In his three recent and awesome posts on intelligence, Scott Alexander describes what it’s like to grow up intellectually lopsided (high verbal IQ and a low-ish math IQ, in his case). I’ve always been interested in intelligence (who isn’t), and I was struck by how similar Scott’s experience with lopsidedness is to mine. So that’s where this post is coming from. Note: whenever I say “IQ” hereafter I’m referring to math IQ. Let’s get started.