13 ms·

Both geniuses and madmen pay attention to what others ignore

248 points by lingben 10y ago

koolba 10y ago
While not every crazy person I know is a genius, every genius that I know is crazy. Pretty sure people that know me would place me in at least one of those categories as well.
- rublev 10y ago
  What's the point of this comment without explaining why? If you're going to pat yourself on the back, don't only do it once, spill the beans! There's nothing wrong with your implication, just be able to back it up because it's a fairly large one.
  - jacquesm 10y ago
    > If you're going to pat yourself on the back That's not how I read it.
amargado 10y ago
LOL, oh, HN commenters, please never change.
- M_Grey 10y ago
  Isn't that a bit of an ironic tautology, fellow commenter?
- H4CK3RM4N 10y ago
  I think he's trying to ask for psychiatric assistance.
- corporateslave 10y ago
  Hahaha
- dang 10y ago
  Please don't do this here, even if you haven't misread someone. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13848745 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13848745 and marked it off-topic.
vxxzy 10y ago
I'm surprised Hemmingway was used as an example in this piece. He did believe he was being monitored or 'stalked' by the FBI. His wife/family did have him subjected to electro-shock therapy. Wasn't it later proven that Hemmingway was followed and 'harrassed' by the FBI?
- M_Grey 10y ago
  Life is so complicated, and sometimes the line is even more blurry. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/14/us/hospital-guns-mental-health.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/14/us/hospital-guns-mental-h...
- aaron-lebo 10y ago
  The mention seems to be related to his suicide. "Crazy" might not be the appropriate word, but his suicidal idealization (see For Whom the Bell Tolls) was detrimental. He also shot his legs up while fishing with a machine gun, so he clearly did crazy things... "Crazy" is a bad word. There's "crazy" and crazy. Hemingway was touched with unique ways of thinking, but he wasn't John Nash (with all due respect to Mr. Nash).
- sitkack 10y ago
  He also had chronic backpain from multiple airplane crashes. Many people that suicide have chronic pain.
  - 55555 10y ago
    Probably almost all of them, if we're including emotional pain.
- leggomylibro 10y ago
  He did go hunting for U-boats in the English Channel with a shotgun and a dinghy in WWII. I guess that may or may not have been particularly abnormal in Britain at the time, though.
taneq 10y ago
Well, they do say that the only way to distinguish genius from madness is by observing the results.
ikeboy 10y ago
It is sad that the state of statistical knowledge is so low that the third and forth paragraphs are necessary.
rhizome 10y ago
This seems quite all over the place and I'm not sure what the point was. Was it that sometimes mental illness and creativity are coincident? Everything else seemed like a bunch of worldbuilding.
- fritzw 10y ago
  Over all the uniting factor seems to be having an outsiders view of the world. Creativity, or mental illness will both give you a unique view of the world. Otherwise, the writing composition is beyond me
  - sunilkumarc 10y ago
    Your last sentence made me upvote your comment :)
- dkarapetyan 10y ago
  Creativity is highly correlated with mental illness because the kind of brain wiring required for creativity is a bit unstable. The article points to one such instability. Creative people are worse at filtering out "unnecessary" information.
zghst 10y ago
I believe I'm crazy but far from a genius...
geoka9 10y ago
I think the fact that this submission is on the first page is pretty damning of the community ;)
CuriouslyC 10y ago
Truthfully, I've found that the real difference in intelligence between people isn't so large as many people think it is. People don't generally come along and solve "intractable" problems because they're so much smarter than all the people who've tacked the problem prior to them. Instead, they approach the problem in a way that is fundamentally different. This is why outsiders are so frequently the people who make major breakthroughs in a field, and "genius" is correlated with eccentricity.
- jacquesm 10y ago
  > This is why outsiders are so frequently the people who make major breakthroughs in a field, and "genius" is correlated with eccentricity. That would be nice, if it were true. But it isn't. Those are the stories that everybody likes though, a bit like the kid with a 25c fishing rod out-fishing adults with 100's of $ worth of gear. But in practice, most progress in most fields is made by insiders, one tedious bit at a time.
  - CuriouslyC 10y ago
    I didn't say most progress, I said breakthroughs. Let's look back at some of the biggest breakthroughs in history. Newton was by all accounts a profoundly odd human being who was highly secretive and kept to himself. Faraday came from poverty and made his discoveries with no grounding in the math of the day. Einstein made his big breakthroughs as a patent clerk working on his own. Darwin was also an outsider who worked on his own to develop his theory of evolution. I'm not discounting the work of insiders, but their role is typically to tame the wilds first explored by the outsiders.
    - throwaway90840 10y ago
      I don't know if that is possible these days though. Ideas even from (relatively unknown) insiders are often termed "lacking in scope" and outright rejected. I can only think of one outsider having accomplished anything of value in math in the past 20 years (and even that guy wasn't really an outsider). Academia has turned into a social game that is painful, and where the rewards are terrible (unless you're in CS I suppose). I think post-WW II has solidified the cult-like feeling of place, and also the increased the number of kooks. This contrasts starkly with the PR that is put out: hermits seeking truth. It's generally hard to put this point across, since most people don't see the ground details, and the whistle-blower costs are rather high. I've previously found posts by Mark Tarver (creator of Shen) on c.l.l and on his blog to be informative, though. Life, I fear, is no different than lord of the flies, except that the characters are rather a bit more polite.
fritzw 10y ago
The article attacks the idea that genius is normal, and it maybe suggests that it would be hard to be normal and genius. Taking the title at face value, Your not a genius if you think you are. I will say that dealing with people who don't have basic math, science, logic, physics, chemistry and philosophy understanding it's pretty easy to convince yourself that your both genius and crazy.
- sitkack 10y ago
  There are tons of geniuses that are perfectly normal. What his article was talking about was eccentric geniuses.
  - taneq 10y ago
    That's a contradiction in terms. Genius is exceptional by definition, if you're a genius you're not normal. Most of the smart people I know struggle with some form of depression or existential issues. The really smart ones are invariably a bit odd.
    - sitkack 10y ago
      We have to put these tropes to rest, they are damaging to everyone.
sverige 10y ago
Every time I read one of these articles about genius and madness, I become smug for a little while, then I get depressed because I realize that I haven't accomplished anything noteworthy, then I'm mildly reassured because occasionally my wife will spontaneously aver (contrary to all expectation) that I am a genius, then I get distracted and start chasing some ideas, then I get depressed again because, well, shit, I still haven't accomplished anything that anyone but my wife knows about, and anyway these ideas I chase are very interesting but once I've figured it out, I am satisfied and don't share it with anyone, because I don't really give a shit about becoming known as a genius, if I even am (which I doubt seriously). Then, as a general rule, I start drinking if I have no obligations for the evening. Thankfully this evening I started drinking before I read this, so I can skip all the other stuff and just enjoy this awful feeling as I contemplate several of my friends who have accomplished things, and one of whom is actually a genius, unlike me. Edit: Thank goodness for whisky. (Did I mention that I predicted Trump's victory back in August 2015? I'm pretty good at political predictions.) (No, I don't vote, and my predictions don't imply endorsement. All politicians suck, even those who aren't (or weren't) politicians.) Also, if I ever accomplish anything noteworthy, I will let you poor HN comment readers know immediately.
- taurath 10y ago
  For some reason (probably my whiskey) your self aggrandizing comment was quite entertaining even though normally I'm put off by "I am very smart" posts.
  - sverige 10y ago
    I detest "I am very smart" posts. I just came back to delete my bullshit comment, but I have decided to let it ride because of your kind words. I am glad you found it entertaining. Hopefully I won't hate myself in the morning for not deleting it. :^0 P.S. I really don't think I am a genius, just to be clear.
    - taurath 10y ago
      Well then you have a clear chance of being a genius, since according to other threads those who think they're a genius aren't!
Psychthowaway 10y ago
As a public figure, it wasn't worth burning my reputation to type this out, but I think that speaks to the state of discourse around mental health today. The article is uses the word "psychopathology" which is a general term for the study of mental disorders. However I want to talk specifically about Psychopathy as a disorder, because I recently came to understand that I am a psychopath. My guess is that there are probably a bunch of psychopaths reading this too that don't even realize what they are. I also scored in the "Genius" level on IQ tests in middle school (whatever the hell those are worth), and have made a non-trivial creative dent in the world. The challenge is that, for the average person, if you hear "psychopath" or "sociopath" all you think is murderers and rapists. While most institutionalized (ie. caught) murderers and rapists do fit that profile, 90% of sociopaths are out there in the world and struggling to fit in. In fact almost half of CEOs would fit the diagnosis: Lack of empathy, remorse or guilt. Because that's all it is, it's not based on behavior (even though that is usually part of a formal diagnosis). I have gone through my whole life with what in retrospect feels like a handicap that I have to make up for in every way. Not being able to feel empathy, remorse, guilt etc... means that every movie that the whole crowd is in tears at, every funeral of a family member, you are basically saying to yourself "What is with all these emotional people?" When relationships deteriorate because the best way you know how to deal with people is to act like you care, to manipulate them to thinking you care and then when the "mask of sanity" slips temporarily it blows your whole life apart. Therein lies the rub, cause there is no sympathy there, and you know if you reveal who you are you won't get any breaks, because you are seen as a predator. So you spend your whole life studying people to see how they respond in certain situations so that, like a robot, you can try and emulate them - and because you're so smart you can actually pull it off. Genius level sociopaths/psychopaths look like the best of us because it takes that level of intellect to play a character 24 hours a day without taking a break. And you don't reveal yourself - because what would the benefit be? You don't get a chance to be yourself because who you are is broken and ugly. So you continue to play the game and get into higher and higher stakes. You start to run a company, maybe even a big one with thousands of employees, you get married, have children etc...and your ability to manipulate and control just get wider and wider. And you see that your contemporaries are also psychopaths, so you think, well I guess that's what it takes to make a big impact. So your goals and ambitions, those "delusions" get bigger as you accomplish the "delusions" you previously had and see that you can accomplish a lot that others can't. This is something that needs to be discussed because from where I stand, it's pretty clear that psychopaths like me "rule the world." It's not from a place of malice or hate though, but adaptation and if we can have that conversation and we can start to recognize and cope with psychopathy then I think everyone would be better off. It's tiring as hell to live this life.
dkarapetyan 10y ago
Evolution is probably the worst way to design anything and yet all of biology is driven by it. It is basically a random walk that just flips bits and every so often it is inevitable that some of those flipped bits will have something to do with the brain's default networks and modes of operation. But I think genius is an unstable optimum and things inevitably slide downhill. There is no such thing as heritable genius, crazy or otherwise.
- contingencies 10y ago
  There is no such thing as heritable genius I disagree with this statement but is difficult to debunk unless 'genius' is nailed down. Nominally if a large part of socially communicable (and thereby recorded) analytical or creative capacity ("genius") is experiential rather than genetic, then it is heritable in the sense that it can be taught. If it is taught to many, however, then by some definitions it becomes non-genius. Are the large number of documented ascetic/hermit traditions teaching genius? Preserving an alternative worldview? Simply crazy? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.
  - dkarapetyan 10y ago
    I mean as a complex biological system phenomenon genius is unstable a bit like unstable weather phenomenon. We don't have windstorms all the time but every so often global currents and temperatures line up and we get one. I imagine genius is a bit like that at the genetic level. I think genius can be nurtured and as a society we can make better use of all our geniuses but I don't think it can be taught. It really has to do with brain wiring and although much of it is plastic some of the defaults can't be changed and those default settings are usually the ones that make or break a genius.
    - contingencies 10y ago
      So you think genius is genetic, but mystically uninheritable? Interesting perspective.
      - 10y ago
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
baron816 10y ago
Is the rate of mental illness really any higher among those deemed genius than in the general population? I doubt it. Lots of people have mental illness, it's bound that some of those will do great things.
funthree 10y ago
flagged
trentmb 10y ago
You have a personality disorder. Please see a psychiatrist.
- sverige 10y ago
  Oh, I have seen several psychiatrists and psychologists and counselors over the years. They're generally pleasant but useless people, though a couple of them provided perspectives and comments that were useful at the time. The biggest help has been that I no longer value social acceptance so highly. It's terrible, I know. Feel free to call me an obnoxious asshole if it helps you. Several have and I've survived.
  - trentmb 10y ago
    > The biggest help has been that I no longer value social acceptance so highly. Sure you do- hence your performance, hence your need to reply to me. I suspect you expected a reply in the vein of mine. EDIT: i reply => a reply
    - sverige 10y ago
      Uh oh, I've been caught.
    - DanBC 10y ago
      Your comment about personality disorder was really ignorant. It's not okay to throw about psychiatric diagnoses, especially ones which are so heavily stigmatised, in an argument just because you dislike someone. It says a lot about you that you think it's ok. For anyone who is interested in personality disorder a good source of information is Meeting the challenge, making a difference - http://www.emergenceplus.org.uk/news-from-emergence/507-meeting-the-challenge-making-a-difference-a-new-personality-disorder-practitioner-guide.html http://www.emergenceplus.org.uk/news-from-emergence/507-meet...
  - chillwaves 10y ago
    Can you just stop with the "me me me" show for a minute?
mkempe 10y ago
Only a madman would see fundamental commonality between genius and insanity. This mis-integration is on a par with a theory grouping cigars, the aura of saints, and the moon -- they're all round.
known 10y ago
"We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us happy is something to be enthusiastic about." -Einstein
funthree 10y ago
Please quit judging upward. How many thousands of years have geniuses been hounded by those with smaller brains? How many great sorcerers, magicians, electricians and plumbers have been lost because of this thing where people think they have the right to speak confidently and negatively of men who are of higher caliber? Maybe geniuses are kooky because of how outnumbered they are by irrational people? Or something else like that.
Pica_soO 10y ago
The pattern-matching gone haywire visible in schizophrenia, applied in mild dosages on principles not related is in my opinion the secrect ingredient that allowed in the early days of science for the "genius" myth to occur. So madmen might be usefull- but not all the time, and not in all situations. The true art in project managment is to keep the madmen around against all resistence ("That guy is constantly reinventing the wheel"), prevent the usual specialization silos from walling off against this and get a stuck project to "shift gears" as in, temporarily withdraw the usual project-management ("We need fast, easy solutions- not something custom made") - and get the recombined stuff at least discussed.
dredmorbius 10y ago
Creativity, a component of genius, and problem solving (likewise) are of themselves both in part skills and not necessarily some innate talent. I've been poking around the Skills and Creativity pages on Wikipedia for the past few days, as well as their references, looking at the state of art and understanding of these topics. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's five-phase model of creativity seems pretty accurate: preparation, incubation, insight, evaluation, elaboration. (Creativity: Flow and the psychology of discovery and invention). I'm also quite captivated by Liane Gabora's "honing theory", which ... gets into a whole mess of areas: world models, systems theory, epistemology, evolution, communications theory, and more. I've only just run across it but it's quite exciting, as is much the rest of her work (bio page with links below). Another element I'm finding useful is to have a useful concepts and interests capture system, for which I've gone retro: 4x6 index cards and a series of file boxes. The immediacy, free-form nature, adaptability, and physicality of the system make it hugely useful (my HN user submissions history includes a link to a POIC, "pile of index cards", data management system). And the list of people who've relied on index cards, starting with Carl Linneaus who invented the damned idea, is pretty impressive. (I particularly recommend John McPhee's essay, "Structure".) I've known researchers myself who've used the method and am coming to understand its merits. And yes, search and grep are challenges, but the review such attempts trigger seems to be a more-than-ofsetting advantage. https://www.worldcat.org/title/creativity-the-psychology-of-discovery-and-invention/oclc/910934813 https://www.worldcat.org/title/creativity-the-psychology-of-... https://people.ok.ubc.ca/lgabora/ https://people.ok.ubc.ca/lgabora/ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creativity https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creativity https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skill https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skill
epalmer 10y ago
> Instances such as these have led many to suppose that creativity and psychopathology are intimately related. I wonder if this is true is that why some think that using psychedelics have helped them see the world from different perspectives and be creative in their work world?
Mendenhall 10y ago
When I pondered if I was a genius I realized the list of things I will not know will always be vastly larger than that which I do. Anyone swathed in that much ignorance cant be a genius IMO. To me its a battle to be less ignorant.
charles-salvia 10y ago
As much as some of us might feel some misguided excitement over the idea of being some kind of tech savvy Hannibal Lecter, the reality is that there is no real correlation between psychopathy and intelligence (perhaps even a negative correlation.) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16178679 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16178679 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23551975 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23551975 http://www.soc.iastate.edu/staff/delisi/Hannibal%20Lecter%20PDF.pdf http://www.soc.iastate.edu/staff/delisi/Hannibal%20Lecter%20... In other words, psychopathic people aren't necessarily smarter. In fact, contrary to the Hollywood idea of the "super-intelligent serial killer", most actual serial killers were basically kind of idiots who got caught in stupid ways, with a few notable exceptions. It's also hard to read anything Einstein (an actual genius) wrote and conclude the man was bereft of warmth and empathy.
- Psychthowaway 10y ago
  This whole line of reasoning that Psychopath = Super Intelligence Serial Killer is misguided. All of the studies to date have used the criminal population as the sole source of research for psychopathy - as your reference does. The point I was making with my lengthy post is that, in fact, genius level psychopaths don't become murderers; they become Presidents, Dictators and Hedge Fund managers.
  - charles-salvia 10y ago
    Because the set of criminals used in the research are confirmed psychopaths, so it's the only way to conduct such a study. You cannot round up Hedge Fund managers for such a study. But this also makes what you're saying somewhat non-falsifiable. Highly successful people basically are extremely driven and ambitious, and they work all the time. (I'm assuming you relate to this.) But there is no evidence (as far as I know) correlating tendencies to be extremely ambitious, and psychopathic tendencies such as inability to feel empathy. Although, obviously, tendencies associated with both things may overlap, since a very ambitious person is more likely to appear very selfish to an outside observer. Also, many actual confirmed geniuses like Einstein, Alan Turing, etc. clearly were simply obsessed (which is really just a more negative way of saying "very enthusiastic") about their work - they didn't necessarily care to become powerful men (Einstein famously turned down the Presidency of Israel because it was boring to him). These people were just really, really interested in the problems they were working on. This seems to intersect better with something like OCD rather than psychopathy - and indeed, there are of course many anecdotes around Princeton University of Einstein exhibiting OCD tendencies.
erikbye 10y ago
There was never a genius without a tincture of madness -Aristotle
dennis_jeeves 10y ago
A corollary to this is that the regular masses have somewhat collectively the same delusions.

248 points by lingben 10y ago

While not every crazy person I know is a genius, every genius that I know is crazy. Pretty sure people that know me would place me in at least one of those categories as well.

rublev 10y ago
What's the point of this comment without explaining why? If you're going to pat yourself on the back, don't only do it once, spill the beans! There's nothing wrong with your implication, just be able to back it up because it's a fairly large one.
- jacquesm 10y ago
  > If you're going to pat yourself on the back That's not how I read it.

amargado 10y ago

LOL, oh, HN commenters, please never change.

M_Grey 10y ago
Isn't that a bit of an ironic tautology, fellow commenter?
H4CK3RM4N 10y ago
I think he's trying to ask for psychiatric assistance.
corporateslave 10y ago
Hahaha
dang 10y ago
Please don't do this here, even if you haven't misread someone. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13848745 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13848745 and marked it off-topic.

vxxzy 10y ago

I'm surprised Hemmingway was used as an example in this piece. He did believe he was being monitored or 'stalked' by the FBI. His wife/family did have him subjected to electro-shock therapy. Wasn't it later proven that Hemmingway was followed and 'harrassed' by the FBI?

M_Grey 10y ago
Life is so complicated, and sometimes the line is even more blurry. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/14/us/hospital-guns-mental-health.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/14/us/hospital-guns-mental-h...
aaron-lebo 10y ago
The mention seems to be related to his suicide. "Crazy" might not be the appropriate word, but his suicidal idealization (see For Whom the Bell Tolls) was detrimental. He also shot his legs up while fishing with a machine gun, so he clearly did crazy things... "Crazy" is a bad word. There's "crazy" and crazy. Hemingway was touched with unique ways of thinking, but he wasn't John Nash (with all due respect to Mr. Nash).
sitkack 10y ago
He also had chronic backpain from multiple airplane crashes. Many people that suicide have chronic pain.
- 55555 10y ago
  Probably almost all of them, if we're including emotional pain.
leggomylibro 10y ago
He did go hunting for U-boats in the English Channel with a shotgun and a dinghy in WWII. I guess that may or may not have been particularly abnormal in Britain at the time, though.

taneq 10y ago

Well, they do say that the only way to distinguish genius from madness is by observing the results.

ikeboy 10y ago

It is sad that the state of statistical knowledge is so low that the third and forth paragraphs are necessary.

rhizome 10y ago

This seems quite all over the place and I'm not sure what the point was. Was it that sometimes mental illness and creativity are coincident? Everything else seemed like a bunch of worldbuilding.

fritzw 10y ago
Over all the uniting factor seems to be having an outsiders view of the world. Creativity, or mental illness will both give you a unique view of the world. Otherwise, the writing composition is beyond me
- sunilkumarc 10y ago
  Your last sentence made me upvote your comment :)
dkarapetyan 10y ago
Creativity is highly correlated with mental illness because the kind of brain wiring required for creativity is a bit unstable. The article points to one such instability. Creative people are worse at filtering out "unnecessary" information.

zghst 10y ago

I believe I'm crazy but far from a genius...

geoka9 10y ago

I think the fact that this submission is on the first page is pretty damning of the community ;)

CuriouslyC 10y ago

Truthfully, I've found that the real difference in intelligence between people isn't so large as many people think it is. People don't generally come along and solve "intractable" problems because they're so much smarter than all the people who've tacked the problem prior to them. Instead, they approach the problem in a way that is fundamentally different. This is why outsiders are so frequently the people who make major breakthroughs in a field, and "genius" is correlated with eccentricity.

jacquesm 10y ago
> This is why outsiders are so frequently the people who make major breakthroughs in a field, and "genius" is correlated with eccentricity. That would be nice, if it were true. But it isn't. Those are the stories that everybody likes though, a bit like the kid with a 25c fishing rod out-fishing adults with 100's of $ worth of gear. But in practice, most progress in most fields is made by insiders, one tedious bit at a time.
- CuriouslyC 10y ago
  I didn't say most progress, I said breakthroughs. Let's look back at some of the biggest breakthroughs in history. Newton was by all accounts a profoundly odd human being who was highly secretive and kept to himself. Faraday came from poverty and made his discoveries with no grounding in the math of the day. Einstein made his big breakthroughs as a patent clerk working on his own. Darwin was also an outsider who worked on his own to develop his theory of evolution. I'm not discounting the work of insiders, but their role is typically to tame the wilds first explored by the outsiders.
  - throwaway90840 10y ago
    I don't know if that is possible these days though. Ideas even from (relatively unknown) insiders are often termed "lacking in scope" and outright rejected. I can only think of one outsider having accomplished anything of value in math in the past 20 years (and even that guy wasn't really an outsider). Academia has turned into a social game that is painful, and where the rewards are terrible (unless you're in CS I suppose). I think post-WW II has solidified the cult-like feeling of place, and also the increased the number of kooks. This contrasts starkly with the PR that is put out: hermits seeking truth. It's generally hard to put this point across, since most people don't see the ground details, and the whistle-blower costs are rather high. I've previously found posts by Mark Tarver (creator of Shen) on c.l.l and on his blog to be informative, though. Life, I fear, is no different than lord of the flies, except that the characters are rather a bit more polite.

fritzw 10y ago

The article attacks the idea that genius is normal, and it maybe suggests that it would be hard to be normal and genius. Taking the title at face value, Your not a genius if you think you are. I will say that dealing with people who don't have basic math, science, logic, physics, chemistry and philosophy understanding it's pretty easy to convince yourself that your both genius and crazy.

sitkack 10y ago
There are tons of geniuses that are perfectly normal. What his article was talking about was eccentric geniuses.
- taneq 10y ago
  That's a contradiction in terms. Genius is exceptional by definition, if you're a genius you're not normal. Most of the smart people I know struggle with some form of depression or existential issues. The really smart ones are invariably a bit odd.
  - sitkack 10y ago
    We have to put these tropes to rest, they are damaging to everyone.

sverige 10y ago

Every time I read one of these articles about genius and madness, I become smug for a little while, then I get depressed because I realize that I haven't accomplished anything noteworthy, then I'm mildly reassured because occasionally my wife will spontaneously aver (contrary to all expectation) that I am a genius, then I get distracted and start chasing some ideas, then I get depressed again because, well, shit, I still haven't accomplished anything that anyone but my wife knows about, and anyway these ideas I chase are very interesting but once I've figured it out, I am satisfied and don't share it with anyone, because I don't really give a shit about becoming known as a genius, if I even am (which I doubt seriously). Then, as a general rule, I start drinking if I have no obligations for the evening. Thankfully this evening I started drinking before I read this, so I can skip all the other stuff and just enjoy this awful feeling as I contemplate several of my friends who have accomplished things, and one of whom is actually a genius, unlike me. Edit: Thank goodness for whisky. (Did I mention that I predicted Trump's victory back in August 2015? I'm pretty good at political predictions.) (No, I don't vote, and my predictions don't imply endorsement. All politicians suck, even those who aren't (or weren't) politicians.) Also, if I ever accomplish anything noteworthy, I will let you poor HN comment readers know immediately.

taurath 10y ago
For some reason (probably my whiskey) your self aggrandizing comment was quite entertaining even though normally I'm put off by "I am very smart" posts.
- sverige 10y ago
  I detest "I am very smart" posts. I just came back to delete my bullshit comment, but I have decided to let it ride because of your kind words. I am glad you found it entertaining. Hopefully I won't hate myself in the morning for not deleting it. :^0 P.S. I really don't think I am a genius, just to be clear.
  - taurath 10y ago
    Well then you have a clear chance of being a genius, since according to other threads those who think they're a genius aren't!

Psychthowaway 10y ago

As a public figure, it wasn't worth burning my reputation to type this out, but I think that speaks to the state of discourse around mental health today. The article is uses the word "psychopathology" which is a general term for the study of mental disorders. However I want to talk specifically about Psychopathy as a disorder, because I recently came to understand that I am a psychopath. My guess is that there are probably a bunch of psychopaths reading this too that don't even realize what they are. I also scored in the "Genius" level on IQ tests in middle school (whatever the hell those are worth), and have made a non-trivial creative dent in the world. The challenge is that, for the average person, if you hear "psychopath" or "sociopath" all you think is murderers and rapists. While most institutionalized (ie. caught) murderers and rapists do fit that profile, 90% of sociopaths are out there in the world and struggling to fit in. In fact almost half of CEOs would fit the diagnosis: Lack of empathy, remorse or guilt. Because that's all it is, it's not based on behavior (even though that is usually part of a formal diagnosis). I have gone through my whole life with what in retrospect feels like a handicap that I have to make up for in every way. Not being able to feel empathy, remorse, guilt etc... means that every movie that the whole crowd is in tears at, every funeral of a family member, you are basically saying to yourself "What is with all these emotional people?" When relationships deteriorate because the best way you know how to deal with people is to act like you care, to manipulate them to thinking you care and then when the "mask of sanity" slips temporarily it blows your whole life apart. Therein lies the rub, cause there is no sympathy there, and you know if you reveal who you are you won't get any breaks, because you are seen as a predator. So you spend your whole life studying people to see how they respond in certain situations so that, like a robot, you can try and emulate them - and because you're so smart you can actually pull it off. Genius level sociopaths/psychopaths look like the best of us because it takes that level of intellect to play a character 24 hours a day without taking a break. And you don't reveal yourself - because what would the benefit be? You don't get a chance to be yourself because who you are is broken and ugly. So you continue to play the game and get into higher and higher stakes. You start to run a company, maybe even a big one with thousands of employees, you get married, have children etc...and your ability to manipulate and control just get wider and wider. And you see that your contemporaries are also psychopaths, so you think, well I guess that's what it takes to make a big impact. So your goals and ambitions, those "delusions" get bigger as you accomplish the "delusions" you previously had and see that you can accomplish a lot that others can't. This is something that needs to be discussed because from where I stand, it's pretty clear that psychopaths like me "rule the world." It's not from a place of malice or hate though, but adaptation and if we can have that conversation and we can start to recognize and cope with psychopathy then I think everyone would be better off. It's tiring as hell to live this life.

dkarapetyan 10y ago

Evolution is probably the worst way to design anything and yet all of biology is driven by it. It is basically a random walk that just flips bits and every so often it is inevitable that some of those flipped bits will have something to do with the brain's default networks and modes of operation. But I think genius is an unstable optimum and things inevitably slide downhill. There is no such thing as heritable genius, crazy or otherwise.

contingencies 10y ago
There is no such thing as heritable genius I disagree with this statement but is difficult to debunk unless 'genius' is nailed down. Nominally if a large part of socially communicable (and thereby recorded) analytical or creative capacity ("genius") is experiential rather than genetic, then it is heritable in the sense that it can be taught. If it is taught to many, however, then by some definitions it becomes non-genius. Are the large number of documented ascetic/hermit traditions teaching genius? Preserving an alternative worldview? Simply crazy? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.
- dkarapetyan 10y ago
  I mean as a complex biological system phenomenon genius is unstable a bit like unstable weather phenomenon. We don't have windstorms all the time but every so often global currents and temperatures line up and we get one. I imagine genius is a bit like that at the genetic level. I think genius can be nurtured and as a society we can make better use of all our geniuses but I don't think it can be taught. It really has to do with brain wiring and although much of it is plastic some of the defaults can't be changed and those default settings are usually the ones that make or break a genius.
  - contingencies 10y ago
    So you think genius is genetic, but mystically uninheritable? Interesting perspective.
    - 10y ago

deleted 10y ago

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baron816 10y ago

Is the rate of mental illness really any higher among those deemed genius than in the general population? I doubt it. Lots of people have mental illness, it's bound that some of those will do great things.

funthree 10y ago

flagged

trentmb 10y ago

You have a personality disorder. Please see a psychiatrist.

sverige 10y ago
Oh, I have seen several psychiatrists and psychologists and counselors over the years. They're generally pleasant but useless people, though a couple of them provided perspectives and comments that were useful at the time. The biggest help has been that I no longer value social acceptance so highly. It's terrible, I know. Feel free to call me an obnoxious asshole if it helps you. Several have and I've survived.
- trentmb 10y ago
  > The biggest help has been that I no longer value social acceptance so highly. Sure you do- hence your performance, hence your need to reply to me. I suspect you expected a reply in the vein of mine. EDIT: i reply => a reply
  - sverige 10y ago
    Uh oh, I've been caught.
  - DanBC 10y ago
    Your comment about personality disorder was really ignorant. It's not okay to throw about psychiatric diagnoses, especially ones which are so heavily stigmatised, in an argument just because you dislike someone. It says a lot about you that you think it's ok. For anyone who is interested in personality disorder a good source of information is Meeting the challenge, making a difference - http://www.emergenceplus.org.uk/news-from-emergence/507-meeting-the-challenge-making-a-difference-a-new-personality-disorder-practitioner-guide.html http://www.emergenceplus.org.uk/news-from-emergence/507-meet...
- chillwaves 10y ago
  Can you just stop with the "me me me" show for a minute?

mkempe 10y ago

Only a madman would see fundamental commonality between genius and insanity. This mis-integration is on a par with a theory grouping cigars, the aura of saints, and the moon -- they're all round.

known 10y ago

"We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us happy is something to be enthusiastic about." -Einstein

funthree 10y ago

Please quit judging upward. How many thousands of years have geniuses been hounded by those with smaller brains? How many great sorcerers, magicians, electricians and plumbers have been lost because of this thing where people think they have the right to speak confidently and negatively of men who are of higher caliber? Maybe geniuses are kooky because of how outnumbered they are by irrational people? Or something else like that.

Pica_soO 10y ago

The pattern-matching gone haywire visible in schizophrenia, applied in mild dosages on principles not related is in my opinion the secrect ingredient that allowed in the early days of science for the "genius" myth to occur. So madmen might be usefull- but not all the time, and not in all situations. The true art in project managment is to keep the madmen around against all resistence ("That guy is constantly reinventing the wheel"), prevent the usual specialization silos from walling off against this and get a stuck project to "shift gears" as in, temporarily withdraw the usual project-management ("We need fast, easy solutions- not something custom made") - and get the recombined stuff at least discussed.

dredmorbius 10y ago

Creativity, a component of genius, and problem solving (likewise) are of themselves both in part skills and not necessarily some innate talent. I've been poking around the Skills and Creativity pages on Wikipedia for the past few days, as well as their references, looking at the state of art and understanding of these topics. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's five-phase model of creativity seems pretty accurate: preparation, incubation, insight, evaluation, elaboration. (Creativity: Flow and the psychology of discovery and invention). I'm also quite captivated by Liane Gabora's "honing theory", which ... gets into a whole mess of areas: world models, systems theory, epistemology, evolution, communications theory, and more. I've only just run across it but it's quite exciting, as is much the rest of her work (bio page with links below). Another element I'm finding useful is to have a useful concepts and interests capture system, for which I've gone retro: 4x6 index cards and a series of file boxes. The immediacy, free-form nature, adaptability, and physicality of the system make it hugely useful (my HN user submissions history includes a link to a POIC, "pile of index cards", data management system). And the list of people who've relied on index cards, starting with Carl Linneaus who invented the damned idea, is pretty impressive. (I particularly recommend John McPhee's essay, "Structure".) I've known researchers myself who've used the method and am coming to understand its merits. And yes, search and grep are challenges, but the review such attempts trigger seems to be a more-than-ofsetting advantage. https://www.worldcat.org/title/creativity-the-psychology-of-discovery-and-invention/oclc/910934813 https://www.worldcat.org/title/creativity-the-psychology-of-... https://people.ok.ubc.ca/lgabora/ https://people.ok.ubc.ca/lgabora/ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creativity https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creativity https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skill https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skill

epalmer 10y ago

> Instances such as these have led many to suppose that creativity and psychopathology are intimately related. I wonder if this is true is that why some think that using psychedelics have helped them see the world from different perspectives and be creative in their work world?

Mendenhall 10y ago

When I pondered if I was a genius I realized the list of things I will not know will always be vastly larger than that which I do. Anyone swathed in that much ignorance cant be a genius IMO. To me its a battle to be less ignorant.

charles-salvia 10y ago

As much as some of us might feel some misguided excitement over the idea of being some kind of tech savvy Hannibal Lecter, the reality is that there is no real correlation between psychopathy and intelligence (perhaps even a negative correlation.) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16178679 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16178679 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23551975 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23551975 http://www.soc.iastate.edu/staff/delisi/Hannibal%20Lecter%20PDF.pdf http://www.soc.iastate.edu/staff/delisi/Hannibal%20Lecter%20... In other words, psychopathic people aren't necessarily smarter. In fact, contrary to the Hollywood idea of the "super-intelligent serial killer", most actual serial killers were basically kind of idiots who got caught in stupid ways, with a few notable exceptions. It's also hard to read anything Einstein (an actual genius) wrote and conclude the man was bereft of warmth and empathy.

Psychthowaway 10y ago
This whole line of reasoning that Psychopath = Super Intelligence Serial Killer is misguided. All of the studies to date have used the criminal population as the sole source of research for psychopathy - as your reference does. The point I was making with my lengthy post is that, in fact, genius level psychopaths don't become murderers; they become Presidents, Dictators and Hedge Fund managers.
- charles-salvia 10y ago
  Because the set of criminals used in the research are confirmed psychopaths, so it's the only way to conduct such a study. You cannot round up Hedge Fund managers for such a study. But this also makes what you're saying somewhat non-falsifiable. Highly successful people basically are extremely driven and ambitious, and they work all the time. (I'm assuming you relate to this.) But there is no evidence (as far as I know) correlating tendencies to be extremely ambitious, and psychopathic tendencies such as inability to feel empathy. Although, obviously, tendencies associated with both things may overlap, since a very ambitious person is more likely to appear very selfish to an outside observer. Also, many actual confirmed geniuses like Einstein, Alan Turing, etc. clearly were simply obsessed (which is really just a more negative way of saying "very enthusiastic") about their work - they didn't necessarily care to become powerful men (Einstein famously turned down the Presidency of Israel because it was boring to him). These people were just really, really interested in the problems they were working on. This seems to intersect better with something like OCD rather than psychopathy - and indeed, there are of course many anecdotes around Princeton University of Einstein exhibiting OCD tendencies.

erikbye 10y ago

There was never a genius without a tincture of madness -Aristotle

dennis_jeeves 10y ago

A corollary to this is that the regular masses have somewhat collectively the same delusions.