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Costanza comments on Talking to Children: A Pre-Holiday Guide - Less Wrong
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I was never a child prodigy, but I took myself to be the smartest student in my junior high school class of 25 or so. Maybe I was, but if so it wasn't by a huge margin. But I had some mildly precocious interests and was overpraised. I decided it was the natural order of life that I would always be able to coast by without effort and would always be the smartest guy in the room. In other words, I bound up my self esteem to my supposed intellectual superiority, and I had learned to be lazy. This is a very, very bad combination. My parents went to considerable trouble to send me to a high school with an excellent academic reputation. When I found out I wasn't really all that relatively smart any more, my ego took a hit. Merely average grades were terrifying, a sign of failure. At the same time, having to work hard to get good grades seemed like a sign of failure, too. I felt like Charlie in the second half of Flowers for Algernon. I became far, far too overcautious, too ready to quit at the first hint of trouble. In LessWrong terms, I surrounded myself with ugh fields.
I see now that I was never really that smart. I wish I'd known that earlier. In the words of Jay Leno, "A little low self-esteem is actually quite good. Maybe you're not the best, so you should work a little harder."
I'm sometimes afraid that I'm in the middle of this process myself. I'm a high school student, and I've been told I was smart for as long as I can remember. I've never had to study to get good grades. I don't know how much study is normal, but I suspect it's more than I ever do. While I do study some I can't really tell if it helps: I get As when I study, and I get slightly lower As when I don't. I have a sense of superiority that I try to keep calibrated. I'm about to go to an elite college, where I will most likely be average and get average grades. I'm afraid that I won't be able to handle the need to work hard and the experience of being in the middle of the pack, but I hope that expecting it will make it easier.
If I met you in person, I would probably be too embarrassed to say: don't make my mistakes.
For what it's worth, I suggest you first find something worth working hard on, and then work really, really hard on it. I'd further suggest that, even if you're not quite sure that you've found the one true task that is your calling, maybe you should still take a bit of time busting your ass on whatever task may be in front of you. After a while, you could reasonably then step back and reflect on whether you're using your talents wisely. Maybe you should then choose some other goal to bust your ass for. But don't completely waste your time like I did.
I've seen some of your posts. I think you're more talented than I ever was.* However, I also wouldn't mean any offense by suggesting that you might not be quite as talented as Isaac Newton. The reason I bring it up is because I think everyone can agree that Isaac Newton had a lot of basic native talent, but also, he worked himself like a dog for years.
Thank you for the advice. I'll follow it.
Consciousness of this is likely to help, I think.
I relate, but as a genius and getting decent (but not exceptional) results from no work. At least, in some areas.
It's annoying. It's especially annoying to think about how I could've been Eliezer but probably couldn't now.
And that gives me an idea for tomorrow.
My advice to anybody who says 'I regret not doing X in the past, but it's too late now', is to reconsider very very carefully whether it is actually too late now, or whether you will in the future find yourself saying 'I regret not doing X in the past because I thought it was too late; but now it's really too late'.
-- Anonymous