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Comment by gnosis | Hacker News Reader

"And what did the genius do when not teaching LSAT prep courses? Why, he worked at Target."

Kafka was a clerk at an insurance company. Einstein was an assistant patent examiner. Wittgenstein was a gardener at a monastery and then a primary school teacher.

Van Gogh only ever sold one painting during his life, and that was to his brother.

There are hordes of other people widely regarded as "geniuses", who lived and died in dire poverty. Many others were cheated out of the fame and fortune they deserved by others who got the credit. And many more are probably still unrecognized.

The cold hard fact of the matter is that the world generally does not reward intelligence, "genius", or even hard work. True, some have the temperament and luck to scale the greasy pole of "success", but many others don't -- or choose to focus their energies elsewhere.

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> Einstein was an assistant patent examiner. Wittgenstein was a gardener at a monastery and then a primary school teacher.

I take your point, but Einstein and Wittgentsein are not good examples. You list jobs they held, but those jobs don't reasonably express the success either man had in his lifetime. Einstein was also a member of Princeton's Institute for Advanced Studies from 1933 to 1955 (when he died)[1]. Wittgenstein was also awarded a PhD at Cambridge - without having done coursework or exams - on the basis of his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and was an idolized professor for many years there[2].

Neither man was by any stretch of the imagination an unrecognized genius - they were both absolutely recognized as huge intellects with superior achievements in their respective fields when they were alive.

[1] http://www.ias.edu/people/einstein/

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Wittgenstein#1929.E2.80....

My point was the OP appeared to be judging by the jobs an individual held at one point in time. Judged by the same criteria, Einstein, Wittgenstein, and Kafka would have fared no better.

The fact that Einstein and Wittgenstein held more prestigious positions at other points in their lives would not have spared them from an attitude like the OP demonstrated at the time they held the more menial jobs, and judging only by those menial jobs.

Who knows what heights of glory this particular Target employee will climb to in the future? History is even more full of people who once held menial jobs but then went on to achieve vast fame and fortune (and perhaps even be judged a "genius" by many).

We also don't know what this particular Target employee did before he worked at target and taught LSAT courses. Perhaps, like Wittgenstein, he'd been a lecturer at Cambridge and was awarded some prestigious degree.

Ok, I know that's stretching credibility. He probably wasn't. But my point is that we don't know his past or his future. All we know are two job titles and his boast of being a genius. Should we judge him based on just those couple of facts? Or should we withhold judgment? My vote is for the latter.

Finally, I never claimed that Einstein or Wittgenstein weren't recognized during their lifetimes, just that Kafka and Van Gogh weren't, and that many others who are generally considered "geniuses" now weren't either.

Your original post sounded very different from what you're saying now, but I apologize if I misunderstood you. Your last two paragraphs talk about whole lives and what the world recognizes without in any way distinguishing between the examples you gave initially. Kafka, Einstein and Wittgenstein are all listed in the same paragraph; again, there's no distinction between them there.

I'm not trying to nitpick, just to say that I doubt I was the only person who took the post differently than it sounds now like you meant it.

They were listed in the same paragraph because they were examples of people who are widely considered to be "geniuses", but who either held menial jobs at one point in their life, or who weren't "successful" (in the common sense of the term) at one point in their life (in Van Gogh's and Kafka's case it was at all during their life, in Einstein's and Wittgenstein's case, during significant portions of their lives, though Einstein was certainly vastly more successful than any of the others during his lifetime).

The OP was talking about one point in the Target employee's life, the point at which he was a Target employee and an LSAT teacher, and he seemed to be judging solely based on job titles. That's a very myopic, and I would contend, unfair vantage point from which to judge a person's life, contribution to humanity, or achievements... as the examples I mentioned (and many others that I didn't mention specifically) demonstrate.

Please look again at your original post. This whole business about "at one point in their life" simply isn't there. You didn't say those words. Just the opposite: in one of the later paragraphs, you talk about people "who lived and died in dire poverty". You seem to be moving the goalposts of the argument. Either that or your first post was very unclear.

> in Einstein's and Wittgenstein's case, during significant portions of their lives, though Einstein was certainly vastly more successful than any of the others during his lifetime

No, see, you're doing it again. Wittgenstein was regarded from early in his life as a genius. He was considered a very eccentric genius (that's putting it mildly), but in his own lifetime he was successful and well regarded. If anything, he held lower status jobs because he chose to run away from the world of fame and regard that he already had.[1]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Wittgenstein#Teaching_po...

You guys are both right. The point really is that prior to hitting a career grand slam (a Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, a "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies") one can find oneself in a menial job where one is looked upon as an unfulfilled genius. There's nothing to say that this Target employee isn't writing the next great American novel in his spare time.

In summary, the "menial" job in and of itself should not be seen as a failing for the genius.

I thought the point was that one can find oneself in a menial job where one is not looked upon as anything other than a bozo. Before the grand slam, nobody is going to recognize you as any kind of genius. Probably agreeing with you, but wasn't sure about the wording.

"You're a loser until you're a winner."

Also most people even though hit a career grand never get recognized for it.

Gandhi never won the Nobel prize for peace, Just imagine- Gandhi!!! Although there is hardly anyone in the past century who did explicitly more for peace than he did. He not just preached, but demonstrated an entire moment for independence of India and even succeeded all on non violence.

Not that he complained about it. But the world never recognized it at the time.

Come on, being unclear is not the same as moving the goalposts. Unless you think gnosis is lying about what they meant.

"Who knows what heights of glory this particular Target employee will climb to in the future?"

Quite possibly none. Intelligence doesn't equal success, ever.

We all have plenty of examples of people who, though very smart, fared poorly in the world and then later, in their own lives or afterwards, fared much better and even became famous---because those people became famous.

Kafka and Einstein had white collar jobs when those were rare and Wittgenstein gave away his (inherited) fortune.

The OP was judging a person by his job, and implying that the person in question couldn't be a genius because he worked at a menial job.

I simply provided some counterexamples.

Furthermore, white collar or not, I doubt that many would contend that Kafka or Einstein were some sorts of models of "success" if judged by their jobs, and few would judge them "geniuses" solely by looking at what they did for a living.

The fact that Wittgenstein gave away his inheritance is completely irrelevant. We were talking about jobs as marks of genius, not about inherited wealth.

However, I will grant that being born in to a wealthy family, being given a first-rate education, and being surrounded by highly accomplished individuals (as Wittgenstein was) does usually give the beneficiary a tremendous head start over most people.

I would certainly have bet on someone born in to Wittgenstein's highly privileged position making something of himself than on someone born in to poverty.

That said, plenty of people born in to tremendous wealth squander it and their lives. A couple of interesting, relatively recent documentaries on the subject are "Born Rich"[1] and "The One Percent"[2].

[1] - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0342143/

[2] - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0819791/

The OP was judging a person by his job, and implying that the person in question couldn't be a genius because he worked at a menial job.

No, I was judging him by his accomplishments -- a measure by which your counterexamples shine, and the LSAT instructor falls down. All of the people you mention were successes in some way outside of their job, and they met my other criteria: they disproportionately advanced the state of the world.

We were talking about jobs as marks of genius ...

You were talking about that, but nobody else was.

But still, don't you think it's a little premature to judge your Target worker? Einstein was a patent worker while he thought about and conceptualized Special Relativity. Do you know what that fella' was doing in his free time?

I still agree with the main point though - IQ doesn't mean anything except another avenue of high potential. Just like being extremely physically fit and a better athlete leaves you with high potential to succeed in something physical. A high IQ gives you the potential to succeed in something mental, but you still have to put in the work and do something with it.

You learn a lot more about Einstein's potential by testing his IQ than by looking at his job history. If it turns out that the Target Einstein is too lazy to do any physics, that's OK, the IQ test will still tell you vastly more about what he COULD do under the right incentives.

"No, I was judging him by his accomplishments"

What made you think your LSAT instructor's accomplishments were limited to his job titles?

What do you know about this man apart from those two facts?

Kafka and Van Gogh were completely unknown and unappreciated during their lifetimes. Kafka even burned 90% of his work before he died.

There are countless other examples of people who were only discovered and appreciated after they died -- often long after they died.

Conversely, many (if not most) of those who achieved great fame and fortune during their lifetimes are largely forgotten now, or considered of minor importance.

"You were talking about [jobs as marks of genius], but nobody else was."

On the contrary, that seems to be exactly what you were doing. Your lack of knowledge or appreciation of someone's accomplishments and apparent eagerness to judge this person by the job they held is what I was responding to.

If you want to debate the merits of inferring accomplishment from a person's job, that's fine. To call that my main argument, and countering it with your sample size of three, is trolling.

Considering your sample size of one, calling me a troll for using a sample size of three is a case of the pot calling the kettle black.

Also, I never claimed that was your main argument. I just said that that's the part of your post I was replying to.

Here is the point: if all you know about someone is that they run a cash register, that doesn't tell you that they are unable to do anything else. This argument does not rely on sample sizes.

No, here's the point: if you run a cash register, don't scoff at someone who aims higher than what you've achieved, and don't throw your genius status in their face when you do it.

If you want to argue that a person's job is not indicative of ther level of achievement in life, then you absolutely do have to argue inductively. But I personally do not care about that argument. It is a stupid premise, and gnosis is picking an argument when one is not being forwarded. And he is doing it in a completely fallacious manner (overgeneralization, tu quoque), against what I clearly stated was an anecdote and life lesson.

Who does that? A person's own experiences, related as such, are anecdotes, not arguments.

I don't think jessedhillon was saying that someone working a menial job must not be highly intelligent. His point was that such a person isn't getting much value out of being highly intelligent (he was presenting it as a supporting point in favor of his claim that 'being intelligent has no intrinsic value').

I believe that the idea that someone who works a "menial" job "isn't getting much value out of being highly intelligent" is the fundamental misconception here.

If you are a genius, your time is not necessarily well spent on ANY job, whether it is considered menial or not by the intellectually unwashed masses, unless it is for exercise, relaxation, sustenance, or pleasure.

I refer you to the classic essay The Outsiders http://www.cpsimoes.net/artigos/outsiders.html

'The second kind of social adaptation may be called the marginal strategy. These individuals were typically born into a lower socio-economic class, without gifted parents, gifted siblings, or gifted friends. Often they did not go to college at all, but instead went right to work immediately after high school, or even before. And although they may superficially appear to have made a good adjustment to their work and friends, neither work nor friends can completely engage their attention. They hunger for more intellectual challenge and more real companionship than their social environment can supply. So they resort to leading a double life. They compartmentalize their life into a public sphere and a private sphere. In public they go through the motions of fulfilling their social roles, whatever they are, but in private they pursue goals of their own. They are often omnivorous readers, and sometimes unusually expert amateurs in specialized subjects. The double life strategy might even be called the genius ploy, as many geniuses in history have worked at menial tasks in order to free themselves for more important work. Socrates, you will remember was a stone mason, Spinoza was a lens grinder, and even Jesus was a carpenter. The exceptionally gifted adult who works as a parking lot attendant while creating new mathematics has adopted an honored way of life and deserves respect for his courage, not criticism for failing to live up to his abilities. Those conformists who adopt the committed strategy may be pillars of their community and make the world go around, but historically, those with truly original minds have more often adopted the double life tactic. They are ones among the gifted who are most likely to make the world go forward.'

You might be interested in Colin Wilson's book "The Outsider"[1], which was written more than 30 years before the essay you quote.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Outsider_(Colin_Wilson)

I have read it. It's excellent. "Outsider" is the term chosen by Grady Towers high IQ society correspondents.

I think a far more revealing point about Kafka is his self-view and the fact that in his will he wanted all of his works burned. I don't think Kafka was ever a very happy man in his life, so you really got to wonder how much good did the "being a genius" do for HIM regardless of how much he contributed to the world and humanity and our culture.

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