> And you can tell when someone has spent any time among the truly gifted. Because running into people like this is something else. They will come into a situat

> And you can tell when someone has spent any time among the truly gifted. Because running into people like this is something else. They will come into a situation blind, get what you've already gotten, and then make a realization you'd never would have. They do process on a different level. And it's not about knowledge. It's not how much they know. It's about how fast they can acquire that knowledge, understand it, and then build upon it. It's how they can relate knowledge from different areas in new and novel ways. People who have spent time with the truly gifted know there's a such thing as intelligence. People who have only spent time with people who are average to above average have never actually seen intelligence at work. I used to think this as well, having gone to a famous university. Some people just seemed to get it much faster than others. With some hindsight I no longer believe it. I think it was all hard work, and very much influenced by environment. One guy I knew seemed really quite bright, always seemed to know everything. Ended up getting a PhD as well. But I realized that he basically just studied a lot. I wanted to think he was smarter than me, but I also knew inside I wasn't putting in the same amount of practice he was. I brought the same fellow into a business to work with me, and he was ordinary. Couldn't have known that he was one of the top grads of two world famous universities, just one among a sea of reasonably competent quants. I'm fairly sure a lot of firms make this mistake as well, they think they need the people who did best at uni, but actually it has a lot to do with what you do with people, who you stick them with, what training they get, and so on. The thing about highly productive creatives is they seem to have special motivation. They ome into some field, they see connections, they are more motivated to read more, talk to more people, study more. That seems to be the driver. I never saw anyone good that was just smart but not engaged as well.