Do You Have What It Takes to be a Genius?

[Gib Z]

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 ..)

 

[Zeth]

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.

 

[ice109]

snip

theres no way feynman's iq was 120

 

[Schrodinger's Dog]

theres no way feynman's iq was 120

My mistake it was 124

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.

 

[BoredNL]

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.

 

[Couperin]

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.

 

[Just some guy]

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.

 

[Werg22]

But IQ tests do measure some form of brilliance. Not everyone can score a high IQ.

 

[ice109]

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

 

[BobG]

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.

 

[maze]

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.

Me and my brother and one of my brothers friends used to do this when we were kids, usually on long car trips. It's really hard at first and you make a lot of blunders, but after a while it gets to be second nature. As a skill, I'd say it's roughly as difficult as learning to do a handstand, or juggle 3 balls (about 20 hours required).

 

[rewebster]

funny, I was never told my IQ---maybe I missed the tests from moving so often--


and now for the bad news about IQ:

"Health and IQ
Main article: Health and intelligence
Persons with a higher IQ have generally lower adult morbidity and mortality. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder,[55] severe depression,[56][57] and schizophrenia[58] are less prevalent in higher IQ bands.

A study of 11,282 individuals in Scotland who took intelligence tests at ages 7, 9 and 11 in the 1950s and 1960s, found an "inverse linear association" between childhood IQ scores and hospital admissions for injuries in adulthood. The association between childhood IQ and the risk of later injury remained even after accounting for factors such as the child's socioeconomic background.[59] Research in Scotland has also shown that a 15-point lower IQ meant people had a fifth less chance of seeing their 76th birthday, while those with a 30-point disadvantage were 37% less likely than those with a higher IQ to live that long.[60]"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ

its probably from being called an "egghead" and being pushed to the ground by the bully so often that it becomes a habit

 

[thomasxc]

Genius is the ability to elude innate human stupidity, at least in my opinion.

amen. i think that if people sat down and tried, theyd be a lot smarter than they generally are...i think "geniuses" are genetically predisposed to a certain skill...but that's just me../