What makes a genius? | Hacker News Reader

What makes a genius?

nationalgeographic.com

55 pointsjgrahamc55 comments

I think that there is a lot of revisionism in the concept of "genius".

Just look at the movie "Amadeus". It looks like Mozart genius is the envy of the mediocre Salieri. In fact, Salieri was an incredible composer himself.

Then you have people like John Carmack. He is a figure in the game industry. But one of the best Doom ever has been developed without him.

The solitary genius creates an interesting narrative, but it is just a simplification of the reality. Too much get attributed to individuals once they achieve fame. This is similar to the "survivor bias", where we also attribute more to the individual and his ideas and abilities than it really is worth.

> Hailed for his “otherworldly ingenuity,” Tao won the prestigious Fields Medal in 2006 at the age of 31. Yet he rejects lofty notions of genius. What really matters, he writes, is “hard work, directed by intuition, literature, and a bit of luck.”

This is for me, a more down to earth, realistic explanation.

I would say Tao had everything this article talks about. Innate intelligence, a great environment where his parents made sure of his opportunities, and the hard work and persistence required to succeed.

The trouble is it's hard to know how many other people had exactly the same characteristics but not the luck. Without knowing that, we don't know how useful this definition of "genius" is.

In the case of mathematical accomplishments, there is an objective way to predict people's future possibilities: How young and how well does the person do in International Math Olympiads?

These Fields medalists all fit the pattern: Maryam Mirzakhani, Grigori Perelman, Terence Tao. Check out others at IMO Hall of Fame--all top listers I checked are doing very well, although many of them are still young and studying. [1]

So it does seem most top math prodigies who stay in the field or adjacent ones continue to produce exemplary works, and luck does not seem to play a huge factor there.

I mean, luck may contribute to a given single accomplishment, but it also happens because the person works on the problem from many different angles, using creative approaches based on sufficiently deep understanding. If someone tackles several problems with such ingenuity, at least one of them is bound to get solved.

In other fields, we have fewer objective measures, but from my years of experience teaching and mentoring gifted and highly gifted kids, you can tell how well they will do academically at the university level by the time they are in grade 3.

[1] https://www.imo-official.org/hall.aspx

What portion of gifted children participate in the math Olympiad?

I am not an expert and I don't have the numbers, but not all "gifted" are talented in mathematics. Also the study of the field of mathematics is a task of endurance and slow but steady work, this is something the highest tier gifted (profoundly gifted) tend to suck at even with proper disipline training, but the profoundly gifted is so few in number that they don't really have an effect on the percentage.

Gifted often have one or more of the five overexcitabilities, one of those are Intellectual overexcitability, one can guess that a notable part of gifted who participate got Intellectual overexcitability, then you can make a guess that ca 20% of gifted got Intellectual overexcitability, that 50% fail to get that far in school because of the problems gifted face, then 30% from those gifted living in shitty enviroments that stops them from learning about the joy of mathematics and then 50% of those in turn actually puts in the time to learn mathematics, then 25% is actually good enough to enter so maybe: 0,375%

The education system really sucks for gifted kids, especially highly giften, exceptionally gifted and profoundly gifted, the mildly gifted and moderately gifted can be helped alot by the imperfect solution of being moved up a few classes.

>This is for me, a more down to earth, realistic explanation.

It's called modesty. Tao is the quintessential genius. Certainly hard work is a necessary condition for works of genius, but it's not in itself a sufficient explanation.

>I think that there is a lot of revisionism in the concept of "genius". Just look at the movie "Amadeus". It looks like Mozart genius is the envy of the mediocre Salieri. In fact, Salieri was an incredible composer himself.

That's not a "revisionism in the concept of "genius"" -- just a misrepresentation of Salieri (at best). A revisionism in the concept of genius would involve redefining what genius itself means. And in any case, nobody really thinks of Salieri as a big a genius as Mozart, movie or not.

>Then you have people like John Carmack. He is a figure in the game industry. But one of the best Doom ever has been developed without him.

So? John Carmac being a gaming genius or not doesn't preclude other geniuses, or other people being able to do equally good work (even less so since he already laid much of the groundwork for them for 2+ decades).

>The solitary genius creates an interesting narrative, but it is just a simplification of the reality. Too much get attributed to individuals once they achieve fame.

That's true.

i personally have never understood john carmack's "genius" role. smart guy for sure. but in many ways, i tend to think of a genius being without a peer in their direct domain, and for john carmack, that's simply not the case. the most prominent example is tim sweeney. it's just that he isn't as big into marketing himself as carmack is. tim sweeney has arguably outdone carmack in many ways.

Then you have people like John Carmack. He is a figure in the game industry. But one of the best Doom ever has been developed without him.

Carmack has never been famous as a game designer. How good or bad his games turned out to be had a lot more to do with Romero, who actually did the game and level design work.

Carmack is worshipped as a game technologist. The legendary stories about him are all based on achieving things with limited hardware. For that he has few modern rivals.

I've introspected, thought, and read about this for several decades, and here is roughly what I think at present. What's perceived as genius is really a path. One either stumbles upon or is led to a certain useful mental tool, probably in very early childhood. That tool unlocks new paths, as in a video game skill tree, with new tools to be discovered and leveraged. Schoolwork looks completely different to the person armed with these tools. Nature itself looks different.

People have commented my whole life on "how easy things come" to me. I understand why they think that. The only visible product is the grades and professional accomplishments. Internally though, it felt like an arduous, epic struggle, and a continuous obsessive search for more powerful ways in which to think.

These things surely interact with whatever heritable intelligence exists, but they are also separate from it.

Neural plasticity at a young age is probably key. Not that you can't learn effectively when you are older, but your obsessions when you are younger really take hold. I think this accounts for the majority of genius.

I still credit my academic achievements to my father reading 'Dune' to me as a child, because I was fascinated by the (paraphrased) introduction to one of the chapters: "Many comment on how quickly Paul Muad-dib learned, but they do not realize that his first lesson was in how to learn, and the first part of that lesson was believing he could learn... it is amazing how few people believe they can learn".

That book is probably the reason I treated learning as a learnable skill rather than an innate ability.

My parents got me my most influential book when I was 4. "What Makes It Go? What Makes It Work? What Makes It Fly? What Makes It Float?" by Joe Kaufman. It taught me that everything has causal inner mechanisms. From then on, I had xray vision and could imagine the inner mechanisms of every object at work.

The conviction that the world, pace certain "intrinsic" limits of the information-theoretic or quantum-mechanical nature, is understandable is a singularly powerful one. It's something lots of people think they believe, but it took me (anecdotally) until I was 9 or 10 to internalise it. The belief that the X-ray vision you speak of exists is enough in many cases for one to "get" it.

I do not mean to start a tangential flamewar, but the ability to accept and be comfortable with not knowing, while at the same time believing that the unknown is not unknowable, is something a certain kind of religious worldview precludes. This is one thing which I realised quite early on that my parents didn't share my beliefs on: for them, there's some underlying agent that chooses what happens in situations that we call random or do not understand:

"I don't know why this happens, but there's no reason why we never should/it's not computable/etc."

"Ah, child, it's time to accept things as they are. When I do not understand, I say God's causing it to happen."

It's a confusing mixture of the different positions one can take on determinism coupled with a sort of complacence I find remarkable.

For anyone who came to this article hoping it might contain any actual concrete or interesting information about the nature of human intelligence: it doesn't. Go ahead and skip the read.

The article is just a tiresome romanticized rehash of the myth of genius and the associated pop-science.

> For anyone who came to this article hoping it might contain any actual concrete or interesting information about the nature of human intelligence: it doesn't. Go ahead and skip the read.

Complete agreement. It's easy to detect fluff articles on the topic of genius -- they tend to include pictures of tissue samples taken of Einstein's brain, the presence of which can only confess how little we know.

I like to think that a genius is a person who looks at life from a different angle than the rest of us, who isn't limited by what people tell them to be or do, who want to know why something is the way it is and not just accept it, and who is not afraid to ask or answer difficult questions.

The problem is that definition just as easily applies to an unapologetic convicted rapist.

From what I've seen, genius for me can be reduced to "what one is able to achieve in some dimension with a limited amount of instruction".

I subscribe to the idea that someone can be taught to do anything, given enough time and the right guidance. However we are all limited by our available time and our access to instructors. At the top, this becomes even more pressing - who can teach you when you're at the forefront of whatever you have chosen to specialize in? This is where genius comes in, to quote Schopenhauer, genius hits a target no one else can see... - there will come a point where you will have to be your own teacher and whether you plateau or continue to rise will depend on your being a genius.

This manifests in a whole variety of ways - for some, it may be mastering calculus as a pre-teen and while Erdos, still had good and dedicated teachers, there will many who would fail to grok the subject given the same upbringing.

For others, it is mastering the art of writing symphonies at the young age of 8 like Mozart.

My personal favourite to observe is in sports such as tennis or football where the spectator has the chance to witness moments of true technical brilliance and improvisation under very quick and stressful situations.

The problem with the term "genius" is that it's emotionally fraught but has no practical definition. One of the few things psychologists got right was a decision in the 1960s to avoid use of the term in I.Q. assessments (a decision that has sadly been swept away over a period of decades).

Source: "Our Genius Problem" (https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2002/12/our-gen...)

Quote: "At this point in history genius has become a commodity, an ambition, and even a lifestyle. Biographers, scholars, critics, and fans spend untold hours trying to nail down a concept that can't be nailed down, to identify a proof or a marker the way scientists identify genes." (emphasis added)

My humble suggestion is to avoid terms like "genius" and focus instead on what a person does with his/her gifts.

Controlled Shizophrenia. The ability to see connections where there are none, a conspiracy of unrelated things to be mated and the ability to step back from this and see it for what its worth.

Can not be learned, and not having it- and the related manias and depressions, is actually a blessing.

I recently read about the 'schizotypic' brain type, which was described essentially as having a lower threshold to accept new ideas. I much prefer that term to telling people I'm 'on the schizophrenic spectrum'

The greater tendency towards neuroses I think everyone could do without, but learning meditation young and practicing it consistently seems an effective way of dealing with it.

And, as usual, a central aspect is absent. The social/historical environment. Any individual's performance, in whatever aspect of human activity being considered, is closely dependent on, some would even say produced by, its context. Closed contexts foster waste, open contexts foster creativity. Essentializing intelligence, or problem-solving, is way of perpetuating closed contexts.

Thanks! I really enjoyed this article. Seemed well balanced on a complicated subject.

Look at ordinary people and societies and notice that they calcify and grow shells which make it harder and harder for change to occur. Only a profound influence such as brain trauma or war can make them to see things differently. Whereas an outsider can develop in his own way, guided by intuition rather than by the social forces which stultify.

The genius is an outsider.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4226320/

http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/4480-you-know-what-the-fello...

Admiration in retrospect.

I tried to tease out the "meat" of the article excluding the filler as follows. It's mostly the same old cliches - nothing new.

* What makes a genius? We don't know the answer, but science offers some clues. There isn't likely to be a single factor, since genius is too elusive a concept. But intelligence, creativity, perseverance, and good fortune may be a few factors that contribute to it.

* Intelligence is often considered a crucial factor. Lewis Terman at the Stanford University tracked the careers of a 1500 high IQ school kids. Many of them did turn out to be successes. But IQ in itself was not a guarantee - some high IQ people struggled to thrive, whereas others who didn't make the cut went on to win Nobel prizes.

* Creativity: the aha moment often emerges after a period of contemplation. Information comes in consciously, but the problem is processed unconsciously, the resulting solution leaping out when the mind least expects it. The creative process relies on the interplay of... different parts of the brain at once—both the right and left hemispheres and especially regions in the prefrontal cortex.

* Jazz musicians' brain scans during improvising: the internal network, associated with self-expression, showed increased activity, while the outer network, linked to focused attention and also self-censoring, quieted down. “It’s almost as if the brain turned off its own ability to criticize itself".

* One sign of creativity is being able to make connections between seemingly disparate concepts. Richer communication between areas of the brain may help make those intuitive leaps possible.

* As per an ongoing study, in creative people's brains: “...there’s more communication going on between the left and the right hemispheres, which one might expect in people who are highly creative”. “There’s more flexibility in their thought processes, more contributions from different parts of the brain.”

* Genetic potential alone does not predict actual accomplishment. It also takes nurture to grow a genius. Social and cultural influences can provide that nourishment, creating clusters of genius at moments and places in history: Baghdad during Islam’s Golden Age, Kolkata during the Bengal Renaissance, Silicon Valley today.

* “grit”—drives people to achieve. Duckworth, ...says the concept of genius is too easily cloaked in layers of magic, as if great achievement erupts spontaneously with no hard work. She believes there are differences when it comes to individual talent, but no matter how brilliant a person, fortitude and discipline are critical to success. “When you really look at somebody who accomplishes something great,” she says, “it is not effortless.”

* Prodigious productivity is a defining characteristic of genius. “Most articles published in the sciences are never cited by anybody,” says Simonton. “Most compositions are not recorded. Most works of art aren’t displayed.” Thomas Edison invented the phonograph and the first commercially viable light bulb, but these were just two of the thousand-plus U.S. patents he was awarded.

* Biological traits: “In the same way that Mozart may have had extraordinary hearing,” says Ausubel, “Leonardo appears to have had extraordinary visual acuity.”

Thank you for this. I wish there were more people (or bots) like you who made thoughtful highlights.

I really don't like the popular concept of "genius". It's divisive and trivialises the accomplishments and struggles of people who aren't "geniuses".

> It's divisive and trivialises the accomplishments and struggles of people who aren't "geniuses".

I agree. But I will add that it also devalues the hard work of "geniuses". The concept of "geniuses" don't bring any value to anyone, except to novel writers. :)

Exactly, it trivializes both the "geniuses" hard work and the hard work of anyone trying to do something non-trivial.

I find this attitude particularly strange, given that I find stories about geniuses inspiring. I like to read about/talk with people who are elite in their field of endeavor, I find it amazing what they can accomplish with hard work and grit.

I do find the excuse "oh, he's a genius, I can't do that" to be annoying though, maybe that's what you're referring to?

I disagree. Calling someone a genius and someone else not is akin to calling someone a terrific athlete or not.

Your excellence in no way diminishes the value of my attempts. It does put my success (or lack there of) into perspective and gives me a meter for what excellence looks like. That's a good thing, though. Having something higher to strive for, and knowing that it's possible to do better, is a significant factor in personal growth.

Yeah, seriously. How is it any more divisive than calling somebody "seven feet tall"? Verrrrrrrrry few people reach that height, yet it would be laughable to suggest that their presence on a basketball team somehow diminishes the accomplishments of people of average height.

Because height is a spectrum and easily and accurately quantifiable, whereas "genius" is neither.

Genius is not a spectrum, but neither is "seven feet tall". If you're looking for something to compare to height, look at IQ.

You're the one who used the analogy. Are you being deliberately obtuse?

Height is a spectrum and yes, IQ is a spectrum. "Seven feet tall" is an easily identifiable point along the height spectrum. "Genius" is not an easily identifiable point along the IQ spectrum.

It's a wishy-washy, overly emotive term that lumps certain people into an elite group which, by the popular conception of the word, you're either born into or you're not. It says more about the people who use it than the people they're bestowing the title upon. But hey, if you like the term and get your kicks seeing it bandied about, good for you. I find it trite and counterproductive.

The purpose of making the distinction is not to get my kicks but to highlight that there's more to success than hard work. The idea that all you need is to work hard enough and you can do whatever you want is a pernicious lie used to prop up the corollary: "You didn't succeed, so obviously you didn't work hard enough."

By drawing the analogy to height, I thought the point would be obvious. Telling somebody who is 5'2" that they "didn't work hard enough" after they failed to get drafted into the NBA is just cruel. I think the same argument applies for somebody with an IQ of 85 hoping to win a gold medal at the IMO or a Fields Medal.

People are in elite groups along many different metrics: wealth, intelligence, height, strength, athleticism, etc. Hard work is what it takes for somebody who is already in one or more of those elite groups to succeed on the world stage. Millions more work just as hard but aren't in those groups and typically don't win the big contests.

The culture.

1 part inspiration, 99 parts perspiration

1 part inspiration, 39 parts perspiration, 60 parts upbringing, family fortune and luck.

Not many computer scientists out of Western Sahara villages...

> upbringing, family fortune and luck

You just need to be not pre-occupied with survival; and to have access to state-of-the-art knowledge and techniques (or you'll waste your inspiration re-inventing them, instead of SOTSOG).

>You just need to be not pre-occupied with survival; and to have access to state-of-the-art knowledge and techniques

You "just need" to have those to struggle 100x times as hard as the person who has this plus good upbringing, plus connections, plus university education, plus is in the right country for a chance at the same results.

I would include "university education" under "access to state-of-the-art knowledge and techniques", and "right country" under that and not having to be pre-occupied with survival. I don't think we differ much there.

"Connections" help for success in business/career, but how do they help for genius?

Why were you downvoted? While not an original idea, it does mostly represent the reality of expressed genius. Even if the 1 part inspiration is a required part (i.e. you either have that inspiration/talent/predisposition/whatever it is, or you don't), the 99 parts perspiration correctly convey that differentiation truly arises from hard work and persistence.

Many 'genius' level minds are doing absolutely nothing productive for humanity with their 'talent'.

Not only is it not original, it's a famous quotation (Edison).

I like that it's about expressed genius, implying genius isn't something you are, but something you do. Inspiration strikes unpredictably. This fits with that TED talk about the older definition of genius as a kind of muse that visits you (the inspiration part).

The inspiration for relativity - that you could make speeds constant by fiddling time and distance - is pretty simple, even childish or foolish. But constructing a consistent mathematical theory from it was difficult. Even so, the maths was within reach of other mathematicians of the time - they tutored Einstein for general relativity. It's the inspiration that you could do it and actually doing it, Though IMHO the most amazing thing about relativity is that it turned out to be true.

I agree there are many smart people who never did anything. By this definition, they aren't "geniuses".

BTW: HN might dislike this quote because Edison has fallen from favour, and (Nikola) Tesla is celebrated. Though, Edison is by all measures the better model of entrepreneurship (Telsa the better inventor). In general, HN votes should not be taken seriously.

I don't downvote, even if I could.

However, this comment is exceptionally rude, disrespectful and out of place here on HN.

[EDIT] Specifically I don't appreciate the way you changed the narrative.

The fact that you're offended does not make a comment rude. It makes a valid, interesting point, that disdain for rules can be common to genius and criminality.

In fact, I think your comment is exceptionally rude and disrespectful. If you're not prepared for viewpoints to be challenged, stay out of discussions.

I'm not offended, I'm stating a fact that we were talking about what makes a genius and you decided to make it about rape and there was an implicit derision aimed at the person you replied to in addition.

I'm here discussing... Carry on.

>I'm stating a fact that we were talking about what makes a genius and you decided to make it about rape

Conversations move and branch out from their starting subject. That's in the nature of conversation.

But even keeping it on the same subject, sometimes people bring an example or a metaphor from a different area to clarify something about the subject. And sometimes they try to use something obvious or universally agreed as a good or bad counterexample to drive a point home. Which is exactly what happened here.

If we talk about computing and I bring an example from baking, I don't "make it about baking" anymore than the parent "made it about rape". If anything, the parent just made a single comment that just happened to use rape, he could have used any number of similar examples, e.g. arsonists or flat earth believers or Drake fans -- you fixated on his use of the word rape.

>there was an implicit derision aimed at the person you replied to in addition.

Only an imagined one. The only thing the parent did was to aim at a gaping hole in grandparents definition. No derision towards the person itself.

I apologize that you (or anyone else) are offended -- I didn't intend my comment to have anything to do with rape, or to imply anything.

We were discussing the definition of a "genius" and I was trying to point out a problem with the definition proposed. I feel that's perfectly in line with the "narrative".

Any number of unacceptable labels/behaviors could have been used as an example here.

Thank you for the clarity.

I actually knew what you meant and probably the other person did as well.

It did come off a bit harsh, that was my only point and I don't think think it was offensive but it seemed like it was conflating two very different things that should have no "nearest neighbor search" with each other.

Yes, definitely agree on the last point.

What makes a genius -> My personal experience -> Rape.

Not a good flow at all :)

>However, this comment is exceptionally rude, disrespectful and out of place here on HN

I don't find anything "exceptionally rude, disrespectful" or out of place here" about the comment.

Except if we knee-jerk associate the mention of a word such as "rape" with an insult.

>Specifically I don't appreciate the way you changed the narrative.

The parent didn't change the narrative. They pointed an flaw in it with a crystal-clear example to make it immediately obvious.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14172786 and marked it off-topic.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com