Is being a genius genetic, a talent or an illness

[uperkurk]

Here's your problem right here.

No one has mentioned Edison's definition of genius yet: "Genius is 2% inspiration and 98% perspiration."

I read a book about autistic savants and they described a study done to determine whether normal people could attain the calculating skills of autistic savants. They got a math student and taught him the algorithms for determining what day of the week dates would fall on. Then they got him to drill himself in doing this in his head. (I believe he was required to drill at least 3 hours a day.)

After something like two months of this, he did, indeed, cross a threshold and suddenly became able to do it instantly, without thinking.

If you really want to have some kind of impressive skill like this you have to buckle down and do some serious practicing.

The authors of this book believed that autistic savants got good at this kind of thing because they had nothing else. The world is bewildering to them, so they retreat to the comfort of numerical calculations and do it constantly in their heads all day long. That's the thing to realize: they're doing it all day long, day in, day out. 98% perspiration. Eventually it becomes automatic.

If this model is true, then the illness is what drives them to retreat from the world, but it is the constant practice that makes the calculating automatic.

Yes, ofcourse practice would eventually get you to cross certain thresholds but you can't learn every single equation off by heart. I mean one guy I watched was given things like 98 to the power 13 and he just closes his eyes for like 3 seconds, then reads out the number and goes behond the decimal place of even the computer. Also doing outrageous calculations like 7.14256 factoral and other crazy stuff.

Which is impressive but the most impressive thing I ever saw which occurs in some savants, they sit them infront of a TV and for 1 second on the screen a random number of dots will appear, typically anywhere from 100 - 300 and after 1 second the image dissapears and they can instantly say how many dots there were...

 

[Ryan_m_b]

Yes, ofcourse practice would eventually get you to cross certain thresholds but you can't learn every single equation off by heart. I mean one guy I watched was given things like 98 to the power 13 and he just closes his eyes for like 3 seconds, then reads out the number and goes behond the decimal place of even the computer. Also doing outrageous calculations like 7.14256 factoral and other crazy stuff.

Which is impressive but the most impressive thing I ever saw which occurs in some savants, they sit them infront of a TV and for 1 second on the screen a random number of dots will appear, typically anywhere from 100 - 300 and after 1 second the image dissapears and they can instantly say how many dots there were...

The point Zooby was trying to make is that these people are good at these things because their autism makes them practice similar things constantly.

Whether or not that is the case some or all of the time though is besides the point given your post earlier about becoming more intelligent. Whilst calculating large sums quickly in your head or remembering every conversation (etc) are cool traits they really aren't the killer app you seem to think they are. If you want to be intelligent and productive then you really can just work at it until you have it. You might never work out sums in your head really fast but so what? The vast majority of mathematicians can't, they don't need to. What they need is a broad knowledge of the subject matter, a good understanding of what to apply and when and the determination and creativity to use this to achieve their goals.

It's a boring answer but I'm afraid there really isn't anything you can eat, drink or smoke. What you need to do is study hard for a long time and immerse yourself with people who do the same.

 

[uperkurk]

The point Zooby was trying to make is that these people are good at these things because their autism makes them practice similar things constantly.

Whether or not that is the case some or all of the time though is besides the point given your post earlier about becoming more intelligent. Whilst calculating large sums quickly in your head or remembering every conversation (etc) are cool traits they really aren't the killer app you seem to think they are. If you want to be intelligent and productive then you really can just work at it until you have it. You might never work out sums in your head really fast but so what? The vast majority of mathematicians can't, they don't need to. What they need is a broad knowledge of the subject matter, a good understanding of what to apply and when and the determination and creativity to use this to achieve their goals.

It's a boring answer but I'm afraid there really isn't anything you can eat, drink or smoke. What you need to do is study hard for a long time and immerse yourself with people who do the same.

That's the best answer so far. The hardest problem I have is reading maths questions, reading the formula etc but my knowledge of maths is literally that of a GCSE student. I have a very very long road ahead of me. I've been recommended this website www.khanacademy.org

 

[Ryan_m_b]

That's the best answer so far. The hardest problem I have is reading maths questions, reading the formula etc but my knowledge of maths is literally that of a GCSE student. I have a very very long road ahead of me. I've been recommended this website www.khanacademy.org

Everyone starts at the front of a long road. Even PhD students have to approach new fields like beginners! I've heard good things about the Khan academy, best of luck with it. Personally I'd also advice reading a lot and reading anything you find interesting. Books really do push your horizons.

 

[ImaLooser]

The authors of this book believed that autistic savants got good at this kind of thing because they had nothing else. The world is bewildering to them, so they retreat to the comfort of numerical calculations and do it constantly in their heads all day long. That's the thing to realize: they're doing it all day long, day in, day out. 98% perspiration. Eventually it becomes automatic.

I would believe that. I used to have the habit of finding the prime factors of numbers I saw. I got to be pretty good at it.

 

[ImaLooser]

Yes, ofcourse practice would eventually get you to cross certain thresholds but you can't learn every single equation off by heart. I mean one guy I watched was given things like 98 to the power 13 and he just closes his eyes for like 3 seconds, then reads out the number and goes behond the decimal place of even the computer. Also doing outrageous calculations like 7.14256 factoral and other crazy stuff.

Which is impressive but the most impressive thing I ever saw which occurs in some savants, they sit them infront of a TV and for 1 second on the screen a random number of dots will appear, typically anywhere from 100 - 300 and after 1 second the image dissapears and they can instantly say how many dots there were...

You know those puzzles where you have to look at one image with one eye and another image with the other. Both images look like random dots, put them together and get an image. A few people can do it seeing the images a day apart.

 

[FreeMitya]

I posted something similar in another thread, but perhaps this might be of interest to you (OP):

Professor Sandra F. Witelson, department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Neurosciences, from the Faculty of Health Sciences at McMaster University, and her co-workers, compared anatomical measurements of Einstein's brain with those of brains of 35 men and 50 women who had normal intelligence. In general, Einstein's brain was similar to the other brains except for one area called the inferior parietal region. Because of extensive development of this region on both sides of his brain, his brain was 15% wider than other brains studied. "Visuospatial cognition, mathematical thought, and imagery of movement are strongly dependent on this region," the researchers note. This unusual brain anatomy may explain why Einstein tackled scientific problems the way he did, the researchers write, "Einstein's own description of his scientific thinking was that 'words do not seem to play any role', but there is 'associative play' of 'more or less clear images' of a 'visual and muscular type'.

http://fhs.mcmaster.ca/main/news/news_archives/einstein.htm

Now, this is just one person (Einstein) and there is obviously no currently conceivable way we're going to be able to study the brains of every brilliant person (can we even define 'brilliant'?), but it is fascinating research and is certainly going to give us more insight into the labyrinth of human consciousness.

 

[Bill_K]

Years later an admiring Freeman Dyson was to meet with Einstein at Princeton in 1948. However, before the meeting, he obtained a copy of Einstein's new "Unified Field Theory". He called it 'junk', and skipped the meeting.

This says more about Dyson than about Einstein. I shared a cab ride with Freeman Dyson once. Now there is "Sheldon" in the flesh.

 

[SW VandeCarr]

This says more about Dyson than about Einstein. I shared a cab ride with Freeman Dyson once. Now there is "Sheldon" in the flesh.

The fact is that Einstein's "Unified Field Theory", to be kind, was irrelevant to physics by 1948. Einstein did not accept the foundations of Quantum Mechanics (QM), and held that hidden variables would explain the apparent probabilistic nature of QM. He seems to have ignored much of the practical work that was being done in QM. He really did not participate much in the advance of physics after the publication of General Relativity (GR) and not at all after about 1935. Even GR was not particularly relevant to mainstream physics until the 1960's when the Standard Model was being developed. A new appreciation of Einstein's work followed, but he died in 1955.