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I want to find an appropriately-sized "small" pond to be a big fish in. Any advice?
Anecdote time!
I had the high school resume to get into highly selective universities. For financial reasons, I instead went to my flagship state university. I expected the big fish in small pond effect to play to my advantage, and I did develop a reputation as "(one of) the smartest student(s) in the room" (which I'll at least admit was a boon to my romantic desirability), but the most salient result was extreme loneliness. I wasn't able to find many people I could have stimulating conversation with, and while I did make a few friends, none of them shared my degree of passion for intellectual subjects. This summer I've been at Hacker School, which I think is a correctly-sized pond for me, but the damage to my mood and social expectations from three years of being stuck in too small a pond has definitely impeded my ability to make friends and feel socially engaged. As of right now I'm attempting to find a job as a software developer so I can drop out of college in relative security, because college is that intolerable and I think I have a much better chance of finding more correctly-sized ponds on this path. (Transferring to a more selective university is still not a financial burden I'm willing to accept.)
I guess the takeaway here might be: while a small pond of the right size can have its advantages, larger ponds are much more likely to help you grow more, and ponds that are too small can be absolutely crushing. If finding a smaller pond consists of moving away from your current large pond, be extremely careful that it's not too small.
I also went to a state university (Rutgers). I was in an Honors program (in engineering) with plenty of other smart students, but I was still often one of the best academically in the room. I didn't feel much of a "small pond" effect there; when I drifted away from the friends I made in my first year, it was for other reasons.
Rutgers is a better university than mine. Studying engineering in the honors program I still felt very alone. I'm glad it (sounds like?) you felt like you fit in there somewhat. Still, it's very possible to underestimate the size of the minimum-sized pond you'll be able to flourish in. "Lonely at the top" and all that.
Binary search? Find a pond. If it's too big for you to conquer, try a pond half its size. If that's so small you're unsatisfied with being its biggest fish, try a pond 50% larger, etc.
I have a pond. It feels too big. How do I locate a smaller one?
What is your pond? I think more details would help. Is it professional, social, educational? Do you want to be in smaller ponds across the board or just in some areas of your life?
Depending on the answers to these questions the advice could be as diverse as: move to a different city, change jobs, or just pick up a new hobby.
My most relevant pond now is that I play Magic: the Gathering competitively, with a focus on deckbuilding. The online Magic community has grown a lot since 2001 and I'm not too thrilled at my chances of making a name for myself in it, at least not without doing something dramatically different than I have been. I either need a mentor who's better than I am (Zvi, of the NY Less Wrong meetup group, turned me down), or I need to start working a lot harder and spending a lot more money on the problem of trying to qualify for the Pro Tour. (Not just on cards, but on travel, too.)
I don't have a job. When I start looking at job postings, I freak out, and I also have no confidence in my ability to get and keep a job in the current economy. My meatspace social life is kind of crap, too; I live with my parents, who support me, and rarely see anyone else in a social context. Needless to say, being with my parents makes me the small fish, not the big fish. I also used to go to the NY meetup group but it's such a pain in the neck to take the bus to NYC and I feel inadequate next to these people with well-paying jobs and/or advanced degrees.
I could try to get some respect as a productive member of a raiding guild in some MMO or other; I'd only have to meet a threshold of competence instead of competing against other people, so it would be less stressful. I do have a pretty good healer in SWTOR...
I've always been very good at math. In my (small) high school, I was always the best math student; in college, I still felt like I was among the top math students in any given math class I took, although I was only a math minor, not a math major. If I tried to study math in graduate school, I don't think "lack of talent" would be an obstacle to getting an advanced degree... but how much room is there in the world of mathematics for someone who's probably closer to the 1 in 1000 level than the 1 in 100,000 level? And it's not like I like taking classes...
I really would focus on these major problems before spending time on running from pond to pond with a measuring tape (or figuring out which raiding guild to join).
That's a problem you have to fix. Not knowing you I cannot offer any advice on how, but I can predict with high confidence that your success in solving this problem will have a major impact on your life.
You don't know until you try. Also, since you have no job at the moment, your downside is zero.
I'd agree with Lumifer and jamesf that it seems like it'd be best to do what you can to overcome the ugh field surrounding getting a job. Anecdotally, from my experience and others, having a job can do wonders for your self-esteem and general outlook on life. And it's also a reason to get out of the house and meet new people!
On that note, do you have any interest in computer programming? Programming ability seems to be pretty correlated with mathematical ability, at least to the degree that anybody at the 1 in 1000 mathematical ability level should be able to do very well as a programmer, if they enjoy it.
And if you're interested, but don't have any experience, there are lots of ways to learn! You can sign up for free Udacity or Coursera courses. There are even multiple developer bootcamps you can sign up for that teach you to code, including one that is in New York, and free until you get a job! (Then they take a 15% cut of your first year's pay.)
If you want to go the bootcamp route, and you've had no experience before, it might be a good idea to do some messing around with a couple free online courses first, 1) to convince yourself that you'll enjoy it and 2) to show in your application that you are serious, as I think getting into the camps might be competitive. But the fact that these, and especially the don't-pay-until-you-get-a-job version, exist demonstrates that there is very high demand for strong programming talent, and with your level of mathematical ability, it really seems like you could easily fall into that category, with just a little training and experience.
Hope that helps!
Last time I had a job, I sat in a cubicle surfing the Internet and feeling guilty about not working on the (programming) problem I was supposed to be tackling. It was horrible.
To be fair, this describes a significant fraction of every working programmer's day. But if the programming problems themselves don't grip you at all, then maybe it's truly not for you.
Let's try this from another angle. Suppose it's three years in the future, and you're working a job that you find, if not absolutely thrilling, then at least engaging enough that you're content to do it every day. What kinds of things are you closest to being able to picture fitting in that blank? (You're allowed to say professional Magic player, but that should only be one of several options. Also, you of course don't have to answer -- I'm just a random person from the internet, but perhaps this exercise will be helpful?)
Honestly, I have no clue. Book editor, maybe?
/me shrugs
I did well in programming courses in college, but, in general, I don't program for fun; it feels like hard work.
The competitive Magic scene may not be your best bet. If it looks like you're not going to make a name for yourself in it, but that's what it would take for you enjoy it, you might be much better off playing with local amateurs and trying to focus on that world instead. Also, it's probably a better way to make friends. I've never stood a chance at playing competitive Team Fortress 2, but finding a public server and carrying the team every now and then is still very fun for me; I pretend pros don't exist and temporarily relish in my superiority over 23 randoms.
I don't have much concrete advice as far as finding a job goes, since there a lot of relevant details that you haven't and possibly shouldn't share, but I'll at least suggest that doing whatever you can to overcome your ugh field around job searching would be extremely valuable in the long run. If you have a large gap in your resume (which sounds like it might be the case), find something you can do that puts an end to it, and can also plausibly retroactively fill in some of the gap. Freelancing of some sort comes to mind.
If I need an excuse for a resume gap, does "I was taking care of elderly relatives" work? (My last job was in 2006, and that was officially an internship.)
I also advocate volunteering. It's both a good indicator that you weren't just sitting in your basement the whole time(even if you actually were), and a good source of references. I think the two hours a week I spent at the food bank while unemployed made a big difference to me getting my current job.
That would be a good component of an answer to "what have you been doing for the last seven years?", yes.
Aren't you in New York? That's a relatively poor place to look for small ponds.
Central New Jersey, actually. Manhattan is about 60-90 minutes away by car, depending on traffic. (By bus is slower because I have to wait for the bus.)
Pond in what sense? Online community, company, soccer league, town, what? Or do you not care?
Define what you want out of it.
Alpha-maleness or status in general? Money? A sense of superiority? Something else?
I want to recalibrate my sociometer so I stop comparing myself to people who are way more awesome than I am and feel better about myself.
I don't know if self-esteem problems are fixable by pond-hopping.
The world is big. There will always be many people way more awesome than you. You can't prevail in a status competition against the entire world and even in a small pond you'll be well aware that there are oceans out there.
The way to win is not to play the game.
Well, that's nice in principle, and easy to think, but how do you actually go convincing yourself to consistently feel it? If you have an answer, I sincerely want to know it, because I've become acquainted (doing the first labwork of my life) this summer with feeling like an absolute fraud, despite reasonable success and complete inexperience.
Ah. That's a different problem.
I find it helpful to read memoirs of people who have been successful in the field. Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman mentions a number of episodes of him feeling like a fraud or a failure, as a graduate student or junior faculty. Many other scientists and scholars report the same. Feel free to talk to grad students or faculty around you -- I would bet that most of them went through this. Most of the successful grad students I knew felt that way some of the time or most of the time.
Feeling out of your depth in science (and I suspect most other competitive fields) isn't an indicator that you're doing badly -- it's an indicator that you're badly calibrated. It's a routine feeling that you should just ignore until it goes away.
See also the term "impostor syndrome."
Something occurred to me while I was in the shower. Suppose for a moment I really was incompetent, and not just because I had little lab experience - I was just plain incompetent at labwork, I really was a fraud/failure/what have you, and to ignore those feelings would be critically bad. What would I expect to see in the world, that would distinguish that from "no, you'll be fine, this is what everyone goes through", and what would I expect to see differently from "no, you'll be fine, you'll actually be really good at this, good enough to make significant, even undergrad textbook contributions in 10 years' time"? Because there should definitely be something I should be able to observe that would be different, and if there isn't, then it seems safest to proceed with maximal caution and minimal self-estimation.
Incompetence and fraud are separate.
My impression is that being a scientific fraud is hard work. The system is designed to catch honest mistakes -- reviewers will tell you "this analysis doesn't make sense" or "this is a source of error you didn't control for," or even "we don't know what's wrong, but we don't believe this result." And they'll say it anonymously and confidentially when they don't publish your paper.
Being a fraud requires deliberate dishonesty. You would know if you were faking data. And if you are an LW reader, you probably would notice if you were doing selective reporting in such a way as to undermine your statistical tests. You would know if you were committing fraud. If you don't do it, you aren't it.
That brings us to incompetent. I don't think there's a category of otherwise-intelligent non-handicapped people who just cannot do lab work. The prior probability on "gets accepted to grad school / undergrad research / whatever and cannot learn" is low. Do you find that in general there are things you can't learn?
The people I've known who failed out of science did not fail through inability or catastrophic mistake. They got distracted by something else in life, or they never got very interested in their work, or they were very badly advised, or the like. Sometimes it's bad luck -- the funding runs out unexpectedly, their advisor turns out to be a bad match, the data or samples get destroyed by accident, or somesuch.
Many people aren't good enough or dedicated enough or lucky enough to make important scientific contributions. Certainly, most people don't make important contributions. But that's a different problem than incapacity, and probably shouldn't worry you too much. You can very easily have a happy life as a mediocre scientist. You can even do something important. To pick an extreme example, Angela Merkel doesn't seem to have done anything notable as a researcher, but has left her mark in other ways.
Something I didn't know until just now is that Merkel's PhD did actually help her career in politics. Fairly early in her career, she was made minister for the environment and nuclear policy -- and I assume that her chemistry PhD was part of her qualification for the post.
As for feeling like a fraud: I don't fabricate data, naturally. But there's always that moment at the mass spec where you go "eh, that looks like it should be the right peak, rather than this slightly smaller, but closer peak." It's not fabricating data, but it feels like it's in the same vague region, from the same source. But I meant something more like "other people are doing your work for you, you're a burden, they're just humoring you until they're convinced you're to be got rid of."
As for incompetence: I do find it difficult to understand, for example, complex math. Homotopy groups stumped me for weeks, and I'm still not sure how I tottered through the rest of my recent math, but apparently it was satisfactory enough for a reasonably good grade for someone generally renowned as intelligent. (And it was also his last class taught here, too, says the voice. He was just being nice.) But as best I can tell, there's not a lot I just plain can't learn, can't come to terms with, can't abstract and assimilate and build on, given enough spoon-days.
As for mediocrity: one of the many things that keeps me up at night, when the anxiety is particularly bad, is the idea of never amounting to anything significant, of just being mediocre. The idea terrifies me, that I will fail to stamp my name on men's minds forever. Another is self-modifying to the point where I no longer worry about the things I worry about, and then falling prey to them. My foibles are almost sentient in their cleverness and self-preservation. They even have their own designated inner self-part.
I know of it. I was trying to avoid the term because it feels wrong, feeds the wrong, and also rationalist taboo. Also reminding myself that feeling dumb means you're learning, and feeling really dumb means you're learning a lot. Just ignoring it won't help, I don't think, and other mental issues do point to that I'm really, really badly calibrated.
Well, I am not sure I had do any particular self-convincing, that's just the way I naturally feel.
Basically, I know that I'm not the best in the world by pretty much any criteria -- there are people smarter than me, stronger than me, richer than me, etc. etc. But then, why should that matter? I am not in a competition with these people. We are not fighting over some resources. Let's assume I have some global rank in, say, smartness -- if my rank changes will it affect my life in any way? No, it won't.
Things are different in a local context -- maybe you want to win the affections of a particular girl or a boy. Maybe you entered a sports tournament. Maybe you want to get into a particularly selective school. In these cases I care about how I compare to others in the same local context -- because whether my ranking is high or low will directly affect outcomes that are meaningful to me.
But globally -- meh. I don't care that there are thousands of people who understand quantum physics much better than I do. So what?
I suspect it ultimately boils down to the issue of self-worth. Do you consider yourself worthy because you're better than someone? Or do you consider yourself worthy just because you are?
As it turns out, I consider myself worthy only when I'm better than someone, which sometimes takes the form of being able to help others, exert control over situations, or solve problems myself. This tends to spiral into feeling (self-)loathing when reading about some fictional people - Lazarus Long is a good example. At the moment, mental issues prevent me from consistently feeling worthy just for existing.
There always¹ is someone somewhere worse than you.
That's really not the point. It's because it's so common and so easy to be worse than me that I don't really take notice. Yes, I am aware that there is a critical error in thinking that, and then worrying about not being very good. I am attempting to resolve it.
In theory, if you define a niche narrowly enough, you can become "best in the world" at it, but, chances are, nobody is going to care. A niche still has to be big enough to support a community in order to be satisfying...
Certain times for certain people they are: “out of sight...” an' all that.
It might help to poke around in your mind to find out what's going on when you compare yourself to other people.
Build your own pond. That is, start your own business, work for yourself.
Of course, you will need customers, but as long as you don't think of them as fish, you'll be fine.
Non-thinking-of-customers-as-fish is not a business plan.
Depends on what you intend to get out of it, but you can go to an amateur hack night ("we're going to implement C-style integers in Ruby", "we're going to implement simulated annealing)", where almost everyone but you will have trouble conceptualizing the problem.
It's just as well this is a stupid-questions thread, but: Doesn't Ruby already have C-style integers? What is it you mean by this phrase which Ruby doesn't have?
C-style integers = integers with a fixed possible range of values and the corresponding rollover -- that is, if you get a result too big to be stored in that fixed size, it rolls over from the lowest possible value.
Ruby doesn't implement that limitation. It implements integers through Fixnum and Bignum. The latter is unbounded. The former is bounded but (per the linked doc) automatically converted to the latter if it would exceed its bounds.
Even if it did, it's still useful as an exercise: get a class to respond to addition, etc operations the same way that a C integer would. (And still something most participants will have trouble with.)
Hmm, interesting! Maybe the simplest approach would be to just implement a class with 16 (or 32, whatever) booleans, and do the underlying bit-pattern math. Then on printing, interpret as powers of two, or two's-complement, or whatever you like.
... and that is what being a big fish in a small pond feels like ;-) That is, most of them there won't even make it that far. At least, that was my experience.
(My approach was the cruder one of just taking a remainder modulo max size after each operation.)
That would work for unsigned integers, but I don't see how it gives you the classic rollover from 32767 to -32768?