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How Geniuses Think

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Re: How Geniuses Think

#81

Post by specialist »

ntkachov wrote: post #79
thaumaturgy wrote: post #70

A reasonable book covering some of this topic is Origins of Genius by Dean Keith Simonton. Unfortunately, aside from being excessively wordy and light on supporting evidence for some of its assertions, it suffers from the same problem as this article and most of the comments here: people can't agree on what a genius is. Debates about the foundations of genius are meaningless until we get a better idea of what a geniu…

Lets "think like a genius" and reconsider this notion of a genius. I propose this definition: A genius is someone who, through their work, insipres the masses to take part in their field. Because lets face it, your not a genius until everyone agrees you are a genius. Therefore, in order to be a genius you must make affect the masses.

Just like there's different types of intelligence, beauty, taste, etc. So I'm cool with your definition.

In one of the Feynman books, a colleague said something like: With most really smart people, when they explain something to you, you get can it and think to yourself "I could of thought of that, if I was smarter." But with Feynman's work, even after you understood it, you'd think "How in the world did he come up with this?!"

Re: How Geniuses Think

#82

Post by zerostar07 »

Retric wrote: post #47
zerostar07 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many other canonical examples of geniuses that serve as a good foundation for the myth of Genius. Think about how daring it was to propose some of the most unconventional scientific insights when there wasn't even enough experimental evidence to justify them (why would light speed ever be constant? why would anyone ever think light is emitted in discrete packets?). Those ideas sounded crazy enough as it is,…

You have the light speed thing backwards. People had already had a fair amount of evidence that the speed of light was constant, it's just one of those things that's hard to accept / build a reasonable model for why that might be the case. Think of it as an open question if the experiments where inaccurate or the universe was just strange. Until relatively came along and said, assume the speed of light is constant wh…

The genius leap (from which special relativity is derived) is the postulate that it's constant for regardless of the state of motion. The older research mentions nothing of the sort.

Re: How Geniuses Think

#83

Post by zerostar07 »

bmelton wrote: post #50
zerostar07 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Au contraire, i think, just like really great art, it's easy for an average person like me to identify genius when we see it.

Except that generally, the average person knows little about the inner workings of things. It is easy for the average person to believe that building Twitter was hard, though surely it was. Our ability to understand things decidedly maps to things we can already understand. To give a completely made up scenario about how this might have gone: Stupid person: "Wow. Building twitter is hard. You type on a website and so…

Twitter s not genius, it's great incremental technology. Wolfram alpha is genius

Re: How Geniuses Think

#84

Post by [deleted] »

bmelton wrote: post #50
zerostar07 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Au contraire, i think, just like really great art, it's easy for an average person like me to identify genius when we see it.

Except that generally, the average person knows little about the inner workings of things. It is easy for the average person to believe that building Twitter was hard, though surely it was. Our ability to understand things decidedly maps to things we can already understand. To give a completely made up scenario about how this might have gone: Stupid person: "Wow. Building twitter is hard. You type on a website and so…

[deleted]

Re: How Geniuses Think

#85

Post by Tichy »

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…

Yet some people produce brilliant things, others don't. While I also think that it might be attainable for everyone (at least start from birth, not sure about turning into a genius in later age), not everybody becomes a brilliant producer. A lot of circumstances have to come together (for example Mozart's father was apparently also one of the most famous music teachers of his time and started to train him from an early age). Maybe you could hire a brilliant music teacher and start training your child from age 3 and produce a music genius. But few people choose to do so.

Again I have to refer to Laszlo Polgar who turned his three kids into chess prodigies - and it was planned, he even advertised for a wife who would be willing to do the experiment with him. To rephrase: he didn't go "hey, my kids seem to enjoy chess, let's teach them more of it", he went "let's have three kids and turn them into chess prodigies".

The article posted here is pretty useless, though...

Re: How Geniuses Think

#86

Post by calibraxis »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #70

A reasonable book covering some of this topic is Origins of Genius by Dean Keith Simonton. Unfortunately, aside from being excessively wordy and light on supporting evidence for some of its assertions, it suffers from the same problem as this article and most of the comments here: people can't agree on what a genius is. Debates about the foundations of genius are meaningless until we get a better idea of what a geniu…

Yeah, I think "genius" is a romantic notion which is meant to be mysterious. (That is, a genius has a mysterious superhero quality, and you're not really supposed to understand what's going on, unless you too are a genius. Personally, I think it has to do with intellectuals' desire to spread mysticism about the nature of their work.)

Worth reading: (http://terrytao.wordpress.com/career-advice/does-one-have-to...)

I mean, there is no end of literature by highly skilled people who offer general opinions on how to do a good job. Noam Chomsky, Rich Hickey, Jerry Lettvin, George Polya, Bertrand Russell, and Terence Tao are common examples. (Well, Chomsky is a bit different in that he shies away from individual advice, believing in diversity and improved societies, but if you look closely, he does offer advice like, maybe paraphrasing a little, "Allow yourself to be confused.") But I suppose "Ideas on doing a Good Job" doesn't poke at people's desires for validation as much as "How to be a Genius."

Re: How Geniuses Think

#87

Post by checkers »

calibraxis wrote: post #86
thaumaturgy wrote: post #70

A reasonable book covering some of this topic is Origins of Genius by Dean Keith Simonton. Unfortunately, aside from being excessively wordy and light on supporting evidence for some of its assertions, it suffers from the same problem as this article and most of the comments here: people can't agree on what a genius is. Debates about the foundations of genius are meaningless until we get a better idea of what a geniu…

Yeah, I think "genius" is a romantic notion which is meant to be mysterious. (That is, a genius has a mysterious superhero quality, and you're not really supposed to understand what's going on, unless you too are a genius. Personally, I think it has to do with intellectuals' desire to spread mysticism about the nature of their work.) Worth reading: ( http://terrytao.wordpress.com/career-advice/does-one-have-to... ) I…

Ya'll talking about Steven Paul Jobs? Check out this blog site and get more about the latest that technology has to offer! http://techiest.blogspot.com.

Re: How Geniuses Think

#89

Post by mattmanser »

_debug_ wrote: post #67
mattmanser wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And hard work oversold.

Thank you. I've been quite sceptical of 10000 hours of Deliberate Practice, etc; esp. after seeing Tiger Woods play golf at the age of two : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxPmzIKBris It's been a long standing tradition to oversell the power of hard work. I believe the word for it is "hopium".

hopium, I like it!

Re: How Geniuses Think

#90

Post by crntaylor »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #70

A reasonable book covering some of this topic is Origins of Genius by Dean Keith Simonton. Unfortunately, aside from being excessively wordy and light on supporting evidence for some of its assertions, it suffers from the same problem as this article and most of the comments here: people can't agree on what a genius is. Debates about the foundations of genius are meaningless until we get a better idea of what a geniu…

Mensa, a worldwide organization of self-described geniuses ... Should they not be regarded as geniuses? Why or why not?

The condition for membership of Mensa is that you score "at or above the 98th percentile on certain standardised IQ or other approved intelligence tests" [1]. I don't think it makes sense to refer to the 140 million potential members of Mensa as "geniuses" no matter what your definition of genius is.

Also, if it's true that Richard Feynman's IQ was around 122, then he wouldn't have qualified for membership of Mensa.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mensa_International#Membership_...

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