You don’t shoot down every fighter plane launched against you, you blow up the platform they’re being launched from

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Although genius has been defined in the dictionary as requiring an IQ above 140, this definition depends on an arbitrary methodological decision made by Lewis Terman for his longitudinal study of more than 1500 intellectually gifted children, a study that occupies four of the five volumes of Genetic Studies of Genius. […]

[T]he actual relation between IQ and genius is small and heavily contingent on domain-specific assessment, the operation of traits like persistence and openness to experience, and the impact of diversifying experiences, including both developmental adversity and subclinical psychopathology. Hence, the dictionary definition of “genius” has minimal, if any, justification.

{ Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences | Continue reading }

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