[lit-ideas] Re: Einstein

So you're saying Einstein is just a tooth fairy?  How do you answer my 
statement that Einstein is a demigod, yet Edison is unknown except as the guy 
who invented the lightbulb?



----- Original Message ----- 
From: Mike Geary 
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: 10/31/2005 4:49:43 AM 
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Einstein


A.A:
>>  Maybe my standards are too high, but to me a genius is a genius, someone 
>> gifted who doesn't work hard at something but still gets a profound result. 
>> <<

Not too "high", Andy, just too childish.  Like Santa Claus and the tooth fairy, 
there's no such thing as your 'genius'.  You've been laboring under a mythology 
all these years, alas!  For your information, sir, I am a genius and yet I've 
labored 50 years starting with paper routes, I've discovered nothing, 
accomplished nothing, am only a mediocre refrigeration mechanic, a mathematical 
moron, a semi-illiterate English major (what a joke that is) an embarrassing 
poetaster, a failed provider, a lousy lover and yet, still I insist I am a 
genius.  Why?  because for  61 years now I have thought seriously about, but 
have not yet killed myself when all the world argues vehemently that I should 
-- the reasons I've come up with for not pulling the trigger are sheer genius, 
that and a little laziness.  

So pay attention, godddamnit, this is genius talking to you.  You've been 
snookered by American ideology.  To you a genius is someone set apart from the 
rest of us slobs by INTELLIGENCE.  No, no, no, no.  Intelligence is but a 
glorified Pavlovian response to hunger.  Genius is creativity,  it has nothing 
to do with intelligence.  Nothing comes to anyone entire of itself.  In fact, 
though, genius isn't even creativity.  That's a myth, too.  Genius amounts to 
nothing more than a misunderstanding of someone else's idea.  In fact that's 
all that philosophy is as well -- maybe everything's just a misunderstanding, 
hell, I don't know, give me 10 years to think about it.  Genius is a fool's 
misunderstanding of another genius's mistaken notion of some other's wrong 
idea.  We approach truth through error.  The greater the error the greater the 
ingenuity.


Mike Geary
genius extraordinaire
of Mempis




  ----- Original Message ----- 
From: Andy Amago 
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx ; lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 
Sent: Sunday, October 30, 2005 8:01 AM
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Einstein


----- Original Message ----- 
From: 
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: 10/30/2005 12:14:39 AM 
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Einstein


In a message dated 10/29/2005 8:18:56 A.M. Central Daylight Time, 
aamago@xxxxxxxxxxxxx writes:
I'm disappointed in him, not in his accomplishments
Hi, Andy,
I'm also a bit perplexed here.

Why in the world would you be disappointed in someone's learning/creative 
style. . . especially when it had the outcome that it did?


A.A. Because I along with everyone else I always considered Einstein a 
"genius".  The word Einstein is synonymous with the word "genius".  Then I 
learned that he is no more a genius than anyone who spends years working on a 
problem and has a breakthrough.  Maybe my standards are too high, but to me a 
genius is a genius, someone gifted who doesn't work hard at something but still 
gets a profound result.  Einstein does not fit that description.  He's no 
different from Thomas Edison or any other dedicated researcher, a little 
insight, lots of hard work.  At the same time, Einstein has been mythologized 
into a demigod, where Edison is all but forgotten except as the guy who 
invented the lightbulb.   You're satisfied with that state of affairs?


Andy Amago




If you actually read all sorts of interesting thoughts on both learning and 
creativity and how to get the most of what and who one is. (and you can on the 
internet, even, if you don't like to go to the library and ask for some titles 
on the topic) 

What Einstein did is actually very critical. I'm not sure why you would be 
disappointed in him...though I know a number of parents who are disappointed 
when their kids learn by reading instead of hearing or by hearing instead of 
reading.

(Or, like the article once in Fortune Magazine that I posted one talks about 
the bunch of CEOs who are all dyslexic and who were willing to be studied by 
the physicians at Yale doing a study on their brains. Sure--they all learned to 
compensate for not using parts of their brains--and they all have had those in 
their companies who couldn't understand how they made decisions [they are all 
using a part of their brain that we regular folk are not] Many of them, I 
suppose, had people in their lives who were 'disappointed' in them, too, for 
not learning as others did.)

People learn and create in all sorts of ways.  (I wish I was one of the people 
who got paid to go into the companies to assist with helping their top people 
learn how to be creative. Or, even, the top level companies who actually are 
doing innovative things [I was just reading about Koch Industries the other 
night] spend a lot of time/money/investment in their people to provide the 
synergy of many creative minds working on problems/creative energy/etc. in 
order to let them have those opportunities to pool information and take lines 
of thought\inventions to new levels.

Instead of considering it 'obsessing' over a problem/puzzle, maybe you could 
soften that belief statement to something like 
'determined/curious/dedicated/continuing despite difficulties/persistent.

If you think of him having those qualities, do you like him better?  (What do 
you think a genius is? Someone who just wakes up someday and "knows" something? 
or someone who ponders, mulls over, thoughtfully reflects, gets other opinions, 
collects data and sifts through it looking for new ways of thinking about 
something, or ?)

I suppose you are also disappointed in Edison, too, right?  After all, in spite 
of his taking his inventions to new levels and so forth, he had gobs of 
inventions which didn't pan out. He was constantly working on several ideas all 
at the same time--and though what worked, worked wonders, many of them did not. 
He, like Einstein, had persistence and curiousity, though. 

Waiting for ten years from now when Andy will have taken Einstein's thought to 
the next level (presuming he takes up his own challenge and has the persistence 
to do it as well as the intelligence),
Marlena in Missouri

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