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."
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.
Two words sum it all up....
"yes dear...."
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.
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.
It's just that most (ordinary) women aren't really much for issues bigger than the Cable Bill and What Emmy Said To Susan About Dana's Relationship With Kevin and so on.
I disinclude geek women here - you ladies are a breed apart and I salute you.
Just try thinking about a Grand Unified Theory when someone is whining at you about how you forgot to clean out the f***ing cat box again.
To quote Victor Hugo the morning after sleeping with his mistress:
"France lost a great novel last night."
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.
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!
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?
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
"A man is not complete until he's married...
Then, he's finished."
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'.)
What happens when they get divorced?
she gets the house.
you get to be a genius again!
If you mod me down the terrorists will have won
"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.
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.
I think he has it all backwards. If you get married you can nolonger be considered a genious.
Darn. I recently got married, and will probably soon have children :P
Of course, maybe it is just that the creative genius changes to some extent.... Obviously children require a creative attitude towards, so maybe they become the focus of the creative genius instead of things like computers, physics, etc... What do you all think?
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Raising children doesn't require genuis, it requires endurance.
Laugh while you can, monkey-boy!
Of course his wife was like "All I want for my birthday is a Proof" (probably not adding, "so I can start nagging you about taking out the garbage!")
Dude, I think I can see my house from here.