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The myth of ‘mad’ genius

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Re: The myth of ‘mad’ genius

#41

Post by toomanybeersies »

dbxz wrote: post #26

I taught gifted education at a prestigious middle school for five years. Over 300 kids came through my classroom during that time. I saw it all. Seizures. Fistfights. One girl was pretty sure there were secret messages from the principal in the tests I gave. Lots of them started taking drugs early too. The culmination happened in the Fall of 2012, when one girl convinced her friends that, if they killed themselves, t…

I used to go to a gifted education class once a week when I was around 13 years old.

Probably half the class or more had some form of condition, Autism, ADHD, depression, etc.

Looking back at it now, I don't think it was the case that gifted people are generally "mad". I'm a fairly normal person, and so were a lot of other people in the class. I think that rather, it was that these kids didn't integrate well into conventional education, but this gifted education class was very understanding and accepting of people's "quirks", and had a much more open learning environment where people could grow in their own way. I ended up there because I struggled with the structured nature of normal school.

I've met plenty of people over the years who could be considered gifted (in this case, top 5% IQ), most of them are completely normal and probably just dealt with the overly structured nature of normal school.

Re: The myth of ‘mad’ genius

#42

Post by 8bitsrule »

The Romantic stereotype that creativity is enhanced by a mood disorder

That's postulated as a given. If it's not a given, then it's a red herring. The author supplies no evidence that it's a given. As far as I got, the phrase 'mood disorder' was undefined.

... But is there any scientific reason to believe in a connection?

Science doesn't believe, science constructs and improves models based on repeatable observations. That which cannot be observed cannot be modelled. People can choose to 'believe' those models ... which is 'faith'. Which science was invented to get away from.

So in the first two paragraphs, the author prepares us for the illucid neo-phrenology which follows.

Re: The myth of ‘mad’ genius

#43

Post by RealityVoid »

hyperpallium wrote: post #37
commandlinefan wrote: post #3

I've always wondered if a lot of "eccentric" people aren't just behaving the way everybody would naturally behave if they could get away with it. I say and do a lot of things because I have to if I want to have food to eat and a place to sleep, but I'll never know how different my behavior _might_ have been if I were rich enough or brilliant enough that people would just put up with whatever I happened to feel like d…

It's related to conformity. If you automatically, naturally and agreeably fit in with what everybody else does, you won't tend to think outside the orthodoxy. But if you question everything, try to work things out from first principles, and wonder what happens if things are done differently... well, you're "eccentric", at best. It seems logically possible for a person to be a perfect conformist socially, and a wild f…

I honestly do not think that is the case. Using a sample size of one(me) I can tell you that while I'm very agreeable and sometimes too nice to people around me, when it comes to my opinion about things or digging for the truth, I will push and dig and (sometimes recklessly) support unpopular opinions, even if in the minority. I surely can't be that unusual.

Re: The myth of ‘mad’ genius

#44

Post by dfee »

commandlinefan wrote: post #3

I've always wondered if a lot of "eccentric" people aren't just behaving the way everybody would naturally behave if they could get away with it. I say and do a lot of things because I have to if I want to have food to eat and a place to sleep, but I'll never know how different my behavior _might_ have been if I were rich enough or brilliant enough that people would just put up with whatever I happened to feel like d…

I’d be considered eccentric. It’s not discipline or the lack thereof. There is a piercing focus that overwhelms the demands of normalcy.

But I won’t talk about me. I’ll talk about a friend of mine. He stepped away from his role with the US Gov’t and spent the last year wandering through Africa and Eastern Europe. I don’t concern myself with him having a roof over his head, because he always will. He just doesn’t define himself by living in SF and putting a roof over his head; nor does he bemoan what could have been. He just is.

Re: The myth of ‘mad’ genius

#45

Post by TangoTrotFox »

Speaking of the stereotype of 'mad genius', as opposed to the eccentric creative which this article is about, I would hypothesize that 'mad' is simply a mislabeling of the fact that those who are more intelligent are generally going to be less guided by social norms and more by their own logic and views. Being able to follow your own logic, without bounds, is something that is most people, for some reason, do not tend to do.

Einstein is the best example of this. Relativity, and its implications, are intuitively insane and absurd. Yet his logic led him there and he invested an immense amount of effort and energy trying to prove it. And it turned out he was correct. In a parallel universe where the laws of physics are more sane, Einstein would have been labeled as insane for even imagining such an 'absurd' idea might be reality.

Re: The myth of ‘mad’ genius

#46

Post by gh02t »

minikites wrote: post #34
darawk wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a reasonable theory, but it doesn't explain why this phenomenon is (somewhat) unique to art. The explanation you gave applies equally well to say, Basketball players and business tycoons. And for the most part, there's no social wisdom i'm aware of that says you have to be a drug addicted asshole to be one of those things.

The article has a good response to this, artists generally have a more flexible work environment: >The creative occupations considered in these studies are overwhelmingly in the arts, which frequently provide greater autonomy and less rigid structure than the average nine-to-five job. This makes these jobs more conducive to the success of individuals who struggle with performance consistency as the result of a mood d…

Artists can also often work in isolation, especially someone already regarded as a genius. I suspect plenty of people have a tendency towards eccentric behavior, but suppress it because they need to participate in society in order to survive. A genius engineer for example is less able to be wildly eccentric, because an engineer is inherently dependent on others and depends on others to implement their designs.

Another example is the stereotypical eccentric mathematical genius, of which there are endless examples. Pure math shares something with art here, in that a single gifted person can produce important results independently. I mean, I'm having a hard time coming up with very many examples of famous mathematicians who weren't a bit strange.

Re: The myth of ‘mad’ genius

#47

Post by TangoTrotFox »

swayvil wrote: post #14

I used to be nuts. And you know what, I went with it. I could focus on a project 24-7-365. That's how great projects get done. And people who get great projects done are what we call "geniuses". I'm better now. Sometimes I think of the great projects that I could do but then I think, "no thanks, life is bigger than that".

In what way is life bigger than that? You'll be dead in the blink of an eye relative to any meaningful timescale. And so will everybody and everything you know. All that will be left is what you create and leave behind.

Okay for some this is children, but that's hardly a legacy in many cases. You have greatness born to fools and fools born of greatness, so in the end you're just leaving your mark as a roll of the dice which is hardly unique in any case.

But what we create and help bring to light are things that can reshape and redirect humanity, changing our path forever.

Re: The myth of ‘mad’ genius

#48

Post by vorpalhex »

azhu wrote: post #13
nur0n wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are people brilliant because they don't care or do they not care because they are brilliant? Seems to be a little of both...

Or perhaps brilliant people care a lot and just have the ability to pull it off so well that everyone else thinks they don't care. The real answer to how to be happy is not to not care how you affect others, it is to master your ability to affect them how you intend to. Those who recommend the "not giving a fuck" approach step on their own bootstraps given how large a fuck they give about not giving a fuck.

Not giving a fuck isn't the same as apathy. Today I spent an hour waiting for some poor chap to repin a simple lock at the hardware store - I didn't give a fuck that he was a bit clueless and flying by the seat of his pants - but if someone scammed me tomorrow I would absolutely jump into action.

There are things that don't matter (someone a bit clueless working earnestly) and things that do (scammers, violence, etc). The goal is to differentiate and respond appropriately.

Re: The myth of ‘mad’ genius

#49

Post by humbleMouse »

themodelplumber wrote: post #11
askl56 wrote: post #8

I've always believed that "genius" is simply mental illness with an audience. People such as Mozart were known for feeling nervous anxious etc, until they wrote music which was cathartic, which nowadays I'm sure would be diagnosed as some sort of mental illness.

This is part of the reason why "mental illness" is a broken term for certain applications. Unevenly-matched skill (coping, etc) vs. circumstance (group psychology, social standards) is one alternate POV that better explains why a "mentally-ill" person could create genius works. They have become conditioned to exploring extremes by dint of circumstance and personal history; their liabilities, struggles, and even perio…

That last sentence is profound, nice comment +1

Re: The myth of ‘mad’ genius

#50

Post by salty_biscuits »

James Joyce said

"To say that a great genius is mad, while at the same time recognizing his artistic merit, is no better than to say he is rheumatic or diabetic"

His daughter had mental health issues. She went to see Jung and the exchange allegedly went

“Doctor Jung, have you noticed that my daughter seems to be submerged in the same waters as me?” to which he answered: “Yes, but where you swim, she drowns.”

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