
E.O. Wilson on Introversion, the Limits of IQ, and Where Ideas Come From - mcguire
https://medium.com/@mmeditations/e-o-wilson-on-the-upside-of-introversion-the-limits-of-iq-and-where-ideas-really-come-from-23cface0cd8b
======
montrose
I know a fair number of people who've done important new things, and this
seems right on the mark:

"There is also an introversion in the innovator that keeps him from team
sports and social events. He dislikes authority, or at least being told what
to do. He is not a leader in high school or college, nor is he likely to be
pledged by social clubs. From an early age he is a dreamer, not a doer. His
attention wanders easily. He likes to probe, to collect, to tinker. He is
prone to fantasize. He is not inclined to focus. He will not be voted by his
classmates most likely to succeed."

An interesting conflict arises when these people become startup founders. If
their companies succeed, they're forced to become leaders, whether they want
to or not. But they rarely learn to relish it.

And yet these founders are usually the best leaders for their companies, if
they can make themselves do it. It's one of the only examples I know where the
people who are best at something don't like doing it much.

~~~
dsacco
The problem with that paragraph is it’s vague and non-commital, like a
horoscope. We can fill in the blanks to make that description fit people who
we already think are intelligent, innovative, etc. As a template, it lacks
precision because it’s hard to falsify, like when you survey people to see if
they’re “more creative or more logical.”

As a counterpoint, I also happen to know people who have done “important new
things” and they mostly don’t match that description. One of the most
brilliant people I’ve known seemed almost born to lead. He didn’t particularly
excel at sports, but he enjoyed playing and watching them, and was on teams in
high school and college. I wouldn’t describe him as a “dreamer” or as
unfocused; in all things he seemed relentlessly focused. His opinion on
authority is probably lukewarm, but not negative.

I think that paragraph presents a false dichotomy - even of the people I’ve
known who more closely match some of the other qualities, I wouldn’t describe
_any_ of them as lacking in focus nor action. It’s easy to come up with
examples of famous innovators matching either description, and it’s probably
easy to slip into disagreement about things like, “well what does not inclined
to focus _mean_?” In short, it’s underspecified, and people can read into it
what appeals to them.

~~~
mojuba
> I also happen to know people who have done “important new things” and they
> mostly don’t match that description

I'm curious what exactly that person is doing. You seem to be describing a
leader but not necessarily tech/science innovator.

Wilson is talking about people who invent and build innovative stuff. They can
become leaders only as long as they are forced to, in order to achieve their
goals (e.g. become a founder and lead a company). Lack of focus applies to
things that are not interesting to these people, but then they become hyper-
focused and even obsessed about their own ideas.

~~~
dsacco
_> I'm curious what exactly that person is doing. You seem to be describing a
leader but not necessarily tech/science innovator._

He’s a research scientist at a tech company. He resolved a central open
problem in his field while in academia, then entered the industry to work on
applied research.

 _> Lack of focus applies to things that are not interesting to these people,
but then they become hyper-focused and even obsessed about their own ideas._

Maybe. But you saying this is part of my original point: is that actually what
the quote means? What you’re saying sounds like the stereotypical conception
of a genius, not necessarily the reality of high performing innovators. I feel
like it’s hard for me focus on things that aren’t interesting to me, and I
dive into things that interest me. But that also describes...essentially
everyone I know, if I’m reasonably objective about it.

If we can keep exchanging anecdata that supports or challenges that
description, it’s no longer a description of the world, but rather just a
description of particular people (and one without predictive impact). A
description isn’t impactful if you have to keep clarifying its interpretation
in order to make it work. Reasonable people can disagree about whether it’s
fair to say your interpretation is what the quote is actually getting at, and
in any case we could find obvious counterexamples for it.

------
ilamont
_It has occurred to me, after meeting so many successful researchers in so
many disciplines, that the ideal scientist is smart only to an intermediate
degree: bright enough to see what can be done but not so bright as to become
bored doing it._

And:

 _There is also an introversion in the innovator that keeps him from team
sports and social events. He dislikes authority, or at least being told what
to do. He is not a leader in high school or college, nor is he likely to be
pledged by social clubs. From an early age he is a dreamer, not a doer. His
attention wanders easily. He likes to probe, to collect, to tinker. He is
prone to fantasize. He is not inclined to focus. He will not be voted by his
classmates most likely to succeed._

This is not the type of person the elite universities are looking for. Whether
it's Harvard, Stanford, Sorbonne, Beida, IITs, etc., they're looking for high-
scoring, blindingly bright geniuses for undergraduate and many graduate
programs, too. If they're confident extroverts, i.e., "natural leaders," even
better.

Are they doing it all wrong?

~~~
mcguire
Speaking for myself, with limited experience, the best scientists don't make
good managers or leaders, but the universities are looking for managers or
leaders, not scientists.

The best scientists probably won't be recognized during their lifetimes. The
scientists you do recognize while they're alive, are probably not the best at
"science".

~~~
wallace_f
>The best scientists don't make good managers

This brings up an important point. People are good at different tasks.

Some people are exceptional with gleaning and regurgitating information from
texts and lectures. This is what we mostly label as "smart" today.

Others can be great at different things, such as any of the vast sets of
social skills, critical thinking, maths, strategy, etc.

The problem is that while intelligence in one skill is correlated with
intelligence in another, it is not necessarily the case.

We probably all have met engineers who openly admit they're not the greatest
writers. Another example was one I learned from my interest in chess. Bobby
Fischer was one of the greatest at the game, but notoriously struggled with
memorizing opening game lines and theory. I am sure many of us here have also
met engineers and academics with a lot of knowledge in their field, but whom
also hold missconceptions, or easily come to factually erroneous conclusions
on things which they have not studies.

When I read the story, I was a bit incredulous at the author's words that "IQ
is real and it does matter," not because it's such an obvious over-
simplification.

However, universities will be reluctant to disavow their beliefs in the
mystical IQ--an idea which rests in the scholarly literature as an estimation
of _G_ , general intelligence--as this is a set of institutions which benefits
from their faith not just that it is something which can be measured on a
test, but that they do accurately measure it.

They're running in circles with this "medium brilliance" because they're out
of ideas about why their faith's predictions failed. Turns out those who score
the best on IQ tests are those who are the best at scoring well on IQ tests--
not the same set of skills needed to be the best scientists.

~~~
reefoctopus
Do you have a source for that Bobby Fischer anecdote? I’ve read several
biographies, and I’ve never heard it mentioned that he had trouble memorizing
openings. There were, however, quite a few stories that suggest he had perfect
recall.

~~~
wallace_f
Maybe my characterization of his memory should be revised to instead say he
had particular disdain for the necessity of memorizing opening game theory to
play at a high level. In the case of your background, you are aware of him
complaining about this through many interviews in his later life, and that he
was known to struggle with this. He even invented a new variant of chess for
specifically this specific reason.

Here is one such interview:
[https://youtu.be/7EuxVOgrEig](https://youtu.be/7EuxVOgrEig)

~~~
gowld
That interview is after his mental illness caught up with him. When he was a
champion, he was so much better than everyone that it's silly to say he
struggled with openings.

From
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_Fischer#Opening_theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_Fischer#Opening_theory)

> "He employs a limited range of openings. Of course, this is not a sign of
> Fischer's limited creativity, since he compensates for this by a very
> profound and sound knowledge of the variations he favours [sic]." Plisetsky
> & Voronkov 2005, p. 270.

> Fischer was renowned for his opening preparation and made numerous
> contributions to chess opening theory

He promoted (not invented) Fischerrandom / Chess960 because he felt that
memorizing ever-long opening sequences was boring and ruined the game, and
that would be soon dominated by computers with their far-superior memory.

~~~
wallace_f
I'm not sure what your source is, but perhaps update the Chess960 Wikipedia
page with this information because what you're saying here contradicts what's
there.

Fischer was, despite being, at one point, the greatest chess player in the
world, and on people's all-time greatest lists, predictable in his use of
openings, as you know since this is widely documented and you're well-read on
him. Your quote even admits this.

So I'm not sure what you are exactly disagreeing with that I said. Maybe the
source of disagreement is that I unintentionally gave the impression that he
has a bad memory, or a bad opening game. As he was one of the greatest chess
players, this was clearly not true. Rather, the idea was that he had a notable
disdain and discouragement from memorizing learning opening game theory. He
was never able to master a very large number of openings... This was a notable
feature of him as a player.

Perhaps he could have, but that would be speculation. I think he just wasn't
as good at it as the other top players.

------
cmdli
> Anti-social, passive aggressive, and a hyperactive imagination? That’s a lot
> different from the image most of us hold.

On the contrary, I think that's precisely the stereotypical image of smart
people (e.g. Turing in The Imitation Game). I think a bunch of people who
think they are smart would agree with this self-evaluation; I'm tempted to see
myself as the intelligent loner who is right while others are wrong. However,
I think that view is more narrative than having an actual bearing on aptitude.

~~~
mkl
The article is talking about our image of "successful" not "smart".

~~~
cleong
The problem with articles like this is that it's in our natural tendency to
think "oh this is me". Everyone thinks they are smart and we're not
particularly good at successfully finding others who are smart (hence the
hiring problem in this industry ). Instead we hire based on whether someone is
like us, because we think we're smart so if they like me, they are also smart.

Articles like this will perpetuate that belief. Bad soft skills? Lack of a
structured lifestyle? Cannot focus? Many people will relate to these because
they take effort to build.

Though Wilson touches a good point. Medium levels of intelligence is require
for most jobs, even in Investing you do not need to be that bright to be "the
best" in the field. Additionally, we know now that novel ideas comes from a
background process in your brain that takes a lot of time and domain knowledge
to develop.

~~~
dsacco
_> Medium levels of intelligence is require for most jobs, even in Investing
you do not need to be that bright to be "the best" in the field._

At the risk of kicking off a debate to define the word “intelligence”, I think
you’re massively underestimating the intelligence - not just effort and
experience, but actual intellectual horsepower - poured into the upper
echelons of investing strategy.

More generally, while I agree with your overall comment I’d say there’s likely
few fields where the best professionals aren’t extraordinarily intelligent _in
addition_ to other success-amplifying qualities.

~~~
cleong
No doubt professionals in the investing field have done good work, highly
competent and smart. I was making a reference to Warren Buffet, there was a
story where he was working with very high IQ individuals that made a mistake
by over-complicating the strategy behind a decision. In the end, he said that
you only needed a IQ of 130, smart but not a genius.

------
DoreenMichele
_Wilson suggests that too-smart people tend to be lazy_

There is some truth to this. Bright students often don't have to work that
hard at getting good grades. Some kids who just knew all the answers without
studying until high school or college never learned how to study. It isn't
uncommon for them to have a really tough adjustment period when they suddenly
do need to study.

Though maybe _lazy_ is not the best word for it.

~~~
KMag
We can mean many things by lazy. One meaning is actively avoiding work, and
another is not being disciplined.

I knew quite a few of my classmates at MIT who never learned to focus and
direct their energies. Even advanced/AP/IB classes in high school didn't
require them to focus for very long at a time. It's not that they disliked
work, it was that they had never before practiced focusing for very long.
Also, being obviously smart, teachers and administrators had always made
exceptions for them.

My old room mate was a regional US chess champion and widely regarded as one
of the smartest in our MIT peer group. He really enjoyed difficult problems,
but lacked the ability to steer his intellect. When he was in high school in
Atlanta, there was a school program where the government would pay the AP exam
fees for any student who signed up, as long as they didn't sign up for two
exams that were concurrently administered. There was no requirement that the
student take the corresponding course. Partly to demonstrate the wastefulness
of the program, my old room mate got a schedule, signed up for all of the
exams corresponding to his classes, and also filled in his schedule with as
many exams as possible. When the administration discovered his little
demonstration, they called him in and told him that he would be actually
taking all of the exams, and there would be stern consequences if he didn't
pass all of them. I think the threat was to bill his parents for the exam fees
for intentionally wasting school resources. They told his teachers what was
going on and that he was to be excused from normal classroom activities in
order to sit in the corner of the classroom and study from a textbook for a
different subject. He passed a full slate of exams, most without benefit of
instruction, and most with background distraction of an unrelated class going
on in the background while he studied.

He wouldn't have been able to do this if he were merely adverse to work or
unable to focus. However, the motivation to focus was externally applied. At
least until his early 30s, he never gained the ability to will himself to
focus, and he never got an undergraduate degree.

~~~
newbear
What did he end up doing for a job?

~~~
KMag
He poured over the fine print of online poker sites and found a couple that
didn't forbid bots, and then wrote a poker bot that gave him income for a
while. Now he writes data mining software for a hedge fund.

------
YeGoblynQueenne
I found myself wanting so desperately to accept what the article says that I
realised it's basically just mollycoddling its reader. "Don't worry if you're
only mediocre, you don't need to be excellent to excel".

I guess the article is trying to say that being a genious is demotivational,
in some counterintuitive (not "unintuitive") way. I get that- but so is always
being the last in class in grades and the first in the pricipal's office.

If geniouses find it hard to advance in life because they never learn to do
the hard work - well so do the kids who always get all the D-'s, but for the
opposite reason. The genious kids learn that rewards don't require hard work.
The "antisocial dreamer" kids learn that working hard brings _no reward_. They
both stop trying, after a while- but the bright kids still get ahead, without
trying.

And don't get me started on the "antisocial" part. Maybe that's the mark of a
true scientist- but it's also the mark of the kid who'll spent most of her
school years ostracised, once the other kids' parents get the message that
she's "disruptive", who'll finish school with bad grades and struggle to get
into the good universities, or the good jobs, and generally find all the doors
closed and everyone's back turned.

Yeah, sure, you can make it to the top even so. But if every day is an uphill
struggle, you'll find you can do a lot less, just because there's only so much
motivation a person can have and you'll need to spend most of it just to stay
on your feet.

This is what I have to say: life is a series of Quick Time Events. If you
don't push the right buttons, at the right time, in the right order- you're
screwed for ever more. Don't waste your school days being _that kid_ who's
always the first to take the blame and the last to receive any praise. And
don't let your kids be that kid, either.

------
PeterStuer
Quick aside on 'Eureka' places. The article notes 'Real progress comes in the
field writing notes, at the office amid a litter of doodled paper, in the
corridor struggling to explain something to a friend, at lunchtime, eating
alone, or in a garden while walking'

Am I the only one that has this relation between ideas and temperature? If I
take a sauna, it is like my brain shifts into a completely different gear, new
ideas and deep insights are generated at high speed. When I'm cold, I can
barely do basic math.

~~~
eiriklv
I am the same. It seems like when your body doesn't have to spend
energy/overhead on keeping your temperature up it can make it all available to
your brain.

~~~
Wildgoose
Interesting thought - I'm fond of pondering over ideas while soaking in a hot
bath.

------
ScottBurson
_[T]he ideal scientist is smart only to an intermediate degree: bright enough
to see what can be done but not so bright as to become bored doing it._

This reminds me of a piece I once read on Freeman Dyson — can't find it now,
sorry — which had a couple of interesting nuggets. As I recall, Dyson was once
at lunch with a couple of Nobel laureates, when someone mentioned a puzzle
they had heard, some question in number theory. Everyone at the table was
stumped except Dyson; and once he gave the answer they were baffled as to how
he had come up with it so quickly.

On the other hand, he was asked, as I guess he occasionally is, why he had not
won a Nobel. His answer was something like, "To do that you have to work on
the same problem for a decade. I don't have that kind of attention span."

So it seems like Wilson may have a point here.

------
throwaway34231
The traits mentioned in the article seem much too similar to those mentioned
in the 'Bipolar Lisper' ,

[http://www.shenlanguage.org/lambdassociates/htdocs/blog/bipo...](http://www.shenlanguage.org/lambdassociates/htdocs/blog/bipolar.htm)

------
red_admiral
An interesting read, matches my own experience in academia well.

I hope that one of the good things to come out of today's "information age" is
that a bright but bored-with-school student can easily access materials more
appropriate to their level, for example learn to learn some programming or
more advanced maths in their free time.

One point that I think is not particularly well made: "the ideal scientist is
smart only to an intermediate degree" \- immediately followed up by examples
of people (including Wilson himself) estimated at least at the 90th
percentile. That's not "intermediate" by any reasonable definition of the
word!

~~~
dasmoth
When looking at one tail of a distribution, a somewhat-logarithmic view can
often make sense. The 90th percentile of a normal distribution lies almost as
close to the mean as it does to the 99th percentile.

See also, the UK definition of “middle class” (which isn’t entirely about
income, but certainly _doesn’t_ mean “close to median wage”).

------
qxzw
Transire suum pectus mundoque potiri. Life is unfair, a lot of rules are
arbitrary, phony people thrive. Get over it, get over yourself. Focus on
something worthy and specific, and grind.

------
YeGoblynQueenne
Isn't the title a little misleading? I thought the article was actually
written by E.O. Wilson- shouldn't it be more like "About E.O. Wilson on... "
etc?

------
sunstone
Very often a situation requires analysis that leads to creating a plan. IQ is
pretty good at assessing someone's ability at analysis. IQ does not really
address the "creating a plan" part.

In most situations its more effective to be "pretty good" at both aspects
rather than super good at just one of them.

------
simen
A bunch of unsubstantiated claims that boil down to "mediocre is good." Who
doesn't want to be a misunderstood genius rather than a failure, or just a
roughly average person who dreamed of something more? This is feel-good
pandering, and it's the sort of thing that's very easy to identify with
because you want it to be true.

------
kamalkishor1991
Psychology says there is no correlation between IQ and consciousness. So you
will find both lazy and hard-working people with same IQ spread over the
normal distribution of consciousness. Seems to me this is a biased observation
based on own personality.

~~~
gowld
Do you mean conscientiousness?

~~~
ncfausti
I think so, and iirc there are s lot of studies that have actually shown a
negative relationship with conscientiousness.

------
rnabel

      > "the father of sociobology"

I will never understand why people write articles without a spell-checker.

~~~
oh_sigh
Hey, at least the author didn't misspell the first word in the title of their
thesis:
[https://repository.library.georgetown.edu/handle/10822/52804...](https://repository.library.georgetown.edu/handle/10822/528049)
,
[http://www.cddc.vt.edu/feminism/Birke.html](http://www.cddc.vt.edu/feminism/Birke.html)

Strangely enough, which I didn't know when first writing this post, is that my
aunt knows this lady as they overlapped during their tenure as professors at
the university of warwick

~~~
btrettel
That appears to be a journal article, not a thesis, and the title is correct
in print:

[http://www.jstor.org/stable/4236129](http://www.jstor.org/stable/4236129)

------
trakam
This may not be the instructive guide to genius that many will read it for
since it omits one very important point: You either have it or you don't.

