I wonder if it just boils down to the speed with which you see the implications of a rule. Or, more generally, some sub-set of rules. If you can travel quickly,

I wonder if it just boils down to the speed with which you see the implications of a rule. Or, more generally, some sub-set of rules. If you can travel quickly, mentally, through a tree of implications, and ideally with some heuristic for eliminating large branches, well, that would seem pretty smart, I reckon. In that sense you're simply seeing more than others, and so you want to talk about..odd things, which leads to isolation. Then there's something I would call "the quiet mind". The smartest people I've known have had very quiet minds, in that once they accept a goal, all of their gifts are brought to bear on eliminating obstacles to that goal. This helped cull the huge portions of that 'syllogism tree' that represent the general opportunity cost of doing anything in particular. (Which brings up the other possibility for drop outs: that they either can't make a choice, or won't because of moral reasons.) Anyway, I have to wonder what sort of mind could look at the Lorentz contraction and even consider the possibility that "the speed of light is constant in all inertial frames." It's so simple, and yet so profound. Truly one of the most beautiful insights ever made, and it could not have come from a syllogism tree. But for all that Einstein was apparent quite well adjusted.