Since joining this forum, I've been doing a fair amount of musing on the subject of talent and intelligence. The more I read here, the more I read elsewhere, and the more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that IQ is just a single (albeit important) facet of what could be called cognitive talent. What follows are some random musings I've had as I try to understand this attribute.

As we all know, every now and then, a news article or segment about a PG+ kid appears, and the journalist describes the child by making liberal use of terms such as "next Einstein" or "genius." These claims never made sense to me. If the child had an IQ of 175 --- 5 full standard deviations above the norm on a S-B --- there would still be almost 2,000 people on the planet with that IQ.* Very, very high IQ? Yes. But the next Einstein? Surely that can't be true if there are almost 2,000 other people with the same IQ running around the world right now and 1,000 or so in 1960. If an insanely high IQ is all it takes, someone would have figured out quantum gravity 50 years ago.

So this led me to considering creativity. Einstein was a very creative fellow. So was Richard Feynman. So was Charles Dickens. And Charles Darwin? Obviously. SO: we get high IQ plus high creativity. That's got to get you places.

So then I learned that there are tests (however imperfect) to measure creativity ("Here's a toy truck. How many ways can you think of to make it better?). It seems that people have found that high levels of creativity are strong predictors of future success.

Oh look, someone figured that out already --- in 1959.


Here's an interesting book that discusses creativity an IQ. It says that high IQ is no guarantee of high creativity:


So this led me to think: hmm. An IQ of 140 is around 1:260 people. Let's goose the great-scientist-IQ-minimum up to 145 (seems reasonable to me). This IQ happens in 1:1000 people. If you then assume an equally high level of creativity, you'll still have a lot of people running around the planet who have both characteristics: even in a rarest-case scenario that assumes zero connection between IQ and creativity, you'd expect this to happen in 1:1,000,000 people (1,000 x 1,000). This is ~6,700 people right now based on the 2009 world population estimate and around 3,000 people in 1960 when the population was 3 billion people. If there's some small connection between the two, you'd expect those numbers to be higher. If the IQ minimum is lower (also possible), again, you'd have even more people. So. We should still have met the next Einstein decades ago. Didn't happen. What's missing?

Obviously, various factors can affect a high IQ/creativity person negatively. They include being squelched by a school system (which can be a recoverable event), the need to support yourself and your family (which could mean taking a dull job in industry or even a coal mine), and so on. But still. Einstein said he was a poor student and had to take a job in a patent office. If there were really thousands of people with this ability, surely one of them could have got around suboptimal circumstances?

Of course, there are personality attributes that also feed into being able to make a major breakthrough. They include self-confidence, an ability to challenge authority ("I think Newton may not have been completely correct") and an ability to soldier on when other people disparage you. That winnows the field, but not enough, I think (we've hit the my conjecture point of this discussion).

So this led me to my most recent additional required talent, which I call thoughtfulness or a propensity to ponder ideas. Thoughtfulness means thinking and thinking about all facets an idea or condition. It means being open to new ideas. It means being able to accept that you have wrong ideas and being able to reject them without losing confidence. This is a relatively new concept in my mind, so I haven't gone through it in detail yet.

This gives very high IQ + creativity + thoughtfulness plus the personality attributes. Are they enough? I don't know, but it sounds like a very cool combination in some ways (and an alienating one in others).

Thoughts? Ideas? Thanks for reading this far.

Val

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* An IQ of 175 has a rarity of 1:3,483,046. See this link.

Hi Val,

I am about to run out the door, but just wanted to say that I love what you've written here. I've had similar thoughts running about my head over time as I have thought about giftedness and what it actually means. I hadn't got to the point of forming them into something I could articulate though.

Will come back to this when I have a chance

Cool! Thanks.

And ... I'm back. Now you'll have to accept my apologies as this is fairly self indulgent, but only to illustrate my point.

There is a fair whack of 'giftedness' in my family, some tested and some not. Those who have been tested were tested back with the SB L-M, with scores in the 165+ range. And yet they are as a whole largely unsuccessful (bar one or two exceptions). When I say unsuccessful I'm not talking about it in the context of not earning loads of cash (though they certainly haven't), I'm talking about not having terribly satisfying lives in general. And to a large extent feeling that they never lived up to their potential (which, if you look at it from the perspective of what they 'could' have achieved - being aware that 'could' and 'would' and even 'should' are all very different things - they have not).

In fact, in many ways, I - who never realised my own potential until I had my HG+ dd, have been the most successful (if the definition is a happy and fulfilled life), even if that state has only been found recently. This is despite what can only be described generously as a 'difficult' childhood.

I have long pondered how this could be. How could these educated, articulate and respected people feel this way. Sure, they can recite Shakespeare and do complicated equations in their heads (none of which I learnt to do), but how do they miss the connections between things that I see? They see - to use JamieH's line in another post - a lot of leaves, few trees and no forest. It's almost like they're stuck. And yet they're super smart.

What my unsatisfied family lack, I suspect, is the thoughtfulness you describe (and to a lesser extent the creativity). Thoughtfulness (as per your definition), I have in abundance. I often think it was this aspect of my giftedness (now given a name - thanks!) that allowed me to move beyond my circumstances - or perhaps my circumstances allowed it to develop. It allows for adaptability and resourcefulness and the possibility to combine ideas, which for me creates a kind of tidal wave of implications that can be seemingly endless. I think that idea of being open to new ideas and open to being wrong are what my family don't possess. They wear their intelligence like a shield that can not be penetrated. Anything that doesn't fit is justified away. It's a trait I see with many professionally 'smart' people I know (and in many case love - so I don't mean to be harsh and obviously I'm generalising) - academics, doctors, lawyers etc. Many of whom don't seem to feel they've done enough with their potential either.

Now, I have the thoughtfulness but possibly not the same extreme IQ as some of my family (though I'd hazard a guess I'm above normal), and I don't score terribly well on creativity tests. This causes a block for me I think, where I ride this ocean in my head but don't have a way of giving it a form or an outlet (yet! - I like to think of my thinking as a work in progress!) So when you talk about needing them all for that unprecedented ability to be realised, I completely get it.

Now, I am conscious my very odd family is hardly a good sample, and I may have completely re-interpreted your comments for my own use (this is what thoughtfulness gets you, endless caveats!), in which case I apologise. But it was great food for thought for me

Val, I really enjoy your posts.

I'd add in stubbornness in there and actually argue you need to have some sort of balance between stubbornness and thoughtfulness.


I've worked with a number of gifted individuals, some who are the top of their field. DH and I both come from families filled with gifted individuals who vary in degree of success in their lives. I can actually think of two individuals in (one from DH's family and one from mine) who are very intelligent, creative, AND thoughtful but are unsuccessful. In both cases it's like their thoughtfulness consumed them and led them to depression. They seem to get overwhelmed with the tragedies in the world or how things are unfair and seem to get stuck. I can actually think of two fairly successful colleagues who could do much more with their lives but have the same problem. They get depressed because of politics or what they perceive as their own limitations.

Stubbornness is an extremely important goal. Einstein clearly was stubborn and couldn't let physics problems go despite his work situation. Feynman constantly questioned authority and wouldn't believe what others said. Part of that is thoughtfulness but you need stubbornness to stick with your own ideals and not be weighted down by the opinions of others (as I have seen happen many times).

I see stubbornness as a key ingredient that differentiates DH and myself. I just can't persevere through problems at work as well as he can. He as the ability to shut off the rest of the world and stick to his ideas. I just can't do that. He's also been much more successful at work and I think that's a key ingredient.

The problem with stubbornness is that many people have it and don't have the other key ingredients too. That's why you always hear about crackpot scientists that try and go rogue and claim they have the answer to everything but nobody else will listen. Sure, this has happened on a few occasions but it's definitely the exception more than the rule.

I think that creativity needs to be carefully defined to have a real discussion about how much it contributes to very high achievement. I have a feeling that a lot of very high achievers may have a heavy dose of intuition, which I don't think of as coextensive with creativity although they seem to overlap a bit. I guess, for me, creative thinking and intuition both fall under what I often see described as "divergent thinking", as they both give startling results, but they're not the same in the way they operate, and I don't think they're necessarily possessed in equal measure by a particular person. I think of creativity as more generative, and intuition as more reflective.

I think of creativity, in the context of problem-solving, along the lines of broadening potential inputs or searches for solutions to a problem, and intuition essentially along the lines of pattern matching, but so subtle that it can seem like black magic. Intuition may be part of what's generally considered the creative process some of the time, such as suggesting initial areas of potentially valuable research, etc.

There must be lots of highly gifted researchers out there, who brainstorm with the best of them, yet never become renowned because they never stumble upon the pathway to a great discovery; but intuition can remove the need for luck. If my concept is true, then some of the world's great scientists may have had tremendous gifts in other areas, though not world-beating intution, but still got lucky. Others would be guided by a vision of something like the theory of relativity, and due to their other gifts would be able to see the idea through to fruition. Still other brilliant minds might strongly intuit insights that they can't prove in the end, though they know them to be true; a conjecture like Fermat's Last Theorem would be a good example.

I've read that mentorship can be important for a developing genius, although it is obviously not necessary in all cases. Perhaps intuition can be taught in part.

Speaking of Einstein, what about this 2011 guv'ment shut down? So what's that even mean? Congress is still in session, the post office is open today, and the schools are open today? Does this happen a lot, does anyone know?

"I say tomato, she says bowling shoes." -Larry the Cable Guy

Good topic Val. I think uh, well... Do we need another Einstein? What about Alexander the Great or Tomas Edison, or whoever's going to build the starship enterprise. Was Tomas Edison as smart as Einstein, but one was theoretical and one was applied science? Wait, fine. I'll google it. 145-180. Hey Lincoln and George Washington were OG.

I'll bet the only pre-requisite is degree of desire for the truth. At one point in time I was less OG. That's what I had more of then that I have less of now. And belief there was the truth, something solid enough to continually refine a search for. And if you like truth too much that really screws with you socially, making you socially desirable to a great extent, but incompatible beyond that.

The shutdown would take effect tomorrow if it happens. Congress will stay in session (but their staffers may have to go home, and I am not sure who will feed them in the cafeteria...). The post office has their own separate revenue stream, they will stay open. Your local schools do not get any money from the federal government, so they should stay open. Last time it happened was in 1995 (impact I noticed at the time was a snafu in a merger/acquisition project I was working on, as the Dept of Justice couldn't move forward on approval for the business deal-- the delay cost us a bunch of money).

I'm just itching to get into this great topic, but where to start. There are so many intuitive minds on this site, I am sure all of us knew the rest of us would love this topic...lol.

Another aspect of talent I would like to add is free thinking. I think some people are often held back by the bounds of their social group, their workplace hierarchy or society. Some people seem able to think for themselves no matter what is happening around them. Others seem to vary depending on how much pressure is on them. I think Einstein was a free thinker.

I have seen some high IQ scores applied to many of the recognized great minds, however, I believe these assignments were based on their achievement. I wonder what their IQs would have been had they actually taken the IQ test.

A person has to wonder how many of todays high potential minds have found satisfaction in the many distractions available in our modern world. In Einstein's day, I imagine it would have been very difficult for an active mind to find an easy way to keep it occupied.

Wow, what wonderful replies. I love this forum so much because of the high caliber of posts that dominate this message board.

Like Giftodd's first post, I'm in the middle of something now and will reply meaningfully later.

Thanks all. This is great!

Wow-- I'm really enjoying this, too.

Giftodd and JamieH both hit upon some of the same things I was thinking as I read your opening post, Val. I'll add that I had a bit of a chuckle at Giftodd's characterization of her childhood. Likewise, let me just say that.

I'll add to that that there may be "mitigating" factors which are not randomly occurring within the population as a whole, but have a positive correlation with cognitive ability.

Some of THOSE factors (which would seem to mostly dramatically limit achievement, at least achievement in terms that matter to the so-called outside world):

schizoaffective disorders-- these become a lot more common and also significantly more severe as one goes out to the tail of the cognitive bell curve.

Someone already mentioned OEs, which I think, when present in extreme forms, can be fairly debilitating in terms of allowing a person to live normally and interact with the world the way others do-- I also hypothesize that some of them may, in fact, lend vulnerability to the development of mental illness when they are severe enough.

Another thing that I see as missing (thus far, anyway) is the notion of focused PASSION for ONE thing in particular.

I mean, sure... there are the Tchaikovskys of the world, the Beethovens, the Mendeleevs, for that matter. But there are also the Borodins-- he's not as famous as any of the others... because of MULTIPOTENTIALITY and the ultimate inability/unwillingness to choose between two passions.

Some HG+ people seem to have more than two. In fact, in looking at my own family, I'd say that is probably more the rule than the exception.

I don't see multipotentiality as being a bad thing. Maybe it is just a THING. It's bad from the larger world's perspective, because it limits the advancement that could be achieved for humanity as a whole... but on the other hand, I think that it is probably a MUCH healthier way to be a PG person. A burning passion for a single thing all too often seems to lead to some of the darker side... the mental instability, workaholism, etc.

After all, look at what happened to Mendelssohn (Felix, I mean)... to Mozart (Wolfgang, I mean)... to Schubert.

None of them lived very long-- but all were incredibly prolific and blindingly brilliant. I'm not sure that the two things are unlrelated. It seems like a rather quaint notion, but I think that in Feliz Mendelssohn's case in particular, a very good argument can be made for him simply using himself as a non-renewable fuel source in his inbridled passion.


This particular Howler Monkey has a lifetime habit of wide-rangin dilettantism that keeps ME safe from such dangers, thankfully. LOL. Then again, I suppose that has probably kept me form winning a Nobel Prize or anything, too. On that note, however, several people have mentioned serendipity/luck as being a factor. I tend to think of that as a HUGE factor, one that is completely overlooked by the most successful among us. Human beings simply do not wish to believe in chance governing our lives. It's part of our psychology as human beings to construct reasons or causation-- even when it isn't factually based or even... uh.. "real." Particularly so when we are ascribing why something GREAT happened to ourselves, we don't want to imagine that it was luck-- but skill, somehow. Truth is that it is probably luck, at least in large part.


Rambling, I know...

I'm sure that someone else will probably have something far more erudite to add. But this was my one-penny thought off the cuff.

Fascinating topic.

The Federal government DOES send tens of billions of dollars to many local schools, especially in disadvantaged areas under Title I -- see http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/15/us/15education.html . Maybe the money for this academic year has already been disbursed. Much of the stimulus also went to public schools.

Oh-- ohh... one more!!

Consider for a moment just how many people in the world have all of their basic needs met and are therefore sort of receptive to 'taking it higher' as it were, into the realm of higher cognitive functions:

Maslow's Heirarchy of Needs


Even if we were to assume that some 30% of the world's population has those needs met, then that means that-- even in the absense of any other factors of mitigation-- we've gone from 6300 persons to 1890 who might have the "ability" to problem-solve at an Einsteinian level.

If we were to further assume (as is not unreasonable, I think) that a person has to actually encounter his or her passion at the right time to light that fire, and that if the right person, right time, and right presentation doesn't all take place, the opportunity for genesis is lost...


well, then I think that begins to explain why we have not seen a second Shakespeare or Einstein, and why we perhap won't for another 500-5,000 years.

I strongly suspect that the odds are greatly against the right set of circumstances coming together with the precisely right person. Part of that is the relative scarcity of prodigious talent, certainly, but part of it is also that most of the people with latent prodigious talent never have it 'triggered' by the right combination of things when they are uniquely receptive to them.

Good post Val. But isn't the real definition of your thoughtfulness and creativity just "in the box" and "out of the box"?

No matter how high your IQ, it doesn't mean you can think out of the box. And that is what defined the great. Feyman put O-rings in a glass of ice water. How hard a concept was that?

Someone posted the article about that 12 year old that questioned the Big Bang theory and he had his reasons. Now he did have a phenomenal IQ but he was also taking himself out of the box to come up with why it didn't work. No amount of acceleration or challenge is going to make a kid an out of the box thinker. It has to do with life experience and perspective.

Ren

I think the explanation may be that there was more virgin territory in physics at the beginning of the 20th century than the 21st. Great achievement depends on working in a young field, not just talent and hard work.

Some of the smartest people in physics today are working in string theory -- and they may be squandering their careers. Has string theory made any testable predictions? Lee Smolin wrote a book "The Trouble with Physics" on this. Because physics is a relatively mature subject, I may advise my children to specialize in biology instead, where I think there is more to discover. Of course, they should LEARN a lot of physics, which is applicable to all other sciences and engineering.

Maybe, maybe not. As people become more talented, their ability to overcome adversity may also increase. I'm just thinking out loud here, but I doubt the equation is as simple as 30% of the world's population doesn't have its needs met. Highly talented people are more likely to find a way by virtue of having more talent. I don't know about survival instinct, of course, which is also important in this example.

But as an example, think about people like Andy Grove and Rep. Tom Lantos (California). Both were holocaust survivors (and Grove had to flee Hungary during the revolution in 1956). Both came to the US with basically pennies to their names, and both did spectacularly well.

Must read with my daughter...

Val

Val, you speculate that highly talented people are more likely to overcome adversity. But what kind of talent?

There are people who could build a house, or make a dress while what I make is makeshift. And also fear has a large part when you are in survival mode. You have to be willing to take risks.

There was another post about Myer Briggs. I remember taking this in first year in college but they also gave us a test about risk taking. Very few people will take risks, no matter how talented.

People don't like stepping out of the comfort zone for a variety of reasons. You generally keep your job by staying in the comfort zone. Questioning authority doesn't work well for many people. Hence why you have to become an entrepeneur.

Ren

I think the point about overcoming adversity is a good one. I found an interesting page citing to research recently for the proposition that a stimulating environment affects IQ, but that the effect can be lost over time if a person goes back to a normal environment, but that extreme achievers may tend to seek out or create their own stimulating environments. Will try to remember to hunt it up when I'm not posting from my phone.

You could add George Soros as another example of someone who fled the Holocaust and was very successful. Santos, Grove, and Soros are Jews, and European (Ashkenazi) Jews have average IQs of about 115. I think this is an important factor explaining the success of Jews in the U.S. and around the world. It is possible that Jews evolved high intelligence because of the adverse circumstances they faced over centuries. Here is an NYT article discussing such research:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/03/science/03gene.html
Researchers Say Intelligence and Diseases May Be Linked in Ashkenazic Genes
By NICHOLAS WADE
New York Times
June 3, 2005

A team of scientists at the University of Utah has proposed that the unusual pattern of genetic diseases seen among Jews of central or northern European origin, or Ashkenazim, is the result of natural selection for enhanced intellectual ability

The selective force was the restriction of Ashkenazim in medieval Europe to occupations that required more than usual mental agility, the researchers say in a paper that has been accepted by the Journal of Biosocial Science, published by Cambridge University Press in England.

The hypothesis advanced by the Utah researchers has drawn a mixed reaction among scientists, some of whom dismissed it as extremely implausible, while others said they had made an interesting case, although one liable to raise many hackles.

"It would be hard to overstate how politically incorrect this paper is," said Steven Pinker, a cognitive scientist at Harvard, noting that it argues for an inherited difference in intelligence between groups. Still, he said, "it's certainly a thorough and well-argued paper, not one that can easily be dismissed outright."

<rest of article at link>

I could believe that they developed some cultural aspects that help develop high ability; in my experience Jews are more likely than average to believe in the value of schooling and learning in general (sorry if that is offensive, but it's what I've seen here in the US). I don't think it's likely that less smart Jews were selected out of the breeding population in a way that led to a genetic predisposition to high intelligence. But of course that's a complete guess.

In a thread about what is talent, I find it interesting how easily it turns into a discussion of what are the talents leading to personal success.

What about the talents which lead to success of a society. If the talents driving people to focus their attention on parenting did not exist in the population, would any of us even be here to develop talents for our own personal success.

How about what is talent from a more objective point of view, without even considering aspects related to success. I think it is important to look at it from this point of view as we then can see the entire gray scale of talent and better understand what the underlying mechanisms driving all levels of talent.

Once we have this better understanding of what is talent, we are then better equiped to understand all those various questions related to talent in relation to success.

I assumed if you were talking about Einstein you were trying to define the specific talent that lands you in a history book even a few hundred years later.

Haven't had my coffee yet this morning, so my wording sounds a little like sarcasm. Was suppose to be more like even if you are only interested in the tip of the iceberg, you still have to consider what lies beneath the surface.

Referring to the Jewish comment. I think adversity had a lot to do with it. Though the children of war-time or immigrant Jews really pushed their kids, this generation -- not so much. In the 60s and 70s, Styvescant was considered the "Jewish high school" now it is mostly Asian. You have Asian parents dealing with adversity, being immigrant, struggling with nothing. And they push their kids to succeed.

Or someone can just do the "research" and say they have a higher average IQ than those Jews....

Dealing with adversity usually means striving for a goal beyond adversity. Without any adversity, you just go chugging along, no matter how smart your brain started out to be.


Ren

I am probably not intellectual enough to contribute too meaningfully to this thread, but I have really enjoyed reading it.

I do have a simple thought on the topic though:

I always wondered how much easier it must have been back in the day, to seem really smart because there was so much left to "discover". Now it seems in almost any discipline, it's all been done or thoroughly thought through by "more qualified people", so you are expected to read/review everything others have said before you can add/build meaningfully on the existing knowledge base. What a tedious drag/beat-down. What a deterrent to the generation of independent out of the box ideas.

I think to some extent, those people who have the natural IQ/talent/curiosity to make great discoveries/advances to begin with, may be beat down by all of the "already been done" thinking that's out there. They do not get to experience and build off of that thrill of discovering things for them-self because they are spoon-fed the "facts" from an early age. At school, or by well-meaning parents, either way the thrill of discovery/working things out for oneself, is taken away and I suspect this squashes the drive and/or self confidence that one might have otherwise developed had they been allowed to try and fail until they successfully "discover" things for themselves.

By the time they are through with college, most individuals have been spoon-fed "knowledge" for so long, the ability/confidence necessary to think great new thoughts is thoroughly beat down.

Just a thought.

I made a similar point earlier in this thread
http://giftedissues.davidsongifted....at_is_talent_Ultimate_Phi.html#Post99088 , but I do think people should study what others have discovered, so that they may "stand on the shoulders of giants".

sorry Boston, somehow I missed that. I think what I am trying to say though is that in addition to the lack of "virgin territory", or maybe because of it, fewer people have opportunities to discover anything exciting for themselves since everything is all explained to them from an early age.

I believe this is the critical point, I suspect this early spoon-feeding kills the momentum, self confidence, drive, and lust for for exploring that would otherwise develop through the thrill of "discovering" things for oneself as a child.

I also believe there may be a lot of presumed "settled territory" today that may be settled somewhat erroneously but tends not to be looked at through fresh eyes because it is somehow perceived to be settled and taught as if it were so.

I agree on the "shoulders of giants" statement, however, I think there is plenty of time for studying what others have discovered after one has had the chance to make a few successful "discoveries" for themselves as a child. And even then, I believe it should be emphasized that what we think we know is always open for review/question.

Great comment. I was once on the side of teach as much as possible in the early years people. However, I have converted to believing a child will benefit from self learning and discovery as you mentioned.

Then again, I guess it depends on what you want for your child. Money and career success is not something I value. I think the early education may provide a competitive advantage at possibly an ideal time to provide a good head start for these types of goals. But I think if anything, it will either have no effect or even possibly a negative effect if the goal was to have the next Einstein.

Einstein was barely able to walk and talk before he was 3 years of age from what I understand.

I absolutely agree with this - and I wonder if the emphasis on money/status = success is another reason why we don't see an Einstein. If a desire for money or status is your motivator, then the quiet hardwork Nik describes isn't going to be terribly appealing. And, as I have only really recently accepted, being smart is meaningless without some input to connect your smarts too. For my entire life I figured smart meant being able to come up with a completely original idea off your own bat, with no input (not so smart huh!) I've only recently come to see just how important knowledge is to actually give it a form and to give you a base for ideas to spring from. This is probably self evident to anyone who received any encouragement to learn - but it took me a while to start to get my education

But I also wonder if we put too much emphasis on an Einstein type discovery (and I mean in general, not just in this thread). I don't feel certain that people aren't making these kinds of discoveries and that maybe we're just a bit desensitised because discoveries are constant. And possibly because, as others have said, there is seemingly less to discover, I wonder if because there is so much information to draw from that we down play a new discovery as 'just fitting the pieces of the puzzle together'. Maybe this means we're genuinely unlikely to have another Einstein in the scientific world because there is so much more information to draw from so any discovery is less unique? I don't know - I'm just thowing some random thoughts out there

So if not science, what about technology? What about Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg or even someone like Julian Assange? They haven't just created products, they have been world changers. Or because so much technology is obsolete so quickly (genius in itself perhaps!) are we not able to (or do not) attribute Einstein qualities to such things because it doesn't last and we'd have to be anointing a new Einstein each week (and don't seem so exceptional in that context).More random thoughts...

I guess I'm wondering if we're (as in the world, not just this thread) overlooking extraordinary thinking in other areas. I've only added technology to the debate, but I'm sure there are equivalents in economics, politics etc. They might just be less tangible. Are these less valid or just lesser known or have less impact? (I am genuinely asking)

Hope I haven't strayed too far off topic...

Revisit the topic "the world's changing, 'our' needs are changing". Thanks to Mr. Vice President Al Gore inventing the Internet, and Amelia Earnheart perfecting Da Vinci's airplane we probably won't see an Einstein as much as we'll see a Einstein Company, perfecting the development of an intellectual property** a manager overheard at a party in his college days.
Over-teaching the young'uns, theory by "Me.". I'm pushing the basics- reading, writing, 'rithamTic, it ain't so they can get rich. *. It is so they won't be hindered in their quest for their thing. May as well get it while the gettin's good. I see value in studying the "giants" because then you are able to discuss with other kids the awesome stuff of life, even if it just makes for social conversation and does not lead directly to your patented idea.

* I like the comment I read elsewhere the other day that helicopter parenting related to academic career (ie college and choice of profession) is bound to go the way of arranged marriages eventually. Not the deepest truth I've ever read, but on it's own level it's quite true.

**metaphorically, an idea. Not related to the child development market.

I wonder if there's still lots of virgin territory. The difference now is that you have to know a lot in order to get there.

I also think that it's easier in hindsight to see how much stuff there was to discover. The great questions of 1900 probably seemed as difficult to the scientists of the day as the questions of 2011 do to scientists now.

I'd say there's a ton of new stuff to find out. Geographically there's space, the final frontier, spiritually there's still suffering and wars and violence to end with respect and dignity, there's still disease, hunger, aging, overpopulation, we're losing species-should we make new ones? We have a lot of questions. We still have needs here on earth. After we address the needs we still have questions. No, our kids do not have to wordy about not having stuff to study and not having anything meaningful they could be doing with their lives. Plus we have complex social/ financial that they can play for a challenge or regulate for a bigger challenge. Study society, study living bodies, study the o-spheres. There's still stuff to do, IMO. You could spend a lifetime just trying to preserve and archive our world's history-someone should. Everybody talks about the leaders and followers, what about the workers. Oh, because the march to the beat of their own drum.

I should really begin practicing better Grammer, my appologies. Just feels so great to feel like I'n having a heart to heart with kindred spirits weither or not we see eye to eye.

I really do think there's just a ton out there to discover. I think it's almost hard not to discover stuff.

About 10 years ago, I picked up a hobby, and started making a splash in an academic field. I'm kinda out of it now, due to the kids thing, but honestly, it didn't take much to "discover" something that other people are now taking seriously. Mostly it took being willing to be ridiculed by the people who taught me the basics, and whom I liked and respected very much. Most of them don't like talking to me anymore, but I get occaisional star treatment from others. It's wierd, frustrating, isolating, and generally not really worth the bragging rights for having done something academically good. (and it's not particle physics, either, historical textiles just don't have the same rep.)

Anyway, I think great discoveries are really about being willing to pay the price for the prize. I kinda forgot to look at the pricetag, or I mighta kept my darned mouth shut.

Since Einstein is the current flavour of genius, the example from his life is that darned patent office, where he hid his real work underneath his assigments... Anyone here remember doing THAT at school? I certainly do. It did not make me feel particularly well valued and respected for my genius, such as it is. (Obviously Einstien did get some real recognition in the end, but my understanding is that that was not all roses either.)

-Mich

Ooh, I didn't mean to imply there is a lack of things to discover (though reading my post I see that's how it reads) - just that because there seems to be a perception that there is less to discover and that this might influence how we feel about the amazing discoveries that are now made. They're just kind of heaped on top of the pile. I absolutely think that what is left to discover is limitless

I have to disagree that there's a huge pile of knowledge that young students/scientists/researches have to wade through first to start discovering things. It's more that knowledge has just been compacted and shifted downwards. During Newton's time Calculus was cutting edge but now it can be "easily" explained to high school students. Over time we learn methods on how to pass down all that complicated knowledge that's been discovered by the top minds to younger and younger students.

I also have to agree with Val that there are other areas that genius can be shown besides just pure research. The tech fields are a great example of this as she pointed out and, really, it's probably infinitely easier to shine in a tech field because you don't need as much education first to make your mark (whereas if you wanted to make a major discovery in a science you'd have a much harder time getting academics to be interested in your work and you'd probably be labeled a crackpot right off the bat if you haven't first gotten a Ph.D).

However, I definitely agree with you on the push for early education and self-discovery. I think even in higher education self-discovery needs to be more emphasized. I would love to see colleges (and some are definitely moving in this direction) really incorporating young students into research projects instead of just having them sit through lectures and take tests. Passive learning just does not stick nearly as well.

It's ok, giftodd. I just said something because nobody said anything here all day so I had to say something. It was either this or dig up the "why bright folks should breed" thread and mention that I had planned to. I wanted to have at least a dozen kids, raise them to think for themselves. Then let them loose on the school teachers and the rest of the world (plot revenge much?). But now I've had two kids and it hurts and takes too long, so, I'm done.

You do make a good point that there's more cool stuff than there used to be for the kids to learn, that everybody else already did before them. Which means the bars higher and it means there's more knowledge to play with, build on.
I watch too much "big bang theory" on tv, so I think there's a disdain between theoretical and applied scientists, so I was just saying, "Gee, why does everybody want to find baby Einstein, ol' Edison waz pretty cool dude too."

A-and, I waz thinking about this while I was painting my kitchen cabinets that we're only calling out people whose talents was solving problems. What does solving problems and creating art have in common?