Latest / Stuff You Should Know / What makes a genius?

Transcript

What makes a genius? · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
0:03
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know
0:08
Speaker 1: from House Stuff Works dot com. Ahoy, and welcome to
0:16
Speaker 1: the love boat. I'm Julie, your cruise director, with me
0:19
Speaker 1: as always as Isaac, your bartender. How are you doing?
0:23
Speaker 1: I just did the little double gun the double guns
0:26
Speaker 1: looking good. You're a genius. Thank you for coming up
0:29
Speaker 1: with that. Thank you. You're a genius to chuck, thank you.
0:32
Speaker 1: Do you want to know how we can callague to
0:35
Speaker 1: each other geniuses without cracking up? I'm cracking up on
0:39
Speaker 1: the inside, but sure, because we have no idea what
0:43
Speaker 1: constitutes a genius, do we? Right? We like to throw
0:46
Speaker 1: the word around, as you were pointing out earlier. Oh,
0:49
Speaker 1: he's a genius, or he's a socialist, story's a fascist,
0:52
Speaker 1: he's a genius. You should see the bathroom he designed.
0:55
Speaker 1: He's genius. You know. Yeah, it definitely is a word
0:59
Speaker 1: that gets to run a lot. But the way that
1:03
Speaker 1: we use the word genius now, actually uh is kind
1:07
Speaker 1: of a throwback to its original meaning in the Greco
1:11
Speaker 1: Roman era, the word genius when everyone was wrestling. Yeah,
1:15
Speaker 1: like you could be a genius at wrestling. Really? What
1:18
Speaker 1: it what it? What it described was somebody's um natural
1:23
Speaker 1: enthusiasm inclination towards certain activities, not just your your abilities,
1:30
Speaker 1: but you know how revved up you were, so so
1:32
Speaker 1: somebody who was pretty good at bathroom design would have
1:36
Speaker 1: been considered a genius at bathroom designs. Like the word vintage,
1:41
Speaker 1: people always thinks vintage just means old, But I think
1:44
Speaker 1: vintage specifically means like characterized by that person's best work,
1:49
Speaker 1: like a tailor, their best five pairs of pants they made.
1:53
Speaker 1: I think so I might just learned that just now
1:56
Speaker 1: I might be wrong thanks to you. Are we picking
1:57
Speaker 1: up Jerry's laugh? Because we're in a yeah, two ft
2:01
Speaker 1: by two ft space right now? This room is not genius. No,
2:05
Speaker 1: it stinks of volatile organic compounds. We should say what.
2:09
Speaker 1: They actually moved us for one day into an even
2:11
Speaker 1: smaller office like the sign Felds. Remember when Castanza they
2:15
Speaker 1: kept moving him around because they didn't like him, and
2:18
Speaker 1: he were eventually going to end up in a storage
2:19
Speaker 1: closet like he did. Yeah, I think we've arrived there.
2:23
Speaker 1: I'm sure it's lovely. It's just not for podcasting. Well,
2:26
Speaker 1: I'm a little lightheaded. So if this, if this goes oddly,
2:30
Speaker 1: that's why it's the paints and the airplane glue. That's
2:34
Speaker 1: airplane glue. Is genius, it is. Yeah, we were talking
2:37
Speaker 1: about genius for some reason. Where are we? Yeah? Because
2:40
Speaker 1: this is about genius. Okay, Oh so yeah, I was
2:44
Speaker 1: saying the original idea of genius was enthusiasm, throwing yourself
2:49
Speaker 1: into something where you were into right. Um. And then
2:55
Speaker 1: thanks to a guy named Francis Galton, who he was
2:58
Speaker 1: a pretty smart guy himself, but he had a long
3:00
Speaker 1: history of just kind of missing the big picture with
3:04
Speaker 1: his ideas, he came up with eugenics. Sure, he was
3:08
Speaker 1: the first one to start attributing um genius to intellect.
3:12
Speaker 1: He kind of narrowed it a little more, and eventually
3:16
Speaker 1: this led to our idea of genius being quantifiable e g.
3:23
Speaker 1: Through i Q tests or g which we'll get to. Nice. Nice, Yeah, Yeah,
3:31
Speaker 1: I don't. I'll just go ahead and say I don't
3:32
Speaker 1: know how quantifiable it is. Well, it's not. And there's
3:35
Speaker 1: actually two pretty big reasons why quantifying genius is virtually
3:40
Speaker 1: impossible at least with our current understanding of the mind.
3:43
Speaker 1: And they are they are uh Well, the first one
3:46
Speaker 1: is pretty obvious. Genius is a very subjective thing. Um.
3:50
Speaker 1: Some people think it's like an i Q higher than
3:54
Speaker 1: one forty or one seventy five I've heard, which you know,
3:58
Speaker 1: that's just a smart quantifying, quantify quantifier And I'm clearly
4:06
Speaker 1: no genius. And the other thing is, like you said,
4:08
Speaker 1: it's a it's a big picture thing. In science and
4:11
Speaker 1: medical inquiries, that kind of thing is all about the detail.
4:14
Speaker 1: So it's really hard to like analyze and study. It's
4:17
Speaker 1: like studying intercessory prayer. How do you study that? How
4:21
Speaker 1: do you quantify happiness or prayer or genius? You know? Um,
4:27
Speaker 1: our colleague Tracy V. Wilson, I like how she put it. Yeah,
4:31
Speaker 1: she did a good job just kind of getting rid
4:33
Speaker 1: of the crud that's often associated with genius. And and
4:37
Speaker 1: just if you have like crazy hair and a big
4:39
Speaker 1: mustache and you know math, you're a genius, do you
4:42
Speaker 1: get rid of all that? And uh, for the for
4:44
Speaker 1: the purposes of this podcast, will adopt her description, right,
4:49
Speaker 1: which was that a genius is an extraordinarily intelligent person
4:54
Speaker 1: who breaks new ground with discoveries, inventions, or works of art. Right,
4:59
Speaker 1: Because you can't just be a really smart person, you
5:01
Speaker 1: have to do something with it to truly be a genius.
5:05
Speaker 1: That's what makes a genius. It's not just intelligence, it's
5:08
Speaker 1: intelligence with creative energy. Well, the creative part is huge,
5:11
Speaker 1: and we'll get to that, but it's um She goes
5:13
Speaker 1: on to say, and I agree that they usually will
5:16
Speaker 1: change the way we look at the world, or at
5:18
Speaker 1: least the way people in whatever field they're in look
5:21
Speaker 1: at their field. They make a difference or difference makers.
5:24
Speaker 1: Have you ever heard of a guy named William James
5:26
Speaker 1: sidis Now, he reportedly had the highest um i Q
5:32
Speaker 1: in history. I'm higher than ask Maryland of Parade. As
5:35
Speaker 1: a matter of fact, yes, asked Maryland says, hers is
5:38
Speaker 1: two thirty. She claims the highest ever measured. This guy
5:41
Speaker 1: supposedly was to fifty. Yeah. Um, let me let me
5:45
Speaker 1: keep you more than a q a at the end
5:47
Speaker 1: of Parade magazine. Sadly, no really, Okay, So let me
5:51
Speaker 1: let me give you a little background on sittence. Okay, uh.
5:54
Speaker 1: He was eighteen months old when he started reading the
5:57
Speaker 1: New York Times. Okay, so far so uh. At two
6:01
Speaker 1: he taught himself Latin. Three, he taught himself Greek. Uh.
6:06
Speaker 1: He could speak more than forty languages by the time
6:09
Speaker 1: he was an adult. Uh. He graduated kum laude at
6:12
Speaker 1: sixteen from Harvard and became the youngest professor ever in
6:17
Speaker 1: the history of Rice University. I imagine he was like
6:19
Speaker 1: seventeen or something. Who's a young guy, and then within
6:25
Speaker 1: I think about a year at Rice, he dropped his
6:28
Speaker 1: position and spent the rest of his life working like
6:32
Speaker 1: menial jobs. He went from job to job just doing
6:36
Speaker 1: normal labor. So he's not a genius though he would
6:39
Speaker 1: not qualify as a genius by this definition. You have
6:42
Speaker 1: a two ft Q. You're clearly a prodigy. You're an
6:45
Speaker 1: incredibly brilliant person. But if you don't contribute to humanity,
6:49
Speaker 1: what are you worth? You're like a Buddhist monk who
6:52
Speaker 1: goes and spends your life meditating in a cave. We
6:56
Speaker 1: curse you, sorry, but but that's that's the point. And
7:00
Speaker 1: geniuses are incredibly valuable in society. I don't remember what
7:04
Speaker 1: podcast it was in what we were talking about, um
7:07
Speaker 1: mauthis and the idea that the more the larger the
7:11
Speaker 1: world population, the more incidents of the births of geniuses happens. Right, Uh,
7:17
Speaker 1: and then the more geniuses you have, the further along
7:20
Speaker 1: society is helped by leaps and bounds. Right, Well, if
7:22
Speaker 1: you think MENSA is a quantifier, then there's about three
7:27
Speaker 1: million geniuses in the US. But I don't buy that,
7:30
Speaker 1: right because MENSA standards, UM, they accept people who well
7:34
Speaker 1: it's not just like you, but standardized intelligence tests. Um,
7:38
Speaker 1: they accept people who score within the top two percent
7:42
Speaker 1: of those. So if you just extend that with basic
7:47
Speaker 1: math to percent of the population in the US is
7:50
Speaker 1: like six million people, right, and then thirty million worldwide.
7:54
Speaker 1: But I don't buy it anyway, because they don't even
7:56
Speaker 1: count in the creative element. You know, Gina Davis is
7:58
Speaker 1: in mensa that everyone always says that. Anytime you hear
8:02
Speaker 1: about MENSA, people go, you know, Gina Davis, even I
8:04
Speaker 1: think we had this conversation you brought up Ronny Harlan
8:06
Speaker 1: and yeah, the the Pirate movie they made. Let's play
8:09
Speaker 1: the clip, shall we? No? Okay we won't. Um, just
8:14
Speaker 1: get back to she just spit bologny out of her mouth.
8:18
Speaker 1: She shouldn't be eating bologny anyway. I did her a favor.
8:21
Speaker 1: You're right, so you wanna talk about the brain is
8:22
Speaker 1: that where we're going. Let's let's get to it. I mean,
8:25
Speaker 1: like if if you're going to go in search your
8:27
Speaker 1: genius with or without Leonard Nimoy, Um, you are going
8:32
Speaker 1: to start looking in the brain, right. I love that
8:33
Speaker 1: show the best. It's awesome, so super seventies. Um, so
8:38
Speaker 1: let's go into the brain. Clearly we're gonna find our
8:41
Speaker 1: answers here, right, Maybe no, no, but we should talk
8:45
Speaker 1: about it. The cerebral cortex, as we all know, is
8:47
Speaker 1: the largest and outermost part of your brain, and this
8:51
Speaker 1: is where the higher functions like thought and reasoning happen
8:54
Speaker 1: as opposed to lower functions like just basic survival that
8:58
Speaker 1: kind of thing, right, And the basic stuff is found
9:01
Speaker 1: in your brain stem, which is how Mike the chicken
9:03
Speaker 1: was able to live for so long. That's right. Uh,
9:06
Speaker 1: the cortex is cerebral cortex is divided into lobes, and
9:10
Speaker 1: within those lobes are regions that help you handle specific tasks.
9:15
Speaker 1: And uh, we do know it has a big impact
9:17
Speaker 1: on how we think, but it's a little tricky to
9:20
Speaker 1: study because one reason that Tracy point out, which I
9:24
Speaker 1: thought was really valid, is to get an m R
9:26
Speaker 1: I done, you're lying there in a tube. They can't
9:29
Speaker 1: actively study how your brain operates on a day to
9:33
Speaker 1: day basis, why you're functioning, which is the great failing
9:35
Speaker 1: of the wonder machine. Yeah, I bet you they can
9:38
Speaker 1: solve that one day. Oh they will definitely, And by
9:40
Speaker 1: they I mean people other than you, me or Jerry.
9:42
Speaker 1: It's some genius perhaps precisely. But she did point out
9:47
Speaker 1: a cool study from cal Irvine in two thousand four
9:50
Speaker 1: and they they did pinpoint that the volume of gray
9:53
Speaker 1: matter in parts of the cerebral cortex has a greater
9:56
Speaker 1: impact on your overall intelligence than how law your brain is.
10:00
Speaker 1: Because we talked about that in the Einstein thing, right, Yeah,
10:05
Speaker 1: the gray matter, h man, I know, the white matter transmits.
10:09
Speaker 1: The gray matter is like a problem solving. I believe
10:12
Speaker 1: in white matter is used to transmit information. But Einstein's
10:16
Speaker 1: brain was smaller than your average bear's brain. It was.
10:19
Speaker 1: Remember we talked about what happened to his brain and
10:22
Speaker 1: um when what they finally found. The big distinction they
10:25
Speaker 1: found in his brain that was abnormal was that his
10:29
Speaker 1: prietal lobe was almost missing this fissure within it that
10:35
Speaker 1: most people have. So he had a very narrow fissure
10:38
Speaker 1: and they also wider, and so had a big prietal lobe,
10:43
Speaker 1: which is responsible for century and put, but it also
10:46
Speaker 1: handles things like mathematics. Unsurprisingly enough, so he had a
10:50
Speaker 1: big prival lobe with a small fishure in between it,
10:53
Speaker 1: which they theorized means or meant that his his pridal
10:56
Speaker 1: lobe could communicate with itself more a fishly more effectively,
11:01
Speaker 1: and a genius was born by Josh Youers. He proved
11:06
Speaker 1: that Adams Adams exist. He figured out that light behaves
11:09
Speaker 1: as a particle and a wave. He developed the theory
11:11
Speaker 1: of relativity and the famous equation equals mc squared by six.
11:16
Speaker 1: Where were you and by that age? I wish I
11:19
Speaker 1: could remember, Chuck me too. You were you were? Were
11:22
Speaker 1: you following fish around or something like that? Wire panic, Yeah, yeah,
11:27
Speaker 1: I was. I think I was living in New Jersey
11:29
Speaker 1: at the time, but I goofed around enough in Athens.
11:32
Speaker 1: I wasn't coming up with theories of relativity, nor was
11:35
Speaker 1: I know I was thrown a lot of darts. Some
11:39
Speaker 1: other interesting aspects of the brain um is that it
11:42
Speaker 1: actually develops. It goes from thicker to thinner as we age,
11:46
Speaker 1: So it goes from undeveloped to the cerebral cortex thickening,
11:52
Speaker 1: and then after adolescence or maybe during adolescence it begins
11:57
Speaker 1: to thin, right, And what the what a study in
12:00
Speaker 1: Nature I think two thousand and six found was that
12:03
Speaker 1: UM kids whose brains thick and faster in youth tended
12:09
Speaker 1: to have higher i Q s. And the reason that
12:11
Speaker 1: this could be significant is that they we we tend
12:14
Speaker 1: to find intelligence is an inherited trait or what appears
12:18
Speaker 1: to be an inherited trait. So this is a physical
12:21
Speaker 1: example of how uh intelligence could be inherited through organic
12:25
Speaker 1: structure of the brain. So that's intelligence, but that's not genius.
12:31
Speaker 1: But we can't even we But at the same time,
12:34
Speaker 1: we can't even really describe intelligence. Like consider, let's let's
12:37
Speaker 1: talk about the i Q tests, all right. The are
12:41
Speaker 1: our big um arousal for the i Q test began
12:45
Speaker 1: in the in the mid nineteen twenties when a psychologist
12:49
Speaker 1: named Katherine Morris Cox published UM The Early Mental Traits
12:54
Speaker 1: of Three Geniuses, and basically she went back from and
12:57
Speaker 1: it was exhaustive. She used like fift sources and studied
13:01
Speaker 1: the the work the traits, the UM contributions of three
13:07
Speaker 1: hundred actually three hundred and one. Oun't know why she
13:09
Speaker 1: called it three hundred, but three hundred one Great minds
13:13
Speaker 1: and then basically gave them an i Q test based
13:16
Speaker 1: on this uh and came up in. The highest rated
13:20
Speaker 1: one was Johann Gurta, very nice thank you. Did you
13:23
Speaker 1: know he had a theory of evolution like seventy five
13:26
Speaker 1: years before Darwin? Yeah, and he came up with human chemistry.
13:30
Speaker 1: He was a smart guy. But he cocked in at
13:31
Speaker 1: number one, at two fifty or to ten. Sorry, not
13:35
Speaker 1: bad at all. But as this book came out and
13:38
Speaker 1: became you know, um, the public became aware of it,
13:42
Speaker 1: it was like, hey, we didn't know about these i
13:44
Speaker 1: Q tests. Is awesome, we can start measuring how smart
13:47
Speaker 1: people are. Ironically, the earliest i Q tests were used
13:50
Speaker 1: to measure mental handicaps and children. Yeah, but then they
13:54
Speaker 1: started figuring out, hey, you can use this for gifted
13:57
Speaker 1: kids to find the gifted kids as well, and the
14:00
Speaker 1: Stanford psychologist U mixed with the first guy who came
14:04
Speaker 1: up with the i Q test, bin At. The two
14:06
Speaker 1: together formed the Stanford Binet IQ tests that we used today.
14:10
Speaker 1: Have you ever had yours done I refused to I
14:13
Speaker 1: never will. I took one at one point, but it
14:16
Speaker 1: wasn't like the standard test. It was just some hackneyed version,
14:20
Speaker 1: and I scored really high. That's the reason I know
14:22
Speaker 1: that it was pretty much BS because I'm kind of smart,
14:26
Speaker 1: but not anything like Uh I scored. I didn't. I
14:29
Speaker 1: don't put any stock into it, but chuck, I guess
14:32
Speaker 1: that kind of underscores um. A really good criticism of
14:36
Speaker 1: i Q tests is that they may be standardized, they
14:40
Speaker 1: may be widely accepted, but we aren't percent sure that
14:43
Speaker 1: they measure everything. So I wouldn't even say we're sure
14:47
Speaker 1: they measure everything. The measure mathematical aptitude, language abilities, um,
14:54
Speaker 1: what else? Uh? Well, yeah, sure, along with memory and
14:57
Speaker 1: spatial ability. Okay, but is that every Well No, in
15:01
Speaker 1: any standardized test, the word itself kind of says it all.
15:05
Speaker 1: It's standardized, right. No standardized tests that you give different
15:08
Speaker 1: people can really tell you the same thing about all
15:10
Speaker 1: those different people. No, I can't. And I mean the
15:12
Speaker 1: very questions that the test test asks. Wow, these pain
15:18
Speaker 1: themes are really getting on top of me. Uh, the
15:21
Speaker 1: very questions that these tests ask um actually can be biased? Um?
15:27
Speaker 1: I heard, I heard of I think an S A T.
15:30
Speaker 1: I hope it wasn't an S A T question. It's
15:32
Speaker 1: a little too easy. But um, some sort of standardized
15:36
Speaker 1: tests asked the question which of these places would you
15:39
Speaker 1: go to buy milk? And it was like grocery store,
15:41
Speaker 1: convenience store, dairy or something like that. You can buy
15:46
Speaker 1: milk at all those Josh, well you can. But I mean,
15:48
Speaker 1: like for kids out in the sticks where there isn't
15:50
Speaker 1: a grocery store, but there's a convenience store, that's where
15:53
Speaker 1: they go to buy their milk. But they missed the
15:55
Speaker 1: question because the answer was supposed to be grocery store.
15:57
Speaker 1: It's a it's a pretty dumb examp ample, but it's accurate.
16:01
Speaker 1: I mean, the very people who write the tests are
16:04
Speaker 1: biased in some ways, and i Q tests have been
16:07
Speaker 1: shown to skew against um certain ethnic and socioeconomic groups. Yeah, sure,
16:14
Speaker 1: same say, any standardized test does so boo boo to.
16:18
Speaker 1: That is what I say. And the other thing, too,
16:20
Speaker 1: is is that geniuses don't, like people can generally consider genius,
16:25
Speaker 1: don't necessarily score well in these tests anyway. No, that's true.
16:28
Speaker 1: To throw it out the door, I say, Um, I
16:30
Speaker 1: will say that just while we might as well give
16:32
Speaker 1: a little information on the IQ test. The standard score
16:38
Speaker 1: is a hundred with the deviation of sixteen, So the
16:40
Speaker 1: average score of the general population will be between eighty
16:44
Speaker 1: four and one sixteen. Right, but no one knows what
16:49
Speaker 1: over that indicates a genius. A widely accepted number is
16:53
Speaker 1: one forty. But somebody just made that up at some
16:56
Speaker 1: point in time. Well, like I said, I read one.
16:59
Speaker 1: And it's not to say that a really high score
17:03
Speaker 1: doesn't mean you're a genius, like it could mean you're
17:06
Speaker 1: a genius. The i Q test is capturing something, probably,
17:09
Speaker 1: but it's not capturing the whole picture, I think is
17:11
Speaker 1: the point we're trying to make right here, right, not
17:13
Speaker 1: at all. So let's leave the i Q test in
17:16
Speaker 1: our dust. Okay, maybe we should go with Steinberg's I'm sorry,
17:21
Speaker 1: Sternberg's try arch theory. I kind of like that. Yeah,
17:25
Speaker 1: there are some competing explanations of what components there are
17:30
Speaker 1: to intellect, right, Yeah, Sternberg said that he thought it um.
17:33
Speaker 1: Human intelligence includes a few things plus the try arc.
17:37
Speaker 1: Creative intelligence, so the ability to generate new ideas, interesting ideas,
17:43
Speaker 1: analytical intelligence so you can examine facts, draw conclusions that's
17:47
Speaker 1: pretty good and practical intelligence, which means you can fit
17:50
Speaker 1: into your environment, which like kind of yeah, But I disagree, man.
17:56
Speaker 1: I went back and reread that a couple of times,
17:58
Speaker 1: and you know, Racy points out that there are a
18:01
Speaker 1: lot of critics of you know, um practical intelligences. Everybody
18:06
Speaker 1: has that to a certain degree, that does that really
18:08
Speaker 1: count to towards being a genius? I disagree. I've met
18:11
Speaker 1: some people who well, I mean, think about it. It's
18:14
Speaker 1: the classic example of somebody who's very book smart, but
18:18
Speaker 1: you should never let walk down an alley by themselves
18:21
Speaker 1: and by himself for her. So many many people like that. Sure,
18:25
Speaker 1: and then there's you know, the super street smart um
18:28
Speaker 1: ratso Rizzo, you know, who can make his way him
18:32
Speaker 1: Jersey Midnight cowboy here exactly, who who can make his
18:36
Speaker 1: way in the world, but you know, would probably do
18:39
Speaker 1: horribly on an IQ test. The very fact that there
18:42
Speaker 1: there are those different um polar extremes means to me
18:46
Speaker 1: that there's something to that that is an aspect of intellect, right,
18:51
Speaker 1: And you remember I mentioned g earlier. I didn't want
18:54
Speaker 1: to leave people hanging there. But the i Q test
18:56
Speaker 1: they have come up with a unit and they call
18:58
Speaker 1: that unit for intelligence g right, and that's actually i
19:01
Speaker 1: Q tests are under a larger umbrella of what's called psychometrics,
19:06
Speaker 1: which is basically the study of an attempt of the
19:10
Speaker 1: measurement of intelligence. Right yeah. Um. Back in the seventies,
19:15
Speaker 1: there is a statistician named Carl your skog you're a
19:19
Speaker 1: skog weird, um, and he figured out that you. He
19:24
Speaker 1: figured out a way to measure intelligence that basically lead
19:27
Speaker 1: to the appearance of three different kinds of intelligence. While
19:31
Speaker 1: we're on theories of intelligence, right, okay, he came up
19:35
Speaker 1: with um fluid intelligence, right, yes, okay, And this is
19:41
Speaker 1: basically coming up with new ideas on your own to
19:44
Speaker 1: solve problems. Crystallized intelligence is UM understanding already established techniques
19:51
Speaker 1: of problem solving and being able to identify which technique
19:54
Speaker 1: will best work to solve a particular problem. And then
19:58
Speaker 1: there's visual spatial reasoning, which is UM kind of an
20:02
Speaker 1: aptitude at creating mental images in your head to solve problems.
20:06
Speaker 1: It's very important part of mathematics. Actually, So we have
20:11
Speaker 1: your Scogg's ideas, we've got um, what's your guy's name, Sternberg's.
20:18
Speaker 1: Let's talk about Howard Gardner, and he has the feel
20:21
Speaker 1: good we're all geniuses kind of theory, right, Yeah, multiple intelligence.
20:26
Speaker 1: He thinks there's seven types linguistic, logical, mathematic, musical, bodily, kinetic,
20:32
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, kinesthetic, spatial, which is always in there, uh intrapersonal,
20:37
Speaker 1: and interpersonal. But that's, like you said, it's a little
20:40
Speaker 1: too uh broad, is what a lot of critics say.
20:44
Speaker 1: There's always a critic of each of these. It seems
20:46
Speaker 1: like one person comes out with something and people say, well,
20:49
Speaker 1: I think that sounds good, and then another part of
20:50
Speaker 1: the camp says, no, I don't agree at all. Isn't
20:54
Speaker 1: that the way with everything they chook? Pretty much like
20:56
Speaker 1: mountain dew code read is the greatest drink ever. No,
20:59
Speaker 1: it's not gular, Mountain Dews way better. Good point um.
21:04
Speaker 1: And then I guess another hallmark of intelligence, something that
21:07
Speaker 1: can be measured, is geniuses aptitude toward social awkwardness. Yeah,
21:15
Speaker 1: there's a lot of them. Are generally known as quirky,
21:17
Speaker 1: odd characters makeup friends John Nash did. Yeah, absolutely. Einstein
21:24
Speaker 1: was sort of a wacky guy. Yeah, he liked to
21:26
Speaker 1: stick his tongue out, he was zany. Yeah, that people
21:28
Speaker 1: always pointed that picture. So you look how crazy he was.
21:31
Speaker 1: Got anyone else? Well, let's talk about studying that. Yes, Josh,
21:35
Speaker 1: a Purdue uh study perdue you saw four and twenty
21:39
Speaker 1: three students gifted students and suggested that they were more
21:44
Speaker 1: susceptible to being bullied. So they're little mammy panbies, I
21:49
Speaker 1: guess a little bit. Also, there was a study UM
21:52
Speaker 1: out of was it Stanford That it was a twenty
21:55
Speaker 1: year study actually UM that ended in ninety that actually
22:00
Speaker 1: gave UM children aptitude tests and personal adjustment tests and
22:06
Speaker 1: found that there was a negative correlation between i Q
22:10
Speaker 1: and social adjustment. Right, So basically it's it's quantifying what
22:15
Speaker 1: we all already know that if you're a smart kid,
22:18
Speaker 1: you're going to eat mud several times in your life. Yes,
22:21
Speaker 1: I never ate mud. That's why my IQ score was
22:23
Speaker 1: bs uh. Well, one thing that they geniuses have in common,
22:28
Speaker 1: I think we can all agree on that you need
22:30
Speaker 1: to have to be a genius and not just smart.
22:33
Speaker 1: This creative intelligence and high waisted pants. Creative intelligence and
22:39
Speaker 1: high waisted pants. This is where it all comes together
22:41
Speaker 1: to me, right, Yeah, I mean when we talked about
22:43
Speaker 1: this earlier, like you can't. It's not good enough to
22:46
Speaker 1: just be smart. Then you're just a really intelligent person.
22:48
Speaker 1: That leap between intelligence and genius is bridged by creative prowess. Yeah,
22:55
Speaker 1: that's how you break new ground. Right, Why did you
22:57
Speaker 1: point it me? Because promise was a horrible I like that,
23:00
Speaker 1: thanks man. The thing is, though, Josher's is that, uh,
23:04
Speaker 1: this is another thing that you can't quantify and study necessarily,
23:07
Speaker 1: So once again it's hard to kind of pinpoint creativity
23:11
Speaker 1: and imagination. Although they researchers do think that creative people
23:16
Speaker 1: have less latent inhibition, and I completely agree with that, right. Yeah,
23:21
Speaker 1: we've talked about that with the Thinking cap episodes where
23:24
Speaker 1: schizophrenics have low latent inhibition and they take this extra
23:28
Speaker 1: stimuli and their brain constructs solution hallucinations out of it.
23:31
Speaker 1: The idea was that creative geniuses, who who have low
23:36
Speaker 1: latent inhibition take this additional stimuli and use it in
23:39
Speaker 1: novel creative ways. Yeah, that's one way of looking at it.
23:43
Speaker 1: There's also um a quantifiable method or a couple of
23:46
Speaker 1: them to determine how much um creativity a genius has
23:52
Speaker 1: lent to the world. Right, It isn't that article you
23:56
Speaker 1: that time article you sent me. I thought that was
23:58
Speaker 1: kind of lame. Explain but that this is the level
24:02
Speaker 1: that we're at to try to survey a genius. Right, Yeah,
24:05
Speaker 1: what is was this the guy who wrote the book
24:07
Speaker 1: Simmons Simonton. Yeah, he yeh, Dave dean Keith almost said,
24:11
Speaker 1: David Keith, what a great actor. Dean Keith. Simonton wrote
24:16
Speaker 1: a book called a Genius one on one Creators, Leaders, Prodigies,
24:20
Speaker 1: and he came up with a little notion that add
24:24
Speaker 1: up the number of times someone has been in a publication,
24:28
Speaker 1: has been cited in a professional publication in the field,
24:33
Speaker 1: or the number of times their composer's work maybe has
24:36
Speaker 1: been performed or recorded. And I just think that's stupid.
24:39
Speaker 1: I think the I think there's one that's worse, and
24:43
Speaker 1: that's counting encyclopedia references. That's awful, because I think you
24:47
Speaker 1: can be a genius who was undiscovered. You may have
24:52
Speaker 1: like written a thousand great compositions of music that you
24:57
Speaker 1: never show the world. No, then the same things just
25:02
Speaker 1: holding menial jobs. It's that's virtually the same thing as
25:05
Speaker 1: holding that stuff in your head. You have to share
25:07
Speaker 1: it with the world. To be a genius or else
25:09
Speaker 1: you're just some smart schmoke. I don't know if I
25:11
Speaker 1: agree with that. Well, but I don't know if I
25:13
Speaker 1: do either. I think you can still be a genius
25:16
Speaker 1: in and of yourself. You can be a genius in
25:18
Speaker 1: a vacuum, but not considered a genius by the populace
25:22
Speaker 1: who wants to own you, right, you know, I guess
25:25
Speaker 1: that's a difference. The difference I see in the the
25:28
Speaker 1: guy who wrote, or gal maybe who wrote uh several
25:31
Speaker 1: great compositions and that were never discovered, and the guy
25:34
Speaker 1: who just got the menial jobs is he didn't seem
25:36
Speaker 1: to have any creative genius going on. Yeah, he learn
25:41
Speaker 1: he was book learning, book learning. Um. Although if you
25:45
Speaker 1: are trying to come up with a measure of you know,
25:48
Speaker 1: creative genius, then counting Encyclopedia entries does work. I mean,
25:53
Speaker 1: it's a way to go, right, Malcolm Gladwell should talk
25:56
Speaker 1: about him. No, he is of the belief that, along
26:01
Speaker 1: with Galton I think you're talking about with eugenics, that
26:05
Speaker 1: practice is really what leads to genius, hard work and
26:09
Speaker 1: practice and practice and practice, which I don't know about
26:13
Speaker 1: that either. What do you think I told you I'm
26:16
Speaker 1: not talking about Gladwell. Oh really all right? Moving on then?
26:20
Speaker 1: Uh and there was well, fine, forget glad Well. Let's
26:24
Speaker 1: talk about Ericsson Andrews Erickson as a rival. They call
26:27
Speaker 1: him a friendly rival, which I thought was kind of
26:29
Speaker 1: funny of the Simonson guy I was talking about their
26:32
Speaker 1: their um conflicts end in tickle fights, right, It kind
26:37
Speaker 1: of reminded me of the good Will hunting like Robin
26:39
Speaker 1: Williams and that other guy. Right, there were friendly rivals.
26:42
Speaker 1: But he is popular for the tenure rule, which has
26:45
Speaker 1: been around for a long time. But that's a notion
26:47
Speaker 1: that it takes ten years or ten thousand hours of
26:50
Speaker 1: dedicated practice to master a complex endeavor, and Gladwell is
26:55
Speaker 1: a believer in that. So chuck um. There's a guy
26:58
Speaker 1: named David Gallantson too, who's kind of come up with
27:03
Speaker 1: and at least a qualification of creative genius, Right he didn't, Well,
27:09
Speaker 1: doesn't that kind of underscore like where the field of
27:13
Speaker 1: genius or intelligence research is right now that we we've
27:17
Speaker 1: just pooh pooed absolutely every sec it's all over the place. Yeah,
27:21
Speaker 1: but yeah, say what he says, because I want to
27:23
Speaker 1: prove that he says that there's actually now he says
27:25
Speaker 1: there's three kinds. Originally said there's there's two types of innovators.
27:28
Speaker 1: There's conceptual innovators who think in bold, dramatic steps, which
27:35
Speaker 1: Einstein would fall into. And do you know that among
27:38
Speaker 1: very smart people, he's considered kind of a flash in
27:40
Speaker 1: the pan. Yeah, think about it. He did everything that
27:43
Speaker 1: he was going to do by age six. After that
27:45
Speaker 1: he just went around canoeing with Walter math Ou as
27:49
Speaker 1: Walter math Ou same thing. Um. But then there's experimental
27:54
Speaker 1: innovators and they learned through trial and error over This
27:58
Speaker 1: would be the Thomas Edison's of the genius world um.
28:01
Speaker 1: And then everybody started shouting at David Gallerson. Then he
28:05
Speaker 1: said shut up, shut up, and went back to the
28:07
Speaker 1: drawing board and came up with the idea that genius
28:10
Speaker 1: can also be expressed in a continuum over time, throughout
28:14
Speaker 1: a long lifetime of great contribution and work. That's my
28:18
Speaker 1: problem with it. What everybody shouted at him. And he
28:20
Speaker 1: went back and was like can you go? He was like, well,
28:22
Speaker 1: you can either get everything done really early, or you
28:25
Speaker 1: can produce all your great work later in life. And
28:27
Speaker 1: they were like, but what about people do it all
28:28
Speaker 1: their life. He went, well, yeah, you can do that too.
28:31
Speaker 1: It's like so lame. So should we just list out
28:34
Speaker 1: some some geniuses throughout history that people generally consider genius
28:38
Speaker 1: and didn't like this list either, But we don't like
28:40
Speaker 1: anything about this one doing George Washington's number forty five,
28:43
Speaker 1: and here's number one. It starts at number two, and
28:46
Speaker 1: if one's Einstein, I'm gonna literally eat this list. One
28:50
Speaker 1: was Einstein. I didn't copy pastel of them. We have
28:55
Speaker 1: geniuses like Tesla's three, um Da Vinci number two, Isaac Newton,
29:00
Speaker 1: number four, Hawking of course, Michelangelo, Archimedes, Josh is eating
29:05
Speaker 1: his list. Warren Buffett is on there. Not bad. Sure
29:10
Speaker 1: they had to round it out and make it as
29:11
Speaker 1: approachable that all the readers they could Aristotle, Picasso, Neils
29:15
Speaker 1: Or Jefferson, Plato, Churchill, Benjamin Franklin. I think I'd agree
29:19
Speaker 1: with that one. Shakespeare, Sir Francis Drake, Michael Faraday, Chuck Darwin,
29:26
Speaker 1: Renee de Descartes or is it desplaine deplane des plane,
29:33
Speaker 1: Gary Cass casper Off and I think Bobby Fisher was
29:36
Speaker 1: on their both chess champions. I don't know, they're they're
29:39
Speaker 1: considered geniuses. It's all subjective that it is completely subjective.
29:44
Speaker 1: I think we're gonna end this with this observation. Genius
29:49
Speaker 1: is like pornography. It's impossible to fully define, but we
29:53
Speaker 1: know when we see it, right, Chuck, who who was that? Uh?
29:56
Speaker 1: Suitor Bruce Suitor, Bruce Jenner. If you want to learn
30:02
Speaker 1: more about genius, I think there's more than just this article.
30:05
Speaker 1: There's a bunch of good genius articles on the site
30:08
Speaker 1: at how stuffworks dot com. And there's also a bunch
30:10
Speaker 1: of articles on the people that we've mentioned, because we're
30:13
Speaker 1: doing a whole new series on painters. Right, yeah, we
30:15
Speaker 1: are at Cosso and Van Gogh. You can type it
30:19
Speaker 1: in the handy search bar. Of course, since I said that,
30:22
Speaker 1: it means it's time for listener and mail Chuck first
30:28
Speaker 1: before we do anything. Before anything, yes, let's uh, we
30:33
Speaker 1: get we should probably plug our new Facebook page. We
30:36
Speaker 1: were on Facebook for a while. This is nothing new
30:38
Speaker 1: to us, but we streamlined our stuff. We had a
30:42
Speaker 1: fan page and a regular page and it was also strange,
30:46
Speaker 1: so we consolidated and we're actually active on Facebook now.
30:50
Speaker 1: Yes we are, um, so, yes we are. We have
30:54
Speaker 1: a our brand new Facebook page is stuff you should know.
30:58
Speaker 1: Just type that into the handy search part Facebook or
31:02
Speaker 1: I think it's Facebook dot com slash stuff you should know.
31:04
Speaker 1: Maybe I'm not positive. Fine, And also, buddy, we're tweeting.
31:09
Speaker 1: You are tweeting, tweeted twice. Yeah, and your tweeting, I know,
31:13
Speaker 1: I feel like a modern child. All right. If you
31:16
Speaker 1: want to follow us on Twitter, we have our Twitter
31:19
Speaker 1: name as s y s K podcast right, yeah, so
31:23
Speaker 1: that would be at and the how they do it. Yeah,
31:25
Speaker 1: look at you guys, y ESK podcast and we'll be
31:28
Speaker 1: saying funny things as well as uh sending out links
31:31
Speaker 1: to cool stuff. And you know we're active now, that
31:34
Speaker 1: is true. So check us out, will you yes on
31:37
Speaker 1: on the show? Yes? All right, Josh, listener mail. For
31:40
Speaker 1: goodness sakes, listener mail, I'm gonna read a couple of
31:43
Speaker 1: quickies here from a young boy named Sam and from
31:47
Speaker 1: a trucker name and net. And it took us to task.
31:52
Speaker 1: Oh no, over what I will read it first? And
31:55
Speaker 1: that says u Hi chucking Josh. I am a oh
32:00
Speaker 1: for the road truck driver and love your podcast over
32:03
Speaker 1: the road. That's what she says. I would love for
32:05
Speaker 1: you guys to come along with me into the twenty
32:08
Speaker 1: one century. Regarding truck drivers, I've been driving for almost
32:11
Speaker 1: thirteen years, and guess what, I'm a woman. In fact,
32:15
Speaker 1: I have two sons. Y'all's age when you talk about
32:19
Speaker 1: truck drivers is in the McDonald's podcast. You always talk
32:21
Speaker 1: about big, burly guys. Well, I may be big and
32:24
Speaker 1: probably more surly than Burley, but I'm definitely not a guy.
32:28
Speaker 1: Don't forget us, lady drivers, love love love the show,
32:31
Speaker 1: so and how could we forget? I mean large Marge
32:34
Speaker 1: was a huge factor. Yeah, J's big adventure and that
32:37
Speaker 1: was a net. That was a net, and I told
32:39
Speaker 1: her that I would read this as our penance a net.
32:42
Speaker 1: I'm making the blow your horn signed for the tractor trailer.
32:45
Speaker 1: So if you're hearing this right now to your horn, awesome.
32:48
Speaker 1: I hope she didn't just cause an accident. This is
32:51
Speaker 1: from Sam, and Sam is just another a cute little kid,
32:53
Speaker 1: and I like these. I saw that that's a caps. Yeah, Hi,
32:57
Speaker 1: Chuck and Josh. I'm Sam blank be because I'm using
33:00
Speaker 1: your last name substitute. I'm eleven years old. You guys
33:03
Speaker 1: helped me get through many boring tasks like dog poop
33:06
Speaker 1: pick up my least favorite chore. I think it's mine too.
33:09
Speaker 1: Actually that in the cat box I just stopped as
33:12
Speaker 1: an adult, I don't pick up. You just don't go
33:15
Speaker 1: into the yard. I just watch where I'm walking in
33:18
Speaker 1: the yard. Okay. I think the funniest podcast was the
33:21
Speaker 1: Twinkie podcast. You guys make me laugh in my bed
33:24
Speaker 1: when I listen. Also in the supermarket, so he listens
33:28
Speaker 1: when he goes to sleep and when he's grocery shopping,
33:30
Speaker 1: or I guess when his mom's grocery shopping, or dad
33:34
Speaker 1: or two dad's. I don't know. Kids today are pretty independent. Yeah,
33:37
Speaker 1: you're right. I think you guys are the funniest people
33:40
Speaker 1: in the world. I have a few suggestions, like what
33:45
Speaker 1: dues cat Got your Tongue mean? And other phrases means
33:51
Speaker 1: improper English? I do. Also, Riot Control really cracked me up.
33:55
Speaker 1: Does an eleven year old kid know what riot control is?
33:58
Speaker 1: And legos? So he wants to know about I Got
34:00
Speaker 1: your Tongue? Legos and riot control and trading cards and football?
34:05
Speaker 1: So could you please please read my shout out on
34:07
Speaker 1: the air, And here's my shout out, and this is
34:09
Speaker 1: an all caps. I told you mom, I would get
34:12
Speaker 1: my email read on air. Ha ha ha ha ha ha.
34:17
Speaker 1: So that's from Sam w And he said, I thought
34:19
Speaker 1: Josh looked like Chuck and Chuck looked like Josh, but
34:21
Speaker 1: that changed when I saw your pictures on the site. Yeah,
34:25
Speaker 1: we get that a lot. Yeah, we're well, not that
34:27
Speaker 1: I look like you and you look like me, but
34:29
Speaker 1: that we look like different people. Okay, that's always a case.
34:31
Speaker 1: With the voice. I'm much uglier than you would think.
34:34
Speaker 1: That is not true. You are a lovely, handsome man.
34:37
Speaker 1: Thank you all right? Well, thanks Sam, keep on shopping
34:40
Speaker 1: and the net keep on trucking. If you have an
34:43
Speaker 1: interesting email that you want to roll the dice and
34:45
Speaker 1: see if we'll read it on the air. Cost you
34:47
Speaker 1: nothing in this digital age, you can send us an
34:50
Speaker 1: electronic mail. Just address it to stuff podcast at how
34:56
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. M For more on this and
35:02
Speaker 1: thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com.
35:06
Speaker 1: Want more how stuff works, check out our blogs on
35:09
Speaker 1: the how stuff works dot com home page. Brought to
35:14
Speaker 1: you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready,
35:17
Speaker 1: are you