<p>I think that if your smart, you’re born that way. Our school had us take IQ tests back in second grade, which still affect our class placement to this day. Some people like me who get good grades and high test scores without effort are who everyone expected to score gifted or genius (which I did.) But I’d say the majority of the 15 people in our school who scored that high are complete underachievers and F students (about 10/15). So while people are born with their intellect, their surroundings and upbringing with help them utilize it.</p>
<p>^ some of the underachievers could be utilizing their intellect outside of school.</p>
<p>Wiscongene, if you can’t measure intelligence, why are you measuring it with an IQ exam? It is true; intelligence can not be measured.</p>
<p>I was a former child genius and I would like to give some insights. Many of the people here are wrongfully connecting genius with high score on standardize tests. That is wrong. And many of the alleged geniuses you see on tv or youtube aren’t really geniuses. They’re just kid taught by their parents. That is why those kid’s education only reached 1-2nd year of college. Parents couldn’t teach any further.</p>
<p>With geniuses their mind is often coming up with ideas which often keep them up at night. Not one night, but all their lives. Sleep affect your memories as well as your day performances.</p>
<p>To answer the question: genius is born. Einstein wasn’t made, he was born. Look into his eyes, does that guy look alert? Even though he is a genius, he still need to be educated like everybody else.</p>
<p>Notice, most of the genius never took the IQ test. My bet is that if they had they’ll score very low. Look into their eyes again. They don’t look fully awake. I betcha they probably missed read the problem or probably isn’t interested in those problems.</p>
<p>It’s a shame, with all these advance in civilization, people don’t understand geniuses. When I was younger, I was placed in a gifted program while my classmates were in class being taught. I had to take a quiz the next day on the materials I didn’t even attend! They think that as a genius, information just grows in my head or something.</p>
<p>Both occur in my opinion. While there is undeniable evidence of children inheriting their parents’ brains, Malcolm Gladwell wrote an interesting chapter in his book “Outliers,” about the “10,000 Hour rule” which, in a nutshell, states that performing 10,000 hours of practice in a various discipline, whether it be singing, practicing an instrument, reading, etc, that person will become a genius in that field. The examples he used were the Beatles, who did countless tours and shows in Europe before coming to the U.S, and Bill Gates, who spent over 10,000 hours programming in his high school’s computer.</p>
<p>did you ever see the documentary about the “Polgar family”. It has alot of insight. Look it up guys</p>
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<p>Are you kidding me? Einstein was completely devoted to his subject. Gates spent thousands of hours coding and took math 55 at Harvard. Jobs… well Jobs was very innovative and was a special leader but he also stole lots of ideas and screwed lots of people over to get where he was.</p>
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<p>This just likely means your friend has inefficient methods of studying. (Seriously, at times my studying can range from 2 hours to 30 minutes with the same result depending on how efficient I am.)</p>
<p>Anyways, I think it’s probably something like 30% nature 70% nurture. Hard work gets you places nothing else can and sufficient for most intents and purposes. Similarly true geniuses do exist; these are the people with massive amounts of time and effort but a lot of natural skill as well (e.g. this is the distinction between your average MIT math professor and Terence Tao… the MIT professor to most would be considered a genius, just not once in a century sort of genius).</p>
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<p>I haven’t seen this documentary, but I’m familiar with the Polgar’s story. Basically, a chess player raised all his daughters from birth to play chess, and they all ended up grandmasters, and are the top of the women’s game. </p>
<p>Basically, I think to be an all time great of some field (e.g. Gauss, Euler, Von Neumann, Einstein, Tao, Fischer, Kasparov) etc. you need to have a special innate talent in addition to thousands and thousands of hours of hard work. However, I think to simply be a genius by most standards, that is, be one of the best in a field in your country but not of all time, it is mostly about hard work as long as you’re above average. I know of at least one math professor, for example, who was not considered remotely special in high school or college but put in something like 20,000 hours of work over 8 years and suddenly leaped to the top of his field by the end of college; he today has a Macarthur genius grant to his name (though to be fair there are also a plenty of examples of IMO gold medalists failing as professional mathematicians due to lack of creativity). </p>
<p>I think a lot of what matters is what task is being looked at. Highly technical tasks (playing an instrument, chess, etc.) are probably something like 90% nurture 10% nature. More creative tasks (art, math, music composition, writing) is probably closer to 50% nature 50% nurture.</p>
<p>TL;DR Geniuses are born but it shouldn’t really matter to the individual since experts (though short of genius) are made anyways, and that genius needs the hard work to access.</p>
<p>Also, I think IQ testing of young kids should be banned (at least in schools). Kids who score high often face the idea that they’re smart, and thus don’t need to work as hard, and thus underachieve. Similarly those that score low could be discouraged even though IQ is a terrible measure of future success anyways. IQ has almost no bearing on real life success. (I know personally I became really complacent in middle school and early high school because I had been constantly praised for my intelligence rather than a work ethic. Thus I was lazy and average. This changed once I realized I was not nearly as smart as I thought I was and I ended up doing pretty well for myself once I started working hard (4.0, National AP Scholar, 2400, siemens regional finalist, etc.). CC played a pretty big role in this, funnily enough.)</p>
<p>IQ tests are irrelevant in displaying how smart a person is.</p>
<p>true, it’s not like smart people brandish their IQ scores to show that they’re intelligent.</p>
<p>^ I used to!</p>
<p>I think a lot of times kids don’t know better … or maybe that was just me.</p>
<p>Some of it is learned or altered by one’s environment while a large portion is genetics. I’d say 15% learned, 25% environment, 60% genetics.</p>
<p>[ Malcolm Gladwell wrote an interesting chapter in his book “Outliers,” about the “10,000 Hour rule” which, in a nutshell, states that performing 10,000 hours of practice in a various discipline, whether it be singing, practicing an instrument, reading, etc, that person will become a genius in that field. ]</p>
<p>Malcolm Gladwell is wrong. He misused “getting good at something” to be the same as a genius. Anyway, being normal is what you want to be at. Most of your great tennis player, pilot, concert pianist, etc do thing nearly flawlessly. That’s because they are normal and have nothing else on their mind than their game. You don’t want a real genius to be your surgeon, his mind will be thinking about some ideas while performing on you. And he’ll make tons of mistakes and forgetting a thing of two while sewing you up. Remember, they aren’t fully awake. The 10,000 Hour rule applies to normal people, not to genius. When a genius try to pull the 10,000 rule, he couldn’t figure why he kept making simple mistakes. But he does get better.</p>
<p>You hear this all the time. Some kid took a standardize test and score really well. Then he said something like, “I didn’t even prepare for the exam and did well.” If you followed my post, you should figured it out already. Being normal gave him an edge. </p>
<p>Forget about all the geniuses you heard about unless they do something great. Most of the genius you hear on tv and news. Those are mainly fakes. Youngest college student, youngest college professor, youngest doctor,… Teaching someone so he can be ahead of the other kids do not mean he is a genius.</p>
<p>Genius is innate talent that some people have. Nurturing makes the most of whatever innate talent a person has. </p>
<p>I have two children, both raised the same way. Older daughter is very good at school, near the top of her class. She works hard at it.</p>
<p>Younger son at age six calculated the number of milliseconds in the month of February, IN HIS HEAD, and was attempting to calculate the number of milliseconds in a year before we stopped him. Learned algebra on his own at age 7. Introduced him to chess and he started beating me in six months and is now nationally ranked for his age.</p>
<p>Both nurtured the same way, but one has more innate talent.</p>
<p>I have a similar story to the one above, but I’m not a super genius. It’s definitely a but of both, but mostly genetic. I clock in around 145-150 for IQ, get straight A’s, love physics, AP calculus at age 15, yet could never ever calculate the MILLISECONDS in a day mentally, let alone attempt a year. My sister is extremely smart, but doesn’t always get A’s, just missed the gifted cut off at like a 133 IQ, loves writing, and journalism. We’re exactly a year apart, and were raised the same way, but…I just have more innate talent for my subject field.</p>
<p>I agree with lazy dude. Genius is beyond just being smart or being good at something. There is a creative side to a genius that can make the leap to a new level. They also seem to be self-driven, with a built in work-ethic driven by the desire to know new things. A person like Isaac Newton or Einstein were gifts from nature.</p>
<p>Born, then made.</p>
<p>"[ Malcolm Gladwell wrote an interesting chapter in his book “Outliers,” about the “10,000 Hour rule” which, in a nutshell, states that performing 10,000 hours of practice in a various discipline, whether it be singing, practicing an instrument, reading, etc, that person will become a genius in that field. ]"</p>
<p>I very much doubt he used the word “genius”, more likely he used the term “expert”.</p>
<p>After all, he advocated the use of a lottery for Ivy admissions for anyone with an IQ higher than 115.</p>
<p>BTW, Gladwell also included a chapter on a true genius who was not successful in school and later because of his upbringing and lack of knowledge of entitlement. He was unable to advocate for himself in school and became quite bitter.</p>
<p>bump!!!</p>
<p>Mostly genetics, partly environment.</p>
<p>Hard-work, alone, will make you great. Intelligence/Innate ability, alone, will make you great. Hard-work coupled with intelligence/innate ability will make you brilliant. To answer the main question though, I believe genetics factors more into the making of a genius. Not to deny the importance of a nurturing environment, but genetics is far more significant.</p>