/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.10964140]

What has come out of the brain studies on geniuses? What makes them smart?

[Anonymous No.10964147]

meta-meta-metacognition

[Anonymous No.10964148]

>>10964140
Now think if that guy that was so smart worked out too, it would he one well proportioned giant freak

[Anonymous No.10964154]

>t. never browsed /fitlit/

[Anonymous No.10964341]

>>10964140
Dedication

[Anonymous No.10964369]

>>10964140
If you mean the ACTUAL geniuses, not the ~140-150 IQ Harvard PhDs, it seems that the only thing in common among them is the only thing all top performers in general have in common: they deviate greatly from the average, even from the average high IQ person. They have a combination of hyperfocus, natural intellectual prowess and specific traits (or combination of traits) that literally only they possess.

[Anonymous No.10965834]

>>10964147
terrence tao was found to be hardly self aware at all by psychologists who have visited him

[Anonymous No.10965836]

>>10964369
>it seems that the only thing in common among them is the only thing all top performers in general have in common

[Anonymous No.10966597]

>>10965834
meant in the sense of thinking about thinking about thinking about thinking. meta-pedagogy, meta learning - you could learn how to solve any problem and then how to transcend further by seeing and surpassing some limiting mindsets and beliefs, and also how to build new out of the existing; seeing without a map.

[Anonymous No.10968033]

>>10966597
Whether or not it is true no one could even say, so it is somewhat unhelpful.

I think a better idea is to look at people who have historically been identified as "geniuses," and look for the common traits.

One of the biggest ones is that they lost one or both of their parents at an early age.

I think it also matters, in identifying them, to look at what field they are a genius of: you can be identified as a musical genius at a very early age, but no one can be a genius at writing epic poetry at a young age: Milton didn't write Paradise Lost until fifty, and he didn't write his major poems until about thirty. I imagine the difference between the two is that music is much more a formal, mathematical thing than poetry: to write a epic poem, you have to have gained a monstrous amount of experience of living, but a symphony does not hinge upon life in the same way. When identifying genius, I think it is helpful then, to keep in mind what subject they are trying to be a genius at: generally the more abstract the discipline, the more easy it is to master it at a young age, because you don't need life experience to understand it. So in math, music, logic, physics and chess one would expect to see genius at an early age; in literature, ethics, the writing of history and political theory genius cannot shine until late in life, because these fields need to be filled out with life experience.

One might also look at philosophy to get a better understanding of this: someone like Wittgenstein was able to tutor Bertrand Russell in logic after only a year of studying with him: had his first major work in logic published at 25, and finished the Tractatus by age 27: Plato, in contrast, was in his mid thirties when he wrote his first dialogues, and didn't finish the Republic until he was around fifty. But this makes sense if we understand that Plato's works are more general, and Wittgenstein's works are extremely technical and abstract works of logic.