GENIUS FORUMS

We've all heard.."the genius of Ray Charles"...right? I play a little blues harmonica. Not sure "genius" really goes with "music". So many of those old time songsters might be able to pick and grin but could they read and write? Muddy Waters a genius? Mick Jagger a genius? Frank Zappa a genius? Janis, Jim and Jimi all geniuses?

Can you be a genius in one area and an idiot in another arena?

From the "Introduction and Welcome to Genius Forum" section:

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What is Genius?

The best way to answer such a question is to describe what genius is not. First and foremost, genius does not necessarily relate to talent. Being exceptionally good at some particular task does not automatically make one a genius. In light of this, people like Albert Einstein and Johan Sebastion Bach were not geniuses, but simply very talented people. Indeed, a genius need not be very talented in any area of life at all. Or if he does have some talent, it would necessarily find its most concentrated expression in the realm of wisdom. Genius is a function of one's relationship with Ultimate Reality and thus is a function of consciousness. The more one is conscious of the true nature of Reality, the more one is a genius. By this definition, people like Jesus, the Buddha, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Weininger, and Socrates were geniuses to greater or lesser degree.

Albert Eintein, although gifted with a prodigious intellect, had a very poor relationship with Reality. The highest he ever reached in this relationship was a sense of awe and wonder at the Universe, which means that his connection with Reality was largely emotional and subconscious. It was, at bottom, little more than an emotional reaction to his own limited understanding of Reality as a whole. Einstein failed to take the all-important conceptual leap into full understanding of Reality, and thus he failed to reach the level of genius. The chief characteristic of a genius is independence of mind. This independence is attained through his having a clear and conscious grasp of the nature of Reality, which results in his mind being unmoved by the myths and fashions of his culture. Indeed, everything he thinks, says and does is performed with authority, a quality that arises when one's knowledge is permanent, complete, and beyond doubt.

David Quinn

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Seems pretty boring to me.

DavidQuinn000 wrote:Albert Eintein, although gifted with a prodigious intellect, had a very poor relationship with Reality. The highest he ever reached in this relationship was a sense of awe and wonder at the Universe, which means that his connection with Reality was largely emotional and subconscious. It was, at bottom, little more than an emotional reaction to his own limited understanding of Reality as a whole. Einstein failed to take the all-important conceptual leap into full understanding of Reality, and thus he failed to reach the level of genius. The chief characteristic of a genius is independence of mind. This independence is attained through his having a clear and conscious grasp of the nature of Reality, which results in his mind being unmoved by the myths and fashions of his culture. Indeed, everything he thinks, says and does is performed with authority, a quality that arises when one's knowledge is permanent, complete, and beyond doubt.

I'd like to defend the notion that Albert Einstein was, in fact, a genius.

First, his work was highly original. His papers were not like the usual physics papers of the day. Generally, physics papers would discuss some experiment and what could be drawn from it, but Einstein's papers were not like that. His papers would just lay out something, through logical argument, and explain something about how the universe works that was, at the time, highly unintuitive. He spoke with authority, because he understood these things no one else understood, but once explained, could hardly be denied.

I think Einstein's view of physics and reality was similar to the way some people were thinking about string theory in the 1980's. That is, that the laws of physics, once described, would have no arbitrary elements. There would not be any physical constants that could only be measured; they would be explained by the theory. In the end, the theory would show that apparently arbitrary constants were not arbitrary at all; that they could, in fact, not take on any other value.

If you could develop this theory, the "Theory of Everything", then you would understand why the universe is the way it is. You would understand the mind of God, as Einstein put it. Things are the way they are (in this view) because it it absolutely impossible for them to be any other way.

A famous Einstein quote is that God does not play dice (with the universe). This was his objection to the quantum theory, and his objection was similar to the objection sometimes expressed here - that "true randomness" doesn't make any sense; everything must have a cause.

Also, some of the notions that Einstein put forth actually do show some deep insight into the nature of reality. For instance, a fundamental part of relativity is that there is no such thing as "absolute" position or speed; it only makes sense to talk about them relative to something else. Distance can only arise when there are two things to have a distance between.

So, while he may not have had "a clear and conscious grasp of the nature of Reality," in his view he was certainly working to achieve that.

I more or less agree with what you are saying. When Einstein was introspectively trying to resolve the fundamental issues of physics with thought-experiments and pure logic, he was coming close to genius. He was certainly a lot closer to genius, during these periods, than the average scientist will ever be.

Yet the fact that Einstein never came to realize that the solution to the riddle of Reality cannot be found through physics, that he needed to step up another level and apply his logical skills philosophically, was a major disappointment. I cannot, in all conscience, associate such a glaring blind spot with genius. On the contrary, it was a tremendous failure on his part.

So, at best, I can only think of him as a very gifted intellectual who was, sadly, afflicted with severe mental blocks. A true genius would have dismantled those mental blocks.

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