Genius: It's Not For Everyone
Many people associate the Nobel Prizes--identified by one science magazine as "the big kahuna of genius awards--with public recognition and financial reward for achievement reached as a result of genius. It doesn't necessarily work that way.
For example, William Shockley, winner of the Nobel Prize for physics in 1958 for inventing the transistor, was refused admission to a study of genius as a child because his IQ (Intelligence Quotient) was not deemed to be high enough.
In 1968 Luis Alvarez won the Nobel for his work on elementary particles. He had been excluded from the same study as Shockley. As kids, they must have lacked something. Maybe it wasn't genius they lacked, but the ability to write tests and score high marks.
The genius study began in 1928 when Stanford University prof Louis Terman--a strong supporter of IQ tests--wanted to find out how many geniuses were around. Terman defined genius as anyone who could score 140 or higher on standard IQ tests of the day.
None of the children in the study--known as "Termites"--has ever won a Nobel Prize.
Not that they were all failures in life. Termite Jess Oppenheimer invented the TelePrompTer and Termite Norris Bradbury once led the Los Alamos National Laboratory.
October is the month when the year's Nobel winners are announced. If you haven't been contacted, you likely didn't win this time around. Can you find out if you were at least nominated? Yes, but you'll have to wait for 50 years. That's how long the Nobel Committee keeps its lists of nominees secret.
Many outstanding geniuses of the 19th and 20th centuries--at least the male ones--gained reputations as guys who liked to bed the ladies. They include Richard Feynman, Albert Einstein and Bertrand Russell. (Sorry if that burst your bubble about Albert. Apart from a scampish attitude, he had a smile and grin that melted many a heart. Look how popular his image is even today.)
How could geniuses, notoriously considered as geeks, become ladies men? One theory suggests that geniuses--at least the ones who become well known--have an inherent tendency toward risk taking. Einstein once said that if a new idea isn't considered absurd at first, it will go nowhere. It takes chutzpah to make it successful and widely accepted. Risk taking is considered to be linked to higher than normal levels of testosterone.
William Shockley and eugenicist Robert Klark Graham set up the Repository for Germinal Choice, in Southern California, in 1981. That was essentially a sperm bank for Nobel winners and well known geniuses. Women could buy a fair chance at having a child with a high IQ through artificial insemination.
Unfortunately, Graham died in 1997 and the sperm bank for geniuses closed in 1999 after a huge amount of negative publicity.
Having a high IQ is no guarantee of financial security in life. Geniuses are notoriously poor managers of money, likely because their focus in life is elsewhere. A study at the Ohio State University Center for Human Resource Research showed that those with average and lower than average IQs were as good at saving their money as bright people.
Einstein is reputed to have lost most of his Nobel money on bad investments.
You don't usually find geniuses as CEOs either. Many are socially inept, not great people managers.
Is real genius in fact a form of mental imbalance, even a disorder? Austrian pediatrician Hans Asperger identified a form of autism--known today as Asperger's syndrome--where a person engages in intense absorption with a very narrow range of special interests. Google "savant syndrome" to find some of them. Think A Beautiful Mind.
Asperger believed that for outstanding "success in science and art, a dash of autism is essential." He believed there is a clear link between mathematical and scientific genius and the form of autism named after him.
Talk about absent-minded geniuses, the term was almost invented for Norbert Weiner. The inventor of the field of cybernetics was the poster child for absent-mindedness.
He once forgot that he had driven his car to a conference and took the bus home. Finding his car missing from his driveway, he reported it stolen to the police. Let that scenario play itself out in your head.
Sometimes genius doesn't even help toward success in the working world. In the 1990s, Bell Labs found that its most productive and valued electrical engineers were not the geniuses it employed. The best were those who had good rapport with their coworkers, were able to empathize, were cooperative, persuasive and had the ability to build consensus.
How intelligent are our nearest DNA relatives? In 2007, Kyoto University conducted three memory-based intelligence tests using chimpanzees and college students. Take a moment now to picture that.
Ready? The top scoring chimp beat out all the students in the first test, tied with a few in the second and came out on top again in the third. You just knew it had to end that way, didn't you?
But are chimps the smartest animals? Sadly we can't pit them against Alex, a gray parrot that died last year at age 31. Alex was widely believed to be the smartest bird ever. He could identify 50 objects, seven colours and shapes and quantities of up to six.
If that sounds lame, remember that it was people who designed the tests. How would you stand up in an intelligence test designed by a parrot or a chimp? Think it couldn't happen? That's because you don't have the ability or skills to think on their level. Most animals are much smarter than we give them credit for. We just think they're not as bright as us because we design the tests.
Most of us don't have a clue about how to communicate with animals. Our pets can usually read our moods and attitudes based on our behaviour easier than we can read theirs.
Getting back to genius and intelligence, you may be able to boost your own intelligence. Australian scientists at the University of Sydney and Macquarie University claim that intelligence can be raised, at least in the short term, by taking daily doses of 5 mg of creatine. Creatine is a compound found in muscle tissue.
In any event, your intelligence can drop if you don't use it. Like any other kind of body function such as muscles and nerves, it's use it or lose it with intelligence. It's not like money in the bank. Keep your brain well exercised or you will lose what you have now.
Senility is a preventable disease. Getting old is inevitable, getting stupid is not.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to grow children who are well balanced socially, emotionally and intellectually as well as physically.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
[Primary source: Discover, October 2008]
Showing posts with label Nobel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nobel. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Saturday, March 10, 2007
Why Intelligent People Tend To Be Unhappy
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
- Ernest Hemingway, author and journalist, Nobel laureate (1899-1961)
Hemingway, who took his own life in 1961, knew his share of both intelligent people and of unhappiness. He lived through two world wars, the Great Depression, four wives and an unknown number of failed romantic relationships, none of which would help him to develop happiness if he knew how.
As Hemingway's quote was based on his life experience, I will base the following speculation on both my personal and my professional experience as a sociologist. Not enough study exists to quote on this subject.
Western society is not set up to nurture intelligent children and adults, the way it dotes over athletes and sports figures, especially the outstanding ones. While we have the odd notable personality such as Albert Einstein, we also have many extremely intelligent people working in occupations that are considered among the lowliest, as may be attested by a review of the membership lists of Mensa (the club for the top two percent on intelligence scales).
Education systems in countries whose primary interest is in wealth accumulation encourage heroes in movies, war and sports, but not in intellectual development. Super intelligent people manage, but few reach the top of the business or social ladder.
Children develop along four streams: intellectual, physical, emotional (psychological) and social.
In classrooms, the smartest kids tend to be left out of more activities by other children than they are included in. They are "odd," they are the geeks, they are social outsiders. In other words, they do not develop socially as well as they may develop intellectually or even physically where opportunities may exist for more progress.
Their emotional development, characterized by their ability to cope with risky or stressful situations, especially over long periods of time, also lags behind that of the average person.
Adults tend to believe that intelligent kids can deal with anything because they are intellectually superior. This inevitably includes situations where the intelligent kids have neither knowledge nor skills to support their experience. They go through the tough times alone. Adults don't understand that they need help and other kids don't want to associate with kids the social leaders say are outsiders.
As a result we have many highly intelligent people whose social development progresses much slower than that of most people and they have trouble coping with the stressors of life that present themselves to everyone. It should come as no surprise that the vast majority of prison inmates are socially and emotionally underdeveloped or maldeveloped and a larger than average percentage of them are more intelligent than the norm.
Western society provides the ideal incubator for social misfits and those with emotional coping problems. When it comes to happiness, people who are socially inept and who have trouble coping emotionally with the exigencies of life would not be among those you should expect to be happy.
This may be changing in the 21st century as the geeks gain recognition as people with great potential, especially as people who might make their fortune in the world of high technology. Geeks may be more socially accepted than in the past, but unless they receive more assistance with their social and emotional development, most are destined to be unhappy as they mature in the world of adults.
People with high intelligence, be they children or adults, still rank as social outsiders in most situations, including their skills to be good mates and parents.
Moreover, they tend to see more of the tragedy in the communites and countries they live in, and in the world, than the average person whose primary source of news and information is comedy shows on television. Tragedy is easier to find than compassion, even though compassion likely exists in greater proportion in most communities.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to make the difficult problems easier to understand so someone can change the system.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
- Ernest Hemingway, author and journalist, Nobel laureate (1899-1961)
Hemingway, who took his own life in 1961, knew his share of both intelligent people and of unhappiness. He lived through two world wars, the Great Depression, four wives and an unknown number of failed romantic relationships, none of which would help him to develop happiness if he knew how.
As Hemingway's quote was based on his life experience, I will base the following speculation on both my personal and my professional experience as a sociologist. Not enough study exists to quote on this subject.
Western society is not set up to nurture intelligent children and adults, the way it dotes over athletes and sports figures, especially the outstanding ones. While we have the odd notable personality such as Albert Einstein, we also have many extremely intelligent people working in occupations that are considered among the lowliest, as may be attested by a review of the membership lists of Mensa (the club for the top two percent on intelligence scales).
Education systems in countries whose primary interest is in wealth accumulation encourage heroes in movies, war and sports, but not in intellectual development. Super intelligent people manage, but few reach the top of the business or social ladder.
Children develop along four streams: intellectual, physical, emotional (psychological) and social.
In classrooms, the smartest kids tend to be left out of more activities by other children than they are included in. They are "odd," they are the geeks, they are social outsiders. In other words, they do not develop socially as well as they may develop intellectually or even physically where opportunities may exist for more progress.
Their emotional development, characterized by their ability to cope with risky or stressful situations, especially over long periods of time, also lags behind that of the average person.
Adults tend to believe that intelligent kids can deal with anything because they are intellectually superior. This inevitably includes situations where the intelligent kids have neither knowledge nor skills to support their experience. They go through the tough times alone. Adults don't understand that they need help and other kids don't want to associate with kids the social leaders say are outsiders.
As a result we have many highly intelligent people whose social development progresses much slower than that of most people and they have trouble coping with the stressors of life that present themselves to everyone. It should come as no surprise that the vast majority of prison inmates are socially and emotionally underdeveloped or maldeveloped and a larger than average percentage of them are more intelligent than the norm.
Western society provides the ideal incubator for social misfits and those with emotional coping problems. When it comes to happiness, people who are socially inept and who have trouble coping emotionally with the exigencies of life would not be among those you should expect to be happy.
This may be changing in the 21st century as the geeks gain recognition as people with great potential, especially as people who might make their fortune in the world of high technology. Geeks may be more socially accepted than in the past, but unless they receive more assistance with their social and emotional development, most are destined to be unhappy as they mature in the world of adults.
People with high intelligence, be they children or adults, still rank as social outsiders in most situations, including their skills to be good mates and parents.
Moreover, they tend to see more of the tragedy in the communites and countries they live in, and in the world, than the average person whose primary source of news and information is comedy shows on television. Tragedy is easier to find than compassion, even though compassion likely exists in greater proportion in most communities.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to make the difficult problems easier to understand so someone can change the system.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Friday, January 12, 2007
One Solution for Our Biggest Problem
"Discovery consists in seeing what everyone else has seen and thinking what no one else has thought."
- Albert Szent-Györgyi, winner of the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1937
I did.
As a teacher I wondered why kids who were such vibrant and interesting little people in grade school a few short years later had so many personal problems, many of which turned into academic, health, psychological and legal problems.
As parent of a teenaged daughter I wondered why my child felt she needed to dress somewhat like a hooker when she reached her mid-teens in order to attract boys.
I wondered why so many adults turned to alcohol, recreational drugs, prescription drugs and many forms of addiction which inevitably ruined their lives and usually the lives of those they loved and who loved them.
I wondered why small crime increased so much that variety stores had to put bars on their windows and gas stations kept their attendants behind bulletproof glass overnight.
I wondered why the courts put so many more people in prison than ever before, but people were more afraid than ever to walk the streets at night, take a subway or bus at night, even to let their children play outside after school.
More police, psychologists, therapists, doctors, prisons and psychiatric facilities obviously wasn't working. A neoconservative broadcaster informed her audience that these social problems were simply the consequence of overwhelming success of western society in the modern world.
Nothing about human behaviour is inevitable. I knew she was preaching crap. Almost everything we do is a result of a series of lessons and circumstances that led us to make the decisions we do. People can be taught to behave differently, as happened when laws regarding seat belt usage for car passengers and drivers was effected.
After a great deal of study of people (we sociologists love to do that), I found the answers. Parents were no only too busy to teach their children the life lessons that parents of the distant past had taught, but many of today's parents had little idea what responsibilities a parent has or how to carry them out.
Parenting, the most important job in any society, was the only one where amateurs were not just admitted, but were encouraged by keeping young adults ignorant of the information they needed to know before they could use it.
We are afraid to teach our children about crime for fear that they will become criminals. Then we cry when they become victims of personal crimes. We are afraid to teach them about sex for fear that they will become sexually active as a result of having information. We are afraid to teach our children about drugs for fear that they will become users. Studies have proven all of these beliefs to be wrong.
We don't have time to teach our children what we have learned about being responsible adults, so we leave it to television, movies and video games to teach our children on our behalf.
... (pause for effect while you think about that)
We don't permit teachers to involve themselves with such matters because we believe they are the responsibility of parents, not schools. But too many parents are not teaching kids what they need to know.
Some parents leave teaching important life lessons to their kids until the kids are old enough to already have formed some twisted and harmful attitudes toward life and have found themselves in trouble. For example, young children should know about illegal drugs because many of them will be offered drugs while they are still in the early years of grade school.
Despite this total disconnect of young people from the information they need and of parents from the knowledge about development streams of children, we continue to believe that both parents and children are better off being kept ignorant.
If we don't believe that, then that is nevertheless the consequence of what we do believe and the way we function as a society.
Ignorance never improved anything. One way or another, we have been misled about the importance of parenthood and how and what children must be taught. So I compiled a huge amount of information and wrote a book designed to inform every parent, no matter whether they are good readers or not. It's an easy read, loaded with valuable information and tips and parenting and about how children develop and what they need to learn.
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems not only discusses the problems of modern families and communities, but presents a plan to implement change that will form the basis for a reformation of society into one of real knowledge about parenting and child development. It's an easy to understand plan and will be quite straightforward to implement.
Best of all, implementation of the plan is cheap. Any initial investment spent by governments will be recouped within five years as a result of lower costs to service social problems.
Now we need you to read the book and tell others about it. Anyone and everyone with access to a computer can find out a huge amount of information by going to my web site at http://billallin.com
I can only do a limited amount without your help. To assist, all you need to do is to read the book and tell others about it. Give your book to them. Or borrow it from your local library.
Solutions are no good unless people know about them. I did my part. Now it's your turn.
I'm here to help.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to get the word to as many people as possible before it's too late.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
- Albert Szent-Györgyi, winner of the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1937
I did.
As a teacher I wondered why kids who were such vibrant and interesting little people in grade school a few short years later had so many personal problems, many of which turned into academic, health, psychological and legal problems.
As parent of a teenaged daughter I wondered why my child felt she needed to dress somewhat like a hooker when she reached her mid-teens in order to attract boys.
I wondered why so many adults turned to alcohol, recreational drugs, prescription drugs and many forms of addiction which inevitably ruined their lives and usually the lives of those they loved and who loved them.
I wondered why small crime increased so much that variety stores had to put bars on their windows and gas stations kept their attendants behind bulletproof glass overnight.
I wondered why the courts put so many more people in prison than ever before, but people were more afraid than ever to walk the streets at night, take a subway or bus at night, even to let their children play outside after school.
More police, psychologists, therapists, doctors, prisons and psychiatric facilities obviously wasn't working. A neoconservative broadcaster informed her audience that these social problems were simply the consequence of overwhelming success of western society in the modern world.
Nothing about human behaviour is inevitable. I knew she was preaching crap. Almost everything we do is a result of a series of lessons and circumstances that led us to make the decisions we do. People can be taught to behave differently, as happened when laws regarding seat belt usage for car passengers and drivers was effected.
After a great deal of study of people (we sociologists love to do that), I found the answers. Parents were no only too busy to teach their children the life lessons that parents of the distant past had taught, but many of today's parents had little idea what responsibilities a parent has or how to carry them out.
Parenting, the most important job in any society, was the only one where amateurs were not just admitted, but were encouraged by keeping young adults ignorant of the information they needed to know before they could use it.
We are afraid to teach our children about crime for fear that they will become criminals. Then we cry when they become victims of personal crimes. We are afraid to teach them about sex for fear that they will become sexually active as a result of having information. We are afraid to teach our children about drugs for fear that they will become users. Studies have proven all of these beliefs to be wrong.
We don't have time to teach our children what we have learned about being responsible adults, so we leave it to television, movies and video games to teach our children on our behalf.
... (pause for effect while you think about that)
We don't permit teachers to involve themselves with such matters because we believe they are the responsibility of parents, not schools. But too many parents are not teaching kids what they need to know.
Some parents leave teaching important life lessons to their kids until the kids are old enough to already have formed some twisted and harmful attitudes toward life and have found themselves in trouble. For example, young children should know about illegal drugs because many of them will be offered drugs while they are still in the early years of grade school.
Despite this total disconnect of young people from the information they need and of parents from the knowledge about development streams of children, we continue to believe that both parents and children are better off being kept ignorant.
If we don't believe that, then that is nevertheless the consequence of what we do believe and the way we function as a society.
Ignorance never improved anything. One way or another, we have been misled about the importance of parenthood and how and what children must be taught. So I compiled a huge amount of information and wrote a book designed to inform every parent, no matter whether they are good readers or not. It's an easy read, loaded with valuable information and tips and parenting and about how children develop and what they need to learn.
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems not only discusses the problems of modern families and communities, but presents a plan to implement change that will form the basis for a reformation of society into one of real knowledge about parenting and child development. It's an easy to understand plan and will be quite straightforward to implement.
Best of all, implementation of the plan is cheap. Any initial investment spent by governments will be recouped within five years as a result of lower costs to service social problems.
Now we need you to read the book and tell others about it. Anyone and everyone with access to a computer can find out a huge amount of information by going to my web site at http://billallin.com
I can only do a limited amount without your help. To assist, all you need to do is to read the book and tell others about it. Give your book to them. Or borrow it from your local library.
Solutions are no good unless people know about them. I did my part. Now it's your turn.
I'm here to help.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to get the word to as many people as possible before it's too late.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
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