Comment by gnosis | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gnosis | Hacker News Reader

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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.

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