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Einstein: Curiosity trumps intellect
- mixmax 19y agoA 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 19y agoBut maybe imagination and curiosity requires intellect.
- xirium 19y agoEnthusiasm will get you very far. I've seen young, euthusiastic people without much knowledge or intelligence exceed the ability of old cynics.
- doubleplus 19y agoOf 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 19y agohe 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
- bocajuniors 19y agoof course you are free to define intelligence how you wish, but i think for the definition to be useful creativity should be included in it
- yters 19y agoYeah, IQ unfortunately doesn't take free will into account.
- rms 19y agoThere's not a lot of room for free will in a deterministic universe. I've found it is best not to dwell on it.
- yters 19y agoOk, taking airy metaphysical arguments out of the picture, is this true in your experience? Do you do best assuming you have no control over your future, or by assuming you have control over your future? That's what I mean.
- yters 19y agoI hear he originally had to get a job as a postal clerk because at university he was really stuck up about his intelligence and pissed everyone off.
- anewaccountname 19y ago
- mynameishere 19y agoCurious like a cat? http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1098316453585764384 http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1098316453585764384
- airhadoken 19y agoIf 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)
- lowkey 19y agoHe also said "Imagination is more important than knowledge" which is also deeply cosmically true, especially for startups.
- dkokelley 19y agoI 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.