What does it feel like to be smart?

Question

What’s easier?
What’s better?
What’s harder?
What’s boring?
Is life easier?
Is it fun?

what was it like to answer this question?

Answer 1

Your mind races while people are talking. You feel they are thinking in slow motion. You have many options ready before they have finished speaking.

You can read fast.

You remember many more things than other people.

You make the same mistakes only once.

You get bored easily.

You logon to Yahoo Answers to taunt meatheads into answering stupid hoax questions.

Answer 2

Life isn't easier. Smarts can't solve every problem. And even mentally, the life of a genius isn't easy because he keeps looking for things to interest and challenge him. The pursuit of challenges itself is a challenge.

There's a lot of truth to urbancoyote's answer. He said that getting along with people and politics are harder for the genius. That's true. The reason it's true is that a genius can see value, relation, and importance where the mediocrities see none. Or, conversely, a genius can see through illusions of value, relation, or importance which deceive the mediocrities.

Although the mediocrities might know that someone is a genius, they don't "accept" what that fact means; they cling to the notion that their opinion is just as good as his, and they are offended when he tells them, truthfully, that it isn't. That's why geniuses have difficulty with politics... unless they become dishonest.

The small proportion of any population that its geniuses comprise is why democracies shift around in reckless aimlessness. The people who really do know how to navigate the political seas are always outvoted by people who incorrectly believe that they have a "good enough" grasp of the subject to vote on the ship's course.

And, when in a democracy this isn't true, it only means that the political process has been hijacked by subversives (usually by control of high finance and the media) who, though they do know what they are doing, do not propose to use their political powers in a way favourable to the democratic mass.

And, yes, being smart is fun. It's like having a bigger room to play in than other kids have. With more and better toys. Urbancoyote said that genius isn't any fun, but I suppose that depends on what you do with it. The life of the mind has its compensations, which I enjoy even though I don't live that life exclusively.

But the important thing is: smart people can do more to solve the difficult problems that give trouble to everybody.

A long time ago, before all the easy things were discovered, anybody could be a major contributor to the sum of human knowledge. But those days are in the past... by at least a thousand years. Since the middle ages, just about everything that an average intellect could do has been done, recorded, published, and stuck on the library shelves.

Nowadays, when somebody wants to know how to do something, he doesn't have to discover it the hard way, with primary (field or laboratory) research. He can just go into a library and do secondary research, to find out how someone else did it before.

What that means is that further intellectual progress has passed out of the purlieu of the common man. The tasks at the forefront of research are too difficult for any except the very gifted and the geniuses. As far as making new discoveries goes, the mediocrities count no more than the retards do.

And the proportion of geniuses to the whole population is very sensitive to small shifts in the average IQ. Intelligence seems to be normally distributed, with an average IQ of 100 (approximately for Whites) and a standard deviation of 15 points.

An IQ of 160 would be 4 sigma above the mean. The cumulative distribution function is

F(x) = (2 pi)^(-1/2) integral[-inf,x] { exp[ (-1/2) t^2 ] dt }

And the fraction of the population with an IQ of 160 or more is

1 - F(4) = 3.167E-5

So one person in 31575 has an IQ of 160 or more. There'd be about 9500 of them in the USA, if the population there is 300 million and if the average is still 100 (doubtful, given the extent of your Mestizo immigration).

The proportion of persons having very high IQs is very sensitive to shifts in the mean IQ. If you could raise the average by only 2.5 points, you'd double the fraction of the population with IQs over 160. An upward shift of 9 points would multiply this proportion by a factor of ten.

When considering how to raise intelligence, it is important to understand that it is almost entirely a hereditary faculty. It runs in families, and it is a statistical characteristic of races. Intelligence can be raised by selective human breeding.

Answer 3

*comparatively in my area, im smart. so im not answering this out of pretentiousness >_>*

What does it feel like to be smart - Overly aware.
What's easier - Absolutely nothing. People say smart people have it easier at tests, but if you're smart, tests don't matter anyways cause they're too easy.
What's better - An environment with more chances of intelligent conversation (there are quite a lot of dumb people in Honors and AP, trust me)
What's harder - Everything. Get piled with more work cause you're "better" and "smarter".
What's boring - Everything except art, music, wikipedia, and debate.
Is life easier - No. Contrary to popular belief, a poor life and a rich life, dumb and smart life have no "easier" or "harder". It is all evened out, the amounts of goods and bads. People just see that smart people have more pros.
Is it fun - If I feel like making it fun, yes.

Answer 4

being smart sucks. people depend on you to have all the right answers. when it comes to groups everyone wants to be with the smart kid. i admit it is easier. but it is so not better. you ask whats harder. whats hard is making friends that want to be your friend because you are funny, make good jokes, kind, and acts like yourself. others only want to be your friend because they think that if they have the friendship of someone that is smart they can get all the right answers. life is sometimes easier being smart. but not always. after a few years of realizing that you are are smart and your friends have to it does become boring. i do admit it is fun at times when you answer this really big question or problem and get it right, people slaps you on the back saying congratulation and all that. being smart has its advantages. but sometimes being smart doesn't always have that. being smart isn't everything. it feels great knowing that people notice you for you achievements and not from something you did wrong, and not accomplished.

Answer 5

It is actually quite unsettling. Ignorance IS bliss.

Intelligence is measured by the ability to measure patterns. I have the ability to measure patterns of human behavior, often far into the future . Of course I do have to be careful to not make my assessments become self fullfilling, but it is often frightening to see how some behavior could put a great many in jeopardy.

Life is not easier, in some ways it is much harder. I get very impatient standing behind people in lines. I usually know exactly what I want and what I need to get it, standing behind people who haven't done their homework is aggravating.

Also, people that are not so smart OFTEN think they are smarter than other people, that is annoying.

And a good many movies are boring, they are so mundane and predictable. I often have the plot figured out long before movies end.

But I do have a lot of fun. My friends are all levels of the intelligence scale and I love them. And I am a joker, that's for sure, so I attract a lot of people with my wit and humor. My humor is on the order of Lewis Black and Steve Martin, being a female this does make for some very funny situations and I will say the most OUTRAGEOUS things.

I liked this question, thanks for asking.

Peace.

Answer 6

This sounds really conceited calling myself smart but I make good grades and people call me smart so here it goes.
Obviously school is easier. I don't ever have to study and I can make all above 97's.
What is better? Nothing really. As you don't know what it is like to be 'smart,' I don't know what it is like to not be 'smart.'
What is harder? Well, being social is hard for me. I know how to talk to people but some people just plain out don't like me because the teachers in my high school classes ( I am a senior) always call on me.
What is boring? CLASS! I hate class and I find myself not even having to listen.
Life is not easier because everyone is better in some area. Because I am smart doesn't mean that I don't have problems in areas that you are good in.
Life is not fun right now because high school sucks.

Answer 7

Compared to what? What kind of "smart" are we talking about?

I wouldn't even begin to try to answer, except that I remember being a lot smarter in many ways than I am now, thanks to cognitive deficits due to a disability. I remember thinking faster, having a much better memory, and being confused much less often. I know I had a better vocabulary. It's a darned good thing Mensa doesn't require retests, because if I ever want to rejoin I can use my old scores to get back in and drag down the general level of discourse there (not that it would matter much - being a member there just means that you do well on a particular kind of test, anyway, or that you could do well on them at some point in your life!).

What was easier? School. I'm still in college, and I have to try harder now. Writing was easier, certainly. Paperwork in general. Interacting with bureaucrats. Reacting to people in general, especially in stressful situations. On bad days, I feel like an absolute idiot.

What was better? All those things. I was much more self-confident. I didn't ever feel like I needed a keeper, or someone to help me deal with anything! This is frustrating as hell. I don't know how it would be for someone who isn't in a pseudo-"Flowers for Algernon" situation.

What was harder? Nothing, honestly.

What was boring? Lots of things. It was fairly easy to deal with, though, because I just always kept books with me. If I was deprived of my book, I was fairly good at keeping myself occupied internally. I'm not as good at hiding my boredom now as I was then, probably because I'm not as smart now.

Was life easier? Yes. I could adapt to things much more easily, because I could learn just about anything very quickly.

Was it fun? I suppose it was. It was just "normal" then. It's hard to say now, as I realize that it's easy to idealize things in hindsight.

Answer 8

I could be misinterpreting your question, but I'm getting the impression that you believe that smart people are smart all the time. I suppose it's possible for some people to be smart all the time, but I personally find that hard to accept as true.

I think people are probably more commonly smart only some of the time, not all of the time. And for those who are smart some of the time, I can tell you that it feels great. You just beam with pride and satisfaction over your accomplishment, and you hope there's more of that in store for you in the future.

Possibly you were referring to people who seem to find school learning easy. In my opinion, that's not necessarily smart. It could simply be a high degree of ablility to remember things. This is sometimes referred to as a photographic memory.

In my humble opinion, truely smart people are able to solve problems by connecting knowledge in new ways. Some find themselves in positions where they can do that frequently, others not so frequently. Some affect the world, others affect less.

Answer 9

Depends on you attitude...

- easier is to feel like you live in a place where no worries & just move with the beat!

- better is to behave nice & dont hesitate to say a thing.

- talking with girls, girls are very sensitive & they'll chek you out whats boring in you, so watch out, dont go wothout a shave!

- boring is behave outraged or being so excited all the time, dont laugh too much, behave lightly & try to answer with the topic.

- no, life isnt easier, cuz your body changes in different places, you cant be youself all the time, you to change your motivation & movement to keep in touch with the society as we cant live without a society.

- yes, you get lots of fun being so smart, cuz people will check you out & you'll get attention most of the time, it feels good.

--- (^_^)

Answer 10

What's easier -- taking tests

What's better -- laughter because you laugh at more things

What's harder -- getting along with people, politics, getting promoted

What's boring -- slow paced lectures, people who can't tell a story

Is life easier -- no, it's an endurance contest, a lot of people worship resentment and automatically dislike you, you receive very very little compassion

Is it fun -- absolutely not. It's a life of melancholy solitude, a forced march toward wisdom

Answer 11

Understanding things is easier, like following what's happening in movies, tv shows, etc...
You learn things much easily, and sometimes you don't even have to study to ace a test.
Most smart people have underlying problems... I have ADD, for instance. =/
It's boring when people just don't get something, and you have to explain it to them again and again...
Life is NOT easier. By being smart, sometimes you don't feel like you fit in, and you tend to get frustrated at other people because they just don't seem to get some things.
It's not fun. My parents expect straight A's from me, and I can't always pull that off. Expectations get higher and higher, and I hate the pressure.