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What Makes a Genius?
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Eric Barker writes at TheWeek that while high intelligence has its place, a large-scale study of more than three hundred creative high achievers including Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo, Beethoven, and Rembrandt has found that curiosity, passion, hard work, and persistence bordering on obsession are the hallmarks of genius. 'Successful creative people tend to have two things in abundance, curiosity and drive. They are absolutely fascinated by their subject, and while others may be more brilliant, their sheer desire for accomplishment is the decisive factor,' writes Tom Butler-Bowdon. It's not about formal education. 'The most eminent creators were those who had received a moderate amount of education, equal to about the middle of college. Less education than that — or more — corresponded to reduced eminence for creativity,' says Geoffrey Colvin. Those interested in the 10,000-hour theory of deliberate practice won't be surprised that the vast majority of them are workaholics. 'Sooner or later,' writes V. S. Pritchett, 'the great men turn out to be all alike. They never stop working. They never lose a minute. It is very depressing.' Howard Gardner, who studied geniuses like Picasso, Freud, and Stravinsky, found a similar pattern of analyzing, testing, and feedback used by all of them: 'Creative individuals spend a considerable amount of time reflecting on what they are trying to accomplish, whether or not they are achieving success (and, if not, what they might do differently).' Finally, genius means sacrifice. 'My study reveals that, in one way or another, each of the creators became embedded in some kind of a bargain, deal, or Faustian arrangement, executed as a means of ensuring the preservation of his or her unusual gifts. In general, the creators were so caught up in the pursuit of their work mission that they sacrificed all, especially the possibility of a rounded personal existence,' says Gardner."
Invariably, we also see throughout history that these laser focused artists and creators are preyed upon by the vultures. The swarming businessmen, promotors, managers, who give their charges "the best they can" (i.e. a fraction of their actual value) whilst proclaiming to the world that they themselves are the true producers and behind closed doors they opine how if only they could get that last fraction of a few pennies from "those leeches, those damned artists."
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
"The great men turn out to be all alike." Did you forget that not only men are reading your site? - A great woman
No, some people are just dumb.
Things are changing, but from a historical perspective, this cannot be ignored.
"The fact of the matter is that there have been no supremely great women artists, as far as we know, although there have been many interesting and very good ones who remain insufficiently investigated or appreciated; nor have there been any great Lithuanian jazz pianists, nor Eskimo tennis players, no matter how much we might wish there had been. That this should be the case is regrettable, but no amount of manipulating the historical or critical evidence will alter the situation; nor will accusations of male-chauvinist distortion of history. There are no women equivalents for Michelangelo or Rembrandt, Delacroix or Cezanne, Picasso or Matisse, or even, in very recent times, for de Kooning or Warhol, any more than there are black American equivalents for the same. "
From a brilliant essay on the matter:
http://www.miracosta.edu/home/gfloren/nochlin.htm
I can't help but wonder how many people with plenty of "curiosity, passion, hard work, and persistence bordering on obsession" we've never heard of. In other words, we don't actually know--and likely can't know--how likely people with these traits are to be remembered by the world as geniuses, and how many will be regarded by their families and friends as obsessive workaholics with lousy personal lives and utterly forgotten outside those circles.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
He's really talented, though. Hugh's summaries are never just a single link wrapped in a quick copy-paste summary, but a quite broad picture of a topic. On the other hand, I'm a curious why he puts so much effort to Slashdot submissions. Dice should be paying him already.
The difference between a genius and a mad man is thin, but obsession with a problem is what both "suffers" from.
Another thing that's different is to work hard on a problem, then sleep on it and then approach the problem again from a new angle. The brain will sort out a lot of stuff while you are sleeping.
Trying too hard on a problem is often ineffective. Sometimes it helps to take a walk.
All this is what also makes many geniuses seem eccentric - they do stuff the way that suits them best, not by following the beaten path.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Whom is to determine the genius status of any particular individual. Genius is based on a system of values as perceived by ones peers. If i were to believe math or rocket science were an important trait, I would judge someone with impeccable skills in this area as genius. But someone that would value the arts or athletic skills at a greater lever may not see this person in the same light. Many times there has been someone given the genius label and I find it difficult to see the noted person in this classification because of my value system. so it goes that I cannot believe there is one common scale that genius can be measured.
-- john
I have it on good authority that Kanye West is a genius.
I'm not claiming to be a genius, but one thing I noticed early on when deciding to take on STEM is that unlike art (which I had pursued previously), where an understanding of the history, techniques that were developed, and cultural perception of art were very helpful in developing a more acute understanding of the art in question, studying these things wasn't necessary, whereas in science and math the rigor is (usually) completely necessary.
When you talk to aspiring young scientists, generally you hear a fondness for lasers, space travel, disease research, etc, but almost none for finding the derivative of a function or the like. Because people see the space lasers as the carrot and the intense math as the stick, they tend to get pretty exhausted after a fair amount of work. But in my experience, developing an appreciation for the math itself led me to view science as more of an art form than merely labor. I suspect fostering a greater appreciation of math and logic in children, as well as diminishing the cultural perception of math as a difficult and troubling affair would lead to an easier time for students who can both accept and appreciate the level of math they commit to.
"When Terman first used the IQ test to select a sample of child geniuses, he unknowingly excluded a special child whose IQ did not make the grade. Yet a few decades later that talent received the Nobel Prize in physics: William Shockley, the cocreator of the transistor. Ironically, not one of the more than 1,500 children who qualified according to his IQ criterion received so high an honor as adults." Simonton, Dean Keith (1999). Origins of genius: Darwinian perspectives on creativity. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-512879-6. Lay summary (14 August 2010).
Exceptional output requires access to tools, training, and environment (food, health, relationships) that enable the person to devote (obssess?) over solving the problems or creating something. And, the person's exceptional output must be recognized as such. So being highly intelligent won't make it. It may even be a hindrance. For instance, it would be easy to imagine the first ever person to be able to repeatedly create fire would not score well on any measure of intelligence today, but to the tribe, that person may not only be considered a genius but a god.
Professor Hawking has better than a Nobel prize (given out all the time). He holds the Lucasian chair of mathematics, as Newton did. *That's* the real prize.
"Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
Does any researcher really think their generalizations capture that which they cannot imagine?
If a dog researcher analyzed humans, he'd be like, "and we see the human goes over here and waves his hands and light suddenly appears in the night. That's all there is to it, I've watched him do it a hundred times."
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
A maniacal cackle, an evil grin and an uncanny ability to great doomsday devices?
We'll make great pets
While intelligence is a vague term in itself there is something to be said for the written word, collaboration, education, proofs, and the extrapolated reasoning that comes from combining them all.
Wasn't it someone's theory (or experiments) that luck was the largest factor in a genius?
I remember Gladwell's book starts off with the Canadian hockey team and the birthday paradox. The birthdays of the players in the Canadian hockey team fall primarily on the beginning of the year, primarily the first few months of the year. There wasn't anyone born on the second half of the year.
The theory was that this is because of the age cutoff of Jan 1st. When they select the junior teams, the age cutoff is Jan 1st. So, someone born on January has almost a year head start over the person born on December. That little difference between individuals turns into who gets coaching or not, who gets selected for teams and ultimately who makes the national sides.
Yes, some people are geniuses because they have drive and passion and are workaholics but not because they are born that way but because each little bit of effort they put in gets rewarded very heavily (and that situation comes by from luck).
Why do geniuses come in clusters? Why were there so many Greek geniuses? Why hasn't Greece produced another set of geniuses like them after that?
The other argument was that geniuses were able to feed off the society. If we as a society value something very highly, then we reward the person good in it with money and admiration. That again creates a lot of drive and passion for the work they do and they strive to obsessively improve on it.
It has been disproved that geniuses have high IQ. There are a lot of geniuses with normal IQ.
So, technically, anyone with at least normal IQ can be a genius. You have to be born in the right society and pursue something that the society deems very valuable. Then, you have to have luck that will get you funding, audience etc for you work that will fuel your passion and drive.
Really, wasn't this covered in school?
Man has always assumed that he is more intelligent than, for example, dolphins because he has achieved so much—the wheel, New York, wars and so on—whilst all the dolphins have ever done is muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins have always believed that they are far more intelligent than man—for precisely the same reasons.
-Douglas Adams (slightly paraphrased)
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
You might want to change your statement to "no women equivalents to Michelangelo or Rembrandt, Delacroix or Cezanne, Picasso or Matisse..." have been recognized, due to the societal taboos of growing up in those times. They were there, but were sidelined or worse when their talents started showing. A sad statement on western civilization at the time, but others were/are no better.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
What makes a genius?
Output.
You can be the smartest person, ever. If you don't do anything with it you will never know genius. Genius is just a recognized smart person, that is a person recognized for being really smart.
I would also argue that people who are recognised early as "genius material" are more likely to piss away their potential because they have been told for so long how amazing they are. This sort of thing is very common in high schools and universities as well. I've seen plenty of people who performed very well early in their education, solely based on their natural ability, only to go on to massively underachieve in late high school or university because they grew up without really having a connection between academic praise and hard work. These are the sort of people who end up pissing away the rest of their lives unemployed or in average jobs browsing 4chan all day, despite being quite intelligent. Basically, I think the worst thing you can do to a kid with a naturally high IQ is to tell them that they are going to grow up to be a genius. All you will achieve is setting them up for a life of mediocrity on the back of laziness.
He holds the Lucasian chair of mathematics, as Newton did. *That's* the real prize.
Slight correction -- he held the Lucasian chair, but he retired in 2009. The current Lucasian professor at Cambridge is Michael Green.
Hmm. Spend your life in an average job which allows you the time to waste at work on leisure activities like 4chan, or burn yourself out working for a money man in some sort of Faustian arrangement. Perhaps the failed prodigies ARE the real geniuses...
He holds the Lucasian chair of mathematics, as Newton did. *That's* the real prize.
Slight correction -- he held the Lucasian chair, but he retired in 2009. The current Lucasian professor at Cambridge is Michael Green.
Good! He wasn't using it anyway. Always insisting on using his own chair.