Do You Have What It Takes to be a Genius?

  • Thread starter stoorssarg
  • Start date
  • Tags
    Genius
In summary: IQ means agreeing with accepted norms... genius is going beyond that.IQ means agreeing with accepted norms... genius is going beyond that.Genius is something we can all achieve if we set our mind to it. Being a genius is not just about having a high IQ. It's about using your intelligence to achieve something great.
  • #36
jimmysnyder said:
Even though my IQ score will not support me on this, I have always considered myself to be a genius. I base this on the fact that I use a lot of big words that I don't necessarily understand.
i think the word for that is "blowhard", not genius :uhh:
 
Physics news on Phys.org
  • #37
Gib Z said:
I wish i was a genius :( Definitely am not though. Something I've realized over the past few months is that I'm not "good" at math like i thought i was. Terry Tao is Good at math, I'm just interested in it, somewhat well read and practiced in it. Any standard tests and exercises in textbooks I can do, but when it comes to an insight problem, like something in an Olympiad, I fall to my knees..~sigh~

yea terry tao is a genius

on someone's blog around here i read about the gifted test he took when he was eight and how he was studying linear algebra at the time and all that stuff.

fourier jr said:
i think the word for that is "blowhard", not genius :uhh:

im pretty sure he was joking
 
  • #38
ice109 said:
yea terry tao is a genius

what is it with people on this forum & terence tao? i would think ANY fields medalist would have a little something that most other people don't. or to look at it another way, maybe they DON'T have something that everyone else does have.
 
  • #39
fourier jr said:
what is it with people on this forum & terence tao? i would think ANY fields medalist would have a little something that most other people don't. or to look at it another way, maybe they DON'T have something that everyone else does have.

what i didn't say terence tao was god, i just said he's a genius?
 
  • #40
i think riemann was a genius, i can't think of any other clear cases. maybe archimedes.
 
  • #41
I've came to conclude that after reading all of your posts. That genius isn't how good your math skills are. Or of you can get an A+ on your physics test. (Sure all those things help)

But if your able to question the world around you; and ponder new idea and willing to test those idea in real life. Thats what I think makes a genius.
 
Last edited:
  • #42
fwiw here's what georg lichtenberg thought:
"I have very often reflected on what it is that really distinguishes the great genius from the common crowd. Here are some observations I have made. The common individual always conforms to the prevailing opinion and the prevailing fashion; he regards the state in which everything now exists as the only possible one and passively accepts it all. It does not occur to him that everything from the shape of the furniture up to the subtlest hypothesis, is decided by the great council of mankind of which he is a member. He wears thin-soled shoes even though the sharp stones of the street hurt his feet, he allows fashion to dictate to him that the buckles of his shoes must extend as far as his toes even though that means the shoe is often hard to get on. He does not reflect that the form of the shoe as much upon him as it does upon the fool who first wore thin shoes on cracked pavement. To the great genius it always occurs to ask: Could this too not be false? He never first gives his vote without first reflecting..."

or baltasar gracian:
"Have original and out-of-the-way views. These are the signs of superior ability. We do not think much of someone who never contradicts us; that is not a sign that he loves us but that he loves himself. Do not be deceived by flattery and thereby have to pay for it, rather condemn it. Besides, you may be given credit for being criticized by some, especially if they are those of whom the good speak ill. On the contrary, it should disturb us if our affairs please everyone, for that is a sign that they are of little worth. Perfection is for the few."

or jacques hadamard:
"To invent is to choose. This very remarkable conclusion appears the more striking if we compare it with what Paul Valery writes in the Nouvelle Revue Francaise: "It takes two to invent anything. The one makes up combinations; the other chooses, recognizes what he wishes and what is important to him in the mass of things which the former has imparted to him. What we call genius is much less the work of the first one than the readiness of the second one to grasp the value of what has been laid before him and to choose it.""

or baltasar gracian again re: hadamard thing
"Know how to choose well. Most of life depends on this. You need good taste and sound judgement, for which neither intellect nor study suffices. To be choice, you must choose well, and for this two things are needed: to be able to choose at all, and then to choose best. There are many people with fertile and subtle minds, of keen judgement, of much learning, and great observation who still are at a loss when it comes to choosing. They always take the worst as if they were determined to go wrong. Thus, knowing how to choose well is one of the greatest gifts."
 
  • #43
Newton would deny this and say all his work was from pure effort, but I swear he's a genius as well.
 
  • #44
Why are we limiting our discussion of who is a genius to scientists? Surely Van Gogh, Mozart, and a host of other artists, musicians, writers (I personally believe Jonathan Swift was a genius), and even entertainers (perhaps Frank Zappa and Henry Rollins). As fourier_jr pointed out, perhaps a genius is someone who questions that which is established. Then again, I've been called a genius (in the non-pejorative sense) by people when I tell them I have a degree in math and physics and am getting a graduate nuclear engineering degree (by no means do I consider myself a genius, however). With all this in mind, I would probably say a genius is relative. One individual may see person A as a genius but not person B while another individual sees the opposite. I think it may have something to with a perception that the so called genius achieves a level of expertise in some endeavor that very few others could also achieve.
 
  • #45
Seems that being a Genius is purely subjective, right? How often is it that two people consider each other geniuses when one is smarter (in common ways) than the other? Seems most call people geniuses when they merely grasp things significantly quicker than themselves. When I was a child a "nuclear scientist" or "rocket scientist" must be a genius because the material they worked on was so beyond me. Now it isn't and I hold a firm belief that most people could, if they desired, learn science and physics to a depth of my own.

In my humblest of opinions, I would name someone a genius who is able to see things and understand them as no(rarely) person has prior, and then have the creativity to MOVE. To go forward with that understanding and create the unexpected. To apply their understanding.
 
  • #46
how bout we all just admit that genius is a pretty meaningless word
 
  • #47
Indeed. And some of its meaninglessness come from its overuse...
 
  • #48
my friend alan mayer said he thought michael spivak was a genius.
 
  • #49
jimmysnyder said:
Even though my IQ score will not support me on this, I have always considered myself to be a genius. I base this on the fact that I use a lot of big words that I don't necessarily understand. However, to be objective, I asked my family to decide this issue. My wife said that the only genius thing I ever did in my life was to marry her. My mother said that I was indeed a genius and that I had the cutest knees when I was a baby. My 15 year old daughter just rolled her eyes and said "as if". My 13 year old son said that if genius is 90% persperation, then I'm an idiot. Looks like the nays have it.
Since all demand to know what I think, this is by far my favorite post in thread. Well alright my mother likes to know what I think. Sometimes.
 
  • #50
I like to role this one out when this topic surfaces:

Men give me credit for some genius. All the genius I have lies in this; when I have a subject in hand, I study it profoundly. Day and night it is before me. My mind becomes pervaded with it. Then the effort that I have made is what people are pleased to call the fruit of genius. It is the fruit of labor and thought.

Alexander Hamilton
 
  • #51
The question is what makes a genius, if the word actually means anything? Is it his accomplishments or simply his cleverness? I know of incredibly brilliant individuals who are also incredibly unambitious and little willing to put their cleverness into use. Could an individual with these attributes possibly be a genius? I have done some research and it appears that a man named Chris Langan has the highest IQ ever recorded. What does he do? He works as a bar bouncer. You can watch a video of him on Youtube, quite an interesting guy. I have no doubt that this man is capable of incredible mental prowesses, as his IQ proves, but is he really a genius? Pointcarré apparently failed an IQ test that was administered to him but I have no hesitation calling him a genius. In the end, it seems that genius is an elusive thing; I even suspect that those who possesses it do not entirely understand it.
 
  • #52
People do not like admitting they are inferior in any way in comparison to another person, especially in intelligence. We all want to believe we are geniuses but we have doubts that we actually are. If we are "no genius," then we are simply ordinary. The looking glass self kicks in and a pang of inferiority hits, sending us insecurely flying into biased logic and analysis of what it means to be a genius.

The word "genius" has at least two main uses in the context of this thread. One is used to describe a person that is within the top 2 percentile of society as measured by an IQ test. No actual accomplishment is needed to be labeled a "genius" in this manner. The other is of a person who figured out things that nobody else did, even though others may have tried. Tese are usually complex accomplishments, but sometimes even a simple minded person who was simply lucky enough to be viewed as original and creative may be called a "genius." "Genius" existed before IQ tests, however.

The IQ sort of "genius" is an attempt to label and stratify society. The obvious reasons for this would be to cater to those with superior ability and to nurture that ability in schools, higher education, and perhaps even in the workforce. IQ tests are certainly not perfect and their validity has been disputed since the inception of the test. One common argument is that the tests only measure some forms of intelligence, and even those measurements can be quite unreliable, but it is what it is and it has been firmly entrenched into society.

The other sort of genius, which is driven more by actual accomplishment is both more superficial and a more substantiative form of genius. One must rely on their perception of a person to see whether said person is a genius or not. Why do most people believe Einstein is a genius? Did they know him? Have they studied his work? More than likely, the answer is that they have not. I prefer this usage of the word though because it does drive us to create the perception in others that we are a "genius," rather than simply vesting us with the label for accomplishing nothing. I believe this drives many to actual accomplishments, while the label of "genius" given via IQ test actually instills little more than arrogance and complacency, causing errors in judgment or simply little to no productivity. I would critique IQ tests more, but that is outside of the scope of this thread.

Now, arrogance has nothing to do with genius in terms of IQ and is only partially valid in determining genius by the second usage described here. Many like to think that arrogance invalidates a person's "genius" status, and in a way it can because the second usage of the word that I described relies upon society labeling a person with the title of genius. However, an individual does not speak for society, no one person on this forum, nor even group can remove the label of "genius" from a person given that status by society. It is society who creates the label for the person. A very arrogant person may not appear to be that way to the whole of society and in the context of society, even if he does, society in all it's complex interactions may still label him/her a genius.

Remember, the word "genius" is simply an idea created by man and it carries no meaning with it other than the meanings we attribute to it. It doesn't matter which definition you prefer personally. A person can be a type of genius, but you don't have to confuse the meanings and try to take that status away from them. If a lazy, arrogant person with the status of genius because of his IQ tells you he is a genius, what is the sense in disagreeing with him? Just tell him that he is a rather dull and complacent genius who will amount to nothing, and move on.

-Phil
 
Last edited:
  • #53
I prefer to use the word "genius" in terms of something that certain people have, as opposed to something that certain people are. Many people you have met have a brilliance in particular areas, yet are normal in many other circumstances ("Multiple Intelligences, and all that).

Most of us agree that the measure of genius is through results rather than an IQ test.
 
  • #54
Tony Sudbery, a mathematician at University of York in Britain, said to me: "Roger Penrose is a genuius; Stephen Hawking isn't."
 
  • #55
George Jones said:
Tony Sudbery, a mathematician at University of York in Britain, said to me: "Roger Penrose is a genuius; Stephen Hawking isn't."

I'd agree. I love Penrose. His book (Road to Reality) is fantastic.
 
  • #56
lets face it, if someone is a genius, how would any of us know?
 
  • #57
BoredNL said:
One is used to describe a person that is within the top 2 percentile of society as measured by an IQ test.

Well, that's patently absurd. I was in the top 1% (99th percentile :tongue:) 30 years ago before I started getting smart, and I sure as hell ain't no genius even now.
To the OP, I would suggest that perhaps a genius is one who doesn't spell 'Are' as 'A'. :biggrin:
(Yeah, I noticed the all-caps cover-up in the first sentence, but really... somebody had to say it.)
 
  • #58
Danger said:
Well, that's patently absurd. I was in the top 1% (99th percentile :tongue:) 30 years ago before I started getting smart, and I sure as hell ain't no genius even now.
To the OP, I would suggest that perhaps a genius is one who doesn't spell 'Are' as 'A'. :biggrin:
(Yeah, I noticed the all-caps cover-up in the first sentence, but really... somebody had to say it.)

You are technically one form of genius then, but the whole point of having this sort of "genius" status is so that you may use it towards constructive things. There is a moderate link between IQ tests and success in academia and highly technical fields. It's more of an imperfect and limited predictive status given to you with lots of bias and narrowmindedness attached. I wouldn't boast about it if I were you, but it probably isn't a bad thing.
 
  • #59
stoorssarg said:
ARE you a genius*** :- )

What do you think gives a person special mental abilities? (IQ of 149+) Is it all genetics or just your environment, or a combination of the two? Do you think the IQ test really measures your mental ability? Or is there other factors that the IQ test doesn't take into consideration such as creativity and so on. OR maybe genius is just a state of mind that we all can achieve.

No it measures your level of education mostly.

And yes precisely because it does not take into account creativity it is practically redundant IMHO. :biggrin:

IQ tests(proper ones) Are a waste of money, internet ones are a joke :smile:, go buy a textbook and learn instead, IQ is debunkable.

ice109 said:
i just kind of assume that if you're smart, you know to be humble.

By some accounts I've heard Newton was an obnoxious and arrogant man, who knew he was a genius, hard to get on with.

But then who'd argue with a man who stuck a pen in his eye to work out if it would effect his visual acuity, I don't think we can draw any conclusions about personality or sanity in making an assumption.

Feynman: IQ 120: impresses me, his ideas about what it takes to develop a highly inquisitive and broad mind tend to show that he was a genius.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1dgrvlWML4&mode=related&search=



And Amen to the last one, it's the essence of science.

Besides being a wonderful physicist, Mr. Feynman was a wonderful person! What a joy is to watch him talking! The world is a better place since he lived in it...

The quintesential of genius, right or wrong the world is a better place for you having been there, and there are many who fit that criteria. Even you *points*

I'd say never be satisfied with an arbitrary nonsense such as IQ, I suppose genius is in, as said, what you achieve not what you think of yourself or non correlatory tests.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
  • #61
O my god I agree with Werg...I SWEAR his accents different in those links than in other video lectures I've seen...but either way, I can't believe I didn't say he's a genius before lol. Actually this reminds me of a book I read a few years ago when I knew pretty much nothing about mathematics, but quite a lot of Physical Theory.

I underline theory because I knew the principles of many things such as relativity and quantum mechanics and even up to a point got as advanced as QED and QCD. However I realized one day that meant actually very very little, as the maths in those theories were to biggest part! And since I hadn't even heard of a logarithm then, I decided to start learning maths in pure pursuit of my dreams in physics. But i seem to have converted to a mathematician-wannabe now.

I just realized I went very off the topic, but you won't know that till you've read this far anyway so it doesn't matter :) The point was I read this very interesting book that gives shortened biographies of about 6 or so influential Physicists. And the names were the some of the biggest. Newton, Einstein, Heisenberg, Feynman, Bohr (even though personally i don't think that he was THAT great) and and Finally who i don't agree with but the book seemed to think was the finest example of a genius, Murray Gell-Mann. It doesn't say on the wikipedia link, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray_Gell-Mann , but the biography said he spoke 6 of so languages. Not just that, but his father had pioneered a technique as to learn a language and speak it without the slightest hint of an accent. He went to Yale at 15 years of age as well >.< He also was known to be an arrogant person, so perhaps people can have an arrogance about their genius but still be one..There were many other things that left me with the impression this guy was "one smart cookie" as my sister says, i just can't remember them lol.

I also remember that Heisenberg is quite a genius too, and to a lesser extent his brother. They used to go on hiking trips and on the long walks Heisenberg and his brother would play chess. How they held the board you say? No need, they played in their minds >.< "Queen to B5" etc etc, and they would remember the positions of all their pieces...quite amazing.

But come on guys, at the end of the day, there's no debate that this guys a real genius :) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSw1Qav0L2E&NR=1
(they spelled his name wrong ..)
 
  • #62
IQ measures how well you do in IQ tests, not to mention denoting a 3 hour period in your life which could have been better spent watching paint dry.

As for genius it in the eye of the beholder rather than in the head of the beholdee.
 
  • #63
Schrodinger's Dog said:
snip

theres no way feynman's iq was 120
 
  • #64
ice109 said:
theres no way feynman's iq was 120

My mistake it was 124 :wink:

http://www.assessmentpsychology.com/genius.htm

"On the trip home from the Nobel ceremonies in Stockholm, prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman stopped in Queens, N.Y., and looked up his high-school records. 'My grades were not as good as I remembered,' he said, 'and my I.Q. was 124, considered just above average.' "

James Gleick. (1992). Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman. New York: Pantheon.

Editor's note -- Richard Feynman's IQ of 124 was well above average for high school graduates and even college graduates. The average IQ of PhD/MD degree recipients is about 125, which is higher than 95 percent of the general population. Beyond a certain level of ability, other factors are certainly more important in determining an individual's chances of winning the Nobel Prize than IQ, not the least of which is the quality and reputation of the institution where the individual obtained his/her graduate degree and worked or taught. See Nobel Prize Winners and Universities. -- W.E.B.

As I said people take this nonsense far too seriously (even letting it influence there education choices or personal sense of intelligence) Genius or even intelligence isn't all that Correlatory with IQ it never has been. It may tell you how well you might do in education, but further than that it's hard to say.

"The four socially and personally most important threshold regions on the IQ scale are those that differentiate with high probability between persons who, because of their level of general mental ability, can or cannot attend a regular school (about IQ 50), can or cannot master the traditional subject matter of elementary school (about IQ 75), can or cannot succeed in the academic or college preparatory curriculum through high school (about IQ 105), can or cannot graduate from an accredited four-year college with grades that would qualify for admission to a professional or graduate school (about IQ 115). Beyond this, the IQ level becomes relatively unimportant in terms of ordinary occupational aspirations and criteria of success. That is not to say that there are not real differences between the intellectual capabilities represented by IQs of 115 and 150 or even between IQs of 150 and 180. But IQ differences in this upper part of the scale have far less personal implications than the thresholds just described and are generally of lesser importance for success in the popular sense than are certain traits of personality and character."

Arthur Jensen. (1980). Bias in Mental Testing. New York: Free Press, p. 113.

"It has been said that a 140 IQ is a "genius" score, however there is no definition, as such, in either of my psychological dictionaries about "genius." Neither is there an IQ score ranked as "genius"... Genius may be in the eye of the beholder. Furthermore, a true genius may not score particularly well on a standard group IQ test... And really, those who are what we may call a genius don't need a score to prove it."

The Question Of "Genius"
Abbie F. Salny, Ed.D., Supervisory psychologist, American Mensa

From my personal experience I've found people who are gifted at maths and language to score high on IQ tests, but to have little imagination or creativity sometimes, and that is what genius and intelligence is also about, a test that misses this, is missing the bigger picture. These skills in IQ tests are important, but those they miss are more important IMO.
 
Last edited:
  • #65
Even a "complete" IQ test that gave weight to all the vague forms of intelligence we are able to categorize would never be accurate, simply because it gives equal weight to the differing parts. Even trying to set some sort of proportion scale wouldn't be accurate. A person may be specifically wonderful at mathematical equations, but terrible at language problems, so they would still receive a lower score. The problem is that the test generalizes everything into 1 number, which is inadequate at best and is ignorantly discriminatory.
 
  • #66
I loved it when I read one of Feynman's biographies and discovered that his IQ was 'only' 124, because it more or less confirmed my suspicion that the concept of IQ is for the most part BS. The fact is that Feynman's intelligence probably didn't function in the terms tested by an IQ test and that's probably what made him a genius (However it should also be noted that Feynman did very well in the maths and spatial tests, and poorly on the linguistic tests).

I once had a convo with someone to whom it was obvious that Feynman’s ‘real’ IQ was much higher than that produced by his IQ test. Personally I think that's a load of crap because what is a ‘real’ IQ? IQ is exactly what it is: the results of a very specific test. That’s literally what it is (like you needed me to say so). Gauging intelligence by a ratings system is IMO completely misunderstanding the nature of intelligence, hence why IQ tests spew out so many anomalous results.
 
  • #67
Nah, not really close. Come to think of it I don't think I've ever met a genius :/ I guess I'll stumble across one eventually.

But I do think that IQ tests don't really have a lot to do with genius. I once saw an article about a guy who created sculptures from a grain of sand, painted them with a hair plucked from a fly and placed them in the eye of a needle. His stuff was amazing, I would call it genius, and the guy can't even read or write and has an IQ less than 100.
 
  • #68
But IQ tests do measure some form of brilliance. Not everyone can score a high IQ.
 
  • #69
Werg22 said:
But IQ tests do measure some form of brilliance. Not everyone can score a high IQ.

and not everyone can roll their tongue. it's been said before an iq test measures someone's ability to take an iq test. while their might be some correlation between iq and success there's no casual relationship
 
  • #70
ice109 said:
and not everyone can roll their tongue. it's been said before an iq test measures someone's ability to take an iq test. while their might be some correlation between iq and success there's no casual relationship

I agree. It's a predictor since there is a correlation between IQ and job performance/success, but it's not a particularly great predictor, especially above a certain IQ. It's more one of those things that you need enough of and after that other factors start to become more important.

You might have a hard time saying IQ correlates to success depending on how you define success. Looking over the Wikipedia article, a person with an IQ < 75 is more likely to find a spouse by the age of 30 than a person with an IQ > 125. Of course, those with an IQ of 110 or less have a much higher chance of divorcing within 5 years, so maybe there's a decent trade off in the long term. :rofl:
 

Similar threads

  • General Discussion
Replies
33
Views
2K
Replies
51
Views
5K
  • General Discussion
Replies
8
Views
979
Replies
4
Views
1K
  • General Discussion
2
Replies
39
Views
6K
  • General Discussion
2
Replies
49
Views
6K
  • General Discussion
Replies
32
Views
10K
  • General Discussion
Replies
17
Views
3K
  • General Discussion
Replies
27
Views
4K
Back
Top