I'm unintelligent and I hate it

[Rudolph Mondal]

I can't come to terms with the fact that I'm not intelligent.

I was trying to reflect on why I feel this way and realized it's because I associate my self-worth with intelligence.

I'm not trying to distort reality by saying that I'm not intelligent. I really am not. I can't work out the hard puzzles in all those puzzle books or games.

I don't know if I can improve my intelligence somehow.

What's in store for me, being the unintelligent person I am? What's the point in life if I can't see through problems into the underlying logical skeleton?

I'm finding life to be very hard. I don't think I can do anything. I'm useless.

I don't know what to do now. I don't know what to do.

 

[Jennywocky]

I can't come to terms with the fact that I'm not intelligent.

I was trying to reflect on why I feel this way and realized it's because I associate my self-worth with intelligence.

I'm not trying to distort reality by saying that I'm not intelligent. I really am not. I can't work out the hard puzzles in all those puzzle books or games.

I don't know if I can improve my intelligence somehow.

What's in store for me, being the unintelligent person I am? What's the point in life if I can't see through problems into the underlying logical skeleton?

I'm finding life to be very hard. I don't think I can do anything. I'm useless.

I don't know what to do now. I don't know what to do.

Can you provide other reasons why you think you're not intelligent, because you can't work out the hard puzzles in puzzle books? Why is that your definition of intelligence? Are you capable of at least average intelligence, enough that the typical person exhibits and spends their whole life getting by with just fine?

I mean, unless you're seriously deficient to the degree you can't even go through the day without being bewildered and incapable of performing basic tasks, you have enough in life to be averagely successful. That's a far cry from useless.

I mean, IRL, I was often one of the smarter people in the room. In this forum (and in my current job), I'm likely not, there are those here who I recognize as having more raw intelligence than I have overall... which is something I've had to adjust to, but it doesn't mean I'm unsuccessful in life. By conventional standards, by my career at least, I'd be considered very successful even if I'm not always happy. It sounds like you might be judging yourself by the people you're around rather than your life in general?

 

[YOLOisonlyprinciple]

I can't come to terms with the fact that I'm not intelligent.

I was trying to reflect on why I feel this way and realized it's because I associate my self-worth with intelligence.

I'm not trying to distort reality by saying that I'm not intelligent. I really am not. I can't work out the hard puzzles in all those puzzle books or games.

Yeah i have this issue too..
I think we constantly want to seek where we actually place in the ladder..

For me, that lead to game addiction, and wasting 3 years of my life playing LoL and wanting to climb the ladder just so i can show how much better i am..

Now i plan on taking the Mensa test instead; atleast id not spend 8hrs a day wasting time to show im better than others..
Maybe you shud try Mensa too, not sure though;But, in any case your self esteem is pretty low, so probably your score would come out higher than expected

 

[nanook]

I'm similar. I know i have some introverted talents that are not appreciated by the world, but i am more one-sided than other introverts, so i can't seem to function in the world, while they all can. And i can't come to terms with the fact that cleaning toilets is the only thing i might be allowed to do, if i were to ask for a job. The irony is that it is because of my one-sided nature, that i am more confident about my useless introverted talents. The other introverts are often too busy living up to extroverted expectations to discover who they are. And so they might appear to be much more happy cleaning toilets and becoming the towns manager of public toilet cleaning. If it pays for their semi-extroverted make up, car, lifestyle ...

puzzle books? not the right measurement for infp. perhaps not even for intp?

 

[Ex-User (9086)]

You are a player, it doesn't matter what your starting resources are.

Inevitably if you want to play to improve, you will have to accept and rely on them, you can choose to stall or give up as well, it's up to you, but you can't negotiate the starting conditions, it's pointless.

You can improve your intelligence by working on its components, usually by using them. To improve memory, start learning and memorising, etc. Being healthy and fit helps. You can reach your peak and oscillate around it for a long time, it may be enough to make you feel better, but in the end you are feeling bad by comparing yourself with the world instead of looking at what you can do with what you have.

 

[StevenM]

It's some kind of weird fallacious bias that each person has a valid way of first detecting then comparing capable intelligence.

I have some stories....

Waiting for a bus, I happened to stumble across a grown man with clear intellectual disabilities. I guess he loves to talk though, and with me being the only person around, he started with slurred speech, and a subtle spaced out look, the whole bus schedule, the driver's names, what he had for lunch, all his appointment dates, the forecasted weather for the next three days, and his life story. I also noticed a social worker (helper) with him.

With one brow cocked, I was thinking a bunch of things while listening. I was somewhat wonder about diagnoses. But also, I've read (somewhere) that you could be very surprised when encountering these kinds of people, and often they are very underestimated in their capabilities.

Still matter-of-factly stating stuff off, he also opened up his little tin box and wanted to show me papers. He lisped out that he ranked #1 in darts, which I guess was indicated in this dart club's scoreboard.

When the bus arrived, he incidentally ran into his fellow dart buddies, whom were loud and rowdy, and I couldn't help overhearing them cheering him for his latest accomplishment.

It was interesting to me that his apparent condition had no effect on his ability to play darts, and have meaningful relationships with peers, nor did he suffer too much from being social. From his story of being abandoned, homeless, sick, and then under government's social care, he also displayed a remarkable resilience to adversity.

I now question the term - "intellectual disability" or capacity, or comparable measurements thereof.

 

[Jennywocky]

Yup, Tmills -- great story, great example. Sometimes intelligence can impact some practical stuff, but everyone also kind of makes their own way and leverages what they have... and some people might also be conventionally "unintelligent" but actually might be profound and above accomplished in their particular realms of strength.

 

[Minuend]

In the end, being bummed about ones limited intellectual capacities will only be bad for you and it can't change what is. Better to accept you have limitations and that's actually perfectly ok. I struggled with this issue for a loooong time before I realized this.

That being said, there is always potential for developing and improving certain abilities. I'm better at analyzing people today than I was just 1 and 2 years ago, for instance.

 

[8151147]

You actually should feel good because you just was better at selfawareness yourself. Learning truths about ourselves is always good, lying other about yourself is worse, and lying yourself is the worst. Just not everything is necessary to be told to other.

This is actually pretty common for INTPs. INTPs are usually not smart/intelligent in childhood. Why? Because their characters restrict their activities for developing intelligent: lack of sympathy, can't focus on routine activities in both school and social, lack of interesting on something common in social... etc. Beside of that, INTPs not usually express their emotions and aware about their environment, they looks "dull" and docile in people's eyes around them. They usually wonder themselves if they are smart or not and tend to do things involved re-checking about it. And may compare them to other people who have "intelligent figure", or capability of something that prove the self worth.

However when they grow up and Ne functions develop to certain degree, it can support the Ti at it best and it's time for INTPs shining. INTPs now are the real monster of smartness, witty tricky sneaky bastard and obviously surpassed their brothers ENTPs. They are dangerous intelligence seekers and knowledge hunters.

 

[Black Rose]

i would like to learn things from an ai in the future
right now the way i learn it seems i look up stuff online but it's not consistent
science and math and linguistic psychology are all important to ai
if i could ask it questions it would help out because i don't know anyone who would do that for me
people who learn things self autonomously know what to look for
i do not really know what to do because the meaning of what i read changes because i understand it differently from new vocabulary
mostly the isolation happens to discourage me from knowing what is relevant (google can't answer my questions)

 

[Yellow]

I score well on tests, but I feel unintelligent most of the time. I feel like I'm a slow thinker and slow learner.

That feeling doesn't bother me, though. I'm vastly more upset (and perhaps go a little insane) when I appear to be more intelligent, or much quicker on the uptake than another individual or group of people who are supposed to be my peers.

Spoiler

The train of thinking pretty much looks like this:

I'm not that smart. I don't know everything. I'm slow, and I know it. So how dare they be so far below me? I mean fuck! My level should be the baseline, the BASELINE, or at least considered below average, and they should be able to match or surpass me. Surely, it can't be that hard. WHAT IS WRONG WITH THEM?!

 

[Architect]

Why worry about it? Machines can solve puzzles faster than you. They can beat you at chess, Jeopardy, Go, solve math and prove theorems better and faster than you could ever hope. But for all difficult aspects of intelligence, or cognition if you prefer the term, you are better. You have emotions, can make and recognize a joke, and express irony. Machines can't do that yet. But they will, by which point we'll be fully merged with them.

I gave up worrying about my intelligence a long time ago, it's a cheap commodity getting cheaper.

 

[ProxyAmenRa]

The average IQ of a PhD graduate is 120 to 125... It is does not really mean much.

 

[Rudolph Mondal]

Well, it's just that I have friends who are much much better than me at solving puzzles and what I call seeing through a problem to it's underlying logical structure and deriving the solution from there. That's what I think intelligence at the highest form we know is like. I'd really like to attain that intelligence and I've been trying since I was fourteen, at least.
The intelligence I possess is more scattered which means I'm unable to converge to a solution of the problem and would simply be amassing more and more patterns unable to organize all of it in a logical manner so as to converge to the solution.

It's like I can't see the big picture, yet I focus only on the big picture. I wish I couls better understand the dynamics of my thoughts so that I could improve myself further.

 

[Rudolph Mondal]

And the sad thing is that intelligence is probably the skill I possess to the highest degree compared to all the other skills I might possess. However, my intelligence itself isn't very high and that's just sad. It makes me feel like a sub-par human.

 

[onesteptwostep]

I think you're putting yourself down because there's this societal ideal (prevalent in a lot of developed Asian countries) which tells you that intelligence is like some holy grail in life. Imo there's intelligence in the sense that you know a bunch of stuff, and intelligence in the sense that you perceive patterns. The patterns part only comes when your brain isn't depressed or putting itself down all the time.

I haven't been to Singapore myself but I'm guessing it's somewhat similar to Taiwan. Culturally speaking I'm guessing it places high value of doing certain things so you'll have a certain status in society- there's a set course in life which society- or your family even, expects you to take. Singapore's damn small so I bet that dynamic is even more, er, what's the word.. volatile.

 

[Pyropyro]

@TMills27 That's an awesome story! More power to that dude!

@OP

I feel ya since that's how I felt when I first studied in a University. Anyways, I think being successful in life is less about intelligence and more of one's attitude, ability to take care of others and willingness to learn.

If you feel that you lack in other skills then go ahead and learn new stuff.

 

[StevenM]

Puzzles are for fun though? In fact, I'd dare to say that most skill is effortlessly acquired through play.

At least that's what people have been seemingly been telling me,
"Your talents are hidden in what you like to do with your free time. "

Thinking about this now, I'm guessing this 'intelligence' is just a bi-product, or side effect, of what you enjoy doing.

I remember you posting awhile back that you 'invented' board games or such for your brother to play. I remember doing something similar, which followed me into adulthood, where I'm still thinking about what makes a good game.

 

[Rudolph Mondal]

Puzzles are for fun though? In fact, I'd dare to say that most skill is effortlessly acquired through play.

At least that's what people have been seemingly been telling me,
"Your talents are hidden in what you like to do with your free time. "

Thinking about this now, I'm guessing this 'intelligence' is just a bi-product, or side effect, of what you enjoy doing.

I remember you posting awhile back that you 'invented' board games or such for your brother to play. I remember doing something similar, which followed me into adulthood, where I'm still thinking about what makes a good game.

Do I enjoy doing anything?

I don't know. I don't think so. Not right now anyway.

I probably would have given a different answer last week.

But frankly what I was doing for the most part last week was born out of my desire to find a coherent theory which captures all the points that were floating around in my head.

I got somewhere with that but then I think I started getting upset again.

So right now I don't know what to do.

This is a cycle. Always happens. It will probably take a while for me to get back up on my feet again.

Right now I kinda find all the things I was reading/thinking about last week to be repulsive.

I can't stay in sync with a topic or subject for long. Disassociation always happens.

I need to find a new goal so that I can start reading/thinking again.

Last week my goal was to try and link patterns, emergence, self-organization, evolution, and optimization together.

I don't find that interesting anymore.

I need a new goal.

Finding one or rather having it find me will take some time.

I know I feel that I'm useless right now but I tell myself it's temporary.

I know it's temporary.

It's always like this. I'll feel empty, like there's nothing out there for me, that everything is barren rock. This lasts a few weeks.

And then I get interested in something. A small question about something which in turn leads to larger more general questions.

Following that my goal leads me to find some sort of way to address the question. To find some kind of answer.

And then I'll be searching for that answer, trying to find a picture that links the points I've found.

I realize I can't link the points. I realize I'm lost, in search of something that my mind is unable to grasp. I start feeling stupid, hopeless, wishing I was more intelligent.

Soon, I start feeling empty again, barren rock.

Perhaps now that I've recognized the cycle and brought it to consciousness, I can shorten the time I feel empty?

That would be nice.

 

[Hadoblado]

Sounds like depression.

I could've written OP word for word.

Intelligence as an objective measure is a trap. It's only a means to an end, not an end in itself. Figure out what you want to use your intelligence for and focus on that. For me it's telling reality apart from non-reality (for the most part).

 

[onesteptwostep]

@OP

I feel ya since that's how I felt when I first studied in a University. Anyways, I think being successful in life is less about intelligence and more of one's attitude, ability to take care of others and willingness to learn.

This really needs to be emphasized.

Maybe try going to Malaysia and enjoy nature for a while, like a month or something. Touch dirt, explore the jungle, kayak in a river. I'd imagine being cooped up in Singapore doesn't really do good for your mental health.

But eh, just me though.

 

[SNCSA]

Search for what makes you happy and stop listening others.
If you can't handle it alone try some therapy or a shrink... They common people with tools to help you. Don't expect to be understood, expect only to get the tools to live normal life

If we are here not to do
What you and I wanna do
And go forever crazy with it
Why the hell are we even here?

 

[RicBC]

I usually separate being smart and being intelligent. How about you guys?
Another thing. I see limits me is short term memory. I like to code but the short memory fails given the overload of information perceived from little details. And most time I fail to perceived the most relevant information about what I am doing, which makes me look really dumb and stupid sometimes lol.

 

[Cherry Cola]

If you are introspective and in possession of well developed meta-cognitive reasoning you'll be able to spot your own faults, and keep on growing continually on an intellectual level, especially if you also have a bit of a self critical streak (which you seem to have). Unfortunately self loathing tends to come with the package. Slow, steady, and deliberate thinking from a mind which knows itself can and will beat out raw intelligence in a lot of cases.

Don't be so harsh on yourself. You're hardly lacking in raw intelligence either. I'd be really surprised if you weren't at least in the 90th percentile.

 

[Vion]

I can't come to terms with the fact that I'm not intelligent.

I was trying to reflect on why I feel this way and realized it's because I associate my self-worth with intelligence.

I'm not trying to distort reality by saying that I'm not intelligent. I really am not. I can't work out the hard puzzles in all those puzzle books or games.

I don't know if I can improve my intelligence somehow.

What's in store for me, being the unintelligent person I am? What's the point in life if I can't see through problems into the underlying logical skeleton?

I'm finding life to be very hard. I don't think I can do anything. I'm useless.

I don't know what to do now. I don't know what to do.

Oh boy you really are dumb! Hey wait since I agree with you does that mean I am dumb too? Omg you tricky fucker calling me dumb! Smart enough to not say it to my face though. Oh no does that mean you are smarter than me!? I hate this game! Nvm wrong forum section.

 

[Nikki 1635]

INTP's and J's lifegoal is often to understand everything. THats' an insane premise in itself. Anyone attempting such will immediately conclude they are unintelligent and they'd be right. But, INTP's understand way more than most everyone else because they work 99 times harder at the process.

 

[RicBC]

I can't come to terms with the fact that I'm not intelligent.

I was trying to reflect on why I feel this way and realized it's because I associate my self-worth with intelligence.

I'm not trying to distort reality by saying that I'm not intelligent. I really am not. I can't work out the hard puzzles in all those puzzle books or games.

I don't know if I can improve my intelligence somehow.

What's in store for me, being the unintelligent person I am? What's the point in life if I can't see through problems into the underlying logical skeleton?

I'm finding life to be very hard. I don't think I can do anything. I'm useless.

I don't know what to do now. I don't know what to do.

Honestly... This looks like a shyzotipal Ti-Si loop evolving to depression.

You have to find who you are in what you do and stop feeding the thinking tool (typo I meant trol, lol, but yeah, use thinking as a tool, do not let your being to become thinking-being only, do things in your life, let your being express itself in what he does, don't do thinking only) inside your mind.

 

[TheManBeyond]

i'm not intelligent and i wish i was to do some efficient programming and have a high monetary income but whatsoever, i'm lazy to learn and stupid to learn quickly, i need patience and i lack this in this fields. all my patience is spent stupidly in my relations with other people, i say stupidly becuz they wisily have no patience with me and i should learn about it.

 

[ApostateAbe]

I can't come to terms with the fact that I'm not intelligent.

I was trying to reflect on why I feel this way and realized it's because I associate my self-worth with intelligence.

I'm not trying to distort reality by saying that I'm not intelligent. I really am not. I can't work out the hard puzzles in all those puzzle books or games.

I don't know if I can improve my intelligence somehow.

What's in store for me, being the unintelligent person I am? What's the point in life if I can't see through problems into the underlying logical skeleton?

I'm finding life to be very hard. I don't think I can do anything. I'm useless.

I don't know what to do now. I don't know what to do.

Do not try to improve your intelligence (there is no scientifically-known way to do that), but, if you accurately recognize your own limitations, then you have what so many other people don't: clear vision, not delusions. Just make the most of what you have. Half of everyone in the world has an IQ below 90.