Anyone who will unironically define themselves as a genius has issues with ego. Genius is something only history can bestow on people.
Bill Gates possesses a genius level intelligence, has the accomplishments and mental demonstrations to back it up, and is apparently fully aware of it. What's the problem exactly?
Let's define genius:
"exceptional intellectual or creative power or other natural ability."
or
"a person who is exceptionally intelligent or creative, either generally or in some particular respect."
As though it should be difficult for a genius to recognize that their abilities far exceed those of other people.
I would argue that being oblivious to that level of blatant genius - having no idea you're so much better than most others - would be more of a negative mental trait vs being aware of it. You'd have to be incredibly ignorant, and almost entirely non-self-aware to miss such a thing across a lifetime.
If you can reasonably be defined as to be in possession of X trait, there is absolutely nothing wrong with recognizing that. It is not an ego problem to do so. If my brain is capable of great feats of mathematics, and I can tell that I'm drastically better at math than my peers, there is nothing irrationally egotistical about recognizing it. With there being a critical distinction between recognizing your capabilities, vs. obnoxiously promoting them to others.
And I do think it's ego problem if somebody goes around defining themselves as a genius. One of the things I'm always struck by is the fact that many of the smartest people I know are incredibly humble. They're smart enough to realize all the things they don't know.
He claimed that any genius could win a Nobel prize, but that he'd done really well to have won one as a non-genius!
Put another way, I consider both of those guys geniuses, but if either of them made that claim about themselves, I would have to reconsider the position.
Put another another way, no good can possibly ever come from acknowledging your own genius, even if that was something a person was capable of perceiving about themselves, which I don't think it is.
Or maybe I'm just talking about highly intelligent people != genius.
For example, I'm not sure what you're seeing in Bill Gates. I don't want to have a discussion about him, just offering an example of how nebulous any definition 'intellectual power', 'creative power', 'natural ability', 'general or particular intelligence' and 'general or particular creativity' is, and to second the opinion that definitions of genius are primarily social rather than operational or falsifiable.
edit: apologies for distributing your definitions but still using quote marks.
Probably a majority of HN readers qualify based on that measure. We can all be geniuses together! ;)
In any case, while I'm not foolish enough to believe IQ isn't a useful measurement of intelligence, I certainly don't think any given number indicates "genius", which is something else again.
http://www.psmag.com/blogs/news-blog/narcissism-breeds-belie...