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How Geniuses Think

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Re: How Geniuses Think

#31

Post by astrofinch »

m_for_monkey wrote: post #9
delluminatus wrote: post #4

This article is quite interesting. I thought it was good that the author restricted himself to a description of genius traits, instead of implying that applying these traits would make one a genius. At least, until the summary, where he threw that out the window. It's important to not engage in some kind of magic thinking here: altering your behavior patterns to match "genius" behavior is self-defeating. When one is…

Well, in the summary he cites some evidence that "geniusness" can be learned, at least if your teacher himself is a genius. "J. J. Thompson and Ernest Rutherford between them trained seventeen Nobel laureates" - quite a coincidence.

Maybe they had just accumulated a good set of heuristics for doing good research.

Re: How Geniuses Think

#32

Post by jacquesm »

Think of 'genius' as something you get for free.

You can make up for that lack to a certain extent by applying yourself. A person applying themselves with merely average innate ability more often than not will outperform a person born with some windfall. This goes for money, brains, the lot. Apply yourself, that's half the battle.

Plenty of people never learn to apply themselves and that includes plenty of geniuses and people born into wealth.

The best part: whether or not you apply yourself is under your control. What you're born with is the luck of the draw.

And knowing a few things will make it that much easier to learn a bit more, knowledge begets more knowledge and insight.

Re: How Geniuses Think

#33

Post by astrofinch »

ljlolel wrote: post #11
casca wrote: post #3

This article lists a few characteristics that intelligent and successful (for some definition thereof) people have. The characteristics seem to be neither necessary nor sufficient and the examples are clearly cherry-picked. If there's any scientific or research basis for asserting them, the author hasn't shared. It's like the author looked a some intelligent people and superficially extracted their secret. It's like…

That's basically the premise of Good to Great and Built to Last.

Has there ever been a book or news article that actually made an attempt to randomly sample individuals/companies and tease out relationships between some hypothesized factor and outcome?

It doesn't even seem like you have to be much of a genius to do this...

Re: How Geniuses Think

#34

Post by [deleted] »

m_for_monkey wrote: post #9
delluminatus wrote: post #4

This article is quite interesting. I thought it was good that the author restricted himself to a description of genius traits, instead of implying that applying these traits would make one a genius. At least, until the summary, where he threw that out the window. It's important to not engage in some kind of magic thinking here: altering your behavior patterns to match "genius" behavior is self-defeating. When one is…

Well, in the summary he cites some evidence that "geniusness" can be learned, at least if your teacher himself is a genius. "J. J. Thompson and Ernest Rutherford between them trained seventeen Nobel laureates" - quite a coincidence.

[deleted]

Re: How Geniuses Think

#35

Post by ams6110 »

sophacles wrote: post #13
ams6110 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think not having fear of being "wrong" must be a part of it also.

I think you are on to something here. I have worked with many very smart men and women who couldn't produce. I have know doubt that they were smarter than me (more knowledgable, quicker to answers, generally quicker to understand techniques and maths). Despite this, they would spend absurd amounts of time on fairly simple stuff. There was some need to "do it the right way" that led to effective paralysis. I'm not try…

I am working with some of those types of people right now. Researchers, who are undeniably smart, but seem to be far behind on their project goals, micro-managing incidental tasks, and not focusing on the big picture.

As to the source of the fear coming from schooling, I'm not sure. I'd never punish one of my kids who got a bad grade because he applied some creative approach or reasoning that happened to be incorrect, but most cases of bad grades I've seen are due to simple lack of effort.

Re: How Geniuses Think

#36

Post by olalonde »

jacobolus wrote: post #21
mvzink wrote: post #12

Genius is a sort of myth. For example, people seem to have the idea that before Charles Darwin, biology was in a dark age without any ideas other than intelligent design or some such. Well, no, Darwin was actually relatively unoriginal in his ideas about evolution, which was already commonplace in biological circles. He really just added a bit of sciency-but-not-quite-scientific rigor and coined the term "natural sel…

> Darwin was actually relatively unoriginal in his ideas about evolution, which was already commonplace in biological circles. He really just added a bit of sciency-but-not-quite-scientific rigor and coined the term "natural selection", then got famous for it. That’s entirely unfair. Darwin spent his whole life furiously gathering evidence from everywhere he could and communicating with the rest of the biology commun…

There actually exists some "hard-wired" geniuses, but not the kind of genius we would use to describe e.g. Darwin. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xd1gywPOibg

edit: Found a better reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superhuman

Re: How Geniuses Think

#37

Post by pcrh »

astrofinch wrote: post #30

I stopped reading when they quoted Freud as a genius.

You have to consider how things were before Freud before dismissing him. Before Freud there was no idea that the mind subconsciously processed information. Although his ideas of how psychology works were very "infantile", they were the first attempt to investigate the subconscious, thus revolutionary.

Re: How Geniuses Think

#38

Post by mynameishere »

nikcub wrote: post #7

> Richard Feynman, who many acknowledge to be the last great American genius (his IQ was a merely respectable 122). I've always wanted a quick, one-line, anecdote as to why IQ is bullshit. I think I just found it.

He almost certainly flubbed it on purpose, or is just lying. Also, it was never meant to differentiate geniuses.

Also, you don't need quick, one-line, anecdote to explain why 1 (one) is not statistically significant. It's actually pretty obvious.

Re: How Geniuses Think

#39

Post by jimhefferon »

m_for_monkey wrote: post #9
delluminatus wrote: post #4

This article is quite interesting. I thought it was good that the author restricted himself to a description of genius traits, instead of implying that applying these traits would make one a genius. At least, until the summary, where he threw that out the window. It's important to not engage in some kind of magic thinking here: altering your behavior patterns to match "genius" behavior is self-defeating. When one is…

Well, in the summary he cites some evidence that "geniusness" can be learned, at least if your teacher himself is a genius. "J. J. Thompson and Ernest Rutherford between them trained seventeen Nobel laureates" - quite a coincidence.

Of course, they were the top people in their fields and so attracted the top students. Having good people coming in helps with a person's production of great people.

Re: How Geniuses Think

#40

Post by bane »

I've long thought that the model of "genius" as a "really smart person" was a hopelessly flawed model. There are simply too many different kinds and measures of "smartness" to collapse all of them under such a simple umbrella.

For example, consider the notion that IQ is a measure of capacity. To wit, let's use an extended and natural analogy -- a container.

Consider a notional container measured only by its depth.

A yard of beer is 36 inches (~91.5cm) tall and most people would consider this a lot of beer. This plays out in people who are extreme specialists -- extremely knowledgeable in only one or two areas. But are they geniuses?

So we have to consider breadth. I have a large mixing bowl I use when marinating meat that's about 26 inches (66.04cm) across, and most people would consider it to hold a lot of meat. This plays out in people who are extreme generalists, not particularly good in any one area, but can cut across disciplines easily.

Yet both containers pale when compared to a 55 gallon (~208.2L) drum in terms of volume. Yet the drum is not as tall as the yard of beer and not as wide as my marinating bowl!

But volume is not the only thing that matters!

I wouldn't pour molten steel into any of the containers above. And I've used stoneware that cracks when used with extremely cold liquids.

What about containers with different compartments that can hold both?

We also know about people who have perfect recall but almost no creativity, and creative geniuses that can barely remember their own name.

Can somebody who is a generalist only know about several topics or can they synthesize it into something new and novel?

How about the person that, regardless of depth or breadth, can see far reaching implications -- second, third, forth degree effects -- when new information is presented? Or the extreme tactical thinker that can react to new things with extreme speed?

Napoleon and Einstein are both commonly regarded as geniuses, but the nature of their intelligence couldn't be more different.

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