= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
James_Miller comments on Stupid Questions August 2015 - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (129)
I was recently at a bar with some friends, most of which are from the same physics PhD program as me. We had a discussion about how hard it is to spend all your time around unusually intelligent people, and then go out into the real world and have conversations with normal people. It seems to be intelligence-related, because it's usually much easier to have a conversation with, for example, a psychology grad student from Singapore than with a fashion designer who lives in the same city as me.
Is this just because we have no practice talking to people of average-ish intelligence?
Is it because intelligence gaps are inherently difficult in social settings?
Is there some factor other than intelligence that's causing this?
Are we just socially inept?
(Is this more of an open thread question or stupid question?)
I'm an economics professor at a good college. A fair number of my students are interested in fashion and have written on the topic for one of my "apply economics to anything" paper assignments. Fashion is a deeper topic than you might imagine and can justifiably attract bright minds.
Prediction: A typical fashion designer and physics PhD get into a conversation. If the fashion designer wanted the PhD to greatly enjoy the conversation she could easily do this (even without doing anything sexual) but the reverse probably doesn't hold true.
I didn't mean to suggest that being in the fashion industry implies that someone is unintelligent. I've known plenty of smart people in industries that are not traditionally thought of as being full of smart people. For this reason, I usually approach a conversation assuming that someone is good at something they do, has thought about it deeply, and has something interesting to say about it. It's usually much easier for me to tease this out with smarter people.