Slashdot Mirror
Marriage May Tame Genius
theodp writes "Here's one to share with the wife and kids. Using a database of the biographies of 280 great scientists, a psychologist at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand has concluded that creative genius is turned off almost like a tap if a man gets married and has children, regardless of age."
Aw cripes. NO WONDER I'm feeling dragged by the lagging economy and wishy-washy business recently.
... I'm screwed?
It must have NOTHING to do with the fact that I'm now in my early 30's and married just over one year now. So, basically
At least I won't knock over the 7-11 on whim while out on my midnight smoke run. Oh, wait, pussy whipped...Quitting.
Damn it Spock, we need more testosterone.
And crime. The linked article says this happens to genus and crime in young men. Why leave that off the article? Only 10% of Slashdot readers ever read the articles, so leaving that key piece of information off is a little irresponsible, since we know the reader's habits now.
Of course, I don't know why the average Slashdot reader would need to know either fact.
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
Maybe the body figures once it's begun to do so, it's okay to stop working as hard (thinking takes energy!). At that point, survival for what you have and what you're creating is more important than achieving more.
Two words sum it all up....
"yes dear...."
It requires a lot of thought and planning to have sex with seombdy else vs. DIY
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Being married--and raising children--is hard work.
Most recognized genuses have the luxury of working with little to no distraction. When you have a wife, financial trouble, and screaming children, it's rather hard to plumb the secrets of the universe.
This is no surprise to anyone.
I'm thinking this is just to make slashdotters able to justify their position with the opposite sex.
The story is also available at Yahoo!
There are two kinds of egotists: 1) Those who admit it 2) The rest of us
Stupidity is hereditary...your kids give it to you.
:)
The marriage part...well, I'll let her explain it.
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
That is why I worry about accepting a bride. What will it do to my studies? How could a woman help my research, or compile data for me? I am very torn both ways.
I suggest you read Slashdot
If you are young single and have no children you obviously value your work very highly. Marriage is not too bad, your work is still important but your wife takes away from your work slightly.
I belive the biggest change comes when your children are born, after which your whole life changes. You no longer live for yourslef but ever decision is based on the children. They are the most important thing in your life, work is nothing....!
A proud father.
There is no god
Scientific support for my choice of the bachelor lifestyle. And I thought I was just being selfish.
I guess professional sports shows that having children outside of marriage has no detrimental effect on creativity
Truth: If it's not one thing, it's another
This is a problem most /. readers will never have to deal with.
So it is a good thing to be a virgin.
Time to go back to the high school jocks and teach 'em who was right afterall.
They thought I couldn't get sex.... I was simply trying to maintain my genius.
The Political Programmer
This joke is what the article's statement remids me of.
JERRY: Got lost? We went to school here for three years. GEORGE: What are these? (Holds test tubes to his head like antennae) Take me to your leader. JERRY: Oh my God. You had sex. You had sex with Louise! GEORGE: No, the Portuguese waitress. JERRY: The Portuguese waitress? GEORGE: I calculated my odds of ever getting together with a Portuguese waitress. Mathematically, I had to do it, Jerry.
I wonder if the Black album coincides with the weddings of Lars, Kirk, and James. Hrmmmmm. Time to fire up Google.
To quote Victor Hugo the morning after sleeping with his mistress:
"France lost a great novel last night."
There is a food that has been proven to all but eliminate a woman's sex drive.
:D
It's called "wedding cake."
bah-dum..*ching*
What?
.
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
Spouses, rug rats and home ownership are all serious destractions. This is why I feel real hackers should be castrated to avoid them. There is historical precedent (i.e. the operatic castrato).
You might think being an unwashed dedicated geek is enough to repel the opposite sex, but we all know plenty of counter examples. Nope. Castration is the only way to demonstrate that you are a dedicate uber geek.
You first.
Does this mean there's been a rash of marriages in Washington?
It did not take long to come up with a glaring exception: a man recognized as one of the top few composers of all time:
"Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) was the most prolific of the great composers. In his 65 years he produced 1,200 musical works and 20 children. You can find his compositions listed in an encyclopedia."
(For the mathematically minded, that's 60 musical works per child. Isn't P.D.Q. #21 ?)
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Dr Kanazawa theorises after a man settles down, the testosterone level falls, as does his creative output.
This is great! I have two scenerios in my head:
1. Man, hard five-o'clock shadow, wearing apron, cig hangin out of his mouth, frying eggs wondering 'how'd I get myself into this'.
2. Man sitting on couch, staring into space and kids repeatedly hit him on the head with nerf sword yelling 'play Harry Potter with us'.
What's worse and definitely not funny, btw, is that I'm just around the corner from that. Jesus... *stares out the window*
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
>creative genius is turned off almost like a tap if a man gets married and has children, regardless of age."
Lack of regular sex will do that to you...
Not having RTFA, I find it much more likely these men chose between being a scientist or inventor and having a family. They both require just about 100% commitment if you're to have any success with them, so it seems you can't do both, and these guys are smart enough to know that. Once they chose their family, they gave up on attaining greatness.
It's nothing but crumpled porno and Ayn Rand.
It means that our brilliant technical minds will continue being brilliant, since the overwhelming majority are in no danger of becoming married.
Insert witty, contrived comment here.
It's just that their wives take credit for all of their really GOOD ideas.
What happens when they get divorced? What about womens creative genius? What about men that don't get married, they just get older?
Thank goodness I lost my testicles in a terrible accident at age 12... i'm set to be brilliant for the rest of my life.
Immagine, spending time on something will leave you with less time for other things!
There's a simple reason why. In any good committed relationship, your partner usually comes in first place on the priority list. For a scientist to make a great contribution, you have to have 2 things: (1) Almost fanatical devotion to your field of study. (2) Luck. Having a wife and kids to look after doesn't leave much time and attention to a scientific study.
Diji
"I came, I saw, I WTF'd!"
You mean I can't creatively have a nice Guiness anymore. Damn! You know it just goes to... what? genius? Oh that's different.
Nevermind
.sig
Not exactly, if you read the article it says the genius in the person shines due to the high testosterone level.
Kanazawa suggests "a single psychological mechanism" is responsible for this: the competitive edge among young men to fight for glory and gain the attention of women. That craving drives the all-important male hormone, testosterone.Marriage just kills competetive edge among men, cause you don't have to earn your sex anymore. (No relation to sexual orientation)
After a man settles down, the testosterone level falls, as does his creative output, Kanazawa theorises.There are two kinds of egotists: 1) Those who admit it 2) The rest of us
Do you get smarter if you get divorced?
Are these the same guys who measured heads and lumps on skulls to determine who's a potential criminal?
... that those who get married and children overall feel better. At least I feel alot better when being with my girlfriend or conducting other social activities than if I'm only studying. And that is far more important to me than contributing to science.
Jonathan Edwards is considered one of America's top metaphysicans/theologians and is considered to be a genius in practically every intellectual circle. What is of note is that he had an amazing marriage to Sarah Edwards and she bore him 11 children. He was also a president of Princeton, and a leader of the first great awakening in America.
Only one of many, many, many examples.
Anyone else see a confounding variable here? If you 'marry well,' I'd say there's a better chance of you already turning away from crime...
Dr Kanazawa suggests "a single psychological mechanism" is responsible for this: the competitive edge among young men to fight for glory and gain the attention of women .
Hello !!!! Any women out there who like the Scientists ????
I'm sure without kids it would still change things.
Everyone at a party I went to was feeling Rosie..
Rosie got sore and went home..
Badda Bing
Rosie was my ex
You aren't free to do anything, until you've lost everything.
Don't you think that after fighting for the attention of women, the "scientist" would go ahead and concentrate on other stuff: his scientific career? You know with one thing out of the way, even lesser mortals like us pay attention to other issues.
Just a thought. I wonder what happens to women scientists when they get married!
Are we supposed to guess women aren't affected by this? Maybe the study isnt sexist but the article covering it sure is...
Of those to whom much is given, much is required.
If only he'd waited a week more for this story to circulate the net.
While the study notes the fact that output drops off - it doesn't have any data to come up with an explanation as to why. So any explanation given is just speculation... My theory - maybe its because once married, they no longer want to commit the time they once spent working (whose going to spend 16 hours a day, 7 days a week in the lab when the wife wants you home?) Once a study comes out to say why the output decreases (don't want to spend the time anymore, brain starting to malfunction, etc) - that will be real news...
In Soviet Russia, kids have you!
We're like rats, in some experiment! -- George Costanza
Dr Kanazawa suggests "a single psychological mechanism" is responsible for this: the competitive edge among young men to fight for glory and gain the attention of women.
Isn't this what Freud said nearly 100 years ago?
They dont do real research at the University of New Zealand. All the greatest UFO and Bigfoot researchers are based there.
They're more interested in publicity than science. I fail to see anything credible in this research, other than some guy trying to 'shock conventions' with his 'radical theories'.
I'll remain a genius forever!
Is anyone surprised by this? Really?
;)
On a slightly related note... I recently read "The man who loved only numbers" by Paul Hoffman. A pretty interesting biography of Paul Erdös (who didn't marry and continued doing mathematics and publishing papers until his death). I'd recommend reading it. To some people, at least.
God, root, what is difference?
Nikolai Tesla (inventor of AC generators, among many other things) cut off his own testicles at age 40, after coming to the conclusion that his interest in women was distracting him from his work.
That said, while my first conclusion from the article was that marriage causes a decrease in creativity, it's more likely a mutually-reinforcing situation: A guy who lives for his work won't have the time or inclination to meet people and 'settle down'. Only after he has already reached the end of his youthful enthusiasm for work does he perk his head up and realize that there are other things in life.
And THAT said, I know from my own experience that, after ending a long-term relationship and being single again for the first time in years, I was amazed at how much creativity I had.
every stain tells a story
I wonder if this will be covered the Americans with Disabilities Act? If so, aftr being maried for years, I can't weight!
I guess it wouldn't be about testosterone then, but the study would hold more sway if there were any data going the other way. For that matter, what about gay geniuses - is it the same? Fact is, raw genius often makes for terribly imbalanced people - maybe marriage helps them. Either way, the study is flawed, whether it's true or not. Can the /. editors be modded as flamebait?
---------------------------- DevNull - a discernible void in the province of Saskatchewan
Personally, I don't think you need to be a genius to see the rewards in a family and friends.
Again, these are just points for discussion.
I work with three guys who used to be programming gods -- one of them whipped up an emergency replacement for one of our production systems in Perl in a single weekend. (This was a production system that was about 500,000 lines of C code.) And then, in one summer, all three of them got married (not to each other.) And it's just like their brains went to jelly. Their code is complete shit, it looks like something that a college student would write in a Pascal 101 course. Seriously. And these were guys who used to be the best in the bunch, bar-none. It was bizarre. It wasn't even gradual, it was just like a boulder plummeting from a cliff. *whoosh*
:)
It's not just the coding, either. Want to go have a couple of beers after work? Sorry, wife won't let me. Water-skiing at the lake this weekend? No, kid's got a recital. Travel to Australia to install a system down there? I wish I could, but my wife's sick. Bah. I fully intend on getting married at some point in time, but for now I intend on remaining a valuable contributor to the company and actually do something worthwhile with my work output. Besides, there's nothing wrong with wild monkey sex with chicks from the bar, and they don't care a bit if you have some beers after work
It seems quite a stretch to go from 25% of married scientists to the claim "the great minds who married virtually kissed goodbye to making any further glorious additions to their CV." Last I looked, 75% was a pretty sizable majority. And what was the percentage of unmarried men of similar ages who had also made their last significant contribution?
Of course, saying "A fair amount of married scientists" doesn't make for a good headline ...
I've never even *thought* of getting married. I've never been in a long-term relationship. I haven't been in even a semi-serious relationship (over three weeks long) for three years. I haven't had sex for over a year, and I haven't been on a date in almost seven months.
:)
I must be one of the smartest people on Earth
This space left intentionally blank.
...they are trying to raise a nice headline to publicise their work.
"Marriage tames Genius" is so much better a headline than "Genius burns out, then gets married."
Remember, causality is very hard to prove either way.
Mode (3) smart-aleck mode. Press * to return to main menu.
...that Unix WAS mispelled. :-}
This is why I feel real hackers should be castrated to avoid them. There is historical precedent (i.e. the operatic castrato).
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
Let's not forget that for many centuries, clergy had to remain virgins throughout life to prevent contamination as well
Here are the stats (numbers of children) for the other two composers considered to be of J.S. Bach's stature:
Beethoven: 0
Mozart: 6
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
I have to somewhat question the cause and effect the article seems to suggest.
:)
:D
I agree the effect is there (I've been somewhat experiencing it myself over the past year, just got married a few weeks ago).
I think what's more likely though is that people who are young, brash, out to change the world, eventually get tired of doing so when they find something more emotionally rewarding to engage themselves in (like, oh, long term relationships and family). I used to stay up to all hours of the night and expend all my energy coding and doing all sorts of crazy stuff, working on my game projects, generally doing the sort of stuff he ascribes to pre-married people.
But now I find not so much that my drive is diminished, but I am kind of tired of the things I have always done and find it more rewarding to spend time with my current (and later on, future) family. You get a little older and start realizing that life maybe isn't as long as you thought it was going to be (infinite?) and as one of my friends used to say in a fake Scottish accent "get yer priorities straight, man!"
Nowadays I only stay up for half the hours of the night, not all of them
*shrug* To each his/her own I guess, just relating my own experiences...
Cryptic Allusion - New Mac and Dreamcast Games!
Well, I got married when I stopped being creative ...
...
and I was depressed by poor results. Turning
to simpler things and family just kept me sane
So it is also possible that man get married
when they burn-out - exactly as I did
George, this is your brain. (holds up head of lettuce. Pulls peice off and presents it to George.) This is the part of your brain that is intelligent. The rest of it here is completely dedicated to sex. When you don't have sex, the rest of this head of lettuce gets "turned on."
George then learned Portugese so that he could screw the maid. Soon after, he became a complete imbecile once again.
This is the Seinfeld theory. The only individual that worked in complete opposition to it was E. Schroedinger, who always did his best work when he was getting laid regularly.
You need to restart your computer. Hold down the Power button for several seconds or press the Restart button.
But to be honest I think that if you find yourself in a loving relationship that withstands the test of time, and you have the insight to realise that the ultimate creative activity is raising a child anyway, choosing a life of solitude to work on a physics problem or write an operating system is pathetic.
Remember, Linus has a wife and kids. Even he knows where it's at.
This, just in!!
A quick followup study shows that if a genius tells his wife about this study, he usually ends up dead or castrated.
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
It says that Einstein was married in 1903. Then in 1905, he published three papers, including his most famous one on the theory of relativity. So, the authors of the article used a quote from a man whose life contradicts the theory!
"Women. Can't live with them.... pass the beer nuts."
i wonder about the statistics for divorcies
.cig
That's pretty sad. A moderated can't get laid so he claims my post, or PUSSY, is over-rated and drops it a point. It's a sad, sad state of affairs when someone's sexual, or lack of, escapades clouds their judgement of, an obviously, great post:D
You aren't free to do anything, until you've lost everything.
All this study shows is that marriage is associated with a decline in scientific productivity, not that it's the cause. The causation could easily work the other way: once scientists are done making their major contributions, they're more likely to settle down, get married, and focus on family life.
Cheers,
IT
Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.
Divorce may tame bank accounts. :-}
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
I guess this means that women never really make great contributions to science since they are not "young men to fight for glory and gain the attention of women".
Euler wasn't known as the most prolific mathematician for nothing. He married twice and had 13 children, and he published 886 books and papers.
How many of you married men have had to come up with an instant, creative solution to a problem your wife brought up...(Honey, why are you late?) Uh, Geoerge and I were stopped at the light when a truck hit the car next to us and ......
Seriously, many inventions could be attributed to married men, who out of necessity had to figure out a way around obstacles... Take a farmer from the 1800's. There were many creative ways that they increased production of crops. Creative genius is not something one can really put a label on. Many men carry the ability, and some just need an obstacle to overcome before discovering it.
My 2 cents.
He has some cute kids and is turning out kernels like a mad man.
Everything Zen;
Everything Zen;
I don't think so!!!
yes, you are dead on. Read some of Hetfield's recent interviews and he'll mention something about his kids. People start to suck once they marry and have kids. Yeah, I'm talking about you *point finger*, married Slashdotter. You suck.
Dr Kanazawa suggests "a single psychological mechanism" is responsible for this: the competitive edge among young men to fight for glory and gain the attention of women.
That craving drives the all-important male hormone, testosterone.
Dr Kanazawa theorises after a man settles down, the testosterone level falls, as does his creative output.
I don't agree with this. Has Dr. K considered the fact that choosing to get married means that you also choose to give time to your spouse, and therefore you choose to not give as much time to your scientific endeavors?
I've experienced this personally. Everytime I've been in a relationship in my life, especially now that I'm married, my individual projects suffered because I chose to put them on the backburner. I hardly think I have less testosterone than the average geek who instead spends his time hacking on Linux. In fact, IMHO, I'd venture to say that an unmarried scientist has quite a bit less testosterone than a married male because he has less of an urge to seek relationships than to continue working.
Stephen Hawking? Hard to top his mind among living scientists. 3 children for him.
Einstein? Two sons there.
Frank Lloyd Wright? World's greatest architect (he said so himself, and not many argue with it). 6 children (or was it 7?)
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
... most Slashdot readers are safe. Smart forever, mooohaha ...
Your pathetic attempt at page widening does NOTHING! NOTHING, I say!
This has similarities to the Seinfeld episode where George became incredibly smart while abstaining. Not that there is anything wrong with that.
I know, for myself, I'm planning to avoid marriage and kids for as long as possible (perhaps indefinitely). Family is certainly satisfying for some people, and that's fine. But others of us find more satisfaction in intellectual pursuits. High-level mental tasks (programming, engineering, abstract design) require intense, unbroken concentration. There are costs and benefits to both life-choices. You simply need to introspect enough to find out what drives you.
Why, oh why, does everything have to come back to testosterone for these people? It is, quite possibly, the most overrated hormone of all time. I believe the results are correct, but this causality argument is total bullstuff.
This has nothing to do with man-juice, and everything to do with the allocation of time. You simply cannot build a successful happy relationship with a woman if you are not willing to put her first in your schedule.
As a single, I had approximately 8 more hours per day of play time when nothing was pre-scheduled for me. THAT'S where my 'research' time went -- yardwork, making dinner together, visiting the in-laws, going to movies. You do the math.
I wouldn't trade it for the world, though - well worth the investment.
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
...but what about ME? I was no genius to start with. I'm married...and I'm worried.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
Aha!!, so that's why most geniuses tend to fall off the end of the world after 30 or there abouts....maybe that's why a lot of older math proffs arn't so productive...but if that's the case, how do you explain the continued productivity of other science feilds?
50% Flamebait and 50% Insightful?! Oh, wait, I'll bet that the mods meant Funny, but didn't realize it...
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
Man, before I was all 'boyfriend' I was such a fun-loving punk-assed drunk of a geek, and it was FUN! I'd pop pills and drink all the time and geek for days on end. I learned so much back then, it would take me a decade to learn now what took only twoi years when I had that sort of... un-focus in my life.
Now I'm so tired from the commute and the 9-to-5 and I have to pay attention to all this other shit (cats, girlfriend, email, bills, car care, lawn, landlord) I don't have any room left for being creative.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
Richard Feynman, Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking: at least 2 children each.
Hope at least one counts as a notable scientist !!!!
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
No, you still have a great chance to blather on about aliens and write crappy coffee table books and start a four-letter agency that doesn't accomplish a damned thing in 20 years. Don't sell yourself short. ;)
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
Recently, a friend told me about a conversation he had with a neighbour. his neighbour has been driving the same car* longer than he'd like -- and sees his kids as the reason he hasnt any disposable cash for the things *he'd* like.
he has taken to calling his children " dream stealers " - i dont know if its sad or funny...
Marriage may curb genius, but as someone else mentioned here, having children does it to a far greater degree. Your maternal/paternal instincts, if intact, place your children above your work.
It is interesting that we must almost choose between either the advancement of our species or its propagation.
Perhaps these instincts were deliberate, maybe to slow down advancement to a more managable pace? Similar to how our lifespans are limited. Imagine the rapid advancements we would see had some of the geniuses of the past lived just twice as long as they did.
Just some thoughts.
Nonsense, I was able to show the horizontal scrollbar on a 1152 X 864 monitor.
... Slashdot readers:
I guess there's no danger here.
Four fifths of all our troubles in this life would disappear if we would just sit down and keep still. -C. Coolidge
Madam Curie is also another exception to this rule. She and her husband both made significant contributions to science after they were married.
I think it depends on who you marry mostly - in Madam Curie's case - her husband Pierre was a helpmate. And anyways - the article states that most scientists drop out at 30 or after 5 years (of marriage). Well - if most people get married about 24 (assumming Geeks marry late) or so - 5 years later they're 30.
There is always a frontier where there is an open and willing mind
that all the gay geniuses have an even better chance at making a contribution to sciences and arts? ;) It makes you wonder. ;)
John Stuart Mill single? No, married to Harriet Hardy Taylor.
Stephen Hawking? Three children and one grandchild.
Madame Cuire, anyone? Anyone? Bueller?
Then there's da Vince. *cough* *cough*
I'd come up with something witty to say to this ... except ... the baby needs a bottle. :{
Yes, of course it's much more likely that a wife and children bring a man down than, say, the man's "genius" being less active because he is ready to settle down. I just love the conclusions people draw from statistics.
Anyway, everyone knows women do all the thinking in relationships.
Allolex
No, you just suck.
I know there are a number of reasons that it may not be feasible to do a similar study on women (small pool to choose from--not by fault of women by any means), but it would certainly be interesting to see! Ah well, back to my lab...first my testosterone injection; I don't want my prof to think I'm slacking.
NMG
This just in from CES 2004:
DiaperGene (a small company created by former scientists that married and had children) today introduced AutoWipe. Much like the 'autowash' process we all loved in "The Fifth Element", AutoWipe simply bolts onto most cribs for infants and toddlers. The AutoWipe uses backscatter x-ray technology to detect when a #1 or #2 enters any standard diaper, and proceeds to automatically change and dispose of the diaper. A built in incinerator module disposes of the used diaper, and is powered off standard LP portable tanks manufactured by Coleman or etc.. Additionally customers can purchase a module that uses a wireless connection to e-mail or page the parent when the diaper supply is low. All this without harm to your children, and without that eye-opening smell.
Parents everywhere delight!
" But is creative genius affected here or a more digit-headed cerebral genius? Right brain vs. left brain kinda stuff."
Bach's music has always seemed to me more "digital" and mathematical than that of a lot of other composers.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Apparently Dr Kanazawa has never had to remove several Hot Wheels cars from the innards of a toilet full of crap. Yeah, I might be a great computer guy, but it takes a pretty creative mind to stay ahead of the creative minds of my children. We used to lock certain doors in our house to keep our kids out of those rooms. It turns out that I inadvertently trained them all in the art of lock picking. If you want to look into the human mind, raise some kids and put a few obstacles in front of them and watch their minds work. It's truly fascinating.
I am the proud parent of 5 kids. Hey, if the intelligent part of the population doesn't reproduce, then it's all left up to the dummies. Have you ever SEEN the people on the Jerry Springer show. The world would be better off if our scientists would get off their butts and start raising kids with the same love of science that they have rather than try to eek out a few more discoveries after their 30s.
"So - all the Simpson women turn out okay?"
"That's right, sweetie. The defective 'Simpson Gene' is on the Y chromosome, so only men are affected."
"So I'm not doomed! Oh, Dad, I've never been so glad to be your daughter!"
"A man is not complete until he's married...
Then, he's finished."
My educational advancement and creative ideas stopped shortly after I became teathered. Mine started before I was married. Something about someone being around nagging you about what you're doing, why you did what, what you're doing next and doing so over the phone when they're not around tends to do that.
Now that we have a kid the phone doesn't have to be there, if I have the kid while she's not around the kid substitutes that part, but don't think the phones not around for re-enforcement.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
I heard funny joke about this at the University. I will try to tell...
QUESTION.. What is the difference between married American man and single Chinese man?
ANSWER.. The single Chinese man cannot leave his country when he want but he can leave his house whenever he likes.
But the married American man has freedom to leave his country any time he want, but HE CANNOT LEAVE THE HOUSE!
-- Dr. Fu Ling-Yu, Internal Technology Consult; Tongji University, People Republic of China.
I suppose that Andrew Wiles, having a wife and kids, is an exception.
You know, the same Andrew Wiles that proved Fermat's last theorem (a^n + b^n != c^n, n > 2, n is an integer) using some mathematics so advanced maybe 10 people in the world understand it (do NOT check that number).
I guess you have to admire his wife for saying (paraphrasing), "Get in your office...I don't want to see you until you've solved this".
Cheers to the genius and the support of his spouse!!
One thing I've noticed over the years: Women want a man to BE successful, but they often don't want to be married to a man who's doing the necessary work to become successful.
(There's a similar thing with cars: If you're single, having a cool sports-car will help you attract women. Once you've married, she'll want you to trade it in for something more 'practical'.)
Especially eunuch partners. Women drag men down in general.
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
...that Linux got hooked nicely into the server but tailed off on the desktop.
Curse you Linus! Divorce her for the freedom of mankind!
Seth you son of a bitch...
I hate your ugly face, die you mother fucker DIE
This is study is fully of implied ageism. Seriously, getting married isn't that big of a step anymore...most people live with their spouse before they get married. And now, how's it happening?
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
"Dr Kanazawa suggests "a single psychological mechanism" is responsible for this: the competitive edge among young men to fight for glory and gain the attention of women. "
As a young female scientist, I object to the slightest intimation of the idea that the only way good science gets done is because young (presumably male) scientists are trying to compete for female attention. How many young male scientists out their have managed to impress girls with their thesis results anyway?
On the other hand, I find it entirely plausible that scientists of both genders who get married and have families often find their priorities rearranged. Discovering that having a family means a less obsessive attention to your career shouldn't be a surprise to anyone with a balanced view of life.
Luckily for many male scientists at institutions such as the one where I'm a student (MIT), they DO have wives who often stay home at least part time, enabling them to maintain something close to the obsessively competitive hours they put in before marriage and kids. That applies for all but one of the male professors in my department. For female scientists, it's much rarer to have a house-husband. The two female professors in my department only manage because their salary combined with their husband's allows them to hire people to help with household chores and raising the kids. Any female scientist who can't come up with a substitute for a housewife finds it very, very difficult to compete.
It's about time a lot of scientists realized that the sciences of nanotech and biotech (life extention and not growing old) is the best way to go in promoting better chances (self interest) of all scientists who have not yet "made it by 30" to continue long productive careers well past 30 and not look a day over 20.....why should it be just rich people, athletes, polliticians etc, that benifit from these soon to be here technologies. Who wants to be the last naturally old person in their feild...at least there would be one less reason for your employer to get rid of you just because you get old (what is it, 30 is old for programmers in IT, and 45 for electrical engineers)? The other thing that really bugs me is when you get older, they expect you to move int management...(okay, it pays more, but it can be more boring..)
Whoa, and I thought it was because they were replaced by evil alien robots!
This would really explain a lot in the music field though. For all the bands I listen to, it seems they follow a too-typical path where their first album is interesting, but really rough. Then for the next five years their music is brilliant. Then they go downhill really fast. Previous theories were that they got too old and tired, didn't have the youthful vigor, etc. But the marriage-and-kids theory would probably explain most of these bands. These researchers should now do a study to determine how marriage and kids affects a band's suckiness.
Bueller?..... Beuller?...... Beuller?.....
This bodes ill for Doom 3...
Also, in the field of music, with which I am most familiar of those mentioned, I can think of a bunch of examples where marriage hasn't significantly impacted genius: Bach (as mentioned earlier), Dvorak, Ives, and Shostakovich all produced many great works after they were married. In poetry, Robert Frost comes to mind. Anyways, I take this piece with a large grain of salt.
...and the you marry one. Then life sucks and she doesn't. Then you die...
And somewhere in between you lost your creative edge...
"are also remarkably similar among geniuses in music, painting and writing, as well as in criminal activity.""
Don Vito Corleone had 4 children (not counting the "adopted" Tom Hagen).
.. I would probably have had something really amusing to say. Damn, I really don't want to take the garbage out right now.
"Derp de derp."
"Great Scientists" by whose definition? I could believe that the probability of someone being recognized as a brilliant solo contributor who far exceeds those that he works with is probably diminished when he gains the maturity to be able to share his life with a family.
But the ability to work as part of a team in a sustained problem solving effort that cannot be totally planned? Seems to me that a spouse and children would help
Only a chick could give me a headache this big.
Einstein was married during his greatest discoveries..
Don't Tread on OpenSource
Dammit I KNEW I should have waited to get married until AFTER I finished my PhD. Well at least now I know why my thesis isn't finished yet!
Could you be a genius if you heard the following:
"Albert, get this chalk board out of the living room, NOW!"
"Johan Sebastian Bach stop that infernal racket this instant!"
"Rene! Cartesian my ass, help me with the laundry!"
I mean genius has it's limits.
"creative genius is turned off almost like a tap if a man gets married and has children"
The study does not detail cause and effect. Maybe the geniuses who married and started a family chose to do so because they no longer wanted to be engaged in their former pursuits as opposed to marriage and kids killing their output.
My common sense and observation lead me to believe the above interpretation is just plain silly. Marriage, relationships, and family take time and commitment to work. If you can juggle this within a schedule and maintain a commitment to your interests then your creative output will not be significantly impacted.
My father is among the top computer scientists in networking. He is responsible for some of the greatest advancements you are currently using. He has helped found numerous successful companies. Before he met my mother he was brilliant but had no output to prove it. To this day he continues to be extremely productive and his work continues to revolutionize the industry. Take this anecdote as you will.
Bullshit statistics and studies abound everywhere as do misinterpretations of real data. I use my experience and thought for guidance.
Every man knows that genius and sex-drive (libido) are related. Noboby can pull a hard nights shift and be expected to work like a genius all day too!
To quote Allen Ginsberg:
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,
...who lost their loveboys to the three old shrews of fate
the one eyed shrew of the heterosexual dollar
the one eyed shrew that winks out of the womb
and the one eyed shrew that does nothing but sit on her ass and snip the intellectual golden threads of the craftsman's loom
i'd suspect that creative genius may not be pushing the boundries of scientific schools but instead toned towards the toddler level..a good time to sort of start from the beginning and learn anew with your little blank slate. to be learning in teaching instead of learning through experimentation (wouldn't want any lab fires when there's little mouths to feed)
It claims at one point: "Two-thirds (of all scientists) will have made their most significant contributions before their mid-30s." And then right after it: "Within five years of making their nuptial vows, nearly a quarter of married scientists had made their last significant contribution to history's hall of fame."
Then surely since most male scientists get married in their twenties, this will be true regardless? The "within five years" statement would be only interesting if most male scientists got married well before the age of thirty.
Let's say you're a single guy just out of college, working your first job and living in an apartment. When you come home in the evening, you may have a few chores (laundry, make dinner, clean up here and there), but essentially you have a vast window of free time from at least 7:00pm until you go to sleep. That's 3-5 hours of free time TO DO WHATEVER YOU WANT. On the weekend, you easily have 6 to 8 hours a day to do whatever you want, with lots of time left over to have fun.
Now let's say you're married. This chips away at the amount of free time, but not too much. Maybe this cuts down your evenings a bit, and you never do anything on Friday, but it's still a lot of time.
Now you have kids. To make a long story short, this takes away most of your evenings and weekends, dropping you from 20-30 free hours a week to a few here and there which you have to plan far ahead for and during which you're most likely going to be very tired. It's hard to want to jump into a creative activity during those few hours.
Also, you likely have a house by this point. Now you have maintenance and mowing and so on to eat up any free hours you may have. The realization hits you that even if you could write the great american novel it would take three years of 1-2 hours per week to finish it.
Just google it to find who will sell it. You can get without prescription. Getting this out of the way, you can concentrate on genius things like putting all the other human animals into zoos with technology. Who's the loser then?
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
The article does a pretty crappy job of demonstrating causality.
While the findings may indeed be true that those who are married exhibit a decrease in creative output, the study doesn't say whether or not "Creative men who's creativity is beginning to wane may suddenly get married" --or -- "Consistently creative men are less likely to marry", or in fact as the article suggests: "Marriage decreases creativity".
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
That's pretty fucking witty candyass
You aren't free to do anything, until you've lost everything.
I think the mechanism here isn't the oversimplified, neo-Freudian "competitive edge among young men to fight for glory and gain the attention of women." That would imply that only men lose their creative edge when their priorities shift.
A broader look at the subject would show a parallel with a more modern topic: anti-depression medications. There are plenty of examples of highly creative people -- geniuses in their fields -- whose creativity would likely have been quashed if they'd had access to a good Selective Seratonin Reuptake Inhibitor. Poet Emily Dickinson and artist Vincent Van Gogh come to mind, but I'm sure there are many others.
The problem, as I see it, isn't that having a family takes something away from a would-be genius... any more than an appropriate dosage of Prozac does. What both do, ideally, is give the person a sense of contentment, a feeling that things are the way they should be.
Creativity, in the end, often requires adversity to bring it out. Remove the adversity, and the creativity (or "genius") may seem to be extinguished. But as the examples in this discussion show -- Bach, Hawking, et al -- it is possible to achieve both genius and happiness. It just doesn't happen very often.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
andrew wiles was about 42, married and had a kid(i think) when he published his proof of fermats last theorem.
nuff said.
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
Leonhard Euler was married and had fourteen children. He was also stone blind for the last 17 years of his life. Despite this he made tremendous and lasting contributions to the field of mathematics.
One biography says of him:
"He was blind for the last 17 years of his life, and during that time his mathematical productivity actually increased. It was said that Euler had tremendous powers of concentration and that he was even able to do mathematics 'with a baby in his lap while the older children played all about him.'"
If the trend is that people become less creative after they marry, it is likely due to a lack of time rather than any suppresion of the creative instinct.
If the study had concentrated on people for whom creativity was essential to their livelihood I doubt there'd be a correlation between creativity and being married. Many artists and writers are married and still turn out works of genius. Some don't even become famous for their works until long after they're married, for example J.K. Rowlings (a woman, I know, and whether or not you like Harry Potter it is a great work), and Stephen King(one of the most prolific writers of our time).
I always wondered why my friends who married became dull and unentertaining almost overnight. Once, while on my death bed with a horrible flu, a recently-married friend called to regail me with his tale of putting plastic up on his second-floor condo windows. Man, til then I hadn't had so much fun--NOT!
I have yet to see a friend become MORE interesting after marriage, or even manage to tread water and remain a good ol' guy.
And now, a study supports my theory. Of course, I am still waiting eagerly for some chickie to come along and make ME a bore...
Mmmmmm... Bold, yet refreshing!
The summary failed to mention this key point of the article "Dr Kanazawa theorises after a man settles down, the testosterone level falls..."
:-) The old ball and chain will help you keep it a little longer!
Testostrone is one of the key actors in male pattern baldness.
So... all of you guys out there with the genetic predisposition toward baldness? Hurry up and get married before all your hair falls out!!
If he is a real genius and if he likes the way he is then why should he marry ...obviuosly the women sex is gifted with stuff[sex,affection,beauty,support] that could cloud the pursuit of glory of research.
Hey a small piece of observation, if all geniuses find that women and children are a better venture, average guy like me better take the clue and dont need to experiment!!!
Lets salute women and children who bring meaning and hapiness to life.
CmdrTaco better watch out. He was geek and all to propose on the internet. Guess in a few years we will be missing him.
Yep, that was all I wanted to say. I had been considering sending the link, but now I realize how wrong that would have been....
Sig under construction since 1998.
Reasons why many of us reading this is because we want to confirmed(or comfort) ourselves that being a nerd and single is all about preserving our creative genius.
On the other hand, if you are poor with kids and a wife to support, you will do some creative things do make money to bring home.
Conclusion, this research is again run by some single guy trying to comfort himself. There goes the money for the family with 10 kids.
blah.
I am one out of many.
I'd also like to fuck siskbc's mom, like Sagan apparantly must have.
I think he has it all backwards. If you get married you can nolonger be considered a genious.
If they had said the logically equivalent "over three-quarters of married scientists made further significant contributions...", it would sound like marriage helped research. Personally, it looks like pretty flimsy reasoning to me.
This has been a pattern (sentence? :p) long observed. Nikola Tesla once remarked, "I do not think you can name many great inventions that have been made by married men."
History also seems to be in accord with the article's sentiment found in quoting Einstein to the effect that, "A person who has not made his great contribution to science before the age of 30 will never do so."
Einstein himself wrote three papers in his lifetime that were of any grave significance. These signal scientific contributions were made while he was a Swiss patent clerk, who hobbled together toy-physics theories in his spare time.
Einstein wrote and published these three papers in Annalen der Physik (respectively concerning: quantum theory of radiation, Brownian motion, and of course, relativity) within the span on one year... at the age of 26.
Newton, too, made his great contributions to calculus and physical and celestial mechanics in his early twenties while under house-arrest during an outbreak of the plague.
It seems, then, to be quite well established that such revolutionary progress (especially of a mathematical nature) is made by somewhat-isolated young scientists whose innovative potential, either by causation or correlation, is stiffled by age and inter-human commitment.
Marriage diverts a lot of man's brain power toward mundane things, like home ownership, two cars where before one bicycle would do. Less computers and more television gear, hey I like the video recorder and camera! Movies are fun, but since I have been married twice, I am a certified moron. It just validates the preliminary studies. Obviously I was stupid enough to try yhe same trick twice and expect different results!
What I am looking for from the geniuses left out there are a few simple things:
1) A kudzu hybrid that combines cannabis, tomatoes and strawberries on the same self perpetuating plant, plus seeds!
2) A clone of the Dodo bird's genetic material, wow really big chickens that are easy to raise and are tasty too.
3) Natural penis enlargers that resemble the lips of a loved one or someone you would like to meet.
4) Peppers hotter than Habaneros with a long slow cumulative burn factor and a great apricot taste.
5) Laws that stop politicians or members of their genetic pool from ever running for more than one public office ever!
The list could go on, but since I am a certified moron, I will stop for now.
Damn I have been married for over 12 years and have a child. I must be a dumb SOB by now. I don't think it necessarily stops all Genius though. Marriage and parenting definitely competes for it though. That's OK because I don't want to have that wild Einstein like hair anyway.
"How about slashdotsingles.org?"
Whoever gets the contract for banner ads for wankware on this is going to get richrichrich.
According to the article, will I get more creative for no longer being unmarried or less creative because I am now "too old"?
Cryptonomicon here somehow, especially with Waterhouse in the old castle huff-duff station during WWII.
But I guess I've been married too long to figure it out. 22 years today.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
One possible outcome: $$$ comes from him so she can be a genius.
I dont think this is going to be a problem for anyone here.
Far too late for me, I guess I might as well stay single.
They notice a lot more when you oggle other ladies. They become defensive and buy all manner of "Beauty aids" to make them selves more attractive to you. They find many small quirks in your personality that they overlooked before , to name a few things lady scientists do. If they are doctors, they seriously consider self mutilation, AKA cosmetic surgery, to make you jealous. You, on the other hand know all too well, that if she suddenly becomes Cindy Crawford, for example, she will still not swallow, or allow some back door hijinks. The men she hopes to attract to use against you are merely dupes to be used in a dangerous game of one-up-manship. You still know ALL her dirty little secrets and feel smug, knowing that if you NEVER tell any of them, she will worry that you might, and that truth and video tapes are the best defense for slander and libel.
If you are young single and have no children you obviously value your work very highly.
Obviously?! Huh? I can't count the number of single friends I have that work shit jobs.
Once they are married... well, what's the point?
What great brainstorm you going to tell us next? Women tend to gain weight after they get married?
Ok, you loose your genius side. You're no longer special. But hey, there's pretty good side, like watching old "America's Funniest Home Video" re-runs, and suddenly realize that Bob Saget is a heck of a comic genius.
"hey do whatever they do to get laid..."
Of course, Yaweh isn't married either, and look at all he's created!
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
I would pay to see that.
In fact, I think that's what they should call the study.
"Marriage and the suckiness of popular music."
It's got a ring to it, no?
I wonder if there is a correlation between the high divorce rate and the advent of file sharing. That might be worth looking into as well.
This signature has Super Cow Powers
Or to turn a different interpretation on this data, once married, a scientist is less likely to be able to spend 15 hours a day in the lab.
Well, this should be a very easy hypothesis to test. Female scientists should show less of a drop after their marriage, since they should be less affected by the "all-important male hormone."
This guy theorizes that testosterone levels drop after marriage, and therefore so does the competitive drive, and therefore one's level of contribution to science. This seems to be a LOT of interpretation to read into a small amount of data.
...was the PhD who did this research single or married?
Cause if he was married, I'm not giving this report much credo...
Simple as that. Some of us were wiser in our choice of mates.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
Albert Einstein's latter career was largely a bust, IIRC, and the point of the discussion was that great scientists ceased to do much *after* they got married and had kids.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
i guess the quote "behind every great man is a great women" is not just wrong but a complete fallacy.
Now I see it. well done.
Creative genius and crime express themselves early in men but both are turned off almost like a tap if a man gets married and has children, a study says.
So do geniuses and criminals get married when they are ready to settle down and fit into society? Or does marriage tame them?
Will we have alternate sentences? The judge says, "You have one year to get married or you will live in jail for the next 10 years?"
Will Bill Gates set up a free matchmaking service for geniuses who are innovating in the computer field? Maybe he'll pay for pretty women to go after them?
It could be a fun experiment (speaking as a single genius who is currently designing the next revolution in information technology.)
I spend my life entertaining my brain.
I would've been able to think of a clever comment, but ,you see, I just met this girl...
If your theory is different from practice, then your theory is wrong.
Do I get married and lose my awesome genius, or do I get so fed up with all the bullshit dealing with academics, I decide to settledown and not do that kind of crap any more.
meh
It's not news that to be highly productive whether in literature or aerospace engineering, people need to forego the traditional family life. People who claim to be highly productive in their career while raising a family are really falling short on one or both without realizing it.
I would bet that nearly everyone who is a really big-time contributor to open source, for example, is single and lives by themselves. This is not meant to paint them in an anti-social light, but simply says that they had to make choices to let them do what they enjoy doing most.
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
Hawking does not waste his time raising children, playing with them, driving them to soccer practice, coaching them, cleaning up after them, etc. He's not physically able to do those things, so those normal duties of a father are done by others. He's essentially without children, from a "to do list" and "time wasted" point of view.
Bach had twenty children because his organ had no stops.
-kgj
I smell a government grant for a study in here somewhere!
I think it's just because your average band only has about 3 or 4 good albums worth of material in them.
There are exceptions, of course -- there are bands that are still putting out worthwhile albums 30 years since thier inception (Rush comes to mind).
But most modern bands insist on riding that super-fame wave, and that only lasts for so long. So you get the first rough album, a few awesome albums, and then they just can't accept the fact that they're not going to be every second song on ClearChannel anymore, and keep trying to reinvent thier earlier stuff -- the Goo-Goo Dolls is an example of this kind of effect. Thier early stuff was rough, then they made some great stuff (genre considerations taken into account), and then they just kept trying to make the same shit that got them famous, and you can't do that.
Unfortunately, most of the blame can probably be laid at the feet of the labels and the average modern label contract that gives the buisnessmen veto power over anything a band produces -- they don't have a choice but to keep reinventing the same stuff, which is basically doom.
Well, they aren't exactly geniuses to start off with. I mean I look at a woman, at the skin, the breasts, the shape of the hips, the hair and the eyes, and then I think that a homosexual looks at a woman and thinks "Nah, gimme a man's smelly, sweaty, juicy hairy garbage hole instead" and I don't see genius there.
Yikes.
Just because you're not married does not mean you are a creative genius. So you have nothing to lose.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
J.S. Bach had over 20 children and in the opinion of many was the greatest composer who ever lived. He was also probably the greatest keyboard player of his day, and an expert on pipe organs.
Isn't this just a case of having less time on your hands to invent all the cool things like, say condoms, or that miracle female attracting pheromone deodorant? :-)
zWhat would an EWOULDBLOCK block, if an EWOULDBLOCK could block would? -- me
"Here's one to share with the wife and kids"
"...if a man gets married and has children"
Now, why are all geniuses presumed to be men?
(Well, true, most so called geniuses have been men, but thats because of discrimination against women, isn't it?)
bla bla...
According to the article this horrible syndrome requires mirrage... Slashdotters once again breathe a heavy sigh of relief...
"There are plenty of intelligent educated professional women out there, I've established that as fact, but the gentleman in question can't seem to see them."
You've established this as fact? I guess we are to believe that you have a line of intelligent educated professional lined up in your backyard as proof.
Not that I don't believe that there are intelligent educated professional women (I'm married to one), but I suspect that they are *ahem* in a different county then you.
Yeah, they slowed down a bit as they got older--but perhaps that is because one tends to focus more narrowly with age.
Einstein had a kid and was married before publishing Special Relativity in '05. He completed general relativity in about 1917 if I recall correctly.
Kids and women (quite plural) didn't slow him down that much. Or, if they did, I wonder what he would have come up with had he been alone?
I do better work now that I'm married than I did when I was single. Perhaps frequent sex helps stir the creative juices...
DJ
Allen Turing? What killed his genius. answer; Social convention and bigotry. The biggest killer of genius is peer pressure, caused by many things other than marriage! It also depends on who you marry. If Marie Currie had married a drunken lout then she might have not been a great scientist.
The social structure of our public education where bigotry and pressures to conform are greatest cause many to lose interest. Not that private education is any better.
What a new age science piece of crap.
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
An intelligent man would skip getting into shape and just use his intelligence to trick a woman into thinking he has earning potential.
paintball
Interestingly enough this effect doesn't exist in poetry. It's not that getting married improves people's (geniuses) work... It just has no effects. Witness Eliot, Stevens, Crane, Pound, Hill, et al. But part of poetry good poetry comes from wide experience in life, of which marriage is a necessary part.
And maybe they weren't writing in the first place to attract women? Does anybody set out saying, 'damn; i'm gonna win the Nobel for economics, the chicks will be ALL OVER ME'? Not that I know of. Although it could happen. There are easier ways to pick up women, though.
And what about Paul Gauguin (painter)? He _left_ his wife and children, and _then_ did his best work. And then he wound up sleeping with a string of 13-year old girls in Tahiti. But we won't talk about that.
All the power of a male mind is free and undirected before marriage... But after marriage, all that power is redirected and focused in all its glory into a singular purpose....
Hiding pr0n from the wife...
The geniuses don't lose their intelligence, it's just that it has to be channeled into different activities. How to avoid getting in trouble with your wife, how to still enjoy time with your friends, and how to finally get some.
Can I get my genius back if I get a divorce?
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
... I dare you to post something bad about the Chinese government.
But the way she says "We don't have money for you to try to blow yourself up" is so cute...
s/creative genius/sex/g
"And this is my boy, Sherman. Speak, Sherman." "Hello." "Good boy."
I must not lust.
Lust is the mind-killer.
Lust is the little-torment that brings total corruption.
I will face my lust.
I will permit it to pass over mr and through it.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its descent.
Where the lust has gone there will be no kleenex.
Only I will remain.
Mark Knoffler
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety" - BF
"Don't think with your dick."
I feel the big head and the little head should agree on some decisions. In any case (though I hold no signed claim on genius) I think that genius can't be lost any more than energy can be destroyed, only rechanneled into areas that matter more (or are given more priority). Though it's certain that (at my own level (as I suppose even the subgenius would feel such effects)) marriage has slowed my making of strange mechanical drawings and poetic ramblings, I've found no greater joy in life than watching my children reflect what few good graces my wife and I have to offer them (or surpising me with a few of their own creation).
Perhaps it's better for our race as a whole to not intellectually advance so quickly as to outstrip our capacity for simple joy, peace, or caring. Perhaps the union of male and female correct an imbalance that leads to both unbridled genius (nuclear weapons, genetically created superdiseases etc.), and criminal behavior (the desire to use them), to very good purpose.
Experience helps more in avoiding bad decisions when it isn't gained by making them.
Creative genius and crime express themselves early in men but both are turned off almost like a tap if a man gets married and has children, a study says.
Promote romance in prisons. Create weekend dating zones and have a wedding pastor for every prison !!
And no,
Woah, I must be living in the wrong world. I always considered web monkies to be one rung below garbagemen.
This really should be labeled "Genius's of the past that were so socially abnormal and the only life they had was their research soon discovered greater happiness in being married and therefore spent less time at the office."
"Scientific productivity indeed fades with age," Dr Kanazawa says
Like when your 80 you can't think as well... this is somehow news?
"Scientists rather quickly desist (from their careers) after their marriage, while unmarried scientists continue to make great scientific contributions later in their lives," says Dr Kanazawa.
I can hardly say there is enough proof to show this, since only 1/4 of 280 scientist that got married had any change in discoveries after marriage. (that is their data from the article) How is there any correlation between that percentage and reality? How are they deciding what a "great contribution" is? This is ubsurd.
For all we know only those 70 even got married out of the bunch...
I'd like a time warp machine to see the proof that somehow if those scientists had not gotten married that they would have discovered anything new that by this research would be considered "great achievements". Me quitting coffee is a great achievment and Bill the idiot savant that can understand the universe isn't listed in the 280...
I am going to have to research his article, but the only way you can use all 280 in this project is if all 280 got married. If half didn't then your data is not conclusive. If half that got married had crappy marriages, your data is not conclusive. If half that got married got divorced while still in their prime, the data is not conclusive. Think of all the variables involved...
Maybe I just believe a little too much in the scientific method, but where is the control group here? 280 people, each with probably a radically different experience with women many possibly in different fields of expertise.
Of course even a more laughable aspect of this, that by all indications from the article there are no genius women scientists...
Heck, what if one guy lived on a cot at the observatory, but when he got married moved back to his home state and didn't have access to the materials... all of a sudden he isn't a genius anymore? These people's research is total bunk...
Dr Kanazawa theorises after a man settles down, the testosterone level falls, as does his creative output.
Ok people, beware, testosterone has been declared to affect "genius". I'm sure the most geekified of the slashdotters can figure out the consquences of that statement...
How does this article justify being on top?
paintball
Didn't he interview any scientists married to scientists? I'm no scientist, just a lowly programmer, and still I know I couldn't hitch up with someone who didn't share my interest in computers. I mean, who am I supposed to play warcraft with if the guy doesn't have a proper hand-keyboard coordination? And if I stay up working late, would I stand him nagging me all the time about it?
:)
Better just choose a compatible (plug & play?) soulmate who will stay up late with you debugging/playing/whatever, and you'll do fine. I know I did.
shana
I guess you drew your sig in MS Paint?
I am a viral sig. Please copy me and help me spread. Thank you.
Musicians lose creativity in rehab, which explains St. Anger.
paintball
Since there have been a couple takes with this particular article and Freudian analysis, I thought I'd share his notion of Sublimation with the slashdot audience. It reads as follows:
"Sublimation is a process that concerns the object-libido..." (that means YOU wanting something like a computer or a vagina on an INSTICTUAL level) "...and consists in the instinct's directing itself towards an aim other than, and remote from, that of sexual gratification; in this process the accent falls upon the deflection from the sexual aim...."
That is the jest of Freudian psychology. He believed that everything that humans share in society with one another comes about through the repression of instincts, the most significant one being that of sexuality. Language, Law, Literature, agriculture, none of these things could not have came about without repressed instincts.
Once these instincts are no longer being sublimated ( you buy the computer, you behold the Vagina) then your power and ability to sublimate your consciousness into higher activities is diminished. Why? because you're content, and getting some.
Freud aside, why was this even posted, is the slashdot crowd finally coming to the realization that they are wed to machines that have only one simple nature, that of being overly complicated and error prone? Stick to technology, let the psychologist ramble, keep up with the posts on how to solve memory errors.
That and they take up a goodly amount of time, which might otherwise have been spent coding, thinking, perusing, learning or inventing.
How about people that get married, get divorced, and then go back to the old habits/haunts - do they get their brain back?
Bill Cosby says so. After getting married 3 years ago and having our child a year later, I think it's true. My wife and I both are less creative artistically, though our tech support jobs help keep our problem solving edges sharp. I doubt the 2 years of sleep deprivation have anything to do with it, nor the lack of REM sleep.
On the plus side, we're both much happier now than when we were single geeks. Could be that the satisfaction imbuing our general life leaves us with less creative/neurotic energy.
I drank what? -- Socrates
Satoshi Kanazawa is clearly a worthless academic who coudln't gather or interpret accurate data to save his life. My father was a pioneer in the US space program and earned over 20 patents while married and raising a family. His was hardly a unique example. This pronouncement is nearly as ignorant as claiming that creativity decreases with age. Case in point - Paul Erdos published more papers in one of his latter years than most mathematicians publish in their lifetimes. QED.
The life of Alan Turing somewhat ironically illustrates the idea that the article conveys better than any other case that I can think of in science. Tried and convicted for homosexual activity in Manchester in the middle of the last century at the age of fourty-one, Turing's sentence consisted of estrogen injections which were meant to quell his libido. This was essentially the end of what had been a very productive life. Two years later, he apparently committed suicide. The cause of death: poisoning by a cyanide-laced apple.
well - that explains why i've a hard time finding a girl...
I'm sure Bach, Hawking .. were/are wealthy enough to afford help for all the mundane aspects of life freeing them to work hours on end.
...and what happens to a female genius after she marries and has children?
--- "TANSTAAFL" --Robert Heinlein (There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch)
that married people live longer.
So, you have a choice. Live brilliantly and die sooner or Live married and die older.
-
The word "aliento" works better than "respiración" in that context.
:D
A better translation would be:
" El aliento de mi gato huele a comida para gatos. "
Said another loser.
--- Sueños del Sur - a webcomic about four young siblings
First, you probably mean "correlation" rather than "association".
The study found a strong correlation between individuals who have previously exhibited the creative and intellectual output of a genius, having dramatically decreased creative and intellectual output shortly after having been married.
By stating, "done making their major contributions", you suggest that there is some sort of unconscious awareness of, or that there is a telos behind one's potential for high levels of creative and intellectual output.
There is simply no reason to believe this. We no of no such forces or influences, and given their alleged nature, they are simply unverifiable by science. Hence: useless and pointless assertions.
The claim is not that marriage causes the brain physically to no longer have the potential for that same level of creative and intellectual output, but rather that marriage seems to result in, cause, this potential, should it still exist, not to be realized at all as fully.
There is no reason to be defensive about the claim, or to avoid the conclusion that it very much appears to be true, unless of course you regret having been married.
In that case, live with the consequences of your actions, or talk with your wife about making dramatic changes to your lifestyle.
This story is bunk. Doc Brown made a flying, time traveling train after he settled down.
There's a psychological study that says people inherently want to remain creative. If creating children is creative, then do that. If creating technologically interesting things is creative, do that. If you're into art, do that. All in all, we're still being creative, just differently.
So, are you a *single* young, female scientist? ;D
--- 11 meters/second, or 24 miles per hour - the airspeed velocity of an unladen European swallow. Really.
I could go on...but that seems kinda silly to do...
A self-aware penis transportation device. Once his objective is completed, the motivation vanishes.
Laugh while you can, monkey-boy!
Hm. Wonder what JS Bach would say to that? Oh. We were talking scientific creativity. Sorry.
This is a textbook case of "RTFA" dispelling the pretense of the introduction.
First, the article actually states that only 25%, a marked MINORITY of said "geniuses," have made their last significant contribution within 5 years of having been married. This is a far cry from the sweeping claim of the introduction.
Second, it's a reasonably well known fact that historically most major thinkers, whether ultimately married or not, have produced their greatest work before the age of 35.
This article is really nothing more than a confirmation of what we've all known for years:
A) that among scientists and their ilk there exists a certain unfortunate subgroup of obsessive/compulsives who simply cannot manage the demands of work and an actual life simultaneously.
B) that at least 25% of slashdot articles, within 5 hours of being posted, will be utterly debunked.
When a kid enters a puhblik skool, and he/she
is subjected to peer pressure, long boring
classes, and apathy everywhere he/she goes?
Skools have a tendency to kill off the bright,
eager to learn kid within.
The fact is, if you previously had the intellectual and creative output of a genious, and you have now married, it is highly probable that you will not sustain this high level of creative and intellectual output.
This is not to say that your "brain gets stupider", or anything silly of that sort.
It may, but that is not what is being addressed here.
What is being claimed is, it is highly probable that if you have been married, and were a genius before marriage, you will no longer sustain that high level of creative and intellectual output.
What's wrong with that?
If you are bitter about having been married, you shouldn't have been married in the first place. Don't try get us to encourage you in rationalizing away a decision you regret. Live with it, or change it if it is not too late.
yeah, and 10 months ago, I went out with my wife, ate some spicy food, drank some red wine, came home and feeling slighty spritzy, got creative with her. Nine months and 4 days later, a little person looking just like me entered the world and I haven't had a full nights sleep since. :)
Now that's what I call genius...
Old JPL humor:
Every engineer should have both a wife and a mistress.
You tell your wife you're spending the night with your mistress, and your mistress you're spending the night with your wife...
I can assure you do get it back :) The day I finally got my life back was the happiest of my life so far. If only I had listened to Al Bundy 4 years of my life wouldnt have been wasted...
US-UK-Israel: The real Axis of Evil
All that stuff is just a biological imparative to impress chicks and get you laid. Once you have kids, it dosn't matter anymore.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Why are all you housebound ex-geniuses spending your free time MOWING? Please stop. Please. Plant something else--grass wastes water; mowing pollutes. And I'm sick of the yard nerds waking me up every Saturday morning.
And I hardly think it's a radical theory. It's more like a confirmation of something a lot of people already suspect. Just look at some of the jokes at the top of the page.
Besides, this isn't from the University of New Zealand (I don't think that even exists). If you knew what you were talking about, you wouldn't have make that mistake.
And the rest is history
Now watch this drive.
I wonder what the data would show for women? There genius increases? Maybe its Kanazawa's next project.
--"The perfect example of the man of action is the suicide." - William Carlos Williams
Work your way through all the Nobel prize winners and count the number who were not married when they were doing their nobel prize winning works. I work at Stanford Medical School. The two prizewinners I was familiar with, both in the biochemistry department, were Arthur Kornberg, and Paul Berg. Both of whom were married well before their nobel prize winning work. Let's add (and I may get a few wrong) Richard Feynmann, Pierre and Marie Curie, Niehls Bohr, Robert B. Woodward. Go to the official nobel site and read the biographies of the winners. Most were married.
As always it is hard to know what direction casuality travels.
It could be that only the brightest geniuses realize that marriage is a bad idea!
remember if she was attractive...she wouldn't be a scientist...
Just look at the state of Slashdot after that Taco character married.
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
But seriously, I'm not really surprised at these results. All of the prolific scientists I know were "made" early in their career, OR they ignore their families so much they might as well be considered single.
He's mainly trying to get at criminal behavior by linking it to scientific behavior by showing that both fall off because testosterone does.
main(O){10<putchar((O--,102-((O&4)*16| (31&60>>5*(O&3)))))&&main(2+ O);}
LN2 is cool!
You can either be a great person or a great parent, but not both. The two are mutually exclusive.
Lots of great people have tried to be parents. What happened? They ended up being "distant", "unknowable" (i.e., shitty) parents becuase they were spending no time with their kids. After all, they couldn't afford to spend any time with their kids -- all of their precious time was spent doing things that made them into a great person.
And what is the primary requisite for being a great parent? Spending time with your children! It doesn't have to be some exalted kind of "quality time", just spend time with them! Even watching television with your child is infinitely better than spending no time with your child.
So if you have the desire to be a great person, give up on the idea of having children. You will end up doing a disservice to them.
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
I've been married for almost 12 years, and we have three kids. I'm as creative as ever; just don't have time to produce concrete results. :-(
these idiots forgot about Euler. There goes their theory.
guys who get to sleep around are not "as" genius as those virgins. There is quiet a talent and skill to picking "chix" up, this skill requires much practice and refinement - just like any other skill. Due to the amount of time one must spend practicing this skill, this surely takes the time away from practicing scientific genius!
The article (and everyone here) seems to assume that marriage automatically leads to children. There's a large number of adults that marry with absolutely no interest in reproducing, and make sure that no "accidents" can occur to change that. As one friend of mine put it, "I love my partner enough that I don't need a kid to feel fulfilled; we want to focus on sharing a wonderful life together, not be distracted by unwanted third parties."
In fact, in the childfree community, it's generally known that *having children* is what damages the capacity for brilliant work in both genders. The couple's finances and energy are necessarily devoted to their offspring rather than other pursuits, and anything that isn't "child-friendly" in their lives essentially has to be dropped. That doesn't happen when childfree couples meet or marry -- so it's not marriage that derails genius, it's having children.
However, in this child-centric society, few people are willing to acknowledge that one can be happily married without kids or that becoming a parent is detrimental in any way to the rest of one's life. So what you see is articles calling parenthood "marriage" to avoid offending those who have reproduced intentionally or by accident.
My partner and I both have genius IQs, are childfree, successful in academics/career. I had one horrible boyfriend before him; being a stereotypical geek, he lacked a girlfriend despite being in his mid-30s. Rather than slowing one another down, we're constantly learning new things together or from one another. We love being able to spend an evening writing alongside one another, discussing philosophy, studying, or doing other "intellectual" things. If we had kids, *then* all of those pursuits would have to be put on the back burner; it's not whether one has a relationship, but what one does with it that counts.
I accomplished relatively little during the intervals when I've had a gf living at my casa. Terrifyingly little. Those geeky, productive mad dashes and late nights that make the bling-bling and peer respect instead produced trash cans of spent prophylactics... I love both persuits - but the one that leads to marriage also terminates in a Jersey suburb with three brats and a mortgage. F* that, I'll continue breaking hearts until _after_ I'm burnt out, thank you. Then bring on the wife and kids. I aint blowing my prime, when I could handily and rapidly grow my net worth, on some freakin screaming baby and complaining broad.
(can't recall my slashdot nick and my colo imap server is down (fookin rackup sonsabitches,99.99% my ass))
For a counter example, take Bruce Sterling. I'm in the same writing workshop as Bruce, and he's written the occasional piece for my SF critical magazine, so I know both him and his work pretty well. As long as I've known him, he's been married to Nancy Sterling, and for some 15 or so of those years he's been father to Amy (and to Laura for about five). If anything, Bruce's work has generally gotten better over the years, with both Holy Fire and Distraction being among his best novels. Not to mention winning Hugos for "Bicycle Repairman" in 1997 and "Taklamakan" in 1999.
;-))
Actually, I think the opposite may be true for science fiction writers: They need a spouse to support them in their early years! (And if there are any beautiful, single women out there who would like to support my science fiction writing career, please write me at the address below.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
There are two numbers mentioned in the study. First, that two thirds of scientists stop significant contributions after age 30. Second, that one quarter of scientists stop significant contribution after marriage.
How did someone get from that data to the idea that marriage stops genius? Just those two pieces of data almost suggest the opposite -- if you want a 3/4 probability of continuing to contribute after 30, you'd better go get married, otherwise you'll only have a 1/3 chance.
I realize I'm playing fast and loose with the number, but I think my conclusions are much more supportable than those of the researcher or the poster.
- But, regardless of age, the great minds who married virtually kissed goodbye to making any further glorious additions to their CV.
Within five years of making their nuptial vows, nearly a quarter of married scientists had made their last significant contribution to history's hall of fame. (This taken from the mentioned atricle)
Then I guess it's a good thing that every man on the planet of this earth aren't geniuses, otherwise there'd be a serious dent in the "evolution" of mankind.Women have less tendancy to date a guy that is smart because in the United States intelligence is looked down upon, and women don't want to feel lesser.
God spoke to me
This can't be true...
Look, I'm married with children and just the other day I finally figured out how to unify General Relativity and Quantum Physics under one simple elegant theory. It had been nagging at so I worked on it after putting the kids to bed and giving the wife a good rogering. I can prove it. Here, I've got it all written down... somewhere... hmmm. Hey, Honey, where's that blue notebook with my new physics theory? The kids spilled strawberry shake on it and it was all yucky and you threw it out?
S**t, nevermind.
between making children and wanting them.
If you can't forsee the problems and investment of having children then somebody else who did is smarter.
I've taken up gardening (think of it as terraforming, if you must), crocheting (think of it as geometric puzzles and patterns), and cooking (advanced practical chemistry and alchemy), as well as rollerblading (all girls who rollerblade are hot, by definition. The un-hot ones either become fit, confident, and hot, or they stop rollerblading), and wushu (really flexible, fit girls), and am thinking of taking up biking (similar girls).
There are practical benefits too, like being able to give out homegrown roses, as well as recognize your girl's favorite flower by name, being able to show your manual dexterity, feeding yourself or producing a romantic dinner, showing you have stamina, strength, and flexibility.
And of course, I have FUN doing all these things.
Am I a hit with women? I don't have them crawling all over me, no, but I have found them, that way. With rollerblading you have city skates; at least in California you do, with wushu you have classrooms full of like students, with gardening you have garden clubs and groups, and the same with knitting, crochet, and sewing.
GPL Deconstructed
how do you think you geeks and geniuses came from...
That darn knowledge has to go somewhere.
I figure that I don't lose them.
I just lose them to my wife and blood sucking kids.
What if publication were not the proper criterion for defining genius? Is it possible that their creativity is merely directed toward a different goal? These people are thinkers. DUH, think about it. You have to interview them and follow them until they croak off. Like the Boston nurses.
Any preoccupation with ideas of what is right or wrong in conduct shows an arrested intellectual development. (Wilde)
When I got married, I found I had better things to do than work!
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
...Richard Feynman? He still had quite a productive scientific and intellectual life even after he married. And married. And married.
Such irE
As soon as you made a contribution of huge proportions, you would feed off of your own success and go hunting immediately :)
How do female geniuses compare?
John von Neumann is another sterling example--married twice, child out of the first marriage, many great accomplishments (including Game Theory) came later in life.
Integrate Keynote and LaTeX
He's a virgin, and always will be, yet he's a moron. But then most of his stuff here at /. borders on the criminal...
...and saved them an assload of time. Coming, dear...
I have a hypothesis which I have now verified scientifically: ice cream sales are the cause of global warming! Please don't buy any more ice cream as it will cause all the polar ice to melt. Instead, if you live in a desert area, I encourage to you to purchase an umbrella or rain coat, as sales of these items have been shown to cause precipitation! And please, please, please: if you are a brilliant scientist, stay away from women.
I have been married for 23 years, we have 3 children, 21,18 and 16 and now you tell me!
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
albert einstein, married john von neumann, married charles babbage, married stephen hawkings, married marilyn vos savant, married the list goes ON and ON and ON the only lack of genius is related to the flawed study. peace
You know, if you're not willing to put in any effort or do anything that's not immediately pleasant, you're not going to reach any long term goals, social or otherwise.
Refuse to change if you want to. It's your choice. But don't be surprised at the predictable consequences.
We, the citizens of Slashdoschia, bestow upon Reservoir Penguin honorary title of imperceptive weak-minded dumbass.
We, the citizens of Slashdoschtia, bestow upon Binary Burn the honorary title of imperceptive weak-minded impatient dumbass.
We, the citizens of Slashdoschtia, bestow upon luser joshsnow the honorary title of imperceptive weak-minded impatient dumbass.
Just to correct the article, he's not a psychologist, but a sociology professor, with a special interest in sociobiology. He taught me one of my undergraduate sociology courses.
Astute analysis.
I on the other hand would never make your choice. In fact, I would love to turn off my social/sex needs entirely since they are a gross waste of my time and resources. Short of castration, anybody know of a safe and effective sex drive depressant?
Just wondering, moderators, but who does that flame? Sagan's fucking dead.
I shouldnt of read that...
Now every time that my wife starts giving me that 'idiot scientist' look whenever I pick up a fresnel lense or remove a laser from printers/copiers, I will have just a little more 'Grrrrrrrrrrr' in me when I bite back........
SuperGlue
pop psychology rules
If you read the actual study, you'll find that there's a whole lot more interpretation than the story linked lets on. One of the main problems I see with the actual study is that it reads like a summary of a study, and repeatedly uses phrases such as "I believe," "all men," and makes vast normative judgments without any scientific data to back it up (the most glaring of which is the assumption that "great" is a universally defined term). Perhaps the best thing to do is compile a list of other classic, non-reference quotes from the study (taken completely out of context, but then again, it's written without context).
Criminal behavior doesn't require any special talent (Or "Genius" in the equation: Productivity = Genius + Effort). This is why I believe....
He then continues to assert that Crime = Effort, when Genius = 0.
In the ancestral environment, most (if not all) competition between men was physical and its potential costs included death an physical injury.
Apparantly, he was there.
The same psychological mechanism that compels men to commit crimes also compels them to make great scientific contributions and express their genius in other forms. This also explains why men far outnumber women both in crime and in various expressions of genius.
He also contends that the mechanism is the drive to find a mate. Women, therefore, must not be searching for mates. They're waiting to them to come?
There is evidence to show that criminals, whose productivity peaks early, also marry earlier than noncriminals.
He earlier asserted that criminals were less intelligent than non criminals. I would say that the earlier marriage could have more to do with the intelligence issue than the criminal issue.
Men who can win the Nobel prize or the Grammy are obviously more capable than those who cannot. These men will, therefore, make better fathers and providers for their offspring, even though their competitive urge will soon decline after marriage and parenthood, and their productivity will fade.
Ummm... no comment.
In short, it's a classic example of "correlation doesn't necessarily imply causation." As others here have mentioned, an equally logical explanation is that men marry because they want to settle down, not vice versa as Mr. Kanazawa asserts.
I would assert, with just as much justification as he employs, that the reason why men outnumber women is societally influenced, not evolutionary influenced. Women, throughout history and especially in the time period he studied (1700s, 1800s and 1900s), have very much been forced out of the euro-idealistic scientific field. It's a library study only: the 280 people are based off of a paragraph description of each from The Biographical Dictionary of Scientists, and half of his references come from previous publications by himself. The study has no actual research other than reading of literature, and makes far to many assumptions that have multiple possible readings to be of any value, other then to highlight how misogyny and shoddy research still makes its way to serious discussion.
We, the citizens of Slashdoschtia, bestow upon Anonymous Coward the honorary title of imperceptive weak-minded impatient dumbass.
Case Western Reserve University is notorious for nasty looking women.
The wife and kids left the picture. You know, maybe due to divorce or death (e.g. they got in the way). Would he revert back to his old genius?
And my friends and I were thinking of chiping in and ordering Linus a russian bride...
Good thing we found this out before we acted!
For example, both my sisters love animals and swore that they would not kick their cats or dogs out when children arrived. But as soon as they came home from the hospital with child in hand the first thing they did was get all animals out of the house! Both swear that it was an automatic response, a reflex, and that they could not stand to have animals around the child, despite their previous insistence that the animals would stay. The existence of a genetic trigger to protect the newborn child from animals would explain this apparently inexplicable behavior.
It only makes sense that there may be genetic mechanisms to ensure the well-being of offspring and that those mechanisms may fire even in adulthood (parent-child bonding might be another example). It may be that the need to protect the new offspring takes highest priority, certainly higher than inventing the wheel or getting a Nobel prize.
Duhhhh....
I wholeheartedly disagree with what you are saying for the simple reason that being emotionally disturbed does not correlate with creative genius in non artistic fields such as math and science. This should be obvious because depression and other psycological disorders which are treated with medication result in a complete lack of motivation and also a disinterest in life. I seriously doubt that there is such thing as a severely depressed person who is motivated to work towards advancing knowledge, or anything.
However, I will acknowledge the fact that in music, art, and writing, some of the greatest works have been written by emotionally troubled individuals
Just like the hanging out with your friends and sex.
I was going to post something along those lines, but MoggyMania expressed it more eloquently than I could.
She is precisely right--it's not the marriage, it's the kids that drain the energy and vitality out of one's relationship and out of one's life.
Many people automatically assume that marriage implies kids, when in fact this is not the case. There are lots of happy childfree couples out there.
http://us.cnn.com/2003/TECH/science/07/09/thirties
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
Shigeru Miyamoto created many of his mega games while being married AND having kids.
Nintendo simply wouldn't be as big without him and he even has credited his kids for inspiration on some titles.
What most people fail to realize is that it is voluntary behavior. Once you get married, and you start acting like a moron, you can use this ineptness as an excuse for not mowing the lawn, taking out the garbage, etc. It is all really that simple.
Ronald said nothing. He flung himself from the room, flung himself upon his horse, and rode madly off in all directions.
No, for music that sounds like math, listen to Milton Babbitt and other "total serialists." The Second Viennese school (Schoenberg, Berg, Webern) considered their music to be an ultimate expression of human passions. They developed the twelve-tone technique to make their music more not less emotional. Whether it worked I leave up to the individual listener.
Journey onward.
mystery solve, nothing to see here!
-ccm
Too much Law; not enough Order.
From my personal experience (Im married *and* older than most here): choose a girl with your eyes shut.
Its too easy to get fooled by appearance and make the wrong choice because her looks are exciting.
This way youll be happier.
do you mean "with your husband and kids", you insensitive clod ?
Dr Kanazawa theorises after a man settles down, the testosterone level falls, as does his creative output.
No wonder Kobe Bryant keeps trying to grope the babes. He wants to keep it going.
Table-ized A.I.
I think this is true for the majority of people in general, not just men. I do, however, have a case that is completely opposite, my wife and I. When my wife became pregnant, we were both technicians and not very experienced (in many things), I was about 22. We decided not to get married based soley on a child, instead, we chose to live together and raise the child together first and basically, see how things went. It was a rocky road at first.
:) but we are a small group.
We found out that we were not just compatible but complemented personalities. So we got married. During that time, we made some evolutionary leaps ourselves. My wife went back to school and eventually got a dual degree in Anhtroplolgy and Archaology. I got into UNIX systems, big time. I scored a great job, we got a great place, all was well.
With my wife's amazing school work, it became evident that I needed to return to school and continue to hone my skills. All the while raising a bright daughter who is quite well balanced.
I returned to school and my career got better, I learned more, got better at my job and got excellent raises. I was also contributing to the NetBSD project. Of course, I did this late at night, often on weekends.
I was eventually invited to join the Foundation, my career took a staggering boost when I was relocated to corporate.
I have continued to learn, stay in shape and still have time for my family, chores, and hackery. So, it can be done, when two very motivated people get together and have a child, great things can happen.
My wife was recently awarded a scholarship to attend the Unicersity of Cincinnati's Geology Program (with a focus on GIS systems) after working for the Natural History Museum. I am now re-rentering college, again, pursuing an Engineering Degree. Our daughter (going into second grade) was placed at 3rd grade math and 4rth grade reading. In my role with NetBSD, I helped design a new way to check binaries in the kernel, I had been married for 4 years.
I also contributed chapters to two books, co authored one and ran a (mildly) successful ezine about UNIX for several years. All started prior to marriage and lasting throughout.
Is it most likely people lose focus on their other interests when they become married? Sure, but not always.
Now, the other side. Not too long ago a really close friend of mine got divorced. Once the fallout ended, he got into BSD bigtime. He purchased several systems with the intent to begin hackery. He had a fair amount of experience with UNIX, so I helped him out. The day he hooked up with another woman, it ended. He has done next to nothing since, even after dropping the first one and moving to a second (I at least expected him to hack a little in between).
I agree with this statement, in general. But there certainly are exceptions. I can list the names of developers off the top of my head who have made breakthroughs in technology after being married for years (I should know, they are my friends
It can be done, it just takes the right companion.
As the old cliche goes, genius is 5% inspiration and 95% perspiration, so this conclusion is not entirely surprising. Once the genius gets married and has children, suddenly a whole lot of that 95% is devoted elsewhere, and not to the body of work that made that person a "genius" in the first place.
Marriage isn't a disease, neither are kids. They are decisions in one's life. I have been more creative after getting married, but I just lack the time to develop and implement them. These are just life decisions and rearranging of time. Look at Feynman, he was obsessed with women! Still created how much at Cornell and Caltech?
Did she make you say that?
"No matter where you go, there you are." -- Buckaroo Banzai
Patient: "Doctor, my girlfriend is too horny. I need some pills to calm her. She is going to break my back."
Doctor: (Writes perscription on paper and hands it to patient.)
Patient: "Thanks Doc, I'll go fill it now."
Pharmacist: "Sir, I cannot process this. This paper only says one word: 'Marriage'."
Table-ized A.I.
Note that the article is talking about scientific discoveries. How do we usually measure scientific discoveries? It's different for science than for most other types of creativity. We measure the importance of a scientific 'contribution' by how much of the old way of thinking it over-throws and/or replaces. E.G. Einstein's relativity vs. Newtonian physics.
:) But it's not essential to the definition of a great work of art that it destroys/discredits some other work of art.
:) -- not make new breakthroughs.
Artists don't necessarily have to win their way to the top of the heap and 'discredit' other artists in order to be considered great artists. Not that many of them don't try to destroy/discredit others... Artists are often driven by testosterone, too.
So, you're a young scientist and you make a 'big break through' in some technical field like physics or biology. It destroys some old school of thought and puts hundreds or thousands of other scientists into 'catchup' mode to understand what you've done. You get accolades, and job offers at important universities/research labs. You start raking in the cash and enjoying your status. What next? Hmm, time to get married and have kids. You'll have a much better choice of mates than you would have before the 'big breakthrough' thanks to your new status.
Now you're successful and all that. You could try to investigate your own theory and see if there's anything new to learn. But now you are the 'established school of thought'... why discredit your own work? It's gotten you all these perks! And besides, you've got all these colleagues now who like your theory. If you try to change it you could end up in conflict with many of them, and endanger your status! See the disincentive to break the mold and make any more 'great discoveries' in science once you've arrived? You'll have strong incentives to maintain your theory and build on it, even if it's only 'wrong in a different way than the old one'
It's not that getting married and having kids ruins genius. It's that geniuses who want to relax and enjoy life get married and have kids.
280 is a statistically significant sample?
Linus Torvalds
I was reading this article, and looked over at my wife, and told her i found out why I am not feeling creative anymore. Bad idea! Anyway, I was sitting here thinking this over for a while, and it came to me, this study may be true for a small number people but not the majority, as far as I can remember Linus is married with 3 kids . This encourages me to not stress out about being creative again, hopefully one day it will come back to me, how i miss it.
I think my problem is, I have to many intrests and can't settle on just one.Plus being a daddy to a little girl takes up a lot of time!
I on the other hand would never make your choice. In fact, I would love to turn off my social/sex needs entirely since they are a gross waste of my time and resources.
Okay look, here's the thing. There is a class of human activity which is both unpleasant and mandatory (i.e. work). And then there's everything else. You can do anything you want with the "everything else" time. There's no point wasting the "everything else" time by doing something you don't enjoy.
If you don't enjoy socializing, then don't do it. Voila, problem solved. If you DO enjoy socializing, then your time is, by definition, well-spent. It's not as if aliens are beaming these "Gosh I like sex" thoughts into your head, you know. Your brain is telling you what you like to do. Get over it.
If you're in a relationship where your time is being managed for you in such a fashion that you feel your soul is being stifled and your time is being wasted, then it's time to renegotiate the terms. Everyone needs free time (some more than others). If your partner can't understand this, if they're trying to turn you into someone you're not, then maybe they're just not the right person for you, hmm?
I say this as a veteran of many such negotiations. Believe me, fellow geeks, it IS possible to carve out your own little niche in a relationship with a non-geek. It requires a certain amount of flexibility, respect, creative thinking, and diplomacy on both sides, and may entail solutions which sound silly at first ("Never ever speak to me when I am at the computer and I have placed this bright pink Post-It on the side of my monitor"). But the important thing is that it can - I promise - work.
Really. C'mon. Save mod points for something with a bit more bite.....
eat shiat and bark at the moon
I agree that if you're going to create a human being, then it's your responsibility to make sure they're well cared for. That doesn't have to mean putting your whole life on the shelf, so you can plow all your spare time into making your toddler laugh at you and have daddy as a playmate.
If you're out there earning enough money to afford a nanny, what's the harm in that? You're helping another person stay gainfully employed, and you're still caring for your child. People who don't care do stupid things like leave their kid home alone while they run off to work.
I'm married with a 14 month old daughter myself, and I can tell you, she's a MAJOR time-sink. Sometimes it's fine, and I enjoy watching her grow up and learn how to do things. Other times though, I wonder about the toll it takes on me and my own aspirations.
Honestly, I have no choice right now - because I barely have enough spare money for the occasional babysitter, much less a live-in nanny. For people who do, I think it's a great example of your money being very liberating.
That must be the reason for the lackluster book A New Kind of Science by Stephen Wolfram.
{ - Generic Guy - }
So this movie script writer has been on a long dry spell of not being able to come up with anything marketable. He has his friend who does pretty good, and tells him of his lament. The friend asks "You do dream, don't you? I get many good ideas when I am dreaming." What a great idea! He thanks his friend heartily.
Sure enough, he is dreaming, and realizes what a great story it is! He wakes up, astounded by how terific this story will be. Wonderful. A sure blockbuster - gobs of money, forever! He goes back to sleep, content in knowing all is well.
In the morning, he cannot remember the dream. It is gone. Horrible.
Well, there is always the next time.
And the same thing happens again. He wakes up from the dream in wonder of how great the story will be; but, in the morning - nothing. It vanished like a wisp of smoke.
He tells his friend, who offers another piece of advice: "Leave a notepad and paper on your nightstand. When you wake up, quickly jot down the story." Again, great advice from this friend.
He wakes up during the dream - sure enough, its a winner. He immediately writes it down, and settles back into his bed, as happy as can be, knowing that his fortunes are to be made great once again.
In the morning, he wakes up, and eagerly reads his notepad. It says:
Boy meets girl.
Boy loses girl.
Boy gets girl back again.
;-) Well, I hope it made you laugh.
"The most sensible request of government we make is not, "Do something!" But "Quit it!"
...at least in soviet russia it would
I know that this will be a disappointment to many people , but you don't need to be a genius to make a significant breakthrough in most sciences -though it helps. Most of the people that we regard as scientific geniuses were involved in foundational work in their respective fields. If you analyze the contributions of prominent scientists in mature fields of research you'll notice that they are commonly over thirty. When a field is very young though any useful discovery , hypothesis, or formalism is unprecedented and has the potential of establishing the originator as a 'father' of that field. This doesn't detract from the significance of their contributions , but doesn't mean that they are preternaturally intelligent either. Science is a process designed to reveal useful , testable , and replicable information. If this process required that the applicant be a genius then it would contradict its own premises.
* if you choose to refute this , I challenge you to use examples beyond Physics.
how long have you been married?
btw i've had 2 long term relationships (6 years total) with virgins both of which turned sour when they eventually realized there were other cocks in the big wide world so good luck on that point as well
The data remarkably concur with the brutal observation made by Albert Einstein, who wrote in 1942: "A person who has not made his great contribution to science before the age of 30 will never do so."
Whew. I can stop worrying about doing THAT one now. On to writing the great Armenian Novel, or something...
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
http://edition.cnn.com/2003/TRAVEL/DESTINATIONS/07 /11/wright.gas.station.ap/
BUFFALO, New York (AP) -- Frank Lloyd Wright knew the gas station would have a place of prominence in the American landscape.
The progressive architect even designed a couple, including one in 1927 meant for a Buffalo street corner. But money problems and a divorce got in the way, and Wright never saw his filling station take shape.
I rest my case.
It's unsurprising that a New Zealand researcher would come to this conclusion, because when they marry, they have to start thinking like sheep in order to communicate with their wives.
(Sorry! I like New Zealand. Really!)
What is the inverse of the Matrix?
Quake3 sucked hard, His rockets suck, and Doom3 engine looks like poo compared to HL2 engine.
Perhaps it is how we define genius?
Is genius coming up with something someone else has not thought of? or it coming up with a better way to do something? Discover vs. invention. Enstein vs. Edison.
If it is coming up with something new - a breaktrough - then the young are at an advantage. They have not learned you can't do that.
For both sexes, antidepressants of the SSRI (selective seratonin reuptake inhibitor) variety - eg. Prozac. For women, straight progestin (eg. the contraceptive Depo-Provera). Apparently progestin is also used to chemically castrate men.
There were a lot of MSFT marriages in 2000, about a year after the stock peaked. Groups with little creative opportunity had the most married employees, while groups with substantial creative opportunity (XBox) had the least.
The effects of marriage differ from person to person. Some run home at 5.00 to spend time with the spouse and kids. Others stay in the office burning the midnight oil to stay away from the kids. In both cases the employee is defining their life around marriage rather than work. In one case it is a positive definition while the other is negative.
It would be interesting to compare creative output of gay/lesbian couples to straight couples. Gay men are sterotyped as being more creative -- perhaps this has something to do with finding a positive life partner that doesn't end up producing a major time sink (kids).
Having kids is as about creative as you can get. You create these complex beings, without even using the big head, just using the small one. Amazing. Effortless.
It seems that you are saying that a nice sports car will increase creative productivity? Sweet!
If Dr. Kanazawa got married more than five years ago, I think you can safely discount the study... It scientifically proves itself to not be his best work.
Now I can :
- Spend 2 hours trying to improve my business
- Watch some television and chill out after yet another 60+ hour week
I was tempted for (1) but reading the article gives me plenty of excuses; since nothing much genius like is likely to come out of me today anyway. So no great American Novel/website/piece of software this weekend either.Oh well, there is always next week....
I'd give up everything I know to meet the wife and kids of my dreams.
Good night.
In the episode "The Abstinence" George Costanza becomes a genius when he stops having sex.
-- thinkyhead software and media
Before a wal-mart is built a load of hillbillies is flown in to seed the area. Also didn't you know that if it wasn't for womens lack of taste the human race would die out?
Diplomacy is the art of saying "Nice doggie" until you can find a rock. Will Rogers
In other news, a resent research in "humannity labs" pointed out that human being try to be happy, not geniuses.
Yeah, and also caring a lot about the poor people in africa, the famine in your own country, or caring about abything at all, makes you obsolete....you will not longer be a genius...geniuses do not lose time, and do not have happy lives.
Welcome to the world, where Teresa de Calcuta or Ghandi are just normal guys, and Einstein and the likes are the examples to follow. Welcome to how history is written. Welcome to one of the saddests things of the latest centuries. Welcome where a world where what matters is beign whatever except feeling well and being happy. Welcome all, once again!
unfinished: (adj.)
Is exactly why most of you are so unhappy.
My sweetie is already asleep, but one of my favorite movies "Leaving Las Vegas" is playing on CBC and I'm surfing during the ads.
Be the person your sweetie wants to be with, and you can be with the sweetie you want to be with.
not to mention procreate, which makes them seem pretty smart compared to those other "geniuses" that slave their lives away making the world a better place for other people's kids.
I don't think that you being in a genius in ANY field makes you a better human being. Or a more charming person. Also happens with money. YES, you may 1000 woman arround telling you are a GREAT person. But do they love you, or your work? And what does a genius value more, and who is the start?
Love, after all, is mistical. It's just not a metter of convenience, it's magical, or it is not, no matter how convenient it looks for any one part.
I would argue that most geniuses don give a damn about true love. Thi study does not imply causation, and that's how I regard the study.
In the other hand, to have a happy and logingly life you have to really CARE about the other. It must begeniune, you love a PERSON, not certain features. I you love it as is, and that needs a lot of time.
Finally, I would argue that there are MANY cases where geniuses arised BECAUSE of love. And it's not only HOLLYWOOD that show these examples.
unfinished: (adj.)
I mean DAMN.
man.
wow.
The OP is at 5, and this is at 0?
Huh?
Your are right,
testosterone *IS* bullstuff.
I always wondered why my friends who married became dull and unentertaining almost overnight.
From the other side of the fence -- the lives of my single friends who hadn't married eventually seem shallow and empty.
It's all a matter of perspective.
I do like the implied assumption in most of these comments that clearly all slashdot posters are geniuses, and the various offers of advice for how you can avoid losing your genius should this nightmare scenario transpire. Some of them even read like "This is how I plan to avoid losing my towering genius."
:-)
Methinks the word genius is over-used. Genius is not a synonym for geek
Notice that all studies conducted by scientists involving sex and relationships seem to be slanted towards justifying one of two things:
a) why it's a good idea to have sex with a scientist, or
b) why it's okay if scientists can't get dates, anyway.
So it's okay if a young scientist is sitting alone in his room on a Saturday night, because, hey, he's a genius, and geniuses don't need that sort of thing. *sniff*
(If you think I'm off-base, just remember: the studies always seem to be male-centric.)
"Give a man fire, and he'll be warm for a day; set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life
Nice one. Ignoramuses would be the case.
Huh?
Honey! Can you get one of the kids to bring me another beer? Thanks!
Now, what's this about genius?
Just finished forwarding this to all my ex-girlfriends... Men everywhere, rejoice! When asked why you are afraid to commit, it's not because you are afraid, but because you are truly a selfless soul and it is for the good of humanity that you stay single! I have been trying to tell this to girlfriends for a long time and now I have documented proof!
What about those "geniuses" who never did anything with their talents until settling down into marriage?
True story: I've been married now for almost 20 years, during which time I've been highly productive and, yes, creative both in technology development and music. I have a tested IQ of 156. Before I got married, I drank to excess, did a lot of drugs, and ended up in jail. It wasn't until I got married that I was able to channel my abilities and do something with them.
Marriage may temper creativity in some cases, but unleash it in others.
I think that comparison of people with cerebral palsy with average slashbots is very unfair. Those I knew were way better than the average comment quality here indicates. Although Ctrl-Alt-Del (or Shift-Command-Apple-4 or whatever it was back in the 1980s) on lab machines was not ideal.
Maybe you're overlooking that when you get castrated you forget how to program/etc. and have to become a manager.
Creativity in the genius category comes from obsession with a topic, mulling it around in your brain without cease (unavoidably around the clock) until you see it so clearly that intuition leaps in periodically and takes you a quantum step ahead. It's easy to see how that stops dead when you're married and your think-time becomes "managed" and your priorities reassessed. It's one of the many compromises that you have to make to live a shared life with another person, rather than just sharing a living space, normally. It's worth pointing out though that this needn't actually be a limiting factor for everyone: a few people get married but don't self-introspect enough to notice a need for compromise at all. I don't know how common that is though.
As regards crime, that correlation is probably for a different reason, but equally easy to see. Most criminals are likely to be loners, at least outside Italy (:-), and for a very good reason: anyone else that knows what you're doing is likely to be a liability to you. I really don't see it working in a family environment.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Those manipulative females cannot be trusted with that kind of power. /are/ married,from influencing geniuses to make weapons for them - likely they are manipulated behind the scenes by women...
Now if we can just keep those idiots on capitol hill, who
Natural Selection comes into play here:
Brilliant thinkers who spend all their time in the lab working - Fail to reproduce!
'Genius Genes' then become rare recessive genes, otherwise the individual organisms fail to reproduce and the brilliant mind genes are lost...
To a very real extent - Horny Stupid People can out - breed the so-called brilliant 'civilized' people.
Evolution may favor men who put their energy into raising offspring - vs. energy into great scientific discoveries. Time and Energy are the limiting factors.
And Teen Mothers are Not bad - they are early breeders and very well may pass on their genes, where PhD's are still childless into their late 40's.
From a Biological Standpoint - Teen Mothers are much smarter than PhD graduates!
Society should stop condemning young people who have a reproductive strategy that works. After all, teen women do not need to worry about artificial fertilization costs or downs syndrome, they way a career woman in her early 40's must face higher risk pregnancies... So - Go Teens Go!
In Society - the basic rules of Biology apply:
You got to Breed to Succeed...
I'm not sure this study is statistically significant...not only is it a small number of sample units, but it's also a self-selecting sample (great scientists who choose to marry and have children may also choose to do less science). The better study would be to find scientists and engineers who married, but still desire to make contributions to their field.
Don't become a regular here, you will become retarded. -- Yoda the Retard
Brings new meaning to 'Open Source'...
I think it's very sad that you consider you child a time-sink and caring for her a waste of your life. I feel even sadder for your child when she finds out that's how you feel about her.
You can tell a great deal about the character of a man by observing those who hate him.
(a) perhaps once one gets married they just realize that there are more important things in life than showing off to your peers
(b) perhaps once one realizes that there are more important things that showing off for one's peers, one decides to get married
(b) either way, more problems would be solved in the world by good parenting than will ever be solved by "creative output", so maybe there's hope after all.
Liberty uber alles.
you might think there are no genius women.
I met my wife at a trade show - the (late, lamented) Portland Creative Conference. She had a badge from our local PBS station, which my company at the time was doing some work for, so I walked over, introduced myself, and *BAM* six years later we've got a couple of kids and a minivan.
Meeting at an event of mutual interest gives you something to talk about, and ensures a certain level of commonality.
Of course, it's useful to have the right interests! A film industry trade show is a lot more fertile ground for meeting unattached women than, say, an Open Source conference. I'm sure it's possible, but the odds and competition would be much more against you.
The big problem with parties and bars is that they're typically loud, and there's nothing obvious to talk about, other than them being loud.
My video compression blog
This is why my marriage didn't work. My creative genius acted as a repellant and the other person walked out. Whew! That was a close one. Now I can carry on making great contributions, and all in the name of science. Bring on the lucky test subjects!
*~*~Money can't buy happiness because when you have money, happiness is a standard feature.
Hao Wu got moteradted as funny, but I think he is serious!
The 20th century was a very urbanizing century -- and one should expect the patterns of more urbane cultures, including omnisexuality and polygyny (de facto in the post-sexual revolution West) to come to dominate the patterns -- including the one observed by the author of that article.
Seastead this.
The article was about "280 great scientists" in history. Unless you're some elite physicist who hangs out with Stephen Hawking, you've probably never even met one.
Don't drop the soap, Tommy!
Besides guys, c'mon now, this is
Anyone here who figures out how to get laid can probably think with more heads than they even have (Or design a mind control device to do so).
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
Gee, thanks!
And I love y'all too..
There is a difference between 'time-sink' and not loving your kids....
All 4 of my kids are 'time-sinks' - Time that I gladly sink!
First off, in response to the statement that society does a lousy job of rearing girls, I'll agree. However, bear in mind that girl children are raised in a manner that has been dictated by men, for their fitness as future mates. So it is by no means an unfair statement to say that society does an equally crappy job in the rearing of boy children. To wit: girls get dolls. Boys get chemistry sets. Thankfully, my family was delightfully strange, so my sisters and I had Legos, chemistry sets, model rockets, and all of the cool toys that girls aren't supposed to be interested in. People still kept giving me Barbie dolls, but I'm proud to say that every last one eventually met a horrible mangled and mutilated fate. Girls are taught that men want a woman who's a cross between Donna Reed and Christina Aguilara; brainiacs need not apply. Boys are taught that smart girls are weird and undatable; most never learn otherwise until it's too late. While the situation has improved over the last 30 years or so, it's a long way from ideal.
Secondly, if you are griping that girls aren't turned on by intellect, I have but one thing to say to you: bollocks! I learned a long time ago that the best indicator of fitness for a long-term-relationship is the quality of what lies between a man's ears.
Waistlines expand, hairlines recede. Bank balances come and go, and gravity conquers everything, eventually - on both sides of the gender fence. The best and longest-lasting relationships I have are the ones in which I can converse with the other person about almost anything, for hours on end.
In short, if you want to engage my emotions (not to mention my hormones), you'd better engage my mind first.
Doing my level best to piss off the religious right wing...
Your argument is invalid for reasons you yourself have pointed out. You were raised in a very unorthodox way for a girl, so the fact that you're interested in guys with intellect is statistically insignificant. All the other girls aren't.
I disagree about your assertion that girls are raised according to standards dictated by men. These standards are agreed upon by both men and women. The problem, I imagine, is that it's a vicious cycle, much like alcoholics raised children who become alcoholics, abusers' children become abusers, etc. Airhead girls go for asshole guys, have kids and those kids become the same way. People like you are rare, so unless you have a ton of kids, you're not going to pass on your values enough to counter all those other morons.
Personally, I wish there was a larger selection of single girls who grew up with chemistry sets. I'm sure they'd be a lot more interesting to talk to than the ones who grew up with dolls.
Probably the most intelligent comment I have read today... wait, make that the last coupla' weeks.
My sisters and I were not raised in an completely unorthodox manner; we also had dolls, stuffed animals, and suchlike. I won't speak for my sisters, but I always found such things boring after a while, because there's only so much that you can do with them. (I feel I should point out that one sister is now in med school, and the other had a BS, and is looking forward to grad school.) Our family puts a lot of stock in varied interests, and none of us got the message "you have to act X way, or boys won't like you" from our parents. We grew up to be fairly independent and strong-willed; but as a consequence, none of us had an active social calendar.
The problem, as I see it, is that boys and young men are taught to ignore, if not outright torment, girls and young women who show any sign of intellectual achievement. Cheerleaders will ooh and aah over you and make you feel like a stud; a girl who reads all of the time proably has other things on her mind than playing trophy. Girls learn early on to downplay their intelligence; if you want a social life, act like an airhead, and keep your interests in robotics and biology to yourself. ;-)
Most women out there aren't airheads, but it's a game that they're accustomed to playing. (The ones who time and again go for abusive jackasses have specific issues that I won't go into here, as it's a different can of worms.) My point is, the majority of women act in accordance with the role they've been told is necessary to attract male attention. Don't be too smart. Obsess about being thin and "pretty". Guys won't like you if you are intelligent, outspoken, and have a realistic figure. Women are to blame for buying into this, sure; but the guys who perpetuate this myth by their behavior are just as much at fault. There's a certain amount of reciprocity involved: I've never gotten involved with anyone who didn't value me as a thinking being. My theory is this (and it isn't directed at you; it's a general statement): if you want to find an intelligent woman, let the women around you know that you value their smarts along with everything else, and see if their IQs don't suddenly improve.
Doing my level best to piss off the religious right wing...
Since I got married, I've gotten smarter, but that may have something to do with the fact that my wife is is probably smarter than I am and has a law degree. :)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Exactly! At least somebody understood my message.... Ever wonder why many people say they don't want to ever have kids? I doubt it's often because they truly dislike kids. (Don't you think you'd have to be pretty cold-hearted to not so much as smile when a child says "Hello!" to you in a grocery store?)
I think the more common reason is they watch what children do to people's free time. They soak 90% of it up!
I had a good female friend in college who worked as a nanny - and I have lots of respect for her. (The family she worked for was involved in politics, incidently.) I don't think she ever felt like she was giving love that the parents didn't want to give. It was simply a sensible arrangement for all the parties involved. Politicians don't generally get lots of free time at home, and I doubt many people with a successful political career would throw it all away just because they had a kid.
I think, given the circumstances, the parents did the right thing. Better to pay for a carefully selected nanny to make sure the kids are well cared for than to leave them feeling like their parents just left them to fend for themselves.
Just came back from vacationing with family in Tainan and Taipei. Can I have some of what you're smoking?
you 0wned the OP