Flowers For Algernon
She was making mistakes and struggling to compensate for them, but she felt sure that her IQ still fell at least a standard deviation above the mean. And people with average IQs didn’t kill themselves. Well, some did, but not for reasons having to do with IQ.
Lisa Genova • Still Alice
Spearman was right that people differ in their ability to solve well-defined problems. But he was wrong that well-defined problems are the only kind of problems. “Why can’t I find someone to spend my life with?” “Should I be a dentist or a dancer?” and “How do I get my child to stop crying?” are all important but poorly defined problems. “How can w... See more
Adam Mastroianni • Why aren't smart people happier?
Because the brain mediates our experience of the world, any neurosurgical problem forces a patient and family, ideally with a doctor as a guide, to answer this question: What makes life meaningful enough to go on living?
Paul Kalanithi • When Breath Becomes Air
Don’t be too cross at my role. You couldn’t understand, no matter how much I explained. You’re a brilliant physicist, your Rutherford chap et al. agree you’ve got a brilliant future, quite sure they’re right. But in some fundamentals you’re a dunce. The healthy can’t understand the emptied, the broken. You’d try to list all the reasons for living,
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