Name a genius: past or present, famous or non famous.

I'll go with Leonardo daVinci.

Remember when it was trendy like three years ago to say 'Hitler was a genius.' People would crowd round, and angrily await an explanation for such a controversial statement, fists raised (but not in Nazi salutes). Then you would smugly elaborate on your point; 'he was evil, but he was a genius.' A standing ovation! Applause from all directions; forget Hitler, today you were the genius!


My answer, as per: Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein, 1889-1951

.Ienstien or however you spell it? See I am not one

must. fight. urge. to. say. Einstein.

Myself.

You want a list? How about just Tesla to start.

John Lennon

Bill Marrs

einstein, gandhi, my friend gene

> John Lennon
agree..... good one!

Alan Turing.

Dr Norman (sp?)

Although the whole food people won't like him.

> Alan Turing.

Good choice. There was a recent apology over his death last month in the UK. About time too!

I'm not convinced that there actually is such a thing. At least, not in the way that the word is often used. There isn't some great separation between "normal" people and "geniuses". I suppose I see it a bit like a graph, with IQ on the X axis, and output on the Y axis. There will be a few individuals that place in the top right hand corner of the graph, and I suppose we would generally see those as being geniuses *but* I think they're also people who have had the good fortune to have access to the resources that they needed to develop their ideas, as well as being born into the right time period and culture for their ideas. And what about the people with lower IQ, but extraordinary output of ideas? Or those with a massive IQ who never really achieve anything, or perhaps only ever achieved one great thing? And don't we all have some moments of genius, even if most of the time they are rather mundane and personal?

Einstein

I don't really believe in the "genius" concept because I have seen some very very dum geniuses. Yet there are animals out there that given a problem come up with incredible solutions without even trying. So "genius" is a human concept. If I were to name one it would be my "imagine"-ary friend who gives me all my ideas and musical compositions. Some call him / her The Creator. Or Superconscious. Whatever... I am having some big fun with the connection.

Julius Caesar.

Me.

Unless the concern is 'famous productive' geniuses, I don't think it's too environmental. When I was three I was sketching out inventions like remote striker systems for castle gas chandaliers and tearing apart things like clocks to see how they worked. Come to think of it though, I had been given a workbench of mechanical tools by that age. At age five I had a new stepfather who taught me most of spectrum physics, electronics concepts, and flight and engine mechanics by age nine. I was modifying appliances like phones and stereos by then and designing steam vehicles. I read most of the local libraries engineering section by that age too. I don't think I was particularly encouraged to. Until that age my teachers thought I was a dunce, probably because I didn't speak well and didn't care to do assignments.

We could all claim to be geniuses. I think only productive individuals are likely to be considered as such by anyone else.

Ben Franklin

What's productive? Da Vinci's notebooks would be proof enough, if one ever got to see them. I can recognize genius sometimes in an off-hand sentence which weaves complex relationships to the prior subject matter.

Most people who can perceive in terms of recursive processes are likely to be rather intelligent.

I recall a PSAT test question that my peers got wrong, asking for the top view schematic of a dog running clockwise tied securely to a pole (a spiral of decreasing radius as it winds clockwise, of course). I would have thought one had to be absoutely retarded to not get that one. I consider myself a good teacher, and spent a few months teaching my 120 IQish colleague employees a new recursive based programming paradigm, and came to realize they were never going to wrap their heads around it, though it was an ideal simple elegant solution for the self-unfolding sort of app we were writing.

Someone here at SC made a good point, that one can estimate the IQ of those below them (at least within 15 points, I'd say) just by talking with them, but have no clue how far above them someone else is. And, they reckoned correctly, that those above them can place them on such a scale as well. There are all kinds of genius though. Someone can have poetic or musical genius and lack 3D visualisation faculties. Supposedly my linguistic skills are down in the 100 range.

It also depends on how you use it, and as you said, one's resources. Often enough I go emailing a scientist on some PBS show or Sci.Am. article to point out key big picture components they missed. A few years later the shows and articles reflect my earlier realizations. I could imagine this indicates their ability to think outside the box, but to be fair, the outsider insight I had may have required the step of them firmly crystallizing their constituent premises first. Come to think of it, I even have such progresive insight on my own material if I can set it down for a year and not get locked into past trains of thought.

I don't think we can all claim to be geniuses. There are throngs of people who will never have much in the way of novel elegant perceptions or creations in any field of specialty or even be capable of having them explained to them. There may be others who's genius is too sublime for anyone to catch, like seeing how fennel root could play into a lobster stew, but again, not everyone has such capacities.

I think genius isn't entirely innate though and requires some exercise. It may not require fame, but it at least requires some application to count in a social context. I can sense my own creative intelligence (or even my general awareness, for that matter) ebb and flow through manic-depressive days and seasons. There are times (as I suspect They was alluding to) when, without analytically 'thinking' I can simply 'see' a deep and broad understanding of what I am observing. That, and procedural focus (in any domain) are two entirely different forms of genius. There are times when I have plenty of the former but trip over simple logic tables. It's my sentiment that one requires both these forms to really be a genius by the definition people admire, otherwise one is just a brain or dreamer, neither capable of creating works of genius.

I think that more frequently the result of one's work is genius, rather than the person as a whole. I really can't even fathom someone being a genius as a whole.

I see your point, but genius is also a lifestyle approach. The difference between a genius and a non-genius is that the genius always sees how things work and better ways they could work. In conversation they see what others will say before they say it. I spoke of two forms of genius with Biggles, but you allude to a third form, that of inspired genius. Some people are also constantly inspired. You could give me most any subject matter from photography to blender design, and I could rattle off the innovations you are likely to see come about in the next 15 years.

Einstein...seems like a simple enough answer for this very basic question.

> I don't really believe in the "genius" concept because I have seen
> some very very dum geniuses. Yet there are animals out there that
> given a problem come up with incredible solutions without even trying.
> So "genius" is a human concept. If I were to name one it would be
> my "imagine"-ary friend who gives me all my ideas and musical compositions.
> Some call him / her The Creator. Or Superconscious. Whatever... I
> am having some big fun with the connection.

"Hoot" The wise owl

> |> I don't really believe in the "genius" concept because I have
> seen
> |> some very very dum geniuses. Yet there are animals out there
> that
> |> given a problem come up with incredible solutions without even
> trying.
> |> So "genius" is a human concept. If I were to name one it would
> be
> |> my "imagine"-ary friend who gives me all my ideas and musical
> compositions.
> |> Some call him / her The Creator. Or Superconscious. Whatever...
> I
> |> am having some big fun with the connection.
>
> "Hoot" The wise owl

:o) Also, the spider who is the great grandmother who lives in the underworld and has all the great knowledge. And Holda who guards the Underworld where all the knowledge is kept to this life and it just so happens it is called "Hel". No wonder "they" want us to stay out of Hell because we might learn something. :o) I hope I don't offend.

Leonardo DaVinci

The witches during the inquisition were the last stronghold of public spiritual knowledge. It's no surprise that the Vatican was out to eradicate the competition in their quest for monopolisitc dominion.

Not at all!!! You are charming

I love your response. Thanks for taking the time and for the opportunity to think about this further.

The first difference you state (always sees how things work and better ways they could work), I see as the combination of the innate mindset, academic training, and professional experience, of a true engineer - in any discipline.

However, the statement following that one (see what others will say before they say it) is a right brained, intuitive way of seeing the world.

Finding someone who can combine both right and left thinking is rare, and, well, quite frankly, you!

One or the other, left or right, doesn't amount to any contribution. While a full experience range of aesthetic and engineering conceptual patterns is useful, specific academic isn't training isn't required for a cross-discipline genius. One could be introduced to something entirely novel to them, like earth magnetic core polarity reversal, and still derive valuable insights that specialists missed, so long as one has some rudiments to manipulate in their head.

My approach to just about any field is to reinvent the wheel from scratch, for instance figuring out what it would take to design a resonant guitar or video game renderer, and only after that, comparing it to what society came up with, which usually turn out to be pretty much the same. I learn by creating, not by studying, because I have enough general physics in my head to emulate the progress of any development.

There is yet another psychic component to it all. Though I'd like to think I can also emulate the thinking of other people, I've known what (one time at least) people will say even when they speak in a language I don't understand. I think that same phenomena happens with musicians. I almost always know what note is coming next in any song I've never heard before. One might explain that through rules of composition and subtleties of communication, but I think it's more supernatural than that, and happening all the time for people.

Einsten, Bell, Ford

Nikola Tesla

Why thank you! I saw that you had listed Catholic so wanted to not step on toes.

Just on a hunch, with your don't step on toes policy, I'm guessing that you end up being accused of stepping on toes more than the average person anyhow (though there's nothing I've seen at SC to indicate as much)(so don't worry).

You somewhat remind me of myself near the beginning of my spiritual awakening two decades ago, in which I strove to not have an impact on mortal affairs. I can't even recall the philosophy behind that now, which is perhaps a good thing, because it ultimately led to a suicide attempt on multiple planes. One can't even have objective perception without affecting creation, I learned from that (amongst other things).

My spiritual awakening happened years ago and the one thing I have learned is I don't have to convince anyone of anything. I do have my opinions and voice them. And I try to make it short and use the "I believe differently". And I've met people who think they are way above everyone else in their spiritual advancement and they like to point it out which only points out that they aren't as advanced as they believe themselves to be. Live and let live. I worked for a famous spiritual author for 5 years and traveled with him and Oy Vey.... never again. He thought he knew everything!

Alan Alda, Dean Koontz, and Johnny Depp. (I may have an obsession with Johnny Depp as you may notice)

When one lives on a spiritual plane, and every particle of existence confirms your beliefs, it's difficult not to believe that everyone who does not share your views is simply lacking your high knowledge and experience. This is compounded by nearly every religion claiming the existence of a higher spiritual order. The problem here is the notion of 'a'. Most every guru who finds themselves to have experienced a higher spiritual order thus believes themselves to have found 'it', and thus denounces anything which does not resemble 'it'. A few of us have been lucky enough to experience more than one higher spiritual order however, and can thus rationally conclude that if there was one higher order of things which we were unaware of from another, that there are likely to be more. I have seen enough that I can't discount any understanding as being impossible except those which are disclusionary of what I have already seen (of which there are quite a few, unfortunately).

I have also often seen two people witness the same event or person, where one person sees in it or them what I saw myself, and the person remains oblivious in spite of direct experience. Posibly things were happening in your midst, but on another plane, which validated his position but escaped your awareness. On the other hand, people are people, including gurus.

Another thing I might add, is that while also feeding the fire of self-delusion, such absolute belief, even if wrong, or at least rather 'personal', is the very mechanism which opens spiritual doors to begin with, making it a sort of necessary evil. Any good guru in my book has learned by having the rug pulled from under their feet many times along the climb.

As relates to my other post as well, you seem to share a view wih spiritual author Carolyn Myss that I am adamantly against. It is her position that people undermine their spiritual experiences by having to share them with others, either to validate them or to boast. It is my position that anything inspiring, educational, or of good cheer should be shared with others, even if the originating motive is just that the teller can better relive their experience. We should all be teachers. When everyone knows everything from every angle, the common truth of it all will emerge.

To side with your position on the 'convincing' aspect however, let me relate an aspect of my own spiritual awakening. I mentioned three years of people not existing. That wasn't true 100% of the time. It took me some to juggle my new reality into place such that the person I was talking to existed as a person, while the rest of it formed my interactive cosmos. Anyhow, it was important to me to not be utterly alone, or to be seen as crazy by what little of mortal reality remained, such that I was indeed quite desperate to convince those people who still did at times exist of what I was seeing. Eventually (in about three years) I accepted my fate of being alone with this truth, after which, over the next three weeks, ran into perhaps a dozen individuals who would readily confirm that what I was experiencing was the state of things. This opened up an exciting new plane of reality in which I could discuss some rare model of car, and the other person could answer "Oh, you mean like that one" as one would appear from beyond the bend in the highway; or one in which family members (the same ones who denied my experiences earlier on another plane) could have fun asking the television questions out loud to which the tv would return answers.

What I am saying, in the context of our ongoing discussion, is that the universe severely cured me of my 'need' to convince anyone of anything. I still do it, but it's a pastime now, not a need. In fact the same mostly applies to all my needs and desires. All my needs are taken care of, and I choose to have my desires, rather than having them run me, as I discovered that without desires, unless one is on a really cool plane, that life kind of stops happening without them. As I go on for longer immersed in the mortal plane I can kind of forget the immediate truth of the delusion which needs and desires are, but I have enough memory of that to have reshaped my mortal philosphy and to step out of the play for perspective the moment I take anything seriously in a negative fashion.

To some extent you talking not to me, but to my act, or in buddhist parlance, my dharma, that which remains of my mortal procedures after I've been there and back again. I say 'some' extent because I'm throughly engaged in my ego in recent years, and I'm pretty sure that what was really meant by that use of a dharma is state of being I used to be in at times where there was no me to be anywhere in the first place. At the most extreme by that I mean that while my body is engaged in hacking sophisticated computer code, mostly all I am aware of is a state of spiritual rapture. Sometimes I can be bicycling down the road and not occupy my senses at all. more in context though, all I meant though was a lack of serious identity with my ego, where consciouness isn't much concerned with the mortal level of meaning within activity. Even all that I say not so much as to have much meaning, but simply to illustrate various states in case you are unfamiliar with them and interested. As long as you've been here though, I'd gather you aren't interested in my experiences or understandings, unless you've been pulling in your curiosities entirely from the sidelines.

I have this image of you now, probably dreadfully inaccurate, of someone offered the Dorothy choice who opted for Aunt Em instead.

I could never have toured with someone like that. The moment I've ever put faith in anyone to be a hero, they did an about face and either became a demon or really botched things up. Maybe I should qualify that as having expectations. I expressed some faith in my new neighbor's strengths as a leader just wednesday, and friday he got a promotion to head his department.

Even if you don't 'have' to convince anyone, do you not see value in it? ..or perhaps you see it as futile?

Of course everyone can believe as they choose, but I don't think spiritual understanding should be a 'belief' in the first place. It should be a set of values, philosophy, and practices based on a conceptual framework, and that framework should in turn be based either on what observes, or at least what others have observed which does not conflict with what you have observed. When finds events do not support the framework, or believe that others have had experiences which do not support the framework, they need to revise the framework to one which could at least explain what they know to be true. They also shouldn't go about dismissing alternative frameworks which might equally explain what they know to be true.

Unless you believe it is kind to leave others to live in delusions, it is responsible to explain to others that which you do know to be true which suggests that their framework is in need of revision. I have a 1000 personal experiences, which unless someone comes up with another theory, imply that there is single god-like force which can orchestrate all events of the material world toward a unified purpose. If someone tells me that whatever God might exist has no influence in the current material world, then either they are wrong or much of what I have observed in life has been a halucination. If the latter is true, then it really doesn't matter what I say or do here anyhow. It's not a matter of belief. If I conjecture that God has some particular purpose, without firm evidence to back it up, well that might be a belief, but the presence of god and the sorts of things which can be accomplished is not a belief, it is observation.

Unless another persons beliefs are not founded in experience, it's not about belief, it's about dissimilar experiences. One scientist can point out their personal experience that gas increases in pressure or volume when heated, and then the rest of them all need to revise their theoretical framework.

I'm rather looking forward to the day when video game implants allow people to share their experiences, because after that their won't likely be any such thing as unfounded belief. Everyone will be able to experience spiritual experiences first hand and reconcile them with other spiritual experiences people have until a comprehensive theory which supports all of it is arrived at. If it's found that God talks to some people, well then one still can't deduce that god thinks like a person, or even tell the truth, but the common theoretical framework still has to include that god has the capacity to talk with people.

I'm not saying that this would be the culmination of earth's spiritual attainment. It's not unlikely that, within the scope of the cosmos, that even a whole planet unified mind might be left as relatively in the dark as the average individual is today. Based on my 'belief' about the nature of God (inconclusively supported by experience and the past theory of others), that's even a likelihood.

People like to boast to others that they won the lottery as well. That doesn't indicate they are exageratting.

It's great for one to feel they are on the par with Jesus, so long as it is true, they don't let it go to their head, they humbly recognize their god-like status is a mere drop of water in the ocean compared to the omniscience and omnipotence they still lack, and that they don't cherish or respect any one any less because of it. Given human nature, which most any guru still has, that's still a pretty tall order, and thus most of them are headed towards a fall, if not several. Believe me, I've had my share of them and count 9/11 and my son's suicide amongst the consequences from which I've learned further.