Genius isn't really a measure of IQ (although a high IQ helps) — genius is an extreme form of insight. I like to think of it in terms of perspective and thus measure it by how rare and valuable a perspective is.
The thing Jobs and Einstein had in common was an insatiable curiosity that helped them get to a place where they could see the world in a way that few others do. Jobs saw the connections between technology and humanities and relentlessly worked toward making his vision reality.
Einstein became a genius because he would relentlessly explore a problem, following it out farther than anyone had taken it before. This allowed him to see how the universe connects in a way that no one had seen before, and his discoveries were valuable to humanity.
Getting to these rare perspectives is usually a product of building up a mental framework and then seeing patterns in- and making associations or connections among seemingly unrelated phenomena. True genius is seeing associations among things previously unseen. A high IQ gives you more ability to build the mental framework needed to see these associations, and a genius has actually applied it.
> Yet talent is unequally distributed. Some innovators (like Edison, or Newton, or Kelvin) are simply better than others. But if genius is not jumping ahead of the inevitable, where do the "greats" fit in? Simonton discovered that the higher the prominence of a scientist (as determined by the number of pages their biography occupies in encyclopedias) the greater number of simultaneous discoveries they are involved with. Kelvin was involved in 30 sets of simultaneous discoveries. Great discovers not only contribute more than the average number of "next" steps, but are heavily involved in those steps that have greatest impact, which naturally are the areas of investigation that attract many other players, and so produce multiples. If discovery is a lottery, the great buy lots of tickets.
Steve is a great business man. He knows how to manage,manipulate and bring out the best from his designers and engineers. He didn't design and he didn't code. He didn't invent ipods or iphones or ipads. Sure he approves it and demands it.But he didn't create any of those things. He is not an inventor. He is a great CEO. Comparing him with Einstein just disgust me. I'd feel better if he was compared to Jesus.(not an inventor either but knows how to influence people). And Bill Gates would be much closer to Einstein since both of them have high IQ.
Would you say that Warren Buffet is a financial genius? And would you say the thing that separates Buffett from the rest of us is that he has a high IQ, or is because he sees all of the dynamics and intricacies of the financial world in a way that few others do?
You can control your environment if you see and understand its connections. Whatever Jobs saw and understood enabled him to create Apple, NeXT, and Pixar, and ultimately build Apple back to the most valuable technology company in the world.
cant remember the exact amount, but im pretty sure he had 300+ patents......I think he has a bit more imput into the above items than your aware of.....
This is very difficult to phrase without sounding like I'm attempting to insinuate my intelligence.
But I don't believe that many very intelligent men took more than 10 minutes to solve this problem, unless it was presented to them in some dramatically different way (eg, the name was not emphasized as much as it was here).
Maybe it's due to all the brain-puzzler job interviews I've done (which weren't very common in 70s when this incident purportedly took place) ... but yea. I figured this one out immediately based on the name and the first example.
Bill Gates is like Joe Satriani. Satch is one of the most technically gifted guitarist of all time. Hes a master at all the complicated alternate picking and shredding. But his music absolutely sucks.
Steve Jobs is Eddie Van Halen. A tortured virtuoso artist who is not only a master at guitars and keyboards. This guy produced some of the most innovative guitar playing in the 70s and 80s. He also created some of the most kick ass rock and roll songs of all time.
Satch plays awesome guitar. EVH creates awesome music.
Your analogy is terrible. Both examples you gave refer to musicians who are technically capable, but with one being able to turn his mastery of the instrument into music that people like.
Steve Jobs did not have mastery of the instrument. He was "technically limited", but still able to create compelling products. If you wanted to keep the analogy, it would be better to say that he was Bob Dylan (coincidentally, he was one of SJ personal idols).
Anyway, I'm going to try again: can you please stop with the Apple fanboyism? Such blind worshiping and your monotonic comments are so annoying that it makes me want to dislike anything about SJ and Apple.
But hardly a "virtuoso" of computing, n'est-ce pas?
Face it, you can not have it both ways. Either Steve Jobs mastery was in taking ideas that were already there and putting it together in a way that was appealing to the common man (the "Bob Dylan"), or he was someone so ahead of its time that people could not comprehend him, pushing the state further to a level that others could not keep up - the "Satriani".
As for your childish insult... I could go on a long diatribe about how the insecurity usually lies in people that need to put others on a pedestal, but you'd need to get out of the Reality Distortion field to be able to understand it.
Quit the bullshit, troll. There is no way that you were talking about Bill Gates. He was not the one that said anything about Steve Jobs being technically limited. I did.
Steve is a great business man. He knows how to manage,manipulate and bring out the best from his designers and engineers. He didn't design and he didn't code. He didn't invent ipods or iphones or ipads. Sure he approves it and demands it.But he didn't create any of those things. He is not an inventor. He is a great CEO. Comparing him with Einstein just disgust me. I'd feel better if he was compared to Jesus.(not an inventor either but knows how to influence people)
I really, really, really dislike the word "genius". It is a barrier, and exists solely to provide an excuse for us to point to when we compare ourselves to other, more successful people.
A related problem caused by this is that the word "genius" usually gets ascribed only to people working in some specific domains (obviously ones where other "geniuses" have worked). So we end up with a world where if you do things A, B, and C amazingly well, you get called a genius, but if you do D, E, and F equally well, you are either ignored or called greedy or something else. As a consequence, a ton of young naive people who were told they were smart in school flock to fields A, B, and C, while fields D, E, and F stagnate causing all sorts of economic problems.
I wish you were right, but unfortunately I disagree.
The fields where we toss around the word "genius" like it's lettuce are all, IMO, severely undermanned and under-appreciated. Fields like physics, engineering, mathematics, atronomy, biology, music, etc. When we think "genius" names like Mozart, Einstein, Hawking, et al come to mind. I wouldn't mind if people flocked towards said fields.
Instead, we have a giant talent drain into fields where we do call people "greedy" for their participation. Investment banking, for example. The labeling of people as "greedy" hasn't stopped the deluge of people pouring into said fields, and the label of "genius" hasn't really helped the ranks of academics and artists.
I would be very delighted if indeed people flocked to a field known for "geniuses".
Ah, I was actually thinking about art and literature, not math and science. Perhaps I'm wrong (and no disrespect to artists who genuinely know their process and value hard work), but I've felt for a while that art/literature are assumed to be fields of endeavor where you can get to the point of being called a creative genius without doing all the work required for being called such in math/science and without having to detach yourself socially. I've simply seen too many bright young people take that path without quite knowing where it leads (I myself almost took it).
Regarding math and science, I do observe that academic pursuit in those fields is undervalued in social terms (in my opinion at least). Being a logical person, I conclude that it must be due to the law of supply and demand and, and that the supply (the number of average-quality science grad students) outweighs the demand. Now you can disagree with me all you want, but a lot of middle-of-the-road grad schools I've seen are depressing places filled with kids who have no idea what to do with their lives (if they did, they probably would not be in grad school at this day and age). They would probably be much better off working for a company yet seventy percent of them can't get a U.S. visa. Now most American students in their turn aren't that interested in spending six years of their young lives in classes and labs filled with people who speak mostly Mandarin, for example, so they don't go into STEM fields either.
I really think that the practice of U.S. graduate schools to make money off foreign students without offering them visas that allow for U.S. employment is something downright awful. Either give the graduates U.S. employment/visas or don't let them into the country in the first place. I'm leaning towards the first option.
It's all supply and demand. More people joining a particular field does not mean higher prestige to people who are already there -- often it's quite the opposite.
I never saw it from that point of view but it's very true. I feel like that word should be reserved for very special cases like Tchaikovsky or picasso, but those kind of geniuses correspond to that era where most things didn't exist. In our times we had Jobs, a man that was really good at making technology feel like an extension of yourself while keeping it very sleek. This, in a world where there's information overload, I think is genius enough.
From my perspective, there usually isn't anything all that different about these "geniuses". They work their ASSES off, and maybe are a bit more talented in a specific area.
Their hard work improves their talent relentlessly, which is why they appear so gifted. I think.
Which, to me, is inspiring. It means they don't have anything I don't.
This might be silly but I was thrilled that Jobs couldn't nail the monkey banana brain teaser. I was asked that at my first MSFT interview 6 years ago and struggled with it (I hated those brain teasers they did)
I despise brain teaser interview questions - are you interviewing me as a Sunday Puzzles columnist or do you want me to program/design/manage?
To me they reek of pop-psych bullshittery - as if somehow my responses to "why are manhole covers round" would represent some divine introspection to my inner personality and capabilities... or that my ability to gauge the temperatures of three light bulbs is in any way connected to my engineering ability.
> Trained in Zen Buddhism, Mr. Jobs came to value experiential wisdom over empirical analysis. He didn’t study data or crunch numbers but like a pathfinder, he could sniff the winds and sense what lay ahead.
A choice quote from a man known as Osho...
> Intellect takes things apart to see how they work; intelligence puts things together to see the functioning of the whole.
(note that the above is greatly simplified, both are needed, neither is better, and there is overlap between the two)
One is analytic and clinical, it can be put in a book and taught to people. It has a limit that's set by your neuron connections.
The other is more spontaneous, exploratory, and creative.
Perhaps "Osho" said some nice things, but he was also a grade-A crazy in some ways - some of them decidedly not 'good' ways - and had some followers who were outright dangerous:
I'm not much into religions in general, even less so cults. And you can't claim that that lot were anything less than a cult. A picture is worth a thousand words:
A following or a cult ... it does not really matter what you call it.
Osho was all about de-programming. Not having a belief system.
Every time someone asked him a question, he would give an answer which always showed how misguided the question was, that, and an incredible amount of insight.
People who are "de-programmed" do not stand around in orange robes in the middle of the eastern Oregon desert, miles away from anything else (I've driven through the former site of their ranch, and it is extremely remote), waiting for The Leader to drive by in one of the 90 some odd Rolls Royces that they have given up all their money to purchase for him.
Part of the difference between a religion and a cult is that 'normal' religions are a part of people's lives, but coexist with the other things they have going on. Cults, like the Rashneesh group, are all-consuming. Those people lived out there in the middle of the desert, and "Rashneesh" was their entire life. They weren't just lining up at the Apple store for fun, or going to see the pope come to town or something.
"So was Mr. Jobs smart? Not conventionally. Instead, he was a genius."
To me, this is just an abusive twisting of the word "genius". I know it has different meanings to different people, but I think being smart, or having some kind of intellectual capacity, is probably the best common ground between definitions.
It seems like Isaacson thinks being a genius just means being really good at something. Dan Marino and JFK are geniuses based on their prowess in their respective fields.
In science, as well as in other fields of human endeavor, there are two kinds of geniuses: the “ordinary” and the “magicians.” An ordinary genius is a fellow that you and I would be just as good as, if we were only many times better. There is no mystery as to how his mind works. Once we understand what he has done, we feel certain that we, too, could have done it. It is different with the magicians. They are, to use mathematical jargon, in the orthogonal complement of where we are and the working of their minds is for all intents and purposes incomprehensible. Even after we understand what they have done, the process by which they have done it is completely dark. They seldom, if ever, have students because they cannot be emulated and it must be terribly frustrating for a brilliant young mind to cope with the mysterious ways in which the magician’s mind works. Richard Feynman is a magician of the highest caliber.
> They seldom, if ever, have students because they cannot be emulated and it must be terribly frustrating for a brilliant young mind to cope with the mysterious ways in which the magician’s mind works. Richard Feynman is a magician of the highest caliber.
That's a strange statement, because Feynman was perhaps the most revered physics teacher of the 20th century.
I think a lot of smart people cling to the idea that they have the capacity for genius because they can solve hard problems or because they have created something interesting or unique. But when you see real genius, it works differently than that. It's not a matter of more processing power, it's a different perspective. Maybe Jobs had that, maybe he didn't. But to tie genius strictly to "intellectual capacity" is a mistake IMHO.
>...but I think being smart, or having some kind of intellectual capacity, is probably the best common ground between definitions.
Being intelligent is no the best common ground because there are so few of them out of many intelligent people. It is creating an artificial common ground.
>Dan Marino and JFK are geniuses based on their prowess in their respective fields.
As great as those you mentioned were, they are not geniuses. Dan Marino did not change the game of football. He had a great arm and was very good at recognizing defenses. People like Joe Montana and Lawrence Taylor changed the game because opposing teams had to develop strategies just around those two players.
JFK, while great, was not a genius. Though he does have the Cuban missile crisis as his crowning achievement, he didn't even finish his first term. Much of JFK is about symbolism rather than accomplishments.
To me, genius is the creative application of extreme knowledge. Geniuses posses a mind, like Clarke's Third Law on advanced technology, that is indistinguishable from magic.
You can't pretend that Michael Jordan is simply some preternatural freak of athletic nature. I mean, he is that, but there are others stronger, faster, smarter and with much better leadership qualities then he could ever pretend. But none could excel in such ways as he could, not even his successor, LeBron James. The way he could push himself along with his team. He elevated modern basketball to the stratosphere, and inspired countless basketball players and coaches.
So what kind of extreme knowledge/magic did Jobs have?
I also disagree with that law because there is always a handful of people capable of explaining an advanced technology, but no one can explain magic. For example, Siri might seem magical to end-users with no technical background but it is definitely not magical to the engineers and programmers who made it.
>So what kind of extreme knowledge/magic did Jobs have?
Understanding design and people and making it applicable to his chosen profession.
>...it is definitely not magical to the engineers and programmers who made it.
It's obviously not magic but, for the large majority, it appears to be so. Even if you wanted to explain how the concept of Siri works to the average person they wouldn't want you to. I think it would ruin it for them.
it is definitely not magical to the engineers and programmers who made it.
I'm not sure if you're saying engineers in general, or specifically the ones who programmed it.
I'll say this: I tried Siri for the first time the other day. It is magical. Not because any single part of what it does is such a huge leap, but the way in which it combines existing elements to create a whole new direction which is so much greater than its parts.
While Google was busy making voice-driven Google searches, Apple was making voice-driven user interface.
Overall, I was amazed at how much more integrated and useful the iPhone was than my Android device. Siri just brings that to a whole new UI level that others had the technical ability to bring, but not the willingness.
Is that a product of genius? I don't know, but I get the impression that both Google and Microsoft are driven by committee, and have very smart people who can't seem to really finish anything properly. They seem to lack creative genius, leadership, and/or drive.
But also, Einstein was a genius, and he thought about light beams, and Jobs about foam models, so they must be kind of the same. And also Einstein said that God doesn't play dice, so he must be religious, except that he wasn't particularly religious.
OK sorry, my brain hurts, probably that means I am not a genius.
With the ongoing rhetoric that America is on the decline and China and India are the superpowers of the future, I think the important takeaway paragraph is this:
"China and India are likely to produce many rigorous analytical thinkers and knowledgeable technologists. But smart and educated people don’t always spawn innovation. America’s advantage, if it continues to have one, will be that it can produce people who are also more creative and imaginative, those who know how to stand at the intersection of the humanities and the sciences. That is the formula for true innovation, as Steve Jobs’s career showed."
It is for this reason, short term economic maladies aside, in the longer run the United States will remain the strongest nation in the world.
It's also an odd unsubstantiated claim to make given what he writes earlier (same point is made in book as well):
He told me he began to appreciate the power of intuition, in contrast to what he called “Western rational thought,” when he wandered around India after dropping out of college. “The people in the Indian countryside don’t use their intellect like we do,” he said. “They use their intuition instead … Intuition is a very powerful thing, more powerful than intellect, in my opinion. That’s had a big impact on my work.”
Yes, and right after claiming that Benjamin Franklin invented the battery.
I've got copies of both Einstein: His Life and Universe and Steve Jobs on my nightstand right now, awaiting their respective time slices, and I've got to say that this article didn't make me optimistic about diving into them.
hmm, 5000 years passed in the west as well and presumably people were also learning in the west.
in the end, it is not how long knowledge has accumulated in a place but how open people are to learning from others.
And how open is often a crap shoot accident of history. The US forced Japan open when Admiral Perry paid Tokyo a visit. Had he only gone to North Korea instead, history would have been completely different.
They are not just rigid. They are exceedingly strict beyond comparison. having spent a little time in the Indian system, this I can assure you.
It's also no surprise that the biggest hit movie of India in the past few years was about how rigid the education system is and how students should be allowed to pursue their own passions, rather fulfill their parents desires.
As for China, what they've gained culturally in the last 5000 years became irrelevant once communism took hold.
The thing Jobs and Einstein had in common was an insatiable curiosity that helped them get to a place where they could see the world in a way that few others do. Jobs saw the connections between technology and humanities and relentlessly worked toward making his vision reality.
Einstein became a genius because he would relentlessly explore a problem, following it out farther than anyone had taken it before. This allowed him to see how the universe connects in a way that no one had seen before, and his discoveries were valuable to humanity.
Getting to these rare perspectives is usually a product of building up a mental framework and then seeing patterns in- and making associations or connections among seemingly unrelated phenomena. True genius is seeing associations among things previously unseen. A high IQ gives you more ability to build the mental framework needed to see these associations, and a genius has actually applied it.