[Ian Morrison]

Hey, you can throw a coherent argument together that actually makes a fair bit of sense. And you're smart enough to realize that you're dumb! You're a step ahead of the rest of us! :P

[ya lyublyu tebya]

Abstract reasoning begins around age 13!? Do you have a source on that? That sounds much too old.

Anyway, I was and still am. To put this incredibly bluntly (I'm in a really bad mood and probably shouldn't be posting like this), I started preschool expecting intellectual stimulation and fast-paced learning and found that everyone was a pack of vacuous bullies. Went into a gifted program in 3rd grade and found that everyone was a pack of vacuous bullies with bigger vocabularies with which to snipe at each other. Joy.

Once I get out of suburban hell, I'm sure I'll find much less of that, although the one month I lasted around the glorified middle school that was "college," before deciding not to waste my money and just teach myself, was in a city and not much better. My mom says that that place was a zoo and not "real" college at all, so we'll see. I'm not trying to say that I'm some kind of super-genius. I'm just saying that I swear there's something in the water here that turns people's brains to chalk.

[Dodeca]

	Originally Posted by ya lyublyu tebya To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Abstract reasoning begins around age 13!? Do you have a source on that? That sounds much too old.

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[Hinun]

Originally Posted by Dodeca To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

Here is a little bit of my background story. When I was 13, about the time abstract reasoning begins in humans, I started to notice how when I would have conversations with my peer's they never seemed interested in my ideas, in 6th grade the one person that would talk to me would say so many irrelevant things about my theory's. For example (Your A.I. computer chip design could be stolen with an electron microscope). In 7th grade I had the idea that if the structure of a nanotube was made of tubes (as in the pictures Id seen) then it was a fractal structure. But I simply could not demonstrate it to anyone. In 11th, 12th grade when I could actually make an A.I. program the teacher in the programing class wasn't that encouraging. So basically for a long time I was isolated unable to share my ideas with anyone because they would either belittle them or did not understand them. I found this very discouraging and sometimes hurtful. I feel like a very creative person but don't know how to direct it, too much social anxiety built up over the years. Hopefully I am getting over it. Has anyone had similar experiences like this.

You're not alone. To be honest I don't have that problem as much anymore, I meet people who are on a similar intellectual level...but then again I am in the engineering wing of a college...heh. Most of the students challenge themselves, even outside of college we debate various topics. It is a much richer atmosphere. I really felt isolated up until middle of high school when I talked to one of the tutors whom I discussed many topics. I didn't get tutored as much as I just wanted someone who also looked at the world in a superficial way. The only person before this was my close friend who is also an engineer, but he lives in a different state on account of what school he got into. We still keep in touch.

Isolation is just how it is going to be, most people seem to be either uncomfortable sharing deep thoughts or just don't have them often. Accept it, it will make life easier. Hopefully it helps that you're not alone
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.

Oh, and here is a little anecdote: In preschool I remember a few kids had trouble with the concept of zero, I picked up such abstract things rather quickly, and tried to explain that zero added to itself was still zero, since nothing is nothing no matter what you do to it.

[cp444]

I totally share your experience. When I went to college, nobody that I knew of liked to talk about what we studied. They had their own social cliques, and they didn't like to talk about class; only when the exams would come about, they'd invite me for study sessions. In graduate school, I proposed GIS (geographical information systems) as a project for a project management class, and nobody voted for my project. Instead, they went with finetuning a project about installing communications systems (like voice and unified messaging systems) for a sales conference. I hated to be in that project, and was put on that group not by choice. Also, I looked into econometrics for my thesis, and later on, during interviews, I was asked if I had a class in that... And I said I taught myself. The interviewers were mean.

[Monte314]

If you can't communicate most of your ideas to most of your peers, maybe you aren't as smart as you think you are.

[admittedheretic]

Wise words Monte.

My high school consisted of around 80 students with 15 being in my graduating class. When I was younger I would tend to only have one best friend at a time who shared my various interests. Soon after I got my first computer I was already instructing the teachers at school with the brand new windows 95 OS. It was pretty lonely until we got the internet at home and I found an online community that I participated in for several years.

At my current job I'm extremely intellectually and educationally isolated. A few of the some what intellectuals I do associate with it aren't native English speakers and there is a communication barrier. I typically make many uses of figures of speech, metaphors, analogies, and other cultural sayings, but with them I'm challenged to avoid those. I would say that only once or twice a week I actually find my self in a conversation about something that isn't trivial to me with a coworker. I ultimately want to be somewhere else in life around intellectuals IRL, but for the time being I at least I still have the internet.

[Damien Black]

	Originally Posted by ya lyublyu tebya To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Abstract reasoning begins around age 13!? Do you have a source on that? That sounds much too old.

the developmental psychology text book on my lap can vouch. 13 is not set in stone however, earlier for some, later for others.

[Deliberator]

Yes, this has been an issue for me, even when I went to college. It's not even that they don't understand, but they become intimidated and shut up like clams... others simply don't care. Now I've realized that I need to be in research where I can be around other people who are interested in theory and the subjects that interest me, and are willing to sit and discuss them.

Ever since I became involved in research I felt a little more hopeful about my social life, and have met lots of terribly interesting people. But I was a bit naive I think... it's not as though just because you are around other bright, research oriented individuals that they'll suddenly want to listen to your ideas. People often have fairly narrow interests or have developed their own ideas and are only interested in ideas that support their own. It's OK though, because if I have the chance to put my ideas to the test and get something done then at least more people will start to value my thoughts.

	Originally Posted by cp444 To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	They had their own social cliques, and they didn't like to talk about class; only when the exams would come about, they'd invite me for study sessions.

Same here. I knew better, so I'd tell them I already finished studying.

[Geminii]

I felt that way through all of primary school. I was in advanced classes from the time I was about 10-11, and I still felt that way, although I could discern that there was a slight difference - both sets of classmates would pause and look stunned if I tried talking about an idea or concept, but sometimes the advanced kids would blink, frown, and come back with "...yeah, that might work..." every so often.

They were never the ones in the library every lunchtime absorbing their way through the science and SF/F sections, though.

The SF club at university was almost the opposite, though. Lots of people who were quite happy to sit around and read books quietly, but their similar lack of desire to discuss things stemmed more from the same kind of introversion and social background as I had, I think. Twenty students, all in the one small room, each absorbed in their own world. The isolation was still there in full force.

The various places I worked had few people I could talk to until I got into multi-person IT teams, and even then no-one was interested in hearing about improvements to the workplace until I started learning to express them in terms of time and money saved, rather than simply their own elegance.

It wasn't until I was serendipitously invited to a group meeting of theoretical/practical engineers one day that I found people I could open up to full bandwidth with, as it were. I'd had glimpses of it occurring at SF convention panels, but it wasn't an environment conducive to monopolising the focus of interest for more than a couple of seconds. The engineering group, however, were able to take my 200wpm jargon-riddled gabble, understand it, and in some cases even improve on the underlying design. In the same way, I could provide useful contributions to their own endeavors. It was like throwing off a straightjacket I'd become miserably used to wearing for the last thirty-plus years.

[SunLight]

	Originally Posted by Ian Morrison To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	When I start babbling about my latest idea most people roll their eyes. The ones who actually understand what I'm talking about (a rare breed indeed) generally don't get as excited as I do. Annoying, but livable.

I do relate to the comment made in this thread:
"When I start babbling about my latest idea most people roll their eyes. The ones who actually understand what I'm talking about (a rare breed indeed) generally don't get as excited as I do. Annoying, but livable."
...I have experienced a number of times a similar response to my perceprtion of things in day-to-day issues. Oftentimes at the end, the "future has proven me right" specially at work.
... I was exploring this subforum to check if I was alone in this feeling. Seems like it is not atypical for an INTJ to experience this type of "loneliness" (?)

[changos]

Been there and sometimes it kills me. Knowing or seeing something that others can't see hurts and makes you feel isolated, worse it the others call you crazy. Later on some people tell you "now I see it", other times people won't tell you that. Of course at times you realize that some ideas were plain stupid but ir rarely happen, at least one has a tendency to talk only when you are certain about it, even speculation it's above the average level.

	Originally Posted by Monte314 To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	If you can't communicate most of your ideas to most of your peers, maybe you aren't as smart as you think you are.

I have to disagree on this one, strongly. Our parents had (and perhaps still have) a hard time explaining and teaching us how things work, specially human relationships and they were not dumb or lacking intelligence, it's us and the huge gap between. To avoid falling into the huge universe of the general "whatever" I will be explicit: there are examples of how our parents are clear but it's us who just can't get the point. Even using drawings.

The abstract was mentioned on the thread too, so there are scientist that were killed only because they had a hard time explaining what couldn't be seen, and sometimes even with numbers and drawings the people just couldn't get it.


I see a relationship of the thread with "why people don't want to think" and also denial (specially with human relationships).

Preconceived concepts interfiere a lot, this is very evident on the dating topics where older people with first hand experience explain the facts, process and mechanics of the situations and younger people still don't get it (I'm not talking about feelings but data, information, books, literature, how things happen). Then the ones who don't get it not only joke, but also ask for specific data, but NOT FOR LEARNING purposes, but to put on stress the older member. And it's usually a waste of time for that member.... and the others stay without taking advantage of the learning experience.

Some people go to extremes and say "you are talking about feelings" but no, yes it's hard to understand how someone is feeling but what I mean with the examples are the process, A, B, A+B and still some just don't get it.

[Haumea]

	I have to disagree on this one, strongly. Our parents had (and perhaps still have) a hard time explaining and teaching us how things work, specially human relationships and they were not dumb or lacking intelligence, it's us and the huge gap between.

Parents aren't peers, but your confusion is understandable.
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[Zsych]

Originally Posted by Dodeca To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

When I was 13, about the time abstract reasoning begins in humans, I started to notice how when I would have conversations with my peer's they never seemed interested in my ideas, in 6th grade the one person that would talk to me would say so many irrelevant things about my theory's. For example (Your A.I. computer chip design could be stolen with an electron microscope). In 7th grade I had the idea that if the structure of a nanotube was made of tubes (as in the pictures Id seen) then it was a fractal structure. But I simply could not demonstrate it to anyone. In 11th, 12th grade when I could actually make an A.I. program the teacher in the programing class wasn't that encouraging.

You're talented apparently. The degree of my difference from people has increased with age. As a child, I would have some friends my age, but I was more often friends with teachers or adults (no doubt they thought I was a kid, but overall the discussions were much more interesting than discussions with others of my age). I knew a decent number of scientists and just generally intelligent people as a kid, that I could talk to.

... we should all really put more effort into finding surroundings that we are better suited for.

	Originally Posted by Monte314 To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	If you can't communicate most of your ideas to most of your peers, maybe you aren't as smart as you think you are.

That's debateable. Especially with Ns. And for a child with above average intelligence, the people around him/her are not peers. They are behind by years in terms of mental development and acquired knowledge (and that is when you are talking about commonly learnable knowledge - the systems intelligent people learn and develop themselves are not designed to be communicated, they are designed to understand more complex things, often using intuitive structures of your own)

Seriously dude, that was almost as bad as saying that you're not that intelligent if you can't explain your ideas to the point that a dog can understand it.

[plushbug]

Originally Posted by Dodeca To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

When I was 13, about the time abstract reasoning begins in humans, I started to notice how when I would have conversations with my peer's they never seemed interested in my ideas, in 6th grade the one person that would talk to me would say so many irrelevant things about my theory's. For example (Your A.I. computer chip design could be stolen with an electron microscope). In 7th grade I had the idea that if the structure of a nanotube was made of tubes (as in the pictures Id seen) then it was a fractal structure. But I simply could not demonstrate it to anyone. In 11th, 12th grade when I could actually make an A.I. program the teacher in the programing class wasn't that encouraging. So basically for a long time I was isolated unable to share my ideas with anyone because they would either belittle them or did not understand them.

Three or four thoughts, reading this and responding posts so far...

First, ohyeah. Only...in my case it started earlier, I'm going to say about 10-11, and wasn't so much a matter of my being creative and generating ideas or theories about anything, as being more widely read in a lot of subjects (sciences, astronomy, history, archaelogy, paleontology, world exploration) than most of the kids I knew, and their simply not being able to relate to those interests, or to the intensity with which I would get into and study things. Always related much better to adults, as far as such interests went.

Second, wouldn't argue against the potential for communication skills to be an issue, but my own sense is that the most useful thing is to learn to recognize quickly when you're dealing with people who don't have it in them to be interested in the sorts of things you are, and don't waste energy on the effort to engage them. As the line goes: "Do not try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig."

Third, regarding the age-of-onset question: I remember reading the 13-14 part from Piaget as well, back when I was in university in the mid-70s, and suspect this has stood up well because it's true for a lot of people...but also think variability may relate to something else. I don't have a text reference or citations for this, but recall hearing a discussion on the radio a number of years ago about how, in the 8-10 months before any child hits puberty, there's a terrific growth spurt in the brain...as described, a quantum leap in mass and complexity. Credible for me, because I hit puberty at 11, and have a strong sense of my ability to make rational sense of things changing markedly through that 10 1/2 to 11 1/2 year--right in through the time I started noticing real problems getting my age peers tuned in on most of my major interests.

[changos]

	Originally Posted by Dodeca To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	I started to notice how when I would have conversations with my peer's they never seemed interested in my ideas

Some of us ( I think mostly introverts ) try to go one step further and that's the main reason. While others think about the colours we wonder if it's the combination what hits us, if others talk about the music we go beyond and talk about music, lyrics and influences. If you think about it, even considering mental age, perhaps you are not so close to them but one step ahead.

The field that impacts me the most among my peers (didn't miss it this time
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) it's dating. My introverted friends and me get a lot of :/ but after a while we get a lot of "you were right" why? I guess because we go beyond the actions and also think about the meaning or motivation behind the actions trying to detect manipulation where others just see "she gave me a gift".

[Masslessxphoton]

absract reasoning does not begin at age 13. you hear that? i know you have had this ablity at least sense you were a small child. we all always had it. for ex. when i was about 6-8 i concluded that butterflies use the mussles on the back, on the bump behind there heads, because when i apply pressure there, the butterfly cannot open their wings, where if i applied some where else, the butterfly can flap its wings. and i saw butterflies cant fly straght without their antennas, so they use to feel.

---------- Post added 11-20-2011 at 12:58 PM ----------

yeah i tortuerd a lot of butterflies. but i learned a lot by doing so. my theory of the bump on the back controling wings is probrobly wrong, but you get the idea.
i do feel lonely intellectually yes. i know how you feel.

---------- Post added 11-20-2011 at 01:01 PM ----------

ps im using a psp so forgive my typing. ps the sentance "you hear that" was suppose to be "where did you hear that?"

[MONADANOM]

Seems like I'm always broadcasting in stereo and everybody else is doing mono.
Or maybe my receiver's in need of calibration.

[RainingLogic]

The village idiots eventually broke down Frankenstein's door. Solve for what he did wrong.

[SeverusSin]

When I was around 8 or 9 years old I became profoundly self-aware to the point that I realised that the nature of our world was but an interpretation of electrical signals that are converted into the "reality" we experience by our brain. This was later confirmed by films like The Matrix. That was one of many childhood revelations I had but I never felt compelled as a child to share this with anyone.

When I was around 13-14 I started to converse with others about concepts akin to the above, such as the nature of human existence etc, mind over matter, metaphysics and the like. These were mostly with adults, teachers and no peers so I didn't feel particularly isolated by nature. It was only when attempting to relay these thoughts and ideas to others between the ages of 17/18-22 I've found much difficulty as many aren't prepared to delve into such depths into such topics.