Difference between revisions of "User:Shollingsworth/Genius INTP"

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So, as I sat one evening alone in my rented room in the decrepit boarding house, wondering why I had been cursed and if I would ever be able to support my daughter, I said one of the very few prayers I've ever said. Having grown up on a small farm I've always had the experience of not getting what I asked for, so I only ask for what I feel I absolutely have to have (I'm still like that) - and this time my prayer was one sentence only. I asked God that if he wasn't going to let me use my intelligence for anything else, that he let me use it to stop a world war.  
 
So, as I sat one evening alone in my rented room in the decrepit boarding house, wondering why I had been cursed and if I would ever be able to support my daughter, I said one of the very few prayers I've ever said. Having grown up on a small farm I've always had the experience of not getting what I asked for, so I only ask for what I feel I absolutely have to have (I'm still like that) - and this time my prayer was one sentence only. I asked God that if he wasn't going to let me use my intelligence for anything else, that he let me use it to stop a world war.  
  
I had no concept then of what that prayer apparently would lead to.  
+
I had no concept then of what that prayer would apparently lead to.
  
 
=== Self-analysis  ===
 
=== Self-analysis  ===

Revision as of 07:38, 25 January 2011

Triple-Nine INTP - Where the Brave Dare Not Go.  A personal story of a new Philadelphian.

Intro

In at least one way it's appropriate that I'm now a Philadelphian. The U.S. was born here - and, for the last 14 years, has partially been defended from here.

____

Foundation

Kathe's death in 1975 devastated us - but left me with a martyr to live up to. I would go on to dedicate my life to making the world safe for gentle young women.

That journey would lead into a hiking trip through strip-mine country that forever soured me on coal-fired power, through rejoining ROTC, into nuclear engineering which was the one then-viable path for replacing coal, and into access to SCI information. Far later it would lead to madness, and to insights important to national defense, and eventually to paganism. And I cannot but wonder what is next.

Turbine Overspeed

A modern electric power plant has one purpose - to spin the core of an electrical generator around thousands of times a minute. This is done by ramming massive amounts of steam at extremely high pressures through a huge multi-stage turbine, which turns the shaft on which is mounted the generator's core.

The entire setup is incredibly finely balanced. It has to be -- because any significant imbalance would, at high rotational speeds, cause vibrations in the setup, and those vibrations would cause the turbine's sheer blades to flex, and a blade that flexes enough will someday break off. And once one blade has broken off, the setup is suddenly badly unbalanced and vibrates dangerously and other blades break off - then in a cascade of failures dozens or hundreds of them. And the huge turbine explodes.

The higher the speed the turbine turns at, the more finely it has to be balanced. There are very seldom any significant walls around them. So the most dangerous moments in any power plant are when the turbine's speed increases uncontrollably to the point that tiny, previously-tolerable imbalances become a threat to its stability -- when the klaxon blares and a single red warning light in the Control Room flashes out Turbine Overspeed.

It has been recently shown that the most brilliant minds are somewhat like high-speed turbine/generators in that they often run on the ragged edge of imbalance. That there is something that makes being on the edge of crazy also making one free to attain amazing mental insights.

They might be giants. But they are also likely to be bi-polar, to be borderline manic/depressives. And a sudden massive mid-life shock to a manic/depressive will often throw him into the hell that used to be called LOS - "late-onset schizophrenia".

My massive breakdown in 1994 very, very nearly killed me. The effects did kill my career as a nuclear core design engineer. It wouldn't be until 2004 that I would really be able to work adequately anywhere (unlike normal schizophrenics, LOS is something one recovers from). It's only recently, about 2010, that I can work like I used to.

But my story here starts thirteen years before 2010.

Inception

I was not sane in 1997. There's no other way to put it, I was definitely not sane - but I tried to work anyway. That's what brought me to live in Upper Darby - a job in Bala Cynwyd.

The medicines in 1997 - although orders of magnitude better than those in 1993 - were not totally effective (as Abilify nearly is today) and had such horrible brain-fogging side effects that sufferers could barely stand to take them.

I would lose that job in Bala Cynwyd eight months after I took it (it was a help desk job, and far too challenging for anyone in my condition then). But I've never stopped trying to get back on my feet.

So, as I sat one evening alone in my rented room in the decrepit boarding house, wondering why I had been cursed and if I would ever be able to support my daughter, I said one of the very few prayers I've ever said. Having grown up on a small farm I've always had the experience of not getting what I asked for, so I only ask for what I feel I absolutely have to have (I'm still like that) - and this time my prayer was one sentence only. I asked God that if he wasn't going to let me use my intelligence for anything else, that he let me use it to stop a world war.

I had no concept then of what that prayer would apparently lead to.

Self-analysis

I'm almost certainly not a genius. My GRE scores got me into the Triple Nine Society, but I've never had a reliable IQ test (except for possibly the DLAB, the results of which are classified). My IQ is probably, at the very most, in the low 150s.

But my IQ is not my primary strength. I'm a Myers-Briggs type INTP, the rarest of the types - and the one most capable of insightful thought. The books say that INTPs are literally not all here - that we, by nature, are always half-present but half reflecting on the past or future. And that we fully re-evaluate the current situation every ten minutes.

And as an engineer part of my education was to identify trends and evaluate them dispassionately and logically.

As a result of the above traits I can literally often see what is not there (but certainly has to be) - and I can deduce the patterns long before any of my peers.