

Brains, Brains, Brains, Brains: different flavors of genius - hhm
http://scienceblogs.com/pontiff/2009/01/brains_brains_brains_brains.php

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swombat
Interesting classification. I can't help but feel that it's overly simplistic
to think that each "genius" is only a genius in one of those areas. Back in
Oxford, I met many people who were clearly good at several of these areas,
amongst both other students and professors.

Imho, the "dots and spaces" metaphor is still the best one to describe the
diversity of brilliance around us: <http://www.stephanietolan.com/self-
knowledge.htm>

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michael_nielsen
From the post: "just to cut out the comment before it happens, of course these
[areas] are not mutually exclusive".

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trominos
I _think_ that swombat's intended point was that the areas of genius correlate
very highly with each other's presence -- to the point that treating their
respective occurrences as independent events (possibly) damages our actual
understanding of the situation. Which has been my experience also.

You did refute his actual point, though.

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michael_nielsen
Something I find interesting about this post is that the author is an
accomplished theoretical physicist, who has known and worked with many leading
theoretical physicists and computer scientists. It gives his classification
some extra credibility.

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peregrine
These things always read like horoscopes to me. It always feels like simple
bait for people who are looking to reaffirm their genius.

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whacked_new
A suitable response to this: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=447904>

The problem is, if you abstract any amazing person into one word, it is
usually "genius." Which elicits the natural tendency to find patterns and make
comparisons (since we are comparing "apples" to "apples" now, aren't we!?).
Amongst the different flavors of humans, there is a common flavor of
romanticism and bias.

