If you're surrounded by people that constantly tell you how smart you are, you should take it as a signal and go find new (more intelligent) people to surround

If you're surrounded by people that constantly tell you how smart you are, you should take it as a signal and go find new (more intelligent) people to surround yourself with. You don't want to be the one-eyed king. Also, on the subject of "genius", having met a few in my life, many people seem to have a simplistic idea of what it takes to be one. According to one popular model, all that is required is an increase in the magnitude of certain qualities which everyone already possesses in some measure. Make the particular qualities pronounced enough, and you get to genius. But a better way to understand the concept may be that a genius has a particular capacity, which on a certain level can seem obvious or unremarkable, but which no one else has. A genius, on this understanding, is a person uniquely capable of making a leap ‘off the path’. With hindsight the leap may seem simple or obvious, but at the time no one else was, apparently, capable of making it. A potential leap of this kind is made possible by preceding leaps. Nevertheless its actual occurrence may go on not happening for decades. During that time there may be clear pointers towards it. Yet it is not until a genius comes along that the leap actually happens.