Would you rather be a genius amongst idiots or an idiot amongst genius’s? (1 Viewer)

[andrew markworthy]

This has applied to me whichever university or research group I've worked in.

Intellectual genius is not all it's cracked up to be. I'll give you one detailed example. A few years ago the research unit I worked for kept getting pieces of wood left outside the door, and on the pieces of wood were written number sequences and branching linear patterns. We knew that the guy leaving the pieces of wood was a schizophrenic and one day we scheduled a meeting to decide what the sequences and patterns meant. The meeting consisted of professors (the title only applies to the top of the profession in the UK, not just anyone who lectures) and lowlier folks all of whom are now professors. Two hours later we still had no idea what the sequences meant, until our secretary happened to walk into the room, looked at the numbers on the whiteboard and asked 'why have you got all those radio frequencies and drawings of aerials?'. [It turns out the guy was obsessed with radio waves and what they were doing to his brain]. So much for a university education.

Other examples of great brains being incompetent in real life:

(1) the university professor who was due to give a keynote address at an international conference on memory and was refused entry into the country because he'd forgotten his passport

(2) a famous school of economics that went bankrupt

(3) an internationally renowned expert on particle physics who drove his car into closed entrance gates 'because they were normally open'

The examples can just go on an on.

 

[andrew markworthy]

This is quite common amongst intellectually gifted people. Often dexterity lags way behind their mental abilities. Basically, it's as if the body cannot keep up with the mind.