h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I have been watching a bit of the House, MD series again, as well as looking at a bit of stuff about robotics at MIT. Now I have met and talked to a number of scientists, who were all quite smart. However I don't think I have ever met anyone who seemed to be a real genius. Not the kind of person who can learn a new language in a few weeks or do third order differential equations in their head. After all, they would be quite rare. Have any of you ever met someone like that? What were they like?

On one or two occasions I've spent a day with an industry-recognised IT troubleshooter. These are the guys you bring in when you've tried everything and can't fix it. They charge truly astronomical day rates.

I was the junior in the department on each occasion. I was relegated to making them cups of coffee and was under strict instructions not to waste their time by asking stupid questions.

It's difficult to know how to describe them. In some ways they were just like us mortals - they drank coffee and chain smoked. Each uber-consultant, noticing my keen interest in what they were doing, showed me a few tricks of the trade.

Where they were different was in their utter unflappability as they calmly sliced through the complexity of the intractible problem we had presented them with, and gave us a solution which was so obvious in its simplicity, one which made us look like fools for getting into that situation in the first place and paying so much to get out of it.

Icy, I am sure the "I think I have forgotten to plug it in" scenario has happened to all of us before

Y.

Seeing the simple solution at the core of a comlicated problem is the mark of a genius.

Douglas Adams was a genius. Pianist Glenn Gould was a genius. I've read about an astronomer whose capacity has never been gauged because no one ever found anything that could stump him.

I've met many authors at book signings over the years.
Most, like Bernard Cornwall, Michael Palin and Rob Grant I would say are good authors.
Terry Pratchett, Spike Milligan and Terry Jones I would describe as being geniuses.
Surely artistic achievement is as valuable as scientific?

<BB<

I am sure the fool believes he has met many.

Having a photographic memory can certainly give the impression of being a genius.

Stephen Hawking is reckoned to be a genius in some circles.

Yes, geniuses in the arts matter just as much as geniuses in the sciences. The thing is, much of the world's work is done by people who are bright enough but not geniuses. Lots of qualities matter: honesty, kindness, generosity, wit, dedication to a task, strong work ethic. I would never put someone down for not being a genius, nor would I automatically assume that something told me by a genius was necessarily right.

In some circles?

well... some orbits can be *approximately* circular

I met a Nobel prize winner once. He was very polite and very elderly, and it was nearly dinner time, so perhaps it would have been unfair to expect to see any genius behaviour exhibited under such circumstances.

I work with someone who is a world expert in his/her field and very clever. They seem unaware that they are a lot cleverer than average and constantly wonder why people are stupid on purpose, and think that it may be just to annoy them.

Z,
This is what the word /zir/ was invented for.

I've met (and chatted to, and had breakfast with) Terry Pratchett. I think he's a genius. Can't think of any others.

TRiG.

yes yes some of you have met them
but
the question is... what were they like??

tell us?

The late Kim Peek and Daniel Tammet. Both could/can do things you can't begin to teach. Haven't met either of them, but I worked with a guy who, given a scenario, could pretty much say something funny about it instantly. I also worked with a girl whose recollection of past events was absolutely staggering. I don't think either of these people knew how amazing their talent was.

Qu> What are the characteristic features of a genius and how certain would you be that the person you were meeting was a genius?

Most school systems in most countries have regular testing. If a student scores an amazingly high score on an IQ test, that's one indication. Glenn Gould [a Canadian pianist] got the highest score every recorded on some national exam. Douglas Adams scored a perfect score [the only time it ever happened to anybody] during his school days. Albert Einstein's IQ score was well over 200 when it was tested.

But I'm a little leery about letting IQ test results be taken too seriously. Through long years of hard work and perseverance, a person of average IQ might attain a PhD. Plus, there are different ways in which a perosn might be intelligent. And, to the extent that memory is a component of intelligence, it pays to remember that each of our five senses has a memory component. if you desperately need to remember something, you might do well to connect it to one of your five senses. How does the thing tatse, smell, look, sound, and/or feel?

Indeed, IQ tests shouldn't be taken too seriously.

Firstly, they're hugely variable. A friend of mine took three and got scores of around 100, 120 and 140 (roughly corresponding to average, above average and genius). These were internet IQ tests rather than properly done ones, but I understand that the proper ones are also quite bad. The statistic I heard from someone knowledgeable about them (but I don't have a reference) is that if you take two IQ tests, your scores on the two would be about as correlated as your score on one of them with your height. In other words, an IQ test tells you as much about someone's intelligence as knowing their height does. (Height is quite well correlated with IQ.)

Secondly, although they're supposed to test 'natural' intelligence, you can learn to do better at them.

Thirdly, as paulh says, they only test some aspects of intelligence.

Fourthly, they're (still) partly culturally specific. Although interestingly, they're not sexist. Why? Because although men and women do better or worse on some parts of the test, they weight the value of the answers so that men and women are equally intelligent by definition. (But they don't do that for race, class, etc. - interesting.)

Rant over.

IQ test also don't all use the same scale.

Dogster,
<<<as paulh says, they only test some aspects of intelligence.

Exactly.
A genious can be someone that is absolutely brilliant in all fields or has a high performance in Natural, Kinetic, Mathemathical, Linguistic, Musical… intelligences. And also, a person who has an emotionally balanced life and has great social abilities. And most important, is brilliant at solving problems.

I don´t know any person who fits into what I think would be a complete genius. However I now great geniouses in their fields, Though I haven´t met anyone. Well, I´ve met one…

An illiterate woman who brought up seven children, some of them went to university. A woman who could cook a tasty food out of the most basic and scanty ingredients. She lived extreme hard conditions but fought bravely all of them… I could go on…

That woman was a genious at solving complex problems successfully.

Depends how you define genious... And also how you measure it.
The IQ test thing has to my knowledge for quite some time been regarded as not very good at measuring IQ, it relies too much on previous knowledge, which is hugely variable, given differnt cultures, differnt educational backgrounds within the same culture etc...
Its also, from waht I recall highly reliant on visual ability, which kinda makes it skewed somewhat..
I know people who can write PhD level thesis on sociology, literature, theology, aspects of the cinama, ancient history, musical eras from classical to pop to dub, build a computer from scratch, have a huge knowledge on obscure medical conditions etc., but I'd still not describe them necessarily as a genious (err that's one person mind), and simularly know someone who can do mental sums, in his head, instantly, not of the really high level statistics types etc., just any other kinda basic maths stuff... but just so* quickly... Not a genious though... I know people who speak and can imediately switch between English, esperanto, latin, greek, Spanish, French, GErman, and a load of other languages, mdoern and old... But couldn't anyone with a good ability tat doing languages do that, were they to have the time and ability to study them...

Simularly, is genious being a, say for example, scientist, who is, basically just* lucky, by chance, by a fluke, by a happenstance of where he/she is, and whom they're inacting with, suddenly declaired a genious because of basically a random thing happening that lead them to some really important discovery?