Intelligence and self-esteem

[Aik]

I feel like I have made my intellectual sophistication a measurement on which my self-esteem is based. Every time I easily understand something new and complicated my self-esteem increases and the opposite happens when I struggle to comprehend something. Everything else unrelated to intelligence has close to zero effect on my self-esteem. I also have this light subconscious idea that if I don't develop myself intellectually, life is not worth living.
Is this common in INTP's?

 

[Artsu Tharaz]

If you don't develop yourself intellectually, life is not worth living.

-intellectually

If you don't develop yourself, life is not worth living

-contary

Life is worth living if you develop yourself

Truth: life is unconditional.

Life is worth living.

Simple statement:

Life is life / life is living

The way to life is to focus on what is most worthy to you of existence, your supreme experiences.

Any experience given a signifier "not" as in "not to be done" is a false signifier, a barrier to be overcome.

When in your life have you had a profound experience which to you signifies the sanctity of life?

Was there a reason you feel that this moment should not have occurred?

Yet it signifies life, so gives itself meaning.

For example, your moment of supreme intellectual discovery, or one such moment that you can imagine, shows such a display of the sanctity of life.

Yet, this moment is given sanctity simply by the experience which occurred, and is given sanctity once more simply via the act of imagining it.

The obligation towards the intellectual implies in itself a barrier towards the acceptance of life.

Through acceptance, intellectual development will be an enjoyable pursuit.

Many pursuits are enjoyable, and show their worth through how they are experienced to you yourself.

 

[Aik]

What's your point?
Also, the question was if it was common in INTP's.

 

[Aik]

"The way to life is to focus on what is most worthy to you of existence, your supreme experiences."

Whose way to life? The ideal way to life is to enjoy all experiences equally.

"Yet, this moment is given sanctity simply by the experience which occurred, and is given sanctity once more simply via the act of imagining it."

What was the point of writing this? By the act of imagining do you mean conceptualising the experience?

 

[Black Rose]

Goal-directed learning can lower self-esteem if you are not intelligent enough to achieve your goal, so the learning was pointless. Your goals must match your intelligence level. A problem I have is that I think there should be a problem I need to solve. When I find a problem I want to solve, sometimes I can't solve it and get depressed / anxious.

INTP's don't have this problem because they solve problems only when they are required to, otherwise they just spend time thinking about everything they possibly can. This increases the knowledge they have that makes it easy to find solutions because they probably thought of the problem before it existed.

 

[Absurdity]

Great, until you reach your limits and watch as others effortlessly pass you by.

Don't hang your self worth on anything like this. It can only let you down.

 

[Turnevies]

Of course, knowledge is power, so it makes some sense that understanding things increases your self-esteem.

On the other hand, the more you know, the more you know what you don't know aka the Dunning-Kruger effect.

 

[PmjPmj]

An NT's main driver is competence. Your OP could also relate to myself (INTJ).

Turnevies makes an excellent point re: the Dunning-Kruger effect. It would appear that the pursuit of intellectual superiority leads (me, at least) into serious doubt and self-loathing, because I am regularly coming up against my own limitations aka stupidity and a glaringly obvious lack of knowledge.

I just wanted to be a genius with an IQ of 250, damnit

My advice would be to relax, and realise that you are only human. The truly intellectually gifted are few and far between.

Take a good look around you. It certainly isn't very evolved to compare yourself to others and feel better about life, but who cares about evolved perspectives? fact is, for all of my self-loathing around stupidity, I need only look around to realise that on the whole, I'm actually not that stupid.

I'm sure you could say the same.

 

[Artsu Tharaz]

I just wanted to be a genius with an IQ of 250, damnit

I read in an Andy Griffiths book that cockroaches have an IQ of 240.

So, to achieve 250 IQ, simply simulate the thinking processes of a cockroach, and then just go a little further than that.

 

[Aik]

I know how to deal with it, I was just wondering if other's have the same.
Also, looking around, of course, people are far from intelligent.
I think the way this evolved in us is that from a young age most people compare themselves to others and as we were lacking the social status and other standard parameters, the defence mechanism was to make intelligence the criteria of comparison.

 

[Absurdity]

On the other hand, the more you know, the more you know what you don't know aka the Dunning-Kruger effect.

That's not what the Dunning-Krueger effect is...

"The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which relatively unskilled individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing their ability to be much higher than it really is. Dunning and Kruger attributed this bias to a metacognitive inability of the unskilled to recognize their own ineptitude and evaluate their own ability accurately. Their research also suggests corollaries: highly skilled individuals may underestimate their relative competence and may erroneously assume that tasks which are easy for them are also easy for others."

 

[Turnevies]

That's not what the Dunning-Krueger effect is...

"The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which relatively unskilled individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing their ability to be much higher than it really is. Dunning and Kruger attributed this bias to a metacognitive inability of the unskilled to recognize their own ineptitude and evaluate their own ability accurately. Their research also suggests corollaries: highly skilled individuals may underestimate their relative competence and may erroneously assume that tasks which are easy for them are also easy for others."

I was using simplified wordings, but I don't see a difference in essence?

 

[Grayman]

Yes, I value intelligence and consequently I value myself based on my intelligence. Unfortunately my intelligence is very average. Fortunately I recognize that putting value on such things is meaningless. Unforrionately making things meaningless leads to nihilism and eventual depression and apathy. This is all countered by establishing important relationships in which new meaning can then be derived.

 

[Veravera]

Yeah, I'm struggling with it. It isn't just that my self-esteem is based on it, but I think my identity is (mostly). I don't remember exactly where I've seen it, but I've come across the idea that INTP's are humble multiple times and I could never relate to it.

An NT's main driver is competence. Your OP could also relate to myself (INTJ).

Take a good look around you. It certainly isn't very evolved to compare yourself to others and feel better about life, but who cares about evolved perspectives? fact is, for all of my self-loathing around stupidity, I need only look around to realise that on the whole, I'm actually not that stupid.

I'm sure you could say the same.

Good point about the competence. I wonder where the line is drawn between "others are less intelligent" and "I am superior". If you take into account the values of intelligence and competence, where do you stop before jumping to "so that means I am better than others"?

I guess this makes me insecure.

 

[Pyropyro]

What does intellectual sophistication mean btw? How is it measured? Can you compare it with others?

 

[Nofriends]

What does intellectual sophistication mean btw? How is it measured? Can you compare it with others?

It can be measured by many things, for example what someone says or thinks.

For example older people who say things like "I have a life" are usually morons!

This could be for many reasons, (a) to excuse misconduct and saying that it is excused due to their existence (b) to differentiate themselves from someone else or to deceive themselves that they are of a higher standing (c) because they feel a need to make known a well established fact, this implies lower levels of thinking because their mind operates in such a way that they see basic facts of reality as being hard to acknowledge and thus feeling compelled to alert other individuals (d) because their little mind thinks that having or doing x x x equates to having a life (e) their little brain believes themselves to be slaves, they struggle coming to basic realities of life, people who say "I have a life" tend to be of a certain type, most certainly not like people who work purely for their sustenance (f) they are extremely self absorbed and egotistic, with their audacity to make known their existence through the acknowledgement of the self to others, as if that is of significance to the other (g) in the normative interpretation of "life" their egocentricity and stupidity extends to such a degree as to deceive themselves into believing that they have a proprietary right to everything that comprises their existence.

When you have a fine brain capacity you start to transcend the idiocy of humankind, and refrain from making an asinine assertion like the foregoing one. If you wanted to know who said this, it was a school teacher.
Absolutely horrendous, these people should be fired, they have the brain capacity and level of thinking which is akin to a mentally retarded lobotomized premature half aborted baby.

 

[EditorOne]

I know how to deal with it, I was just wondering if other's have the same.
Also, looking around, of course, people are far from intelligent.
I think the way this evolved in us is that from a young age most people compare themselves to others and as we were lacking the social status and other standard parameters, the defence mechanism was to make intelligence the criteria of comparison.

I wonder if intelligence was the only thing some of us had going for us when young. It was for me. I was skinny, nervous, shy, frustrated, clumsy and geeky. But I could excel academically, so I did, and while I didn't consciously assign value to intelligence, I did act as if it was very important.
Excelling academically got me both respect and scorn. I tended, naturally, to hang out with the former and avoid the latter, who were prone to express their scorn physically (also "naturally").

 

[Pyropyro]

It can be measured by many things, for example what someone says or thinks.

For example older people who say things like "I have a life" are usually morons!

This could be for many reasons, (a) to excuse misconduct and saying that it is excused due to their existence (b) to differentiate themselves from someone else or to deceive themselves that they are of a higher standing (c) because they feel a need to make known a well established fact, this implies lower levels of thinking because their mind operates in such a way that they see basic facts of reality as being hard to acknowledge and thus feeling compelled to alert other individuals (d) because their little mind thinks that having or doing x x x equates to having a life (e) their little brain believes themselves to be slaves, they struggle coming to basic realities of life, people who say "I have a life" tend to be of a certain type, most certainly not like people who work purely for their sustenance (f) they are extremely self absorbed and egotistic, with their audacity to make known their existence through the acknowledgement of the self to others, as if that is of significance to the other (g) in the normative interpretation of "life" their egocentricity and stupidity extends to such a degree as to deceive themselves into believing that they have a proprietary right to everything that comprises their existence.

When you have a fine brain capacity you start to transcend the idiocy of humankind, and refrain from making an asinine assertion like the foregoing one. If you wanted to know who said this, it was a school teacher.
Absolutely horrendous, these people should be fired, they have the brain capacity and level of thinking which is akin to a mentally retarded lobotomized premature half aborted baby.

You didn't answer my questions. You just ranted about a teacher that you don't like.

 

[Nofriends]

You didn't answer my questions. You just ranted about a teacher that you don't like.

i gave you two metrics, idiot!

 

[Pyropyro]

i gave you two metrics, idiot!

No you didnt.

 

[Nofriends]

No you didnt.

Utterances or thought.

 

[Absurdity]

I was using simplified wordings, but I don't see a difference in essence?

Dunning-Kruger's corollary is about the highly competent underestimating the level of their own competence, not achieving some pseudo-Socratic level of wisdom about the things they don't know.