Genius: The Modern View

[Kortpeel (imported)]

Kortpeel, I think you and I both agree with Brooks that it would benefit us all to create a culture which encouraged the best from each of us. No one can know where that might lead, but since this world is far from utopia, it could only be an improvement.

Oh how I agree with that.

The problem is how to bring it about. I see louts wallowing in their ignorance like pigs in shit. Total non-achievers and proud of it.

This is one area where we could take a lesson from Judaism: "Look son, there are 14 million of us and six billion goyim. We can't afford to waste anyone of us and that includes you. You have to pull your weight in life and achieve something. Your people are depending on you. You'll get all the education you can handle, as much support as is needed, and then you gotta achieve in whatever field you choose. You aren't allowed to drop out."

That attitude gives each kid a sense of responsibility and importance which carries through to adulthood. Combined with a genuine respect for scholarship and an ethic of personal hard work, it is what enables the Jews to punch far above their weight.

If we could get that kind of thinking into all our kids then the world would become a better place. And certainly there is plenty of room for improvement and problems that need to be solved.

How to do it? It occurs to me that the answer lies in the education of young girls. Special classes are needed to prepare them for motherhood and the raising of their children so that they can inculcate the need for achievement, develop their children's sense of responsibility to humanity as a whole, and instil a respect for lifelong learning. Educate boys to achieve in their own lifetime. Educate girls for the achievement of future generations.

It costs both parents and society (ie taxpayers) a great deal to get a kid through to the end of his/her formal education. We can't afford to waste either the money or the person.

Kortpeel

[punkypink (imported)]

I have to point out that without the innate talent, all the practice in the world does not get you that last 0.1% performance that seperates the truly great from the very good.

I once wrote this for an essay concerning intelligence:

Nature, decides what range your IQ sits in. Nuture, decides where within that range you sit in.

You simply cannot be born of average intelligence and become a genius thru practice, but you certainly could become a success thru hard graft. Nobody ever said one has to be a genius to taste success anyway, depending on what field one is in.

Just like what Matt85 has said tho, there are some fields, such as sport, where no amount of practice could make up for otherworldly innate talent. Take motor racing for example. No amount of practice could give anyone Aryton-esque abilities. That is why the pay-drivers of the F1 world stay as pay-drivers, while the naturally gifted enjoy a meteoric rise. At the top, where just about everyone is a top level talent, that's when the amount of hard graft someone puts in can make a difference.

[A-1 (imported)]

O.K.,

don't want to pee on anyone's parade here, but Einstein's brain WAS structured differently. SOURCE (http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics ... %27s_brain)

Scientific studies

Lateral Sulcus

Harvey found nothing unusual with Einstein's brain, which is of average size. However, a study later found part of Einstein's brain missing and another part 15% larger. In 1999, further analysis by a team at McMaster University

McMaster University

McMaster University is a research-intensive university located in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, with an enrollment of 20,600 full-time undergraduate students and 2,901 postgraduate students in 2007-08....

in Hamilton Ontario

Ontario

Ontario is a Provinces and territories of Canada located in the Central Canada part of Canada, the largest by population and second largest, after Quebec, in total area....

, Canada

Canada

Canada is a country occupying most of northern North America, extending from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west and northward into the Arctic Ocean....

revealed that his parietal operculum

Operculum (brain)

The operculum is generally in the most posterior portion of the inferior frontal gyrus of the frontal lobe in the brain. One notable part of the operculum is Broca's area, which plays a key role in conversation or Speech communication production, Reading and writing....

region in the inferior frontal gyrus

Inferior frontal gyrus

The inferior frontal gyrus is a gyrus of the frontal lobe of the human brain. Its superior border is the inferior frontal sulcus, its inferior border the lateral sulcus, and its posterior border is the precentral sulcus....

in the frontal lobe

Frontal lobe

The frontal lobe is an area in the brain of mammals. It is located at the front of each cerebral hemisphere and positioned anterior to the parietal lobes and above and anterior to the temporal lobes....

of the brain

Brain

The brain is the center of the nervous system in all vertebrate, and most invertebrate, animals. Some primitive animals such as cnidarian and echinoderm have a decentralized nervous system without a brain, while sponges lack any nervous system at all....

was vacant. Also absent was part of a bordering region called the lateral sulcus

Lateral sulcus

The lateral sulcus is one of the most prominent structures of the human brain....

(Sylvian fissure). Researchers at McMaster University speculated that the vacancy may have enabled neurons in this part of his brain to communicate better. "This unusual brain anatomy…(missing part of the Sylvian fissure)… may explain why Einstein thought the way he did," said Professor Sandra Witelson who led the research published in The Lancet

The Lancet

The Lancet is a peer-reviewed general medical journal, published weekly by Elsevier, part of Reed Elsevier.One of the world's best-known and most respected general medical journals, with editorial offices in London and New York, The Lancet was founded in 1823 by Thomas Wakley, who named it after the surgical instrument called a lanc...

. It should be noted that this study was based on photographs of Einstein's brain made in 1955 by Dr. Harvey, and not direct examination of the brain, as implied by the caption of one of the photographs, inaccurately identifying it as a photograph from 1995. Einstein himself claimed that he thought through images rather than verbally. Professor Laurie Hall of Cambridge University

University of Cambridge

The University of Cambridge , located in Cambridge, England, is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation university in the Anglosphere....

commenting on the study, said, "To say there is a definite link is one bridge too far, at the moment. So far the case isn't proven. But magnetic resonance and other new technologies are allowing us to start to probe those very questions".

Scientists are currently interested in the possibility that physical differences in brain structure could determine different abilities. One famous part of the operculum is Broca's area

Broca's area

Broca's area is a region of the brain responsible for speech production.The importance of Broca?s area in producing language has been recognized since Paul Pierre Broca reported impairments in two patients he encountered....

which plays an important role in speech

Conversation

A conversation is communication by two, three, or more people. It is a social skill that is not difficult for most individuals. Conversations are the ideal form of communication in some respects, since they allow people with different views on a topic to learn from each other....

production (Einstein was speculated to have Asperger's Syndrome). To compensate, the inferior parietal lobe

Parietal lobe

The parietal lobe is a lobe in the brain. It is positioned above the occipital lobe and behind the frontal lobe.The parietal lobe integrates sensory information from different sensory modality, particularly determining spatial sense and navigation....

was 15 percent wider than normal. The inferior parietal region is responsible for mathematical thought, visuospatial cognition, and imagery of movement.

...of course, somebody who keeps a brain that he is not supposed to have for 20 years is obvioulsy NOT NORMAL...

Einstein's future first wife and he had a child, a girl, whose wherabouts was unknown after adoption. Einstein was so young then and so was his future wife. They both were promising students, she being brilliant in Chemistry and he in Physics, despite rumors to the contrary.

Einstein married her and they had two more children. Einstein insisted on being left alone and on privacy in his study. His demands although not peculiar at that time and place in history, nevertheless led to irreconsible differences and so they divorced. Einstein, it turns out, also loved the ladies and was popular with them according to rumor, especially during his Princeton years.

A period in Einstein's when he was quite ill he was cared for by his (2nd or 3rd) cousin, Ilsa. She overlooked all his alleged picadillos and eventually they married. Shortly before WWII, Einstein was let go from the Berlin Institute because he was Jewish and so he and Ilsa migrated to England and then America where he found work as a professor at Princeton where he remained until his death in 1955.

Sir Issac Newton, now here is one for you, if you like odd. He lived his live in self-imposed isolation for the most part and never married and never had anything to do with women. (or men, for all we know) SOURCE (http://www.geocities.com/madhukar_shukla/1newton.html)

Isaac never married, and died a virgin in 1726 (perhaps he realised that a life-long relationship would be too taxing on him, or perhaps it was his attachment to his mother which never let him contemplate a relationship with another woman). His discoveries changed the course of history of mankind, and kept enthralling generations of scientists. As a person, his life remained an enigma, to be summed up by Aldous Huxley some two centuries later:

"As a man he was a failure, as a monster he was superb."

So there you have it. The two masters of Physics.

Weird as they come. Not by any means defective, except perhaps, by personal choice.

...so are we all.

[bobover3 (imported)]

Dear A-1, everyone is weird, if you get to know them. That should be especially obvious here at EA, where everyone is weird from the get-go. Why should non-weirdness be such a virtue? I wrote about this in post #4. Anything excellent or praiseworthy is abnormal, almost by definition. Should we strive to eliminate excellence because it reproaches mediocrity? That's probably what many people feel, but their mediocrity prevents them from doing anything about it. Thank God!

And what's all this fuss about Einstein's brain, a virtual cult going back decades? Einstein was very smart, but he would have been the first to admit there are many others just as smart (like his pal Godel - a genius and severe hypochondriac). Einstein became a pop culture icon, sort of an intellectual's Beyonce, and pop culture demands an easy explanation. (We're smart; Einstein was smarter; it couldn't be because we veg out with beer and TV.)

As for Newton, held in awe by Einstein, and among the smartest people who ever lived ... do you really think he should have popped down to the pub of an evening, played darts and told fart jokes, like a reg'lr feller? We've got to get over this business of pitying our superiors. Our egos can stand the strain.

[Uncle Flo (imported)]

I don't see this as pity. It is more like defining the unusual traits of those we acknowledge to be different from the run of the mill. --FLO--

[A-1 (imported)]

Dear A-1, everyone is weird, if you get to know them. That should be especially obvious here at EA, where everyone is weird from the get-go. Why should non-weirdness be such a virtue? I wrote about this in post #4. Anything excellent or praiseworthy is abnormal, almost by definition. Should we strive to eliminate excellence because it reproaches mediocrity? That's probably what many people feel, but their mediocrity prevents them from doing anything about it. Thank God!

And what's all this fuss about Einstein's brain, a virtual cult going back decades? Einstein was very smart, but he would have been the first to admit there are many others just as smart (like his pal Godel - a genius and severe hypochondriac). Einstein became a pop culture icon, sort of an intellectual's Beyonce, and pop culture demands an easy explanation. (We're smart; Einstein was smarter; it couldn't be because we veg out with beer and TV.)

As for Newton, held in awe by Einstein, and among the smartest people who ever lived ... do you really think he should have popped down to the pub of an evening, played darts and told fart jokes, like a reg'lr feller? We've got to get over this business of pitying our superiors. Our egos can stand the strain.

Well, in a word, yes.

He could have at least been a little more like Leibnitz. Or, possibly like Richard Feynman.

Here, let me show you what I mean...

"There are 10^11 stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number. But it's only a hundred billion. It's less than the national deficit! We used to call them astronomical numbers. Now we should call them economical numbers."

"The real question of government versus private enterprise is argued on too philosophical and abstract a basis. Theoretically, planning may be good. But nobody has ever figured out the cause of government stupidity and until they do (and find the cure) all ideal plans will fall into quicksand."

"Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it."

"Physics is to math what sex is to masturbation."

"Looking back at the worst times, it always seems that they were times in which there were people who believed with absolute faith and absolute dogmatism in something. And they were so serious in this matter that they insisted that the rest of the world agree with them. And then they would do things that were directly inconsistent with their own beliefs in order to maintain that what they said was true."

"NASA owes it to the citizens from whom it asks support to be frank, honest, and informative, so that these citizens can make the wisest decisions for the use of their limited resources. For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled." —Appendix to the Rogers Commission Report on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident, June 9, 1986

"No government has the right to decide on the truth of scientific principles, nor to prescribe in any way the character of the questions investigated. Neither may a government determine the aesthetic value of artistic creation, nor limit the forms of literacy or artistic expression. Nor should it pronounce on the validity of economic, historic, religious, or philosophical doctrines. Instead it has a duty to its citizens to maintain the freedom, to let those citizens contribute to the further adventure and the development of the human race."

... sure beats staying in your room all day masturbating and then later claiming that you are going to die a virgin...

oops! did I just diss poor Issac Newton? what? ....again?!!?

[bobover3 (imported)]

The point is, we celebrate genius for what it does for the world. Every famous person has a private life that we don't see (unless it's Britney or Lindsay). We may be curious about these private lives, but they're really irrelevant. Geniuses are as likely to be odd or unhappy as ordinary people, not more likely. (Easy to find happy, well adjusted geniuses. What about Von Neumann or Fermi?) The only thing that makes them different is their genius, and that's what we're properly interested in. Pick any person at random, observe them closely and publish the results, and their minor ticks and quirks would suddenly seem huge.

Leibniz spent most of his life writing about theology. Now that's what I call masturbation. Calculus was a diversion for him.

Feynman mastered the art of public speaking. So? Must every thinker be ready for TV? No one would care about Feynman's remarks if he weren't first a celebrated physicist.

I suspect we care so much about the personal lives of the great because it brings them down to our level. We couldn't create calculus, or even make it through a calculus textbook, but at least we don't "stay in our rooms all day masturbating." But wait, plenty of people who aren't geniuses do that. It's all about the swelling self-regard of ordinary people, who resent anyone better than them. Sorry, I just don't have that kind of vanity. If we want to make the world a better place, one necessary step is to respect and value what's excellent, and to stop flattering mediocrity.

[coinflipper_21 (imported)]

The man who defines true genius is Erwin Schrodinger. He is known for proposing ground breaking concepts in quantum mechanics (Remember Schrodinger's Cat?) and physics in general. Also well known is what was considered his scandalous personal life. While he lived at Oxford, he spent his time, apparently happily, living in the same house, and having sex with two women. One was his wife and the other was his mistress, who was someone else's wife. The two women also shared the raising of Schrodinger's daughter by his mistress. Pulling THAT off took true genius!:)

[A-1 (imported)]

...

Feynman mastered the art of public speaking. So? Must every thinker be ready for TV? No one would care about Feynman's remarks if he weren't first a celebrated physicist.

...

Regardless of what his profession was, NASA cared plenty when he blew open their attempt to cover-up their bad decision-making process that lay at the root of the Challenger disaster.

Bobover, that's like saying that none of us would care what you had to say if you were not a 'celebrated' member of the E.A.

...kind of callous, don't you think?

[bobover3 (imported)]

But true. Feynman wouldn't have been on that panel at all were it not for what he had accomplished. If he were a high school science teacher instead of the great Feynman, no one would have known or cared what he said.

As for me, thanks for saying anyone cares what I say. It doesn't always feel that way. The great thing about a place like this is that only your words count, not who people think you are. There was a cartoon in the New Yorker of two dogs sitting in front of a computer. One dog says to the other, "on the internet, no one knows you're a dog." Makes me feel like howling at the moon.