10.13.08
Comment on Einstein’s mistakes
James comments on Einstein’s Mistakes
This simply calls into question what we mean by intelligence and genius. I have often found it puzzling that Einstein was anointed the poster child for the modern cookie cutter standardized test definition of intelligence when it never seemed like he fit the type. Indeed, you can throw Bohr and Heisenberg (infamous for his mathematical bungling) in the same pot. Von Neumann, for example, may have been the greatest human computer of all time, but I don’t think anybody would claim that he possessed Godel’s level of genius.
From Einstein’s Mistakes, 2008/10/13 at 6:06 PM
Your point is right on. I have spent my whole life watching highly intelligent people getting dumbed down in the social system that, regrettably has a measure of their potential, and rapidly tracks them into highly conditioned production environments, ‘knowledge mills’ or otherwise.
Especially deadening is the Darwinism track where the clever tactic of someone like Dawkins is to insinuate stupidity in those who don’t buy into Darwinian fundamentalism. The opposite is the case. Switching the road signs between ‘smart’ and ‘stupid’ has succeeded in making the whole paradigm an impregnable bastion of these ‘stupid’ intelligent people. There is something strangely stupid about this whole game, played by poster child ‘intelligent’ people.
As to Einstein’s limits, it’s worth keeping in mind that he was quite capable of producing an innovative application of general relativity (extracted from Reimanian and other legacies of nineteenth century math), no mean feat if you have ever looked at tensor analysis, granted that he had help form Grossman. Thus, while it is true that he couldn’t avoid mistakes the basic achievement was obviously genius, but still pretty ‘intelligent’. !
Students in science should be very wary of IQ tests. They don’t detect many factors of general intelligence and tend to bypass completely the intangible factors of cultural balancing that occur outside of educational institutions, and very rarely at that.
Note/update: the term ‘genius’ has changed its usage, or else was never clearly defined. Its nineteenth century meaning (I may stand corrected by a close historical study), at via figures such as Kant/Schopenhauer refers to the natural gift of penetrating to the aesthetic domain, viz. artists and musicians. The term isn’t used that way anymore in any consistent fashion.