5 ms·

Brains, Brains, Brains, Brains: different flavors of genius

26 points by hhm 18y ago

swombat 18y ago
Interesting classification. I can't help but feel that it's overly simplistic to think that each "genius" is only a genius in one of those areas. Back in Oxford, I met many people who were clearly good at several of these areas, amongst both other students and professors. Imho, the "dots and spaces" metaphor is still the best one to describe the diversity of brilliance around us: http://www.stephanietolan.com/self-knowledge.htm http://www.stephanietolan.com/self-knowledge.htm
- peregrine 18y ago
  Interesting. Thanks for that I've always thought about this but never really in that way. I'm keeping this.
- hhm 18y ago
  Actually, for me, the most interesting thing about this article was the short comment about the high-school to college transition. The classification is very simplistic indeed.
- michael_nielsen 18y ago
  From the post: "just to cut out the comment before it happens, of course these [areas] are not mutually exclusive".
  - trominos 18y ago
    I think that swombat's intended point was that the areas of genius correlate very highly with each other's presence -- to the point that treating their respective occurrences as independent events (possibly) damages our actual understanding of the situation. Which has been my experience also. You did refute his actual point, though.
peregrine 18y ago
These things always read like horoscopes to me. It always feels like simple bait for people who are looking to reaffirm their genius.
whacked_new 18y ago
A suitable response to this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=447904 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=447904 The problem is, if you abstract any amazing person into one word, it is usually "genius." Which elicits the natural tendency to find patterns and make comparisons (since we are comparing "apples" to "apples" now, aren't we!?). Amongst the different flavors of humans, there is a common flavor of romanticism and bias.
michael_nielsen 18y ago
Something I find interesting about this post is that the author is an accomplished theoretical physicist, who has known and worked with many leading theoretical physicists and computer scientists. It gives his classification some extra credibility.

26 points by hhm 18y ago

Interesting classification. I can't help but feel that it's overly simplistic to think that each "genius" is only a genius in one of those areas. Back in Oxford, I met many people who were clearly good at several of these areas, amongst both other students and professors. Imho, the "dots and spaces" metaphor is still the best one to describe the diversity of brilliance around us: http://www.stephanietolan.com/self-knowledge.htm http://www.stephanietolan.com/self-knowledge.htm

peregrine 18y ago
Interesting. Thanks for that I've always thought about this but never really in that way. I'm keeping this.
hhm 18y ago
Actually, for me, the most interesting thing about this article was the short comment about the high-school to college transition. The classification is very simplistic indeed.
michael_nielsen 18y ago
From the post: "just to cut out the comment before it happens, of course these [areas] are not mutually exclusive".
- trominos 18y ago
  I think that swombat's intended point was that the areas of genius correlate very highly with each other's presence -- to the point that treating their respective occurrences as independent events (possibly) damages our actual understanding of the situation. Which has been my experience also. You did refute his actual point, though.

peregrine 18y ago

These things always read like horoscopes to me. It always feels like simple bait for people who are looking to reaffirm their genius.

whacked_new 18y ago

A suitable response to this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=447904 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=447904 The problem is, if you abstract any amazing person into one word, it is usually "genius." Which elicits the natural tendency to find patterns and make comparisons (since we are comparing "apples" to "apples" now, aren't we!?). Amongst the different flavors of humans, there is a common flavor of romanticism and bias.

michael_nielsen 18y ago

Something I find interesting about this post is that the author is an accomplished theoretical physicist, who has known and worked with many leading theoretical physicists and computer scientists. It gives his classification some extra credibility.