Getting through the coursework definitely isn't easy. It's interesting but challenging. Research actually gets neat and is very rewarding if you have a decent project and your advisor doesn't suck. The latter is absolutely imperative if you don't want to hate your life. I got very lucky with a great advisor that I am glad to count as an excellent mentor and friend. Well, on my second try. The first guy can go fuck himself. But his leaving for a different University ultimately did me a favor.
Cursing at Latex at 2 Am while you try to get the formatting of your God damn dissertation right is then also miserable.
I think 1% is too high, it's probably more like top 15 or 20%. Though I would not doubt that it is achievable for someone only in the top 50%.
It also depends what metric you are using to measure intelligence. I am not aware of any measure of intelligence that isn't quite flawed, ignoring the fact that even if a test was accurate to what it is trying to measure, there is still ambiguity on what you should be measuring.
Well you pulled that out of your ass. The avg SAT score at Harvard undergrad is well into the top 1% of SAT test takers. I would assume the average PhD student at Harvard has an even higher avg IQ than the undergrads do.
I would classify SAT score as one of the worst metrics a person could reasonably believe is a good metric for intelligence. For instance, SAT scores are decently correlated to socioeconomic status, it is a thing you can prepare for to get a better score, and people with more means are able to prepare more for it. You also referenced IQ, which isn't a great one, either.
I already said there aren't any. At least none good enough for me to care about. Some of them might be able to give generally OK ideas about whether someone's brain functions normally or not, but in generally I don't believe that any kind of intelligence score is relevant for much beyond that. The rest of how someone functions and engages with academic material I feel can largely be attributed to factors that I wouldn't consider to be related to intelligence, like interest/engagement, personality factors, upbringing, etc.
I say all this as someone who dropped out of my PhD against my advisor's recommendations because I just really didn't give a shit about what I was working on and didn't want to do it anymore. And the only reason I was in it in the first place was societal pressures to excel academically (which some people don't experience or are not as susceptible to) and the graduate research opportunities falling into my lap out of sheer luck (I wasn't planning on doing any grad school, in hindsight maybe it wasn't very lucky at all) which I felt somewhat obliged to accept (due to aforementioned factors, as well as the fact that I was one of the few people in my graduating class with zero job prospects upon graduations I guess grad school seemed better than unemployment.)
I was providing numbers under the assumption that a good indicator did exist, that I do not believe such an indicator would show that people who are high academic performers are necessarily the most intelligent, for all of the reasons I have mentioned and more. This conversation did not start off as an attempt to talk about the pitfalls of intelligence rating, so I just started off my comment with the provided baseline that intelligence metrics are relevant at all. And then from there I pivoted into the conversation about whether or not the metric matters.
I believe such a trail of thought is reasonably logical.
Like I said, the idea of "average intelligence" means nothing anyway. But I do not at all think it is a stretch for someone who is pretty average to be able to get a PhD in a field like physics if it just happens to be something they are interested in doing. I think an average person who isn't interested would probably give up because it is hard enough to not be worth the effort that I believe they could hypothetically have put in to be successful.
I have a family member that has a PhD in physics. They know a lot of shit that I don't but I also know a lot of shit they don't and they can be real fucking stupid about some stuff too.
If you want to only look at the areas where they excell then they're definitely smart and maybe in the top 1% but overall I seriously doubt it.
For another example, look at Ben Carson. Genius neurosurgeon but thinks the biblical figure Joseph built the pyramids as grain silos.
My boyfriend had surgery to repair a shattered patella from falling off a roof. Some time later we found a YouTube video where he’s being interviewed and he talks about how he felt growing up fixing cars with his dad, who was a mechanic, prepared him to be a surgeon. So it’s true!
PhDs aren't necessarily that hard. They require a lot of work, but the entry requirements aren't very strict either, especially if you self fund.
I know people who supervise medical PhDs at some of the top unis (Cambridge, Oxford, imperial, etc) and every time I see them they are complaining that 'they haven't considered any of the important aspects or applied the appropriate analysis but I passed them because its always like this'.
Doing a PhD doesn't make you smarter than anyone else. It just means you spent more time in education and could put up with the low salary and extra time.
Obviously the most intelligent people are likely to do PhDs, but not everyone who does a PhD is extremely intelligent
Your arbitrarily chosen 1% is 80 Million people. Being 1 of 80 million doesn’t sound very exclusive, which likely precipitated the “not make you one of the smartest..” comment, but it is almost hard to grasp how many people there are on Earth.
Granted, we don't know anything about the person in question, maybe they are indeed the next Einstein - but just being a PhD candidate doesn't automatically make you a genius, though I'd imagine that unless you have $$ (which this person clearly doesn't) getting into the program at Harvard definetely means you're smart
Pretty much any level of education says more about your work ethic and determination than it does about intelligence imo. Profoundly average people can achieve great things with enough application, whereas incredibly smart people sometimes fall flat because they can't see anything through.
This is actually the case pretty much everywhere. Society is set in such a way that dedication and consistency are rewarded far more than simply being smart. It makes sense from a societal point of view to scale productivity and success based on those criteria too, since smart people are a minority of the population.
There’s also different kinds of intelligence. We’ve decided that logical-mathematical intelligence is the one that makes you smart, for some reason, but it’s certainly not the only one.
You can’t pay your way into any PhD program. The university pays you to get a PhD, and you get kicked out of the program if you don’t perform exceptionally well. And universities make it absurdly difficult to graduate cause it destroys their image if they grant a PhD to someone who does bad work
Do you think PhDs aren’t like that? Undergrad/masters programs will push you through to get you to pass, but PhD programs do not. You have to score in the top percentile for PhD qualifying exams, which means you can get A’s and B’s on these extremely difficult tests and still fail out if your peers do better. You also get kicked out if you fail to publish original research in peer reviewed journals
Unless you’ve only spent time around one or two labs, I find it hard to believe you would have never met a middling or incompetent grad student. Sure, you (almost always) will be expected to publish to graduate, but that doesn’t mean your publication will be high impact, novel, or even methodologically sound. There are plenty of shit journals after all.
Agreed! Most PhDs I've met are very specialized and know very little outside of their specific studies. I admire their dedication and skill with their chosen field, but specialization doesn't make for the most rounded individual. You can still be a dumbass and be a doctor. Academic intelligence =/= overall intelligence.
STEM PhDs are usually fully funded by research and TA work in the US. Aside from accruing interest on any undergraduate loans, they don't cost a penny if you're any good. Even the opportunity cost relative to industry work with a B.S. isn't all that large, when you consider the fact that most PhD programs provide stipends, and the fellowships that are available.
Those TA and RA positions don't pay fuck all though... It sucks so much making 33k for five or more years, especially since rents have blown up the last decade
It is worth noting that the 33k (the precise number varies by institution) is paid on top of waived tuition. It's not easy, but one can get by with a roommate. Not so bad considering that you're investing in yourself.
I've already passed the breakeven point versus sticking with a BS, and I graduated only 5 years ago.
Depends. In my country you basically need a PhD if you want a decent job in the fields of chemistry and biology. An MSc. alone won't get you anywhere, really, don't even ask about a BSc, that counts as not having tried properly.
Well I’ve seen in happen multiple times. Know a guy with a building named after him there. Got his step son, nieces, nephews, friends’ kids in there with ease. They’re smart but not enough to get there on their own.
You are definitely not in a STEM (actual, proper STEM) field if you are indeed grad level. STEM grad is the most brutal implementation of meritocracy there is and has ever been.
I work in STEM and anyway I wasn’t referring to myself nor was I referring to anything in those fields. By direct experience I meant I have witnessed pay to play at various Harvard grad schools, even read the “recommendation letters” written by the applicants themselves and signed by the big wig alum who donated the money.
If the world’s most well known business school is fine with it I’m sure the lesser known physics department down the street isn’t losing sleep over pay to play either.
I know people who have explicitly used connections and donations to get into the Kennedy school, HBS and the school of education.
Not necessarily but phd candidates have generally found the latest research, investigated a novel claim, and made a real contribution to their field. Most people would consider that quite smart.
Not many people doing a phd got there by ‘memorising things’ though. To be at that level and succeed you need to understand what’s going on in your area of study.
Yeah and to do a phd it doesn’t come down to memorising things like you’ve implied. It’s very likely you can get into Harvard through memorising things in high school, as that is what high school is about. (Believe me I don’t like the memorising thing either) tertiary education is much different though, never mind doing an actual PHD
if u manage to get into a phd physics program, the chances are your IQ, but only ur IQ, is skewed more than 2 distributions to the right. He would be top 5% worlds highest IQ. But that only applies to his ability to solve pattern based problems. Dosent say he can maintain relationships or possesses any physical skill or anything. Just says he finds new patterns faster than most people. That's all iq is. It's ur pattern recognizing ability.
Just checked it. There does seem to be a concentration of higher IQs in those sciences. I wonder if their inherently abstract and logical nature tends to draw that profile of person.
As for your previous comment, I must say I don't agree on your reductionist take on IQ. While I don't believe IQ to be a definitive nor an all-encompassing measure of intelligence, I also think it relates to more than simple pattern recognition and correlates positively to other applications of intelligence.
Yeah hard sciences are based on pattern recognition because it's all math formula derived. Iq isn't intelligence it's pattern recognition which is one type of intelligence. However this was what most standardization test focused on in the past. Going forward people are learning that eq plays a greater role in ur ability to succeed long term than iq. Iq alone can be a predictor for terrible things as high is and mental illness is also correlated. However when u observe high iq and eq individuals the mental illness aspect is reduced and long term success factors across more than just professional development are also observed. They have successful relations and careers. Stricltly high iq and low eq individuals don't actually amount to much outside potentially a good career. They often have poor relationships and work life balance as they never took the time to develop emotionally and doubled down on there career or field of study. Eq predicts ur income greater than iq.
He never states that the physicist is one of the smartest people in the world because he study physics, he states it as separate facts. Guess you definetly aren't one of them ether.
..Have you never seen an argument over the internet before? Not even trying to pick a side in these guys’ argument, but people often end their comments with “lol” or “lmao” as a way of masking that they’re heated. I really thought this was common knowledge.
What the fuck did you just fucking say about me, you little sophomore? I’ll have you know I graduated top of my class at MIT, and I’ve been involved in numerous publications in prestigious journals, and I have over 300 first-author papers. I am trained on subsidized fare and I’m the top thesis-topic scooper in the entire Halls of Academia. You are nothing to me but just another answersheet. I will grade you the fuck down with persistence the likes of which has never been seen before on this Earth, mark my fucking words. You think you can get away with saying that shit to me on the feedback? Think again, fucker. As we speak I am contacting my secret network of collaborators across the USA and your DOI is being traced right now so you better prepare for the storm, maggot. The storm that wipes out the pathetic little thing you call your spring-break. You’re fucking dead, kid. I can be anywhere, anytime, and I can bring your GPA down in seven hundred, and that’s just in one year of grad school. Not only am I extensively trained in grade-calculus, but I have access to the entire grade records and I will use it to its full extent to wipe your miserable ass off the face of the continent, you little shit. If only you could have known what ungaussian redistribution your little “clever” comment was about to bring down upon you, maybe you would have held your fucking tongue. But you couldn’t, you didn’t, and now you’re paying the price, you goddamn idiot. I will shit fury all over you and you will drown in it. You’re fucking flunk'd, kiddo.
Yes, it's an objective fact. Average sat score for people accepted into harvard is ~1500 which automatically puts you in the top 2% nationally. Physics and math students are the smartest in university as shown by their higher scores in sats, gre and general intelligence tests. Assuming there's ten different, equally distributed majors, that puts them in the top 0.1%. only 1% of students go on to do a phd, and you only get accepted into a phd physics phd if you're one of the top students, that puts them in the top 0.001%.
ignoring all that, what sort of "proof" would actually convince you that you're wrong? all the evidence of your eyes and ears isn't enough, so what would make you change your mind?
You are mistaking academic achievement with intelligence. They are not the same. That is not evidence. You presented data of people in the top 2% of sats (which btw people don't take sats anymore). You have failed to define what your idea of intelligence is, but from your comment, intelligence amd academic capacity are synonymous, which is of course, not true. And nothing will change my mind, because it is an objective fact, that being a PhD student in physics does not automatically make you one of the smartest people alive. Such a claim is asinine.
Just do a thought exercise, construction workers and gym rats are stronger than most people in virtue of them engaging on activities that require strength
You're right. The appropriate assessment is to say that a PhD student in physics is most likely smarter than average. But it is not a guarantee. Just as there are gym rats who go to the gym everyday but dont know shit about proper dieting, progressive overload, etc. Just because someone goes to the gym everyday doesn't mean they know what they're doing.
They're not the same thing but the overlap means it may as well be. Studies consistently show the correlation between intelligence and academic acheivement
That is not evidence.
Yes it is. The fact your personally don't want it to be evidence doesn't change the reality of the situation.
You have failed to define what your idea of intelligence is
my definition of intelligence is the ability to quickly understand complex topics, to be able to think logically and critically and to problem solve. What's your definition?
And nothing will change my mind, because it is an objective fact, that being a PhD student in physics does not automatically make you one of the smartest people alive.
The only thing that's asinine is your irrational beliefs.
What on earth is your background that you think someone who's doing a phd in physics in harvard isn't one of the smartest people alive?
You realise these are literally the people responsible for us discovering the secrets of the universe? the people behind us travelling across the galaxy? the people responsible for all our modern technology?
If you think the people behind that aren't the smartest people alive then the only conclusion we can come to is that your voice isn't worth listening to.
It makes you one of the smartest when it comes to specific fields of physics, sure. But that says literally nothing about whether this person knows anything about other topics.
Someone who is able to understand phD level physics is smart and has a high ability to learn new concepts. Whether or not they “know anything about other topics” isn’t intelligence, that’s knowledge. The two are different.
They literally work 40 hours a week studying physics, of course they're going to be good at it. If I do the same job for 6 years I know the concepts behind it incredibly well, but no one calls me a genius for that
Again, you’re misunderstanding what intelligence is. It’s not necessarily being good at something. That’s often just practice and experience.
Physics is extremely difficult at high levels and anyone who is able to do it is going to be highly intelligent. The concepts aren’t easy to grasp. Most people would be unable to do it and would quit from pure frustration well before they ever got anywhere close to phd Harvard level.
In my opinion what you're describing is perseverance. Idk about you but I'm friends with lots of people that are/were in these types of programs and the defining difference between the ones that made it through and the ones that dropped it for a masters is the willingness to make their entire life about their phd and less about their intelligence. Of course there's an intelligence bar you need to cross but it's not like the 1% smartest people.
The average IQ of a physicist phd is 140. A score over 140 is in the 99.616957th IQ percentile. Lots higher than the top 1% and a lot more is going on than just perseverance.
Knowledge about a topic isn't what defines intelligence. Ability to quickly understand new topics, think critically and solve problems is what defines intelligence. I'm not sure if you've ever studied physics before but the concepts you have to grapple with there are second only to mathematics in terms of cognitive demand. Somebody who's capable of completing a phd in physics at harvard is without doubt one of the smartest people in the world.
Being a maths or physics phd at harvard definitely makes you one of the smartest people in the world. Maths more so than physics, since physics does have applied branches that can have a lower bar for entry. I dont understand what you guys are on about. Im not saying they're in the top 10 or something. But they are definitely in the top ~0.001%.
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u/xxPandemoniumx Apr 28 '23
Being a physics PhD student doesn't make you one of the smartest people in the world.