Tianxi Yu (余天曦) on Graduation, Work, and Hobby Tests
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/07/17
Tianxi Yu（余天曦）is a man who’s interested in IQ tests. Here we talk some updates in his work and professional life when applying his intelligence to work and personal situations.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: When I returned from travelling through the United States, you mentioned how insanely busy you have been. What is new?
Tianxi Yu: Not a lot of news. I’m busy in three main places: my job, cryptocurrency investing and startup investing. There’s not much to say about my work; I only had some small output this year. I’ve made over $150,000 in cryptocurrency investments, but mostly by luck; my startup is still in its infancy, but it’s already paid for itself. Free time will be spent thinking about Mahir’s new test, “Mystery,” link: https://mahirwu.wixsite.com/iqtests/%E5%A6%82%E8%B0%9Cmystery, which is an interesting spatial test, and I’ve solved most of the items, and will probably submit it in several months.
Jacobsen: Does it work, or is it an insanely attention-absorbing hobby?
Yu: Just work itself! I don’t know how to attract attention or even deliberately gather it. It’s more like letting the thoughts collect and dive in wherever I want to immerse them.
Jacobsen: How have you changed in the two years we’ve known each other?
Yu: Two years is a long time for me, and a lot has happened to me in those two years. I graduated from university in 2022 and started my journey into the world. I was impatient and short-sighted in the year I was about to graduate. I made some money during college but lost my capital due to ego at the beginning of cryptocurrency investing. Still, I was more resilient and kept fighting for opportunities in the market with a minuscule amount of money, which I now recall as a time that helped immensely refine my perceptions. I then managed to get a job in the government sector (passed in one sitting; it was difficult), and it was also at that moment, I felt that the whole person and the world formed a very harmonious and smooth state. Even though I had no money then, I knew I had succeeded. Next, I became addicted to reading, focusing on politics, economics, religion and psychology, which deepened my understanding of the world. People tend to think that their inherent perceptions are correct and are reluctant to break the boundaries of their perceptions, which is the cause of conservatism, prejudice, ignorance and bickering. I am now reading The Spectrum of Consciousness and The Sovereign Individual, which are well-written and highly recommended. I now spend hours a day reading books that continue to increase my spirituality. Many of the scholars have very sharp and profound perspectives, and if I didn’t know them, I probably wouldn’t have thought that I could understand them in this way, which makes me realize the limitations of “IQ” even more, and I am now facing the IQ test mainly as a hobby. “Wisdom” can bring much more than “Intelligence.”
Jacobsen: How did you find work that kept you intensively focused on a task? Something intellectually capable and able to keep you preoccupied and focused.
Yu: I don’t have any tricks. If it’s a task I have to complete, I force myself to finish it before the deadline (imagine the consequences of not finishing it — the worse, the better). If it’s a job I’m interested in, then it doesn’t take any tricks for me to give it my full attention.
Jacobsen: Are you thinking of pursuing this field for the long term?
Yu: Yup. I have to have a foundation that I can stabilize in the long term and explore more possibilities.
Jacobsen: What are your recommendations for high-IQ people to find work of interest that meets their intellectual level?
Yu: Steady as it goes. Have a good foundation of life security first, and then go on to develop personal interests. In this high IQ space, we are exposed to high-range IQ tests where the range of abilities he can detect are mainly imagination and logic, with imagination outweighing logic in good tests. These are not so much needed in today’s society unless you are in an academic job, which is the popular stereotype of us, but we also have our own lives and what we want. So, I would advise members to forget about their “high IQ” labels and find ways of getting along with the world.
Jacobsen: Do you think most people do not find work deserving of their intelligence?
Yu: Yes. I used to think that this question was proof of the inefficiency of current social development, but I don’t think so now. In your question, “everything is useful” is the point, but is everything in nature useful? That is certainly not the case; nature and even the universe are disordered, and the existence of many things is complex and random. At the same time, human beings are also complex, and each is characterized by enormous potential and capacity. Intelligence is a minuscule twig, and the great tree does not bear all its fruit on a single branch.
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