I am, unapologetically, a genius. (A lot of people here are.)
My experience of what it is like being a genius: I look at a problem and I know an answer. That’s pretty much it. I’m not any faster at thinking than anybody else; I’d say I’m actually a somewhat slower thinker, but make up for it by having “larger” thoughts; most people seem to have fast multi-core processors, and I’m running a slightly slow graphics card. Depending on what you need done, I’m either many orders of magnitude better at it—or completely hopeless. It mostly depends on whether or not I’ve figured out how to adapt the problem to my way of thinking.
Also, sometimes my “I know an answer” is wrong—this means that I still have to go through the “manual” effort of thinking, to verify the answer, and I’m using the slow graphics card to run a mostly single-thread process. Sometimes the answer is too hard to verify either way! (Hey, look at my username; I’ve been pursuing themes on a crackpot physics for twenty five years, and I’m not particularly any closer to being able to determine whether or not it is true or false!)
In practice, in the real world, what this translates to is: I’m often no faster at providing a “good” answer than a merely above-average person, because, while I know -an- answer, it will take me just as long to verify whether or not it is a good answer as it takes a merely above-average person to go through the manual effort of finding an answer and then verifying it!
Also, my answers are often … strange. Not wrong, and I can find answers to problems other people find intractable, or find a way to do something in way less time than somebody else—but on rare occasion, I can’t find the answer that an average person can spot immediately, and much more frequently, I find an answer that takes way -more- time than the obvious-to-other-people solution.
What I conclude is that what makes me a “genius” is context—I am in fact likely merely somewhat above-average, but that I find the difficulty of problems -different- than other people. Imagine, for a moment, that everybody is given a map of the world, which maps, let’s say, 5% of the territory. But 99% of the 5% is in common; ask a hundred people, and 99 of them will know where Canada is. My map is only somewhat above average in size, but it covers an entirely different geography—I couldn’t tell you where Canada is, but I know where Tucson is, something that is on less than .01% of the maps out there.
You need to get to Canada, you can ask just about anybody, and they can tell you how to get there. So, even though I don’t have Canada on my map, this mostly doesn’t present me any problems, except when I’m trying to get to Alaska and somebody tells me to just drive through Canada.
But if you need to go to Tucson, it’s hard to find somebody who knows where it is. But I can immediately tell you. Nobody ever asks me how to get to Canada—why would they? - but everybody asks me how to get to Tucson, so I look like I know a lot. And IQ tests really reward knowing how to get to Tucson, and don’t bother asking about Canada at all, so—I’m a genius. And because everyone knows where Canada is, I benefit, from an intellectual perspective, as much from having ordinary people around me, as they benefit from having a “genius” around them.
But I’m in the same boat as anybody else when I need to get to Jupiter; nobody has a map that says how to get there.
I am, unapologetically, a genius. (A lot of people here are.)
My experience of what it is like being a genius: I look at a problem and I know an answer. That’s pretty much it. I’m not any faster at thinking than anybody else; I’d say I’m actually a somewhat slower thinker, but make up for it by having “larger” thoughts; most people seem to have fast multi-core processors, and I’m running a slightly slow graphics card. Depending on what you need done, I’m either many orders of magnitude better at it—or completely hopeless. It mostly depends on whether or not I’ve figured out how to adapt the problem to my way of thinking.
Also, sometimes my “I know an answer” is wrong—this means that I still have to go through the “manual” effort of thinking, to verify the answer, and I’m using the slow graphics card to run a mostly single-thread process. Sometimes the answer is too hard to verify either way! (Hey, look at my username; I’ve been pursuing themes on a crackpot physics for twenty five years, and I’m not particularly any closer to being able to determine whether or not it is true or false!)
In practice, in the real world, what this translates to is: I’m often no faster at providing a “good” answer than a merely above-average person, because, while I know -an- answer, it will take me just as long to verify whether or not it is a good answer as it takes a merely above-average person to go through the manual effort of finding an answer and then verifying it!
Also, my answers are often … strange. Not wrong, and I can find answers to problems other people find intractable, or find a way to do something in way less time than somebody else—but on rare occasion, I can’t find the answer that an average person can spot immediately, and much more frequently, I find an answer that takes way -more- time than the obvious-to-other-people solution.
What I conclude is that what makes me a “genius” is context—I am in fact likely merely somewhat above-average, but that I find the difficulty of problems -different- than other people. Imagine, for a moment, that everybody is given a map of the world, which maps, let’s say, 5% of the territory. But 99% of the 5% is in common; ask a hundred people, and 99 of them will know where Canada is. My map is only somewhat above average in size, but it covers an entirely different geography—I couldn’t tell you where Canada is, but I know where Tucson is, something that is on less than .01% of the maps out there.
You need to get to Canada, you can ask just about anybody, and they can tell you how to get there. So, even though I don’t have Canada on my map, this mostly doesn’t present me any problems, except when I’m trying to get to Alaska and somebody tells me to just drive through Canada.
But if you need to go to Tucson, it’s hard to find somebody who knows where it is. But I can immediately tell you. Nobody ever asks me how to get to Canada—why would they? - but everybody asks me how to get to Tucson, so I look like I know a lot. And IQ tests really reward knowing how to get to Tucson, and don’t bother asking about Canada at all, so—I’m a genius. And because everyone knows where Canada is, I benefit, from an intellectual perspective, as much from having ordinary people around me, as they benefit from having a “genius” around them.
But I’m in the same boat as anybody else when I need to get to Jupiter; nobody has a map that says how to get there.