What constitutes genius

nice spook buckaroo

Thanks bros.

Who'd you listen to? The genius or the man who's spent years researching but with a slight above AVG intelligence?

Stevens was 35 when he was published

Yeah but he was writing for just as long, its not like he started writing at 32

Why is it a spook?

yr fine m8. Realistically, no one spends that much time specializing before college. In the pursuit of well-rounded mediocrity they will be able do everything at an OK level, but true, serious study? Not until grad level.

Hes a memelord dw

Joyce played piano from a young age and read tons of shit in 17 different languages.

So 1.

It isn't necessarily: Stirner describes genius as "a definitive eigenheit." Eigenheit literally means "ownness," but it best translates as peculiarity. I think his is the best characterization of genius so far produced.

Although, like anything, it can become a spook if one is frightened and overawed by its ideal.

I've been having issues with what it is to be smart.

People say I'm smart and that they don't understand half the things I'm saying when I speak up in law school. When I ask what makes someone smart, they have no characteristics, only other people.

Am I a sperglord who can't properly communicate my ideas, or is there something more to it?

>Whoever knows he is deep, strives for clarity; whoever would like to appear deep to the crowd, strives for obscurity. For the crowd considers anything deep if only it cannot see to the bottom: the crowd is so timid and afraid of going into the water.

t. Freddy Neechee

So genius is spurious to him?

Obviously hard work and dedication and contributing factors as well, but yes, 10000 hours and any "theories" them are nothing more than pop culture fallacies.

A genius is a person a genius describes as genius.

Joke's aside, your ability to sense genius is in proportion to your genius.

The 10,000 hours concepts gets muddled when you consider tasks most of us have done out whole lives. Examples like reading and writing aren't really like ice skating because we're almost all guaranteed to get our 10,000 hours in.

writing is a skill though

so is reading

both with a variety of applicable methods

1. Realized potential

2. Blessings and learnings

3. Nature and nurture

I can only say, again, not necessarily. If a person attempts to write based on what they think is the "true" meaning of genius, and pores over Dante, Shakespeare, Pound and the like to aid in its production, that person has been spooked by the idea of genius.

If a person produces art that is their own, regardless of what the aforementioned "canonical masters" have to say about it, and is concentrated on that production, that person would fit the description of a modern "genius." That is, if one find that term to be useful.

Genius is narrowing the gap to close the distance between intention and execution, with a level of flair and instinct; inherited vs acquired.

Please tell me more vulgar images of the Unique One exist.

>reading Shakespeare will not contribute to your talent

Do you realise how wrong you are?

Not what I said.

A genius will read Shakespeare and incorporate his work into their own artistic style, while a sub-genius will try to "be like Shakespeare."

So Melville, author of one of the greatest pieces of literature ever, is a "sub-genius"?

He did the former and not the latter, so no, he's not.

A skill that anyone here learns and practices constantly just by living

nope

Reading Facebook comments and instructions for cooking microwave dinners is not the same. This is a ridiculous response because everyone might be doing it their whole lives, they are not practicing unless they actively challenge themselves. Most people don't.

>we all walk our wholes lives so the idea of someone being better at it doesn't make sense

Go back

To me genius is simply how much a person expanded the boundaries of humanity. You could be a dumb genius if you put your head down and headed straight towards one of those boundaries without considering anything else or you could be smart, but not a genius if you spent your life learning everything within those boundaries without expanding them.

This isn't true. Every published literary writer will have been a serious reader since childhood. Being a writer is more comparable with being a concert pianist or something like that than a...chemist.

This is so true. I'm bad at writing and didn't start reading twelve hours (as per my daily regimen for becoming a writer which includes defining fifty words upon waking up and ten before bed, memorizing a poem each day, and at least one hour of straight typing whatever pops into my head with literally no breaks) per day until I was twenty-four. I dedicate my life to this craft and I still can't compete with my ten year old cousin who recites poetry each weekend for the elderly.

10 000 hours thing has never had anything to do with being a genius.
10 000 hours is the hours put in to be professional at what you are doing

None of these matters, there is only this:

1. Being chosen.

That regime sounds like a joke. In case it isn't, I'd like to know more about you and your writing

Ask away

The question what constitutes genius should be the question what makes people inclined to give a heck about brainy stuff to the degree that they reach a genius level of brain, not whether they eventually succeed and become "confirmed geniuses" (via their contributions or basically any kind of proofs). The former is what constitutes genius while the latter is the external confirmation.
An "anonymous genius" could always die young or never publish etc. That person would still be a genius in the sense of possessing genius thoughts or skill which is the actual stuff of a genius.
This urge on the other hand to show and tell and share and care is not a logical conclusion to having genius level thoughts. It is the urge of the social monkey in the genius and not the genius per se.
On that note I have never heard of a genius who wanted to be a genius. Such is wishful thinking of status-obsessed brainlets .

Anyways going a step deeper than that, since a genius could also stop giving a heck about this brainy stuff at some point, his former genius would not be invalidated but he would cease being it despite the possibility clearly existing, as far as I'm concerned.

So what you actually have to ask is what are the conditions of possibility of genius.

What makes it so geniuses develop this (near-)existential degree of investment in the grand, abstract questions and developing the solutions to them etc.?
What makes one give a heck about that instead of normie stuff like girls and material wealth?

There are innumerable possible yet unnecessary preconditions. Here are two: Being autistic and a 2/10 and being at peace with that instead of lurking incel/mgtow forums. Is that luck?

Is it luck to have a mentor growing up who just happens to push all the right buttons in your limbic system so you will to engage with the material instinctively?

Or is it luck to grow spiteful of him, so it feeds your desire to outdo him?

What if that drive manifests as violence or erotic feelings for your mentor instead and you just end up becoming a trap obsessed with cock?

Is that luck?

I think there's nothing lucky about geniuses. It's a stupid mode of existence and authentic geniuses do not live happy lives.

Now being a pseud..

Reading Facebook comments will help you develop Facebook comments and reading instructions will help you with those. That should be obvious. Their uses extend beyond that as well because they are included in the more general category of reading.

The point about walking is idiotic because most people are experts at walking. It is nearly effortless for us to move our body in that way. Compare that to a child, even a child that is fairly experienced at walking (4 or 5) and you will see that their command over their own movements just hasn't been practiced enough. Or maybe you think only people who can walk marathons are experts at walking? By the time you consider walking extreme distances you've already had thousands of hours of walking in, the ground work you'll have to do is far less. Same goes with reading and writing. If you try to write on a professional level, the groundwork you have to do is far less than for something you'd never practiced.

little babby boi wants to become a genius

what do you want for chrtismas this year little boi
being genius
HO HO HO

>anything?

Keke. I like you, boy.

Have you published anything? How old are you? What's your income? What do you write? Do you really keep up with your regime every single day?

>10,000 hours concept is nonsense
No, all the potential in the world can be wasted if you do not labor greatly towards your intended achievement. Even the smartest person ever born is nothing compared to the weight of all other thinkers who came before him. Ain't nothin new under the sun my man and you won't know what you don't know if you never apply your inherent talent in a wise and studious way.

I was just kidding. My point was that the guy I was responding to was being an ignorant sperg. I hope that routine becomes real for me one day though, but hopefully a little more relaxed and less technocratic.

>genes
Fuck off with your nonsense.

Why would reading a hack contribute to genius?

>Dis gotta be a troll.

t. reddit

Nah, just somebody who respects an author who can write an epic narrative that is simultaneously contained in a poetic framework and is a great, exciting, and visceral play.
>Peace, I hate the word, as I hate all Montagues and thee.
Fantastic line. You will never write a single line that good.

>projecting this hard
truly the work of a Letzter Mensch

I didn't start reading seriously again until I was 24. I read a lot when I was younger but video games/high school/university just killed it for me.

I'm a pleb so...maybe there is some truth to that.

>10,000 hours concept is nonsense
It might take 10 000 hours to cut a raw gem into the genius that it was destined to be. Destiny is decided by everything, really.

Let's say you have musclebrain genes, but never lift. Anything. You might be stronger than the other neets or office members, but you will never be stronger than the pros, even if they were less capable from their standpoints. Say, they were bullied at school and thought that they needed to get stronger and they did. You need character to face a destiny.

Intelligence is just a tool, genius is a state of being. Ergo
>Character
>Potential (genes and encounters and all that)
>Will

I have lots of potential, I have barely any character and no will at all.

Serious answer: it will show you how smart an artist can be, and more in general how deep, meaningful, perfectly constructed, genuinely intelligent a piece of art can be. It does not matter if you won't follow the style of Shakespeare (who does, after all?), what matters is that it reveals to you how great and poetic something can be: it gives you a new standard of excellence, which, if you're a good artist, you should try to overcome (the hows and whys are up to you).
By the way I think that this applies to all the great pieces of art, no matter what the craft you've picked is.

step one is focusing your attention away from "genius"
Never has a genius consciously considered the becoming of what he is in terminology used by those unlike him. You either have ideas or you dont. You either capitalize on them or you dont. There is no suspected direction in which they arrive from. It could be any and everywhere or nowhere. Train and build up your talent so when and if you happen to meet one of these ideas you're able to execute it.

It's more to do with applied method rather than age. Children, when trained, absorb method unlike anything else. It's no longer conscious; it exists solely to their being and its natural expression.
Train in method, live in method, and act in method and the possibility of chance may serve you one day.

Oh look, a multitude of platitudes.

We all have lots of potential buddy. We all do.

Simple:

Talent hits a target no one else can; genius hits a target no one else can see.

10,000 hour concept is not nonsense. 10,000 of good practice will make you good at something. 10,000 of shitty practice will not.

I think there is a certain treshold of necessary education in one's childhood, but past that any difference can be overcome.
I mean, I may sound a bit too elitist here, most of the people you will see in your lifetime are barely aware of their existence, of what they are and the things that they know keep always floating on their surface. It's not about lacking the right words, it's just about being emotional retards. If it never gets challenged in one's formative years it will never amount to anything.

If someone, even without education, can manage to obtain that sensibility through other means, the work is done. At this point the sophistication of his craft will just be just a chore, since the core of his artistic sense is now fully formed.

At the end of the day who cares about the guy who is verbose in the best way? Or about the best structured shallow play?
The technique is not the prerequisite, rather it's just a tool to express something that, simply put, most people simply don't have.

That is genius, and it has nothing to do with intelligence (well, not until a certain point), rather it has to do with a specific set of personal intuitions.

Potential is deceiving. The creative paradigm has introduced to us terminology inexistent to those who presently exhibit another's potential. It's a word expressing the nature of a possibility void of life. It doesn't exist on a level capable of emergence; the idea is the eternal perspective of non-being(s) by a reality stricken single being. I suspect, as scarce as true creativity is, the latter in the previous sentence was developed as a coping mechanism and later established in continuum by pedestrians with enough clarity to acknowledge greater but lacking that which would allow for their gradual ascent to it.

Nice trips.
Is this what A Thousands Plateau is about? I know nothing about Deleuze's philosophy.

- Schopenhauer

A

Before anything, is necessary to acknowledge the fact that “genius” is a subjective concept, some kind of highest-seal-of-approval and supreme-stamp-of-valor that we created to grace those members of our race that we deem to be the most apt examples of the greatness of humanity. It is a term coined to glorify the human beings whose works seem to be inexplicable to the rest of humanity, so difficult and wonderful are the creative powers necessary for them to be produced. In the end, however, “genius” is just a word: there is no organic structure inside the brain of certain individuals that we can call a sure sign of genius. It is even difficult to find a complete unanimity when it comes to the matter of who should receive this ultimate tittle of greatness. Once again: genius is a word that designate a subjective quality.

But to the matter.

What I have read is that a certain level of IQ is necessary for great achievements, but once you pass a certain limit (IQ of 120) it’s not easy to make correlations. Once this limit is achieved, a person with an IQ of 125-130 might end up creating greater works of art than someone with an extremely rare IQ of 160, and that even though the two people are both making efforts and working hard. The person with the higher IQ might absorb information faster and understand subjects with more facility, and yet his/her creativity might not be as incredible as the one we found in the person with a 125 IQ. The main thing here is:

>A higher than average IQ seems to be necessary for great achievements, but once you pass a certain level the creativity and personal story of a person can be much more important than extra points of IQ; about creativity, there is no consensus about what it is, how it works, how it can be measured and how much it is related to raw intelligence.

B

IQ is not an absolute test for intelligence, and everybody knows it, yet there is a correlation between great achievers and successful professionals and higher IQ scores. To say IQ is completely irrelevant is to deny a lot of collective knowledge and accumulated data about the subject. But when we say “high IQ” we are not speaking of enormous IQ scores, such as those of 160-170-180 and higher, but simply IQ’s that are superior to scores like 120. In fact, there are lots of people in the world with the capacity to excel in great creative undertakes.

One of the best phrases I ever read about genius is this one, by Havelock Ellis, on his book A Study of British Genius.:

>“Genius is the happy result of a combination of many circumstances.”

That’s actually perfect. Yes, you need a relatively high IQ, but you also need a proper upbringing, the exposition of the person in the right time of her life to the area of creation that is actually her personal field, the many particular characteristics of personality, like ambition, desire to excel, curiosity, obsession, courage, hard-working capacity, and many other circumstances.

It comes down to this: Genius is so rare not because we have few people with high IQ, but because high IQ is only one of the pieces of the puzzle.

C

The best book I have ever read on the subject is this one:

>Before the Gates of Excellence: The Determinants of Creative Genius

amazon.com/Before-Gates-Excellence-Determinants-Creative/dp/0521376998

In short (and Like I exposed before), although a high intelligence coefficient is necessary, it is not necessary that it be absurdly high, but just a little above average, but the similarities end there.

The great geniuses usually had similar personality traits, that motivated them to spend hours and hours and hours, days and days and days working and improving themselves. Great geniuses are a mix of genes (just good genes, a little above the average – being the average today around 100 IQ points) + creation + specific features of personality beget by the life experiences and genetic material of the child.

All great geniuses were ambitious and had broad desire to be recognized and admired for their work; all of them also had obsessive personalities and thought that they creative jobs were the main function of their lives. They might try to fool people, like Einstein tended to do when he spoke that he was only after truth and satiating his curiosity, but not after fame or glory. No doubt he wanted to satiate his curiosity, yet when he was working on general realtivy he was aware that other people were facing the same challenges (like David Hilbert) and he worked like a fanatic, desperately wanting to complete his theory before others did. If he wanted simply to know the truth he could sit down and wait, for people would get there pretty soon. But of course he, like anybody else, wanted to be proud of himself, of his own achievements, and so he worked hard to be the father of general relativity.

D

Another interesting point: although the child who becomes a genius in the future start his/her career in the specific area of activity in a playful manner (playing with musical instruments, drawing for pleasure, reading for pleasure, etc.), in the future the conscience of their own emerging talent (the child or teen realizes his ability in the field and starts thinking on the possibility of achieve fame with his work) makes the chosen activity becomes not just a pleasurable hobby, but an terribly stressful and overwhelming obligation. The great geniuses often had to work without having the slightest desire to do so (all writers relate the difficulty of having to sit all day, in a routine, and fill the paper with significant literature). Even Einstein, when he worked on the theory of general relativity, eventually was tormented by stomach pain, nausea, anxiety, tachycardia and tremors. The anxiety and fear of failure are constant companions of geniuses, and also the constant dissatisfaction with oneself. The moments of pride and joy are quickly dissolved into new ambitions.

It is also a common feature of geniuses that certain feelings, mainly of respect or value, are wanted but not provided in childhood (sometimes this is even imaginary: the child receives attention and love, but not the enormous amount of attention and praise that it commonly desired). The huge ambition that they have is, in a way, a response to not receiving all the admiration they wish they had received when they were children and teenagers. Genius are generally very proud of themselves.

>10,000 hours concept is nonsense
Why do you think this? Just seems self serving to your laziness, or you don't enjoy the way it unromanticises the work.

Literature is just a bunch of shit someone invented with no necessary relationship to reality _whatsoever_. "Genius" just means your brain is shaped in a way that accords with the shape of the brain of the author who's genius you enjoy.

STOP BLASPHEMING MY HOLY CHURCH

indubsitably

Do have the potential to become a genius, or are geniuses born?

IQ is a nonmetric.

with those numerals, id say yes

I am not OP, but here are my thoughts:

10,000 hours, without context or detail, is a completely arbitrary number. It is misleading to assign a number to a subjective and individual pursuit. No two experiences are the same.

10,000 hours has been proven to be an exaggeration.
>Case Western Reserve University's assistant professor of psychology Brooke N. Macnamara and colleagues have subsequently performed a comprehensive review of 9,331 research papers about practice relating to acquiring skills. They focused specifically on 88 papers that collected and recorded data about practice times. In their paper, they note regarding the 10,000-hour rule that "This view is a frequent topic of popular-science writing" but "we conducted a meta-analysis covering all major domains in which deliberate practice has been investigated. We found that deliberate practice explained 26% of the variance in performance for games, 21% for music, 18% for sports, 4% for education, and less than 1% for professions. We conclude that deliberate practice is important, but not as important as has been argued".

In the book itself, Gladwell cherrypicks anecdotes, uses post-hoc sophistry, and false dichotomies. He is deliberately distorting the reality and truth of situations to suit his theory.

Finally, it is a fancy and trendy way to say "work really hard and you can be good at anything". It is pop nonfiction. It assigned a term to something every person, intelligent or not, knows. The whole book offers nothing original or innovative around the concept of constant and hard work.

Way to take an obvious metaphor literally you dumb cunt. Is all your thinking this one dimensional?

It isn't a metaphor. And even if it was, that doesn't excuse it for exactly what I said.

Have you even read the book?

Have you?

Yes.

"Genius" is apriori

You can still be a prolific and profound author if you work hard enough, but true genius is a gift. It's just a matter of putting it to work

Even if those particulars do not hold exact for individual cases, if offers a pretty thorough description (with some down to earth explanations) of the mechanism by which it IS practice, discipline, and circumstances, not being born with it.

While you might see this as common sense, there are clearly people who would take a different stance in the debate, so it is only as useless as the topic of this entire thread.

I know I'll sound pretentious, but it's just about how truly deep you are. No one can teach you how to do it, and you're not born with it. It just happens and you have to make it your own. It's a succession of insights that brings you deeper and deeper (or higher and higher). You can't teach it, you can just show examples of it and hope that your students will just ''get'' it in a way that is not dogmatic.
This is what genius is.

Note my third point. He cherrypicks situations and events and mainpulates them to suit his theory. He doesn't just report the truth, he reenacts it with suggestions and bias. It is dishonest.

What is that Nietzsche quote that says those who want to appear smart strive for obscurity but those who are smart strive for clarity.

Nietzsche believed in this notion too, Deleuze formalized it as ''sign''.

It's *a priori, genius.

People can be so gosh darn harebrained!

Kind of ironic how 1. many people would consider neeche a genius 2. he is quite obscure at times 3. he still said that

Can you expand on the Deleuze sign?

"They muddy the water, to make seem deep."