
Both geniuses and madmen pay attention to what others ignore - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/issue/18/genius/if-you-think-youre-a-genius-youre-crazy
======
Htsthbjig
When you want to do anything new, you have to go against the flow, and this is
psychologically very hard.

When I decided to quit my job and create a company I went against everybody.
My parents, my girlfriend, my friend, all them thought I was crazy quiting a
good position for something so risky.

E.g My girlfriend told me that if I was doing my company the relationship was
over, so I said to her, ok, go away. The next week she wanted to come back,
but I preferred to risk this alone.

Of course, when whatever you did works, everybody believes you are a genius,
and they always remind you how much they KNEW that. Success is contagious, and
once the media says that, you are a genius for everyone.

People like Newton, who was a geek, had to suffer isolation all his life in
order to do what he felt right.

Fortunately today there are two differences with Newton's time:

1-There is Internet. Whatever you do you are not alone. There is a 1 per cent
or 1 per thousand people like you, and with Internet you can find them, meet
them. In the past getting enough critic mass was only possible in cities, with
millions of people.

2-We know a lot more about psychology, you have amazing educational materials
to improve your live, be happy and not getting in holes like suicidal
thoughts.

~~~
emotionalcode
Any advise for a person who had success, then had compound PTSD surface, get
mingled with the concept of ego, leading to a negative sorts of ego death, and
is still trying as hard as they can to become genius? I can't get the concept
of being past my prime, out of my head, and I think that is precisely what is
holding me back.

~~~
enraged_camel
My company's CEO passed away last week. During her memorial I found out that
she was 70 when she died, and had founded the company 25 years ago, when she
was 45. Which I think shows that people's "prime" actually comes a lot later
than they think.

The way I look at it is that if you start a business in your 20s, the odds are
against you. You may be young and full of energy, but you don't know shit
about the world yet and will make a ton of mistakes. If you do it in your 30s,
the odds are neutral. You are more seasoned and possibly have some domain
experience under your belt that you can leverage. If you do it in your 40s,
the odds are in your favor. You probably have significant domain expertise as
well as connections you have established earlier in your career that can help
you. It's only in your 50s that you can justify feeling like you're past your
prime. Then again, that hardly stops some people.

~~~
DavidAdams
The average age of a _successful_ entrepreneur is 40. So for every Zuckerberg,
there's a 60-something balancing him out:
[http://blogs.hbr.org/2013/06/entrepreneurs-get-better-
with/](http://blogs.hbr.org/2013/06/entrepreneurs-get-better-with/)

------
nicklaf
This article gives the following quote some context:

"Mathematics requires a small dose, not of genius, but of an imaginative
freedom which, in a larger dose, would be insanity. And if mathematicians tend
to burn out early in their careers, it is probably because life has forced
them to acquire too much common sense, thereby rendering them too sane to
work. But by then they are sane enough to teach, so a use can still be found
for them."

\--Angus K. Rodgers

(The word genius seems to be rather ill-defined, as evidenced by Rodger's
reluctance to use it in a context that seems identical to that of the
article.)

~~~
nicklaf
I also like the following quotation of N. Bohr, appearing in an Amazon book
review[1] of Dr. Simonton's[2] "Creativity in Science: Chance, Logic, Genius,
and Zeitgeist":

"We are all agreed that your theory is crazy. The question which divides us is
whether it is crazy enough to have a chance of being correct. My own feeling
is that it is not crazy enough."

[1]
[http://www.amazon.com/review/RV4Y43WKRK6LO](http://www.amazon.com/review/RV4Y43WKRK6LO)

[2] Dr. Simonton is the UC Davis professor who authored the article.

------
m52go
> The most important process underlying strokes of creative genius is the
> tendency to pay attention to things that normally should be ignored or
> filtered out.

I'd add that it's not only paying attention to these things, but _questioning_
them.

Noticing something no one else does is useless unless it incites action.
Deciding to act upon something can only happen if there's sufficient
curiosity. Curiosity comes from questions. Why? What if? How might one...?

Questions are so fundamental to everything from creativity to innovation,
management, sales, relationships...I just had my eyes opened by _A More
Beautiful Question_ by Warren Berger.

~~~
drzaiusapelord
>I'd add that it's not only paying attention to these things, but questioning
them.

Personally, I feel the rebellious aspects of intellectualism are far, far
overplayed to the point of absurdity. It leads to buying into marginalized, if
not discredited, ideas and not doing a proper investigation into mainstream
knowledge. I mean, how many more reddit posts about the "evil" Federal Reserve
or how terrible of a person Thomas Edison was do we need? Especially when
these opinions are tied to politicized propaganda from the opposition and not
remotely tied to a legitimate interest into monetary policy or late 19th
century industry.

I don't think young geeky introverts need to be told to be more rebellious, if
anything they should learn to conform more, learn better social skills,
understand the power of teams and collaboration, etc. I really wish someone
told me this when I was younger. These attitudes did me a big disservice in
life and I imagine I would have been much more successful otherwise.

~~~
m52go
> I mean, how many more reddit posts about the "evil" Federal Reserve or how
> terrible of a person Thomas Edison was do we need?

Is that rebellion or groupthink? Either way, yes, most of it probably is
useless.

But what about the rebelliousness that brought about the hyperlink, the mouse,
and the iPhone? Surely those inventions were rooted in questions that sought
rebellion against established ways of doing things?

There's a time to rebel and a time to conform. Rebellion without conformity
leads to thinkers who have great ideas but no output. Conformity without
rebellion leads to complacency and no progress.

As with everything else, one needs balance.

~~~
drzaiusapelord
>But what about the rebelliousness that brought about the hyperlink, the
mouse, and the iPhone?

Are those really rebellions? TBL was a pretty milquetoast guy who built on top
of a lot of things before him: TCP/IP, server OS, interconnected networks, and
of course text-based predecessors to the web like Archie. He didn't wear all
black and call everyone an idiot and magically produce something wonderful. He
stood on the shoulders of giants and reached a little further.

~~~
m52go
Do you need to be a black-wearing, idiot-calling rebel in order to be a
creative genius?

Of course not.

But you need to observe reality, question it, and then act on your question.
That's it. Milquetoast guys can do it too.

------
MarkPNeyer
this difficulty inhibiting thoughts that i know are irrelevant has long been
an issue for me. i had to build a "memory palace" style visualizing technique
for "disposing" of thoughts that i know aren't relevant, but can't help fixate
on.

i imagine writing the thought down in vim, then moving the file to a USB
stick, then taking the usb stick into a zip-lock bag, putting that into a
specific pocket of my backpack, getting on my bike, and riding from my
apartment down 101 to the NASA base at AMES, throwing the backpack into a red
bin which is loaded into a rocket and shot into space.

the visualization is so detailed and specific that it takes all my attention
to render that internal movie; after having expressed the thought
syntactically (i actually imagine writing the thing down in vim and moving my
fingers accordingly), it gets moved from "the thing actively afflicting my
consciousness now" to "a thing i was thinking about". often after the rocket
takes off, i can remember i was thinking something that bothered me, but i
can't remember what it was. my mind will sometimes grab after it, trying to
remember - and if it surfaces i get agitated again - but i can usually stay
focused enough to distract myself by going for a walk or establishing a small,
easily obtainable goal to fire up the ol' task positive network again.

~~~
Jacqued
It's not quite as detailed as yours, but I use a "trick" of the same kind to
chase those obsessive thoughts.

I see myself on top of a miles high cliff, standing next to a safe. I somehow
extirpate the thought by breathing it out into the vault, which I then lock
and push off the cliff. I then have to wait and when I "hear" a distant noise,
I can't remember the thought, even though my mind perversely tries to
remember.

Anyway, I'm glad to see I'm not the only one having to resort to such
tactics...

------
Animats
The author is talking about idea generation. As Edison wrote, "Genius is 1%
inspiration and 99% perspiration."

Here are a few ideas I don't have time to pursue.

1\. Make extruder-type 3D printing work better by heating the material just
laid down, just ahead of the weld point. Use hot air or a small, maybe 5W
laser diode. Use 3 heat points 120 degrees apart so you can heat ahead of the
direction of travel. Modulate the laser with pulse-width modulation, then read
the temperature during the off period with two photodiodes with different IR
filters. Go closed-loop on the temperature.

2\. Initial application for automatic driving - airport auto rental. Book
rental in advance. When customer's phone shows up at destination airport,
dispatch car to terminal, timed to show up just after luggage pickup. Use
phone to direct customer to car. On return, customer drops off car at
terminal, and it head back to rental lot on its own. Self-driving is limited
to low speed in known areas. Expand system by adding parking garages at likely
car rental destinations, such as convention centers.

3\. Conference room automation. Video projector should have camera, find
screen, put up test pattern, focus, correct for parallax. Room lights should
sense projector/external lighting situation. Microphone system should
automatically track speaker from a distance (this exists, using a hemisphere
with a large number of microphones and a lot of CPU power) without any effort
by speaker. Video feed of talks and classroom should have people tracking and
automatically generate a useful video feed. The whole thing should Just Work.
Internet of Things crowd, get busy.

4\. Integer overflow, both signed and unsigned, should trap in CPUs. If you
want modular arithmetic modulo the word size, you should write "x+= (x %
65536)", and the compiler should understand that as an idiom, generating an
cheap unchecked unsigned add.

5\. Set import duties to recover about half the wage difference between the
exporting and importing countries. This escapes the "race to the bottom"
problem. Half, so as not to have too much protectionism. Politically
difficult, but the current ratio for the minimum wage in Shentzen to the US is
5.6. China is getting close to where this is feasible.

Idea generation is easy. Implementation is hard.

~~~
WallWextra
MIPS had trap on overflow.

~~~
Animats
So did VAXen. If you turned it on, about half the UNIX utilities broke.

------
Fede_V
Anyone who will unironically define themselves as a genius has issues with
ego. Genius is something only history can bestow on people.

~~~
adventured
Your theory is that, let's say, John Carmack can't self-identify as a genius
after all he has accomplished, and given how far out in front of most others
he has always been on the technology curve?

Bill Gates possesses a genius level intelligence, has the accomplishments and
mental demonstrations to back it up, and is apparently fully aware of it.
What's the problem exactly?

Let's define genius:

"exceptional intellectual or creative power or other natural ability."

or

"a person who is exceptionally intelligent or creative, either generally or in
some particular respect."

As though it should be difficult for a genius to recognize that their
abilities far exceed those of other people.

I would argue that being oblivious to that level of blatant genius - having no
idea you're so much better than most others - would be more of a negative
mental trait vs being aware of it. You'd have to be incredibly ignorant, and
almost entirely non-self-aware to miss such a thing across a lifetime.

If you can reasonably be defined as to be in possession of X trait, there is
absolutely nothing wrong with recognizing that. It is not an ego problem to do
so. If my brain is capable of great feats of mathematics, and I can tell that
I'm drastically better at math than my peers, there is nothing irrationally
egotistical about recognizing it. With there being a critical distinction
between recognizing your capabilities, vs. obnoxiously promoting them to
others.

~~~
mwfunk
If John Carmack or Bill Gates thought of themselves as geniuses, they wouldn't
have accomplished a fraction of what they did. Nothing is more destructive to
someone's intelligence or creativity than believing the hype that people put
on you, and that goes 10x if that hype comes from yourself.

Put another way, I consider both of those guys geniuses, but if either of them
made that claim about themselves, I would have to reconsider the position.

Put another another way, no good can possibly ever come from acknowledging
your own genius, even if that was something a person was capable of perceiving
about themselves, which I don't think it is.

~~~
scobar
I completely agree with most of your comment. I wonder, though, if some good
could come from (erroneously) acknowledging one's own genius privately and
temporarily. If that person were above a certain threshold, wouldn't the
acknowledgement of one's own genius evoke the conflict that there must be much
more left to learn that the person isn't yet aware of? It might just provide
enough motivation to search for the reasons why it was so ignorant to have
considered oneself a genius.

~~~
sbensu
Very interesting! I find that what geniuses are secretly proud of is seldom
what others perceive as their top achievements, so it would be hard to
parallel the external "you are a genius" with the internal "I'm a genius".

Or maybe I'm just talking about highly intelligent people != genius.

------
adventured
"Suicide victims like painters Vincent Van Gogh ..."

Van Gogh very likely did not kill himself.

[http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-
arts-15328583](http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-15328583)

~~~
kirsebaer
That's a nice idea, but most evidence suggests suicide:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Vincent_van_Gogh](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Vincent_van_Gogh)

------
CurtMonash
I had an IQ score higher than Marilyn vos Savant's once. I like to think I'm a
more creative thinker than most, but I haven't exactly made any world-shaking
discoveries ...

------
codyb
"Second, the permanent inhabitants of mental asylums do not usually produce
creative masterworks."

But how many sedatives are they on?

~~~
eric_h
Indeed. Sedatives, anti-psychotics, mood stabilizers - all have a decidedly
negative effect on creativity.

------
SandersAK
“Amateurs look for inspiration; the rest of us just get up and go to work.” ―
Chuck Close

------
0xdeadbeefbabe
Ninety nine percent of genius is genius and not sweat; just ask Gauss.

~~~
beagle3
Or, as Telsa is rumored to have remarked: "If Edison spent a little more time
thinking, he wouldn't have to perspire as much"

------
checksum404
Reminds me of the sesame seed trade from Silicon Valley.

------
cevaris
Interested in this article, take up a book "Outliers: The Story of Success" by
Malcolm Gladwell

------
andrewstuart2

      > Psychopathy, noun
      > mental disorder especially when marked by egocentric and antisocial activity [1]
    
      > Antisocial: adjective
      > hostile or harmful to organized society; especially :  being or marked 
      > by behavior deviating sharply from the social norm [2]
    

So if you're more intelligent (deviating sharply from the social norm) and you
know you're intelligent (egocentric), you're kind of a psychopath, by
definition of the word psychopath. What's the surprise there?

Not being accepted or understood by the society that you excel above would
also be expected.

[1] [http://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/psychopathy](http://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/psychopathy)

[2] [http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/antisocial](http://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/antisocial)

~~~
logfromblammo
The M-W dictionary might not be the best source for that definition. The
people best disposed to curate the meaning of that word, psychiatrists and
psychologists, would characterize psychopaths as being bold, disinhibited, and
utterly lacking in empathy or remorse.

In other words, they do what they want, when they want, and don't care about
how it impacts anyone else, not during the act, and not after they finish.
Correctly believing yourself to be smarter than most other folks is barely a
nudge from the normal end of that spectrum.

But if I were to guess, r is probably very slightly positive when correlating
genius with psychopathy, psychopathology, and several other "that guy's a
little odd" disorders.

~~~
nzp
In case of psychopathy, or better anti-social personality traits in general,
there is some research into this, and it indicates that "genius level"
intelligence is a _protective_ factor. So a person with amoral/anti-social
traits and very high score on the G factor (I think) is able to compensate,
high cognitive abilities can sort of inhibit amoral impulses through sheer
brute force of intellect, sort of. This makes sense because anti-social/amoral
behaviour is in the general case not very adaptive and beneficial (for each
successful psycho, you have vastly more of them leading miserable lives).
Also, the relationship is non-linear, it only works for very high levels of
intelligence. I'd love to give you some reference, but unfortunately I don't
have the literature at hand ATM.

