"Intelligence"

It's kind of striking that I haven't written this post, even though, at some level, I've been thinking about it, on and off, for decades. If all goes according to plan, this will be about how I ended up with a reputation for academic giftedness, the extent to which I feel I am gifted, and connections to general thoughts on intelligence. Bear with me -- those who know me probably don't anticipate a self-aggrandizing ego fest, but those less familiar might be leery of reading further.

It's taken me a while to articulate and accept, but I think I can say that I'm definitely above average in certain areas. I have, or had, an above-average memory for material I've read, whether technical or literary in nature. I have or had an above-average ability to make connections in seemingly disparate fields. I have an above-average ability to solve mathematical problems.

But I can't be any more specific than that. The quantitative data I have is all outdated, and perhaps problematic. I tested in the 99th percentile in most, and sometimes all, standardized test subjects in K-12 education.

I took a single IQ test in 7th or 8th grade--I couldn't tell you what grade it was, but I can tell you I badly mangled the spelling of luciferous and reversed a pattern I was supposed to construct with red and white blocks, which in retrospect might've indicated some sort of visual dyslexia. I got a 140, which is gifted, but not quite genius level. I got a 1580 on my SATs, which sounds horrible, until you realize that, under that system, a 1600 was a perfect score.

Note that these measures aren't stable over time, are each problematic in their own way, and, obviously, thus far, haven't translated into financial success or personal happiness.

I had some native advantages growing up. I was middle-class in a mostly low-income school community. Unlike many of my kindergarten classmates, I had English as the primary language spoken at home. Additionally -- and precisely how or why this is remains a bit of a puzzle -- I came into kindergarten able to read and count at least to 100. Also, even though I'd say that my mom is not at all academically inclined and of average intelligence, she was an elementary school teacher, and read to me as a child. She also facilitated a culture of reading by providing me with plenty of children's books.

I can't emphasize this enough -- these were substantial advantages at my elementary school, sufficient to identify me early on as a "gifted" student. I'm not sure how unusual any of this is now -- I think many, many children come in knowing more than I did. But it set me apart then, which research has shown can be maintained and extended throughout K-12 education.

Some of the path was shaped by external expectation and reputation. In kindergarten, I had my own reading group in kindergarten, which, being the TV child of the '80s that I was, I promptly named the "Scrooge McDuck reading group". In 6th grade, I was sufficiently advanced in math to be permitted to play Amazon Trail in the back of the classroom while everyone else did math lessons. Most critically, I had a 4th grade teacher that pushed me to do more advanced work in both math, writing, and public speaking, even over my mother's objections.

Notably, my mom did not put pressure on me. She even laughed the time I brought home a "C" on a 6th grade math test. I think she was relieved her child was normal, like her, even if it didn't last.

A lot of the push was internal. I deliberately forced myself to max out reading hours during reading competitions in elementary school. In a high school English class, I wrote essays that regularly exceeded the page limit by a factor of 3. I wish my motivations were more pure, but I genuinely relished the attention, even as I was blind to how isolating it was.

I think I did well in school, in part, because I depended tremendously on the approval of teachers for my self-esteem. As I've written elsewhere, my father is bipolar, and even though I didn't live with him after the age of 3, I saw him regularly, and had enough negative experiences that I'm still dealing with it. I'm also an only child. So I wanted to do well, which ended up distinguishing me from, say, people I met in high school who were brighter and more articulate, but very lazy, or resentful of the pushing they got from their parents, or from even more chaotic homes.

For these reasons, it's difficult for me to accept that I'm somehow innately different. Maybe I just had lots of advantages. Perhaps I deserve some credit for taking advantage of certain opportunities, or making certain choices with time. (I was a quick reader, but it still took a lot of time to read my US history book twice, and I did so just because I was genuinely interested.) But I also recognize that I did have time--I didn't have to work during high school. I didn't date. I did some sports, but not a massive amount. I had time to waste on video games. I spent time on Academic Decathlon, which, in retrospect, wasn't as structured as it could've been, but it did give me the opportunity to get a bit more well-rounded with some self-taught instruction in art history, psychology, music history, economics, and other fields.

But that could just be my liberal, egalitarian philosophy talking. Maybe I do have some genetic advantages. Maybe my application early on translated into increased abilities that, while not necessarily genetic, are more or less permanent.

So, after nearly 30 years of life, if someone were to ask me, "Hey Ryan. Just how smart are you?", I couldn't reply with anything other than "above average".

Because I was. Not just in high school, but college. I went to school with a lot of really, really bright people. No von Neumann savants, but some people who must've had some genetic and cultural advantages AND took advantage of them. I was probably an average to above-average physicist my year, though I looked better on paper (GPA-wise) thanks to good grades in my history courses.

I was also very, very lucky that I made a conscious choice the first semester of college. The first semester at Harvey Mudd College is pass-fail-- there are no letter grades, only "high pass", "pass", and "fail". Some used this as an opportunity to get drunk. I personally felt fear -- people were talking about double-majoring, placing in advanced math and physics classes, and I had tested just below the cutoff to be placed in the incrementally advanced introductory physics course.

Simultaneously, I didn't assume I couldn't catch up. Maybe it was irrational, or prideful. But it worked. I studied my ass off, high-passed a few of my classes (enough to get the "get a life" letter), and generally did well until I hit junior year physics (the triumvirate of statistical mechanics, theoretical mechanics, and PDEs). Even as my grades started to drop off, I still graduated with a GPA somewhat above a 3.7, which is a very respectable grade at HMC.

Grad school was weird. I got the NSF based on a massive amount of work put into the application, and, possibly, because of some things I did in undergrad that let me characterize myself as someone who might serve the country in a science policy position in a few decades. But I was out of my depth, and, honestly, didn't care enough, or believe in myself enough, to keep from drowning. And I've paid various consequences for putting all my emotional eggs in that academic basket.

But back to the positive. In many ways I got very lucky. But I guess I am a bit different. I was with some of the brightest students in the country, and if I didn't hold my own, I did better than I might have reasonably expected.

Looking back, my best friend in high school worked a lot harder than I did. I don't know if it was because he cared more, or if it was because he had to. It did get him a slightly higher GPA (literally, 0.01). And while I paid for the lack of discipline and organization later, I got away with it for a surprisingly long period of time.

And yet, because I went to school with such smart people, my benchmark is a bit skewed, and I can't report anything stronger than "above average". It's taken me a while to say even that. I considered myself average or below average for chunks of college, and most of graduate school. If it's a surprise to you, then you see things that I didn't, and, to this day, still don't.

There are different models for intelligence, and different types of intelligence. I have a passing familiarity with some, but that's partly not the point here. There's a genetic component, and there's an environmental component.

Generally, I believe that the vast majority of us operate far below our genetic potential, and so it's a matter of improving the environment, customized to our history and our dispositions, to make us smarter. Don't drink so much. Exercise more. Eat more healthily. Do hard thinking during certain periods of the day. Sleep better, if not more. And so on -- things that are probably readily obvious, but we make excuses and cut deals with ourselves, with the end result being that we sell ourselves short.

There are other, more philosophical considerations. Why should we assume that knowledge and intelligence are the things that should be maximized for a good life? For a number of reasons, I believed (and a part of me still believes) that my intelligence, however humbly different, is the source of my unhappiness. I've done a decent job of smothering and suppressing it over the last few years through poor choices of time and action, ranging from Youtube videos to video games to chronic unemployment and borderline paranoia. I am, slowly, slowly, coming to accept that it's the same bullshit stereotype of the "mad genius" that makes me try this sort of cure.

There are smart people who are actually quite happy, stable, and successful, and serve as excellent counterexamples for the stereotype (which, by the way, is not really well supported by research). But one can lead a perfectly happy and meaningful life -- even a heroic one -- and be of far, far below average intelligence. Think of anyone you know, and love, with Down's Syndrome.

More mundanely, I did my best to undermine anything remotely resembling pride at my accomplishments, at least in K-12. Bright students with enough wits to be aware of their social surroundings know that a know-it-all can survive only by downplaying his or her intelligence (with it often being worse for women). I can only thank my excellent classmates and teachers for why I was never, ever bullied. Add to that some misguided Japanese false humility, and you had me, basically afraid to breathe in the same room as anyone else, less I affect their oxygen intake.

So yeah, I had, and still have, trouble accepting I'm gifted, or more intelligent than average, even though there is some evidence that I might be. And I don't even know what that precisely means.

What's the point of this post? I'm not sure. It's too long already, so I might cover some additional thoughts on intelligence in another one. But I think some parents have been quietly, or not so quietly, curious how I did so well academically. (We collectively are ignoring the whole dropping-out-of-grad-school-and-becoming-an-emotional-financial-social-existential-disaster component because it's inconvenient and uglies up the narrative.) So this is my retrospective read on how I achieved "success":

• I had some early advantages, which translated into both expectations and opportunities.
• I had access to books and read a lot as a child.
• I spent a lot of time alone as a child.
• I wanted to do well, perhaps to an unhealthy degree.
• I did not receive any pressure, or even guidance, from my mother, or really anyone else in my family.
• I went to a good college that challenged me to rise to a higher standard, and had just enough self-confidence at the time to rise to the occasion (as opposed to withdraw or crash from the system).
• I didn't have to worry about mundane things like money, or food, or personal safety (apart from a very few episodes with my dad) growing up. My Maslow's hierarchy of needs had a solid base, even if, in retrospect, I neglected the middle.
• I *may* have some biological advantages.

I rank the biological component last, for obvious reasons.

If anyone's truly interested, I can more formally write up what parents could do differently to improve their child's intellectual development, though in my experience, most parents just aren't up to giving up enough control to let their kid own their successes and failures, while providing structure for those less "gifted" or more confused. But that's that, for now.