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Comment by bad_user | Hacker News Reader

When I hear about geniuses that lived, most of the time I hear about how awesome their memory was ... which worries me, as I can't even remember the names of people I meet without effort and this would mean that I may never be good enough for anything, so why bother?

But Einstein wasn't one of those people. His IQ may have been great, but he wasn't one of those people that could recite all U.S. states or presidents at age 6.

What I like about Einstein is that he worked hard for his whole life. Whatever disability he may have had regarding his memory, he compensated multiple times by being persistent and obsessed with his work.

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Yes, he could not say the names of all US presidents at age 6. I doubt Einstein ever tried memorizing the names of all US presidents when he was child. He wasn't in the US then. :)

I don't know about Einstein's memory, but I do know that people often mistake having a good memory for obscure facts and above average verbal ability for intelligence.

I never heard this memory thing. In any case it is a bad excuse for you to not even try anything.

If memory specifically bothers you, buy a book about memory techniques. They are fairly easy to learn, and a lot of special techniques exist for memorizing people's names.

I went to a talk by a memory trainer once and he said this is THE main thing CEOs always want to train: remembering people's names. Guess it helps when dealing with employees.

You might also like to look at Grothendieck. He wrote how he felt like a plodding turtle compared to his peers. Hilbert also must've seemed slow.

Of course, when people write stories on mental feats, they'll choose a more showoffy person who can do well on the tests that people remember from childhood. That means fewer stories about people taking time to think about things in their own way.

(What horrors would result if a schoolchild got it into her head that maybe she should just take a day off from school and lie in a hammock and think? That kind of crazy thinking gets you Clojure. (http://clojure.blip.tv/file/4457042/))

(I checked Grothendieck's quote after I got home. It wasn't "plodding turtle" but rather "dumb ox.")

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