
The cult of genius? - jonnybgood
http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2015/12/the-cult-of-genius.html
======
bordercases
This issue seems loaded because cognition is the way you win big now. Although
NFL stars win big with pay, it's the Gates and the Zuckerburgs who loom high
in our minds.

I've learned to ignore the issue (aside from its entertainment value) because
there's still too much for me to optimize within my phenotypic range and local
environment to make me better off – or at least, so I think. Either way
there's much more to keep me busy than navel-gazing at cognitive-height so
much.

On a related note: James Flynn of the Flynn Effect has noted many paradoxes
within his infamous and eponymous result. I.Q. might not be improving so much.
He anticipates explanations which synthesize nature and nurture but also look
at the mind in terms of more basic cognitive operations and strategies. If
I.Q. scores increasing reflect on the acquisition of useful, task-specific
strategies, one might still be emulate the downward effect of a couple of I.Q.
points which is at least something to be optimistic about. Newton only
discovered Freshman Calculus. [http://neuroanthropology.net/2008/12/16/the-
flynn-effect-tro...](http://neuroanthropology.net/2008/12/16/the-flynn-effect-
troubles-with-intelligence-2/)

EDIT:

Or perhaps it's the reduction of ambiguity/improvement-of-clarity that
intelligence can bring that makes it so appealing in modern life? In which
case there's still Buddhism to help with that.

~~~
xiaoma
>Although NFL stars win big with pay, it's the Gates and the Zuckerburgs who
loom high in our minds.

That's interesting. I have the opposite view: people in tech tend to earn
more, but it's the LeBron James's and Taylor Swifts of the world that loom in
our minds.

~~~
onion2k
People like LeBron James and Taylor Swift make most of their money from
endorsements, and I'd argue that endorsement income doesn't really scale very
well. There's a limit to what your brand is worth if you're a celebrity - you
can make hundreds of millions of dollars by diversifying across a huge range
of products but that's pretty much it. You'll never earn more than a small
percentage of the marketing budget of the biggest company in any one market
multiplied by the number of markets your celebrity brand is applicable to.
Whereas a tech founder has a practically unlimited upper bounds to their net
value; if you start a company that becomes the defacto monopoly in a space
(operating systems and office software, or social media for example) your
fortune tops out at some percentage of that entire market, multiplied by the
number of markets you can leverage your product in to. That's a far bigger
number.

~~~
notahacker
The reality is that the chance that an individual can convert being
significantly smarter than the rest of their generation into becoming the
largest shareholder in a de facto monopoly in a particular tech space is
negligible. Whereas the chance of converting being significantly better at
basketball than the rest of their generation into becoming a multimillionaire
basketball star (with or without well-planned endorsements) is extremely high,
with only injuries and attitude problems to hold them back.

If you're a young LeBron James (or Usain Bolt or Lionel Messi) your chances of
becoming a multimillionaire owe very little to where you start and who you
meet. Talent in sport is very efficiently identified, promoted and developed.
You can't expect the same probability of outstanding success from a young
person with the same personal characteristics as Mark Zuckerberg.

Startup founders are rolling the dice with Taylor Swift and the musicians.
Massive talent coupled with attitude helps a fair bit, and above average
talent is a basic requirement. But the sharpest minds have no reason to expect
they'll make it to the top, and not everyone that makes it to the top owes it
to "genius"

------
bronz
I think that intellectual pissing contests are disgusting. In upper middle-
class institutions such as Berkley people seem to revel in it. Everybody
embraces the imaginary hierarchy so completely that watching them do it makes
me gag. I think that this phenomenon has been intensified by the relative
disappearance of the middle class. People no longer aspire to academic
excellence because of their passion or enjoyment for the subject they study.
Instead they believe that they need to be among the elite in order to have a
happy and satisfying life.

------
tokenadult
I have become more and more discouraged by the blog kindly submitted here. The
blog post author started out as a physicist, somehow didn't make a big mark in
physics, and since then has been going into academic administration. His blog
collects his unpublishable (in the scientific sense of "publishable," after
peer review) thoughts about a variety of controversial issues on which he
expresses opinions without as much knowledge base or professional training and
experience as the older domain experts who actually research those issues. I
just haven't found this blog to be a reliable source for Hacker News
submissions that lead to informed, fruitful discussion. A mind is a terrible
thing to waste.

~~~
emgoldstein
This has to be the nicest, most reasonable-sounding ad hominem argument I've
ever seen.

But it's still an ad hominem argument. Is there any way you actually disagree
with the post? What would you say to Dr. Hsu if he were in the room?

Also, what is your evidence that he's not in touch with experts in
psychometrics and human genomics? I don't know him, but I have very much the
contrary impression.

~~~
tokenadult
_Also, what is your evidence that he 's not in touch with experts in
psychometrics and human genomics? I don't know him, but I have very much the
contrary impression._

I don't know him in person but I have emailed him. He is in touch with a lot
of eminent experts (I know some of the same eminent experts and see some of
the regularly in person), but he hasn't imbued their worldview about human
genetics, forged after years of pursuing other worldviews that don't hold up
to experimental test. But your comment is fair, so I'll recommend here for you
and for onlookers some writings by people who are experts in psychometrics and
human behavior genetics.

The review article

Johnson, Wendy; Turkheimer, Eric; Gottesman, Irving I.; Bouchard Jr., Thomas
(2009). Beyond Heritability: Twin Studies in Behavioral Research. Current
Directions in Psychological Science, 18, 4, 217-220

[http://people.virginia.edu/~ent3c/papers2/Articles%20for%20O...](http://people.virginia.edu/~ent3c/papers2/Articles%20for%20Online%20CV/Johnson%20\(2009\).pdf)

includes the statement "Moreover, even highly heritable traits can be strongly
manipulated by the environment, so heritability has little if anything to do
with controllability. For example, height is on the order of 90% heritable,
yet North and South Koreans, who come from the same genetic background,
presently differ in average height by a full 6 inches (Pak, 2004;
Schwekendiek, 2008)."

The review article

Johnson, W. (2010). Understanding the Genetics of Intelligence: Can Height
Help? Can Corn Oil?. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 19(3),
177-182

[http://apsychoserver.psych.arizona.edu/JJBAReprints/PSYC621/...](http://apsychoserver.psych.arizona.edu/JJBAReprints/PSYC621/Johnson%20Current%20Directions%20Psych%20Science%202010%20\(G%20and%20E%20in%20IQ\).pdf)

looks at some famous genetic experiments to show how little is explained by
gene frequencies even in thoroughly studied populations defined by artificial
selection.

"Together, however, the developmental natures of GCA [general cognitive
ability] and height, the likely influences of gene-environment correlations
and interactions on their developmental processes, and the potential for
genetic background and environmental circumstances to release previously
unexpressed genetic variation suggest that very different combinations of
genes may produce identical IQs or heights or levels of any other
psychological trait. And the same genes may produce very different IQs and
heights against different genetic backgrounds and in different environmental
circumstances. This would be especially the case if height and GCA and other
psychological traits are only single facets of multifaceted traits actually
under more systematic genetic regulation, such as overall body size and
balance between processing capacity and stimulus reactivity. Genetic
influences on individual differences in psychological characteristics are real
and important but are unlikely to be straightforward and deterministic. We
will understand them best through investigation of their manifestation in
biological and social developmental processes."

(The review by Johnson, by the way, is rather like Tao's understanding of how
mathematical talent develops in individuals, which prompted the blog post
kindly submitted here.)

A comprehensive review article for social scientists on genetic research on IQ
emphasizes what is still unknown.

Chabris, C. F., Hebert, B. M., Benjamin, D. J., Beauchamp, J., Cesarini, D.,
van der Loos, M., ... & Laibson, D. (2012). Most reported genetic associations
with general intelligence are probably false positives. Psychological science,
23(11), 1314-1323. DOI: 10.1177/0956797611435528
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3498585/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3498585/)

[http://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/9938142/Most_Repo...](http://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/9938142/Most_Reported_Genetic.pdf?sequence=1)

"At the time most of the results we attempted to replicate were obtained,
candidate-gene studies of complex traits were commonplace in medical genetics
research. Such studies are now rarely published in leading journals. Our
results add IQ to the list of phenotypes that must be approached with great
caution when considering published molecular genetic associations. In our
view, excitement over the value of behavioral and molecular genetic studies in
the social sciences should be tempered—as it has been in the medical
sciences—by an appreciation that, for complex phenotypes, individual common
genetic variants of the sort assayed by SNP microarrays are likely to have
very small effects. Associations of candidate genes with psychological traits
and other traits studied in the social sciences should be viewed as tentative
until they have been replicated in multiple large samples. Doing otherwise may
hamper scientific progress by proliferating potentially false results, which
may then influence the research agendas of scientists who do not appreciate
that the associations they take as a starting point for their efforts may not
be real. And the dissemination of false results to the public risks creating
an incorrect perception about the state of knowledge in the field, especially
the existence of genes described as being 'for' traits on the basis of
unintentionally inflated estimates of effect size and statistical
significance."

The newer publications on the topic are not changing the picture
significantly. If one desires to develop a child's mathematical ability, for
example (a problem I have pondered four times over as a parent), then the
thing to do, after gaining whatever favorable shuffle of genes one can through
thoughtful choice of a marriage partner, is to ensure that the child receives
a sound primary education in mathematics. That is rarely done in the United
States,[1] but it's something parents can do if they know mathematics well
through some other channel, for example having lived in another country.

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/Knowing-Teaching-Elementary-
Mathematic...](http://www.amazon.com/Knowing-Teaching-Elementary-Mathematics-
Understanding/dp/0415873843)

[http://www.aft.org/sites/default/files/periodicals/amed1.pdf](http://www.aft.org/sites/default/files/periodicals/amed1.pdf)

[http://www.ams.org/notices/199908/rev-
howe.pdf](http://www.ams.org/notices/199908/rev-howe.pdf)

[http://www.math.wisc.edu/~askey/ask-
gian.pdf](http://www.math.wisc.edu/~askey/ask-gian.pdf)

[http://toomandre.com/travel/sweden05/WP-SWEDEN-
NEW.pdf](http://toomandre.com/travel/sweden05/WP-SWEDEN-NEW.pdf)

[http://educationnext.org/when-the-best-is-
mediocre/](http://educationnext.org/when-the-best-is-mediocre/)

~~~
jessriedel
> The review article...includes the statement "Moreover, even highly heritable
> traits can be strongly manipulated by the environment, so heritability has
> little if anything to do with controllability. For example, height is on the
> order of 90% heritable, yet North and South Koreans, who come from the same
> genetic background, presently differ in average height by a full 6 inches
> (Pak, 2004; Schwekendiek, 2008)."

If you think this is contrary to Hsu's position, you don't understand his
position.

------
evoloution
Has anyone done any studies to correlate intelligence with net worth? Since
the +3 or +4 SD people usually work to satisfy their own curiosity and thirst
for knowledge, I would assume that it doesn't pay really well above a level...

I find it rather discouraging that mediocracy really punishes people for being
extremely smart. Evolutionary punishment is decreasing their fitness (money,
social stature, e.t.c.) and thus decreasing their procreation chances. Smart
women are affected even more. Not to mention the intentional
punishment/oppression by different intelligence class supervisors.

PS: one of my favourite relevant reads:
[http://prometheussociety.org/cms/index.php/articles/the-
outs...](http://prometheussociety.org/cms/index.php/articles/the-outsiders)

~~~
brass9
> He wore a vest summer and winter, and never learned to bathe regularly.

I am curious as to why so many geeky/nerdy type guys express disinclination to
daily bathing (myself included).

While regular bathing is beneficial to maintaining hygiene and health, too
frequent bathing (especially when using cleansing products) can disrupt the
skins natural sebum, pH & moisture control mechanism, dislodge the natural
bacterial flora which may predispose the person to harmful infections. Many
chemical products commonly used during bathing (soaps, shampoos, gels,
disinfectants) are known to mess with the human immune & endocrine systems, a
few may even be carcinogenic. Afflictions like eczema, asthma etc. are
allegedly attributable to a heightened state of "hygiene" among modern humans
- the immune system which keeps constant vigil against infections, is rendered
"jobless" because the chemical disinfectants have done it's job, eventually
attacks the body itself.

Spurred by the aggressive marketing from the personal cleansing products
manufacturers, daily bathing has become a cultural phenomena in our society.
Prime motivation for daily bathing seems to be grooming these days.

Anecdote does not equal evidence, but I've encountered many geeks who are
inclined to hold off having a bath until it becomes necessary. I wonder why
that is?

An interesting read:
[http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/31/fashion/31Unwashed.html?_r...](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/31/fashion/31Unwashed.html?_r=1)

~~~
ant6n
I didn't shower every day. Then I got overweight. Now I do.

