daily life.

What makes one's life more pleasant and happy is EQ, and that isn't dependent on intelligence.
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ora_43




 
 
    
 

Post Fri, Dec 17 2010, 4:34 am
I know several people who are very talented and don't have any obvious difficulties. Some are average in most areas and very talented in a few (eg. a musician doing very well professionally who also gets good grades), and some are just above-average in everything (eg. a kid who is above grade level and gets good grades and is good at sports and music as well).

I also know some people who outsiders might define as having difficulties, who aren't very bothered by their issues. For example, I know someone very bright with aspergers who considers the aspergers more or less just an alternative way to be, and not an illness or anything of the kind. And I know someone who is very bright and a loner, who would describe himself as a loner, not as socially isolated.

I think it makes sense that talents often go hand-in-hand with difficulties. For example, the same thing that can make a brain work quickly enough to learn much faster than average can make a brain work quickly enough that it can't focus. And society has a kind of love-hate relationship with genius that almost guarantees that talent will be both enjoyable and difficult.
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chocolate moose




 
 
    
 

Post Fri, Dec 17 2010, 7:26 am
The difficulties might not be obvious.
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imaima




 
 
    
 

Post Mon, Jan 03 2011, 2:42 am
HindaRochel wrote:
At some point what matters more is EQ, emotional intelligence. Above average to genius is fine, but really it doesn't make one's life better or worse as long as one can do what one needs to do in order to live daily life.

What makes one's life more pleasant and happy is EQ, and that isn't dependent on intelligence.


I agree. I have heard many many times that IQ is overrated.
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JAWSCIENCE




 
 
    
 

Post Mon, Jan 03 2011, 8:01 am
There is a big misconception that all intelligent people have no social skills. There are some geniuses with no social skills. There are also average people with no social skills. Having a high IQ does not mean you are necessarily socially impaired.

I have met several people with extreme talents (people awarded Nobel prizes and MacArthur genius grants) and they are perfectly normal socially with great families etc.
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