[extropy-chat] Harvard president criticized over comments

[Samantha Atkins]

On Jan 18, 2005, at 2:21 PM, J. Andrew Rogers wrote:

> Damien Broderick wrote:
>> The extraordinary rarity of great male mathematicians also makes me
> wonder
>> if there's any point in training all those very ordinary male 
>> scientists.
>>
>> No, hang on, there must be something wrong here.
>
>
> I would note two things:
>
> 1.)  Really brilliant people are not brilliant because they were
> trained.  You cannot be trained to be brilliant, as the very definition
>  generally asserts abilities that are far beyond what can be obtained 
> by
> mere training.  And most of the really brilliant people I can think of
> in history had little or unextraordinary training in the fields their
> brilliance is noted in.

 From what I have heard the most gifted and brightest humans learn (at 
least in experimental  tests) no more than twice as easily/quickly than 
the norm.   So I question the "far beyond" a bit.  From what I have 
seen from being around high IQ types effective intelligence seems 
dependent upon what one has learned in the way of how to maximize one's 
abilities and think creatively, clearly and rationally.  No, that's not 
enough for brilliance either.  It seem to require a mixture of traits, 
habits and abilities including a wild creative intuition and the 
ability to give that creative intuition rational form.  I am not sure 
how much of that is learnable.   But I would suspect a lot of it 
potentially is.     On the flip side I know more than a few very high 
IQ people whose mental powers are confined largely to trivia and the 
creation and maintenance of very convoluted and intricate neuroses.   
Some of them even have flashes of brilliance, for all the good it does 
them or anyone else.

I agree that formal  training in a subject doesn't seem to correlate 
strongly with brilliance in that subject area.   But I think that 
brilliant people hit upon by accident and/or discover ways of using 
their intelligence that leads to brilliance.    We don't know a lot 
about what makes the difference that produces brilliance.    But I 
would doubt it was only or chiefly the luck of the genetic draw beyond 
genetic basis of necessary level raw IQ.    Raw IQ seems  necessary 
(although not necessarily at the actual tiptop of human range)  but not 
sufficient.

- samantha