
A Mathematician's Secret: We're Not All Geniuses - jseliger
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-06-07/a-mathematician-s-secret-we-re-not-all-geniuses
======
sanxiyn
This sounds ridiculous. In the writer's own words, "As a mathematician who
studied at Berkeley, Harvard and Princeton, I’ve known geniuses". Maybe that's
what she means by "geniuses", but usually the word tends to mean "who studied
at Berkeley, Harvard and Princeton".

In terms of IQ, I think mathematicians are averaging something like +2 SD (>=
130). They are certainly "geniuses" (or "gifted"). But they themselves don't
think they are geniuses, because by that word they mean +4 SD (>= 160) people.

~~~
tacomonstrous
Genius has nothing to do with IQ. Genius is a level of creative thought that
appears magically simple once you behold it, but yet was beyond people up to
that point. The things that IQ tests for are almost orthogonal to this. Sure,
there are probably geniuses with high IQs, but I'd be very surprised if high
IQ has any predictive ability to detect genius.

~~~
sanxiyn
> I'd be very surprised if high IQ has any predictive ability to detect
> genius.

This is the most ridiculous thing I have read for a while.

~~~
f055
Why? High IQ means you are very good at solving the IQ test problems, not that
you are intelligent or genius. I don't think these problems represent anything
else, or if there are examples of high IQ people that made actual, genius
contribution to humanity. Do you?

~~~
sanxiyn
Are you familiar with modern intelligence research? IQ test is reliable (get
the same score when you test multiple times) and valid (correlate with things
we actually care about, not just being good at solving IQ test problems).

Intelligence: All That Matters by Stuart Ritchie is a good summary of modern
intelligence research. [https://www.amazon.com/Intelligence-That-Matters-
Stuart-Ritc...](https://www.amazon.com/Intelligence-That-Matters-Stuart-
Ritchie/dp/1444791877) To quote:

"The scientific evidence is clear: IQ tests are extraordinarily useful. IQ
scores are related to a huge variety of important life outcomes like
educational success, income, and even life expectancy, and biological studies
have shown they are genetically influenced and linked to measures of the
brain. Studies of intelligence and IQ are regularly published in the world's
top scientific journals."

~~~
DamonHD
My mum, after getting her PhD (and having taught herself through A-levels
because her Yorkshire school stopped at O-levels, and got into Oxford) decided
to take her first-ever IQ test. She rated mentally subnormal.

Astonished, she thought about what it was trying to test and took another
test: now genius.

None of us think that either was right...

~~~
hinkley
Up until I was eight they thought I might be deficient. So they poked and
prodded and eventually some people came to school and took me to the library
and gave me an IQ test. Then they came back and gave me another one. And I
believe another one after that, by which point I was a little disgruntled.
Didn't I already take one of these? Did you lose my answers?

Turns out that the test can be tuned to a range. If you take the wrong one it
loses some accuracy at the low and high end of the range, so they had to
retest me. They had assumed I might be dim and gave me the wrong one. The real
problem was that I was so insufferably bored all the time that I wouldn't
engage. But I liked puzzles and the test had a bunch I'd never seen before, so
by the last one I was taking it in the spirit it was given.

My guess is in two parts. Either your mother took the wrong one(s), or took a
bogus one, or you're thinking of elements of a successful adult that the test
can't measure, like common sense and social graces.

In any group of peers at that level there are bound to be people who can
certainly do the work, possibly better than you, but who are painfully, even
cringingly, bad at certain other life skills. It gets a little uncomfortable
to acknowledge these people as geniuses. And there are people who seem not to
be all that, but on occasion surprise the hell out of you by coming through in
a clutch.

------
paulpauper
_I’m not saying we shouldn 't have high hopes and standards for our children.
But by focusing our attention on the kids who get the top SAT scores, we
reinforce the fixation on genius to the detriment of everyone else_

No amount of idealism will change the fact that mathematicians , with virtual
certainty, tend to score very high on such tests. To find the next generation
of mathematician, look to kids who are getting ceiling scores on the math part
of the SAT at the age of 13. Sometimes 'late boomers' exist, but still they
exhibit preciosity at youth and then later decide to turn to mathematics and
learn the material very quickly due to having a high iq. If genius is defined
by having a high IQ (which according to the Stanford Binet Intelligence scale
it is) and standardized test scores, virtually all mathematicians are
geniuses, regardless of how much recognition they later get in their careers.

~~~
skybrian
What research are you referring to?

~~~
justin_vanw
He didn't mention any research. Lets not start the 'prove that there is such a
thing as smart people' debate again.

~~~
skybrian
I meant: "Mathematicians, with virtual certainty, tend to score very high on
such tests".

This seems easily tested or refuted, and I'd be surprised if nobody has done
it. However, I haven't figured out a good search query yet.

~~~
justin_vanw
[https://my.vanderbilt.edu/smpy/files/2013/02/Wai2009SpatialA...](https://my.vanderbilt.edu/smpy/files/2013/02/Wai2009SpatialAbility.pdf)

------
chrisaycock
Colin Percival wrote one of my favorite response to a question about
mathematicians here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=228233](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=228233)

    
    
      You have to be smart to do make a significant contribution to 
      mathematics, and I don't believe that people can "become 
      smart" past a very early age. However, it's possible for 
      someone to be smart despite not having been recognized as 
      such, depending on which fields his intellect is applied 
      against. Finally, it's definitely possible for someone who is 
      smart but has never done well in mathematics to make a 
      contribution to mathematics -- if he can develop the interest 
      which is necessary for him to apply his intellect 
      appropriately.

~~~
williamstein
Colin's response nails it on the head (but also, some of the people Cathy is
talking about are really, really scary smart).

For what it's worth, around 15 years ago, I personally had a "traumatic" and
relevant experience involving the author (Cathy O'Neil) of the article we're
discussing here, which I've never told anybody about. We are both number
theorists, with a similar educational track (Berkeley, Harvard, etc., at
similar times). She and I were hanging out in a pub in Cambridge, MA, and I
was showing her a list of research projects I was very excited about and
working on.

First, some background about me. In grad school at Berkeley, I had changed
from worrying about "being a genius", to just being completely obsessed with
doing mathematics research all the time, and actively simply not thinking
about myself or social things. I had many clear experiences when working on
research problems in which if I thought at all about myself and whether or not
I was "smart" (or anything social), my progress would completely _stop_ ;
however, if I could clear my mind of such worries -- about myself or others,
then I could prove theorems and do good mathematics. So at the time I really
embraced mathematics research itself over social concerns.

Anyway, Cathy and I were in a bar, and I was showing her (on my laptop), my
list of projects. I really hoped she would find some of them interesting, and
we might coauthor a paper together, since her thesis research was closely
related to mine, but approached things from a completely different (more
geometric) direction, which I personally found extremely difficult (at least,
I didn't have the "interest" to master that approach, in the sense of Colin's
comment). Well this is not at all what happened! Instead, of getting excited
by any of the projects I proposed, Cathy got really, really angry at me for (I
guess) intimidating her (?). I was never sure. I genuinely meant no harm.

For me personally at least, somehow worrying about the social aspects of
research mathematics too much would make it impossible for me to actually _do_
mathematics. I wonder if some of the other people Cathy alludes to in the
article are similar, and if this has consequences. Anyway, it was a lesson to
me at the time of the extent to which having a sense of "being in the zone"
and not thinking about oneself (or social and emotional issues at all), can
simultaneously be very conducive to research mathematics and also really piss
off certain people.

I make no claims to be a genius or "emotionally mature" at the time, and I'm a
different person today than I was then. However, there is (at least for me) a
real psychological conflict between the social aspects of thinking about
research and actually doing research; it is a very difficult challenge to
balance the two.

~~~
psyc
Oh wow. I've had this exact thing happen a few times. I'm way in the zone,
making thrilling progress on something and perceiving my own state of mind as
rather egoless. I see that if I could collaborate with certain people, the
result would be incredible. But instead of catching my excitement they get
angry, tell me my work is garbage, and say don't speak to them again. It seems
obvious that it must be an ego thing, because if the problem was simply that
my work was bad, they could tell me nicely. Such people seem very territorial.
It doesn't always happen this way. I've also approached people and had them
respond enthusiastically. But when you're in that state of pure excitement
about the objective, it doesn't occur to you that a colleague could feel
threatened, and it can be quite crushing to get slapped back into that social
plane.

~~~
kem
I've published in mathematical/statistical areas as well as applied ones, and
my sense is that interpersonal difficulties are more acute, but also more
transparent, in math and statistics, for lack of a better way of putting it.
My sense is that people tend to hold views more absolutely, because they see
their positions as more logic-based, and so have a more difficult time
recognizing unrealistic assumptions they're making, or outright errors in
their derivations or thinking. An applied researcher can shrug and dismiss
something as sampling error, or ambiguity in a study design, but in math, it's
harder to invoke such excuses or pressure relief valves. A threat, of whatever
real or misperceived magnitude, seems to take on greater significance in math
and statistics.

------
Grustaf
"In short, we over-reward those at the top and dismiss the rest. It’s an
unhelpful and unnecessary bias that facilitates hero worship, undermines the
goal of nurturing creativity and discourages valuable contributions to
communities, worthy causes and scientific projects"

I don't think "the rest" are in any way "dismissed", but certainly it's much
more interesting to read about a Feynman, Saussure or Pascal, than the more
mediocre people around them. Reading about a hard working and helpful but
relatively average group of helpers seems profoundly boring, and our attention
is quite limited, so naturally all coverage focuses on the more interesting
luminairies at the apex.

Besides, it's not even true that all these people were heavily dependent on
big teams of helpers, especially not before the mid last century or so.

Did Leibniz get much help? Did Newton rely on dozens of graduate students? Did
Dostoyevskiy have a team of writers? Hardly. The geniuses of old worked pretty
much alone.

But coming back to the main point, isn't it precisely this "hero worship" that
makes the teams work so hard for these geniuses? And why would this focus
necessarily discourage any creativity? I don't see why it would. It's not like
people, when they inevitably discover that they are not Einstein, give up
science completely. The situation is the same in sports, most people are not
going to set any records, but they don't stop training, despite the total
focus on a few individual top level athletes.

If the author feels that things should be different, why not try writing a
book about these teams, and see if people are actually interested in hearing
about them.

~~~
rocqua
The issue is the expectations this builds.

If the only mathematicians you hear about are apparently the smartest fucking
people ever, you might think math isn't for you even though you enjoy it. The
message needs to get out that you don't need to be that exceptional to do
math. Mostly, its about being interested.

Note that I don't mean interested in the results of math. You need to find the
intricacies of a proof interesting (at least some of the time).

~~~
Grustaf
Now do you also think that the average kid starting out in basketball will be
put off by, rather than inspired by, the likes of Michael Jordan?

------
neutralid
> In short, we over-reward those at the top and dismiss the rest. It’s an
> unhelpful and unnecessary bias that facilitates hero worship, undermines the
> goal of nurturing creativity and discourages valuable contributions to
> communities, worthy causes and scientific projects.

This happens in every research community. The hero worship also tends to over-
fund certain areas because of how the agenda is effectively set by a few
researchers.

One way that may help fix this is if there's a way to generate a crowd-sourced
network of links whose purpose is to plot as a graph the current gaps and
challenges of the field. It's perhaps easier in fields with clear subject
boundaries like physics.

We could then observe how individual knowledge contributions have helped (are
helping) progress the growing knowledge "surface." Young researchers could
also observe areas of neglect and attack those instead of going where everyone
else is. Reward people who grow the knowledge surface, irrespective of their
background.

------
lanstin
I wish companies also realized this. We need to recognize and reward effective
groups, not super good individuals. It doesn't matter how brilliant an
individual is if they aren't in a group that will leverage that genius.
Whatever, still somewhat mysterious, factors make that group work overall are
the things the company needs to not trample on.

~~~
sgt101
Amen to that friend. Many have observed this before, but culture trumps
everything. Teams that establish viable cultures become engines of value, the
mechanisms of corporate life seem to me to be especially designed to prevent
that from happening and to dismantle it arbitrarily.

------
graycat
If you want to _do_ math and can and do, then fine. Else, still fine. There's
no sense in inserting _genius_ into the situation.

Bluntly, there's only one way to know if someone can do math: They want to and
try. If their efforts result in some math, then necessarily they can do math.
That's really the only way to know.

------
lumberjack
The press likes to reinforce this "one hero who did it all my himself" myth.
They are big part of the problem.

~~~
hellofunk
It's not really the press that does this, it is the human psyche. It is why we
have celebrities, in any field. Humans love to idolize others, for various
reasons that have been deliberated upon for centuries by those in philosophy
and psychology.

~~~
dando
There is nothing fundamental about this. It stems from a lack of
understanding, not human nature.

The concept of a single genius coming up with everything exist mostly to
people who don't know any better, not to people who actually have extensive
study of the field.

~~~
hellofunk
Well there are a lot of musings in the field of psychology about why society
creates celebrities from a fundamental need to have living idols.

------
plandis
I see a lot of comments stating that mathematicians have high IQ and high test
scores. Is there any data to confirm that or is everyone just speculating?

~~~
neutralid
[https://www.quora.com/What-college-majors-have-on-average-
st...](https://www.quora.com/What-college-majors-have-on-average-students-
with-the-highest-IQ)

You could use GRE test scores to compare across subject majors. There may be
saturation at the top where further differentiation between majors could be
possible if the exam material were sufficiently more difficult.

------
kkylin
For the perspective of someone to whom the label "genius" hsa often been
applied: [https://terrytao.wordpress.com/career-advice/does-one-
have-t...](https://terrytao.wordpress.com/career-advice/does-one-have-to-be-a-
genius-to-do-maths/)

~~~
nabla9
Terry Tao is genius, so what does he know :)

His brother, Nigel Tao, who is not quite as genius as him and works in Google
has IQ of 180.

------
DrNuke
Elitism is a form of social stupidity but egalitarianism is socially dangerous
when it comes to STEM-based endeavours.

~~~
dmix
Agreed, unlike other administration-heavy fields such as academics and
government, STEM really can't sustain a net-negative contributing subset who
are a natural baggage of egalitarianism. Considering the dangers in fields
such as engineering and medicine and the many important systems that software
fuels there are serious consequences when competency filters are devalued in
the name of some idealized form of equality or other social hierarchies or
attempting to fulfill some artificial processes in the name of risk aversion.

But in a more practical sense life is too short to be a smart person without
having a bit of elitism. Which is both a result of optimization and a bit of
cynicism.

You can indeed be a mathematician without being a genius. In the sense you can
understand the field and convince enough people of your value to keep you
employed.

Every field has tons of busy work and not particularly challenging jobs but
jobs that none-the-less need to be done and are ultimately an important piece
of the puzzle. So it's true that any field, even STEM, shouldn't be hostile to
the 9-to-5ers and the 'middling' bunch, merely because they aren't genius.

That said - if you're going to push those fields forward and make real
progress like these two:

> Andrew Wiles, who is credited with solving Fermat’s Last Theorem, and I met
> Grigori Perelman, who solved the Poincare Conjecture

you have to be top tier. Or close enough to it to feed off the top tier. These
are typically the people pushing industries forward which generate work for
the middling level tiers who weren't child prodigies. In math meaning the
people to work out the details of proofs and finding real world applications.

Talent shortages are usually the result of the work of this tier. So it will
always be a symbiotic relationship between the genius/elite and average
person. The problem largely then isn't so much the elitism, or the fact their
is an elite, but merely that the field was given a false image as being
limited to only those types of people. Rather than one that needs (and
welcomes) the average-person as much as any other field.

More of a marketing problem than a systemic one.

The people doing middling busy-work aren't going to fill pages of Bloomberg or
fill the pages of books like 'Men of Mathematics'. But regardless the fact is
there are a small subset at the top are doing pioneering work and that is what
makes them interesting. Why else would New Yorker write an extend profile on
Grigori Perelman and Shing-Tung Yau? They are interesting because they a small
group at the top. If there were a bunch of them then Grigori wouldn't have a
million dollar prize for his work nor would layman be praising them.

------
lr4444lr
I thought "genius", properly defined, was an ability to perceive things before
the general public can. They discover not only what we know is difficult, but
completely change how we think about that aspect of the world. Intelligence is
important, but only one part of that quality, and does not have to necessarily
be among the highest, as traditionally measured. As Nietzsche is often quoted,
it lies on a line very close to madness.

~~~
forgotmypw
Something I skimmed in a random book recently is that "genius" and "genie"
have the same root and origin.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genius_(mythology)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genius_\(mythology\))

------
almostApatriot1
I regret not getting more into Math in college; only got as far as Linear
Algebra even though I was pretty good at it, even relative to people in the
class. For some reason, I did believe you had to be really exceptional to
major in Math. I think it was, in part, because there were a couple really
talented kids in high school and everyone including the teachers put them on a
huge pedestal. I never felt like I measured up, and if you were smart but not
the type to dominate math league, something like Chemistry or Biology were
more suitable. Having since met many math majors and even phds, I know know my
assumption was kind of false. I look at those talented kids; they're doing
advanced degrees or research at top tier universities, and I realize that
wasn't the route you had to be on. Oh well.

------
gub09
I like the idea of genius as derived from genus, and meaning something like a
particular kind of excellence, an exemplar of its kind, something's
characteristic disposition. One can think of there being not one class of
geniuses, but think of it as excellence of a particular kind, in a particular
activity, that is related to the intrinsic and highly developed talents or
disposition of the genius. So, Rafael Nadal is a clay court genius, because he
is a great tennis player, and in addition he puts maximum effort into the kind
of tennis that requires it, and his physical, top-spin heavy tennis is ideally
suited to the surface.

------
CurtMonash
My first week of grad school at Harvard, Ted Slaman was freaking out a bit,
wondering whether he (or any of us) was good enough to succeed at math. I
replied (more or less in these words):

"Look. You're brilliant. I'm brilliant. We're all brilliant, or we wouldn't be
here. We may not be brilliant ENOUGH to make it, but we have nothing to feel
inadequate about."

He calmed down, and eventually went on to have what may have been the best
math career of any of us (at least judging by the stature of the department
where he wound up tenured).

------
eagle2001
> In short, we over-reward those at the top and dismiss the rest.

This is standard tournament theory: big rewards at the top to provide a strong
incentives for excellence. Look at the prize structure in sporting events and
at the three-medal rewards at the Olympics. Paradoxically the decline in
quantity and quality typically seen after tenure suggests that it works in
academic circles: post-docs and assistant professors are doing outstanding
work because that's what it takes to "win".

~~~
sgt101
Or is it that faculty are diverted into keeping the roof on the lab that the
post docs and assistant professors work in?

------
powera
TLDR: "I'm special too, give me more credit for whatever I'm doing."

Egregious logical errors throughout. Would not recommend others read this
article.

------
wavefunction
Maybe one or two of you living are geniuses. At least I can think of two in my
lay-man's opinion.

------
hellofunk
Everyone is always calling me a genius, but I've learned that they apply the
term too loosely, and thus I support much of this article's points. For
example, when socializing with my colleagues a couple weeks ago, a very pretty
girl asked me at the bar if I wanted a drink. I already had one in my hand, so
I told her, "I already have one in my hand." My colleagues, as they often do,
said to me after she walked away, "Good to point that out, genius." I will
admit that it is very hard to be a genius, and I empathize with others in my
same position.

~~~
winter_blue
That sounds more like they're making fun of you or mocking you for being an
idiot and not realizing that a very pretty girl was interested in you. I will
say I've a noticed a lot of book-smart people can be total idiots in social
situations.

~~~
bayonetz
@hellofunk is clearly having a deadpan laugh. @winter_blue either missed this
or is a next level genius of the deadpan his/herself!

~~~
emerongi
I'd like to believe in the latter.

------
justin_vanw
The author is referring to genius without defining it.

You might say that being 1/1,000,000 in intelligence qualifies as a genius.
However, that would still leave around 8000 people smarter in the world. This
author seems to limit the word 'genius' to the people that those 8000 people
look up to.

When this author talks about genius, she means a genius among geniuses. The
population she's calling not-geniuses are in the top 1/10th to 1/100th of 1%.

~~~
sdenton4
Genius itself is a slippery social construct, defined by social position
rather than any actual objective ranking.

(Also, the author's a she, genius.)

~~~
eanzenberg
Are height and eye color also social constructs?

~~~
throwaway91111
Height and eye color are measurable and meaningful. Intelligence is neither.

~~~
justin_vanw
Intelligence is measurable and meaningful.

It astonishes me that people can claim with a straight face that it is not. I
suspect it is sour grapes or something?

If intelligence isn't measurable, then you would agree that the average frog
cannot be reliably distinguished from the average human in terms of
intelligence?

Ok, so lets move on from that, and don't give me some painful story about how
there are different kinds of intelligence and frogs are 'smarter about eating
bugs' or something, please?

Maybe with the benefit of the doubt, you are trying to say that human's are
genetically not very diverse, and so you can't find significant differences in
intelligence. To that I would say you are certainly not claiming this in good
faith, and you have some quasi-political reason to deny something that is
obviously true to anyone who has interacted with more than 3 people. (and we
can skip the lecture along the lines of 'you can't trust what is obvious and
have to pretend that all your beliefs are properly cited or they are invalid')

~~~
soVeryTired
So you really think intelligence can be accurately measured using a single
number?

Do you not agree that different people have different talents? Some are good
at constructing clever arguments, some can compose beautiful music, and some
can solve partial differential equations in their heads.

~~~
wayn3
thats just being butthurt because we chose to call it intelligence, and
somehow not being classically intelligent is understood as a personal insult.

the IQ simply doesnt measure creative genius. if it was called "the test that
measures how good a persons brain is at pattern recogniton", you wouldnt care.
you'd simply state that you're not particularly interested in logical
reasoning.

intelligence, in terms of IQ, is a more or less well defined metric. in
popular language, its conflated with "not being a mouthbreather". thats why
people get pissy when they dont score above average on an iq test. its kinda
pointless, really. people only care about iq tests because of the name.

~~~
soVeryTired
It's possible to be a very able, erudite person and not do well on an IQ test.
Conversely, it's possible to score highly and be incompetent.

Intelligence is an ill-defined, nebulous quantity. IQ is a precisely defined
quantity. Since intelligence is hard to measure and IQ is easy to measure,
it's tempting to use one as a proxy for the other. But I, and the other
posters above me, just don't find that very convincing.

~~~
wayn3
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFgXF0a_Yw4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFgXF0a_Yw4)

~~~
soVeryTired
Not even a little. But you won't get much respect on HN with that attitude.

------
InTempWeTrust
A genius is somebody shizophrenic enough to make connections where others are
incapable off doing so, while still remaining sane enough to filter the
results and only ocassionally walk the street naked at night, to escape the
satellites tracking him/her with bugs embedded into buttons (lets call it
sabatical).

To be this mad is nothing worthy to strive for. It comes with real cons.

Con A: Your family has usual several shizos who are "over the edge", meaning
people who are in need of constant care.

Con B: If you get the necessary education to contribute more then spynovellas
and abstract art in this unstable family environment, which may include
initially getting pushed into engineering/the sciences against your will -
boy/girl are you lucky.

Con C: No drugs, no long partying, no chem-triggering yourself of any kind
(no, coffee - what a world!)

Con D: Selfisolation tendencies- as perceiving other people as hostile,
overinterpreting constantly on theire intent is very tiresome- thus, you end
up self isolating to not feel the sting of beeing constant wrong (aka Mad) all
along on your spouse.

Con E: Good Connections can also be had by normal people now, if they would go
for that. There are several systems to make them and find exotic and
interesting solutions. The real problem starts with normal people fighting
against new ideas because they pose a risk to there career, there company, the
process and there concept of self-worth.

Con F: You are not systematic, meaning for example, to set up a coherent list
will be impossible.

Con 8: Martyrers of any kind, in religion become sort of very attractive- or
was it the other way around, that martyrer religion produce more durable
creative bonkers people? The irony is that israel, america and irans cultural
looks very much alike to a bonkers inventor.

Con G: The real trouble starts, when the normal people run out of ressources,
and start to vote the "geniuses" as war-chieftains to power, usually after a
prolonged episode of "pulling up more Cash obsticles to actual archivers". If
you are constantly in danger of beeing the guy/girl who the mob will turn to
when they need a witch-streetlight, its a good quality to turn on the needle
and point on any group guilty of beeing not part of the mob enough. Thus
artists and geniuses- the worst group to look for integrity the day the madmen
gets voted to power.

Con H: Sometimes people crash, like computers, and spend the rest of there
days iterrating over a "topic" or "obsession" totally not worth it.

Con I: CEOs and Decisionsmakers constantly crowding in on "working" geniuses,
trying to deduce the "process". Its laughable- but there is no process. There
is no method to learn, there is nothing you can take home from that art-
gallery-meetup. The process consist of a mind constantly recombining stuff
that is not supossed to be recombined, throwing away metric tons of wrong
stuff subconciously and sometimes putting out ideas, with a tacked on invented
backstory how they came to be. Thats it. And as you are going to sit on those
patents and stuff anyway, and live in constant fear, that all those
incremental investments blow up, why fly towards the fire, little moth?

Pro A: Wir sind die Quelle, ihr seid die Senke.

------
FullMtlAlcoholc
The definition of a genius is someone with an IQ >= 140. Sorry, that word is
taken. Embiggen your vocabulary and apply your definition to a more cromulent
term.

~~~
dang
Would you please not post unsubstantive comments to HN? At some point
Cunningham's Law blends into trollery.

We detached this subthread from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14532068](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14532068)
and marked it off-topic.

~~~
FullMtlAlcoholc
> Would you please not post unsubstantive comments to HN?

I take issue with this. How is the content unsubstantive? It wasn't untrue or
misleading, it is just what the Stanford Binet IQ test classifies as genius.
so that it being one becomes a matter of fact, not of opinion.

> At some point Cunningham's Law blends into trollery.

Now that I reread my comment, I see how it can be misconstrued as snarky. That
was not at all the intention. It was meant to be self-deprecating and
lighthearted, as I was using made-up words while criticize someone for not
using made-up words. I thought about adding a smiley face so as to make my
intentions clearer, but emoticons aren't really used on HN.

I'm about as anti-troll as you can get as I believe them to be parasites of
the internet and a brief look at my comment history would elucidate than I am
always if not I'm not earnest, helpful, or passionate in discussion, I am
positive in tone.

Look at the amount of discussion it generated before being pruned and the
varying opinions on what constitutes "genius". It's not that big a deal, but
this is the first time I can ever recall having a comment moderated in my
nearly 25 year history of using the internet. I see how it can be interpreted
as snark, but when moderating, perhaps take the user's history into account.

For my part, I will make my intentions more obvious so that they will not be
interpreted as negative or as an attack.

