There aren't any Tony Starks who become experts in thermonuclear astrophysics overnight.
Richard Feynman was as close to this trope as you can get in reality, but insisted that his reputation for being able to solve difficult problems was due to having a "different box of tools" than others. And he obtained that by studying rather obsessively, well beyond assigned texts.
I have been lucky enough to know a few people who also might qualify as geniuses able to produce miraculous results. One of them decorated his laptop with the logos of defunct computer companies of the 1950s-1980s. He drew a lot of inspiration from papers and books that few others have read in thirty years.
I'm an atheist but when someone like him tells me that god gave him all of his equations - I'm not going to respond with "well ackshully". I'm going to ask them how we can make it easier for them to listen to god.
Assuming you don’t have a direct line to divinity yourself, you would need to have that profound genius in the first place to evaluate…
The original claim was that a genius should be able to easily and quickly attain mastery of any topic, given a grounding in the basics. Like, you give Mr. Super Genius IQ a book on quantum chemistry and the next day they’re putting things together so cleverly they are on the precipice of new discoveries.
Feynman actually did this a couple of times! But I think that just shows the “unreasonable usefulness” of mathematics, as well as his own spirit of curiosity. (And at least one time that we know of, he faked it by reading a colleague’s research before he presented it. Not to take credit, but just as a prank, so he could interrupt and predict every conclusion before the presenter finished.)
If you really still can’t bring yourself to believe this, then my only suggestion is to meet a lot more interesting people.
In the cases where I got to see them work later, I found that they weren't nearly as impressive as they looked at first.
Yes, there really are people like Wozniak in the world.
They seem to be around 1 per hundreds of millions, though. The odds of meeting one are ludicrously small.
These are the kind of people that would probably create weapons of mass destruction and if you might discuss with them with the scale of destruction of their products they have nothing to offer yet they will giddily discuss the technical achievements of their projects.
there are people out there who are better than you in every single regard. dont be jealous, be happy that the world can be composed of people better than you dreamed
What kind of person thinks that the people whose “brilliance” led them to invent weapons of mass destruction are better than anyone that cannot solve technical problems as fast as they can? Do you apply the same reasoning for wealth also? I suppose might is right for you?
You might not see this — for whatever reason — but it is indisputable: history is filled with the types of “geniuses” who in their rush to the prestige of being first they leave in their wake destructive effects on humanity. I argue that when people say “these are 1 in a hundred million” that yeah, because most of the people with similar aptitudes would pause and consider the implications of their actions while you argue that they are gods amongst men that we are “lucky to have met”.
Yet you are willing to cast ridiculous assertions about groups of people - stating as fact as though you are the canonical source of truth.
> But perhaps your characterization is to protect the comfort you draw from your world views.
Seems like you define projection.
See if you can find a way to get a colleague or two to tell you what they honestly think of you. I'm sure you will be surprised at how they judge you. The trouble is getting honest feedback - people say they want it but few people receive it well so over time most people learn not to give their opinions.
I read a relevant comment today from Madmallard that rings true: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39661279
One of the joys of HN is that many commenters can be thoughtfully blunt.
Moderator also asks that we avoid doing "internet psychology diagnosis": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38589525 - this thread is not good and I'm not helping sorry...
If you don’t see how many of these types are so immersed in their craft that they are oblivious to their impact on the world then you really haven’t interacted with many high-functioning types. If you have I encourage you to try and discuss these types of things with them.
Do you have an example of bonafide super-genius?
He once mentored a guy who was so ridiculously good at writing programs, that he wrote out (once) a 5 foot stack of punch cards (back when that was how you would code), to create a program that was needed by the company for some purpose.
It worked, flawlessly, the FIRST time.
This was his MO.
Once, he wrote a program for an internal client, and it got shipped. They ran the program and ran into a problem. My friend told him to debug it for them… he replied “I don’t know how”. Up to that point in his life, He had never had to debug a single piece of software…
My friend helped him debug the program: Turns out, the problem was not an issue with his code, the customer had given him the wrong spec for a critical interface… and that was the only reason it had not worked the first time.
There are truly people that qualify. The only note I will make is that generally if you are a super genius in one dimension, you likely have something you are absolutely terrible at in another. Hopefully it is in a dimension that either doesn’t matter, or you have enough complementary people around you to mitigate it.
You're pulling our leg or in denial.
FWIW, apparently back before Intel released a particular 4 bit processor, this guy made an emulator and compiler for the chip so they could start writing code in anticipation of its release.
Once again, not direct experience… but trusted source.
Every CS department has these legendary tales that grow more hyperbolic over time (See "never" above.)
They are fun to tell!
Two alternate stories I didn’t tell:
First is about my two friends (both ridiculously smart) who in undergrad became the TAs for the Operating System class at Carnegie Mellon as undergrads (normally taught by grad students)… this is the hardest CS course taught there. As part of their summer prep, they wrote a new file system example… I believe based on a b-tree.
The next was my AI professor, Andrew Moore [0], he was legendary at the school… eventually becoming dean after doing a stint at Google (he has since stepped down). By far, he is the smartest person I have ever personally known. To give you context (and we did this regularly in his class), you could ask him a question on anything and he would pause, think about it, and come up with a well reasoned answer that would be both insightful and illuminating… from first principles. On any subject. You could not throw him (we tried). I am still in awe of him.
While I agree that legendary tales grow… they are almost always based on a kernel of truth. The reality is most people don’t often interact with folks at these levels. I was very lucky, and I have only interacted with a handful.
[0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/peterhigh/2017/10/30/carnegie-m...
In fact that’s what I would consider the critical dividing line between a regular genius and a bonafide super-genius. Someone who almost supernaturally acquires expertise/intuition/depth/etc. with very little visible effort.