- #1
Zantra
- 793
- 3
I have this habit of always attempting to look at things from a different perspective. I've found it often helps me if I can understand the thought processes of someone else and how they arrive at particular conclusions.
So has anyone ever tried to picture the mind of someone vastly different from themselves. Say, someone who substantially more or less intelligent that yourself? For people less intelligent- say someone who is mentally impaired, I try to correlate it with my childhood, and how I perceived the world when I was young. I imagine it must be very similar to that in some ways. Or someone more intelligent that yourself in at least an order of magnitude. I see how they must view mere mortal beings such as myself. The same way an average person views a mentally impaired person. Persons of great intelligence are often perceived as arrogant. But is this truly the case? Imagine how mentally impaired people percieve people of normal intelligence. To them, are we not arrogant and codescending? Maybe the arroagance and conescention is derrive from an extreme lack of patience.
One example. I once had the priveledge of playing chess with this very intelligent guy. His IQ was somewhere in the 180's. Now, I'm a casual chess player, not ranked at all, and I've never entered a tournament or considered it in my life. I play for the simple enjoyment of the game. But still, I am pretty decent all the same. He was playing a bunch of people and we played a few games. The first game was so not close you'd have thought it was my first game ever.
After the 2nd game he became impatient and started showing me my mistakes. It wasn't that I was making a lot, simply that he could see more moves ahead than I could. It was more then that, but that was a major factor. He came across as arrogant and condescending. But I put myself in his place, and if I were trying to teach someone who'd never played before, I could see where it could become a chore.
Maybe it's a personality flaw, but his actions did mirrror the actions of how an average person would treat someone who was mentally impaired. Maybe there's a connection there.
So has anyone ever tried to picture the mind of someone vastly different from themselves. Say, someone who substantially more or less intelligent that yourself? For people less intelligent- say someone who is mentally impaired, I try to correlate it with my childhood, and how I perceived the world when I was young. I imagine it must be very similar to that in some ways. Or someone more intelligent that yourself in at least an order of magnitude. I see how they must view mere mortal beings such as myself. The same way an average person views a mentally impaired person. Persons of great intelligence are often perceived as arrogant. But is this truly the case? Imagine how mentally impaired people percieve people of normal intelligence. To them, are we not arrogant and codescending? Maybe the arroagance and conescention is derrive from an extreme lack of patience.
One example. I once had the priveledge of playing chess with this very intelligent guy. His IQ was somewhere in the 180's. Now, I'm a casual chess player, not ranked at all, and I've never entered a tournament or considered it in my life. I play for the simple enjoyment of the game. But still, I am pretty decent all the same. He was playing a bunch of people and we played a few games. The first game was so not close you'd have thought it was my first game ever.
After the 2nd game he became impatient and started showing me my mistakes. It wasn't that I was making a lot, simply that he could see more moves ahead than I could. It was more then that, but that was a major factor. He came across as arrogant and condescending. But I put myself in his place, and if I were trying to teach someone who'd never played before, I could see where it could become a chore.
Maybe it's a personality flaw, but his actions did mirrror the actions of how an average person would treat someone who was mentally impaired. Maybe there's a connection there.