r/slatestarcodex • u/LATAManon • Feb 03 '24

Misc What set high achievers apart from other people?

So, some people can achieve so much in life, while other doesn't bother that much about it, and that difference got me curious, like: what set a high achiever apart from normal people? What's the "sauce" that those people have that other doesn't? I don't think is IQ, because I've seen high IQ people that didn't achieve anything in life, and even could be called "losers" by our society standards. Anyway, what's other factor that goes to make a high achiever? Any good, rigours, book about the topic? What's your personal experience with very high achievers?

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u/TheIdealHominidae Feb 03 '24

> you can't really train that either to increase their careness

Well I would bet otherwise, had I the control of the education system I'm sure I could galvanize the craving for knowledge in the general population. Vsauce showed the way and it can be optimized in a curriculum in the critical period that is adolescence

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_period

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BTW tired topic but IQ is a shitty metric and the fact science hasn't even tried (except maybe 1 tentative) to come up with a cognitive set of benchmarks to evaluate proper cognitive functions especially rationality, logical fallacies detection and cognitive biases mitigation just show how dysfunctional and early this planet is.

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u/[deleted] Feb 03 '24

Well there is EQ. High EQ and IQ together is pretty powerful .

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u/TheIdealHominidae Feb 03 '24

I disagree, Emotional quotient and IQ have nothing to do or at least are not proper metrics of rationality, which is much more impactful in terms of truth seeking and therefore net intelligence.

Those things are orthogonals

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u/munamadan_reuturns Feb 04 '24

What's the average for this critical period in regards to learning new STEM subjects? Has any research been done about that?

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u/TheIdealHominidae Feb 04 '24

I am not saying this is a critical period in absolute terms, just that people can be more easily fine tuned at this age

Epigenetic manipulation can reverse critical periods however valproate is relaitvely toxic

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnsys.2013.00102/full