Genius Requires Just the Right Mix

An anonymous reader writes "LiveScience has an interesting piece taking a look at how genius is rarely developed in a vacuum. From the article: 'The reality is that behind many scientific geniuses, there is at least one other genius, and often a number of them.' It takes much more than a genius pal or predecessor, however, to do great science, according to Simmons. Scientific advances emerge from social, economic and political conditions."

Comments

Surrounding yourself with talent

[lukewarmfusion]

Really brilliant people (not just scientifically, but in any discipline or industry) surround themselves with other brilliant people. They enjoy being challenged by peers. They are secure in their abilities and know that other brilliant people will not threaten their place but help to elevate it.

I am finding, early in my business career, that working with other talented people makes me work harder and aspire to greater things. The constant challenges put a perspective on the obstacles I used to face - ones I now overcome easily.

I'm beginning to believe that "genius" is just a frame of mind.

Re:Surrounding yourself with talent

[catmistake]

Really brilliant people (not just scientifically, but in any discipline or industry) surround themselves with other brilliant people.

Actually... this is sort of a subset of another truth: you become the people with which you associate.

If you hang out with a bunch of drug abusing low-lifes, guess what? That's either what you are or what you are becoming. If you hang out with a bunch of very smart, technically oriented, socially inadept individuals, chances are you are a nerd.

Ironically, its not that you gravitate towards those of similar interest and mental capacities, necessarily, but more that circumstance has thrown you together with those that often times you must socially break free from (in order to find a more pregressive group) to advance yourself.

Re:Surrounding yourself with talent

[alchemist68]

I agree completely with this statement, because I have seen and experienced it first-hand as a contractor at Pfizer Global Research & Development. However, surrounding one's self with excellence at work is only part of the equation, surrounding one's self with a nurturing and supportive family environment (good nutrition and well-balanced life experiences) at an early age further assists your development. Then there are the other relevant social, cultural, and other environmental factors that would go along with this. Given the proper development, many situations can present themselves as opportunities for advancement at any level, i.e. the problem seen before you no longer looks like a nail and your tools are not limited to varying sizes and shapes of hammers. With the right mix of intellectual, social, cultural, professional, and personal development, ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE. I really believe this, but so few people in our American society truely experience what exactly I am referring to, and these people are not limited to science, they are in medicine, law, business, engineering, religion, sports & other physical activities, manufacturing, politics (the incumbent president and associated currently corrupted members of that political party EXCLUDED).

Even if this does not result in genuis, it certainly is a factor in the obvious distinction between the "haves" and "have nots."

Re:Surrounding yourself with talent

[RPMentley]

No, I enjoy squashing them. As if a genius can have a "peer". True genius has no equal, and quite simply cannot have peers. In other words, true geniuses don't need to be around other people to convince themselves that they are "smart": they KNOW that they are smart. Maybe for you, but I suspect this indicates that these people are, in fact, idiots. I am definitely surrounded by a whole lot of idiots, however, my small group of friends is definitely far above average intelligence.

Re:Surrounding yourself with talent

[balster neb]

I agree, and what the article says is actually pretty obvious if you examine it.

If you look back a bit in history, there tend to be brief periods when there this an explosion of new ideas and concepts, and these periods are always associated with particular geniuses. For physics, you could argue that we've been in one long "genius period" since Newton or perhaps Galileo. For other sciences, there have been different periods.

This is not unique to sciences, but happens with all fields. Why, for instance did so many musical geniuses emerge in Europe during the second half of the 19th century? Was it the water supply? No, it was because at that point there were a whole bunch of new ideas in music emerging. But by some time in the early 20th century, most of these musical ideas had been explored by composers, which is why there were much fewer classical music geniuses in the later 20th century. Same goes with the other arts.

Essential for genius to emerge is correct circumstances. A potential genius has to be born at a time when there is great scope in a particular field. Geniuses of the past usually had no shortage of living role models while growing up. So while biology plays a factor, it is important to be born at the right place at the right time, and have the right exposure. That's also why we don't see geniuses emerge from far away, cut-off parts of the world. No genius can develop in an intellectual vacuum.

Re:Surrounding yourself with talent

[TheGSRGuy]

I sincerely hope you're kidding about squashing the less intelligent people. Nothing makes me feel worse than when someone I work with calls me an idiot in front of everyone else. When intellectuals start making everyone inferior, personal relations just go down the toilet. Surprised? No, because many so-called "geniuses" lack basic communications and interpersonal skills.

Re:Surrounding yourself with talent

[woobieman29]

I think that you can take this a bit farther as well, and state that current social and political values also will help to differentiate time periods in their ability to produce genius.

The dark ages are a prime example. Societies turned their backs on logic in favor of mysticism and people were afraid to pursue knowledge lest they be labeled as heretics. It took a lot of bravery in those times to stand up for any ideas that ran contrary to the religious beliefs of the day.

Unfortunately I fear that in the U.S. we are experiencing a rebirth of this social condition, albeit on a much smaller scale (for now, at least). The extreme religious right has waaayy more power than they should (IMHO) and it seems that more and more often faith trumps science and logic.

For true scientific innovation to flourish again in the U.S. we will need to gravitate back towards a society that is progress oriented.

Oh yeah, and it wouldn't hurt to have an administration that lets scientific findings stand on their own merit, without political edits.

Re:Surrounding yourself with talent

[CyricZ]

Are you sure about that? Often times, especially in the programming world, those who think and openly suggest that they are better than their peers turn out to actually be far worse.

Re:Surrounding yourself with talent

[linzeal]

It is not about bragging, it is not being afraid of being better than people around you, who at all levels of acadamia still have a little smugness towards brilliant people. I have seen it at r&d in OSU, caltech and ASU. If you are ahead of the curve in any field you will have people that will justify being an ass to you because they feel threatened or sidelined. Some people work their whole life for one Nature or Science article, some have dozens by the age of 40.

Re:Surrounding yourself with talent

[ppanon]

The other thing that needs to change, or at least be modified is the "Publish or perish" narrow focus for advancement in academia. It's hurting the public perception of science by encouraging the falsification of results in two ways: 1) by directly increasing the pressure to publish results (whether valid or invalid) for prestige and continued advancement in the community, and 2) by decreasing the likelihood that results will be independently verified (since such activities don't count as publishable "original research") thus increasing the perception that such academic misconduct can be carried out without negative consequences. As more great frauds come to light, like the scandal over the Korean cloning team, the public's perception of all science is thus diminished and the "moral" fanatics gain ground. Certainly there have been great scientific frauds for a while, Piltdown Man comes to mind, but I get the impression that it happens more often now.

With more students outsourcing their homework and term papers through the internet, it's only bound to get worse, unless the rules are changed to decrease the incentives for scientific fraud while increasing the penalties. The credibility of the scientific community is at stake, and with it substantial sources of funding. The community needs to address this problem now rather than too late.

Re:Surrounding yourself with talent

[Walt Dismal]

A 'genius' may or may not have a truly high 'IQ' as measured by a standard IQ test, and yet be extraordinarily intelligent and considerably above the norm cognitively. Why? Because standard intelligence tests seek to identify level of ability to reason and to detect patterns, but they do not (yet) measure the entire set of vectors, because some forms of intelligence are related to handling very complex and deep patterns. For example, Richard Feynman is quoted as saying his IQ was measured at 125. That may be so, but it is pretty clear he was far smarter than the average person with a 125 IQ. So how did this failed measurement come about? Feynman had, and others have, certain abilities to spot and to synthesize connections in data that are deep and non-obvious. These data situations are non-trivial and complex; currently psychologists do not understand them and cannot create ways to test them. That is, if you do not understand even the existence of this kind of ability, you cannot directly test for it. Perhaps a psychologist can guess it is there by correlating its existence with the other traits commonly present when it is there, but oftentimes it is like deducing that a quark exists: you can never observe it directly, you can only infer it is present.

I think that genius can sense other genius, though. That is, if you have extraordinary abilities, because you internally understand that you can see things others can't, you often can spot that happening in other above-the-norm people. You can see that they are spotting patterns or making connections that are complex and difficult.

I believe that there are mutational abilities in some people that involve involve genuine physiological differences in the ability of their brains to deal with complex patterns. Such people can then have far-seeing intellectual vision. They can make the non-obvious connections.

By the way, this insight led me to develop Cerebro, in the hope of nurturing all mutantkind. Now if only this darned wheelchair were more comfortable, and I could stop Magneto, I'd be a very happy man.

Re:Surrounding yourself with talent

[bw_bur]

God's gift of reason made progress inevitable

Reason's crowning achievement will be to destroy religion; when reason, not faith, determines how we view the world, there will be no need for God.

Re:Surrounding yourself with talent

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

none of my peers are at my 'level'(I'm not saying I'm a genius) so I can't learn anything from them nor can I teach them a whole lot

How much do you know about being a janitor? About fixing roads? About marketing? About lawyering? About herding cats? About skiing? About writing VBA code? About what it's like to have everyone (including yourself) think you're stupid? About playing a musical instrument? About bankruptcy court? About speaking a dozen languages? About doing any of the countless things that you don't do?

Most intelligent people eventually realize that the system of 'levels' that you speak of does not exist. People know different things about different fields, and you are doing everyone (including yourself) a disservice if you have an attitude that you can't learn *anything* from your peers. If you don't *want* to learn anything from your peers, then at least have the sense to realize that you are not generally "on a higher level" or "better" than them.

Re:Poor Filler

[caffeinemessiah]

Shame on you, throwing Kuhn references around like that! Kuhn's paradigm shifts, perhaps one of the worst uses of technical terms that penetrated '80s business ideology, are more in line with the biological idea of punctuated equilibria applied to intellectualism. Things cruise along for a little while, ho-hum, until the intellectual climate changes and then science truly progresses. There are similar analogies in a myriad other fields.

However, I think all the article was talking about was really clever people who are secure and confident about their knowledge. People tend to equate "genius" with "will discover something to change the world any day now", but geniuses might simply offer a fresh view or point out something that no one has noticed before on a day to day basis. In other words, think smaller than Kuhn!

And I completely agree with you, science definitely doesn't have a monopoly on geniuses. But from a very early age, no matter where we grow up, we tend to be exposed to the stereotype of the mad scientist and the odd poster of Einstein. How many 8th graders know what relativity is in really simple terms, rather than Einstein "was a really smart scientist".

Re: Poor Filler

[Black Parrot]

> As for the conditions necessary for "genius" things to happen in science, that's called a "paradigm shift". Read Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolution".

Kuhn's paradigm [yuk,yuk], even if correct, hasn't got anything to do with 'genius'.

Re: Hmm..

[Black Parrot]

> So if it takes more than one genius to produce another genius, does that mean we could be looking at a genius shortage in the future?

It takes more than one stray cat to make a stray kitten, and yet we don't seem to have any shortage.

Shoulders of Giants

[everphilski]

No, I enjoy squashing them. As if a genius can have a "peer". True genius has no equal, and quite simply cannot have peers. In other words, true geniuses don't need to be around other people to convince themselves that they are "smart": they KNOW that they are smart.

Not sure what qualifies you as a genious. Anyways your approach of "squashing" will not get you far in the real world. Most geniouses will acknowlege they were not the first, nor the last. Perhaps you are familiar with the phrase "standing on the shoulders of giants"?

Re:A lot of it seems to be economic

[BJZQ8]

The 1800's boom in geniuses was the result of greater opportunity for self-advancement, not greater opportunity for sloth and Oprah-watching.

Re:Right

[Bongo Bill]

There's no way to know. Every /. user knows that he's the only intelligent person there.

Re:well yeah

[Bongo Bill]

I'm inclined to believe that a genius is a person who can do well on an arbitrary test of "mental parlor tricks" and excel in real-life applications of intelligence.

Not everybody who does well on an IQ test is a genius, but everybody who does not do well on an IQ test is not a genius.

Re:well yeah

[z4r4thu5tr4]

no correlation, hum? does that mean it has a p-value of +.05? does good grammar--"IQ and SAT has..." "correlate" with intelligence? is the data set parametric? what measurements are we using? note the repeated usage of "no correlation" without any data whatsoever. which school of thought? where is this school of thought that thinks IQ and SAT are the end all and be all of genius? where is this strawperson? yes, we might be moving beyond a single "q" factor for intelligence, but don't you think we should look at the evidence first, rather than asserting the recieved wisdom, which in this of all cases should be questioned?

Similar to Howard Becker's work

[pbooktebo]

The sociologist Howard Becker has written extensively, most clearly in his book "Art Worlds," that to understand creation the locus should be the entire world of the artist, not the artist. We're making a mistake if we try to understand Beethoven's 9th without reference to the culture of Vienna, the rising role of the publishing house, the people who let him live the unfettered (if tortured) life of a creative artist, all play a role alongside the musicians, the promoters, his students, and composers who preceeded him and worked alongside him. That Viennese world, with Beethoven in it, Becker would argue, is the actual producer of the work.

The same holds true for science and other creative endeavors. It's not an airtight thesis, by any means, but it is provocative and gets people thinking along different lines than the unitary individual acting alone as we are so prone to do in the West...

Re:well yeah

[bosabilene]

Genius is a BS concept. IQ is crap. Results are what count. Do you make things better or worse? Are you an asset or a liability? Only fools strut around hoping to have their genius recognized.

Re:Right

[TubeSteak]

I coulda sworn that "Genius" meant you had a certain level of intelligence.

Check this site out for a breakdown of IQ
http://www.wilderdom.com/intelligence/IQWhatScores Mean.html

• 50% of IQ scores fall between 90 and 110
  
• 70% of IQ scores fall between 85 and 115
  
• 95% of IQ scores fall between 70 and 130
  
• 99.5% of IQ scores fall between 60 and 140

Genius is generally considered to be above 145.

The difference between "someone who excels at a subject" and someone who is a "genius" is that a genius may be able to excel at (m)any subjects.

The smarter you are, the greater your ability to comprehend, understand, analyze, etc. Raw intelligence will generally trump training.

The Rand Corp recently released a study involving soldiers, fresh out of advanced individual training courses. They told them to troubleshoot faulty communications gear. The smart ones had a 97% success rate. The dumbest... 25% of them managed to find the two problems.

http://www.ocnus.net/artman/publish/article_22323. shtml

The fact that you don't know what a genius is, tends to suggest that you aren't one. Most people will know genius when they see it.

Agree

[UndyingShadow]

One of biggest problems a "genius thinker" often faces is his own intelligence. He is on a much higher level and being surrounded by "normal people" often leaves him unchallenged, he doesn't have to work at anything, and then his discontent could squash the ideas right out of him. But as soon as you put him in a room with another on his level, he will quickly find himself challenged, and will respond with genius, as will his counterpart, leading to truly amazing things. As a general rule, I've found that people don't excel unless they have a reason to. 99% of the time, its competition

Re:free thinkers?

[opencity]

Hendrix came along at the right time in the curve (also, speaking as a long time professional guitar player, he had the ... uh ... genius to back it up (and really big hands)).

The technology of the solid body electric guitar interfacing with the tube amplifier had reached a level where you (he) could lean on the vibrato arm and stay in tune (3rd Stone), the tubes were together enough to control feedback for long periods of time without the amplifier blowing out, PA systems had recently reached a point where you could play that loud and sing on top of the amps. Add to this a technological arms race going on with tape bandwidth and multitrack fueled by an enormous amount of money flowing into the music business. Read the studio logs, he gets his hands on the latest gear as it arrives. For the rest of the century devices are created that allow any kid in a garage to appx the amp sounds, tuners to take the first two years off of waiting to play out.

A better right place right time example from 60s pop music is Dylan (because he doesn't require the sheer mysterious hand-tone and control that Hendrix does). He arrives right as old school protest folk and Ginsberg are colliding, gets a head of steam and invents a language - having invented it his accent is usually more perfect than most. He's also granted unlimited carte blanc by the 'Zeigeist' to go where ever his beat poetry leads him, including rock and roll.

I can't speak for the science guys as I'm not qualified (though that statement doesn't make much sense on /.) but across musical history you see 'genius' arriving when the technology and or culture move (I'm resisting the phrase 'paradigm shift' for semantic reasons). The first ones to speak the knew language get to invent it, and the rest sit around analyzing Bach / Beethoven / Beatles / Bird et al.
Your statement about
> quiet, reserved, socially inept, introverts.

Is probably only partially true. Hendrix was definitely wierd by the standards of his time, but he wasn't socially inept.

> im fucking 16, and public school

Keep your head up. Highschool sucks. Learn shit. Join a band (or whatever you kids are calling it) and hit on chicks. It gets better at 18 (or so they say)

Most importantly

[wombatmobile]

However, surrounding one's self with excellence at work is only part of the equation, surrounding one's self with a nurturing and supportive family environment (good nutrition and well-balanced life experiences) at an early age further assists your development. Then there are the other relevant social, cultural, and other environmental factors that would go along with this.

Like wild sex with a naked bitchin' ho.

Just for balance.

Re:Genius and Idiots

[rca66]

"There is a fine line bettwen a Genius and an Idiot." Many people we hold in high esteeme for their brillance were also a little eccentric, or down right crazy.

Being an idiot and being crazy are complete different things. A genius can be an idiot, because he has a very special talent and might have deficits in other important areas. But being a bit crazy is probably connected to being a genius. A genius tends to think out of the frame other people have around their minds. So, it's likely they think out of the frame in other areas as well, not just there, where they are famous for.

Counterexample.

[ezzzD55J]

Ramanujan is one of the biggest mathematical geniuses ever, and taught himself these things in a vacuum.