Perhaps. My experience was similar to yours in many respects, but very early on it became clear to me that I was a member of a very small club. We were subject to standardized testing starting in, I believe, third grade, and were delivered results that compared us to hundreds of thousands of other kids across the country. It is hard not to feel “gifted” when you are given a very officious looking document with a government letterhead and the number “99″ on it (the primary metric of academic achievement was a percentile score from 1-99) every three years. What further set me apart was the honour of being the only atheist and sceptic in a religious elementary and secondary school. Perhaps I presumed myself intelligent only by virtue of the bottomless lack of rationality I was surrounded by. Overcoming Bias would have been exceptionally welcome in those days.
Perhaps. My experience was similar to yours in many respects, but very early on it became clear to me that I was a member of a very small club. We were subject to standardized testing starting in, I believe, third grade, and were delivered results that compared us to hundreds of thousands of other kids across the country. It is hard not to feel “gifted” when you are given a very officious looking document with a government letterhead and the number “99″ on it (the primary metric of academic achievement was a percentile score from 1-99) every three years. What further set me apart was the honour of being the only atheist and sceptic in a religious elementary and secondary school. Perhaps I presumed myself intelligent only by virtue of the bottomless lack of rationality I was surrounded by. Overcoming Bias would have been exceptionally welcome in those days.