Comments on: Many Kinds of Smart (A Continuing Series)

By: Valuing all Kinds of Astronomy Smarts

Valuing all Kinds of Astronomy Smarts — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 14:14:53 +0000

[...] couple weeks ago, Sean over at Cosmic Variance brought up the topic of “smart” with respect to Steve Jobs and I want to use that post to springboard to a slightly different opinion piece: Astronomy (and [...]

By: B^2

B^2 — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 20:24:52 +0000

Was it this brain teaser?

Corey Camel’s Bananas

Consider the case of Corey Camel – an enterprising, albeit eccentric owner of a small banana plantation in a remote desert oasis.

Corey’s harvet, worth it’s weight in gold, consists of 3000 bananas. The market place where the stash can be cashed in is 1000 miles away. However, Corey must walk to the market, and can only carry up to 1000 bananas at a time. Furthermore, being a camel, Corey eats one banana during each and every mile she walks (so Corey can never walk anywhere without bananas). How many bananas can Corey get to the market?

Yeah he must have not been that smart because most people talk about celebrity gossip, and the occasional ad hominem arguments based on hearsay.

By: Jonathan Wai

Jonathan Wai — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 20:45:19 +0000

Was Steve Jobs Smart? Heck Yes!
Steve Jobs was not “the 99 percent” intellectually or financially

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/finding-the-next-einstein/201111/was-steve-jobs-smart-heck-yes

By: floodmouse

floodmouse — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 19:46:42 +0000

I would be more interested in the brainteaser about the monkey and the bananas if I got to EAT the bananas after I solved the problem

By: collins

collins — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 03:32:40 +0000

I’ve noticed the acute concern for full-time academicians over who is “smart” or not, and the preoccupation with the pecking order of “smartness” (the real issue). I guess it comes with the territory.
In non-academic fields that are still results-oriented science (like clinical medicine or ?perhaps engineering and computer firms) no one cares who is “smart” if they are not getting this other thing done called “solving the problem.” And not a theoretical problem, a real one.

I would say “smart” means developing and using your natural-born abilities to the best you can, whether you’re a bricklayer or a theoretical physicist or (Jobs) a businessman.

By: Was Steve Jobs Smart? A Dumb Question, Says Physicist | stevejobsvision.info

Sun, 06 Nov 2011 21:05:46 +0000

[...] this idea about “conventional” intelligence, Carroll writes: “I’m not sure what kind of conventionality is being invoked, but I don’t want any part of [...]

By: PeterKinnon

PeterKinnon — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 19:26:45 +0000

The general consensus arising from the above posts underlines the great variability in the qualitative rather than quantitative functions of human imagination (a word I prefer to the rather vague “intelligence” or “smartness”). Extreme example of this are “autistic savants”.

On another tack, Muffit’s post raises another very significant concept, he says:

“I’m gonna go out on a limb and point out that timing and luck HAS got a lot to do with how ‘genius’ manifests itself, possibly more so than anything else.
It’s like that saying “If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants.” Newton said that, I believe.Surely there are countless magnificently smart individuals enjoying a quiet life out of the public eye, just as there are relatively average people catching the luck of the draw at the right time, to become publicly revered. Or even genius people stumbling in the limelight only by being lucky that one time.Quantifying this would be rather hard, I’m just not a huge believer in unique insights (which disregard history, luck, timing, I feel). Often it could be more of a sign of the times than a sign of individual genius.”

If we shake off our very natural anthropocentric biases it becomes clear that, except in a very trivial sense, there are no inventors, no designers.

We do, of course have discoverers, those who happen to be the right types, in the right place at the right time, who pick the low-hanging fruit.

But objectively, we have to interpret science and technology as evolving autonomously within the collective imagination of our species.

Do you honestly believe that without Faraday we would have no electric motors or transformers, no mathematical understanding of the electromagnetic field without Maxwell, no steam engines without Stephenson, without Marie Curie we would know nothing of radium, we would have no radio without Marconi?
Or that without Steve Jobs we would not have computers with GUIs and pointing devices and other gross features not too far removed fro the Apple Mac?

This is expanded upon in my latest book “”The Goldilocks Effect: What Has Serendipity Ever Done For Us?” (free download in e-book formats from the “Unusual Perspectives” website).

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 10:50:17 +0000

Isaacson writes:

Einstein is, of course, the true exemplar of genius. He had contemporaries who could probably match him in pure intellectual firepower when it came to mathematical and analytic processing. Henri Poincaré, for example, first came up with some of the components of special relativity, and David Hilbert was able to grind out equations for general relativity around the same time Einstein did. But neither had the imaginative genius to make the full creative leap at the core of their theories…

This is hilarious!! The dude who came up with Homology and Homotopy lacking in “imaginative genius”??

By: Eugene

Eugene — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 14:53:10 +0000

Apparently according to Isaacson, being a “Genius” is insufficient to be called “Smart”.

I hate authors sometimes.

By: Jan

Jan — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 10:22:23 +0000

I think you people are way too concerned about who is smarter than whom.

By: vonbahr

vonbahr — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 07:36:07 +0000

Some excellent comments; some incomplete; some mistaken in their attempt to get it all right. But, if bloggers here think Jobs did this and Gates did that and do not consider the enormous role of others on their “teams”, they will not get any closer to a comprehensive set of factors that make for “smarts” or any of the other attributes of types of intelligence. Instead, much of the discussion is confused because of these characters as “successful” in heading up organizations. I’d want to know just what were the patents Steve Jobs had in his name, what they were for, and who else (if anyone) worked on them, for example. Being the head of either of these (or any) multi-billion dollar corporation is not proof of genius, although it could be….

By: Curtis

Curtis — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 04:16:57 +0000

To label Steve Jobs a genius, when other “acknowledged” geniuses are the likes of Da Vinci, Newton, Einstein, Jefferson, etc., stretches credibility and virtually disqualifies those who consider Jobs to be one. Was he smart? Sure, he was clearly “smart enough.” He was smart enough to find clever, inventive, creative people and to push them and to demand their best… and get it. He was smart enough to buy existing technologies and have his people improve and repackage them. He was smart enough to hire great ad agencies. He was smart enough to make people believe “his” consumer electronic goods warranted standing in long lines, sleeping in long lines, and paying a lot of money for the brand image he and the marketing agencies he had hired created. That buying an Apple product says something about you that is “special.” He was smart enough to eventually lead Apple into becoming the world’s most valuable company. He did his job exceptionally well. That is enough.

(Submitted from my MacBook Air)

By: Christopher

Christopher — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 21:55:56 +0000

Steve was a genius and Bill Gate’s designs were crap? So a true genius is one that designs products the way you like?

By: Shecky R

Shecky R — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 21:26:13 +0000

“Professional mathematicians can be grouped roughly into ‘algebraists” and “geometers,’ and the two groups sometimes have trouble talking to each other. ”

I’ve not heard quite that distinction made before, and although I have a sense of what you mean, I’d be curious to hear it elaborated further, and perhaps some names attached to the 2 groups…

By: Curious Wavefunction

Curious Wavefunction — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 18:12:45 +0000

I think Isaacson’s conclusion is ridiculous. As you note there are different kinds of smarts. Plus in the case of the anecdote, maybe Jobs just wasn’t interested in solving the problem seriously and made a half-hearted attempt to take a crack at it, like many of us often do. That hardly proves even that he wasn’t “conventionally” smart. How many times do we not latch on to every single problem that is tossed at us? It’s a matter of interest and priority much more than of intelligence.

By: Low Math, Meekly Interacting

Low Math, Meekly Interacting — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 16:51:06 +0000

Jobs had, for lack of a better word, a true “knack” for discerning desirable embodiments of consumer technology. He had stunning intuition for appealing style and the right balance of simplicity and capability. He had some happy accidents in his youth that inspired him and connected him to the nascent field of personal computing. He had some truly bizarre, and at times quite difficult, personal traits which, in the role of CEO, proved to be assets. He was obsessive, demanding, and preternaturally charismatic. However derided by those who weren’t susceptible, the “reality distortion field” was a great motivator and actualizer, and got those true technologists and design whizzes who he shepherded to do things that they never imagined they could do, even if they were browbeaten and broken by the process. Jobs left a trail of personal carnage in his wake, as many “great men” do, in the process of achieving greatness. It’s totally wrong-headed to ignore the role of sociopathy here. So, in many respects, even if Jobs wasn’t conventionally brilliant, he had, you might say, just the right mix of the exceptional and appalling to be a captain of industry. His accomplishments speak for themselves. I don’t think there’s much more analysis that will be of use, and probably no chance we’ll ever see another man like him, genius or monster, or both.

By: Muffit

Muffit — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 23:04:05 +0000

I’m gonna go out on a limb and point out that timing and luck HAS got a lot to do with how ‘genius’ manifests itself, possibly more so than anything else.

It’s like that saying “If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants.” Newton said that, I believe.

Surely there are countless magnificently smart individuals enjoying a quiet life out of the public eye, just as there are relatively average people catching the luck of the draw at the right time, to become publicly revered. Or even genius people stumbling in the limelight only by being lucky that one time.

Quantifying this would be rather hard, I’m just not a huge believer in unique insights (which disregard history, luck, timing, I feel). Often it could be more of a sign of the times than a sign of individual genius.

By: William Croft

William Croft — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 22:36:32 +0000

The recent TED / RSA video overview of Iain McGilchrist’s 2010 book, “”The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World” — is relevant in this discussion. Beautiful summary in 12 minutes.

http://www.ted.com/talks/iain_mcgilchrist_the_divided_brain.html

‘A wonderful book about brain function and its wider implications … that two different styles of perception and cognition, holistic versus narrowly focused, are both needed for survival, hence evolutionarily ancient, [is] a very nice insight into why brain division was selected for … And it’s refreshing to see sense being talked about the Libet experiments.’

— Professor Michael McIntyre, Fellow of the Royal Society, and Professor of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, University of Cambridge

By: Maxi Noggin

Maxi Noggin — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 21:30:08 +0000

I completely agree. I have an IQ of 70 and stupidly always thought I was smart!!

By: Philip

Philip — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 18:42:20 +0000

What is the Turing test all about?

We agree that a good working definition of an intelligent computer is one that can talk.

All human beings can talk; therefore ___________.