
Giftedness and Genius: Crucial Differences (1996) [pdf] - gwern
https://www.gwern.net/docs/iq/1996-jensen.pdf
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nabla9
Well argumented and nice reading.

about uniqueness and creativity:

If you model intellectual discovery in the civilization as a search problem,
individuals are heuristic agents in a large scale ant colony process. If the
agents have highly correlated internal biases, agents that arrive at the same
point in the search space are more likely to follow the same paths. All
discoveries that can be quickly reached using common biases are learned
quickly and they are considered mundane and easy. If everyone in the colony
would be exact replica of Carl Friedrich Gauss, the search would advance very
fast at first, but eventually it would slow down (to some really high constant
level) because CFG colony gets stuck in problems that are difficult to CFG.

In this model creativity is partly explained by having atypical or unique
bias. Trait psychoticism might be extreme form of this. When a person has
atypical point of view in 2-3 different ways at once, they gain the ability to
see new paths forward almost constantly.

~~~
javajosh
_> In this model creativity is partly explained by having atypical or unique
bias. _

E.g. being a weirdo. This is why it's smart for cultures to tolerate 'weirdos'
to a greater extent than is traditional, because they really do find unique
solutions. (It's not a cost-free value, since weirdos can _also_ be
legitimately dangerous to a degree that outweighs their usefulness. No-one
said it's easy.)

~~~
V-2
I agree except for the "greater extent than is traditional". Otherwise than
the statement implies, there isn't one, single, traditional attitude towards
weirdos that would be shared across different civilisations. Indeed, some
cultures eg. held the mentally ill in certain reverence (native Americans,
Russians and "yurodivy", etc.)

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pfarnsworth
My son has a tested IQ of 160, which is 4 standard deviations away from
average intelligence. He's certainly gifted, but when you interact with him,
you just know he's definitely not a genius by any means (maybe he just had a
good day when he tested).

I contrast him to a few geniuses that I've met, who just seem to see the world
at a different level. They are stunning in how intelligent they are, but more
importantly how completely immersed in a particular topic they are. One such
genius was a friend who was a programming guru. He was entirely self-taught
and came up with things that were like magic to me. We would talk about ideas
and the next day he worked one of the ideas all night and literally made
software magic. Sadly, he committed suicide a few years ago, due to a lot of
the internal demons he had in him. I'm really hoping to avoid a situation like
this with my son, making sure he's emotionally balanced is my number one
concern and focus.

~~~
manyxcxi
Like your son, I’ve also been tested to have an IQ of 160. Like you, I
certainly don’t feel like I’m a genius in any particular facet of life.

I’ve known a few people that I’m absolutely sure were geniuses (or near it),
the big difference between them and myself (that I could tell at least) is
that they picked one thing or area and just kept getting better and smarter in
that specialty. I get so _bored_ with just one thing. I’m highly creative, as
I feel they are, but I just like building things.

Software, wood working, cars, motorcycles, robotics. I’m nearly as handy with
a wrench and a welder as I am with a keyboard and a compiler. I feel like
everything I look at I break into sub-components and constantly run
optimizations in my head. It’s twisted and I’m constantly annoyed by people’s
general lack of attention to my perceived detail. My wife is a huge fan of my
ability to tell her shoes doing things wrong as well.

Maybe the people I regard as way beyond my capacity have the same quantity of
innate intelligence, they’ve just applied it all to one area whereas I’ve
spread mine around like finger painting on a wall. I just couldn’t do it. I
can get interested in literally anything, there’s just too much cool stuff to
learn.

~~~
bonniemuffin
Same same, I'm similar in that I tested very high and have been unwilling to
apply it to a single area, so I've always been a bit of a jack of all trades
(phd in chemical engineering, genomics researcher, published poet, theater
costume director, grant-funded artist, etc). What has played well to my
strengths is finding an interdisciplinary field (in my case data science) that
requires synthesizing knowledge from many different areas and working with a
variety of domain experts. I'm also much more interested in practical
application than in basic research, so I'll probably never make a great
scientific discovery, but I'm confident I'm making a meaningful impact on the
world.

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callesgg
The problem with the human brain is that it can be very good at one type of
mental puzzle but useless at another that would seam to be highly related.

And as a consciousness(or whatever one want to call themselves) in the human
brain it is very hard to know what one is actually good at and what one is not
so good at.

This theory of mine comes from my own life where people continuously tell me
that i am very smart that i am some sort of genius and all kinds of nice
things. But personally i feel that life is a mess. Everything goes to shit,
relationships go to hell before they even start, friends go away. In hindsight
is see many reasons that caused these things to happen. But in the moment i
cant see it.

Essentially the lesson to learn from this is a story about humility.

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montrose
This is a very interesting thesis. Moreover, the idea of someone having an
extreme amount of several orthogonal qualities (flipping heads five times in a
row) is a very useful one, regardless of how closely it matches our use of the
word "genius."

One implication is that there are probably multiple different types of genius,
and that they're good at different things.

This changed the way I look at the world, and it's not every day (I wish) you
read something you can say that of.

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woliveirajr
> he had an ability to generate, with respect to any given problem, a good
> many hypotheses, with little initial constraint by previous knowledge as to
> their plausibility or feasibility;

I think this agrees with something I read years ago: you can tell those who
are really creative or not by the way they look at a bike: it they see a bike,
they are regular. If they see a lot of components interconnected, then they
have more creative ideas because they can see small parts that can be
reorganized to creat new things.

~~~
2_listerine_pls
Do you remember which paper/article ?

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elcritch
This list of requisite attributes for genius is fascinating:

> (1) ideational fluency, or the capacity to tap a flow of relevant ideas,
> themes, or images, and to play with them, also known as “brainstorming”; (2)
> what Eysenck (1995) has termed the individuals’ relevance horizon; that is,
> the range or variety of ele­ ments, ideas, and associations that seem
> relevant to the problem (creativity involves a wide relevance horizon);and
> (3) suspension of critical judgment.

The third point being particularly difficult to inculcate in oneself while
remaining productive (ugh). It’s like maintaining a quantum superposition
between rationality and intuitive understanding of a possible solution. I’d
argue the majority of people dismiss ideas way to early or because of slight
hinderinces. Perhaps it’s a lack of practice of determining the probability of
failure of a novel idea/methodology based on knowledge from other areas.
Rephrasing the first two points as Bayesian probabilities perhaps could point
toward how one could increase the odds of finding useful outcomes when
"suspending" critical thinking.

~~~
scoot
_”one could increase the odds of finding useful outcomes when "suspending"
critical thinking”_

AKA The Balmer peak? [http://observer.com/2012/04/bottoms-up-the-ballmer-peak-
is-r...](http://observer.com/2012/04/bottoms-up-the-ballmer-peak-is-real-
study-says/)

~~~
elcritch
Ha! Pretty clever, and it does hit upon a point I was trying to make that
achieving the perfect balance of suspending critical thinking is hard! Too
much or too little by a hair’s breadth and you end up with Windows ME.

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esturk
I found the following passage fascinating:

"So later investigators began looking for behavioral correlates of serum urate
level (SUL), and there are now dozens of studies on this topic (reviewed in
Jensen & Sinha, 1993). They show that SUL is only slightly correlated with IQ,
but is more highly correlated with achievement and productivity."

People suspect its because Uric Acid is similar in shape to caffeine which
acts as a stimulant. I wonder if that's why people feel more energetic after
eating meat.

~~~
gwern
Inosine is interesting. Banned for athletic competition (although that's not
proof), and the few studies I found since Jensen continue to support the
correlation although none of them are proper RCTs of its effect on cognition.

The downside is that it looks like it does increase your risk of gout/similar
problems, so something of a tradeoff there...

I've been trying out low doses of inosine myself (just temporarily, I don't
intend to replace the bottle when I runs out because of the gout/joints
issue), and maybe there's an effect? It does seem to mess with my sleep the
way other stimulants like modafinil do, at least.

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dooglius
One aspect that seemed omitted was the value of specialization/tunnel vision.
The article says, "When one reads about famous creative geniuses one finds
that, although they may occasionally have to force themselves to work, they
cannot will themselves to be obsessed by the subject of their work," and gives
some good examples, but attributes this to "cortical arousal" which I don't
think can fully explain what's going on. I don't get the sense that Newton
would get stuck in his cellar to compose music, nor would Wagner run upstairs
to write a formula of physics.

At the risk of stroking my own ego, I would say that I am pretty high on the
components described here ("ability", "productivity", and "creativity") but my
breadth is extremely wide--I can get interested in just about anything--and my
obsession shifts from day to day, preventing any sort of long-term foray into
a specific area.

To the degree that different areas of intellect are non-synergistic, it makes
sense that specialization should be a requirement for great achievement: a
person with great capacity for genius who spends 25% of his time in each of
four areas will easily be overshadowed by someone with only 50% of that
capacity for genius, but 100% focus on a particular area.

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top256
I think the essay considers genius as something way too simpler. I'll give you
just one example : there is a relationship between environment and development
and this is clearly not examined nor cited. A genius might emerge but she
needs support from her environment.

