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How Do You Spot a Genius?
Hugh Pickens writes "Ingrid Wickelgren reports in Scientific American that people have long-equated genius with intelligence, but it is more aptly characterized by creative productivity which depends on a combination of genetics, opportunity and effort. 'Nobody can be called out for outstanding contributions to a field without a lot of hard work, but progress is faster if you are born with the right skills. Personality also plays a role. If you are very open to new experiences and if you have psychopathic traits (yes, as in those shared by serial killers) such as being aggressive and emotionally tough, you are more likely to be considered a genius.' True creativity and genius depends on an unfiltered view of the world, one that is unconstrained by preconceptions and more open to novelty, writes Wickelgren. 'In particular, a less conceptual and more literal way of thinking, one more typical of people with autism, can open the mind up to seeing details that most people miss.' Our schools devote few resources on nurturing nascent genius, concludes Wickelgren, because they are focused on helping those students most likely to be left behind. 'We need to train teachers to spot giftedness, which may take a variety of forms and often needs to be accompanied by creativity, drive and passion. Offering a greater variety of enrichment activities to children will cause many more hidden talents to surface. And accelerated classes and psychological coaching are essential for nurturing talent as early and vigorously as possible.'"
I look in the mirror.
Take away his pocket protector.
God spoke to me
Why bother looking. The local country jail is brimming with just such credentials.
May the Maths Be with you!
His (her?) UID is less than five digits, of course.
are misunderestimated. Just because I can memorize pi to 1000 digits, lift 75 lbs with my weiner and compose French poetry in the bathtub don't mean I should be treated like a freak.
I'm just a people, too.
-badford
False. It raises the question. We've been over this.
The problem with these articles is that they suggest that in order to be a brilliant savant (ie: can do difficult arithmetic mentally without a calculator, or can play chess at an expert level with minimal tutoring), one must be autistic. This is not the case. One may be autistic, and not brilliant, just as well someone could be a brilliant savant, but not be on the autism spectrum. The two cases are effectively statistically independent of each other.
Another issue is that autistic savants often get much more attention than their typical (ie: non-autistic) counterparts due to being able to carry out an apparently amazing mental feat despite suffering from a crippling set of mental limitations and/or deficiencies. Someone not suffering from such a condition is just generally thought of as very smart, and being an educated savant is not such a crowd pleaser, especially in an age where anti-intellectualism is on the rise. Everybody likes a hero story, but few people are comfortable accepting the notion that there are much smarter people out in the world.
If parents are lucky enough to have the funding to send their kids to private schools with a Behavioral Interventionist (BI), then the strengths of the child are usually discovered early on, and it can make the kid's life a lot easier. If the parents don't have the cash though, the kid likely won't enjoy that benefit.
On a side note, one should consider noticing talent amongst the non-autistic population in a school. How does one filter on this criteria when kids are not challenged? I turned out to be a math whiz in school, and was doing calculus by the time I was entering high school. If it weren't for my parents, I would've had to endure 5 years of boredom in high school math, as most of the teachers just came with a hangover, passed the daily readings out, and sat at their desks playing minesweeper. Thanks to my parents, I was allowed to fly ahead in math, and use my spare time for more shop and science courses. If the teachers don't care in the first place, the odds of them helping out their brightest students is minimal.
Background: Been debating this topic with a colleague who has 10 years experience in this field for years over lunch.
We need to train teachers to spot giftedness...
You're a genius kid, now back in line for your standardized test. Or will government officials approve extra resources to cater to the geniuses? If so, how will they handle irate parents of the "unspotted".
Without getting into the main topic being discussed, I would argue that is the biggest downfall of the public school system, at least in the U.S. We are so dedicated to pampering the less intellectually capable that we complete discard the gifted and those with well above intelligence.
But it isn't genius. I don't have those two psychopathic traits, am not emotionally strong not aggressive. I'm not very good at defending myself or my ideas - from my boss, the owner of this machine shop I work in as an engineer (which I have the degree for). He doesn't believe in safety, and I haven't been able to convince him it's important to at least manage the internal liabilities. He just yells and throws tantrums. Like a psychopath (as described in the description).
I've also always never felt like I fitted in, in the places I've worked. I don't know what it is, seems like suspicion of what's going on or who's in charge. But I do know I don't want to be here. It just feels like something is out of alignment.
My biological dad is the same way. He told me about the jobs he had before going off on his own to do consulting, and even though he was competent, people didn't like him. Could be because he showed up late - but stayed late.
So I don't know what the hell to do. I just don't fit in. Maybe I need to go off on my own too.
"Our schools devote few resources on nurturing nascent genius..."
That's because our schools are not meant for such a thing. They are meant to indoctrinate social order. "Nurturing nascent genius" would be in direct conflict with this goal.
I needed some geniuses but couldn't find any that were qualified and I said to myself, "well, gosh, can’t we find some geniuses that are also qualified?" so I contacted some local genius groups and said, ‘Can you help us find folks?’ And they brought us whole binders full of genii.
'If you are very open to new experiences and if you have psychopathic traits (yes, as in those shared by serial killers) such as being aggressive and emotionally tough, you are more likely to be considered a genius.' ... 'Offering a greater variety of enrichment activities to children will cause many more hidden talents to surface. And accelerated classes and psychological coaching are essential for nurturing talent as early and vigorously as possible.'
We should also have people they trust randomly hit them with no explanation, to nurture that desirable sociopathic trait.
Now, wait... That doesn't sound right. In fact, it sounds so wrong that there must be some other explanation. How about this:
Perhaps the answer is not to hold sociopaths up as geniuses just because they succeed in an economic system that can be exploited by sociopaths. Perhaps when Scientific American discusses genius, it should not accept the average idiot's perception but should delve a bit deeper and even explain why sociopathic business success is not a good measure of genius. Perhaps Scientific American should focus on actual geniuses rather than merely people in the top 1% in intelligence, who are also willing to harm society to win.
Or maybe I'm wrong. Maybe Scientific American's role is to reflect the average man's perception of genius. Perhaps Scientific American should report on the coach of the next Superbowl winning team, since that is what all the beer-soaked fat-part-of-the-curve folks at the pub seem to shout after the game, "That coach is a genuis!"
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
because they are focused on helping those students most likely to be left behind.
Wrong. Schools focus on the kids roughly within the first standard deviation limits on the normal curve, not because they care but because they are usually a one-size-fits-all solution. People above or below the first standard deviation or so are too different to work well under those circumstances, so they start falling out of the system. Ironic that someone felt the need to link to the No Child Left Behind Act wikipedia entry. That law was an exemplary piece of parent con job, government pork for companies that provide utterly worthless metrics that in no credible way have improved education, and I challenge everyone to refute that in a credible, empirically, and extensively documented fashion. To the contrary, "teaching to the test" has become synonymous with "education" in the US. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but we will pay a steep price for that in the not too distant future.
...were treated as a disease to be cured, by any means necessary, by the time I got to 7th grade.
I could read at 4, and was encouraged well by my parents, who spent a great deal of time defending me to Administrative staff.
My HS Principal taught me Karate for several years prior; he knew I wasn't a problem, no matter how bad the asshole teachers hated me. :)
I survived, and managed to do well while my detractors have mostly died off thru poor genes and stupidity.
Odds are, I designed something, somewhere, in a machine that almost everyone here or their relatives have been in.
Sorting out the geeks early is a Great Idea, as long as we can keep the other idiots from either exterminating us, or keeping us in concentration camps. (yes, the TSA isn't the Gestapo, but it's a 'like organization'...)
What times we live in... :)
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
"People attach the label Ãoegeniusà to such diverse characters as Leonardo DaVinci, Bobby Fischer and Toni Morrison. The varied achievements of such individuals beg the question: what defines a genius?
False. It raises the question. We've been over this.
Blithely assuming that Toni Morrison is generally considered a genius is begging the question.
Set your phasers on "funky"!
I've heard numerous variations of this by parents trying to justify why their precious snowflake doesn't do well in school. Usually it is the teacher's fault, and their child is just so much smarter than the other students. BS. If your child is so super intelligent that ordinary schoolwork bores them, they should be smart enough to breeze through the tests. They should just "play the game" while at school and do their own learning at home, or in additional enrichment programs (most are free for low income).
It is much more fun to pursue your own course of study in whatever you feel like learning about than be lead in some school based program. It will be tailored for the child because you come up with the plan yourself. If you want additional ideas, there are plenty of teachers/counselors/professors that would be glad to provide ideas. Look at how many things that are available now that weren't a few years ago on the internet. You can learn astronomy, poetry, language, engines, math, physics, programming, etc., etc. Stop expecting everyone else to do it for you.
Gifted programmes as they have been developed over the last 30 years are in fact probably the worst thing for someone with exceptional ability.
Too often gifted education:
- stigmatizes children in a way that causes a wide disconnect between their self-esteem and self-confidence.
- encourages kids for being "smart" or "intelligent" which rewards them for something they cannot control, and causes weird neuroses.
- isolates kids from their peer group based on criteria they don't understand, and prevents them from forming natural relationships with their classmates.
- presumes that these "gifted" kids can be engineered somehow into whatever the popular ideal of citizenship is. For example, gifted kids are not encouraged to do sports are a part of their enriched education, primarily because of middle-class ideas of "intellectuals."
- discourages solving problems with discipline and work, which is why you see so many "gifted" drop outs and burnouts.
- shields "normal" kids from the disruptive exposure to intelligence that they too should understand and adapt to.
I spent much of my education in these programmes and they are misguided, idealistic, and reinforce the astonishingly stupid idea that intelligence is a kind of secular holiness.
Should we have streamed classes? Absolutely, but enrichment should be available as an option for kids who are up to it, perhaps with qualified interest, but not the fatuous anointment it has become.
If you ever resented not being in the gifted class, I can assure you that you dodged a bullet.
In a 2010 article, Svetlana Holt & Joan Marques wrote the following:
"Supporting Brown ... assertions about the transition of narcissistic tendencies from business schools to business
organizations, Pepper (2005) reveals a concerning fact about narcissism in business leaders. While this quality is
often sought in corporate leaders, because the right dosage of narcissism can lead to optimal innovation, there is often
only a thin line that distinguishes brilliant thinking narcissists, such as Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Oprah Winfrey and
Jack Welch, who are also charismatic and visionary, from psychopaths such as Bernie Ebbers and Dennis Koslowski,
who use their skills in harmful ways that we have all come to witness in recent years. Andrews and Furniss (2009) take
it a step further and link excessive narcissism in business organizations to psychopathic behavior. They assert that,
perfectly matching to the description of a psychopath, these business executives are superficially charming, grandiose,
deceitful, remorseless, void of empathy, irresponsible, impulsive, lacking goals, poor in behavioral controls, and
antisocial."
(The doi in case anyone wants to see the whole article is http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10551-011-0951-5 )
Bark less. Wag more.
Wearing a /. 15th Anniversary T-shirt!
We need to train teachers to spot giftedness, which may take a variety of forms and often needs to be accompanied by creativity, drive and passion. Offering a greater variety of enrichment activities to children will cause many more hidden talents to surface.
Parents of Bubba the jock are going to make damned sure he gets into all the 'gifted' classes. Just so he'll look good getting into a decent university. And perish the thought of putting him into a remedial class because his IQ is on his football jersey. There will be no charter schools to place actual gifted students into. Not if they can send the losers back to the general population. Bubba's parents watch this stuff very carefully.
So you have an educational system that fails both ends of the curve.
Have gnu, will travel.
Most have some brain disorders like dyslexia. There's something about the type of brain wiring involved in certain disorders that frees up the problem solving areas of the brain. I think part of the hard work involves overcoming the disorders. Most geniuses are unconventional thinkers. I remember a quote that genius was being about to connect A to C without going through B. It's that out of box thinking that defines true genius. Being able to take an equation with 12 steps and reduce it to 3 or 4.
This place is overrun by people who qualify for something far, far, from genius.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
In 6th grade I was tested for a number of things when I broke the standard tests. The best guess pegged my IQ at around 165-170. By that time I had mastered algebra, had a firm grasp on a couple dozen sciences, and created a number of interesting small inventions (I reinvented the DC motor and came up with a simple rotary engine.)
The next 3 years of my education inside the LA School District involved watching old movies, repeating the times tables, taking field trips (which in fact I found quite enjoyable) and creative writing. This was an attempt to keep me occupied while my peers caught up, which of course never happened... for obvious reasons it couldn't. However, they pissed away the most important educational period of my life. I could have accelerated and been done with my traditional education by the time I was 13 or 14, and moved on to college perhaps completing that by the time I was 18. Our schools are not designed to teach the bright, and in fact, are often punitive to intelligent and creative young people. In a time when we most need these traits fully empowered and present in our culture, such behavior from our leaders and institutions is criminal. However, it is consistent with the large scale conversion of the American mouth-breathing public into obedient, subservient consumption units in the vast corporate engine that is our culture.
Perhaps it time for a new revolution. One in what's possible for being human.
I've heard numerous variations of this by parents trying to justify why their precious snowflake doesn't do well in school. Usually it is the teacher's fault, and their child is just so much smarter than the other students. BS. If your child is so super intelligent that ordinary schoolwork bores them, they should be smart enough to breeze through the tests. They should just "play the game" while at school and do their own learning at home, or in additional enrichment programs (most are free for low income).
You aren't allowed to just breeze through the tests. You are also required to do hours and hours of repetitive, mind-numbing homework that is below your level and serves no useful purpose if you're smart enough to just listen to the lecture and then ace the test. If you don't do the busy-work, you receive a failing grade regardless of how well you do on the tests.
My father was a research professor in curriculum and foundations @ ohio state univ from mid 60s to mid 80s. he would suggest genius is an irrelevant term. misleading at best. he would never tell me my IQ test results as a kid. IQ was not a good measure of anything. creativity, discipline and a host of other factors contribute to the overall picture.
he is rolling over in his grave if he looks at the state of public education today from early childhood development through post secondary education and graduate degrees. education in his mind was not meant to obtain a better job, but mostly to increase one's understanding of the world around them.
our public education system has failed... and since we have a pretty uneducated public, so will the democracy we live in.... (or has it already?)
You can fool some of the people all the time, and those are the ones you want to concentrate on.
I'm an actual genius - 146 IQ. You have no idea what you're talking about.
If your child is so super intelligent that ordinary schoolwork bores them, they should be smart enough to breeze through the tests. They should just "play the game" while at school and do their own learning at home, or in additional enrichment programs (most are free for low income).
That works for about 3-4 years. At some point you just stop trying.
Here's a video on division. I know you already know how to divide... that's the point. I want you to watch it. It's about 10 minutes long.
Have you gotten through it yet? Yes? Great. Now go watch it 10 or 15 more times.
I'm serious. Because that is what it is like trying learn with normal people. I got it the first time it was explained... but the teacher wants to explain it over and over and over and over again so that everyone gets it.
In 2nd grade I was reading 8-9th grade science books. There were YEARS in elementary school when I did not learn a single thing.
It kills a persons soul to sit through lectures on things they already know for that long.
After fighting with teachers to get me into higher level courses, I was finally pulled from school, and was home schooled. I was in 6th grade, and studying junior-level college material.
"The Gifted and Talented Education (GATE) program, authorized by Education Code (EC) sections 52200-52212 (Outside Source), provides funding for local educational agencies (LEAs) to develop unique education opportunities for high-achieving and underachieving pupils in California public elementary and secondary schools who have been identified as gifted and talented. Special efforts are made to ensure that pupils from economically disadvantaged and varying cultural backgrounds are provided with full participation in these unique opportunities. "
Source : http://www.cde.ca.gov/sp/gt/gt/
Look for smart and motivated people who do brilliant and interesting stuff instead. You won't always know who those are at age 9, and who qualifies will change over time as some really bright kids decide to spend their time killing their brain cells while some not-quite-as-bright kids choose to hit the books.
Slapping the label "genius" on a kid doesn't help them, and arguably stunts their social development. Taking any kid that wants to do something awesome (and reasonably safe) and giving them the help they need to do it helps any kid whether they're a genius or not. If the kid wants to do some science, great! If the kid wants to compete in a chess tournament, great! If the kid wants to play the violin, great! Find a way to make that happen.
I am officially gone from
Aderrall is for poor people, Vyvanse is the fancy stuff and Desoxyn (adderral made of a tenth of the mg but with meth salts instead) is on the rise...
Jehovah be praised, Oracle was not selected
the ones getting beaten while the teachers laugh at their little cockmonger bullies antics.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
The current education systems is not only ignoring the genius, but it is even worst: they are chased, bullied, put in prison, declared state enemy, and in the best case scenario they become just another psycho next your door.
Can you tell me the result of 2+2? Is it 4? Really?
.............
And again.....
And again.....
How many times you need to repeat it until you become mad?
Well duh! They are they guys wearing the blue shirts behind the bar at the Apple store!
*ducks for cover*
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
There was a set of circumstances that allowed Maria Montessori to express her genius. She was born smart and put in the effort == yes, she had those two components -- becoming the first female physician in Italy, and having majored in engineering prior to that.
But then something happened to propel her into the work for which we know her today.
She became pregnant -- recall this is circa 1900 Italy -- and the father of her child refused to marry her. So she secretly gave up the child to an orphanage and was heartbroken over missing the child as well as the father of the child, and actually more over the latter. It was at this point that she launched herself into the scientific study of children.
She loved the study of children and appears nurturing of them in photos, yet her writings speak of the children in a cold and scientific manner. Oh, there is a lot of purpose expressed in her writings, a lot of "this is the future of the world," and "this is how we will achieve world peace," but the day-to-day observations are eerily at arms-length. It is just so natural for the rest of us -- too natural -- to "think of the children" with emotion rather than intellectually and scientifically think of the children. My personal theory is that her mothering nurturing was prematurely ended when she gave her son up for adoption.
One of her biographers theorizes that the reason she restricted her study of children to those 3 years old and up -- until 50 years into her career when she was 80 years old and relented to creating a toddler program -- was because it would remind her of her son.
And no one since Maria Montessori seems to have been able to scientifically analyze children and create a resulting pedagogy. Tallying filled scantron bubbles is too narrow -- Maria Montessori was able to observe motion, behavior, and motivation. And other pedagogies are derived from preconceived notions, much as pre-Renaissance "physics" was.
Nothing like an article about "geniuses" to bring out people who believe they're "geniuses" on the internet. IQ means very little to true intelligence.
Calvin: I tell you, Hobbes, no one understands my genius.
Hobbes: How did you get downstairs with both legs in one pant leg?
Calvin: I fell down a lot. Why?
Believe it or not there are thousands of people we'd call prodigies... and not many of them ever become geniuses. And conversely not every genius is a prodigy. As the article says it's a combination of determination and above average intellect. Obviously that doesn't have the sizzle and flash of a Good Will Hunting but seems to be accurate. I think the article is a little over the top in emphasizing the eccentric aspects though. Everyone wants to ascribe a little madness to genius but I think it's more a matter of communication being difficult due to a vast gap between the way they see the world and the way everyone else does. The real geniuses are able to bridge that gap.
Great minds think alike.
Actually, the FDA has classified alcohol as a 'legal' drug for more than 2 decades now.
only the Steve Jobs / Mark Zuckerberg "rock star" types whom turned their talent for being ruthless pricks into piles of money
IQ or psychometric 'g' means something specific and robust: that within a single person the performance on some categories of cognitive skills (and other even low level neurological tests) are quite correlated with the performance of other cognitive skills. Think of a test with dozens of subscores, each with one kind of problem.
Why is it that people who are good at word analogies somehow are also good at number sequences? No a priori reason, but it's true. Which is why the common human experience for thousands of years is that some people are smart and others are dumb.
Clearly this correlation does not extend as strongly or at all (barring major developmental defects) to other tasks which certainly involve neurological capability, such as catching a ball, recognizing faces rapidly, recognizing emotions in faces, tapping rhythm accurately, or seducing women.
Naa, those are the guys who couldn't cut it. A real genius quickly realizes petty crime doesn't pay, and non-petty crime is dangerous and a lot of hard work (you think it's easy running a drug cartel?). No, the real psychopathic geniuses will quickly figure out the place you can get the biggest payoff with the least work is Wall Street. If they're megalomaniacs, they might go for politics instead.
Well, I did just the amount of homework required to have a passing grade, and compensated it on the exams. (That's for the homework that counted toward my grades, the rest I just ignored and took the respective warnings.)
But then, I was wrong in doing that. Every great thing you may want to do requires huge amounts of mindblowing boring work, and doing boring work is moething that we learn, it's not inate. I could have learned it by the time I was at school, but passed the chance.
Rethinking email
1. Look like a dweeb
2. Have a super hot girlfriend
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
People can control your emotions only as much as you allow them to. Don't give them that power!
Thanks for posting something intelligent. Post after post from self proclaimed geniuses who couldn't work out how to amuse themselves at school were starting to bore me. And yeah, everyone is forced into a situations where they are powerless to one degree or another, working through that takes more than intelligence, it takes 'character'. Newton is recognized as one of the greatest polymaths of all time, but I've read two biographies on the guy and (unlike Eisenstein, Feynman, Sagan,...) his social skills were as sharp as Sheldon's.
At the end of the day intelligence is contextual, a genius in the lab is very different to a genius in the boxing ring. Muhammad Ali, Voltaire, Sun Tsu, Mozart - all geniuses, the only thing they have in common is they extend their chosen art, rather than just practiced it to the best of their ability. However being a genius in one context often comes at the cost of being a complete moron when the context changes, eg: from a warm basement full of wizz-kid toys to a cold class room full of other children.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Maybe we don't want to be "spotted". Er, I mean "Maybe THEY don't want to be spotted".
Grandpa: My Homer is not a communist. He may be a liar, a pig, an idiot, a communist, but he is not a porn star.
Genius is an accident of birth, and true genius can be as crippling as any mental health disorder you can think of. It means flunking out of school easily or being tested for things like ADD only to discover that you were merely bored. It can make a job that isn't challenging a living hell as your mind simply can't cope with the monotony.
Genius level intelligence means a life of being shunned by school mates and later co-workers if you aren't careful to mask your intelligence. It creates a lot of social problems and can really hurt dating until you get really good at masking it. Genius is over-rated by those who lack it and rarely appreciated by those who have it. The most important skill a genius has to learn is how to mask their intelligence, so that those around them don't consider them to a 'genius'. Kind of sad when you think about it.
If you have a genius level child, the most important thing you can do for them is help them to develop their social skills, it will be their greatest challenge.
He's the guy who can't see the TV screen, because the book he's reading is in the way.
I'd rather have the picture. When I look at you I just see a narcissist.
DNA is a Turing machine. You, however, being dynamic and emergent, are not.
Paint, magic marker, or my personal favorite: dog poop saturated with indelible ink.
Circle the wagons and fire inward. Entropy increases without bounds.
You can fool some of the people all the time, and those are the ones you want to concentrate on.
That would make a great sig.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
and serves no useful purpose if you're smart enough to just listen to the lecture and then ace the test.
Actually, it doesn't serve any useful purpose under any circumstances.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
Every great thing you may want to do requires huge amounts of mindblowing boring work, and doing boring work is moething that we learn, it's not inate.
Right, so let's just force kids to watch paint dry and record its progress. Not only is it still a waste of time, but it would keep kids from actually learning anything useful!
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
He probably would have wasted less time and learned more. Of course, any excuse to keep the awful public education system as it is is sufficient...
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
Stay awake at night in your dorm room bed. He might enter or leave your closet, leaving no trace. That's when you know you have a Real Genius.
The article is the personal blog of an editor at Scientific American. Not, as we say on Wikipedia, a reliable source.
Take any group of adults with normal intelligence and conscript them into a 'school' where they must circle the shape that doesn't belong over and over. Nothing complicated, just Sesame Street level. Make it clear that it isn't going to change for the next 12 years. They'll score perfectly for a short while but will likely start not turning in their work, doodling on the tests, and just circling random shapes soon enough.
If any are still doing 'OK' after a year, tell them they're 'gifted'. Their 'gift' is double the number of worksheets, naturally. See how well that de-motivates them.
Yep, pump enough meth into them and you can have then knick-knacking with the rest of the class in no time.
Young kids should copulate geniuses, then they'd all be smart.
You might have missed that particular class in sex-ed.
And criminal law.
And English.
“Some men come by the name of genius in the same way as an insect comes by the name of centipede - not because it has a hundred feet, but because most people can't count above fourteen”
I've heard numerous variations of this by parents trying to justify why their precious snowflake doesn't do well in school. Usually it is the teacher's fault
Agreed.
This is modern life for the most part. Even in college you have to play the game. For most jobs you have to play the game. In the military you have to play the game. For many social situations you have to play the game. That is part of life.
No, that's your life. Stop projecting. I am self employed and I do what I want. I hope you're content with your fucked up authoritarian "educational" system and your life of corporate slavery.
Well, I did just the amount of homework required to have a passing grade, and compensated it on the exams. (That's for the homework that counted toward my grades, the rest I just ignored and took the respective warnings.)
I didn't do any of it.
But then, I was wrong in doing that.
No you weren't.
Every great thing you may want to do requires huge amounts of mindblowing boring work, and doing boring work is moething that we learn, it's not inate. I could have learned it by the time I was at school, but passed the chance.
"Doing necessary boring work" is not a skill that homework teaches you. If anything it just wastes your time you could have spent doing something more productive. If you can ace the test and understand the subject without doing any homework, then homework is a waste of time. I fail how to see completing some mind numbing work forced on you by a third party makes you a more driven or better person. If anything you are only training yourself to obey orders. How are you going to prosper in a business of your own, making your own decisions, if all you know how to do is meekly cow to authority and wait for orders from the boss?
You're a fucking moron.
Like the GP I'm also a genius (IQ 130+) and I had the exact same experience growing up in school. I never took notes and I never did homework, in school and in the university classes I took. I can skip half the class and still ace every test. I remember every school year being the exact same goddamn thing; 4th grade math? 5th grade math? 6th grade math? All teaching the same shit, over and over and over and over. Of course through all this we never made it even halfway through any of our textbooks, let alone finished one; how can you finish a textbook when you have to read and learn from it at the rate of the slowest and dumbest person in a 30 person class?
I know exactly where he's coming from. In 6th grade I was reading multiple novels a week and had a college reading level. I know exactly what it's like to sit in a classroom while the class slowly, haltingly stumbles, one student at a time down each row, through reading one paragraph at a time from the textbook aloud to the class. I'm lost in the book, reading 7-8 chapters ahead as usual, so of course when the teacher gets to me and I "don't know my place", I get in trouble. So then I had to learn the skill of covertly reading ahead but still keeping track of the classroom's progress so I didn't get in trouble.
Obviously you don't have the first fucking clue about anything, so why you bothered commenting here is a mystery to me. If you just wanted to stroke your ego by poo-poo'ing on the GP's claim of genius, then you should have at least attached your name to the comment so we could all know who you are and how smart and brilliant you must have been to make that observation!
In the flesh
Your boss isn't a psychopath, he's just an asshole. I'm kinda the same way as you may be, in that I always show up to places exactly on time or 5 minutes late; can't be bothered to be early, for some odd reason, which later in life I found out is because I have a deep seating revulsion to wasting time, as well as a strong need to be independent. It always mystified me why stupid ass bosses would go SO FUCKING UPTIGHT AND MAD about somebody being a few minutes late, when that person is the most valuable member of your time who (as you said) stays late and fixes problems. Some people are just way, way too married to routine and schedules. Fuck that shit. Self employment is the only possibility for me. Maybe you are the same way.
The word "sociopath." I wish clueless people would stop using this word to describe every single person they don't like or understand. This seems to be a slashdot-specific phenomenon for some reason. Some guy is successful, or an asshole? WHY, he must be a SOCIOPATH! Fucking idiots.
"Our schools devote few resources on nurturing nascent genius"
No... Our schools work to actively suppress the gifted, the intelligent, the geniuses. Public school in particular is about warehousing and assembly line instructing children to be cogs in the machine. The highly intelligent and highly creative are a problem for them. The best and the brightest don't fit well in square holes so they are trimmed, squashed and reshaped in the form of mediocrity to fit society's needs.
The best thing you can do for your children is to not send them to school but to homeschool them so they will have a chance of meeting their full potential.
Without that repetitive, mind-numbing homework, you can't just breeze through the tests. One of the huge problems I had with our kid's public school, is that they spent most of the time [literally] training for test-taking, and very little practicing the basic math they were learning. As a result, the teachers were saying that our son was one of their best sutudents, and was just a little slow on the tests, but it's okay because he got good grades, and Algebra (or geometry) should be no problem.
He couldn't add 8+7 except on his fingers.
My fix? I said that when he comes home, he is *first* responsible for doing an hour of that repetitive, mind-numbing math addition problems, until he could get the 60 3-digit addition test in 150 seconds (as specified by the book we have).
Once he got that, then he could go on in the book. He does those repetitive mind-numbing practice problems until he gets the answers perfectly.
Then he goes on.
At some point, he's going to speed up, because he has truly mastered the previous topics. Well, he already has.
He's also then responsible for an hour of active play. After that, comes homework. If he gets it, fine and well. If he doesn't, so be it. But I am just about done with caring about how well he learns nth degree metephysical imaginary-world architecture (or how he does on his 20th autobiographical display board).
Maybe next time he does the autobiographical display board, he can show two addition problems: one the left, 3+5 =6 (more or less). On the right, 3+5=8. In the middle, can be written " ... lots of pointless mind-numbing drill ... "
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
iFTFY.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
"Offering a greater variety of enrichment activities to children will cause many more hidden talents to surface. And accelerated classes and psychological coaching are essential for nurturing talent as early and vigorously as possible."
All this will do is interfere with true genius. Subgeniuses creating programs for true geniuses will develop all kinds of ways to delay and deflect true geniuses. Genius finds its own way. It needs self-focus. It needs time. Most of all, it needs free time and even boredom to create the mental paths that lead it naturally to creative results. Genius is born with a "thought vector." It does what it does; it thinks what it thinks because it must. True genius also needs adversity. Making it easy for it deprives it of the fight it needs to energize itself. In short: leave it alone. All that can be accomplished with programs is to encourage the excellent mediocrity of mere talent while destroying the true genius with too much structure.
E Proelio Veritas.
Separate "what is considered genius" from "what is genius."
Futurist Traditionalism
...and many then play whack-a-mole on the gifted, to hammer any outstanding heads back into a "standard", "average" lower-level line.
Some will even encourage/solicit/welcome the bullies' help to this "noble egalitarian end"...
Make him wear polka dots.
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
Interesting how the man you castigate is the living counterexample to your thesis.
I still don't agree. It may be excessive, but the natural reaction of people is to fight the boring work, and it is a great opportunity to learn that just doing it will make the problem go away.
But again, I can agree that it is too much and too early.
Rethinking email
So are the rehabs
The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.
US election time is the best, there's just so much comedy gold lying around. I'd probably find it sad and depressing if I was a USian though.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
He couldn't add 8+7 except on his fingers.
Growing up in Chernobyl is hard enough without being an unrecognised genius as well.
The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.
Thank god for Gaulois spaces.
nosig today
Unfortunately, this problem won't go away until the person teaching actually understands the material, not knows it by rote, but actually understands it. I can come up with at least 3 non-standard ways of doing arithmetic, each being slightly easier for different thinking patterns, but that's because i understand what is going on, and how different cognitive areas can be harnessed with different methods.
N.B. They couldn't teach me math in school, they actually thought I was retarded. I couldn't multiply or do long-division at the start of grade 5. Thankfully, I was tested and they noticed my advance pattern matching skills. They didn't have the resources to really do anything for me, but they did hand me a grade 9 book on mathematical axioms. I shortly outperformed everybody, though frequently not reflected in my grades because I was unable to show my work for anything because I never was capable of learning their slow tedious methods.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
Ah genius. You do know that the lowest agreed upon cutoff for genius defined by IQ is 140 no?
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
I was going to make some snarky remark about your IQ just barely qualifying for "genius", but I've noticed that usually the ones around 140 are more successful than those of us with much higher (others, i'm just 1sd above you) IQ's. IQ isn't everything, sometimes it just shows that we know how to fill up our brains, not whether we fill them with important things or things we know how to apply.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
I know exactly where he's coming from. In 6th grade I was reading multiple novels a week and had a college reading level. I know exactly what it's like to sit in a classroom while the class slowly, haltingly stumbles, one student at a time down each row, through reading one paragraph at a time from the textbook aloud to the class. I'm lost in the book, reading 7-8 chapters ahead as usual, so of course when the teacher gets to me and I "don't know my place", I get in trouble. So then I had to learn the skill of covertly reading ahead but still keeping track of the classroom's progress so I didn't get in trouble.
Ah, I remember this game from childhood. Just count the number students ahead of you, and skip down that many paragraphs. Briefly take note of the first and last sentences of the paragraphs before and after your predicted section, just in case the teacher doubles-up a short paragraph or splits a large one.
For bonus points: If you memorize your assigned section, then ostentatiously close your book and then recite it perfectly from memory, teachers will generally stop giving you shit.
wat?
One day when I'm a trillionaire, you can argue about the book definition of genius all you like. I said 130+. That's 130 plus for those keeping track. Plus how much? .... Who gives a fuck?
One day when I'm a trillionaire, you can argue about the book definition of genius all you like. I said 130+. That's 130 plus for those keeping track. Plus how much? .... Who gives a fuck?
Well, i'm just taking a guess here, but intelligent people are usually concerned with accurate definitions, and this sure as hell would bug any statistician. Now regardless of the criticisms of IQ in general, a 10 point difference from 130 to 140 accounts for about ~17% of the normal IQ range above 130 for adults. Not that much right? Well, except that only ~2.27% of the population has an IQ above 130, and only ~.4% has above 140. I left the last step of calculating the enormity of your error as an exercise for yourself, try not to hurt your brain :)
Believe me, I use approximations in my in head calculations all the time and assume most geniuses do, but only with error rates below 1-2%. If geniuses had more socialization the only appropriate response to what you said would be
"Wow".
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
Same here, I used to get marked A for attainment, and B or C for effort. I never could understand exactly what else I was meant to do when the work was so easy and I was bored out of my brains.
At university I was so bored in lectures I got into the habbit of completing the previous weeks assignment during the lectures, and taking notes at the same time. Still got good marks, the biggest problem I had was staying awake.
After taking a year out I realised real work had more challenges and more opportunities, and kept me interested in a way education never had. I quit my degree and have never looked back. I have two girls of my own now, and my main focus is to make sure they don't get bored at school and actually get to work to their level, whatever that may be.
Take hope. After the fifth or sixth time, you get to move on to 3 + 3.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
you wont spot the next mozart or chopin. If you do road construction you might not spot the next einstein and the greatest physicist in the world might be blind to the qualities of the greatest builder ever lived. I think you spot a genius by word of mouth. A bit like advertising ... but ... different. I dont think einstein got spotted as a genius before he checkmated a few people who then like spread the word a bit etcetera, might be the same in most cases
Free speech was meant to be free for all... how can anyone grow up in a nanny state ?
Well, i'm just taking a guess here, but intelligent people are usually concerned with accurate definitions
As an intelligent person (TM), I know that the definition of a word is whatever two people agree it is. You say genius is 140+, he says it is 130+. Great, now you and anybody with an IQ of 100+ can understand what you're saying. Anything else is quibbling for its own sake.
Without that repetitive, mind-numbing homework, you can't just breeze through the tests.
That is hardly true. I breezed through numerous tests without doing homework for classes I excelled at. I really only did homework to the extent that it was graded, and that was essentially a waste of time. Forcing some kids to do work because other kids need to do it teaches the wrong lesson - that work is arbitrary and has value for its own sake.
I hate to explain it but I was referencing the number of fingers that guy had
The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.
I actually think the bar should be set at 4 sd's from the mean for IQ. 130-140 just seems to be the point where you can start to have an interesting conversation with someone with their own thoughts(some) and not parroted societal/cultural beliefs. Besides, seeing all the stupid things my siblings have done it's just so hard to consider them geniuses :)
N.B. you can score 130-140 just by repeating facts, I believe real genius is in novel combinations of previous knowns. It's about seeing new patterns not rote memorization.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
I read your comments here and on your reply to my post and I agree with your thoughts. I haven't done anything particularly extraordinary with my life just yet, but it's still early in the race and now I feel more than ever like I am on the right track. I am in my late 20s now and I have spent the last ~5 years basically reforming and improving my mind, body, and thoughts in various ways, as well as working to develop several profitable (potentially quite lucrative) lines of business. I feel like with any kind of real help or guidance in life I could have been a millionaire many times over already, but due to having to stumble through life practically on my own in a lot of ways, and learning the hard way, it has taken me longer to get things turned around and situated and on track for success. The way things are moving now I expect to be a multi-millionaire within 5 years, 10 tops. All this is big talk now of course but watch and see.
Of course one can't post about being smart or successful on slashdot without insecure dweebs crawling out of the woodwork to tear someone down and point out how much better or smarter they are. And of course when I said my IQ is around 135 in the other post, I got the stereotypical snobby pedants chiming in to retort that genius only starts at 150, or some other pedantry. Well I don't really know what my actual IQ score is, if there is such a thing; that number is only an estimate based on one test, and I'm sure I could raise it higher if I spent the slightest amount of time doing or practicing the type of crazy visual problems on that test. All I know is, I've spent my entire life almost always being the smartest person in the room, intutively and easily understanding and envisioning things 30% of people probably will never understand no matter how hard they try. Can you call that a genius?
I don't know, and I truly don't give a fuck, because I'm not some dweeb trying to join MENSA so he can compare his mental penis to other dickwads who have no lives. All that matters in the real world (and to me) are results. That is the true definition of success. Like Malcolm Gladwell said, higher IQ is an advantage to a certain point but beyond that, what good is having an IQ of 180 if you have zero social skills, no business sense, no financial intelligence, and only a narrow range of knowledge on obscure topics?
Hello, I'd like you to meet my friend Irony .
I got here through a series of tubes
That's sort of funny in a bad way.
The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.
No, I wasn't stating my opinion. I was merely stating the lowest agreed upon cutoff by the experts in the area.
Define "expert". LOL
What you "merely" stated is that you are a pedantic twit. And I agree.