Persistence: Beats Intelligence, and Beats Luck

Of course I have no persistence either, but if enough people tell me it might get me somewhere I might give it a try. Probably not, though.

depends what it is you're after, really...

That's the quote taped on my mirror.

what % of your intelligence would you trade in order to become exceptionally persistent? (ie, able to follow through, more or less, with all the plans you make for yourself.)

i would trade 30% of my intelligence for this superpower, and i am not even very intelligent. that's a nonsense figure, obviously, because i don't believe intelligence can be reliably quantified, but anyway, i would much rather be dull-witted and persistent than smart and lazy.

I think you're right to talk about persistence as an ability, just like intelligence, that can vary from person-to-person and is largely out of one's own control. It's often just assumed that anyone can work as long or hard as anyone else, which leads to persistence being incorrectly regarded as a virtue, it seems to me.

Disagree, or at least it's certainly (ime) a lot less binary than that.

Was a bit disappointed with the Brian Eno interview in yesterdays's guardian, where he said:

I don’t really believe in luck; things happen to everyone, but you have to be ready for them.

I thought he, if anyone, would appreciate the role of luck and chance in life..and come down on the side of luck rather than persistence.

i think persistence is really important. luck matters too. intelligence is pointless: after you reach a certain threshold, it's like a parlor trick.

you have to be persistent so that when luck is in your favor you are all ready for it

let's not undersell the will to dominate others and define your own reality

those two concepts are incompatible

A Nietzschean will to power would be pretty useless without persistence.

what % of your intelligence would you trade in order to become exceptionally persistent? (ie, able to follow through, more or less, with all the plans you make for yourself.)

I am not and never have been ambitious or goal-seeking. My goals tend to be modest and reachable without exceptional persistence. I tend to direct my intelligence toward the goal of understanding the world and being happy with my lot in life. This has been easier since I rose out of poverty to have a stable and adequate income.

This has been easier since I rose out of poverty to have a stable and adequate income.

Yeah, if I was happy where I was in my career I might have a different perspective. Rn i think persistence would be very useful.

The plans I make for myself involve a higher level of intelligence than I currently have, so the exchange wouldn't work.

Exchanging for just being happy, on the other hand... give me a lobotomy.

My life arc has been atypical. When I was young and poor I was intermittently happy, during all the times I was reasonably sure I had a roof, a bed and some food for the next couple of months. My basic outlook on life was good humored and could quickly assert itself during those intervals.

My most miserable time was the decade and a half when I had enough money assured to meet my ordinary physical needs, but my daughter's extreme need for physical care was exhausting and the emotional duress this caused made happiness a very rare commodity. After her care was stabilized around ages 15-20, and my own needs were being met, I recovered most of my basic good humor and sunny outlook. Having personal good health is another very important component of this.

I dunno, I think it would balance out. In general, I think that intelligence is the ability to recognize patterns and relations between things and to learn from experience (including reading, watching, listening, as well as doing). If you are more intelligent, it will take you less time to accomplish something than a person who is less intelligent. You'd basically just have less time on your hands.

Some of the most irritating people I've meet are those who are persistent, but with not much intelligence. People give too much credence to Blake's 'If a fool would persist in his folly, he would become wise'.

I also find people who don't acknowledge the role of luck in their lives are often a bit full of themselves. As I get older, I see more and more the role of luck and chance in life.

But maybe I'm easily irritated.

Dogged persistence results in more experience gained and more situations where luck can play a role, imo.

Persistence also comes with fewer complicating factors. Intelligence can lead people astray as often as it can help them solve their problems. Ignorance leads people astray too, but only when people mistake their ignorance for intelligence.

when people mistake their ignorance for intelligence

that's pretty characteristic of stupid ppl though

Intelligence is important of course -- it helps -- but I feel like there are diminishing returns once you get to a certain, not even all that high point, unless of course your goal is to be an exceptional person in some way.

I guess intelligence is enriching though, if it means you are more curious about the world and get more pleasure from learning, as aimless said

diminishing returns

Don't put down intelligence too much...As someone wisely stated above, it all depends what you're after really There are things beyond temporary material gains, possesions and prestige etc, for which intelligence is essential to appreciate. Personally, I think often of the final quote of Oliver Sacks:

Above all, I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure.

I have no idea how to respond to this question. I value my persistence and tenacity over my intelligence, but I doubt that others would agree. I also think my persistence is an attempt to make up for having a generally shitty work ethic in the first place.

but as we get older we lose our mental faculties. if intelligence is essential to appreciate "things beyond temporary material gains" then logically our capacity for appreciation would decline as we get older. i don't think that is the case.

How do you distinguish persistence from work ethic? I'm bad on both counts, but have always thought they were the same thing.

(xp)

how to distinguish persistence from intelligence? it would seem the dumber you are the less patient you are.

"if intelligence is essential to appreciate "things beyond temporary material gains"

Luckily this is a totally nonsensical definition of intelligence. It's not even wrong.

please don't turn ilx full gladwell, ppl

__adwell

Let's come to a consensus on what intelligence is and we'll have this problem half-licked

To be fair, bs said there are some things beyond &c that require intelligence to appreciate, not that ALL things beyond &c &c

Beyond isnt a q of intellect it's a question of basest assumptions and personal priorities. Once you've those decided then imo intelligence is about how well you get to those aims, how efficient, creative, etc you reach the endpoint.

"if intelligence is essential to appreciate "things beyond temporary material gains"

Luckily this is a totally nonsensical definition of intelligence. It's not even wrong.

― Ecomigrant gnomics (darraghmac), Monday, March 28, 2016 10:28 AM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i see where it is coming from though. animals tend to have a one-track mind: FOOD. nothing else matters if there is the possibility of food. maybe this desire for instant gratification is an animalistic instinct and intelligence gives us the tools to delay that (for better food in the future lol)

I tend to think work ethic is defined by not procrastinating & not trying any shortcuts, just doing the work when it needs doing the way it needs to be done.
I find some people who have an excellent work ethic might not actually be that persistent, i.e. if the above doesn't produce the desired result, they feel defeated.
Persistence / tenacity is different.

Faith in the end result might be a bridge between the two, tombot?

just doing the work when it needs doing the way it needs to be done.

Suggest that people have vastly different levels of difficulty doing this based on their neurology, aptitude, the nature of the "work," mental wellness, so much else. Almost so much that it's inherently unfair to measure the output instead of the input. Only of course you can't really measure input and you can measure output if you only consider certain kinds of tasks and reduce your definition to very un-nuanced types of "productivity."

Persistence: I think in recent education research this trait gets linked to qualities like resilience, optimism, "grit," conscientiousness--more closely related to what we think of as "character" than "intelligence."

only consider certain kinds of tasks and reduce your definition to very un-nuanced types of "productivity."

Our society totally does this w/r/t the "work ethic" concept, though. IMO the "excellent sheep" phenomenon and some of the phenomena in "twilight of the elites" is totally because of an American cultural attitude towards "intelligence" and "work ethic" that almost completely ignores grit and conscientiousness (and luck!) and believes that the rewards to be showered on individuals displaying those two traits (and no others, bcz eh who cares) should be as close to limitless as possible

also imho it is really difficult to hire people who have excellent work ethic (as defined above) and lots of grit. I wonder if there is a correlation in that people who never procrastinate get frustrated more easily?

xp Sure, sure! Inarguably. But we don't have to accept those terms for our own discussion, is probably more what I was thinking.

I tend to think work ethic is defined by not procrastinating & not trying any shortcuts, just doing the work when it needs doing the way it needs to be done.

wait, don't you work for the government? that isn't worth ethic, that's plodding.

Nobody is in business for the input tbf

"in business for the input" poss username material tho

I thought grit had to do with self control, and an ability to work toward long term objectives. "Stick-to-it-iveness." I don't see how that can be negatively correlated to work ethic? Even in your definition, work ethic means not taking shortcuts, and gritty folks seem by definition to be in it for the long haul.

yeah, persistence and work ethic are pretty closely related imo

See, my definition of work ethic is a combination of efficiency and not procrastinating

grit is putting up with garbage

where is the love for the term tenacity, by the way

Yeah I see a clear distinction between work ethic and grit

grit from grindstone.

"Persistent: Beats Intelligence" is my favorite '90s IDM compilation.

Heyo

problem w intelligence is most systems are outdated by now, or developed by a capitalist patriarchy. cultural/regional/social/economic/racial/sexual biases can creep into the language and design of even the most simple of test questions.

i think intelligence is awareness of yourself as just another person. it is acceptance of other people. it is pro-social and pro-life. open-source. globalist. altruistic. the higher brain functions tend to me more empathetic.

i find it hilarious that the CIA has Intelligence in its title.

most systems of testing

intelligence is a stupid concept man

Pfft. Measured intelligence, maybe. Why dyou keep.introducing these failed fait accompli propositions into a nice discussion tho.

xp

i am trying to add to the discussion. if you were intelligent you would not see them as intruding on your discussion.

you don't own the discussion. i think greed/ego/possessiveness is anti-intelligent.

what you're talking about, adam, is wisdom, not intelligence. intelligence is about pattern recognition and adapting old schema to new circumstances and other bullshit like that

tbh, i am probably vastly underrating the importance of intelligence. "persistence" just seems really attractive to me because it's not a strength of mine

My intelligence has led me to notice a pattern of you making up nonsensical definitions for terms. I guess that is adding something to the discussion.

could you add further to this discussion by defining the following:

good
taste
food

thx

- sent from my work ethic

what you're talking about, adam, is wisdom, not intelligence. intelligence is about pattern recognition and adapting old schema to new circumstances and other bullshit like that

― Treeship, Monday, March 28, 2016 5:43 PM (20 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

so is intelligence shared between humans/sentient "aware beings and animals alike? or AI? there are computer programs made by 16 year olds that can play Super Mario Bros. blind and do adaptive reasoning.

everyone is making up definitions, or taking the words/vocabulary given to them (often through flawed/biased educational structures), and applying the definition taught them with their own personal history of experiences as well as, now, everyone on the internet's word diahrrea

It's all just chaos.
― B.Rad (Brad), Wednesday, December 11, 2002 9:38 PM (13 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

moral of the story is, i wish i had more grit and motivation. sorry for the rabbit holes.

I wonder if Paul Revere possessed "stick-to-it-iveness"? imago otm, basically.

Paul Revere possessed tenacity but he was also profoundly affable and probably a good communicator.

http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/polisci/faculty/chwe/ps269/han.pdf

The few who have delved into this gap in the historical narrative suggest that Revere’s real importance is not to be found in that one spectacular exploit (Countryman 1985; Fischer 1994; Forbes 1942; Triber 1998). What then was his importance, if any? In other words, if Revere was more than a messenger who just happened upon the assignment to ride to Lexington on that fateful night of April 18-19, 1775, and if he indeed had “an uncanny genius for being at the center of events” (Fischer 1994: xv), what exactly was the role he played? Joseph Warren, known mostly as the man who sent Revere on that ride, presents a similar quandary (Cary 1961; Truax 1968). What was his role? Also, what was his relationship with Revere in the context of the incipient movement?

Using the membership rosters of key Whig groups and supplementary secondary data, I address these questions by examining the underlying relational structure that created opportunities for Revere and Warren in the mobilization process. The analysis shows that Paul Revere’s genius was in his being a bridge par excellence. The role Joseph Warren played
was of the same kind, welding the movement as a whole. Both men were bridges that spanned the various social chasms and connected disparate organizational elements, helping to forge an emerging movement that gave rise to the American Revolution. The effectiveness of the brokerage they provided in linking the microlevel interactions to the macrolevel mobilization was due mainly to the fact that the network they were embedded in was highly multiplex, and the positions they occupied in it were singularly instrumental.

I 100% model my career success on being embedded in a highly multiplex network and trying to occupy a singularly instrumental position within it. More or less. I value that way more than being smart or persistent, I see both of those qualities as means to the end of being a top shelf connector.

Intelligence surely has more applications than just one's career? For example: relationships, bringing up kids, any interests or creative pursuits? You seem a bit obsessed with intelligence in a work situation? If someone traded 30% of their intelligence for persistence, it would have a wider impact beyond career success?

I'm sick of my interests and creative pursuits tbh. I'd rather be more responsible and have less anxiety.

Luckily this isn't a real trade or else I might be making a terrible mistake.

I'm trading future discussion on this topic with dreamy Adam for a few hours trying to deshrub my arsehole using a shaving mirror and some blutack.

It seems, to me, a wiser use of my time.

I'd rather be more responsible and have less anxiety

This is actually the exact opposite of how it works!

Oh don't tell me that

all the super responsible people I know are anxious as balls

Not as anxious as mine once I get this mirror in place

all the super responsible people I know are anxious as balls

key word: super

Accepting responsibility is urgent & key, but all you can really be responsible for are your own actions and intentions, but as soon as your actions enter the larger world you cannot be responsible for their their ultimate effects. iow, high anxiety adds nothing of value.

It is remarkable to me how many otherwise intelligent people are blind to how much is out of their control and how extensive their ignorance is, compared to their knowledge. Intelligence ought to allow one to distinguish what one can and cannot do, and make accurate distinctions between one's desires and one's ability to achieve them, while not mistaking probability for certainty.

OTM; I think the root cause is, again, our failure to teach that, instead of reinforcing the anxious form of responsibility + intellect.

I think being persistant is more gratifying than being "intelligent", because if you're real persistant you know you've done your best, but if you're a lazy intellectual you'll constantly berate yourself

but I think James Stewart is v otm in Harvey:

Years ago my mother used to say to me, she'd say, "In this world, Elwood, you must be" - she always called me Elwood - "In this world, Elwood, you must be oh so smart or oh so pleasant." Well, for years I was smart. I recommend pleasant. You may quote me.

Not much consolation knowing you've done your best if it doesn't achieve anything.

(I've never really understood the 'At least you did your best' way of thinking. I'd rather not have bothered).

I berate myself for being lazy even when I have done my best.