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www.nytimes.com/2009/05/01...brooks.html
May 1, 2009
Op-Ed Columnist
Genius: The Modern View
By DAVID BROOKS
Some people live in romantic ages. They tend to believe that genius is the product of a divine spark. They believe that there have been, throughout the ages, certain paragons of greatness — Dante, Mozart, Einstein — whose talents far exceeded normal comprehension, who had an other-worldly access to transcendent truth, and who are best approached with reverential awe.
We, of course, live in a scientific age, and modern research pierces hocus-pocus. In the view that is now dominant, even Mozart’s early abilities were not the product of some innate spiritual gift. His early compositions were nothing special. They were pastiches of other people’s work. Mozart was a good musician at an early age, but he would not stand out among today’s top child-performers.
What Mozart had, we now believe, was the same thing Tiger Woods had — the ability to focus for long periods of time and a father intent on improving his skills. Mozart played a lot of piano at a very young age, so he got his 10,000 hours of practice in early and then he built from there.
The latest research suggests a more prosaic, democratic, even puritanical view of the world. The key factor separating geniuses from the merely accomplished is not a divine spark. It’s not I.Q., a generally bad predictor of success, even in realms like chess. Instead, it’s deliberate practice. Top performers spend more hours (many more hours) rigorously practicing their craft.
The recent research has been conducted by people like K. Anders Ericsson, the late Benjamin Bloom and others. It’s been summarized in two enjoyable new books: “The Talent Code” by Daniel Coyle; and “Talent Is Overrated” by Geoff Colvin.
If you wanted to picture how a typical genius might develop, you’d take a girl who possessed a slightly above average verbal ability. It wouldn’t have to be a big talent, just enough so that she might gain some sense of distinction. Then you would want her to meet, say, a novelist, who coincidentally shared some similar biographical traits. Maybe the writer was from the same town, had the same ethnic background, or, shared the same birthday — anything to create a sense of affinity.
This contact would give the girl a vision of her future self. It would, Coyle emphasizes, give her a glimpse of an enchanted circle she might someday join. It would also help if one of her parents died when she was 12, infusing her with a profound sense of insecurity and fueling a desperate need for success.
Armed with this ambition, she would read novels and literary biographies without end. This would give her a core knowledge of her field. She’d be able to chunk Victorian novelists into one group, Magical Realists in another group and Renaissance poets into another. This ability to place information into patterns, or chunks, vastly improves memory skills. She’d be able to see new writing in deeper ways and quickly perceive its inner workings.
Then she would practice writing. Her practice would be slow, painstaking and error-focused. According to Colvin, Ben Franklin would take essays from The Spectator magazine and translate them into verse. Then he’d translate his verse back into prose and examine, sentence by sentence, where his essay was inferior to The Spectator’s original.
Coyle describes a tennis academy in Russia where they enact rallies without a ball. The aim is to focus meticulously on technique. (Try to slow down your golf swing so it takes 90 seconds to finish. See how many errors you detect.)
By practicing in this way, performers delay the automatizing process. The mind wants to turn deliberate, newly learned skills into unconscious, automatically performed skills. But the mind is sloppy and will settle for good enough. By practicing slowly, by breaking skills down into tiny parts and repeating, the strenuous student forces the brain to internalize a better pattern of performance.
Then our young writer would find a mentor who would provide a constant stream of feedback, viewing her performance from the outside, correcting the smallest errors, pushing her to take on tougher challenges. By now she is redoing problems — how do I get characters into a room — dozens and dozens of times. She is ingraining habits of thought she can call upon in order to understand or solve future problems.
The primary trait she possesses is not some mysterious genius. It’s the ability to develop a deliberate, strenuous and boring practice routine.
Coyle and Colvin describe dozens of experiments fleshing out this process. This research takes some of the magic out of great achievement. But it underlines a fact that is often neglected. Public discussion is smitten by genetics and what we’re “hard-wired” to do. And it’s true that genes place a leash on our capacities. But the brain is also phenomenally plastic. We construct ourselves through behavior. As Coyle observes, it’s not who you are, it’s what you do.
May 1, 2009
Op-Ed Columnist
Genius: The Modern View
By DAVID BROOKS
Some people live in romantic ages. They tend to believe that genius is the product of a divine spark. They believe that there have been, throughout the ages, certain paragons of greatness — Dante, Mozart, Einstein — whose talents far exceeded normal comprehension, who had an other-worldly access to transcendent truth, and who are best approached with reverential awe.
We, of course, live in a scientific age, and modern research pierces hocus-pocus. In the view that is now dominant, even Mozart’s early abilities were not the product of some innate spiritual gift. His early compositions were nothing special. They were pastiches of other people’s work. Mozart was a good musician at an early age, but he would not stand out among today’s top child-performers.
What Mozart had, we now believe, was the same thing Tiger Woods had — the ability to focus for long periods of time and a father intent on improving his skills. Mozart played a lot of piano at a very young age, so he got his 10,000 hours of practice in early and then he built from there.
The latest research suggests a more prosaic, democratic, even puritanical view of the world. The key factor separating geniuses from the merely accomplished is not a divine spark. It’s not I.Q., a generally bad predictor of success, even in realms like chess. Instead, it’s deliberate practice. Top performers spend more hours (many more hours) rigorously practicing their craft.
The recent research has been conducted by people like K. Anders Ericsson, the late Benjamin Bloom and others. It’s been summarized in two enjoyable new books: “The Talent Code” by Daniel Coyle; and “Talent Is Overrated” by Geoff Colvin.
If you wanted to picture how a typical genius might develop, you’d take a girl who possessed a slightly above average verbal ability. It wouldn’t have to be a big talent, just enough so that she might gain some sense of distinction. Then you would want her to meet, say, a novelist, who coincidentally shared some similar biographical traits. Maybe the writer was from the same town, had the same ethnic background, or, shared the same birthday — anything to create a sense of affinity.
This contact would give the girl a vision of her future self. It would, Coyle emphasizes, give her a glimpse of an enchanted circle she might someday join. It would also help if one of her parents died when she was 12, infusing her with a profound sense of insecurity and fueling a desperate need for success.
Armed with this ambition, she would read novels and literary biographies without end. This would give her a core knowledge of her field. She’d be able to chunk Victorian novelists into one group, Magical Realists in another group and Renaissance poets into another. This ability to place information into patterns, or chunks, vastly improves memory skills. She’d be able to see new writing in deeper ways and quickly perceive its inner workings.
Then she would practice writing. Her practice would be slow, painstaking and error-focused. According to Colvin, Ben Franklin would take essays from The Spectator magazine and translate them into verse. Then he’d translate his verse back into prose and examine, sentence by sentence, where his essay was inferior to The Spectator’s original.
Coyle describes a tennis academy in Russia where they enact rallies without a ball. The aim is to focus meticulously on technique. (Try to slow down your golf swing so it takes 90 seconds to finish. See how many errors you detect.)
By practicing in this way, performers delay the automatizing process. The mind wants to turn deliberate, newly learned skills into unconscious, automatically performed skills. But the mind is sloppy and will settle for good enough. By practicing slowly, by breaking skills down into tiny parts and repeating, the strenuous student forces the brain to internalize a better pattern of performance.
Then our young writer would find a mentor who would provide a constant stream of feedback, viewing her performance from the outside, correcting the smallest errors, pushing her to take on tougher challenges. By now she is redoing problems — how do I get characters into a room — dozens and dozens of times. She is ingraining habits of thought she can call upon in order to understand or solve future problems.
The primary trait she possesses is not some mysterious genius. It’s the ability to develop a deliberate, strenuous and boring practice routine.
Coyle and Colvin describe dozens of experiments fleshing out this process. This research takes some of the magic out of great achievement. But it underlines a fact that is often neglected. Public discussion is smitten by genetics and what we’re “hard-wired” to do. And it’s true that genes place a leash on our capacities. But the brain is also phenomenally plastic. We construct ourselves through behavior. As Coyle observes, it’s not who you are, it’s what you do.
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Re: genius = focus?
Sat, May 2, 2009 - 6:46 AMI think they are getting potential and results confused. It s one thing to be a genius (you, me, lots of folks we know) and be unaccomplished, probably in large part due to parental non-suppport (like somebody I resemble). No direction, no incentive = no success. -
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Re: genius = focus?
Thu, May 28, 2009 - 11:32 AMI feel the need to point out that your rhetoric (and rhetoric it is, not evidence or valid points) is indistinguishable from that used by creationists, homeopaths, energy healers, and free energy cranks. There is usually a reason that you sound like all the other cranks.
I don't exactly know a lot about psychology or the various related fields, but even I could run off a list of the well respected IQ tests right now, and I can tell you that few to none reject g completely and entirely, much less subscribe to anything like your claims.
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Old 04-11-2009, 09:50 AM
darynthe
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Originally Posted by talkingbird
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Well I'm pretty convinced that the bell curve is complete BS. Instead, factor in emotional capability, and get the circle of intelligence Of course, there was no image on google, and it's kinda late and i have to be up so i'll just /try/ and explain it.
at the topmost point of the circle are the sevants.
at the bottom most point, the average-above average
at the rightmost point, you find gifted
at the leftmost, below average-disabled.
Take the below average-disabled. This group may not score high intellectually, but they are VERY social and are eager to make freinds. emotionally they are sevants, but people are intimidated by their low IQ.
I'm a firm CIA supporter.
Hope this makes sense.
What is your opinion?
There is the most basic flaw to this reasoning. You are obviously not measuring the same things.
First of all, the Bell Curve is simply a a statistical tool that applies to normal distribution, which is basically, a population that follows a probabilistical law (that most objects cluster around averages). You could possibly use it to tell the same thing about people's heights, their love of chocolate, or their income. As you see this wasn't devised to put down people. It is just a reflection of odds in real life. Extremely useful. I am almost hurt to think that someone would want to rule out statistics.
Your circle of intelligence, on the other hand, for what I understand, does not mean to measure the same independent variable (IQ) or describe the distribution of a population at all, but to prove that given the sum of all variables that makes an individual both happy and talented at the same time, their net quotient will be zero.
Simple example if given numbers:
Individual A percentil 10th in bell curve: social skills 6+intelliegnce4=10 ICQ
Individual B perpcentil 99.99999th in bell curve: social skills 0+intelligence 10=10 ICQ
See, not the same thing at all. Plus I am afraid that it will never give the same ICQ anyway, as people are not born equal in abilities and especially in circumstances.
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Old 04-11-2009, 10:19 AM
Ntwadumela
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Originally Posted by prometheuspan
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the dirty little secret is that software is worth about 2 or 3 standard deviations. IE, most people with an iq of 110 could obtain an iq functionally equal to 130 or 140 if they just bothered to educate themselves enough on the things most important to do that.
This theoretically should not be true. If intelligence tests measure what they are supposed to (without getting into the argument if they are actually valid or not), intelligence should remain relatively constant. IQ is a measure of aptitude (or the hardware in your analogy), not achievement (software). The important distinction in these words is that aptitude taps into ability, thus it is relatively stable compared to achievement. Therefore, it would be possible for a person to reasonably increase their scores on achievement tests (GRE, ACT, SAT, LSAT, MCAT) through hard work/study/compensatory strategies, but much harder to do so on an aptitude test. Though I will admit it is possible, it is not likely that many individuals will increase their IQ score 2-3 standard deviations.
Ntwadumela added to this post, 5 minutes and 4 seconds later...
Originally Posted by prometheuspan
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General
1.Psychology is the study of the human mind. Most specifically the psyche, most generally All of human behavior.
2. The human Brain is composed of between 40 and 70 different organs, depending upon
how you define differences. These are called brodmanns brain areas. Each brain area
is responsible for specific types of brain processes and mental functions.
3. The human mind has four main operational conditions, they are beta brainwave states, alpha brainwave states, delta brainwave states, and theta brainwave states. Each of these might be further subdivided into waking or sleeping states of consciousness.
4. Beta brainwave states are those in which the dominant area of the brain is the frontal lobes. Alpha brainwave states are those in which the dominant area of the brain is the Mammalian brain or Occipital lobes, and Delta brainwaves states are those where the brain is dominated by the Reptilian Brain or brain stem. Theta brain wave states are
a second waking condition in which the body is healed, or, in which the normal flow of
dominance from top of brain to bottom of brain is reversed, and the bottom of the brain
loads information into the top, which is then experienced as dreams.
5. We have instincts which compel us to seek out gratification of our needs. All behavior is motivated by a conscious or unconscious belief that said behavior will get some need met.
6. Psychology involves first an instinct, which compels a thought process, and then a planning or strategizing session in which the individual uses their maps of reality and belief systems as well as learned knowledge and social conditioning to arrive at an end
product of doing something to get what you want. Schema are maps of reality which we
use as tools to meet our needs .Social Conditioning and personal experience and learning
play vital roles in helping the mind to think up tactics to meet needs.
7. Criminal behavior is behavior which that person believes will get their needs met. Punishment was well demonstrated to have little or no effect on learning curve. What is required for a person to change their behavior is a functional tactic that does work to get their needs met.
8. Groupthink is a social phenomenon of psychology where a group uses false
consensus process to end up behaving stupidly as a group. Groupthink occurs when
people cave into social pressures, where propaganda replaces knowledge or facts, and where group identity is created out of participation in group delusions, lies, codependency, or criminality. Groupthink is how a mob drifts to the lowest common denominator, and why a mob is potentially vicious, evil, and sociopathic. Group
authority ameliorates and dissolves personal conscience, and by having their emotions
manipulated and their social identity threatened, people give up their own better judgment and accept the judgment of the most psychopathic member of the group.
9. Pack Psychology is the psychology exhibited primarily by mammals in small groups
in which 3 primary roles are assumed by social participants. The roles are Alpha- the leader, Beta- the followers, and Delta- the orbiters. In human society that translates in a super-simplified way into bullies, cliques, and nerds.
10. Problem solving psychology must contend against groupthink and pack psychology in the arena of opinion. Problem solving psychology is emotionally neutral and uses the mind and logic to look at all aspects of a problem and try to come up with a viable problem solving process. Problem solving psychology is the worst enemy of both
Rightist and Leftist Dogmatists. True problem solving psychology comes from the place of the radical middle. It takes in all sides and all viewpoints, and it gives each its fair dues
And attention in creating a problem solving process that works from the big picture down through into the nano details.
WTF moments. It's like the filter has been turned off and facts are just erupting.
Ntwadumela added to this post, 11 minutes and 51 seconds later...
Originally Posted by prometheuspan
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you are by wanking on 20 year old iq pseudoscience
Even new IQ tests are pseudo-science. If we are all presented with the same facts (i.e. what intelligence is) and come up with 1,000 different interpretations there are probably flaws in many of our approaches.
Ntwadumela added to this post, 2 minutes and 58 seconds later...
Originally Posted by prometheuspan
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you are by wanking on 20 year old iq pseudoscience
and the old IQ model which hasn't been used by serious psychologists in at least that long.
Please explain the flaws in the old model and how they were sweepingly reformed into the new model that is so universally accepted (and evolved) that we are fools for not subscribing to it yet.
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Old 04-11-2009, 01:56 PM
prometheuspan
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"This theoretically should not be true."
according to your third rate understanding of 40 year old psychology paradigms.
According to science fact now, we generally understand that it is often true that otherwise very impaired people often excel in one or two areas. This is even applied in
finding them work.
We now know that intellegence is a group of things. those things systemically are equal in most senses to the lucidity of the conversations between the brodmanns brain areas.
the reason why you yourself for instance emit so much stupidity is because most of the psychic energy most people spend is about fighting themselves and projecting that fight at other people. If they actually could listen to and communicate with their own subconscious mind, that would by definition up their iq by 20 points or so.
When you factor in the point that high level genius is in most senses just some form of high level mental simulation, and that mental simulation is just a waking theta of consciousness, the truth becomes that your choices and social programming have far more to do with how smart you are then how your brain is built.
ponder me this. Why is it that very high iq people frequently have slightly smaller brains?
how did that work?
If intelligence tests measure what they are supposed to
they refactored everything because the proofs became overwhelming that they mostly
measured biases and cognicentrism at the turn of the 1900s or so. I am sorry you missed
the paradigm shift memo. Now you get it here.
The new model says that the old model was completely a reflection of which kind of intelligence we valued; chiefly verbal and social intelligence. The new model prepares us for and has explanatory power for what we actually experience of people and also matches how different people manages to get different brain regions doing different things. Like the musician that uses the math centers for music. Or the otherwise fairly stupid person whos kinesthetic intelligence has gone up from practice so that they juggle
ten things flawlessly.
the largest failure of the old system was it is just a model of narcissism. thats why you are still holding on and sucking like an infant.
there is no single one thing that makes smart. smart is a lot of different things.
there are thus different kinds of smart and all of those kinds of smart still
come down to the effective efficiency of communication between brodmanns brain areas.
(without getting into the argument if they are actually valid or not), intelligence should remain relatively constant.
thats nice if you are playing with graph paper and you want consciousness to graph easily. otherwise its stupid, because its reifying graph paper.
IQ is a measure of aptitude (or the hardware in your analogy), not achievement (software).
not any more. iq is a measure of problem solving ability and 8 kinds of problem solving.
Thats the small model, the larger model breaks it down into smaller groups for specific brain areas.
The important distinction in these words is that aptitude taps into ability, thus it is relatively stable compared to achievement. Therefore, it would be possible for a person to reasonably increase their scores on achievement tests (GRE, ACT, SAT, LSAT, MCAT) through hard work/study/compensatory strategies, but much harder to do so on an aptitude test.
You only think so because your mental ability has always remained constant. If you ever give yourself the love you need to experience a shift you will realize that evolution can happen inside of you if you choose that door.
people who have had serious mental shifts ini cognitive ability know from personal experience that in fact the mind is capable of things most of us have never tried to
make it do or explore. Self knowledge is enormous potential power when you realize what we are all capable of.
Though I will admit it is possible, it is not likely that many individuals will increase their IQ score 2-3 standard deviations.
fight for your limitations, sure enough, they're yours.
stop fighting yourself andprojecting that at other people, and you realize that
99 percent of our psychic energy is lost in fighting ourselves and others, instead of
building something positive. that is a simple habitual choice. genius is nothing more than the opposite mental choice piling up over time. You can build something beautiful in the world and inside of yourself at the same time. that can grow into genius. Self cultivation
in fact does yield reproducable demonstrable results.
prometheuspan added to this post, 6 minutes and 24 seconds later...
Even new IQ tests are pseudo-science. If we are all presented with the same facts (i.e. what intelligence is) and come up with 1,000 different interpretations there are probably flaws in many of our approaches.
the new dominant models are all seeing the brain as an orchestrated conversation between subsystems. the mind is the qualities of those many conversations.
The simple method which is understood to be the easy reference reification model is the
basic eight kinds of intelligence. Otherwise nowadys they go by brain area, and they
have a subject do things while wired so they know which brain areas get lit.
Yes it is true that all science does is build models, thats why its important to use the recent models, not the old ones.
prometheuspan added to this post, 6 minutes and 38 seconds later...
Originally Posted by PHS Philip
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I feel the need to point out that your rhetoric (and rhetoric it is, not evidence or valid points) is indistinguishable from that used by creationists, homeopaths, energy healers, and free energy cranks. There is usually a reason that you sound like all the other cranks.
I don't exactly know a lot about psychology or the various related fields, but even I could run off a list of the well respected IQ tests right now, and I can tell you that few to none reject g completely and entirely, much less subscribe to anything like your claims.
the simple and more common ones they give most people because they work
great to sort the top ten percent from the rest. but when sorting people whos main
test iq is very high, or looking to employ somebody whos main test iq is very low, or trying to figure out how best to educate a child, you do the multiple set and then figure out HOW
somebody is smart, not IF.
Last edited by Synamon; 04-15-2009 at 05:46 AM. Reason: flaming removed
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Old 04-11-2009, 02:05 PM
prometheuspan
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Your circle of intelligence, on the other hand, for what I understand, does not mean to measure the same independent variable (IQ) or describe the distribution of a population at all, but to prove that given the sum of all variables that makes an individual both happy and talented at the same time, their net quotient will be zero.
the actual way intelligence is now seen to work is that intelligence is a set of bellcurves,
representing the functioning of different brodmanns brain areas and the conversations between brodmanns brain areas. Those actual larger sets of more real data do in fact show that what tends to happen is that the brain and mind adapt to relational modes
as a whole, for instance as previously mentioned the musician who uses the math brain to do music. these whole brain adaptations tell us that expertise is just a form of whole brain adaptation. While there are certainly organic and structural contributing factors to intelligence, the dominance contributing factors turn out to be social and psychological.
If you treat a child with respect and love and give them puzzles to solve they will be smart. if you keep them locked in their room with no toys and spank them a lot, odds
are good that they could end up ego/id conflicted and thus stupid.
So the insight of a circle of intelligence is essentially correct. its not about scoring
as an iq god, its about finding out what your best at and then giving yourself the love and attention and time you need to bring that to fruition.
because of that circle, even "dumb" people can find ways to be exceptional. -
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Re: genius = focus?
Thu, May 28, 2009 - 11:35 AMfocus in fact, and more specifically, an acutely managed and empowered force of attention should enable most people to exhibit skills or abilities which are normally termed "genius".
in reverse, people who have high IQs but who don't have the ability for such focus do not exhibit what we would call genius.
and, important for aspies, we have brain differences which tend to empower us to have acute or extreme focus, and thus, if we understand that should be able to pull of what would be called "genius" whether or not having a very high IQ.
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