David McElroy

An Alien Sent to Observe the Human Race

intelligence

I finally understand why I feel like
a fraud when people say I’m smart

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Imagine you’re a contestant on a quiz show. Your opponents are brainy folks with wide knowledge. The questions aren’t just trivia. You have to think quickly on your feet to solve problems.

Now let’s imagine you have a secret weapon. You have a tiny receiver inside your ear — and somebody elsewhere who has access to most of the knowledge of the world is whispering the answers in your head. Your opponents are bright, but this other person feeds you those answers quickly enough that you have the most points.

The show is over. You’re declared the winner. Everybody remarks about how brilliant you are. But you feel like a fraud, because you know that someone else was feeding you those answers. It looked remarkable, but you know that you didn’t have any idea how to work out the answers which you so confidently gave.

And you’re scared people are going to find out you’re a fraud.

That’s how I’ve felt for my entire life. I’ve been blurting out answers that appear in my head — or writing them down in some way — ever since I was a child. And I felt like a fraud.

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Sudden realization of hunger for taste of kindred soul is killing me

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I’ve been starving for a long time — and I fear this hunger might destroy me — but I have no idea where to find this peculiar thing which I crave tonight.

When you’ve been hungry for long enough, you eventually quit feeling hunger. If you don’t believe me, go on a fast or at least stop eating sugar. At first, you’re desperately hungry and you crave what you’re not getting. But after awhile, your body chemistry stabilizes and changes in some ways that aren’t worth getting into here. Then you quit feeling hunger. Even if you’re starving to death, your body might not feel hunger.

My hunger isn’t for food. This hunger won’t kill me physically. But I haven’t had this need met for so long that I had quit noticing the hunger. I’ve been operating as I am for so long that I’m numb — in ways that are intellectual, emotional and spiritual.

But something happened tonight that triggered the hunger. I was reminded of what it feels like to have this need filled — and the realization of the painful need was back like a forgotten forest fire raging out of control. And now it threatens to consume me.

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Attention, fellow nerds: How are we doing with ‘normal’ people?

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I love being part of groups with so many intelligent people. I confess quite freely that I’m a little nerdy. Sometimes … well … a lot nerdy. Or maybe geeky. Books excite me. Television doesn’t. I prefer to talk about ideas rather than argue about who should be starting at quarterback for the DoofusDogs.

As a long-time libertarian, I’ve enjoyed the benefits of being part of a group with a rich intellectual tradition. Being able to read amazing exposition of ideas and have rich intellectual conversations with my friends is something I’ve treasured for more than 20 years. We have great think tanks and books and websites and all sorts of resources — as long as your brain works in the same hyper-rational way that most libertarian brains work.

But let’s be honest. We’re not doing so well with mainstream audiences. Why not? I think we’re so focused on our ideas — and on arguing with each other and winning intellectual debates with our opponents — that we’re not very good at actually doing things. We’re very good at producing 74-page white papers on a subject, but we’re not as good at finding real-world ways of implementing the things we talk so much about.

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