What Makes a Genius? 190
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Eric Barker writes at TheWeek that while high intelligence has its place, a large-scale study of more than three hundred creative high achievers including Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo, Beethoven, and Rembrandt has found that curiosity, passion, hard work, and persistence bordering on obsession are the hallmarks of genius. 'Successful creative people tend to have two things in abundance, curiosity and drive. They are absolutely fascinated by their subject, and while others may be more brilliant, their sheer desire for accomplishment is the decisive factor,' writes Tom Butler-Bowdon. It's not about formal education. 'The most eminent creators were those who had received a moderate amount of education, equal to about the middle of college. Less education than that — or more — corresponded to reduced eminence for creativity,' says Geoffrey Colvin. Those interested in the 10,000-hour theory of deliberate practice won't be surprised that the vast majority of them are workaholics. 'Sooner or later,' writes V. S. Pritchett, 'the great men turn out to be all alike. They never stop working. They never lose a minute. It is very depressing.' Howard Gardner, who studied geniuses like Picasso, Freud, and Stravinsky, found a similar pattern of analyzing, testing, and feedback used by all of them: 'Creative individuals spend a considerable amount of time reflecting on what they are trying to accomplish, whether or not they are achieving success (and, if not, what they might do differently).' Finally, genius means sacrifice. 'My study reveals that, in one way or another, each of the creators became embedded in some kind of a bargain, deal, or Faustian arrangement, executed as a means of ensuring the preservation of his or her unusual gifts. In general, the creators were so caught up in the pursuit of their work mission that they sacrificed all, especially the possibility of a rounded personal existence,' says Gardner."
Who are the real producers? (Score:5, Insightful)
Invariably, we also see throughout history that these laser focused artists and creators are preyed upon by the vultures. The swarming businessmen, promotors, managers, who give their charges "the best they can" (i.e. a fraction of their actual value) whilst proclaiming to the world that they themselves are the true producers and behind closed doors they opine how if only they could get that last fraction of a few pennies from "those leeches, those damned artists."
You didn't build that (Score:1)
Video [youtube.com] showing what this looks like when it happens.
I know you were going for something like record labels ripping off musicians, but I think the video of Obama saying "You didn't build that" hits the point better for everyone.
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Invariably, we also see throughout history that these laser focused artists and creators are preyed upon by the vultures. The swarming businessmen, promotors, managers, who give their charges "the best they can" (i.e. a fraction of their actual value) whilst proclaiming to the world that they themselves are the true producers and behind closed doors they opine how if only they could get that last fraction of a few pennies from "those leeches, those damned artists."
Those "vultures" are as important to success as anything. Have you ever tried promoting something? It is a very complicated system and very hard to do. I know many good bands have shriveled and died because they couldn't find the right manager or promoter. Many good writers give up because they never get a chance to write the things they want.
Geniuses are not a product of solitary endeavors. They require support from hundreds of people.
Actually reminds of the old TV series called "The Fall Guy" about a
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Actually, the hyper-focus descriptor is bogus.
Isaac Newton took off lots of time to be Chancellor of Exchequer. It was a hard job. He had to hang people for counterfeiting and all.
Vladimir Nabokov was Russian lepidopterist who happened to be English-language writer. Or was it the other way around?
Which was Benjamin Franklin's hobby -- science, publishing, or statecraft?
And Thomas Jefferson? Architecture or political philosophy or revolution?
Omar Khayyam? Administration? Poetry? Astronomy?
The kind of success
Do any of the truly gifted producers care? (Score:1)
The "Vultures" are no less greedy and manipulative than your description... probably more so. But I wonder if the most gifted artists, thinkers, scientist, mathematicians and so on, actually care. There are far easier ways to make money, If they are as focused and driven as described in the article then it seems likely they care more about attribution than monetary appropriation any more than is necessary to live and fund their work.
Conversely look at how pop artists and the RIAA bicker over adequately appr
Genuises don't care about the vultures... (Score:2)
Invariably, we also see throughout history that these laser focused artists and creators are preyed upon by the vultures.
Geniuses, or the really talented and focused artists and creators do not care about the vultures. For the last few centuries vultures - aka 'agents' - were needed, without them it was difficult to propagate your work. At least in the field of arts (except for cinema) it has changed with internet. You do not need an 'agent' anymore to propagate your work. But the flip side - even in 2014, without an agent, your work may not achieve the acclaim it deserves.
But then Geniuses are not concerned with material r
Re:Who are the real producers? (Score:4, Insightful)
Atlas Shrugged is interesting because it imagines the opposite scenario: all the businessmen, vice presidents, shareholders, owners of capital, management, etc., decide to check out and head off to form their own town, without bringing any workers with them. The town nonetheless prospers, despite a lack of even basic staff like garbage pickup, because a bunch of great technology that does all the work was invented at just the right moment. So in Galt's Gulch, wondrous machines do everything and the management class lives prosperously and happily ever after, since they no longer are stuck paying workers (the wondrous inventions don't demand a paycheck).
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It also relies on a machine that breaks entropy, so you can see how realistic that scenario is.
Re:Who are the real producers? (Score:4, Interesting)
So basically, Atlas Shrugged is wish fulfilment for the rich. But I guess it accurately sums up Objectivism.
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It that synopsis based on your reading of the book? IIUC from reading the book it wasn't the owners-as-owners but owners-as-doers (i.e. industrialists who were central to their business' success) who formed the new town, and not because they didn't want to pay workers, but because they were fed up with the contempt their society and government had for their accomplishments. IIRC one of them became a small cattle rancher in the new town.
The "wondrous machine" was a magic BS energy invention that was (a) an
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like hitchhikers guide, where the planet sends all its middle managers, marketers, etc. to the "new planet we're going to move to" ahead of everybody else to prepare things, then somehow everybody else never actually leaves the first planet.....
Total letdown (Score:2, Funny)
"The great men turn out to be all alike." Did you forget that not only men are reading your site? - A great woman
Re:Total letdown (Score:4, Informative)
Perhaps Pritchett's generalization was intended to apply specifically to men, and this was a trap women were less likely to fall into. I don't know, I haven't read the essay. You also might also be interested in some work by two men working out of Cornell, Mr. Dunning and Mr. Kruger.
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and don't forget the legion of "minions" and ladies that made life bearable for said genius.
You may be doing G$ work in chemistry but if you don't have somebody making sure your test tubes are clean and such
YOU ARE FRACKED.
Also don't forget that GRACE HOPPER was the one that decided to show the world how long a Nanosecond was (and could strangle a suck up man with her Microsecond).
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But she did invent that programming language (I will not utter it here) that wears your fingers out.
Probably, you know, hormones.
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Most of the people annointed as geniuses in Western culture have been men, perhaps because of opportunity and social expectations, but Gardner's thesis seems to apply to at least one woman too. [wikipedia.org]
Re:Total letdown (Score:5, Informative)
There is no doubt that women have made many important contributions to science. One may argue this one or that is or isn't a genius, but there is little doubt that science would be poorer without their contribution.
Madame Wu and the backward universe [doublexscience.org]
Marie Curie - Biographical [nobelprize.org]
Ten Historic Female Scientists You Should Know [smithsonianmag.com]
Pioneering Women in Computing Technology [cmu.edu]
The 50 Most Important Women in Science [discovermagazine.com]
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Before birth control they couldn't easily dedicate themselves to art or science. Today we have Annie Lebovitz, Carling O'Keefe, Nina Simone, Lisa Randall, Shaffi Goldwasser, Nancy Lynch, Maryam Mirzakhani, Athene Donald, Nina Simone, Madona, and on and on. The list keeps growing by the minute in all fields of art and science, popular culture and high-brow.
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You forgot Nina Simone.
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Actually, no, there isn't reasonable doubt about the contributions of women to science. Now if you want to make a different argument, one about the impact of political correctness, or various strains of "progressive" or feminist ideology and the negative impact to various aspects of society, you are on more solid ground. It appears that American, and indeed Western society, is bound and determined to push certain bad ideas [mca-marines.org] until they are enacted policies, which will be setting the stage for future highly r
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Women are men, with wombs. In the past (1000+ years ago [etymonline.com]) the word "man" was a gender neutral word simply meaning "human being".
Although, here's a question... When "man" stopped being gender neutral, did female humans stop being men? ;)
Re:Total letdown (Score:5, Insightful)
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indeed it is. the stuff about the floating/flying university; could have been taken from polish history in the 70s.
Re:Total letdown (Score:4, Informative)
She was well educated, even at an early age by her father. This is the critical difference between modern times and the renaissance. Then, women were rarely offered opportunity and education. Now it is available for anybody who wants to do the work. Its obvious that genius has little to do with gender.
I'm not suggesting that she was the greatest genius of all time, but to say that there are no great women is an insult to her legacy and half the human race.
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her husband was run over by a damn horse and carriage. easier to see that coming that gamma radiation.
Don't forget privilege, even if not financial... (Score:5, Interesting)
Things are changing, but from a historical perspective, this cannot be ignored.
"The fact of the matter is that there have been no supremely great women artists, as far as we know, although there have been many interesting and very good ones who remain insufficiently investigated or appreciated; nor have there been any great Lithuanian jazz pianists, nor Eskimo tennis players, no matter how much we might wish there had been. That this should be the case is regrettable, but no amount of manipulating the historical or critical evidence will alter the situation; nor will accusations of male-chauvinist distortion of history. There are no women equivalents for Michelangelo or Rembrandt, Delacroix or Cezanne, Picasso or Matisse, or even, in very recent times, for de Kooning or Warhol, any more than there are black American equivalents for the same. "
From a brilliant essay on the matter:
http://www.miracosta.edu/home/gfloren/nochlin.htm [miracosta.edu]
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Maybe you should read the essay.
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Geeze, you sure got me.
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Many people, including me, would argue that Carla Bley & Paul Haines' Escalator Over the Hill [amazon.com] is a work of genius.
My definition of genius in a work is that it must contain aspects that can't be learned or explained. You're listening, watching, or reading along and thinking "yes, I understand how that follows now that it's been shown to me" -- this is merely brilliant levels of skill -- and then there comes a passage that sets you back thinking "woah, what just happened there?"
Claude Debussy's music
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This is exactly the argument that the essay is making. Maybe you should read it.
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This is exactly the argument that the essay is making. It was written by a well-known feminist philosopher. Maybe you should read it before claiming that it is incorrect.
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The fact that you don't have the attention span to read an academic essay is not my, or the author's fault. It also doesn't give a gram of weight to your criticism.
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That essay was written before Basquiat was popular. Maybe you should read it.
Working hard (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Working hard (Score:4, Interesting)
The difference between a genius and a mad man is thin, but obsession with a problem is what both "suffers" from.
Another thing that's different is to work hard on a problem, then sleep on it and then approach the problem again from a new angle. The brain will sort out a lot of stuff while you are sleeping.
Trying too hard on a problem is often ineffective. Sometimes it helps to take a walk.
All this is what also makes many geniuses seem eccentric - they do stuff the way that suits them best, not by following the beaten path.
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Men of lofty genius are most active when they are doing the least work. - Leonardo da Vinci
Re:Working hard (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not claiming to be a genius, but one thing I noticed early on when deciding to take on STEM is that unlike art (which I had pursued previously), where an understanding of the history, techniques that were developed, and cultural perception of art were very helpful in developing a more acute understanding of the art in question, studying these things wasn't necessary, whereas in science and math the rigor is (usually) completely necessary.
When you talk to aspiring young scientists, generally you hear a fondness for lasers, space travel, disease research, etc, but almost none for finding the derivative of a function or the like. Because people see the space lasers as the carrot and the intense math as the stick, they tend to get pretty exhausted after a fair amount of work. But in my experience, developing an appreciation for the math itself led me to view science as more of an art form than merely labor. I suspect fostering a greater appreciation of math and logic in children, as well as diminishing the cultural perception of math as a difficult and troubling affair would lead to an easier time for students who can both accept and appreciate the level of math they commit to.
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Artistic Rigor (Score:2)
There are two divisions of "technique" when it comes to art. The first involves the physical manipulation of the medium, which has changed somewhat with the invention of new media, and some parts have become obsolete. The second involves understanding of perspective, anatomy, color, lines and shapes, various atmospheric effects, et cetera, and in many cases also how these rules may be broken to artistic effect, and these are timeless. Sure, anyone can paint without understanding, and anyone may criticize wi
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What drives the smart guys to keep focused and interested working for a long time on hard problems? After a hour of intensive STEM stuff I already feel quite exhausted and need a good break.
Me too. My secret...recreational levels of caffeine. God bless the person that invented chocolate-covered coffee beans.
Selection bias? (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't help but wonder how many people with plenty of "curiosity, passion, hard work, and persistence bordering on obsession" we've never heard of. In other words, we don't actually know--and likely can't know--how likely people with these traits are to be remembered by the world as geniuses, and how many will be regarded by their families and friends as obsessive workaholics with lousy personal lives and utterly forgotten outside those circles.
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That's the thing. "Genius" in this context is taken to be based on output known to the greatest number of people. Which is a bullshit metric and denigrates those who aren't fortunate enough to get individually famous. Take Teflon for instance. "Invented" by DuPont and world famous. Not "discovered by a research chemist" whose name (Roy Plunkett) is only known by those who take the trouble to look at the Wikipedia entry and / or take part in pub quizzes. And at least he got famous in his field with awards.
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I can't help but wonder how many people with plenty of "curiosity, passion, hard work, and persistence bordering on obsession" we've never heard of. In other words, we don't actually know--and likely can't know--how likely people with these traits are to be remembered by the world as geniuses, and how many will be regarded by their families and friends as obsessive workaholics with lousy personal lives and utterly forgotten outside those circles.
Reminds me of the string theory physicists that I read in some book.
Before string theory was established, there were two thoughts in physics, both equally challenging and one was string theory and the other quite similar. Both scientists worked in the two thoughts, had offices next to each other and created a lot of ideas and work from that.
However, string theory took off the guy who created it got lots of attention. His colleague who worked equally hard failed because he was unlucky to have the opposin
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General relativity was (1916-1920), long after 1905...I believe Bose-Einstein statistics, notion of spontaneous emission, and the EPR paper (1936, I think) all came later, also....
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how likely people with these traits are to be remembered by the world as geniuses
Yeah, the summary at least is throwing around all sorts of words - genius, successful, eminent, accomplished - these all mean different things.
I think what they're trying to say is "famous smart people who created notable things". Which isn't the same thing as 'genius' at all, though a genius could be among them.
Other geniuses may choose completely different paths, which may or may not be borne of wise decisions.
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2 more things they need -- luck and money.
Ehrlich summed up the requirements for success in research with the four G’s: Glück (luck), Geduld (patience), Geschick (skill), and Geld (money) (Ehrlich, 1913).
http://www.nature.com/jid/journal/v132/n3-2/full/jid2011475a.html [nature.com]
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Genius Is Subjective (Score:3, Insightful)
Whom is to determine the genius status of any particular individual. Genius is based on a system of values as perceived by ones peers. If i were to believe math or rocket science were an important trait, I would judge someone with impeccable skills in this area as genius. But someone that would value the arts or athletic skills at a greater lever may not see this person in the same light. Many times there has been someone given the genius label and I find it difficult to see the noted person in this classification because of my value system. so it goes that I cannot believe there is one common scale that genius can be measured.
-- john
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I can safely say that your English teacher isn't one.
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So why did yours quit?
Only one real answer (Score:3)
I have it on good authority [youtu.be] that Kanye West is a genius.
Abnormal (Score:1)
Output of things that get notoriety, awards etc. (Score:5, Insightful)
"When Terman first used the IQ test to select a sample of child geniuses, he unknowingly excluded a special child whose IQ did not make the grade. Yet a few decades later that talent received the Nobel Prize in physics: William Shockley, the cocreator of the transistor. Ironically, not one of the more than 1,500 children who qualified according to his IQ criterion received so high an honor as adults." Simonton, Dean Keith (1999). Origins of genius: Darwinian perspectives on creativity. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-512879-6. Lay summary (14 August 2010).
Exceptional output requires access to tools, training, and environment (food, health, relationships) that enable the person to devote (obssess?) over solving the problems or creating something. And, the person's exceptional output must be recognized as such. So being highly intelligent won't make it. It may even be a hindrance. For instance, it would be easy to imagine the first ever person to be able to repeatedly create fire would not score well on any measure of intelligence today, but to the tribe, that person may not only be considered a genius but a god.
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Hmm. Spend your life in an average job which allows you the time to waste at work on leisure activities like 4chan, or burn yourself out working for a money man in some sort of Faustian arrangement. Perhaps the failed prodigies ARE the real geniuses...
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Now explain this to those on the pokies machines (Score:1)
They might get a better understanding of themselves instead of thinking they're total scum.
I have a lot of trouble pointing out that obsessiveness is often mistaken for addiction these days. I think it's due to an attempt to assign a medical condition to those being irresponsible with their families and thereby able to bring the law to bare.
Aside from the fact that one can't be addicted to an activity it also is disrespectful to those that do suffer under addiction and, of course, misleading to the rest of
Genius (Score:2)
Does any researcher really think their generalizations capture that which they cannot imagine?
If a dog researcher analyzed humans, he'd be like, "and we see the human goes over here and waves his hands and light suddenly appears in the night. That's all there is to it, I've watched him do it a hundred times."
Ob (Score:2)
How is gennus formed?
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Fucking geniuses, how do they work?
Oh oh I know! (Score:4, Funny)
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high intelligence (Score:1)
high intelligence
Why do we humans define intelligence such that humans are the most intelligent creatures on this planet?
.
Is that really a valid definition of intelligence, or just human self-importance and vanity?
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While intelligence is a vague term in itself there is something to be said for the written word, collaboration, education, proofs, and the extrapolated reasoning that comes from combining them all.
Re:high intelligence (Score:5, Insightful)
Man has always assumed that he is more intelligent than, for example, dolphins because he has achieved so much—the wheel, New York, wars and so on—whilst all the dolphins have ever done is muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins have always believed that they are far more intelligent than man—for precisely the same reasons.
-Douglas Adams (slightly paraphrased)
The role of luck and society (Score:4, Interesting)
Wasn't it someone's theory (or experiments) that luck was the largest factor in a genius?
I remember Gladwell's book starts off with the Canadian hockey team and the birthday paradox. The birthdays of the players in the Canadian hockey team fall primarily on the beginning of the year, primarily the first few months of the year. There wasn't anyone born on the second half of the year.
The theory was that this is because of the age cutoff of Jan 1st. When they select the junior teams, the age cutoff is Jan 1st. So, someone born on January has almost a year head start over the person born on December. That little difference between individuals turns into who gets coaching or not, who gets selected for teams and ultimately who makes the national sides.
Yes, some people are geniuses because they have drive and passion and are workaholics but not because they are born that way but because each little bit of effort they put in gets rewarded very heavily (and that situation comes by from luck).
Why do geniuses come in clusters? Why were there so many Greek geniuses? Why hasn't Greece produced another set of geniuses like them after that?
The other argument was that geniuses were able to feed off the society. If we as a society value something very highly, then we reward the person good in it with money and admiration. That again creates a lot of drive and passion for the work they do and they strive to obsessively improve on it.
It has been disproved that geniuses have high IQ. There are a lot of geniuses with normal IQ.
So, technically, anyone with at least normal IQ can be a genius. You have to be born in the right society and pursue something that the society deems very valuable. Then, you have to have luck that will get you funding, audience etc for you work that will fuel your passion and drive.
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When a mommy and daddy love each other very much (Score:3)
e.g. Autism (Score:2)
This sounds like a trait list for having Autism Spectrum Disorder. No seriously
Output (Score:4, Insightful)
What makes a genius?
Output.
You can be the smartest person, ever. If you don't do anything with it you will never know genius. Genius is just a recognized smart person, that is a person recognized for being really smart.
Freud, a genius? (Score:1)
So Freud is a genius? Maybe a Maddox-like one, a fraud. What's he doing near Einstein or Newton?
Avoiding HBS and its ilk. (Score:1)
What's a genius (Score:2)
What Xerox PARC has to say on the subject (Score:2)
Some years back, one of the former department heads at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (whose reputation for innovation is nearly unmatched in history) wrote a book on this subject. I recently read it and enjoyed it greatly. It's called Breakthrough: stories and strategies of radical innovation [parc.com]. I highly recommend it.
Lots of ideas, intellectual cross-training (Score:2)
Someone once asked Linus Pauling [wikipedia.org] what his secret was to having good ideas. He answered that it was having lots of ideas and throwing away the bad ones.
Here's my personal list of genius traits:
Stand on the shoulders of giants as much as possible. No point rediscovering the wheel.
Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.
Learn as much as you can about as many different subjects as you can. You'll be stunned how often principles from one subject will a
What makes people successful: (Score:2)
A lot of what Pickens is saying here is about what makes people successful, regardless of whether they're smart or not. And the main thing that matters most, even more than talent, in making people successful is full singleminded commitment. As for talent, having 'enough' talent suffices. Obviously I know cases where full commitment is not going to be enough.
Intelligence is a crippling concept (warning:long) (Score:1)
My generation is full of people who were praised for their innate intelligence -- something a child understands is beyond her control -- and subsequently developed the worldview that natural gifts are what matters, that failure is the worst thing, and that if you're not good at something naturally, you won't get good, so, no point trying (these aren't conscious beliefs; more like beliefs we find ourselves slipping into). Research shows that what children need is not high self-esteem, but "self efficacy", wh
Bad reasoning (Score:1)
The assumption that genius requires "achievement" of some kind is smuggled in.
What about memory? (Score:1)
I think this posts misses one essential raw ingredient, not that the rest of it is wrong in any way. That is an astonishing memory for the content of the field, and in fact that is what stops most people, a poor focused memory.
I know a little about musical memory and I am convinced that great composers of music must begin with very good memories, but that most musical people, even if they have good memories, must suppress the linkages between one passage and the next to process the mechanisms in the musi
Clement Stone (Score:1)
Doesn't take a genius to answer (Score:2)
What makes a genius?
Roller skates and Acme Corp on speed dial.
Re:So.... (Score:5, Funny)
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That must be Albert's younger brother who never bothered with physics. He just said, "Yes, that Einstein" in bars to get women. Who's the genius now, eh?
NFL Coaches = bad kind of Obsessive (Score:2)
Pro & college football & basketball coaches definitely be the obsessive, but its definitely not the kind that fosters 'genius'.
They work, no joke, 80 hour weeks. (i know, i know, you work that much or w/e too but most professionals dont work more than 60 & to work more than that usually means you are being taken advantage of)
80 hour weeks. And not just the coaches...the whole staff. Sometimes down to the athletic trainers. It was an athletic trainer friend of mine from college who worked for a p
that's the point it's not productive (Score:2)
whole point of my story was to point out how this is a trope but it's not true
this the support/coaching staff here not the actual athletes we're talking about...they watch more game footage than they need to just to look like they are working "as hard as possible" meaning, in practice, more than the other guy in a tight org. read old SI articles about what the schedule for som
Otto von Bismarck agrees with you. (Score:2)
He divided all military personnel into four quadrants.
Slow-minded, lazy -- assigned as footsoldier
Slow-minded, energetic -- dismissed from corps
Quick-minded, energetic -- staff officer
Quick-minded, lazy -- commanding officer
Re:According to Richard Fenyman (Score:5, Interesting)
Professor Hawking has better than a Nobel prize (given out all the time). He holds the Lucasian chair of mathematics, as Newton did. *That's* the real prize.
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He holds the Lucasian chair of mathematics, as Newton did. *That's* the real prize.
Slight correction -- he held the Lucasian chair, but he retired in 2009. The current Lucasian professor at Cambridge is Michael Green [wikipedia.org].
Re:According to Richard Fenyman (Score:5, Funny)
He holds the Lucasian chair of mathematics, as Newton did. *That's* the real prize.
Slight correction -- he held the Lucasian chair, but he retired in 2009. The current Lucasian professor at Cambridge is Michael Green [wikipedia.org].
Good! He wasn't using it anyway. Always insisting on using his own chair.
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I always thought it was allegorical: never underestimate light infantry with a ranged attack capability.
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He's a racist troll. He needs help. You should have googled it for him. [google.com]