4 ms·

I can name without any effort a few geniuses that didn't lack neither common sense nor social skills (Feynman, Darwin, Newton, Da Vinci, Leibniz, Pitagora). I'

I can name without any effort a few geniuses that didn't lack neither common sense nor social skills (Feynman, Darwin, Newton, Da Vinci, Leibniz, Pitagora). I'm sure that there are scores of them. I would say that the equation "Super-High IQ = Super-Low Common Sense" is simply wrong.

ScottWhigham 17y ago
Well that settles it then - you can name some therefore you must be right. Silly article.
- LucaDuval 17y ago
  I'm inclined to believe that lack of common sense is an exception and not the rule among geniuses, despite popular beliefs, but I could be wrong. Care to offer a few counterexamples?
  - tokenadult 17y ago
    This depends crucially on the definition of "common sense." What is demonstrated by current research is that the form of cognition known as "rationality" is NOT well correlated with IQ (usually called "intelligence" by psychologists). http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/stanovich1 http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/stanovich1 The recent book-length work on this subject http://www.amazon.com/What-Intelligence-Tests-Miss-Psychology/dp/030012385X http://www.amazon.com/What-Intelligence-Tests-Miss-Psycholog... http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=9780300123852 http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=97803001238... provides abundant references to peer-reviewed experimental literature on this distinction.
jacquesm 17y ago
Second that. They're orthogonal, to a certain extent. I find it hard to imagine someone with an extremely low IQ to exhibit a lot of common sense, so to my feeling the relationship is the reverse, but in potential. I would define it as 'super high IQ' = 'potential to exhibit high degree of common sense'. Because people that have a super high IQ are not 'common' in their common sense does not automatically mean they are not right. Common after all is used here almost as a stand-in for average, but common sense means something else entirely. This interpretation of common sense will get you in to Asperger syndrome territory when you look at individuals with a very high IQ, who can have a serious problem communicating their ideas to people that can't follow their train of thought.
- dasil003 17y ago
  This closing line strikes me as complete unsupportable bullshit: No, but the person with high IQ and high common sense, or Practical Intelligence, is definitely a rarer breed of genius. Did it occur to the author that there might be bias from both sides? Many super intelligent people who are socially well-adapted probably conceal their extraordinary intelligence because they are aware of how alienating it would be to cognitively soar past every conversation partner. And from the other side, someone of average intelligence who is more interested in arcane ideas than other people probably puts a lot of time into pursuing those ideas, leading other people to think they are geniuses just because they constantly talk about esoteric things in a very deep manner.
  - elblanco 17y ago
    Many super smart people look at the social environment as simply another set of problems to solve. If they turn their attention to it, and spend the same effort studying socialization as they might study something more esoteric, they can usually provide a good simulation of someone who is well socialized. But it doesn't mean they don't think 90% of those kinds of activities are as dull as any homework assignment.
philwelch 17y ago
Can't speak for the others, but from what I've gathered, Newton was arrogant, vindictive, and disagreeable.
- btilly 17y ago
  Newton is also believed to have been homosexual in a severely homophobic society, which puts a definite crimp in your lifestyle. Also his alchemical researches definitely gave him mercury exposure, which is doesn't help your personality either. That said, going back to the root post I have never noticed a strong correlation between IQ and personality. The few studies with actual evidence that I've seen (ahem, which this is not) haven't seen one either. Therefore I am strongly inclined to ignore this blog.
xtho 17y ago
How come you know their IQ scores? Or is it just an assumption that a "genius" has a super-high IQ? BTW most of those "geniuses" have a wealthy/bourgeois familiy background and they had to have some social skills to manage other people that worked for them, to become court mathematician etc.
- tokenadult 17y ago
  How come you know their IQ scores? A very good question. In fact we cannot possibly know the IQ test score of any person who lived before the era of the first IQ test, which was only a century ago. But it gets worse than this. Lewis Terman's longitudinal study of high-IQ elementary-age pupils showed that many of those young people did not qualify as "gifted" on a subsequent test that Terman gave them at high school age. But he kept them in the study group anyway. Shurkin, Joel N. (1992). Terman's Kids: The Groundbreaking Study of How the Gifted Grow Up. Boston: Little, Brown. An especially odd result of the Terman study is that Terman tested and rejected for inclusion in his study two children whose IQ scores were below his cut-off line who later went on to win Nobel prizes: William Shockley, who co-invented the transistor, and physicist Luis Alvarez. None of the children included in the study ever won a Nobel prize. The book by Shurkin I have just cited here is a good corrective on many misconceptions about IQ, and has an excellent section on attempts by one of Terman's study associates to estimate--by extremely dubious methods that have never been validated--the IQ scores of historical persons.
  - electromagnetic 17y ago
    IQ =/ Genius. IQ tests only show how good someone is at doing IQ tests, there may be some correlation to other tasks, however they're of little use except to examine how well someone performs in academia. A genius is someone who can see things that no one else can, and by virtue of this nature them landing high on an IQ test is rather unlikely. Feynman was a true genius, but he admittedly spent the majority of his life messing around with things, which is why he is a genius.
waterlesscloud 17y ago
Feynman reportedly tested at 125 on an IQ test in high school. Which just indicates how completely useless that test was.

ScottWhigham 17y ago

Well that settles it then - you can name some therefore you must be right. Silly article.

LucaDuval 17y ago
I'm inclined to believe that lack of common sense is an exception and not the rule among geniuses, despite popular beliefs, but I could be wrong. Care to offer a few counterexamples?
- tokenadult 17y ago
  This depends crucially on the definition of "common sense." What is demonstrated by current research is that the form of cognition known as "rationality" is NOT well correlated with IQ (usually called "intelligence" by psychologists). http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/stanovich1 http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/stanovich1 The recent book-length work on this subject http://www.amazon.com/What-Intelligence-Tests-Miss-Psychology/dp/030012385X http://www.amazon.com/What-Intelligence-Tests-Miss-Psycholog... http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=9780300123852 http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=97803001238... provides abundant references to peer-reviewed experimental literature on this distinction.

jacquesm 17y ago

Second that. They're orthogonal, to a certain extent. I find it hard to imagine someone with an extremely low IQ to exhibit a lot of common sense, so to my feeling the relationship is the reverse, but in potential. I would define it as 'super high IQ' = 'potential to exhibit high degree of common sense'. Because people that have a super high IQ are not 'common' in their common sense does not automatically mean they are not right. Common after all is used here almost as a stand-in for average, but common sense means something else entirely. This interpretation of common sense will get you in to Asperger syndrome territory when you look at individuals with a very high IQ, who can have a serious problem communicating their ideas to people that can't follow their train of thought.

dasil003 17y ago
This closing line strikes me as complete unsupportable bullshit: No, but the person with high IQ and high common sense, or Practical Intelligence, is definitely a rarer breed of genius. Did it occur to the author that there might be bias from both sides? Many super intelligent people who are socially well-adapted probably conceal their extraordinary intelligence because they are aware of how alienating it would be to cognitively soar past every conversation partner. And from the other side, someone of average intelligence who is more interested in arcane ideas than other people probably puts a lot of time into pursuing those ideas, leading other people to think they are geniuses just because they constantly talk about esoteric things in a very deep manner.
- elblanco 17y ago
  Many super smart people look at the social environment as simply another set of problems to solve. If they turn their attention to it, and spend the same effort studying socialization as they might study something more esoteric, they can usually provide a good simulation of someone who is well socialized. But it doesn't mean they don't think 90% of those kinds of activities are as dull as any homework assignment.

philwelch 17y ago

Can't speak for the others, but from what I've gathered, Newton was arrogant, vindictive, and disagreeable.

btilly 17y ago
Newton is also believed to have been homosexual in a severely homophobic society, which puts a definite crimp in your lifestyle. Also his alchemical researches definitely gave him mercury exposure, which is doesn't help your personality either. That said, going back to the root post I have never noticed a strong correlation between IQ and personality. The few studies with actual evidence that I've seen (ahem, which this is not) haven't seen one either. Therefore I am strongly inclined to ignore this blog.

xtho 17y ago

How come you know their IQ scores? Or is it just an assumption that a "genius" has a super-high IQ? BTW most of those "geniuses" have a wealthy/bourgeois familiy background and they had to have some social skills to manage other people that worked for them, to become court mathematician etc.

tokenadult 17y ago
How come you know their IQ scores? A very good question. In fact we cannot possibly know the IQ test score of any person who lived before the era of the first IQ test, which was only a century ago. But it gets worse than this. Lewis Terman's longitudinal study of high-IQ elementary-age pupils showed that many of those young people did not qualify as "gifted" on a subsequent test that Terman gave them at high school age. But he kept them in the study group anyway. Shurkin, Joel N. (1992). Terman's Kids: The Groundbreaking Study of How the Gifted Grow Up. Boston: Little, Brown. An especially odd result of the Terman study is that Terman tested and rejected for inclusion in his study two children whose IQ scores were below his cut-off line who later went on to win Nobel prizes: William Shockley, who co-invented the transistor, and physicist Luis Alvarez. None of the children included in the study ever won a Nobel prize. The book by Shurkin I have just cited here is a good corrective on many misconceptions about IQ, and has an excellent section on attempts by one of Terman's study associates to estimate--by extremely dubious methods that have never been validated--the IQ scores of historical persons.
- electromagnetic 17y ago
  IQ =/ Genius. IQ tests only show how good someone is at doing IQ tests, there may be some correlation to other tasks, however they're of little use except to examine how well someone performs in academia. A genius is someone who can see things that no one else can, and by virtue of this nature them landing high on an IQ test is rather unlikely. Feynman was a true genius, but he admittedly spent the majority of his life messing around with things, which is why he is a genius.

waterlesscloud 17y ago

Feynman reportedly tested at 125 on an IQ test in high school. Which just indicates how completely useless that test was.