
The ‘Mad Genius’ Mystery - never-the-bride
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/articles/201707/the-mad-genius-mystery
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nilskidoo
I think it's just entropy in action. Structures invariably show their cracks,
whether it's a marriage or a society or any other institution. Age beats
idealism into place. The world is more and more tiring the more time we
partake in it. We grow weary of our jobs, our politicians let us down, and our
religious leaders let the hypocrisy slip. Sometimes it leads to defeatist
thinking, and sometimes it leads to drastic changes, like the proverbial
midlife crises.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weltschmerz](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weltschmerz)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hikikomori](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hikikomori)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acedia)

~~~
jondubois
>> Age beats idealism into place.

This is true. Also, it's practically impossible for idealistic people to make
an impact in this world. Nobody who has power trusts idealists because they
are difficult to predict and impossible to control. You can't just throw money
at an idealist to keep them in line with your financial interests; they are
unreliable cogs in the engines of capitalism.

Those who succeed in this society are opportunists who pose as idealists. They
are people who can selectively signal idealism when engaging with the masses
but who can also clearly signal opportunism when engaging with the powerful
few.

That's why hypocrites rule the world.

~~~
GuiA
Don’t you think that we got things like women’s suffrage, paid vacations,
democracy, public healthcare, free public education, modern medicine,
engineering, etc precisely because idealists can have an impact?

~~~
ianai
Much of what you said doesn’t have idealistic roots. Democracy is by nature
pragmatic, for instance. Engineers and physicians will generally employ
whatever tool works best as well.

~~~
GuiA
_> Engineers and physicians will generally employ whatever tool works best as
well._

That’s a common myth amongst people who fetishize “science”. Boltzmann
committed suicide over the pushback on how outlandish his theory of the atom
was. Ignaz Semmelweis was ignored and ridiculed when he pushed for surgeons to
wash their hands before operations and finished his life in an asylum.

Engineers and physicians will only employ whatever tool works best as long as
it fits their conception of the world and what is socially acceptable at the
time.

As far as claiming that democracy is by nature pragmatic, that’s a statement
that’s going to need a lot of arguments to support it, in a time where many
support eg China’s communist party as an example of “pragmatic” government.

~~~
jondubois
It's refreshing to hear this point of view with some notable cases to back it
up.

I'm tired of hearing people saying how efficient the markets are and how great
the system is at rewarding talent and hard work and all that "you make your
own luck" bullshit. History books are littered with examples of
mathematicians, scientists and engineers who were being ignored or ridiculed
for purely social reasons.

In fact, it almost seems to be the norm. It shows just how stupid we all are
and that we all ought to eat humble pie.

When we come up with new laws and regulations, we should always factor in our
collective stupidity.

I don't think we can say that markets are objectively efficient when a bunch
of monkeys operating under shared social delusions get to set the price of all
things based on those delusions.

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usgroup
I think it’s often a forgone conclusion that mathematical brilliance not born
of a just hard work and normal ability often comes as a specialisation rather
than as a superhuman power. I.e. genius to normal intellect is what a GPU is
to a CPU.

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keithpeter
Isaac Newton was doing chemistry with a range of nasty heavy metals for
_years_. A sample of his hair was analysed some time ago and found to contain
significant levels of lead [1].

Boyle, Cavendish and their cohorts investigated a variety of sources and were
not empiricists in the modern sense. Remember that they had e.g. no concept of
yeast, bacteria, and yet saw the daily baking of bread and brewing of beer.
Not surprising perhaps that they saw similar processes in the chemical realm?
A flavour of the times slightly earlier can be seen in the use of astrology
for medical purposes [2]

[1]
[https://web.pa.msu.edu/courses/2008spring/ISP213H/welcome/we...](https://web.pa.msu.edu/courses/2008spring/ISP213H/welcome/welcome_assets/newtonHair.pdf)

[2] [http://theshakespeareblog.com/2014/06/shakespeare-and-the-
al...](http://theshakespeareblog.com/2014/06/shakespeare-and-the-alchemists/)

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nabla9
One thing that fascinates me how their 'mechanistic' viewpoints reflects into
their morals and ethics.

People like Grothendieck and Grigori Perelman, and others often stand alone
against customs and norms and they get really disappointed at some time when
they realize that other people don't just act morally against all odds if they
know it's right thing to do. People with mentalistic viewpoint have
inclination to follow the opinions, lifestyles and prejudices of their time
and place even if they have the clarity to see the wrongs.

You can see the same in more functional form in people like Einstein or
Bernard Russel. Bernard Russel spend a year in China because his clarity of
perception was hurting all causes and alienated him from everyone.

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jimhefferon
The parts about Grothendieck are interesting.

