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Genius can’t be taught

stewfortier.com

11–14 of 14 posts

Re: Genius can’t be taught

#12
I know, they're bloody insufferable and impossible to teach. Best, is let them get demotivated and turn to drugs and crime: then we get evil geniuses who can't learn.

Re: Genius can’t be taught

#13
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/László_Polgár

Well I don't generally consider chess mastery to be a sign of genius. Or maths, or music either. Fundamentally they are not creative, generative activities. There's a reason they are called a prodigy and not a genius. Of course there are the rare genius composer (eg Mozart) or mathematician (eg Euler).

I consider mastery of anything to be a sign of genius. Someone out there is in the top .001% of skill for underwater basketweaving, and I think they're a genius in that category.

Re: Genius can’t be taught

#14
What is genius? Genius is characterized by highly divergent thought, especially as compared with conventional wisdom. From this base notion of divergence, you actually get either genius or insanity.

Genius is characterized by divergent thought that feeds back with the external environment (society, historic events, etc.)

Insanity is characterized by this same divergent thought with the feedback being self-referential only. Thus it isn’t grounded in any way that society recognizes.

With that, neither genius nor insanity requires anything other than a highly divergent thought process marked by a level of attachment or detachment to society.

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