Before 30, I was also a moron. But I only know this because I had an ideological epiphany after that and my belief system changed abruptly. Scales-fell-from-my-eyes type situation. When I turned 33, I started keeping a diary because I noticed I have a terrible memory for even fairly recent things, so maybe going forward subtle changes will become more salient.
That said, some things seem more impervious to change. For instance the “shape” of things that give you pleasure. Maybe you liked 3d puzzles as a child and now you like playing in Blender in your free time. Not the same thing, but the same shape.
I’d say what changed for me was my model of the world, other people, myself, and a corresponding change of priorities.
Being an (officially undiagnosed) asperger, I basically had no idea how other people think and behave. I did things that felt natural to me, and people reacted, often illogically. Didn’t realize that most people lie most of the time, and even when I started suspecting that, I wasn’t able to figure out the truth.
But it wasn’t merely my personal stupidity. It also feels like I was culturally discouraged from figuring out the truth. Thinking not-nice things about other people seems frowned upon; that is what villains typically do, and they are always proven wrong at the end of the story. Then again, it’s the autism spectrum that makes you believe the narrative more than the things you actually see. The hypothesis that was taboo to consider despite being a good first approximation, was: “what if most people are actually selfish and kinda stupid, and they lie whenever is convenient, including to themselves, and most of them worry a lot about how others perceive them?” And suddenly, so many things started making sense.
The important thing is that not all people are like this, so you need to tell them apart (but judging people is another cultural taboo), and keep the smart and good ones around you, because (again as a first approximation) people don’t change. To do this successfully, you need to stop confusing “smart” with “acts like a stereotypical Mensa member” and “suffers from big ego and the Dunning–Kruger effect”. Smartness is more about flexible thinking, and often results in the person being good at what they do, even if it is not a stereotypical intellectual task. Also, someone who is nice and doesn’t do anything obviously stupid, probably is quite smart (because most people do stupid things) and “being nice” is the thing they are good at. -- I wish I knew all this when I was at high school and university, surrounded by many people I could choose from.
EDIT: After thinking about it more, this is ultimately a problem of signaling. As a null hypothesis, I guess everyone does the typical mind fallacy. Good people assume that most people are good, bad people assume that most people are bad, et cetera. Now the problem is that to achieve a more realistic perspective, good people need to update towards most people being actually not that good… but the people most likely to give you this update are the ones you do not want to associate with. Basically, “a bad person who assumes that everyone else is bad and that only hypocrites say otherwise” sounds quite similar to “a good person, who originally assumed that everyone else was good, then got burned, and now wants to share the costly lesson with other good people”. (If you listen to them for a longer time, you will notice the difference, because the bad person will conclude “and therefore, it is only fair for us to also hurt others”, while the good person will conclude “and I still keep trying to help others, but I no longer expect that they will reciprocate”.)
Another big update was related to a career. Yes, working hard is important; that’s how you level up. But this will not translate to rewards automatically; you need to negotiate, sometimes you need to leave for a place that values you more. You also need to be strategic about which skills to level up; some things that your employer wants you to learn (obsolete technologies that they still use, internally developed systems) will be useless when you change jobs. The relation between how difficult the work is, how stressful the work environment is, and how much they pay you is mostly random; do not hesitate to leave an unpleasant place thinking “if I can barely handle this, I am not good enough for a better paid place”; chances are that your next job will be easier and will pay more (at least because the salaries are now increased by inflation).
Before 30, I was also a moron. But I only know this because I had an ideological epiphany after that and my belief system changed abruptly. Scales-fell-from-my-eyes type situation. When I turned 33, I started keeping a diary because I noticed I have a terrible memory for even fairly recent things, so maybe going forward subtle changes will become more salient.
That said, some things seem more impervious to change. For instance the “shape” of things that give you pleasure. Maybe you liked 3d puzzles as a child and now you like playing in Blender in your free time. Not the same thing, but the same shape.
I’d say what changed for me was my model of the world, other people, myself, and a corresponding change of priorities.
Being an (officially undiagnosed) asperger, I basically had no idea how other people think and behave. I did things that felt natural to me, and people reacted, often illogically. Didn’t realize that most people lie most of the time, and even when I started suspecting that, I wasn’t able to figure out the truth.
But it wasn’t merely my personal stupidity. It also feels like I was culturally discouraged from figuring out the truth. Thinking not-nice things about other people seems frowned upon; that is what villains typically do, and they are always proven wrong at the end of the story. Then again, it’s the autism spectrum that makes you believe the narrative more than the things you actually see. The hypothesis that was taboo to consider despite being a good first approximation, was: “what if most people are actually selfish and kinda stupid, and they lie whenever is convenient, including to themselves, and most of them worry a lot about how others perceive them?” And suddenly, so many things started making sense.
The important thing is that not all people are like this, so you need to tell them apart (but judging people is another cultural taboo), and keep the smart and good ones around you, because (again as a first approximation) people don’t change. To do this successfully, you need to stop confusing “smart” with “acts like a stereotypical Mensa member” and “suffers from big ego and the Dunning–Kruger effect”. Smartness is more about flexible thinking, and often results in the person being good at what they do, even if it is not a stereotypical intellectual task. Also, someone who is nice and doesn’t do anything obviously stupid, probably is quite smart (because most people do stupid things) and “being nice” is the thing they are good at. -- I wish I knew all this when I was at high school and university, surrounded by many people I could choose from.
EDIT: After thinking about it more, this is ultimately a problem of signaling. As a null hypothesis, I guess everyone does the typical mind fallacy. Good people assume that most people are good, bad people assume that most people are bad, et cetera. Now the problem is that to achieve a more realistic perspective, good people need to update towards most people being actually not that good… but the people most likely to give you this update are the ones you do not want to associate with. Basically, “a bad person who assumes that everyone else is bad and that only hypocrites say otherwise” sounds quite similar to “a good person, who originally assumed that everyone else was good, then got burned, and now wants to share the costly lesson with other good people”. (If you listen to them for a longer time, you will notice the difference, because the bad person will conclude “and therefore, it is only fair for us to also hurt others”, while the good person will conclude “and I still keep trying to help others, but I no longer expect that they will reciprocate”.)
Another big update was related to a career. Yes, working hard is important; that’s how you level up. But this will not translate to rewards automatically; you need to negotiate, sometimes you need to leave for a place that values you more. You also need to be strategic about which skills to level up; some things that your employer wants you to learn (obsolete technologies that they still use, internally developed systems) will be useless when you change jobs. The relation between how difficult the work is, how stressful the work environment is, and how much they pay you is mostly random; do not hesitate to leave an unpleasant place thinking “if I can barely handle this, I am not good enough for a better paid place”; chances are that your next job will be easier and will pay more (at least because the salaries are now increased by inflation).