this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2023
69 points (100.0% liked)
World News
22058 readers
89 users here now
Breaking news from around the world.
News that is American but has an international facet may also be posted here.
Guidelines for submissions:
- Where possible, post the original source of information.
- If there is a paywall, you can use alternative sources or provide an archive.today, 12ft.io, etc. link in the body.
- Do not editorialize titles. Preserve the original title when possible; edits for clarity are fine.
- Do not post ragebait or shock stories. These will be removed.
- Do not post tabloid or blogspam stories. These will be removed.
- Social media should be a source of last resort.
These guidelines will be enforced on a know-it-when-I-see-it basis.
For US News, see the US News community.
This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
While obviously he intellectually knew the requirements were different, and even managed to build something that survived a few trips, I almost wonder if there is a certain amount of mental inertia there, similar to the old saw, "when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail." In aircraft, and even spacecraft, you do so much more to save weight than would be necessary or appropriate for designing a submarine, and your pressure vessel will never need to handle more than 1 atmosphere. Again, I'm not suggesting that he was literally stupid and didn't understand that at some level, but I haven't heard from anyone who's been around subs who thinks he was on the right developmental track.
Anecdotally, I've met almost two dozen people with high level engineering degrees who were about as sharp as a bowling ball when it came to literally everything besides their coursework. Each one of them with whom I shared my perspective that "critical thinking skills are all that matter for measuring intelligence, not the ability to memorize data; chimpanzees can do that better than we can anyway" reacted very negatively, which I've always thought was interesting.
I don't want to imply that everyone with an advanced STEM degree is a dullard and a weiner, a drone who can only produce results if he memorizes reams of other peoples' work. It's just an overrepresentation peculiar to that kind of field, just like how the humanities have an eternal plague of arrogant dicks who got philosophy all figured out at age 14.
As someone who is good at memorization (although not as much post COVID) but has been historically poor at critical thinking, I agree. People kept telling me I was "smart" and that there was no way I could fail X or should fail X, but life experience and slow but steady analysis showed me that no, everyone (including my parents and teachers) were wrong. I was dumb as bricks, I'm just good at memorizing things.
I'm aware that my critical thinking skills aren't great. I'm also aware that I had no business going to college (and failing of course) studying what I did (computer science) and that it's actually very good and liberating to admit how fallible you are, and how bad you are at things, because it gives you the freedom and insight to know what you can do instead of what you can't.
I've lived long enough to see stupid people succeed at what "smart" people fail at, just because they're honest enough and humble enough to admit when they can't do something, and also when they're wrong. I saw that doing something right imperfectly (but effectively) is more useful than doing something wrong with perfect execution. It's the difference between going forward at a walk, and going backwards with a rocket thruster.
It's pretty ironic* that you wrote multiple clear, detailed paragraphs explaining why you think you're unintelligent, demonstrating analysis and critical thinking skills as you elucidate your point. You even followed one of the Socratic models. You also undermined your own argument. You're not stupid, you have a low opinion of yourself and I'd bet cash money you're neurodivergent and got fuck all help for it in your entire youth. Not that I'm qualified to armchair diagnose you, but I really think I can tell.
*I know this isn't what irony means