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Comment by espeed

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.

parent espeed 15 years ago

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