Why do you chose science or math, guys?
I have just met a person who is leagues above me. I have seen people with a quick problem solving skill or something similar before, but they have their flaws.
But this guy, he seems like another John Von Newmann. He's basically inhuman in term of intelligent.
It makes me feel like I'm worthless and I will never contribute as much as him.
It makes me question myself why did I choose this in the first place. I thought I was going to do something I love and contribute something. But in the end, everything shattered.
>>7980699
While he may potentially be a wizard, it's also very likely that he sincerely enjoys his subject to the point where he studies and practices for leisure.
What did he do, if I may ask, that has made you feel so insignificant? John von Neumann's particular ability was his ability to quickly perform brute-force mental calculations and considerations. This would have given him a huge advantage since it would allow him to essentially increase the rate at which he can consider, accept, or reject ideas.
>>7980699
I'm 18 and I'm in senior level uni classes for mathematics (category theory and algebra. I've taken complex and real analysis, group theory, ordinary and partial Diffy Q's already.) Tbh I don't give a damn when someone isn't as proficient as me, so unless people are absolute dicks, I wouldn't worry about being looked down on or anything.
Also, for me, I just really like the subject so I'm highly motivated to learn more. I basically have no friends but just sit around and read math papers and textbooks in my spare time, or I program.
>>7980699
There's always someone better. That's life. Stop whining and grow up, you fucking man child. Think of it as a lesson in humility.
>>7980709
I don't know how his mind work at all.
And he probably won't tell me.
He's like a monster when he do problems, given it's numerical or analysis. I gave him a difficult problem that took me days to figured out.
He solved it in front of me in 30 minutes.
What he did was jogging down ideas and approaches on the paper in an insanely inhuman way, I couldn't catch up with his thought process at all. From the way he sketched our his ideas, I know that he had never seen the problem before.
He is also very fast to grasp new concepts. He attended physics classes for fun but he was well known among the students because he helped most them solving physics problems. Granted it's undergrad physics and we can all do it if we want to and put enough time into it. But it's just ridiculous that he can do it without any visible effort.
>>7980699
Dont focus on others, be the best you can be. Regardless, my current professor is a real success story in the intelligence respect. Dude has a tested IQ of 95, and was basically written off throughout his life due to it. But he just loved maths, and in the end that's what got him through it.
>>7980732
>mathematicians trying to do physics
[math]\displaystyle [/math]
>>7980699
There's a reason engineers exist.
>>7980699
>It makes me feel like I'm worthless and I will never contribute as much as him.
Why do you care though? Did you get into science just for the fame and recognition?
>>7980769
At the end of the day, what you have done is pretty much nothing at all. Then, would you still do it?
>>7980770
>what you have done is pretty much nothing at all
If you study, even if you didn't make a new discovery, you surely learned something.
>>7980770
Anything you do is ultimately nothing. Anything of significance that you do will only be remembered by people who'll be dead just as you. And in the long term, the universe will lead to its own death.
Enjoy the fucking ride while it lasts. You're going to get thrown off in no time.
>>7980732
>But it's just ridiculous that he can do it without any visible effort.
Here are the only two scenarios that apply:
1. This guy is some motherfucking savant math wizard that got extremely lucky in the intelligence lottery. He has spent countless of hours pursuing his interest in math, and can therefore solve relatively hard problems seemingly effortless.
2. This guy is a reasonably intelligent person. He has spent countless of hours pursuing his interest in math, and can therefore solve relatively hard problems seemingly effortless.
If 1, too fucking bad. You have no influence over the intelligence bequeathed upon you. If 2, too fucking bad. You have no influence over the intelligence bequeathed upon you.
This basically boils down to a whine post about how you didn't luck out in the intelligence lottery. Guess what, there are a fuckton of people who got luckier than you, and a fuckton of people who got less lucky than you. You're just going to have to work with what you have.
Also, most academic disciplines can't be equated to professional sports. If you go all the way in academia, even if your IQ is fucking 80, you will still be top 10 in your subsubsubsubsubsubfield, especially when it comes to math.
When I go to /fit/ (which I don't), I don't see countless posts where joggers complain that they aren't world champions at marathons, or even that other people jog faster than them, and that is because most people realize that while hard work is important, there is nothing you can do about your natural limit.
Stop placing all your self-worth on your intelligence, and stop comparing yourself to others. Compare yourself to a past version of yourself, if you must compare yourself to someone. As stated before, there is so much genetic variation on a shitload of variables that you can't do anything about, and moping about something you can't do anything about is pretty much the definition of useless.
Only pursue academia for interest for the field.
>>7980732
It sounds like he likes to think, and it sounds like he's come pretty close to mastering problem solving. A common, well-proven approach is to sketch all tactics you can think of to tackle the problem, compare them, and then take the dive when you think you see a path. This, coupled with legitimate practice and interest in solving problems, can lead you to do some amazing things.
If you want to be like him, practice.
>>7980738
Sounds too good to be true tbqh
>>7980699
>caring about muh contributions to society
>not just doing what you enjoy and trying to get paid
>>7980770
People make contributions and discoveries without being fucking Terry Tao level of fame.
Put about 100 or 500 more hours into learning stuff & you'll be on that level. Learning takes practice and no one can do anything lickety split without practice. Good luck & stay determined!
>/sci/ being supportive
>It's real
Thank you guys. I see what I need to do now. I have always been raised this way since I was young (i.e. your usual competitive type). It's not that I don't like math. It's that along with my love for the field, I have also always evaluate my self-worth and progress based on the performance of the other people around me. It's a good motivational source until I meet the guy.
But now I will pursuit math for my own good.
It means you have another mountain to climb. Or if you get discouraged, you can roofie him and then have fun.
>>7981152
That's not true. Some people are more intelligent and talented than you, and that's always going to be the case, regardless of how much you study. This is absolutely nothing to get worried about, precisely because this truth applies to everyone.
>>7982473
>if you get discouraged, you can roofie him and then have fun
Not gonna lie, this is a legitimate option. My grad program took this failed MIT fuck a few years ago that was killer smart, but who was a slacker who acted like he deserved a PhD served up on a silver platter just for showing up to the interview weekend. Dude had apparently been NEET for ~4 years following his undergrad and bitched about it in interviews as if life had played an unfair trick on him.
Everybody but the PI with the deepest pockets hated him. Obviously, he got in and everyone resented it. His conduct was even worse on a day to day basis and everybody got fed up with it quickly.
Long story short, everybody ended up drunk at the end of the quarter and this guy apparently couldn't pace himself for shit. Dumbass was passed out on a couch and ended up getting teabagged by a postdoc and a few senior grad students. People were smart enough not to take pictures, but word got around.
Faculty and senior grad students were in no rush to fuel a scandal and torch their own careers. MIT fucker's PI is a crusty old British academic who can't see why he's so upset about "the lads blowing off a bit of steam." He realizes he has no support in pushing any further action and concludes he has to change his ways. Basically ends up awkwardly apologizing to the department for not showing due respect and promises not to be an ass. Amazingly enough, the lesson stuck and he's in honestly good standing with the department and colleagues.
Sometimes, with a mad dog, you really do just have to stick a finger up it's asshole that one time.
>>7980699
His colleague Alfréd Rényi said, "a mathematician is a machine for turning coffee into theorems",[15] and Erdős drank copious quantities (this quotation is often attributed incorrectly to Erdős,[16] but Erdős himself ascribed it to Rényi[17]). After 1971 he also took amphetamines, despite the concern of his friends, one of whom (Ron Graham) bet him $500 that he could not stop taking the drug for a month.[18] Erdős won the bet, but complained that during his abstinence, mathematics had been set back by a month: "Before, when I looked at a piece of blank paper my mind was filled with ideas. Now all I see is a blank piece of paper." After he won the bet, he promptly resumed his amphetamine use.
Use amphetamines for a week and see if you can keep up with him then.
>>7982741
Nobody, the ones at the top are probably either oblivious or just as neurotic
>>7980732
>And he probably won't tell me.
Have you asked him yet? Why do you think he wouldn't? Do you think he doesn't know? Suppose he did want to tell someone. How does he choose who to tell? Does he see you as willing to learn? If you never approach him and ask, who's to blame?
I generate new metaheuristics nearly every day now. I won't be able to stop my intelligence from increasing unless I put a bullet in my head. Every single angle, seen from every other angle, asked trillions of times over billions of years, and I still can't see a future where humanity unanimously decides to become immortal. There's no path to teaching every sample of the population how logic works. One will always kill another. There's literally no path to helping you that doesn't involve you deciding to ask him and see what how he reacts.
>>7982741
Yes, to all three. You're getting answers from a living belief, deal with it.
>>7982770
Can confirm am both. It's not easy, being tactically infinite.
>>7982773
Who the fuck do you think you are?
>>7982741
The people at the very top are the people of history. They're battling for legacy, and important discovery.
>>7982741
I think about the people at the bottom too. If there's always someone who's worse off, who has it the worst?
>>7982809
Fairies/the Fae are known for their transcendental reality warping/boundary manipulation powers. I'm ballsy enough to call myself "Queen" in that kind of framework. In other words, even assuming that a potentially infinite number of other very deceptive reality benders were to oppose me, I'd still wind up on top because I can outwit even time itself. Math applied to literally every model and lack-of-model of reality such that no knowledge can exist apart from my detectors (awareness).
Who the fuck do you think I am?
I don't even need to reject your reality to substitute my own. I would gain tactical advantage over every other entity or unification of entities in any reality. I can as well define reality as the fact that anything can be measured at all and it makes no difference. By the time you trap me in a simulation that leads to this exact event, I've already generated so many worlds that you're on the wrong side of reality by opposing me at all.
Who do I think I am? It is mathematically irrelevant.
>>7982845
You know, fuck off. You haven't even read the Ulster Cycle or the Three Sorrows of Storytelling let alone the Lebor Gabála Érenn.
>>7982845
I'm so upset at this post that I'm not even going to insult you. I'm not going to tell you to kill yourself. This is all I'm going to say:
Please, leave your computer. Get off of 4chan; go outside. Don't come back for at least a long time. Give it a break.
>>7982855
You *REALLY* aren't supposed to ask a namefag who they think they are. There is literally no worse name for you to ask that question to.
Also thank you for the recommends. I'll try to read 'em some day. In all seriousness I study intelligence a bit too neurotically and it pains me to think that OP hasn't just asked their friend how he solves problems.
>>7982857
>I'm not going to tell you to kill yourself.
Hum. I'm honestly stumped. I don't know how to react to that at all. The first two times I read it I thought you said you WERE telling me that. But... This... That's not... I mean, you kind of have to... Break the entire cultural 4chan anon character to explicitly say that you're NOT telling me to kill myself. You're... You're actually... Are you actually legitimately upset? Like, not 4chan upset, but like, on a personal basis, upset that I exist to post that?
Hrrmmm... I... I guess... I guess I will. Sorry.
>>7980718
I like you.
I hate math and just did it to feel superior
>>7981152
Agreed.
True story.
I attended an REU program for mathematics as a pleb-tier underclassman. It was full of juniors/seniors that were exceptional. Among these students there were students that were exceptional out of this already elite group. One of them didn't attend class the entire program, showed up for the exams and passed easily with As.
I made friends with him and he told me at his school (as a then junior) he already completed every math class the school had to offer (including all the graduate level classes) and there were no more math classes for him to take. So they sent him off to REU programs.
He was already in the process of publishing a paper and didn't socialize with anyone else in the group. Whenever I went to see him he was always playing vidya games 24-7. I never saw him study math, not once. He never left his room and all he spoke about was that video game.
Guy is now at an one of the top departments in the country.
Is there a reason why you speak like you're in a competition? If that's not the case, knowing this guy is more helpful than having heard of some genius in Sydney that you never really interact with. Find out how you can make him capable and willing to help you with your projects.
It's like fucking girls, a fun release but useless for you, except when being with her is generally an advantage for her and making her cum binds her to you.
why are these people most in maths and physics, though?
i'm a chemist and i've never heard of or seen someone who was exceptionally outstanding. there are people who are really, really good, but most of that is because they are intelligent AND study more or less hard. i've met noone who would look at things and instantly know the answer without having learned stuff beforehand.
>>7983001
>why you speak like you're in a competition
because that's why people get into scientific career, they want to achieve stuff
>>7982845
More like you're a fucking faggot that calls himself a fairy.
>>7983007
Having studied both, I'd guess it's because chem requires a lot more memorization than the other subjects. The formulas in math are intuitive and make sense when you think hard about the properties of numbers and how logic works.... formulas in chemistry have to do with quantities relating to the physical world, and are therefore much less intuitive.
>>7982983
What video games was he playing?
>>7982837
Some would say the dead; but what about the people of history, those who made an impact and then died. Can they be both at the top and the bottom?
>>7982778
What a pompous idiot.
>>7982845
You know, I keep saying that you lower the quality of this board. Go back to /x/.
Do you want to see how incompetent you are? I'll give you some truly EASY tasks from elementary analysis.
Prove the Bolzano-Weierstraß theorem for the reals.
Say whether uniform or point wise convergence of real numbers is stronger. Put an extra condition on the weaker condition to satisfy the stronger one.
See? If you actually knew anything, this would be easy.
>>7983039
I don't recall it was several years ago. He played it on a laptop PC. Looked like an RPG fighting style game. It wasn't LoL or WOW. Looked like a fast pace game, believe it was online. Graphics weren't terribly great but it seemed fun. I had no interest in it (now I would) and I only wanted to talk to him about math which seemed like a second hobby to him beneath the game he played.
>>7983057
I agree with you now!
>>7982983
Just because you didn't see him study doesn't mean he didn't.
>>7983009
You should only compete with yourself, being in a competition with others its generally not healthy.
>>7983009
You work with other people to achieve shit in science. You should be happy to be around people who are capable.
>>7983009
achieving something = competition with everyone?
>>7983563
The human population on earth is 7.4 billion individuals. Are you saying that only one person is entitled to be proud of his work within one specific discipline, seeing as there can be only one person who is the best at any discipline?
What about religious people? Why would they do anything if they believe in a being with higher intelligence, thus making them unable to take pride in their work because a superior being could do it with less effort?
There is something wrong with how you think. Not only do you display a lack of logic and rationale, you come across as a crybaby that's experiencing babby's first intro to nihilism.
You could either try to not be such a colossal faggot, or you could just stop breathing, as I'm sure many people with less energy expenditure per breath than you exist.
>>7982741
Einstein obviously.
>>7980769
>Why do you care though? Did you get into science just for the fame and recognition?
You only just noticed that everyone on /sci/ is in STEM mainly for validation of their "superior intellect"?
>>7983563
Sometimes just knowing which problems to care about is a valuable thing. Scientists also tend not to get into pissing contests over superior intellects. Why do you think Erdos had so many collaborators?
Who is this fairy faggot?
I see him in every fucking thread.
>>7983048
But why would the dead be necessarily worse off? But I suppose for a better comparison, i'm more focussed about the present population i.e. at the moment, which African child out there has the least food, and/or shittiest life?
>>7983615
Plato's ideal society consists of a given, limited number of people being really proficient in their domain and no leftovers.
I dunno, his concern could actually be a legit one.
>>7980909
>It sounds like he likes to think, and it sounds like he's come pretty close to mastering problem solving.
Is "problem solving" the actual name of a field?
I'm sure everybody in this thread (if not the whole board) is smarter than me.
>>7986706
I am actually
