16 ms·

I had the chance to work with a few people I'd consider genius level. While I'm pretty smart myself, they all have something I don't always have: The ability

I had the chance to work with a few people I'd consider genius level. While I'm pretty smart myself, they all have something I don't always have: The ability to be happy in any situation and interested in everything. For example, we were walking trough a hallway. On a wall is an old, damaged, ugly map of my country, half covered with graffiti. I'd walked past it almost every day for half a year. He checks it out, and starts noticing a lot of semi-interesting factoids about names, merged cities, obscure places, old mapping conventions, etc... All of this with an absolute positive energy of pure interest. We spent a fun hour just looking at it. I should have known all this, and yet an hour with him makes me look at it with new eyes. Wherever he was, he instantly attracted a group of friends and wannabe girlfriends, and never really seemed to notice. Same in this case: There was a group of beautiful partygirls we'd never met before, no nerdy interests at all, which accreted around the map in less than 5 minutes. They loved the situation just as much as us nerds did. I learned a lot from him, and try to follow this example, but I still can't do this today and am humiliated (in a positive way) by this way of living.

sdevonoes 5y ago
> The ability to be happy in any situation and interested in everything. I would add: and the ability to share that enthusiasm with others. I consider myself a very average person, but from time to time I do experience what I have highlighted from your paragraph. Most often than not, I keep that enthusiasm to myself. I don't have the ability to share it with others, and when I try, it's not like you have described it.
- pjc50 5y ago
  Yes. It's a performance; you can never quite be sure of their real emotional state, but they're doing a great job of giving entertainment to people. Usually a combination of being naturally good at it and being rewarded for this kind of performance as kids. It can get discouraged in a lot of people for being "attention seeking".
- its_bbq 5y ago
  It goes deeper though -- sharing happiness with others is one of the most crucial parts of sustaining happiness. It literally will make you happier and also surrounded by happier people, creating a virtuous cycle of happiness.
andruby 5y ago
That sounds like someone that has confidence and curiosity. In Dutch we have a word "relativeren" which I think loosely translates to "being able to put things in perspective". I think that is a really important super power. It has helped me immensely whenever things got bad, or I got into a depressing mood. I'm not sure how you can "grow" these attributes, but I'm willing to say that travelling, seeing the world, discovering other people, other cultures, other habits probably contributes a great deal. Having open-minded parents and an education that doesn't stigmatise helps a lot too.
- jorisboris 5y ago
  And realising we're all going to die one day.
- nicbou 5y ago
  Relativise is also an English word, although I'm not sure if people use it a lot. I don't think that travelling necessarily helps. Only having the time and resources to travel also means you probably have some leeway to pursue hobbies and follow your curiosity.
nine_k 5y ago
I see it like this: A lot of resource —> happiness. A lot of resource —> energy for curiosity. A lot of resource —> energy and time for high achievement at work. So happiness is a correlate for staying in high-resource state in a stable manner, which correlates with high achievement, the quality employers seek. Immediately one can consider a trap of unhappiness, similar to the trap of poverty: being worried makes you perform worse, which leads to problems with employers, which males you even more worried. Unlike poverty, this potentially could be countered by antidepressants.
- mellavora 5y ago
  You had me agreeing with you there until you recommended highly addictive drugs with questionable benefit as the primary intervention.
  - lillecarl 5y ago
    SSRIs aren't necessarily highly addictive, you need to taper off, but you it's not opioids...
  - pjc50 5y ago
    They're not addictive unless you also count insulin as "addictive", in that if people who need it stop getting their symptoms come back. shrug
  - varnaud 5y ago
    They're just stating facts. Good or bad, antidepressants help people cope with life just as opioid help people deal with physical pain. Chronic usage can become a problem, but short term usage is unquestionably beneficial for many people. Sometimes your mental state is so bad you can't make any decision or improve your current situation. Maybe you're working during the day and dealing with your family the rest of the time and feel stuck and sinking. Antidepressants can help dissipate the fog in your mind, allowing you to think clearly and actually make the decisions you needed to make and improve your live to a point where they are not needed anymore. You also talk with the doctor prescribing the drugs, if it's not improving how you feel they will suggest other solutions. Also I totally agree with parent. Decent material conditions and the knowledge that they are stable are absolutely needed for a healthy and flourishing mind.
suction 5y ago
Well, having already made enough money to always be able to just say "you know what, I'm out" whenever you feel like it is necessary to be happy in any situation and interested in everything. Anyone who's not "secure for life" and has to keep the salaries coming in will have to deal with bad people, bad decisions, bad culture, etc. and become unhappy. I've sort of dabbled in that situation: I made and lost a fortune on the stock market at the start of this millenium. Not filthy rich, but enough to never have to work again and live a comfortable, middle-class life. I didn't "get out" because of greed, and voila, the bubble burst and the comfortable situation was over - I was at the mercy of my salary again, and everything that comes with it. Dumb colleagues, inept superiors, boring work, etc. My employment situation didn't change - but when I had the theoretical opportunity to just quit with no financial worries, I was happy despite everything. Once that stopped, I became unhappy, or rather, baseline neutral again. When I was in the comfortable situation, I was carefree and open to pursue ideas and projects brought to me which I knew were stupid and prone to fail. My colleagues loved it, of course. I learned that worrying about whether I'll have enough money to live somewhat comfortably until death is what makes me unhappy, and extremely wary to avoid failure. There's nothing else to it.
- pyb 5y ago
  You make a good point. Are people successful because they are happy, or vice versa?
  - suction 5y ago
    Secure situations make successful people. Children raised in well-off households with no financial worries do better in school and later in their careers, on average. Sure, you get the rich kid wasting their life on parties or drugs, or the poor kid beating the odds by hard work and determination, but those are outliers. That's why there are so many of these characters in literature, movies, and TV - they're not the norm.
    - mensetmanusman 5y ago
      My personality is like the happy math guy above; I grew up in poverty, but I had a ton of loving security from both parents centered around love and commitment. We used to have to collect change at McDonald’s for lunch. Eventually I graduated from MIT. I understand it is not the norm… :)
vijucat 5y ago
Amazing anecdote! I'm envious of such folks.
hackernewds 5y ago
whiddershins 5y ago
I believe the word you want is humbled. Humiliated can almost never be positive, but people often conflate these two words.
- lupire 5y ago
  The sad thing is 99% people mean "honored" of the the (opposite of humbled) when they say "humbled" ("I'm so humbled to be recognized by the best by so many people"), but here was a rare case that "humbled" fits.
  - datavirtue 5y ago
    I have always found recognition to be naturally humbling and have always thought the opposite to be a character flaw.
  - tejohnso 5y ago
    Humbled to be recognized seems to mean something like: "You're all so astute for recognizing me in this way that your astuteness humbles me in return". I find it confusing, and likely disingenuous. Maybe I'm not understanding it properly. Or it's just being misused like you say, but it never occurred to me that what they really mean is simply that they feel honored and choose not to use that word for whatever reason.
fxtentacle 5y ago
I think it's the curiosity. I know one guy who rushed through bachelor, master, and a PhD in mathematics in like half the regular time without ever breaking a sweat. Sometimes, you'd meet him in the cafeteria reading research papers for fun. You could mention any topic, and he'd know something related that one time he was super curious about and he spent an evening reading through Wikipedia. He's like a sponge who soaks up useful information. That made him an interesting person to be around. And it seems that it's also working exceptionally well for him career-wise.
- jl2718 5y ago
  What if you’re exactly like this guy, but with a small fraction of his raw intelligence? Does that work out or just annoy people? Asking for a friend…
  - matheusmoreira 5y ago
    I'd like to know too...
  - fxtentacle 5y ago
    I can only speak for myself and I find people who are genuinely curious somewhat endearing, even if they are not yet skilled at it. But my main decision factor would be how much effort someone puts in. Working hard? I'll help. Asking for help but not reading the tutorial links I sent? I won't help again. I also believe it's an easy date tactic to ask the other person to teach one of their hobbies to you. You'll have lots of stuff to talk about, so you don't need to worry about what to say next. And that makes everything more relaxing and, hence, more enjoyable.
  - mncharity 5y ago
    Perhaps... Explore and nurture one's motivation (the "for fun"), else the years of time/effort won't be allocated. Including topics, environment, tooling, metacognition, enjoyment, etc, etc. Emphasize integration, making connections. As merely accumulating disconnected trivia provides less leverage for understanding and play, for engaging with and informing new observations, and for interesting storytelling. Rough-quantitative understanding can be helpful (eg Fermi questions), but utility seemingly plateaus low absent accompanying integrated conceptual understanding. Integration seemingly requires surfing primary-ish literature (the "reading research papers"). Using paper intros, journal "in this issue" summaries-with-context, survey articles, definitive doorstop tome on topic X, etc. Because outreach and education content is very not sufficient (example: 5-yr old Q: What color is the Sun? 1st-tier astronomy grad student pervasive A: Yellow! Q: And sunlight? Common A: white. And then, not infrequently, a pause, and: That doesn't make sense, does it??? Two incompatible conceptions, perhaps first learned in K, persisting unintegrated into grad. Helped by popular intro astro college textbooks having it wrong, remaining decoupled from the science, for decades. The distance/gap between "science" education content, and science, can be very large. Despite some overlap in personnel, their goals, institutional support and infrastructure, culture and incentives, are rather divergent. Integration can benefit from sheer quantity of material chewed on. Jim Keller (chip designer) commented his superpower was reading books, IIRC a book (or few?) a week, since he was 8 yo. Cultivate storytelling skills (the "interesting person to be around"). Excellence is far easier if you can do playdates with excellent people. Especially in math. The delta between "I read the book and saw the lecture" and "I worked the problems" and "I did hours with someone wizzy in front of a blackboard" can be vast. And then there's people who could have a clue, but are babbling history/economics/policy nonsense to praise at DC dinners, lacking folks to push back. Being non-nutter can be hard without a good community. Witness researchers respected on their research focus, but gone nutter on some nearby-but-not-their-research-focus side interest. Or non-tech discussions on HN. ;) What else...?
raxxorrax 5y ago
Cannot really confirm this from my experience. Have worked with a lot of very unhappy geniuses. Perhaps not really unhappy, but not particularly happy either. But performance can mean something different. I think the study source is questionable as well. Perhaps the soldiers were happier because they got acknowledgement for their work? Most intellectuals don't get noticed because they are positively beaming, even if that is a likable truth for management... Or is it just to get management to make people happier? That said, people that are always happy are often not the brightest in my experience. But maybe they do perform well.
- lowercased 5y ago
  > But maybe they do perform well. More likely it's "well enough", and that matches the needs of most organizations just fine.
  - raxxorrax 5y ago
    I would expect that corporate logic will then simply dictate happiness. Wasn't there a case in China or Japan were employees must smile to open doors? They are probably extremely happy employees.
- ajmurmann 5y ago
  All the genius-level people over had the pleasure to work with had tremendous amounts of curiosity on common. They were having a lot of fun when they got to explore something new. I do know though that several of them also struggled with depression at the same time.
- mrtranscendence 5y ago
  > Have worked with a lot of very unhappy geniuses. I haven't worked with a lot of very obvious geniuses, strictly speaking, but I've known plenty of very smart people who weren't particularly happy. And I've known several people that I absolutely would not consider geniuses who were nevertheless brimming with curiosity, successful, and quite outwardly cheerful (though at least one suffered from anxiety and depression). Heck, going by IQ I'm only, what, 15 points off from genius and I'm not particularly happy either. Nor am I that smart for values of "smart" that people would traditionally associate with genius, but maybe that makes all the difference? I can barely do tips in my head ...
nicbou 5y ago
How can one be more like that person? Is it something inate, or something you develop? Some people here suggest that privilege helps and I agree, but is there something else? Is there a way to develop this trait? I think that the 99% Impossible podcast helped me look closer at certain things. I could also name a few YouTube channels. I certainly got a lot about film and literature from dating an art student.
darkerside 5y ago
Humbled is the word you are looking for
Beefin 5y ago
i genuinely think curiosity is the most important characteristic anybody can possibility have. it helps with sales and engineering, two of the most important skills to starting a business in any vertical.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
lupire 5y ago
What did he look like? How tall? Did he have any speech impediments? Obviously "happiness" is not the reason he is so popular, since "happy" dorks are openly mocked throughout culture (at least in the USA) if they aren't physically attractive, and loved (Henry Cavill) if they are physically attractive.
blub 5y ago
In what kind of social context do people approach two strangers passionately pointing to and discussing an old, ugly map? Especially if said people are “beautiful partygirls”. Unless those were Russian spies confusing you two for Ukrainian generals planning for the upcoming battle, that seems rather unlikely.
bottled_poe 5y ago
Lmao. What an idol! Charisma, looks, wealth, connections - possibly some of these are relevant to your observations? Forgive me, I merely speculate..
huachimingo 5y ago
I would say a common problem with his attitude is that some people can become bored very quickly. Why give facts nobody asked? Why talk about those things if you are not an expert? Then he unlearns that optimism because he is alone and loses that "happy" attitude.
krsdcbl 5y ago
We must not forget that being happy and curious is not an inherent ability, but the consequence of countless factors in your surroundings and social life that accumulate over years. Saying this as somebody who used to fit your description, and noticed a hard toll on his performance after a few years of setbacks and bad experiences
digitalsushi 5y ago
There's a lot of Goodhart's Law, to see a happy high performing coworker and then feel positive-humiliation to not behave similarly.
bgroat 5y ago
I want to focus on the social power this individual had, and to remind everyone that interested people are interesting The reason that you're friend was so magnetic was because they could look at an old tattered map, be entertained for an hour, and be open to sharing that experience with those around them.
- bradlys 5y ago
  Yeah - unfortunately - this is not a story of a genius. It’s a story of someone who was interested in mundane things. I think it’s also important to realize that there were likely other attributes at play but OP likely has created a narrative that it was simply their interests that made them engaging. (This is usually not it - I’ve met plenty of people who were also interested in mundane things but exceptionally unpleasant to be around)
  - 2snakes 5y ago
    Consider light. One of the most mundane things. But also one of the most interesting to study.
- mLuby 5y ago
  > interested people are interesting If what they're interested in interests you too. Or as happened in this map genius story, if they're charismatic enough to convince you (and the gathering crowd) that it's interesting. Professor sounds like an ideal place for that skillset to end up. I know people who are profoundly interested in certain things but you learn not to touch the topic because they'll deep dive on something you don't care about, and they aren't socially skilled enough to keep you engaged despite that.
spookthesunset 5y ago
I dunno if humiliated is the right word for that. I’d be very humbled to be around that. For me it’s quite humbling to be around people who can connect with others almost instantly, seemingly with no effort at all. I’ve resigned myself to accepting I’ll never really be like that. It’s quite exhausting, at least for me. I dunno, maybe it is just a skill I could learn but the desire to do so isn’t there and so here we are…
hyperman1 5y ago
A lot of unexpected discussion on this one. Thanks. Some more details: Setting was evening/night at an european university college dorm. We were both not poor, as we could go to university , but we both had a governemental scholarship, so not rich either. We had food and a bed, but not much money for anything hobby or party related. Sometimes a side job, and that's it. Both our dads had corporate jobs, and moms at home. I'd say all of us were middle class. He had no special connections or privileges, except what he buikt up himself in the scientific world while being there. He was average looking, not specifically beautiful or ugly. He was healthy and quite sporty. A bit lower than average height. I don't know what's the criterium for declaring someone a genius. He was a topper in the math olympiads, while I made it rarely out of the second round. He was good at a lot of other olympiads too. He also won a frw competitive sports. But it was the generality of the interest. He could do with particle physics stuff what he did with the map. Or astronomy, physics, every hard science. Or something completely non scientific. I had to take the equations and try to calculate, slowly, while he could feel where some phusics stuff was going to end up. He'd mix knowledge, probably learn something from the map and use it in his quantum stuff. He's a professor now. The attitude was easygoing, good natured, no bullshit, honest. He was competitive, but if he lost he had just as much fun. He was part of a loose group of like minded people all behaving like. I'd consider most of them geniuses. Maybe I'm idealizing, or he had other characteristics I didn't notice. He was described as genius by other people than me, and when we talked about him, similar stories pop up. And indeed, I was humbled, not humiliated. Gratefull for the experience, but it was clearly a height I would never reach. Oh well.
fairity 5y ago
Almost invariably, people like your role model have benefited from an excellent upbringing (e.g. parents) that trained/instilled their positive and resilient value framework. This doesn’t make their mindset any less admirable, but hopefully helps with the humiliation aspect :).
credit_guy 5y ago
I think you mean humbled, not humiliated.
RangerScience 5y ago
> I learned a lot from him, and try to follow this example, but I still can't do this today and am humiliated (in a positive way) by this way of living. Can confirm. Had a friend for awhile (she and her husband moved to NZ, and I barely hear from them now) who had this same "wonder at everything / happy with anything" aspect, and her entire life is practically magic; her father is similar, both in success and vibe. > am humiliated (in a positive way) I think the word you're looking for is "humbled"?
dgs_sgd 5y ago
There's a relevant quote that I love to remind myself of "Enthusiasm is worth 25 iq points". From 68 Bits of Unsolicited Advice by Kevin Kelly
Izikiel43 5y ago
> humiliated Humbled I think you mean

sdevonoes 5y ago

> The ability to be happy in any situation and interested in everything. I would add: and the ability to share that enthusiasm with others. I consider myself a very average person, but from time to time I do experience what I have highlighted from your paragraph. Most often than not, I keep that enthusiasm to myself. I don't have the ability to share it with others, and when I try, it's not like you have described it.

pjc50 5y ago
Yes. It's a performance; you can never quite be sure of their real emotional state, but they're doing a great job of giving entertainment to people. Usually a combination of being naturally good at it and being rewarded for this kind of performance as kids. It can get discouraged in a lot of people for being "attention seeking".
its_bbq 5y ago
It goes deeper though -- sharing happiness with others is one of the most crucial parts of sustaining happiness. It literally will make you happier and also surrounded by happier people, creating a virtuous cycle of happiness.

andruby 5y ago

That sounds like someone that has confidence and curiosity. In Dutch we have a word "relativeren" which I think loosely translates to "being able to put things in perspective". I think that is a really important super power. It has helped me immensely whenever things got bad, or I got into a depressing mood. I'm not sure how you can "grow" these attributes, but I'm willing to say that travelling, seeing the world, discovering other people, other cultures, other habits probably contributes a great deal. Having open-minded parents and an education that doesn't stigmatise helps a lot too.

jorisboris 5y ago
And realising we're all going to die one day.
nicbou 5y ago
Relativise is also an English word, although I'm not sure if people use it a lot. I don't think that travelling necessarily helps. Only having the time and resources to travel also means you probably have some leeway to pursue hobbies and follow your curiosity.

nine_k 5y ago

I see it like this: A lot of resource —> happiness. A lot of resource —> energy for curiosity. A lot of resource —> energy and time for high achievement at work. So happiness is a correlate for staying in high-resource state in a stable manner, which correlates with high achievement, the quality employers seek. Immediately one can consider a trap of unhappiness, similar to the trap of poverty: being worried makes you perform worse, which leads to problems with employers, which males you even more worried. Unlike poverty, this potentially could be countered by antidepressants.

mellavora 5y ago
You had me agreeing with you there until you recommended highly addictive drugs with questionable benefit as the primary intervention.
- lillecarl 5y ago
  SSRIs aren't necessarily highly addictive, you need to taper off, but you it's not opioids...
- pjc50 5y ago
  They're not addictive unless you also count insulin as "addictive", in that if people who need it stop getting their symptoms come back. shrug
- varnaud 5y ago
  They're just stating facts. Good or bad, antidepressants help people cope with life just as opioid help people deal with physical pain. Chronic usage can become a problem, but short term usage is unquestionably beneficial for many people. Sometimes your mental state is so bad you can't make any decision or improve your current situation. Maybe you're working during the day and dealing with your family the rest of the time and feel stuck and sinking. Antidepressants can help dissipate the fog in your mind, allowing you to think clearly and actually make the decisions you needed to make and improve your live to a point where they are not needed anymore. You also talk with the doctor prescribing the drugs, if it's not improving how you feel they will suggest other solutions. Also I totally agree with parent. Decent material conditions and the knowledge that they are stable are absolutely needed for a healthy and flourishing mind.

suction 5y ago

Well, having already made enough money to always be able to just say "you know what, I'm out" whenever you feel like it is necessary to be happy in any situation and interested in everything. Anyone who's not "secure for life" and has to keep the salaries coming in will have to deal with bad people, bad decisions, bad culture, etc. and become unhappy. I've sort of dabbled in that situation: I made and lost a fortune on the stock market at the start of this millenium. Not filthy rich, but enough to never have to work again and live a comfortable, middle-class life. I didn't "get out" because of greed, and voila, the bubble burst and the comfortable situation was over - I was at the mercy of my salary again, and everything that comes with it. Dumb colleagues, inept superiors, boring work, etc. My employment situation didn't change - but when I had the theoretical opportunity to just quit with no financial worries, I was happy despite everything. Once that stopped, I became unhappy, or rather, baseline neutral again. When I was in the comfortable situation, I was carefree and open to pursue ideas and projects brought to me which I knew were stupid and prone to fail. My colleagues loved it, of course. I learned that worrying about whether I'll have enough money to live somewhat comfortably until death is what makes me unhappy, and extremely wary to avoid failure. There's nothing else to it.

pyb 5y ago
You make a good point. Are people successful because they are happy, or vice versa?
- suction 5y ago
  Secure situations make successful people. Children raised in well-off households with no financial worries do better in school and later in their careers, on average. Sure, you get the rich kid wasting their life on parties or drugs, or the poor kid beating the odds by hard work and determination, but those are outliers. That's why there are so many of these characters in literature, movies, and TV - they're not the norm.
  - mensetmanusman 5y ago
    My personality is like the happy math guy above; I grew up in poverty, but I had a ton of loving security from both parents centered around love and commitment. We used to have to collect change at McDonald’s for lunch. Eventually I graduated from MIT. I understand it is not the norm… :)

vijucat 5y ago

Amazing anecdote! I'm envious of such folks.

hackernewds 5y ago

whiddershins 5y ago

I believe the word you want is humbled. Humiliated can almost never be positive, but people often conflate these two words.

lupire 5y ago
The sad thing is 99% people mean "honored" of the the (opposite of humbled) when they say "humbled" ("I'm so humbled to be recognized by the best by so many people"), but here was a rare case that "humbled" fits.
- datavirtue 5y ago
  I have always found recognition to be naturally humbling and have always thought the opposite to be a character flaw.
- tejohnso 5y ago
  Humbled to be recognized seems to mean something like: "You're all so astute for recognizing me in this way that your astuteness humbles me in return". I find it confusing, and likely disingenuous. Maybe I'm not understanding it properly. Or it's just being misused like you say, but it never occurred to me that what they really mean is simply that they feel honored and choose not to use that word for whatever reason.

fxtentacle 5y ago

I think it's the curiosity. I know one guy who rushed through bachelor, master, and a PhD in mathematics in like half the regular time without ever breaking a sweat. Sometimes, you'd meet him in the cafeteria reading research papers for fun. You could mention any topic, and he'd know something related that one time he was super curious about and he spent an evening reading through Wikipedia. He's like a sponge who soaks up useful information. That made him an interesting person to be around. And it seems that it's also working exceptionally well for him career-wise.

jl2718 5y ago
What if you’re exactly like this guy, but with a small fraction of his raw intelligence? Does that work out or just annoy people? Asking for a friend…
- matheusmoreira 5y ago
  I'd like to know too...
- fxtentacle 5y ago
  I can only speak for myself and I find people who are genuinely curious somewhat endearing, even if they are not yet skilled at it. But my main decision factor would be how much effort someone puts in. Working hard? I'll help. Asking for help but not reading the tutorial links I sent? I won't help again. I also believe it's an easy date tactic to ask the other person to teach one of their hobbies to you. You'll have lots of stuff to talk about, so you don't need to worry about what to say next. And that makes everything more relaxing and, hence, more enjoyable.
- mncharity 5y ago
  Perhaps... Explore and nurture one's motivation (the "for fun"), else the years of time/effort won't be allocated. Including topics, environment, tooling, metacognition, enjoyment, etc, etc. Emphasize integration, making connections. As merely accumulating disconnected trivia provides less leverage for understanding and play, for engaging with and informing new observations, and for interesting storytelling. Rough-quantitative understanding can be helpful (eg Fermi questions), but utility seemingly plateaus low absent accompanying integrated conceptual understanding. Integration seemingly requires surfing primary-ish literature (the "reading research papers"). Using paper intros, journal "in this issue" summaries-with-context, survey articles, definitive doorstop tome on topic X, etc. Because outreach and education content is very not sufficient (example: 5-yr old Q: What color is the Sun? 1st-tier astronomy grad student pervasive A: Yellow! Q: And sunlight? Common A: white. And then, not infrequently, a pause, and: That doesn't make sense, does it??? Two incompatible conceptions, perhaps first learned in K, persisting unintegrated into grad. Helped by popular intro astro college textbooks having it wrong, remaining decoupled from the science, for decades. The distance/gap between "science" education content, and science, can be very large. Despite some overlap in personnel, their goals, institutional support and infrastructure, culture and incentives, are rather divergent. Integration can benefit from sheer quantity of material chewed on. Jim Keller (chip designer) commented his superpower was reading books, IIRC a book (or few?) a week, since he was 8 yo. Cultivate storytelling skills (the "interesting person to be around"). Excellence is far easier if you can do playdates with excellent people. Especially in math. The delta between "I read the book and saw the lecture" and "I worked the problems" and "I did hours with someone wizzy in front of a blackboard" can be vast. And then there's people who could have a clue, but are babbling history/economics/policy nonsense to praise at DC dinners, lacking folks to push back. Being non-nutter can be hard without a good community. Witness researchers respected on their research focus, but gone nutter on some nearby-but-not-their-research-focus side interest. Or non-tech discussions on HN. ;) What else...?

raxxorrax 5y ago

Cannot really confirm this from my experience. Have worked with a lot of very unhappy geniuses. Perhaps not really unhappy, but not particularly happy either. But performance can mean something different. I think the study source is questionable as well. Perhaps the soldiers were happier because they got acknowledgement for their work? Most intellectuals don't get noticed because they are positively beaming, even if that is a likable truth for management... Or is it just to get management to make people happier? That said, people that are always happy are often not the brightest in my experience. But maybe they do perform well.

lowercased 5y ago
> But maybe they do perform well. More likely it's "well enough", and that matches the needs of most organizations just fine.
- raxxorrax 5y ago
  I would expect that corporate logic will then simply dictate happiness. Wasn't there a case in China or Japan were employees must smile to open doors? They are probably extremely happy employees.
ajmurmann 5y ago
All the genius-level people over had the pleasure to work with had tremendous amounts of curiosity on common. They were having a lot of fun when they got to explore something new. I do know though that several of them also struggled with depression at the same time.
mrtranscendence 5y ago
> Have worked with a lot of very unhappy geniuses. I haven't worked with a lot of very obvious geniuses, strictly speaking, but I've known plenty of very smart people who weren't particularly happy. And I've known several people that I absolutely would not consider geniuses who were nevertheless brimming with curiosity, successful, and quite outwardly cheerful (though at least one suffered from anxiety and depression). Heck, going by IQ I'm only, what, 15 points off from genius and I'm not particularly happy either. Nor am I that smart for values of "smart" that people would traditionally associate with genius, but maybe that makes all the difference? I can barely do tips in my head ...

nicbou 5y ago

How can one be more like that person? Is it something inate, or something you develop? Some people here suggest that privilege helps and I agree, but is there something else? Is there a way to develop this trait? I think that the 99% Impossible podcast helped me look closer at certain things. I could also name a few YouTube channels. I certainly got a lot about film and literature from dating an art student.

darkerside 5y ago

Humbled is the word you are looking for

Beefin 5y ago

i genuinely think curiosity is the most important characteristic anybody can possibility have. it helps with sales and engineering, two of the most important skills to starting a business in any vertical.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

lupire 5y ago

What did he look like? How tall? Did he have any speech impediments? Obviously "happiness" is not the reason he is so popular, since "happy" dorks are openly mocked throughout culture (at least in the USA) if they aren't physically attractive, and loved (Henry Cavill) if they are physically attractive.

blub 5y ago

In what kind of social context do people approach two strangers passionately pointing to and discussing an old, ugly map? Especially if said people are “beautiful partygirls”. Unless those were Russian spies confusing you two for Ukrainian generals planning for the upcoming battle, that seems rather unlikely.

bottled_poe 5y ago

Lmao. What an idol! Charisma, looks, wealth, connections - possibly some of these are relevant to your observations? Forgive me, I merely speculate..

huachimingo 5y ago

I would say a common problem with his attitude is that some people can become bored very quickly. Why give facts nobody asked? Why talk about those things if you are not an expert? Then he unlearns that optimism because he is alone and loses that "happy" attitude.

krsdcbl 5y ago

We must not forget that being happy and curious is not an inherent ability, but the consequence of countless factors in your surroundings and social life that accumulate over years. Saying this as somebody who used to fit your description, and noticed a hard toll on his performance after a few years of setbacks and bad experiences

digitalsushi 5y ago

There's a lot of Goodhart's Law, to see a happy high performing coworker and then feel positive-humiliation to not behave similarly.

bgroat 5y ago

I want to focus on the social power this individual had, and to remind everyone that interested people are interesting The reason that you're friend was so magnetic was because they could look at an old tattered map, be entertained for an hour, and be open to sharing that experience with those around them.

bradlys 5y ago
Yeah - unfortunately - this is not a story of a genius. It’s a story of someone who was interested in mundane things. I think it’s also important to realize that there were likely other attributes at play but OP likely has created a narrative that it was simply their interests that made them engaging. (This is usually not it - I’ve met plenty of people who were also interested in mundane things but exceptionally unpleasant to be around)
- 2snakes 5y ago
  Consider light. One of the most mundane things. But also one of the most interesting to study.
mLuby 5y ago
> interested people are interesting If what they're interested in interests you too. Or as happened in this map genius story, if they're charismatic enough to convince you (and the gathering crowd) that it's interesting. Professor sounds like an ideal place for that skillset to end up. I know people who are profoundly interested in certain things but you learn not to touch the topic because they'll deep dive on something you don't care about, and they aren't socially skilled enough to keep you engaged despite that.

spookthesunset 5y ago

I dunno if humiliated is the right word for that. I’d be very humbled to be around that. For me it’s quite humbling to be around people who can connect with others almost instantly, seemingly with no effort at all. I’ve resigned myself to accepting I’ll never really be like that. It’s quite exhausting, at least for me. I dunno, maybe it is just a skill I could learn but the desire to do so isn’t there and so here we are…

hyperman1 5y ago

A lot of unexpected discussion on this one. Thanks. Some more details: Setting was evening/night at an european university college dorm. We were both not poor, as we could go to university , but we both had a governemental scholarship, so not rich either. We had food and a bed, but not much money for anything hobby or party related. Sometimes a side job, and that's it. Both our dads had corporate jobs, and moms at home. I'd say all of us were middle class. He had no special connections or privileges, except what he buikt up himself in the scientific world while being there. He was average looking, not specifically beautiful or ugly. He was healthy and quite sporty. A bit lower than average height. I don't know what's the criterium for declaring someone a genius. He was a topper in the math olympiads, while I made it rarely out of the second round. He was good at a lot of other olympiads too. He also won a frw competitive sports. But it was the generality of the interest. He could do with particle physics stuff what he did with the map. Or astronomy, physics, every hard science. Or something completely non scientific. I had to take the equations and try to calculate, slowly, while he could feel where some phusics stuff was going to end up. He'd mix knowledge, probably learn something from the map and use it in his quantum stuff. He's a professor now. The attitude was easygoing, good natured, no bullshit, honest. He was competitive, but if he lost he had just as much fun. He was part of a loose group of like minded people all behaving like. I'd consider most of them geniuses. Maybe I'm idealizing, or he had other characteristics I didn't notice. He was described as genius by other people than me, and when we talked about him, similar stories pop up. And indeed, I was humbled, not humiliated. Gratefull for the experience, but it was clearly a height I would never reach. Oh well.

fairity 5y ago

Almost invariably, people like your role model have benefited from an excellent upbringing (e.g. parents) that trained/instilled their positive and resilient value framework. This doesn’t make their mindset any less admirable, but hopefully helps with the humiliation aspect :).

credit_guy 5y ago

I think you mean humbled, not humiliated.

RangerScience 5y ago

> I learned a lot from him, and try to follow this example, but I still can't do this today and am humiliated (in a positive way) by this way of living. Can confirm. Had a friend for awhile (she and her husband moved to NZ, and I barely hear from them now) who had this same "wonder at everything / happy with anything" aspect, and her entire life is practically magic; her father is similar, both in success and vibe. > am humiliated (in a positive way) I think the word you're looking for is "humbled"?

dgs_sgd 5y ago

There's a relevant quote that I love to remind myself of "Enthusiasm is worth 25 iq points". From 68 Bits of Unsolicited Advice by Kevin Kelly

Izikiel43 5y ago

> humiliated Humbled I think you mean