Is genius simply the product of hard work?
online.wsj.com
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"IQ, talent, and circumstance define your upper bound. Hard work gets you there."
I think the key is a metric which is just a strange thing we are born with as I can't exactly explain why I like computers. They are just neat.
Given a metric and enough hard work, a work will be considered genius quality by someone else. The number of other people is going to be what determines if someone goes down in the history books as genius.
We gain nothing by pedestaling it and calling it magic, we gain everything by trying to work out if it is a process or habitual way of thinking or a fluke biological rewiring or something else.
If I was the right amounts of different and better in the right directions I could as easily be Feynman as Bethe. I could never be Gandalf.
This thread is curious because it's treating the nurture vs. nature debate as if it were some novel concept.
In America, we're taught to believe that if we work hard, we can be anything we want. This thread largely stinks of people clinging on to this belief, if only for their own sanity. It's no secret that the HN crowd holds itself in high regard intellectually and it would be damning to believe otherwise, as all of a sudden you wouldn't have a shot at being the next Bill Gates or the next Linus Torvalds or whoever it is you worship, on the basis of your hard work alone.
This ideal is highly romanticized and is part of our education problem. We strongly belief EVERYONE should go to college, and EVERYONE is equal, when in reality, some people would be better suited to work with their hands as a mechanic than some paper pusher at an insurance company.
In Europe, they are more slanted towards the nature point of view, and this is reflected in their vocational training in education - ie, everyone isn't born equal, everyone doesn't have to follow the exact same path for the sake of appeasing some romantic ideal that we can't prove true either way.
While the truth is probably somewhere in the middle, it's plain foolish to ignore that some people are just born with an innate talent. If you played sports, it would be easier for people to wrap their head around this - a 5'5 basketball player will never play starting center in the NBA. It's just the way it is.
It is part of your responsibility as a human being to find out what those things are that you are most gifted at and exploit them to their maximum potential.
Actually it was Hans Bethe speaking about Feynman, and he didn't indicate that it was due to genetics. When I see people multi-tabling poker it looks like magic to me, yet it's just a skill that is developed from years of practice.
> a 5'5 basketball player will never play starting center in the NBA.
Neither will a 6'6" player like Michael Jordan. They will play the guard position. Earl Boykins has been a starting guard for 4 teams, and he is 5'5". Scored 36 points twice. He has certain advantages against tall, lanky players such as being able to shoot under them, being able to change direction more quickly, accelerate more quickly, and pick balls up off the ground more quickly, including getting under their dribble for a steal.
> In Europe, they are more slanted towards the nature point of view
Michael Jordan grew from 5'11" to 6'3" between 10th and 11th grade. None of his family members are tall. His older brother who he used to practice against all the time is 5'7".
Even when you can SEE something very easily, you only see how it is, and not how it will be.
> This ideal is highly romanticized and is part of our education problem. We strongly belief EVERYONE should go to college,
Actually in the startup world, this is not true at all. Peter Thiel even started a fund to pay kids to drop out of school and do start-ups instead.
http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/27/peter-thiel-drop-out-of-sch...
> and EVERYONE is equal
Equal rights, not equal ability. You should have the right to pursue whatever interests you.
> and it would be damning to believe otherwise, as all of a sudden you wouldn't have a shot at being the next Bill Gates or the next Linus Torvalds or whoever it is you worship, on the basis of your hard work alone.
Who thinks "success" is due to hard work alone? There's a big luck factor that everyone acknowledges, including things like being in the right place at the right time.
But you can't just "luck into" being an expert programmer or artist; it's not like winning the lottery.
> It is part of your responsibility as a human being to find out what those things are that you are most gifted at and exploit them to their maximum potential.
For all I know, I'm gifted at being a ballerina, and could be the best to ever don a tutu. But I don't care!
My only responsibility as a human being is to achieve my own enlightenment and not harm others.
Many would argue that inspiration has an external origin (indeed the word itself indicates this). Be that origin God, a spirit [of some other form] or the universe itself. In which case Feynman is effectively doing magic and as it is based on his relationship to the source of that magic it is not reproducable.
In this sense the magic is something unmeasurable and inaccessible except by being the particular person, I think it is beyond scientific discoverability but not (in a Popperian sense) unfalsifiable. For example a synthetic brain that demonstrated emergent inspiration without an external source - something like an AI network that was generally programmed but wrote entire symphonies in it's "head" or formed unprovable postulates which later took on status as well verified theories.
In short you're supposing a physical explanation. I'm not supposing a non-physical one, but certainly one that lies outside the bounds of standard models (!).
In truth in the arts you have an almost unrestrained version of the Matthew effect - early success either through luck or hard work breeds more and more success. This is more true in drama than music - it is more difficult to tell a good actor from a bad actor than the equivalent violinists for example.
(Sour grapes alert :-)) I trained as an actor, and I know from my cohort that the ones who are really successful now weren't objectively any better than most of their colleagues at the beginning. Their entire careers now rest on the fact that they had two or three really lucky breaks in a row very early on - choosing the right speech at the showcase and getting that good agent, getting a good tv job early on etc. The upshot is that ten years later, they've been working on their craft constantly and so now ARE objectively better than the classmates they left behind, no contest. It is extremely unusual, though not unheard of, for someone who was unsuccessful at the beginning to go on to develop a high profile career and even then the examples you read about in the press are probably fabrications or half-truths (the cliche of the overnight success for example).
I find that arts journalists consistently misrepresent the element of luck. Perhaps because they don't understand, or it undermines them in some way. I've never read an article about an actor friend of mine that has told the truth about how they've come to be successful. It's always something along the lines of "they always new they were special", or "hard work got me where I am today". I'm not suggesting that the actor is lying, although I wouldn't blame them if they did. Your reputation is your career, and if you declare yourself to be a lucky chancer you might damage it. I've always thought that it is more likely to be the journalist justifying why we should look up to the interviewee.
In any case, does anyone here know what happened to Mozart's sister? Perhaps it was harder back then for a woman to be a composer than it was for men? The last orchestra I saw was 90% male, so this wouldn't surprise me one bit.
Theorem:
Genius is talent AND hard work
Proof:
1. Look at geniuses: all worked hard to achive what they achieved.
2. Look at a group of persons who are all extremely hard working, successful and good at what they do. Like researcher mathematicians, or professional sportsmen. Only a very small minority of them is considered a real genius. (like Terry Tao or Maradona). Why? Because those guys are not just very hard working but also exceptionally talented.
He had a lot of time to think as a patent examiner.
What's the mystery there? Bobby Fischer was completely obsessed with chess and played and studied it incessantly.
9 years of manic dedication and he "suddenly" got good.
His mother spoke something like 8 languages and his father was a Hungarian physicist who headed the Theoretical Mechanics section of the Naval Ordnance Laboratory and was an expert in elasticity and fluid dynamics.
One famous story about his memory:
"One day when he was in Iceland, Fischer called Frederick Olaffson, Iceland's only Grandmaster. Olaffson's Icelandic-speaking daughter answered the phone and explained her parents were out and would return at suppertime. Fischer understood nothing that was said because he did not know the language. But he listened, apologized and hung up. Later that day Fischer met with another Icelandic player who spoke English. He explained what had happened and repeated every Icelandic word he had heard on the phone, imitating the sounds with perfect inflection. The Icelandic player translated the message word for word for Fischer."
Despite being prodigiously "intelligent", it still took years of dedication to get good, and years more to get really good.
Plenty of average people undoubtedly beat him at chess when he was a kid. When you think about it, it should be obvious that he was always that smart. Just because you're a kid and don't know anything yet doesn't mean you aren't smart. "Smarts" is not the same as skill.
Incidentally, his record as the youngest grandmaster in history lasted for many years until it was broken by Judit Polgar, whose father was explicitly running an experiment with his daughters to prove that prodigies are made, not born. All three daughters became chess experts. He explained that Judit, the youngest, was the most successful because she worked the hardest. She's the only female ever ranked in the top-10 of the "Men's" ratings list.
Since then, many people have gone on to break the youngest-grandmaster record at younger and younger ages. I can only assume that if being a classical composer had as much of a "lobby" as chess (parents pushing their children into it, reward structures), we'd see more Mozarts as well.
The reason it takes HARD work is because even geniuses aren't that genius. If you look at the top level of any objectively measurable and well-subscribed field, there is generally less than a 1% difference between the best, whether it's sprinting, bike racing, weight lifting, or chess.
Knowledge builds on knowledge and skill builds on skill. If you think of it like compound interest, a few percent difference between two individuals at any given moment eventually turns into a huge dividend a decade or three later.
For chess, if you take two average players rated 1500 each, and one improves at 2% "interest" and the other at 4% "interest", in 10 years the former player will be rated in the 1800s (moving from class C to class A), and the latter will be rated in the 2200s (National Master).
To become a Grandmaster (typically 2500+) in 10 years, that's an "interest" rate of about 5.3%.
Meanwhile, a super-genius with a 7% compounding rate who puts in 7 years and then burns out will be stuck at ~2400, International Master level.
Humans occupy a pretty narrow raw talent niche. The best people tend to be pretty tightly clustered together. I'm not smarter than I was when I was young, but I have compounded YEARS of knowledge and experience to the point where I can vastly outperform my younger, smarter self.
To get the titles special tournaments are often set up designed to give the players a chance to get a norm if they do well. If you let any low rated players in, it lowers your chances a lot. It doesn't matter if you win 100% of the time against the lower players, it still prevents you from getting a title because chess "performance ratings" are calculated by an average of your opponent's ratings (modified +400 if you beat them and -400 if you lost).
Also, ratings are not a linear thing. Going from 1500 to 2000 is WAY easier than going from 2400 to 2500. When you do percentage based interest, you're making it easier to go up when you're at a higher rating, which is the wrong way round.
(I have several GM and IM friends who have organized this kind of tournament.)
Correct. That's why I used phrases like "typically" and "International Master level".
The mentioned ratings are part of the requirements, and are STRONGLY associated with those titles.
"The requirements for becoming a Grandmaster are somewhat complex. A player must have an Elo rating of at least 2500 at one time (although they need not maintain this level to keep the title). A rating of 2400 or higher is required to become an International Master. In addition, at least two favorable results (called norms) in tournaments involving other Grandmasters, including some from countries other than the applicant's, are usually required before FIDE will confer the title on a player. There are other milestones a player can achieve to get the title, such as winning the Women's World Championship, the World Junior Championship, or the World Senior Championship. Current regulations may be found in the FIDE Handbook.[12"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandmaster_%28chess%29
http://www.fide.com/fide/handbook.html?id=58&view=articl...
For a National Master (depends on country), here is the USCF:
"The United States Chess Federation (USCF) awards the Title of National Master to anyone who achieves a USCF rating of 2200, and the title of Senior Master to anyone who achieves a USCF rating of 2400."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_master
A computer playing at well above 2500 can be said to be playing at Grandmaster level, despite not filing the paperwork for officially conferring the title.
> When you do percentage based interest, you're making it easier to go up when you're at a higher rating, which is the wrong way round.
Compound interest is obviously an oversimplification for learning, which everyone already knows is not a linear process. It's illustrative, however, of the vital point: small differences in a feedback cycle accumulate over time into a much larger absolute difference.
They once did an experiment where they sat outside with her and a truck drove past with a particular chessboard configuration on the side. She glanced at it, then recreated the entire board in a few seconds. Then another truck drove past with a different configuration and she couldn't recreate it. She remembered the first one because it was from a game she'd seen before. She'd never seen the second one before so she couldn't remember it.
As an analogue, you and I can memorize speeches relatively easily in our native tongues (I would suppose it's fair to say we're domain experts in the languages we know), but it's not easy at all to memorize and repeat (a) random strings of sounds, or (b) sentences from languages that don't have any common base with the languages we know.
Experts can write the focal elements (e.g. pseudocode) first and then expand them into a full program. A good example might be the fizzbuzz test, or generating the permutations of a string, you'll have an idea of what the problem involves because you've done it before. If you can't visualize the problem in terms of something familiar, you'll have a hard time taking a top-down (e.g. memory-recall-based) approach.
I wish I could say the same thing. I sometimes look through code I wrote over 10 years ago, and think to myself "damn, I wish I could hire this guy to help me build this thing today".
On this subject, the best book I've read is talent is overrated. They discuss this subject in depth and provide a great deal of research and information to support their claims. edit Oh, and their claim is that there isn't much empirical evidence that supports the notion of genius or even innate talent at all.
> Summarizing the article: "Genius is just hard work? Prove it, you have 10 years to produce genius level work. Any takers?"
two examples that leap to mind are:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judit_Polg%C3%A1r#Background
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stuart_Mill#Biography
Two examples famous in India are:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sachin_Tendulkar#Early_years_an...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viswanathan_Anand#Personal_life
Why is it ironic? Because it is written by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terence_Tao. While nobody will deny how hard he works, he is also on record as being one of the most amazing math prodigies ever.
But:
- He says that a reasonable intelligence is needed (I think it is something like an IQ of at least 120, so most of the population would have no chance. Come on, I know some guys who suffered very heavily from high school math even if they tried hard. But certainly a genius level is not needed to do math).
- Reaching the level of Terry Tao is impossible without being brutally talented. I have heard it from good, very smart, successful and extremely hard working (and enthusiastic) mathematicians. Other mathematicians achieved big things when they were children but Terry Tao consistently was ahead of even them. (Like winning a bronze medal at the International Mathematical Olimpiad being 10 years old)
Being a genius is an AND combination: talent and hard work. The 'talent is overrated' statement is true: most people underestimate hard work. This is similar to bodybuilding: most people think that steroids alone are enough to be a body builder champion. No: very lucky genetics AND steroids AND extremely hard work are needed.
However I still think it ironic to get that advice from someone who clearly has such extreme levels of raw talent.
I say generally because I broke the test - I was really bad at the short term memory tests, yet good in other sections. Because there was such a big difference, a proper score couldn't be worked out.
Comment on the submitted article: the Mozart biographical materials I have read suggest that Mozart's sister didn't reach Wolfgang's high level of performance partly because their father really did have a child in whom more was invested, consistent with sexist attitudes of the time. After edit: I guess the author of the essay has ten years to learn how to write a well researched essay on a topic that is well sourced in the standard scientific literature.
That said, it's ridiculous to suggest that anyone can be the next Beethoven or Einstein (or even Bobby Fischer) just from hard work.
This is conflating the claim that expertise can be acquired in 10,000 hours with the claim that genius can. I don't believe anyone is truly claiming the latter is the case. I'll take him up on the challenge the former though. 5 years ago I knew absolutely nothing about programming. I decided I wanted to learn. I started spending few hours a day on learning new things, doing exercises, taking classes and doing projects. I'm far from an expert in the area now, but I'm absolutely blown away with how far I've come in 5 years. If I keep it up I'm pretty confident that in 5 more years I'll be there.
The author also seems to miss the real dangers of "the myth of genius", which should more appropriately be called "the myth of innate talent". I can't tell you how many people I've heard say "Oh I could never learn X, I'm just not one of those people who is good at X". One thing I like to point out is that if it takes you 10 years to be an expert, it probably only takes 2-4 years to achieve an intermediate level of skill, which is pretty damn useful.
Personally, I think work ethic, along with intellect and charisma, is something you are partially born with. It's just silly to say that genetics play no factor: do those with severe mental disabilities just not work hard enough? Think about it as your genes defining a range: you can be between the 30th and 75th percentile of human prowess. Where you fall in that range is up to you.
Spending 10,000 hours on something is incredibly common. Everyone spends 10,000 hours on multiple things. But we coast. It's what we do by habit. It's habit itself.
To break our own habits over and over again in order to improve, to get into a positive feedback loop of ever increasing ability, for 10,000 hours, is genius.
A person of below average intelligence who has studied chess for years and years could beat a genius who took up the game a week ago.
A genius is someone who sees the world by his own sight. A genius has wisdom because of that.
On the other hand, someone who learns only from school can't be a genius and get wisdom from books, he can only be someone with ability through learning, because he didn't awaken himself and see the principle of the world through himself.
Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.
If by "genius" you mean someone who's defined by their actions, then it is [simply the product of hard work].
Otherwise, if by "genius" you mean someone with the potential to be great, then it is not [the product of hard work, but rather one's genes].
Both of these interpretations of "genius" are often used, although there is very little distinction between the two if the "genius" with the potential to be great lives up to their expectations. On the other hand, those who have the potential to be great but don't take advantage of their genes are hard to discover.
Also, the "genius" that -has- potential to be great and -is- great is technically a genius of both kinds. Something to think about...