Personality pattern?

[PeterX]

Maybe there is a pattern:
Some people smart in math/IT/physics seem to be socially dysfunctional. Is that a pattern found often?
(Important: Not ALL smart tech/science people are so!!)

Greetings
Peter

[Korona]

Some people smart in math/IT/physics seem to be socially dysfunctional. Is that a pattern found often?

No.

Of course, these cases do exist but so do the others (high IQ + good social skills, or really any combination -- the two variables are not correlated).

[kzinti]

I will go with no as well.

I've seen plenty of combinations and my experience says there is no correlation.

[Gigasoft]

Maybe there is a pattern:
Some people smart in math/IT/physics seem to be socially dysfunctional. Is that a pattern found often?

You're talking as if either of these are rare events. On the contrary, mathematicians and physicists are usually highly intelligent, or they wouldn't have the necessary qualifications for their job. Socially dysfunctional people aren't that hard to come around either. Therefore, the existence of 2 or more people being all three of the above does not constitute a pattern.

Instead, the overlap between smart people in math, IT and physics and socially dysfunctional people is less than chance would predict. This should come as no surprise, since being socially dysfunctional often is a result of mental handicap and therefore goes together with low general intelligence. Often, pathological thinking is present which may lead the subject to suffer from delusions of being highly intelligent. Data from self reporting may therefore create a false apparent pattern where none exists.

[thewrongchristian]

Maybe there is a pattern:
Some people smart in math/IT/physics seem to be socially dysfunctional. Is that a pattern found often?

You're talking as if either of these are rare events. On the contrary, mathematicians and physicists are usually highly intelligent, or they wouldn't have the necessary qualifications for their job. Socially dysfunctional people aren't that hard to come around either. Therefore, the existence of 2 or more people being all three of the above does not constitute a pattern.

Instead, the overlap between smart people in math, IT and physics and socially dysfunctional people is less than chance would predict.

[citation required] on that one, I think.

This should come as no surprise, since being socially dysfunctional often is a result of mental handicap and therefore goes together with low general intelligence. Often, pathological thinking is present which may lead the subject to suffer from delusions of being highly intelligent. Data from self reporting may therefore create a false apparent pattern where none exists.

I know plenty of socially functional who are low academic intelligence. I know plenty of socially dysfunctional people who have excellent academic intelligence.

I also wouldn't equate academic intelligence with general intelligence. Intelligence has a lot of dimensions, of which academic intelligence is but one.

This BBC podcast is an interesting one discussing work in cognitive neuroscience, and discusses many of the misconceptions people have with regards autism, especially in how it manifests itself (ie. It's not all Rain Man)

[Korona]

Intelligence, as in "IQ", has a single factor, namely g. And g predicts academic success really well. This is not surprising because g is tuned to measure academic success. It is remarkable though, that it also predicts success in other areas well, i.e., areas that have nothing in common with academia (like performance in languages, or in music).

(Now you might say that other aspects of human minds should also be called "intelligence"; I cannot comment on how wide spread such a notation would be; I am not a psychologist.)

By Googling, however, I could not find consensus that g is either positively nor negatively correlated with measures of social skills (although there are a few papers in either direction).

[bzt]

Intelligence, as in "IQ", has a single factor, namely g. And g predicts academic success really well.

Sadly that's absolutely not true. Take for example Katalin Kariko. She is highly intelligent yet she didn't had academic success. Actually she was refused for decades, and she still would be if it weren't for covid (her work makes the basis of the vaccine). She was "lucky", so that now she gets academic success, but not thanks to her high IQ, just the result of the circumstances, the need for a vaccine in a pandemic.

Actually high IQ people are more often terrible with social skills than not, just like Sheldon or Tesla. Tesla actually preferred birds more than people.

Let me give you an example to explain why is this. Let's assume everybody has a Volkswagen, but you have a Lamborghini. Since most people have a VW, the speed limits are defined for them. Now VW owners are jealous for the sport car because they can't have one, and the Lamborghini owner is frustrated because he can't make the best of his car because he also must obey the speed limit if he doesn't want to cause an accident.
What do you think, how is the social interaction going to be between these two? Friendly and nice? Jealousy on one side, and frustration on the other, it's pretty hard to be friendly for both sides. It's very much the same with a high IQ person and a mass with average IQ.

Cheers,
bzt

[Korona]

Sadly that's absolutely not true. Take for example Katalin Kariko. She is highly intelligent yet she didn't had academic success. Actually she was refused for decades, and she still would be if it weren't for covid (her work makes the basis of the vaccine). She was "lucky", so that now she gets academic success, but not thanks to her high IQ, just the result of the circumstances, the need for a vaccine in a pandemic.

Well, we can agree that it's not universally true. But the predictor is good on average. Not good in each individual case (as always with statistics), and your example does illustrate that.

[bzt]

Well, we can agree that it's not universally true. But the predictor is good on average. Not good in each individual case (as always with statistics), and your example does illustrate that.

I absolutely agree that's how it should be. Sadly my experience is different. To get academic success, in general it is and always was a lot more important who your parents are or how much money you "donate" to the school (for an example, watch the movie "The Man Who Knew Infinity" it illustrates that brilliantly. All that successful academic teacher can do is adding numbers together, while the genius is basically outcasted, based on true story).

And these days in my country the one on only thing that matters, how much you can s*ck Viktor's d*ck, intelligence and capability is extremely low priority. If you are a true academician not willing to do what politics dictates, you have no chance, worst case even the whole university might be closed. You probably have heard of lex CEU and FreeSZFE. It's the same all around the world, in China the doctor who discovered covid and tried to warn people was arrested for it, and it is happening in the USA too, there the phenomenon even has a name, called "being PC". (Don't get me wrong, I'm not against black people or gays, the issue with being politically correct is that what's considered politically correct changes day-by-day with the wind. So either you're academic and unsuccessful mistreated by the politicians, or you throw out thrustworthyness on the window say what they told you to say and you'll be successful, but you can't be both.) Oh, I've wandered far from the original topic, sorry.

Cheers,
bzt

[Korona]

Yeah, I agree that in many countries, politics plays an increasingly important role in hiring processes; and that is not a good trend. (Most countries in western Europe are somewhat resilient in that regard though, so I can consider myself lucky that I don't have to deal with such issues.)