It is not easy to grow up being labeled as a genius. One day you realize that most of the people of your age are so far, far below your ability it's just sad. You try to help them, but everyone know it's not easy at all. All the work you've done to get to this level seems to be very natural for you after all these years, and you have no idea that most of the kids were not doing _anything_ in their childhoods. Then you got this feeling that all your "genius" skills came undeservedly and it's really depressing, because they constitute your person, and you really would like to believe that you got there by your own work, cause it does not feel fair otherwise.
To work out this cognitive dissonance, you start to look what you did differently than your peers and you notice that you were doing math (or cs, or electronics, or biology or whatever) as early as you remember, while your averagely performing mates from university only started doing something serious in university classes or maybe in high school. This feels like a pretty good explanation, especially when one takes into account a 10 000 hours rule, but being a rationalist (who you surely are), you cannot discard the impact of your genes, but as long as it is not measurable, you can believe it's small.
That's how you come to the state of mind when saying things similar to the quoted ones seems pretty natural and not at all out of touch with reality.
(I say this from my own experience, so it's easy for me to sympathize -- I'm not as brilliant as the guy from the article, but I'm getting two bachelors (math and cs) next year, by then being 20.)
As a genius, I can attest to the fact that this is spot-on. Every time I look around, I go "Man, those poor people. Don't they realize what they've missed? They could have been doing math!"
Ok, tongue out of cheek. In all seriousness, I've repeatedly felt that whatever (minor) financial success I've had is pretty undeserved. I have a fairly nice career as a graphics programmer, and I worked on an extremely popular online videogame. And why did I get that opportunity? Well, as far as I can tell, dumb luck. I happened to decide in ~5th grade that I wanted to learn programming. By 9th grade, I was sleeping through class every day, then going home and teaching myself game/graphics programming all afternoon and all night. For years.
I happened to find it interesting. And people happen to currently value my experience from it. But it feels less like I'm a genius and more like I just got lucky. But my friends and family all have the impression that I'm some kind of genius or something, and if I had an ego, I'd probably start thinking of myself as one. But I know I'm not. I'm just a hard worker who was interested in a field that turned out to be valuable.
I occasionally play a certain online game, and I've been friends with someone on there for a couple years now. He's about my age, still lives with his mom, and isn't really doing anything with his life. But I can tell you for a fact he's just as intelligent as me, and just as capable. I feel so bad knowing that the only thing he probably has to look forward to is a job in construction.
Conversely, it's hard not to be... condescending... of certain people I see every day. They believe their opinion is so perfectly accurate, and that they're so capable, when every objective measurement would show the opposite. And so you wind up getting into a strange state of mind, where you feel you're somehow "better" than them. I try to resist feeling that way.
Well said. Someone got some perspective into your head before it inflated out of control. Bravo to whoever did it (you or someone who taught you as a youngster).
Thanks. I have no idea. I've just always been modest / hated bragging. (In fact it feels silly to post this since it seems similar to "whoooo look at me I'm so modest!")
If you want to read what the childhood of a true genius is like, or just read a really great book, then check out Feynman's "Surely You're Joking". It helped me to realize how much of a monkey I am in comparison.
To work out this cognitive dissonance, you start to look what you did differently than your peers and you notice that you were doing math (or cs, or electronics, or biology or whatever) as early as you remember, while your averagely performing mates from university only started doing something serious in university classes or maybe in high school. This feels like a pretty good explanation, especially when one takes into account a 10 000 hours rule, but being a rationalist (who you surely are), you cannot discard the impact of your genes, but as long as it is not measurable, you can believe it's small.
That's how you come to the state of mind when saying things similar to the quoted ones seems pretty natural and not at all out of touch with reality.
(I say this from my own experience, so it's easy for me to sympathize -- I'm not as brilliant as the guy from the article, but I'm getting two bachelors (math and cs) next year, by then being 20.)