

Einstein: Curiosity trumps intellect - naish
http://foundread.com/2008/02/20/einstein-says-check-your-intellect-at-the-door/

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mixmax
A good friend of mine is infinitely curious. Whenever he comes around he
always finds something that he doesn't quite know how works, or that is broken
in an unexpected way. And he never stops before he has learnt how it works, or
fixed it.

Since he now has roughly 38 years of experience (his age...) in finding out
how things work and how to fix them he is almost unimaginably good at it.

For this reason he is the greatest hacker I have ever come across.

So yes: Imagination and curiosity are more important than intellect.

~~~
amichail
But maybe imagination and curiosity requires intellect.

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doubleplus
Of course, this is coming from one of the most intelligent people to walk the
Earth, someone who never had to deal first-hand with a lack of smarts. On a
similar note, I just heard that attractive women with rich, good-looking,
intelligent, humorous husbands all agree that the only thing important in a
man is a sense of humor. As luck would have it, we all have a bit of that and
a bit of creativity. I'm inspired.

~~~
tokipin
he wasn't really insanely intelligent. what set him apart was his creativity
and persistence. famous are his thought experiments and the ten-year gap
between his special and general relativities

there are many people who are very intelligent, far more so than Einstein was,
but aren't inclined to originality

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whacked_new
As much as I want to agree with you, I have to challenge you on this -- what
makes you say this?

I have a physics Ph.D. friend who is quite brilliant himself, and when I asked
him about Einstein he said something like Einstein had a particularly good,
intuitive grasp of physics principles in a way most people weren't capable of.
Actually I don't remember if this was Feynman or Einstein; I was asking him
about the two, and basically he said that each of these people had some
uncanny ability.

Daniel Tamment <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Tammet> isn't insanely
intelligent but due to a different brain structure, has a supernormal memory,
which makes him appear abnormally intelligent and creative. When he talks
about shapes of numbers you can say he is particularly creative, but I find it
impossible to dispute that this comes as a result of a brain anomaly he was
born with.

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DaniFong
Both Feynman and Einstein had a terrific physical intuition, but Feynman had
more of an appearance of one since he was quite a showman, whereas for
Einstein it was essentially his core asset.

Feynman also had incredible facility with calculation: he was one of the first
Putnam fellows. He left the exam early!

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whacked_new
As much as I admire Feynman, the stories about his magician qualities are,
honestly, so far beyond most people and end up being more entertaining than
inspiring.

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xirium
Enthusiasm will get you very far. I've seen young, euthusiastic people without
much knowledge or intelligence exceed the ability of old cynics.

~~~
mixmax
yeah - those who change the world are those that do not know that it is
impossible.

~~~
yters
Rather, those who know what is impossible.

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dkokelley
I have a theory: You can learn to be smart.

Granted some people are gifted with intellect just as others are naturally
handicapped and there exists an entire range in between, but I suggest that
those with normally functioning brains who actively strive to increase their
knowledge and understanding will discover that they are getting smarter.

The post goes along with this theory, in a way, by stating that curiosity - an
active attempt to understand things - is above natural intelligence.

This is just a theory I came up with when comparing certain friends who
haven't made the greatest choices in life or gotten the best grades in school
(not a good intelligence indicator, by the way). I'm interested in hearing
what others think about this.

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lowkey
He also said "Imagination is more important than knowledge" which is also
deeply cosmically true, especially for startups.

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airhadoken
If we could foster that sort of thing in American schools, it would scarcely
matter whether India and China better prepared their students for engineering
(referencing another article that was on the front page the same time as this
one)

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mynameishere
Curious like a cat?

<http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1098316453585764384>

