What was true over 2,300 years ago still holds today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the strangest things about highly intelligent people<\/a> is that they are very aware of what they don\u2019t know. The psychological phenomenon known as the Dunning-Kruger<\/a> effect suggests that the more intelligent<\/a> someone is, the more they fixate on their perceived gaps in intelligence, leading them to underestimate themselves. Conversely, those who aren\u2019t very intelligent overestimate their knowledge<\/a> on a subject.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The great mind might be more preoccupied with the gaps in its knowledge than the smaller mind that thinks it knows everything. How can someone see if they have a great mind? Philosophy expert Julian de Medeiros<\/a> says it all goes back to Aristotle\u2019s \u201crule of thumb.\u201d De Medeiros writes a Substack<\/a> on philosophy and has over 1.4 million followers on TikTok<\/a>, where he analyzes the mysteries of love, intelligence, and friendship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHere\u2019s a simple sign that you are intelligent, that you have a great mind, and it\u2019s a simple theory, a rule of thumb, that goes back to an observation by the philosopher Aristotle, who once wrote: \u2018No great mind has ever existed without a touch of madness,\u2019\u201d de Medeiros says. \u201cBy which he meant that there\u2019s a fine line indeed between being a genius and being a madman.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAs the philosopher Schopenhauer once wrote: \u2018Talent is when you can hit a target no one else can hit. Genius is when you can hit a target no one else can see,\u201d de Medeiros continued. \u201cNow to have a great mind, therefore, means that you can see and think things that other people can\u2019t. But this puts you on a kind of border where there\u2019s a liminal line between what is real and what is not. Your mind is a double-edged sword, both a blessing and a curse, and that very intelligent people can also fall off the edge into the abyss.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Aristotle lived more than 2,300 years ago, when our knowledge of mental and physical health was a fraction of what we know now. But, interestingly, he was correct in believing that highly intelligent people may face greater psychological struggles<\/a> than those of normal intelligence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A study in the academic journal Intelligence<\/em> surveyed Mensa members<\/a> and found that highly intelligent people are 20% more likely to receive an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) diagnosis. They are also 80% more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD, and 182% more likely to have a mood disorder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Why is it that highly intelligent people are more likely to suffer from mental disorders? A study by the Hanely Center<\/a> found that it may be caused by psychological excitability. Highly intelligent people are known to fixate on things. This can be a big help when you are problem-solving at work, but it can become a problem<\/a> when you become preoccupied with a comment from your boss or a social interaction that you can\u2019t stop playing over and over in your head.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There is a funny way that life always seems to balance things out. You can either be unintelligent and think you know everything, or be brilliant and focused on everything you don\u2019t know. It shows that, with respect to intelligence, having a psychological understanding of yourself is one of the keys to living a healthy and happy life. Or, as Aristotle once put it: \u201cKnowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What was true over 2,300 years ago still holds today. One of the strangest things about highly intelligent people is that they are very aware of what<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9801,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9800","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/734756345_1629730111460383_8598019104516054127_n.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9800"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9800\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9802,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9800\/revisions\/9802"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}How to know you are brilliant<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Schopenhauer on what makes a genius<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The science backs up what Aristotle noticed<\/h2>\n\n\n\n