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on becoming a genius

I don't know if this has been said yet, but IQ is the measure of yuor ability to learn, not how smart you are. Genious describes somebody who is already smart, not somebody who has a better ability to become smart.
 
There are very few posts that could be accurately answered by a song's lyrics, but I believe that this is one of those few posts.

My IQ by Ani Difranco
when I was four years old they tried to test my I.Q.
they showed me a picture of 3 oranges and a pear
they said, which one is different?
and does not belong they taught me different is wrong
but when I was 13 years old I woke up one morning
thighs covered in blood like a war
like a warning that I live in a breakable takeable body
an ever-increasingly valuable body that a woman had come in the night to replace me deface me see,
my body is borrowed yeah, I got it on loan
for the time in between my mom and some maggots
I don't need anyone to hold me I can hold my own
I got highways for stretchmarks see where I've grown
I sing sometimes like my life is at stake
'cause you're only as loud as the noises you make
I'm learning to laugh as hard as I can listen
'cause silence is violence in women and poor people
if more people were screaming then I could relax
but a good brain ain't diddley if you don't have the facts
we live in a breakable takeable world
an ever available possible world
and we can make music like we can make do
genius is in a back beat backseat to nothing if you're dancing
especially something stupid like I.Q.
for every lie I unlearn I learn something new
I sing sometimes for the war that I fight
'cause every tool is a weapon - if you hold it right.
 
Everyone has the potential for high intelligence.

This, most certainly, is not true. For reasons from the extreme (chromosomal abnormalities) to the mundane, many people cannot excel simply due to heredity.

Despite any factors of environment, some people simply do not have the capacity to be highly intelligent. They just aren't built that way.

It's like saying everybody has the potential to be a world-class bodybuilder. It just isn't so. Like bodies, brains are born with characteristics inherited. That 5'4", 110 pound 30 year old may never be able to weight train with any success - but he might have learned to play chess at the age of 4.

Environment will take you farther, if you have the potential to make the trip. But had Einstein not lacked the potential at formation, no amount of environmental factors would have led him to the theory of relativity.
 
But had Einstein not lacked the potential at formation, no amount of environmental factors would have led him to the theory of relativity.

He didn't, though. In fact he had a pretty serious learning disability: dyslexia. If anything, that supports the theory that anyone can "become" a genius with enough application.
 
(Einstein) didn't, though. In fact he had a pretty serious learning disability: dyslexia.

Myth. An oft-quoted one, to be sure - all over the web you'll find that claim. But it just isn't so.

Some details here: http://www.audiblox2000.com/dyslexia_dyslexic/dyslexia005.htm

Regardless, dyslexia is not a disability related either to intelligence or to capacity - it only affects one form of learning.

When other forms of learning are used, such as vocal instruction, dyslexics, more often then not, learn just fine.

Interesting addendum: http://www.fathom.com/feature/122174 <- Debunking the "Einstein as a poor student or delayed developer" myth.
 
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Petersko said:


It's like saying everybody has the potential to be a world-class bodybuilder. It just isn't so. Like bodies, brains are born with characteristics inherited. That 5'4", 110 pound 30 year old may never be able to weight train with any success - but he might have learned to play chess at the age of 4.


There is very big different between intellect and being a world-class body builder. You can't truly change the body that you were born with. The mind is a different game.
 
You can't truly change the body that you were born with. The mind is a different game.

Not according to most recent research. The trend seems to be that, just like your body, environmental factors and sheer determination can allow you to achieve a certain genetic "maximum" of intelligence. Or you can languish forever at a lower level just by accepting the status quo.

But, just like in bodybuilding, genetics often decrees that a particular person will never, under any circumstances, achieve brilliance. The maximum they can work to is another man's "slow day".

A good article can be found here: http://www.hsu.edu/faculty/langlet/lectures/intelligence/heredity_IQ.htm

It's a chart of correlation of IQ across environmental factors.

0 would be no correlation at all, 1 would be identical IQ's.

Unrelated persons, reared apart - 0
Unrelated persons, reared together - .25
Foster parent and child - .20
Parent and child living together - .41
Siblings reared apart - .24
Siblings reared together - .45
Fraternal twins, opposite sex - .49
Fraternal twins, same sex - .55
Identical twins, reared apart - .76
Identical twins, reared together - .88

Most interesting is the fact that the IQ correlation between identical twins reared apart is so strong. It suggests that genetics affects IQ quite strongly.
 
IMO, Einstein was hardly a genious. To me the word genious decsribes soembody who knows about many things. Einstein knew science and thats about it. He had one very important discovery and was a genious of his field, but not an all around genious. Einstein failed many other subjects in school.
 
Einstein knew science and thats about it.

A man who knows a lot of things "pretty good" is easy to find. Throw a stick. You'll hit one.

Einstein didn't just "know science." He did something absolutely unprecedented before or since. He stayed at the very edge of physics for 20 years and completely reshaped the entire field against huge outcry.

This article sums it up nicely: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/einstein/genius/index.html

Nobody is a genius because they can accumulate knowledge. Genius's don't simply spout knowledge - they apply it, expand it, and reshape it.

Einstein built a structure of knowledge, and an understanding of the universe that has stood ever since, with only minor changes. That knowledge didn't exist before him. THAT'S genius.
 
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Yup, I can think of 5 very major (eg Nobel-worthy) discoveries Einstein made off the top of my head. He failed stuff in school for the same reason he failed math -- he did his own thing and not theirs.
 
I have finally had the time needed to sit down and reply to this. I have been interested in IQ testing and proving their findings wrong for years.My sons were probably part of that study on twins . One day (1995) i get a phone call from the school where they attended first grade asking me to discuss my sons. For a few days waiting for this appointment i am sick because i didnt know what they wanted. When i got there i was met by both of their teachers plus the school psychologist and who only knows who else- very intimadating. They sit me down and proceed to tell me that they performed two different IQ test at different times to my children.

They were doing a study on twins IQs and tested all the twins in public schools in the county. I am strongly opposed to any kind of standardized testing and when i asked them how they could do this without my permission i was told that if your child is in public school they have the right to do whatever testing they want. You give them that right by giving your child to the school to raise. But that's another story. proceed, carry on.They tell me how one test was the WISC which they usually use on children and the other test was the SBIV. They did two different test because my sons are identical twins and one scored upper 90s on the first one and his brother scored 134. This was unbelievable to them because apparently identical twins always score close to each other. So they gave them a second test and that one still showed one son at high 90s (98 i think it was the second time) and his brother scored a little lower with around 129 or 130. They then told me that if a child was having a bad day then the test scores could go down from that alone.
Knowing that beforehand i would of also objected over that as their father and i were going through a divorce at the time. Had they did poorly from it they would of had another label put on them. Plus, each test was over two hours long.

Well, now they wanted to go on about their intelligence scores and tell me that the son with the "genius" IQ needed speech therapy. Twins are very hard to communicate with when they are younger. They will always turn their attention torwards each other. When they were babies they couldnt sleep in their own cribs intill they were almost 6 months because of the relationship they formed in the womb. They would cry all night intill we would place them again next to each other. Because of this special relationship twintalk, or Idioglossia as it is scientifically called can occur. Twins have the ability to make their own language that is only recognizable by them. Here's a definition:"twin language is actually one twin modeling the immature or disordered speech pattern of their co-twin, which results in the incorrect use of speech sounds and grammar by both twins." . You can try to prevent this from happening through reading lots of books at an early age,alot of interaction with well speaking adults and other children, and frequent seperation. You could probably say lack of frequent seperation was the problem. My husband and i believed ,and i still do, that when being seperated from your twin is very stressing for you both and they are both sick and wont eat and asking for the other one, then, yes, minimal seperation then for them. We felt they were children and it is more traumatizing in the long run to be seperated against their will then it would of been to have possible speech classes later. The problem was that my "average" twin did not qualify for speech classes because he didnt display any speech empediments on a speech test he was given. But yet his brother did. I thought they always sounded exactly the same and was kind of upset one should be offered speech and not the other one. Makes me suspicious that they were going to do an experiment on that too.

The school tells me how they will be "monitoring" my children through their academic public school life because they are highly intrested in following them because of the large differences in scores, the speech pattern of my "genius" twin( yes, they referred to them as the average twin and the genius twin.), and the fact the were identical. (me yanks children from schools after this year for many reasons, this one).

I never shared their test results with them. I was strongly against this label but decided through the years i would watch and monitor them myself.

( a little background. the men in my family and their fathers family are all engineers. One of my great great grandfathers was Horace Mann, who was a mathmatical genius and founder of public education system in America and on my ex-husbands side, his grandfather was the inventor of standard nuts and bolts.)

Both of them are very smart in the science and math areas. They are both inventors and can figure out how things work like engines & motors of things. When they were about 8 they made this small remote airboat from a battery, chicken wire, a switch, and a milk carton. Now they are making hot air balloons and designing video games. The one with the higher IQ takes longer to do his work. Even though he usually gets them all right when he's through. Sometimes his brother who flies through his stuff and insist he has checked it misses a few. But he still finishes by an hour at least and that makes his brother ticked. Of coarse, he doesnt know he tested higher on those IQ test. He also has a harder time learning his spelling words.

The one with the higher IQ dives into things first and is the leader of the two outside of their schoolwork. He takes unnecessary risk on skates, bikes, ect that have resulted in 1 broken arm, three sets of stiches, and a broke hand all on different occasions in his 13+ years. His brother is much more cautious and thinks things over outside of schoolwork. The switch of roles in these two places (academically/ outside of that) is one that has always been consistant.

What my own observations have shown me about the one with the lower IQ is that i think he has the potential to score just as high as his brother but he doesnt care to take the full amount of time to throughly examine a situation on paper (much like me). I think that he is more confidant then his higher IQ brother and goes with his first instinct just assuming he is probably right, but if he gets it wrong- oh, well he learns something then. If administartors of the test knew the people they were testing and knew their learning patterns and behavior patterns and look for ways to measure IQ outside of paper too i think that more accurate results of intelligence could be measured. For example i don't think it was very genius like of my son to think he could jump a ramp and over two bicycles and his brother laying down like Evil Kenevil. His average IQ identical twin brother would not have done that.

As a side note the one who took speech therapy talks slower and more deliberate as if he is consiously watching how he is forming the words. His non speech class brother speaks effortlessly and clearly. They have one word left which they use still from their twin talk days. That word is a word they use that represents the two of them exclusivly. That word sounds something to me like "myan". Example, "mom says myan has to make myans beds".Or, "myan has to come inside now", or even "does myan want to come to the store"," meaning do you want to go to the store together? Also they have long outgrown the seperation anxiety even though they love being a twin and our each others best friends. They like to have mutual friends outside of each other.
 
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You've made a valid point, beanrgrl. Testing can be invalidated by a number of factors including just how motivated or interested the student is.

Testing is far from perfect. Statistically, it's valid. In individual cases, though, it can be suspect. What you can say, however, is that in most cases people who score well on those tests are usually people considered "bright" by those around them.

As the chart linked to above shows, the correlation is never perfect. Even among twins reared together the statistical average correlation is only .88 - which means other factors figure heavily.

What is interesting is that although the figures are wider than people might expect, they still fall within 20 points on either side of having been born with identical potentials at birth.

Speech disorders aren't linked to IQ in any case. Like dyslexia, they don't show problems in learning potential or brilliance.
 
(Einstein) didn't, though. In fact he had a pretty serious learning disability: dyslexia.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Myth. An oft-quoted one, to be sure - all over the web you'll find that claim. But it just isn't so.

I stand corrected. That's funny, though. The community college I attended has a huge painted mural dedicated to all the famous achievers (athletes, scholars, etc.) who had disabilities of some sort. There was a huge painting of Einstein in one corner with the phrase "Dyslexia Is Relative" painted above his head.

But as I mentioned, it was a community college. =D

EDIT: Beanergrrl, your post just got me thinking of all the experiments the public school system put my unwitting ass through. It was a very sobering thought.
 
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There was a huge painting of Einstein in one corner with the phrase "Dyslexia Is Relative" painted above his head.

Interestingly enough, this myth actually has a good side. I mean, what better way to abolish the notion that dyslexia somehow reflects negatively on brilliance than to suggest one of the most brilliant men in history was dyslexic?

Regardless, you'll hear that myth for the next couple decades. It's become a legend on its own. Like repeating the story of how Tommy Hilfiger badmouthed african americans on the Oprah show, sometimes the story is too good to die - even when it's fabricated.
 
When they called me in to discuss these results they also took from me their length of gestation (full term-9 full months) because most twins are born prematurley. Their birthweights, and their differences in time of birth. The older and one with higher IQ was 7'6 & his brother was 7'4 and they are a half hour apart. The younger born 3 minutes till midnight it was up to me if i wanted them to have different birthdays. I said 'no' so they sucked him out.They asked me specific details about my pregancy and birth. Anyways... they asked alot of invasive questions including about what i knew about my ex-husbands genology. WTF?? I felt so intruded on. They had these books on my children.

I felt very overwhelmed. Plus ,not only were they my first children but i was still new at this whole dealing with teachers and principal thing on this level. They then asked me if i would sign papers to place the one with the higher IQ in a gifted program. I almost started crying right there. I felt i had no control over my children and this was not what i wanted for them. I am very non competitive and don't even encourage my children to play competitive games or sports . I'm also very into not pressuring children and i spent my first few years in H.S. in AP classes intill i almost had a nervous breakdown and begged my parents to make them take me out of them. Which was quite hard for my parents to do i might add as the school refused intill i made an F (deliberlatly, i was through trying so hard). heh. When you are in special classes of any kind the school gets (on min) $1500 extra per student. So of coarse they are going to test every child for everything to try to get them into any programs they can. Now my sons were about to become part of some experiment to them (i felt). Fortunatly, i asked them if i didnt sign the papers then they couldnt put him in a gifted class and they said "right, we need your permission". So i said i wasnt going to sign them because i thought that it was unnecessary and i wanted my son to have a low pressure childhood and this wasnt what i had in mind for him. I told him i didnt feel school could take credit for him anyway and everything he has learned he has learned at home.

If you can see now the circumstances surrounding these test then you should see why i decided to monitor my children myself. But for me i was determined to show that my younger twin was just as smart and has just as much potential as is brother. It really made me mad that the school cited out that my one son could be so much more then his brother and they were interested in observing them. Just typing this after all these years still makes me mad knowing had i went along with them like a sheep my younger twin would of had a label put on him that he wasnt as bright as his identical twin and i think that the stigma that could of came from that could have been very painful for him.

What i have learned i feel is that like i said in my first post, if you examine all aspects of the person you would see that there should be many things held accountable for someones IQ. My younger lower IQ testing son has proven in many ways to be just as smart as his brother. Even smarter in other areas such as not taking risk physically. If he doesnt care to sit there for a few extra minutes to take the time to really figure it out if he has a hunch his first insticts right, is this a bad thing that should lower ones IQ if when it comes to making real life decisions logically he makes smarter & better ones then his brother? Does not judgment play into intelligence?
You also have to take count for learning styles here. Not everyone can see something on paper and want to figure it out. Some people learn kinetically. They can figure out anything with their hands whereas someone who just scored 140 IQ on a paper test might not have a clue as to know what to do with the puzzle they have been given. They might be able to sit down and figure it out after awhile, but they might not have the motivation to want to accuratly do that.

I don't feel standardized testing is fair and it just captures a small part of ones intelligence.

Petersko- i believe in my son's first test the difference was more then 20 points. Slightly over. But what i point out again was they tested them at a time when their father was moving out of their house. This had to be alot for them to deal with and it makes me mad that the testers did'nt take these considerations into concern when they tested them unfairly and against my preferences. But in the same breath they tell me my one sons could of slipped a few points the second time because "perhaps he was having a bad day".
 
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I've been tested (with a fairly high IQ), though I'm convinced IQ scores mainly just measure ones ability to do IQ tests. :)
Despite being labelled with a high number, some subjects in school I did extremely well, while others I fared very poorly.

From within the framework of the eight circuit model of consciousness (which I find to be a good model), put forward by Timothy Leary and Robert Anton Wilson among others, high IQ's are associated with a well developed 'Time-Binding Semantic Circuit' This is only one form of intelligence, and is only one of eight aspects that can be developed according to the theory.
Furthermore, one very highly developed circuit is often associated with under-development in others. For example, I think I grew up with an underdeveloped emotional intelligence, and this caused some big problems for me growing up. Only in recent years have I begun to recognize this and develop that part of myself. In working to a balance, I have found myself to be much more productive and creative in all aspects of life. There is a huge bias in western society towards 'Time-Binding Semantic Circuit' development, and I think this could be a big factor in the high rates of depression and mental illness in our societies. We are ignoring a larger part of ourselves.
IMO, what are usually referred to as 'realist' philosophies are the result of Semantic intelligence being mistaken for the whole of intelligence. One only has to read the history books to see the disastrous effects of this way of thinking.

/rant
 
Butterfly said:
^^^
As someone who was in a "gifted" program for grades 4 -12, I don't think that IQ is necessarily a predictor of the kind of marks someone will get. While all the students in the program allegedly had higher than average IQ (students were admitted to the program based on a mandatory board wide intelligence test in grade 3), many of my classmates (myself included at times) did not do concomitantly well marks-wise.

Anyway, this having been said I think the questions you raise are important. Terms like "intelligence" and "genius" are subjective categories. Moreover, I believe they are culturally constructed which makes them inherently problematic.

I agree with this statement. As a child I went through that whole "gifted" or "accelerated" thing. Johns Hopkins does a nationwide talent search to by administering the SAT to middle school kids in the top 10% of CTBS testing (a standardized test) then taking the top 5% of scorers of that and inviting them (us) to a summer program where they basically see how fast people can learn advanced material. At the time I thought it was a summer camp for nerds (and it was) but now I realize it was research about the nature of "genius" and the breaking point of intelligence. A lot of the kids that went there with me were completely out of their minds. I knew a kid who couldn't tie his shoes but was doing advanced theoretical mathematics as a middle schooler that I can't even think about doing today as a college student. That's not a joke, either. He was a "genius" in one sense but a retard in another, so I think these terms are both very fluid and specific to individual areas.

What I've come to realize now is that genius as it is traditionally understood is unusual proficiency in one area at the expense of others (usually social as most geniuses have a hard time relating to "normal" people, and even each other).

I personally do pretty damn good in school, but not spectacular. A lot of people who are not as intelligent as myself (I don't want to sound like an asshole here, but I don't know how else to put this) do a lot better in school because they work a lot harder. Good grades do not equal intelligence, as Einstein failed math in school. A lot of intelligence is genetically determined, but beyond that you must factor in familial environment, school environment, social environment (is it cool to be smart where you are, cause God knows its not where I am), opportunities, chance to demonstrate ability, area of ability (is it "useful" as a career or is it abstract like philosophy), and many other factors.

Looking back over what I've wrote I realize what a mess all these confounding variables are, which makes you wonder how accurate IQ tests really are, or even if they are actually testing intelligence or just a couple specific abilities... ?
 
Good grades do not equal intelligence, as Einstein failed math in school.

Einstein did not fail math in school. He failed one entrance exam to the Polytechnic Institute in Zurich.

Article from the Cambridge University Press:
There is a persisting although wildly inaccurate claim that Einstein was a bad pupil who failed to flourish at the Munich high school, or Gymnasium, which he attended from the age of nine and a half. In fact this assertion was firmly refuted as early as 1929, at which time the school's then principal searched the old records and was able to confirm that all the evidence demonstrated that Einstein had actually been a very good student. There had been no complaints about him and, no marks that were other than good. The written evidence of Einstein's performance also proved that the newspaper reports, in which Einstein was said to have been an especially poor student of languages, were totally unfounded.

Text at: http://www.fathom.com/feature/122174
 
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