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i love the guy. he thinks about fascinating questions in brilliantly off beat ways.

I do not like this guy, I do not agree with most of what he said, I think he is way way off the mark. His training appears to be psychology, not science or mathematics. Genius is a word whose true meaning had been badly distorted by incorrect careless usage. About the only concession I give him is that Michael Ventris might have been a genius, Andrew Wilds was not. This is the sour grapes mentality of someone who recognizes his own limitations and has applied what is referred to as "the Protestant Ethic" to assessing the relative value of mental gymnastics. Plodders are rarely geniuses. That is not what genius is about. Genius recognizes something nobody else ever saw because it invented a new way to look at an old problem, not because it trudged through the same mud everyone else did but persisted through sheer determination. In fact, true works of genius are often deceptively simple, elegant, at first almost impossible to believe and eventually seem so self evident that they are impossible not to believe. Einstein was a genius. His simple equation E=m*c*c overturned everything that had previously been known and believed about the essence of the physical universe. At first few people in physics fully even understood the explanation behind it and fewer believed it. Now slightly over 100 years later, it is one of the most certain facts we do know about the physical universe. It was one of those theories which all of the plodders in physics in the world could have worked on together for their entire lives and not have gotten right because at first glance it defies all common experience including all scientific experience up to that time, yet it turned out to be the only plausible explanation for phenomena which were otherwise unexplainable. Without it, our entire modern technological world would not have been possible, everything from television to the transistor depends on it. Some physicists say it rocketed human understanding 100 years into the future in a single stroke. Yes, most problems do not rise to the level where only a true genius is needed, a large number of very smart mere mortals can solve them given enough time but there are those problems which will not yield to the ordinary mind no matter how well trained and no matter how much time and effort is applied. Genius cuts through the trivial, finds the essence immediately, understands all of its implications and ramifications, and explodes it in one swift brilliant burst of insight which puts it in an entirely new light nobody has ever imagined before. Few true geniuses we know of ever existed. I think Leonardo Da Vinci was a genius. Maybe Sir Isaac Newton was, I'm not quite sure about that though. Johann Sebastian Bach probably was, possibly Beethoven, I'm not sure about him either and I do know enough abuot him to know he was a plodder.

Most of the "geniuses" i know have worked incredibly hard at it.

When i first went to university a lot of people though they were super clever, they tought they were born with it. A lot of them ended up droping out!

If they had accepted there inabilities and worked at things that challanged them mabey they could have done better.

this cult of genius, places like princeton and harvard have is very damaging.

Here is an article I found on Terry Tao's website (now theres a genius!),

Once again, another naive analysis and wrong conclusion about genius trying to classify it by extrapolating from the normal range of intelligence and ignoring its uniqueness. Geniuses see relationships and draw concusions other people don't not because they work harder or longer at it but because something about the way their brains and minds work makes it possible for them to do what other people can't under any circumstances. Very little is known about how cognitive thought works, about how the brain functions even in normal people operate let alone the distinction between their thought processes and that of geniuses. We do not know why for example some idiot savants can multiply two four digit numbers and always come up with the right answer faster than anyone could enter them on the keypad of a caculator or why other idiot savants can hear a piece of music just once and play it on a piano with both hands including chords perfectly from then on out. It's not a matter of hard work or determination and this is what the psychogists refuse to accept. No matter how much mental calesthenics you do, most of us are not destined to be an intellectual Hercules, it's just not in us and so far, nobody has figured out a way to put it there. More sour grapes and frankly, people writing articles without using all of the intelligence they do have.

Mark

You astonish me! You're NOT SURE if Isaac Newton was a genuius? Yet we're supposed to take your comments seriously on this topic? Not likely.

helenanne smith, take my comments any way you like, there is no requirement on anyone's part to take anyone elses comments seriously. For example, I NEVER take yours seriously so don't be embarrassed to return the favor.

That's right, I really can't say, I'm not exactly sure. While I studied Newton's ideas in great detail while I was in school, I didn't study Newton himself to where I could even begin to infer what his thinking process might have been. Genius is not merely an output, it is a process. Many creative people in the world have been great innovators, some very smart without being geniuses. I myself had some original ideas and it was sobering to realize that I was the first one to ever think of them. One has resulted in a United States patent but that does not automatically make me a genius, in fact I'm almost certainly not. Don't be too put off, I didn't say Newton wasn't a genius, only that I'm not sure.

I'm beginning to think Mozart was a genius even though he is not my favorite composer. Something interesting has come to light called the Mozart effect which I think was only recently discovered. I heard about it on NPR radio one day in my car. It seems that for some unexplained reason, Mozart's music and no other has a calming effect on people with Tuourette syndrome. It is believed Mozart may have suffered this illness himself and his music was a self invented therapy. It seems to work on children with this disease even in countries never exposed to western music. Nobody knows how or why it works but the psychiatrists and psychologists on this program were very excited about it.

Google tourette syndrome > mozart effect

Could the world exist without geniuses? Without a doubt. Progress would just be slower. And we don't know how many people who were geniuses never had the opportunit to put their gift to productive use so we don't know about them. However, when one is found, it is tragic not to put it to the best possible use. That is where Princeton, Harvard, and other premier schools demonstrate that they are capable of rendering a service to humanity schools like the University of Pennsylvania are not.

Mark,

I think you've confused UPenn with Penn State. The Univ of Pennsylvania is an Ivy League colleage, it's premier league too.

In the video, Gladwell lists UPenn as an example of a premier school with Princeton and Harvard and Yale.

It seems that once Mark starts typing, he has difficulty stopping!

I am a very fast typist xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
My computer can't keep up with me...even when I'm typing. Now what was that about geniuses :-)

Mark- You've made this the widest page in Will & Testament history! Woohoo!