"I was not a loser, but I just wanted to live ordinarily"
Perhaps this is the best proof of his extraordinary intelligence.
In the interest of human progress, I would prefer that people with great ability are encouraged by society and their peers (which I assume the great minds at HN are likely to be among). I mean this in terms of what I see should be encouraged and done so through morals and not laws (e.g. in no way promote the violation of a person's freedom or liberty).
If you can read Outliers and not understand the horrible science and generalizations behind it then you are an idiot. 120 IQ?? Are you kidding me? Maybe it makes you feel better because you only have a 120 IQ, but that precludes you from achieving anything meaningful in math and science. High IQ does not mean you will be a high achiever, but only those with exception IQ's are able to achieve in certain fields.
This is the problem with America. This is why America will lose to China in the next decades. We are trained to feel better about ourselves be devaluing those with superior intellect and ability.
[..] only those with exception IQ's are able to achieve in certain fields
IQ tests are utter bullcrap
Also, there are a couple of famous mathematicians (names don't come to mind) who are notorious for sucking at proofs. Their conjectures were very good and almost always right, but they relied on future mathematicians to prove their work (details, details). They would likely zero the Putnam.
This just shows that IQ tests are garbage. Top level math contests are a much better indicator of your intelligence. I don't know what tests you're talking about because USAMO and Putnam don't have internationals.
And what mathematicians are you talking about? Take time to look them up because I can think of no examples of great mathematicians being "bad at proofs". That would mean they were bad at logic, which would mean they were bad at math. Being more famous for a conjecture doesn't mean you were bad at proofs. To even produce those conjecture requires deep understanding of the math leading to it. I can almost guarantee that there are no great mathematicians who would zero Putnam. I don't even zero Putnam, and there are plenty of people way better than me who still have no chance of becoming a great mathematician.
Do you realize how brilliant a mathematician has to be for you to even ever know his name?
And what mathematicians are you talking about? I retract that: "sucked at proofs" is too strong a statement. There was a time when the same degree of rigor wasn't expected, so a lot of great mathematicians never or rarely wrote proofs. An example would be Ramanujan, who contributed immensely to mathematics and had amazing intuition, but who rarely wrote proofs and, when he did, Hardy usually had to fill in the holes.
On the other hand, had Ramanujan desired or needed to learn how to write rigorous proofs, there's no doubt that he would have been able to do so.
As for Putnam as a "better indicator" of intelligence than IQ tests, I'd agree, but it still only measures one kind of intelligence. The problem with IQ tests is that they aren't accurate in the upper ranges (140+) because that's not what they're designed for.
- Feynman was younger than 15 when he took it, and very near this factoid in Gleick's bio, he recounts Feynman asking about very basic algebra (2^x=4) and wondering why anything found it hard - the IQ is mentioned immediately before the section on 'grammar school', or middle school, implying that the 'school IQ test' was done well before he entered high school, putting him at much younger than 15. (15 is important because Feynman had mastered calculus by age 15, Gleick says, so he wouldn't be asking his father why algebra is useful at age >15.) - Given that Feynman was born in 1918, this implies the IQ test was done around 1930 or earlier. Given that it was done by the New York City school district, this implies also that it was one of the 'ratio' based IQ tests - utterly outdated and incorrect by modern standards. - Finally, it's well known that IQ tests are very unreliable in childhood; kids can easily bounce around compared to their stable adult scores.
So, it was a bad test, which even under ideal circumstances is unreliable & prone to error, and administered in a mass fashion and likely not by a genuine psychometrician.
As the saying goes, the plural of anecdote is not data, and this isn't even a very good anecdote. (I charitably assume that Feynman isn't joking here about the score; Gleick gives no source.)
Child prodigy and Fields Medalist Terry Tao disagrees: http://terrytao.wordpress.com/career-advice/does-one-have-to...
And he's trying to convince the people who were only Putnam honorable mentions or whatever not to give up on math. This has nothing to do with people with a 120 IQ (I know IQ is a BS measure, but when people say 120 IQ, they mean someone who is above-average, but modestly so).
I wonder what Terry Tao's definition of genius is. Would he consider himself a genius? Everybody else would. But he might not.
Right, so on the hand, he's brilliant and understand both things that are ordinary and things that are extraordinary, but when it comes to somewhat softer knowledge, suddenly his genius is a reason for him to not understand something. Luckily we have you to explain that to him and us...</below the waist, but you are really, really asking for it>
Tao is a genius that teaches other people how to do math and we may well assume that he understands what it requires. He has probably taught dozen of students and according to him, they could be people that score 120 on an IQ test and yet succeed at math.
Finally, if only geniuses could succeed at math, most Ph.D. students would not count as successful, despite advancing the science. You're redefining 'success' to suit your needs and you're doing the same thing with other facts: bending their ambiguity to support your thesis, instead of basing your thesis on a single interpretation of the facts.
My parents were smart enough to not tell me (until I was halfway through uni), because they knew I wasn't mature enough to know that the smartest thing you can do (especially when you are learning) is giving other people's intelligence the benefit of the doubt and try to learn from them.
While in concept it is a great idea, the realities are usually much harder for the exceptional gifted. I have a really good friend with aspergers syndrome who has as slightly higher IQ (190's) than mine. He is very well liked but his perception of reality is quite distorted due to his hindrance, unfortunately high IQ is many times coupled with some other form of mental or physical impairment, there are a lot of theories as to why this is, but sufficient to say not all of them are a joy. My point being these impairments are usually the target of ridicule at formative points in an intelligent persons life and some times bitters them from the pursuit of their potential and in extreme cases like my friend bitters them from helping better mankind at all.
I wrote an essay on my experience, a bit of a similar topic.
http://daniellefong.com/2008/05/15/advice-to-the-bright-and-...