@Doctor-Phibes said in Who here had grandparents who got a college degree?:
@Aqua-Letifer said in Who here had grandparents who got a college degree?:
@Doctor-Phibes said in Who here had grandparents who got a college degree?:
@Horace said in Who here had grandparents who got a college degree?:
The Chinese guy we went camping with last summer grew up in the middle of nowhere in China where there was almost no schooling. He taught himself math, because he had a knack for it and it was the sort of subject that you need no materials for, just text books. Which he somehow procured for himself. He eventually got a PhD in math and now works for a major bank in this area. I can promise you he wouldn't have been able to do what he did without the sort of intelligence that happens to be testable.
'Intelligence' is a rather nebulous concept. Personally, I'd say somebody who is really good at maths is intelligent, but some people would say that it means nothing if he doesn't know how to breed pigs. It might be better to say this guy is really good at maths, and this other guy is good at breeding pigs.
Most of us probably equate intelligence with being good at stuff we respect, and not with stuff that we don't understand.
I think that there's natural aptitude, and then there's curiosity. Natural aptitude is something like fluid intelligence, which is highly overrated. Because a natural ability to pick things up means nothing if you don't actually try to pick anything up.
Curiosity, on the other hand, will always get you there. But the vast, vast majority of us would rather be socially acceptable than curious. And those two are almost always at odds.
I think the ability to work really hard is probably better than all of them. Something I've never had, except for short periods of time, when I go freaking nuts at something before inevitably losing motivation.
Gary Kasparov said that the question about whether talent or hard work was more important was missing the point, since the ability to work really hard is a talent.
I'd argue that you're never going to work really hard at something on any sustained level of enthusiasm unless you're really curious about it.
