
Where Have All the Geniuses Gone?  - jamesbritt
http://chronicle.com/article/Where-Have-All-the-Geniuses/142353/
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mdakin
I've had an idiosyncratic but highly useful definition of the word 'genius'
since I was a little kid thanks to my mother. She taught me that a genius is
an intuitive/rational thinker-feeler-person who was lucky enough to somehow
line it all up for humanity in his/her mind and bring something big into the
world that changes it for the better. If you think about all the real
geniuses-- that criteria holds.

There is not much academic research into genius these days but there is
research into intuitive people and intuition. And there is also related work
in psychology about self-actualization and the other mental-processes.

But eventually it all comes down to someone doing something breathtakingly
interesting-- you can't really roll that step off an assembly-line.

I percieve one of the problems with the world right now is that lots of the
most highly-competent/skilled people are sort of holding off doing big things,
esp. with technology. The number of intuitive man-hours that have been poured
into the subject of online advertising is staggering. Those people working on
that are capable of actual works of genius. But instead they feel motivated to
work for a big company on long-term useless problems. But I understand this:
if you look at what the last waves of true high-tech are i.e.
computer/communication/aerospace/nuclear vs. what their "fruits" have been
i.e. surveilance-state/police-state/military-industrial-complex/mass
production and mass proliferation of WMDs. It's quite disgusting.

Anyway, I know why I'm working on "social technology" and "consumer
technology" instead of "high technology."

~~~
jared314
> But instead they feel motivated to work for a big company on long-term
> useless problems.

I remember this opinion also surfacing with the Steve Yegge OSCON 2011
presentation[1]. In which he complained about Google, and all the hard working
people there, focusing on social media instead of hard problems. There was a
good discussion as to why these problems are not in the forefront.

[1] [http://youtu.be/vKmQW_Nkfk8?t=5m47s](http://youtu.be/vKmQW_Nkfk8?t=5m47s)

Subsequent discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2811818](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2811818)

[http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2011/07/hacker-news-fires-
st...](http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2011/07/hacker-news-fires-steve-
yegge.html)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2814032](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2814032)

~~~
mdakin
I think hard problem vs. social media problem is a false dichotomy. I wish
people would focus on wise problems. High tech is too dangerous at this
moment, even though it's the best stuff to work on long-term for humanity.

------
dougk16
There is no genius, just various levels of domain expertise. We call geniuses
those who concentrate most of their time and passion into one niche, and that
niche has to be one that's popularly thought of as requiring smarts to fill. I
approach genius levels of juggling a tennis ball with my feet, but I don't
think there are Nobel prizes for that.

If there truly is a fall in the rate of "geniuses", I would venture to guess
that it's because it's so easy to take an interest in so many different areas
these days.

~~~
nicholasjarnold
Exactly. The internet, and hence the (more) rapid liberation of information,
makes available innumerable opportunities for curious minds to dabble. I've
never been particularly interested in knowing everything about something.
Rather, I'm much more interested in knowing a little about everything.

There's great value to be reaped from going extremely deep on a subject, but
it's just so easy to become distracted these days. I'm reminded of Munroe's
Nerd Sniping: [http://xkcd.com/356/](http://xkcd.com/356/)

------
twiceaday
The question is really "Where have all the famous geniuses gone?" The answer
is that you can no longer get famous just by being intelligent. It's just not
a sexy story people want to read. People just want to shop and read about
fabricated drama.

~~~
wellboy
How to get rich by being intelligent? Answer: Tech

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jaggederest
I think a strong argument could be made that they're still there, they're just
non-notable:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grigori_Perelman](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grigori_Perelman)

As a primary example - I'm pretty sure he knows better than to become famous
for his work.

~~~
pgreenwood
Perelman as an example not famous and non-notable? Wow, I am stuggling to
think of a more famous or notable mathematician alive on the planet today.

~~~
freyrs3
Andrew Wiles, Alexander Grothendieck to name a few.

~~~
jjaredsimpson
Terence Tao

------
eruditely
This article should be taken as seriously as Derrida is.

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Groxx
They're where they always were: hindsight. There are _tons_ of brilliant
people, but it takes a good chunk of temporal separation to be able to spot
them through history and see their world-changing contributions. And
mistakenly attribute things to them, and forget the shoulders they stood on,
making them into even bigger geniuses.

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mrcactu5

      When we consider it at all, we're inclined to deny it, 
      deconstruct it, or explain it away as an "ideology of 
      genius." Geniuses of the past seem to have been perched on 
      their pedestals so that we might drag them down. "People 
      love to come up with reasons for saying Shakespeare was not 
      a genius,"
    

Rihanna, Jay-Z and Serena Williams all make me squirm. When I consider them at
all, I'm inclined to deny her or reconstruct her. When I read her twitter
account about the Indonesian sex show or the illegal photo shoot in front of
the Taj Mahal I'm inclined to deny him/her or explain them away as an
"ideology of genius". Geniuses of the past seem to have been perched on their
pedestals so that we might drag them down. "People love to come up with
reasons for saying Rihanna was not a genius,"

------
cLeEOGPw
I think the "genius" is kind of a byproduct of transition from faith-centered
worldview to knowledge-centered worldview. At the time of mentioned geniuses
people were just starting to tend away from the faith in god, so the faith in
higher powers partially persisted, and labeling people with great achievements
as "geniuses" and making it feel like they have something others don't felt
like a common sense and intuitive thing to do. So the "genius" might just be a
temporary placeholder for the void that left when god was gone. As the void
shrank with time, because the religion lost influence and people got better
education, the need for people to have something greater then them, i.e.
"geniuses" shrank too.

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tlarkworthy
The flame war underneath that article is very entertaining

~~~
majurg
This is why I love articles online!

------
juhanima
Maybe the whole concept of genius is a bit aged, weird and odd to start with?
A glorified genius-concept comes uncomfortably close to the concept of a
führer.

I think all men are created equal and when someone looks way smarter than the
rest, most often he is just faking it?

~~~
cgore
_I think all men are created equal and when someone looks way smarter than the
rest, most often he is just faking it?_

I think all men are created equal and when someone looks way taller than the
rest, most often he is just wearing platform shoes?

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pgreenwood
I don't really believe in geniuses, but I believe in works of genius. Works of
genius are at least potentially producable by a large proportion of the
population, but not with any reliable frequency. Perhaps then a genius could
be defined as one who is a prolific creator of works of genius.

Many of us have experienced that rare feeling of self-amazement of the result
of the creative process. In could be in doing a drawing, composing a piece of
music, proving a novel theorem, or writing software. When you create
something, stand back and say; "how on earth did I do that?", "where did that
come from?". That is a work of genius.

~~~
benched
Then we would only need to define a genius as one who has produced a work of
genius, and we'd have our geniuses back. "There are no generals, only those
who have at one time attained the rank of general."

------
nl
Fabrice Ballard.

Enough said.

~~~
chubot
Yes, unequivocally a genius. I would also put DJB up there.

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almosnow
they are just dying all around us, literally. modern societies do not
appreciate and actually reject them

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amerika_blog
Your society is so insufferable that they've died out.

