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Editorial Science

Genius Requires Just the Right Mix 269

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the baking-genius-pie dept.
An anonymous reader writes "LiveScience has an interesting piece taking a look at how genius is rarely developed in a vacuum. From the article: 'The reality is that behind many scientific geniuses, there is at least one other genius, and often a number of them.' It takes much more than a genius pal or predecessor, however, to do great science, according to Simmons. Scientific advances emerge from social, economic and political conditions."
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Genius Requires Just the Right Mix More

Genius Requires Just the Right Mix

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  • Surrounding yourself with talent (Score:5, Insightful)

    by lukewarmfusion ( 726141 ) on Monday January 23, 2006 @11:36PM (#14545834) Homepage Journal
    Really brilliant people (not just scientifically, but in any discipline or industry) surround themselves with other brilliant people. They enjoy being challenged by peers. They are secure in their abilities and know that other brilliant people will not threaten their place but help to elevate it.

    I am finding, early in my business career, that working with other talented people makes me work harder and aspire to greater things. The constant challenges put a perspective on the obstacles I used to face - ones I now overcome easily.

    I'm beginning to believe that "genius" is just a frame of mind.

    • Re:Surrounding yourself with talent (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 23, 2006 @11:41PM (#14545857)
      So now I have an excuse. I am not motivated because I am surronded by idiots!

    • Re:Surrounding yourself with talent (Score:5, Insightful)

      by catmistake ( 814204 ) on Tuesday January 24, 2006 @12:08AM (#14545999) Journal
      Really brilliant people (not just scientifically, but in any discipline or industry) surround themselves with other brilliant people.

      Actually... this is sort of a subset of another truth: you become the people with which you associate.

      If you hang out with a bunch of drug abusing low-lifes, guess what? That's either what you are or what you are becoming. If you hang out with a bunch of very smart, technically oriented, socially inadept individuals, chances are you are a nerd.

      Ironically, its not that you gravitate towards those of similar interest and mental capacities, necessarily, but more that circumstance has thrown you together with those that often times you must socially break free from (in order to find a more pregressive group) to advance yourself.

      • What if you meat with very different people. Nerds, sarcastic economists, techies, writers, lawers and so on. I am sure someone will find a joke for this one, but I feel I fall in that place anyway. Everything influences you In different way. I really enjoy working with slower people, as much as working with very brilliant people. In fact, different people can show you different angles o ways to process the information. It's rich. Of course, you end stopping judgment more than often, or understanding why pe
    • I agree completely with this statement, because I have seen and experienced it first-hand as a contractor at Pfizer Global Research & Development. However, surrounding one's self with excellence at work is only part of the equation, surrounding one's self with a nurturing and supportive family environment (good nutrition and well-balanced life experiences) at an early age further assists your development. Then there are the other relevant social, cultural, and other environmental factors that would go

      • Most importantly (Score:3, Insightful)

        by wombatmobile ( 623057 )

        However, surrounding one's self with excellence at work is only part of the equation, surrounding one's self with a nurturing and supportive family environment (good nutrition and well-balanced life experiences) at an early age further assists your development. Then there are the other relevant social, cultural, and other environmental factors that would go along with this.

        Like wild sex with a naked bitchin' ho.

        Just for balance.

    • Re:Surrounding yourself with talent (Score:5, Insightful)

      by balster neb ( 645686 ) on Tuesday January 24, 2006 @12:30AM (#14546092)
      I agree, and what the article says is actually pretty obvious if you examine it.

      If you look back a bit in history, there tend to be brief periods when there this an explosion of new ideas and concepts, and these periods are always associated with particular geniuses. For physics, you could argue that we've been in one long "genius period" since Newton or perhaps Galileo. For other sciences, there have been different periods.

      This is not unique to sciences, but happens with all fields. Why, for instance did so many musical geniuses emerge in Europe during the second half of the 19th century? Was it the water supply? No, it was because at that point there were a whole bunch of new ideas in music emerging. But by some time in the early 20th century, most of these musical ideas had been explored by composers, which is why there were much fewer classical music geniuses in the later 20th century. Same goes with the other arts.

      Essential for genius to emerge is correct circumstances. A potential genius has to be born at a time when there is great scope in a particular field. Geniuses of the past usually had no shortage of living role models while growing up. So while biology plays a factor, it is important to be born at the right place at the right time, and have the right exposure. That's also why we don't see geniuses emerge from far away, cut-off parts of the world. No genius can develop in an intellectual vacuum.

      • Re:Surrounding yourself with talent (Score:5, Insightful)

        by woobieman29 ( 593880 ) on Tuesday January 24, 2006 @01:10AM (#14546265)
        I think that you can take this a bit farther as well, and state that current social and political values also will help to differentiate time periods in their ability to produce genius.

        The dark ages are a prime example. Societies turned their backs on logic in favor of mysticism and people were afraid to pursue knowledge lest they be labeled as heretics. It took a lot of bravery in those times to stand up for any ideas that ran contrary to the religious beliefs of the day.

        Unfortunately I fear that in the U.S. we are experiencing a rebirth of this social condition, albeit on a much smaller scale (for now, at least). The extreme religious right has waaayy more power than they should (IMHO) and it seems that more and more often faith trumps science and logic.

        For true scientific innovation to flourish again in the U.S. we will need to gravitate back towards a society that is progress oriented.

        Oh yeah, and it wouldn't hurt to have an administration that lets scientific findings stand on their own merit, without political edits.

        • The other thing that needs to change, or at least be modified is the "Publish or perish" narrow focus for advancement in academia. It's hurting the public perception of science by encouraging the falsification of results in two ways: 1) by directly increasing the pressure to publish results (whether valid or invalid) for prestige and continued advancement in the community, and 2) by decreasing the likelihood that results will be independently verified (since such activities don't count as publishable "origi
        • The dark ages are a prime example. Societies turned their backs on logic in favor of mysticism and people were afraid to pursue knowledge lest they be labeled as heretics. It took a lot of bravery in those times to stand up for any ideas that ran contrary to the religious beliefs of the day.

          Not at all. It is actually the Christian faith that led to science.

          A few excerpts from an interview with Rodney Stark [worldmag.com]:

          WORLD: How is Christianity unique in emphasizing the idea of progress?

          STARK: The other great faiths e
          • God's gift of reason made progress inevitable

            Reason's crowning achievement will be to destroy religion; when reason, not faith, determines how we view the world, there will be no need for God.

            • Compass [coastalnavigation.com] - Invented by the Chinese and first used in Europe by pagan Vikings in the 12th Century.
            • Stirrup [wikipedia.org] - Invented by the Chinese and introduced into Europe by the Swedes in the 7th Century.
            • Crossbow [huntingsociety.org] - Chinese had them as did the Romans.
            • Eyeglasses [teagleoptometry.com] - Probably 13th Century Italian, but early lens's were discovered in ancient Nineveh. Ben Franklin is generally credited with the invention of bifocals.
            • Clocks [tufts.edu] - Were known to the Greeks.
      • People don't like to hear it, but the nazi's were another such group. Their rocket think-tank was largely responsible for the world's radical success in space travel in the next 30 years.

        And it wasn't just the ideas they developed, it was also the people. As soon as the war was over, the allies snarfed up the pack of them and those men became critical to the rocket programs of the US and the soviets.

        It was a rare concentration of funding and talent fired by a intense ambition (i.e. make rockets that can h
    • somehow I come to think that regular schools are not the right place to be if you are a young genius.

      I wonder how many talented people are made average by todays school systems.

  • Poor Filler (Score:2, Interesting)

    by DynaSoar ( 714234 ) *
    What a foul little waste of blurb space that was.

    Science doesn't have a monopoly on genius. There is plenty of genius elsewhere.

    As for the conditions necessary for "genius" things to happen in science, that's called a "paradigm shift". Read Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolution".

    All this article told me was someone was trying to cover some white space.

    • Re:Poor Filler (Score:4, Insightful)

      by caffeinemessiah ( 918089 ) on Monday January 23, 2006 @11:50PM (#14545911) Journal
      Shame on you, throwing Kuhn references around like that! Kuhn's paradigm shifts, perhaps one of the worst uses of technical terms that penetrated '80s business ideology, are more in line with the biological idea of punctuated equilibria applied to intellectualism. Things cruise along for a little while, ho-hum, until the intellectual climate changes and then science truly progresses. There are similar analogies in a myriad other fields.

      However, I think all the article was talking about was really clever people who are secure and confident about their knowledge. People tend to equate "genius" with "will discover something to change the world any day now", but geniuses might simply offer a fresh view or point out something that no one has noticed before on a day to day basis. In other words, think smaller than Kuhn!

      And I completely agree with you, science definitely doesn't have a monopoly on geniuses. But from a very early age, no matter where we grow up, we tend to be exposed to the stereotype of the mad scientist and the odd poster of Einstein. How many 8th graders know what relativity is in really simple terms, rather than Einstein "was a really smart scientist".

      • The problem with understanding relativity is that, unlike saying that Einstein was a genius, it is a not a simple thing to do.
      • Kuhn's paradigm shifts, perhaps one of the worst uses of technical terms that penetrated '80s business ideology, are more in line with the biological idea of punctuated equilibria applied to intellectualism.

        Wrong way 'round: punctuated equilibrium is Kuhn applied to evolutionary biology. Kuhn published _Structure of Scientific Revolutions_ in 1962. Eldredge and Gould's Punctuated Equilibrium paper came out ten years later, in 1972.

    • Re: Poor Filler (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Black Parrot ( 19622 ) *
      > As for the conditions necessary for "genius" things to happen in science, that's called a "paradigm shift". Read Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolution".

      Kuhn's paradigm [yuk,yuk], even if correct, hasn't got anything to do with 'genius'.
    • Exactly. Kuhn's ideas about how scientists who are creating paradigm shifts are reacting to breakdowns in the normal order of things are decades old but much more insightful. Here is a thumbnail sketch of one such idea.

      Kuhn saw scientists in a given specialization as members of a particular linguistic community. Genius revisionings of whole specializations or even whole sciences happen when the normal language of that science, like dynamics or chemistry, starts to prove inadequate to the task of describing

  • Stupidity, too! (Score:5, Funny)

    by strobexii ( 601986 ) on Monday January 23, 2006 @11:42PM (#14545862)
    Browse /. at -1 and notice how stupidity doesn't develop in a vacuum either. Behind every "-1 Offtopic" comment, there are dozens of other equally irrelevant, nonsensical rants. One "Stephen King is Dead" post always leads to more, and penis bird lives on.
    • > Browse /. at -1 and notice how stupidity doesn't develop in a vacuum either. Behind every "-1 Offtopic" comment, there are dozens of other equally irrelevant, nonsensical rants. One "Stephen King is Dead" post always leads to more, and penis bird lives on.

      Probably because it surrounds itself with it surrounds itself with smart people, like Steven King.
    • Browse /. at -1 and notice how stupidity doesn't develop in a vacuum either.

      I'm too smart to do that.

  • Articles interpretation might be challenged (Score:5, Interesting)

    by HidingMyName ( 669183 ) on Monday January 23, 2006 @11:46PM (#14545889)
    In the original article it quotes Newton and interprets his remarks as follows.
    Sir Isaac Newton once said that if he had achieved anything with his work, such as his laws of motion and gravity, it was "by standing on the shoulders of giants." The scientific vision and achievements of those before brought Newton metaphorically to a higher ground that allowed him to "see" further into the nature of the physical world.
    However, there is a contrary interpretation of Newton's remark as being an thinly veiled insult denigrating competing claims of Robert Hooke [uh.edu], a colleague who was short in stature.
    • Further proof that a true genius easily makes more than one point with a witty remark.

    • When Richard Walker published his Life of Hooke in 1705, he added that Hooke was

      ... in person but despicable, being crooked and low of stature, and as he grew older more and more deformed. He was always very pale and lean, and latterly nothing but skin and bone, with a meagre aspect, his eyes grey and full, with a sharp ingenious look whilst younger. He wore his own hair of dark brown colour, very long, and hanging neglected over his face uncut and lank, which about three years before his death he cut of

  • Right (Score:3, Funny)

    by 2Bits ( 167227 ) on Tuesday January 24, 2006 @12:01AM (#14545970)
    According to that hypothesis, I'm wondering how many geniuses /. has produced, since everyone here considers himself/herself a genius? Most important of all, when am I going to become a genius too, since I've been surrounding myself with all these geniuses here for quite a while now?

    Can someone prove to me that this hypothesis is true:

    1. Surround yourself with one /. genius makes you a genius. True.
    2. Surround yourself with two /. geniuses makes you a genius. True.
    3. Surround yourself with n /. geniuses makes you a genius. True.
    4. Hence, surround yourself with n + 1 /. geniuses also makes you a genius.

    The question is, how many /. geniuses does it take to prove this?

    • Re:Right (Score:2, Funny)

      by gbobeck ( 926553 )

      The question is, how many /. geniuses does it take to prove this?

      About the same number of /.'ers that it takes to change a light bulb.

      Wouldn't it be possible to prove this using mathematical induction.

      A(n) = Surround yourself with n /. genius makes you a genius, n = 1

      If it is known that A(n) is true, and also that A(n) implies A(n+1), then A(n+1) is true, and this implies A(n+2) is true, etc., thus proving that A(k) is true for all k>=n.

    • Re:Right (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Bongo Bill ( 853669 )
      There's no way to know. Every /. user knows that he's the only intelligent person there.
    • You don't magically become a genius no matter what you shround yourself with. It's just a buzzword more than anything, it's basi meaning should be "someone who excels at a subject". So theres probably millions of "experts" at Slashdot, each one has their own field where they excel, not because they "natural know", but because they have a passion for it.

      Learning things requires you to work. If you enjoy that work you'll do it twice as much ans get twice as much out of it. Very few people are "naturally gifte

      • Re:Right (Score:4, Insightful)

        by TubeSteak ( 669689 ) on Tuesday January 24, 2006 @01:53AM (#14546444) Journal
        I coulda sworn that "Genius" meant you had a certain level of intelligence.

        Check this site out for a breakdown of IQ
        http://www.wilderdom.com/intelligence/IQWhatScores Mean.html [wilderdom.com]
        • 50% of IQ scores fall between 90 and 110
        • 70% of IQ scores fall between 85 and 115
        • 95% of IQ scores fall between 70 and 130
        • 99.5% of IQ scores fall between 60 and 140

        Genius is generally considered to be above 145.

        The difference between "someone who excels at a subject" and someone who is a "genius" is that a genius may be able to excel at (m)any subjects.

        The smarter you are, the greater your ability to comprehend, understand, analyze, etc. Raw intelligence will generally trump training.

        The Rand Corp recently released a study involving soldiers, fresh out of advanced individual training courses. They told them to troubleshoot faulty communications gear. The smart ones had a 97% success rate. The dumbest... 25% of them managed to find the two problems.

        http://www.ocnus.net/artman/publish/article_22323. shtml [ocnus.net]

        The fact that you don't know what a genius is, tends to suggest that you aren't one. Most people will know genius when they see it.

        • Re:Right (Score:4, Interesting)

          by Savantissimo ( 893682 ) * on Tuesday January 24, 2006 @03:37AM (#14546772) Journal
          There is no generally accepted definition of genius, and it certainly isn't a reflection of IQ alone, but rather of a creative capacity that is in some sense at the level of the best the human race has to offer. The odds of genius rise with IQ, and out around 160 (4 SD) in my experience it becomes common. But there are plenty of geniuses out there who score in the 130s and 140s. IQ isn't all that accurate or precise, particularly for high scores. It only measures a person's ability to solve contrived and artificial rather than natural and ill-defined problems, and it does not test the ability to delineate new problems or to frame old problems in a new way.

          As far as fixing communications gear goes, yes, in my experience, the brighter the tech, the more problems he'll find. And the more problems he finds, and the more thouroughly he fixes them, the worse the quality ranking he'll get on "six sigma" bullshit metrics that big telcom companies use. IQ is better than that, but it still filters out most real intelligence in real complex and fluid situations with competing goals and measures of value.
        • So, by your deffinition, Mozart is not a genius, and I, who sit around not doing that much at the moment, am a genius?

  • Leibniz, Bernoulli, Euler... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Metasquares ( 555685 ) <slashdot.metasquared@com> on Tuesday January 24, 2006 @12:02AM (#14545973) Homepage
    There's a very long string of famous mathematicians that associated with each other (not necessarily directly, but they are all connected on a relatively small graph), beginning with Leibniz and ending with Dirichlet. It includes Bernoulli, Euler, Lagrange, Fourier, and Poisson, as well as the aforementioned two.

    So yes, I'd be inclined to agree.
    • Is it not also possible that people with a similar intelligect and intrest hunt each other down? I mean I can't stand hanging around idiots and I enjoy the company of people with similar intrests. Surely these people are attracted to each other, not "made" by the social group.
  • The summary is fairly misleading. (gasp!) All the article says is that geniuses who accomplish great things tend to work closely with other geniuses. The summary implies that you are only a genius [answers.com] if you accomplish great things. There are probably a fair number of geniuses in the world that spend too much time on the small stuff [paulgraham.com] to do great things.
  • So if it takes more than one genius to produce another genius, does that mean we could be looking at a genius shortage in the future?

    • Re: Hmm.. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Black Parrot ( 19622 ) * on Tuesday January 24, 2006 @12:27AM (#14546084)
      > So if it takes more than one genius to produce another genius, does that mean we could be looking at a genius shortage in the future?

      It takes more than one stray cat to make a stray kitten, and yet we don't seem to have any shortage.

    • Re:Hmm.. (Score:2, Funny)

      by Firehed ( 942385 )
      Not once the government-sponsored inbreeding program starts :) An idea that good couldn't possibly backfire!

  • A lot of it seems to be economic (Score:5, Interesting)

    by tinrobot ( 314936 ) on Tuesday January 24, 2006 @12:18AM (#14546034)
    From the article:

    "The scientific genius who grew up in grinding poverty is an exceedingly rare bird," he said. "If it seems there was a great flowering of scientific genius out of Eastern Europe beginning in the late nineteenth century, it was due in large part to a developing middle class, a stable family life, and secular opportunities for both men and women."

    So, less povery will produce more geniuses. I think that's a really good argument for creating a stronger social safety net.
    • The 1800's boom in geniuses was the result of greater opportunity for self-advancement, not greater opportunity for sloth and Oprah-watching.
      • I wonder how much communications had to do with our perception of the number of geniuses at that time. Maybe Joe Smoe of the 9th century developed comparable work to that of Albert Einstein but just didn't get published.

    • Re:A lot of it seems to be economic (Score:4, Interesting)

      by KrackHouse ( 628313 ) on Tuesday January 24, 2006 @01:07AM (#14546252) Homepage
      Read Hayek's A Road to Serfdom [wikipedia.org] and Austrian economic theory for an explanation of why socialism leads to poverty (or just look at unemployment rates in France and Germany). I think Wikipedia and the Internet will lead to more geniuses than bureaucracy. Since China switched from pure communism to a more free economic system in the '70s 300Million people have risen out of poverty. I personally don't think that's a coincidence.

      I used to be a die-hard socialist myself in college but I started studying economics and though I'm not now a Republican I know government intervention is a net loss for society. Money donated to a good open source project will do the world infinitely more good than well funded politicians.

  • I haven't even begun! (Score:5, Funny)

    by sarge apone ( 918461 ) on Tuesday January 24, 2006 @12:22AM (#14546057)
    Vizzini: I can't compete with you physically, and you're no match for my brains.
    Westley: You're that smart?
    Vizzini: Let me put it this way. Have you ever heard of Plato, Aristotle, Socrates?
    Westley: Yes.
    Vizzini: Morons.

  • Similar to Howard Becker's work (Score:4, Insightful)

    by pbooktebo ( 699003 ) on Tuesday January 24, 2006 @01:13AM (#14546272)
    The sociologist Howard Becker has written extensively, most clearly in his book "Art Worlds," that to understand creation the locus should be the entire world of the artist, not the artist. We're making a mistake if we try to understand Beethoven's 9th without reference to the culture of Vienna, the rising role of the publishing house, the people who let him live the unfettered (if tortured) life of a creative artist, all play a role alongside the musicians, the promoters, his students, and composers who preceeded him and worked alongside him. That Viennese world, with Beethoven in it, Becker would argue, is the actual producer of the work.

    The same holds true for science and other creative endeavors. It's not an airtight thesis, by any means, but it is provocative and gets people thinking along different lines than the unitary individual acting alone as we are so prone to do in the West...

  • And then again, maybe there is genius (Score:4, Interesting)

    by edbarbar ( 234498 ) on Tuesday January 24, 2006 @01:15AM (#14546284)
    I don't agree with the assertions of the author. I know it is in vogue to believe it's a special relationship between events, people, etc., that makes a genius, but I don't agree. You are or you aren't. Whether the genius' contributions are recognized, whether the genius finds an appropriate subject in which to expend his creative energy, these are the questions.

    The article goes on to discuss how Einstein had all the benefits of other great physicists. But wait, he dropped out of high school, barely made it into college, and couldn't even find a job. He taught himself calculus, and developed special relativity on his own.

    History is rife with examples of genius forgotten, and who knows how much is lost. The Fourier Transform was rejected by the Academy of Sciences of Paris, yet look at the applications today, from digital image processing, communications theory, and the profound impact it had on the revolutionary idea of function. Consider others, such as Fermat, a great mathematician, for whom math was only a hobby. This extends to other things like music. Bach, little known in his own time, and completely forgotten until he was discovered by Mendelssohn, is now considered by many to be the greatest composer of all time.

    No, I think that people who like to say there is no Genius, only environment, are merely mediocre thinkers, socialists, and those who would rob the wonderful talent of the great contributers of our world. The goal? To diminish individual contribution and aggrandize socialism.

    The real question we ought to be asking, is given there are as many people alive today as ever, why don't we have 10000 geniuses making enormous progress in the sciences, when largely we hear about questionable things like "cold fusion," and the like.
    • You said: "I don't agree with the assertions of the author. [...] Whether the genius' contributions are recognized, whether the genius finds an appropriate subject in which to expend his creative energy, these are the questions." Please, RTFA all the way to the end. You're disputing the main point of the article by agreeing with the article?

      The last sentence of TFA: "Society creates the conditions for scientists to be creative and productive--or not."

      Genius is, or is not. Whether or not that genius

    • The article goes on to discuss how Einstein had all the benefits of other great physicists. But wait, he dropped out of high school, barely made it into college, and couldn't even find a job. He taught himself calculus, and developed special relativity on his own.

      It's fair to point out that, although Einstein did drop out of high school and failed the liberal arts portions of his college entrance exams, he went back and finished high school, and passed the exams later. There is no evidence to indicate that

  • This applies across the board... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by MikeTwo ( 775582 ) on Tuesday January 24, 2006 @01:26AM (#14546324)
    Ever watch the Olympics? The U.S. always wins WAY more golds than it should percentage-wise. Is anyone going to argue that this is because American genes are just *that* much more superior than the rest of the world? Unless you're Jerry Falwell, you don't make stupid statements like that.

    It's because America has top-notch gyms and training equipment, allowing more people with natural talent to be able to develop their talents to the extreme.

    Cntrl-C, Cntrl-V this idea into an intellectual bucket, and you get the point of the article. Environment is critical to "geniusness".

    • Yes, but another reason (which is sort of relevant to the subject of genius) is that America is a fairly large country. The more populous your country is, the better your top N people will (on average) be, because the "top N" will be a smaller percentage. In addition, America has an additional advantage over other populous countries like Indonesia or India because we have better faculties to find the smart people.
    • Paying athletes so they can train as a full time job helps too.

      I don't like the idea of Olympics where the country who makes the best undetectable drugs wins. I believe we should draw people who are going to participate completely at random. This way, we'd see which country would win on it's own merit :)

    • Not true (Score:5, Interesting)

      by jaakkeli ( 47383 ) <raipala@pcu.helsinki.fi> on Tuesday January 24, 2006 @06:50AM (#14547311)
      http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/spo_sum_oly_me d_all_tim_percap [nationmaster.com]

      Olympic medals per capita, all time:

      #1 Finland
      #2 Sweden
      #3 Hungary
      #4 Denmark
      #5 Norway
      .
      .
      .

      the US comes in at place 28 of 116. And as for gold medals, well, there are no total statistics on the site, but for Sydney, gold medals per capita put the US at place 31 of 48. And so on. It's pretty standard knowledge that the US does very badly in the Olympics for a country of that size. It only does well in the absolute number of medals because of its, well, absolute size, which gives it a massive pool of talented people and a lot will succeed regardless of how inferior their training/financial environment is to rich world standards.

      (BTW, part of the reason why Finland is leading the all time per capita stats is that in the early 20th century Finns *were* often written off in Western Europe/America as racially inferior and there was a huge national push to succeed in sports to defeat that image...)

  • Dilbert (Score:5, Funny)

    by Ctrl+Alt+De1337 ( 837964 ) on Tuesday January 24, 2006 @01:37AM (#14546368) Homepage
    PHB: A good manager is someone who hires people who are smarter than he is.

    Wally: So... your boss is dumber than you?

    Alice: And you boss's boss is dumber yet?

    Dilbert: According to your theory, our CEO is the dumbest person in the company.

    Wally: Unless all of you are bad managers.

    Asok: Truly we are doomed either way.

    PHB: This concludes the motivational part of the meeting.

    Wally: I'd give you a high five but I don't like to move.

  • Agree (Score:5, Insightful)

    by UndyingShadow ( 867720 ) on Tuesday January 24, 2006 @02:20AM (#14546560)
    One of biggest problems a "genius thinker" often faces is his own intelligence. He is on a much higher level and being surrounded by "normal people" often leaves him unchallenged, he doesn't have to work at anything, and then his discontent could squash the ideas right out of him. But as soon as you put him in a room with another on his level, he will quickly find himself challenged, and will respond with genius, as will his counterpart, leading to truly amazing things. As a general rule, I've found that people don't excel unless they have a reason to. 99% of the time, its competition

  • Genius and Idiots (Score:2, Interesting)

    by MaxiumMahem ( 933757 )
    While the article may very well be true, I've heard another saying that strikes me as even more true, "There is a fine line bettwen a Genius and an Idiot." Many people we hold in high esteeme for their brillance were also a little eccentric, or down right crazy. Vincent Van Gogh, Bobby Fisher, Andy Warhol, hell Wikipedia has a whole list of them http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_widely _considered_eccentric [wikipedia.org]. In my personal experience, most of the smartest people I have meet have been a little b

    • Re:Genius and Idiots (Score:2, Insightful)

      by rca66 ( 818002 )

      "There is a fine line bettwen a Genius and an Idiot." Many people we hold in high esteeme for their brillance were also a little eccentric, or down right crazy.

      Being an idiot and being crazy are complete different things. A genius can be an idiot, because he has a very special talent and might have deficits in other important areas. But being a bit crazy is probably connected to being a genius. A genius tends to think out of the frame other people have around their minds. So, it's likely they think out

  • Counterexample. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ezzzD55J ( 697465 ) <slashdot5@scum.org> on Tuesday January 24, 2006 @06:11AM (#14547221) Homepage
    Ramanujan [wikipedia.org] is one of the biggest mathematical geniuses ever, and taught himself these things in a vacuum.

  • Right mix? (Score:3, Funny)

    by hey! ( 33014 ) on Tuesday January 24, 2006 @09:47AM (#14547762) Homepage Journal
    as in the ratio of LSD to amphetamines?

  • O RLY? (Score:2)

    by dj42 ( 765300 )
    I only use the O RLY because this is stupid-obvious and not completely true. Sure, in a sense, the title of the article sums it up nicely. But there's a reason your average half-retard doesn't stumble upon great ideas suddenly and without warning. Or your 160IQ professor at a university who goes his whole life without doing anything that changes his field. I consider this assessment an interpretation, or rationilization of genius, to help commoners better understand how people get their ideas and form c

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