kristalris

For the Devil: you and YdaP really got it wrong even after having it properly explained to you. Again: this is exact science! PRINT THIS PAGE AND HANG ABOVE BED (yes, everyone, unless you already agree) The BIG PICTURE as a rule of thumb: From small to large then in scope yet vice versa in amount of required data: · Deterministic Rotherford reasoning requires a lot of data, and because absolute truth is unattainable only to be accepted when you have a negligible error rate OR if you accept the error rate. So, even with a n1 you can use it on a probandum on what to do when the building is on fire on the question whether to run up or downstairs. The test: take apple and let go. If it falls down run up the stairs if it falls up run down the stairs. No statistics thus. Now bare in mind it might be that running up the stairs can save you and running down can hurt you. I guess you both now can grasp that this is not the way to solve this problem at hand? Or do you need me explain this further? This is nice to communicate with because it is simply Yin or Yang: black or white. · The norm and method you use is dependent on several factors that have to be taken into consideration. A norm is only a convention. You can have your personal norm on when something is proven. For proof per definition means evidence giving a probative value past the norm. · Now when we have less – required ( = NORM!)- data then we get in the realm of empirical statistics. Which as n1 in fact also covers (i.e. thus can be used in all situations) where one can reason deterministically. · Now if you have even less data than that (there is an overlap) then you get into the realm of Bayesian – intuitive - statistics. THE REAM OF YIN - AND! - YANG. The grey area. I.e. you have to start guessing. DNA as forensic evidence is thus weak evidence for an exact scientist, yet at the same time strong evidence for a lawyer. Using any method must – logically – render the same result. It is not a discussion of one or the other but you - can - use both, which one depending on the probandum and amount of attainable data, risk to cost and speed of decision et cetera. Thus sometimes it is wrong to use one or the other see above n1 example. · With even less data you get to Bayesian probabilistic reasoning being the mathematics of common sense. · With even less data you get into the realm of pure non-mathematical logic. The scope of problems that can be tackled has become infinite. This is why we use verbal logic in the courtroom. Near infinitely complex problem and the need to take a decision fast with very little data = evidence. Even inherently unreliable data such as witnesses. Only by exception will you thus use mathematics then in answering the ultimate issue in legal matters (or everyday life in that matter.) Now there are nitwits who think that it is best to use Bayesian networks in courts. No too cumbersome, difficult (=> more chance of mistakes) and measuring on the thousandth of a millimeter with a confidence interval of meters. I.e. garbage in garbage out. · Dictate of logic: when you deal with a problem you must address ALL the relevant questions. · All these questions MUST be filled in as an educated guess if need be. An hypothesis. Intuitive means with your gut feeling: using your imagination. THE MATHMATICS DICTATE THIS! Mathematics is the language of logic ONLY when sufficient data is availleble. So: on a question / probandum of TOE the norm of logic and thus science dictates you first use verbal logic, and then go from broad to fine, gathering more and more relevant data via testing hypothesis you IMAGINED (= intuitive BAYES!! = mathematics !!!!) to be true and thus is POSSIBLY (= probabilistic BAYES!!!) TRUE. Now on the historic psychological truth I refer you to the thread arrogance and genius http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/79253-arrogance-vs-genius/page-5#entry776605 This also entails that science has gone haywire with DSM now V. That is based on Bayes. So, you MUST by rule of mathematics use your imagination or accept the error rate. As rule of thumb a priori (= Bayes!) you thus can't expect on a probandum of what is true science concerning the human brain expect one best practice based on evidence based medicine. You would expect several side by side for the wise expert mind to choose from in order to view a greatly unknown phenomenon : the human brain and make a diagnoses in a specific case. DSM V: 1% of human population is a psychopath. Psychologists wounder why don't they act strange more? Easy pester a population like the Muslims enough and they will themselves or make others fly into twin towers. MN/ God/ Allah thought it wise to have people with no fear. Nice when it gets colder and you want to catch a bear. (I'm told bears have bad breath, and when you smell that, whilst trying to take off his coat poses somewhat of a problem (generaly speaking). For survival thus good to have them. Keep the balance and you don't have a problem. => DSM V = current science disturbs this survival balance. (This doesn't BTW mean that Twin Towers wasn't an attack warranting invading Afghanistan. IMO) I as a Dutchman feel that as an attack on me (= also NATO BTW). yet we dealt with the problem incorrectly in the past. Do it correctly then now, by proper reasoning. => get the team in order! The creative take the lead in R&D in the long run and in crises, see above link on arrogance and genius for historic example, why. These then are the rules of string and stick. The basics of logic and math and thus science. My math teacher thirty odd years ago stated: for mathematics all that is needed is a string and a straight stick on a sandy beach. Now if you two (or anyone else for that matter) want a more thorough shellacking with this string and stick then by all means make my day and don’t throw in the towel.

Indeed, that's why the English can use irony and the Yanks and Frogs can't. That's also why the British have glorious defeats Dunkirk, Arnhem. (The way to rule an Empire BTW good sales.) You don't hear the Yanks about Nijmegen where they got the bridges contrary to the British at Arnhem because Market Garden was a failure and then Yanks feel a looser even though they have no reason to. Germans are the same. They took all the bridges in 1940 including Rotterdam using float-planes. Had the Brits not been so arrogant they would of known that it was possible to land near the bridges and not needed to go 20 km from them. Monty made a muck of it. He lost sight both of the big picture and the important details: land near the bloody bridge and keep it simple. He was arrogant. We know after the war that the Germans weren't afraid of Monty. They knew they would loose from him because Monty had a ten to one or so advantage. The Germans were scared shitless of the mad Patton though. Monty really did everything wrong that he could of done wrong when he got Antwerp. He owed up to his - intergalactic stupid - mistake of not grasping the need to immediately open up the Scheldt estuary and bagging the German 15th army. Thus solving the supply problem for him and Patton still being supplied by the beaches in Normandy because Rommel had foreseen the need to keep the ports. Instead the nitwit went for the breathtakingly bold and creative move to get over the Rhine at Arnhem, like a Vogon citing poetry his troops were in mortal danger. The difference between Monty on the one and Rommel and Patton on the other, is that the latter were creatively intelligent aggressive risk taking good guessing mistake accepting and correcting mistakes ADHD types and Monty a conscientious non creative risk avoider. Also not taking personal risks. You see the same at the battle of the Bulge. When the reserves made possible by the surviving 15th army attacked towards Antwerp. Patton immediately turned his army around correctly guessing that this couldn’t be anything else than a major attack and then go to the “what shall we do” meeting with Monty and others. Monty only did that days later when it was formally decided on. Rommel and Patton are broadly seen as genius generals. Sensing beforehand what is probably going to happen, keeping an eye always on the big picture. And going into super focus on the important details such as landing near a bridge with airborne assaults. They could be seen/ perceived as arrogant. Monty not only is seen by many as arrogant, but he certainly was no genius. Good salesman actor though for his troops. As could especially Patton play the part as actor. Edit: Monty was however not primarily an actor general but a conscientious one. Good in the production department of the set piece battle, going by the book. Carefully planning a predictable battle. Thinking arrogantly he always knew best. Monty let his captains go to the front in order to see what was going on. Not Rommel or Patton, they were always in the thick of it.

I haven't given bad rep points much if any. You got one for this one from me. (IMO bad form not to owe up to using this button BTW. So, of course I do such. Question of honour.) Your rebuttal doesn't add up to much more than: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQFKtI6gn9Y Now pose proper argument concerning my argument you left out in your partial quote. You are obliged to by the rules of the site BTW. You pinned this topic so you're stuck mate. Simply owe up to your mistake. Do you need me to provide you an exclusive list of possible ways to logically refute my position?

ah

I see someone gave you a bad rep point. I can't see who or why? So I'd have to guess. Because it is off topic? Because it is the hacker himself?

Wasn't this all dealt with in the thread on free will?

Well, if you can imagine it, it always is indeed possible. This is always true, not only with certifiable crackpots like myself (DSM V as with 50 to 80 % of the population of the world and neigh 100 % for all agreed upon geniuses). It is true until disproven on an agreed upon norm. It is called an hypotheses. Per definition an hypothesis is held to be true until falsified. Your hypothesis that an hypothesis always requires mathematics is thus herewith falsified.

I agree that the Wikipedia link to free will is quite robust. However as stated earlier it of course depends upon the definition used and the norm you which to apply to the evidence presented. I.e. you can use the definition at different levels / purposes and thus get different answers. For instance the use of free will is central to any legal system. That practical legal mind approach doesn't allow to use philosophy on that issue because the goal is to keep the order in a just way and using the concept of free will has been shown to work sufficiently well. So that proves that there is such a thing as a legal free will. If you want absolute proof of the existence of free will then there is no proof either way. If you want exact scientific proof of free will it can't be had at the moment because you will have to solve the question that Einstein and Bohr where on about whether or not God is playing dice. It hasn’t been answered yet. If I’m not mistaken current science at the moment leans towards an intermediate position on the question if God is playing dice. I.e. we have at any given time a pre-determined begin state and a short time-frame after that a pre-determined situation that will involve an element of pure chance, yet baring impossible scenario’s in the future. It can either be cyclic or not. If the definition you want to use is compatible with this, then you’ve got a free will taking this position. If it isn’t you don’t. The same will go for any other fundamental position taken on this. Because I believe this indeed to be the case I believe that on a reasonable definition you can say we have a free will meaning that we are in fact self-programmable robots that seek an individual goal some of which say to live an as long as possible happy life (= getting dopamine etc. from brain) because to get this working together with others is required as is the algorithm of acting on free will in order to keep others from infringing on this common goal. I.e. whatever you do or don’t do your future is to a greater but not absolute degree uncertain. It is a game of probability management that you might call free will.

The KNAW (Royal Dutch Science Academy) hosts this initiative that I wholeheartedly support: http://www.scienceintransition.nl/nieuws/position-paper-available-in-english 1. the myth of science being un-corrupatble 2. the wrong publish or perish culture 3 the sense of science: to much production of unnecessary research

Tri & Tar, The natural tendency to want to bring any viewpoint into a one pole answer might be correct within a sales and or production problem / viewpoint. However from a research viewpoint (i..e concerning difficult problems) it is far too simple IMO. Such as concerning IQ as in Mensa looking at one number: IQ > 130 = genius? (no, = arrogant IMO) Actually an IQ test is only validated on the conclusion that that someone will be successful in (the production department of) our current (sick) society when the IQ doesn’t get too far from the main 100. I.e. an Einstein might have an IQ on such a test of say 90. In effect you are measuring say 1/3 language 1/3 arithmetic and 1/3 geometry and a bit of creative intelligence in what some geniuses might consider a boring & stupid test in relation to a great many others of which indeed statistically the ones not far from the mean are successful. Only if an Einstein is interested in an IQ test, or has had a lot of experience with it or has a great willpower will he achieve a high score on IQ. A high score on IQ tests thus does not rule out a very low score on EQ or low score creative intelligence. And, it doesn’t rule out the opposite either. I believe that being honest to others as to yourself is much more important. And that understanding that some people are extrovert, unfriendly, narrow-minded, not conscientious is DNA IMO or anyway culturally driven: even in the latter case there is IMO only a limited way in which one / society can or should try to fundamentally change these what are in effect deep rooted personality traits. Other than train everybody to accept each other and to understand how to behave towards others without being manipulative. I guess if you put all types of kids from an as early age on together in a safe environment they will for the greater part automatically learn to cope with each other. Learning this in later life is extraordinarily difficult IMO. Though understanding what makes others tick goes a long way towards accepting each other. And towards working together. I’m more of an open extrovert. So I’ve had to learn to use the 20%-80% rule when in a sales situation. And, I’ve had to learn that what I bring in isn’t immediately done in a larger surrounding but gets opposition. Only later to see it trickle down without getting the credit. Or to learn that what I thought was a great idea proves to be stupid because I stampeded over someone who far more timed came up with the correct answer, not being noticed. There are good systems already that make it possible to prevent the latter, apart from knowing ones deficiencies and trying to work at them (more or less successfully.) Indeed as Tar in effect I guess states / means if you put your team in correct order then everybody is needed and thus contributes to the collective genius. Another point on arrogance and genius is say with a King. They have to be different i.e. arrogant because otherwise a monarchy can’t work. Providing the problem that what the King says is seen by many as spoken by a genius. Which seldom will be the case. Even knowing this I’m not opposed to our monarchy in the Netherlands. It’s on balance cheap and effective for the common good IMO. It is an instrument that helps keep the country together IMO amongst other good points as opposed to the (inevitable) downside.

Indeed. There is no way any system can protect everybody every time. Crime in this way will always exist. You can only hope to cut it down to a minimum. Arrogance leads to mistrust unjustly so in some cases as you so aptly put it. agree agree Albeit a remark: genius in this thread has mostly been in context of what is usually and especially so within science seen as an exceptional ability to solve complex problems. Genius can of course also be seen in a context of the arts; i.e. painting, dance et cetera. Whereby we get the arrogant prima dona. For some providing I guess an thereby even more IMO strange attraction. Further more it is mostly placed in the context of being good: i.e. that it helps further a commonly held goal. Genius can as is stated earlier as well also be an evil genius. Was Hitler arrogant? I'd say extremely so. But was he persieved to be so by his people then? I guess on the whole not. He certainly would rank in my book as an evil genius in the sense that he - I guess - had the high EQ to sell his ideas to the masses the way he did in an exceptional way. And, might I add, he had this mesmerizing effect on many others such as for instance Rommel for a long time. Rommel BTW seen by many as a genius general.

Interesting. Has anyone ever thought of speeding up a magnet to an as great as possible speed to see if it becomes more and more monopole?

I agree with what Tridimiti states. What Onara is missing is the difference between general and individual for one and perception and actual truth on the other. Telling an adult who operates on the level of a six year old concerning creative intelligence even though this person has an above average IQ and or EQ that he should not be conned or duped by looking at the trustworthiness of someone is beside the point. It is just what conmen do: appear trustworthy to mental six year olds. And you can’t have these mental six year olds mistrusting everybody including the ones they should of trusted. She does however provide a general rule that indeed will be applied by the wise: if someone doesn’t provide simple evidence of trustworthiness in general one should be suspicious of a con. However sometimes there are valid reasons that say a certain financial product of a bank is complex. The only way to deal with that problem IMO is to have wise judges scrutinize this and state what they in fact are convinced of: a con or no con. Conmen will then know that the game is up and not cheat anymore because they know that they probably will lose, whereas if you apply rigid objective systems you always will have loopholes in which conmen will dupe the not so wise judge that something that is/ appears trustworthy is to be trusted even though it’s a con. This of course will not stop all crime in this respect, because sometimes people dupe others in a way that is bound to become known. Because that is so, it is deemed trustworthy by the one who is conned. This usually then has to do with psychological despair such as a depression on the part of the conman. You wouldn’t prevent this even if you put the death penalty on it. However most people I’m convinced can be trusted especially if the legal system works. And trusted not to be trusted if you provide loopholes for the seemingly cleaver, i.e. highly conscientious. Arrogance and trust are interlinked and linked to the prevention of all genius reaching its full potential, when it isn’t properly organized. Same goes for driving cars. I trust and have to trust my fellow drivers even when sometimes this trust is misplaced by drunken suicidal drivers driving at the wrong side of the road.

Tridimity, Well of course I’m on about raising the trustworthiness in order to gain trust worthy of that. The thing is, you can organize it conforming to what Onara is on about: she in effect says trustworthiness is being competent, reliable and honest. Indeed. And to provide ample and simple evidence of these. Indeed. I’m not on about only openness. Because as soon as you have got your diploma, or at least in the Netherlands when you have become say a judge the formal point of being competent in all respects apart from scoring highest on creativity has been dealt with. So the problem of being high on openness and low on conscientiousness where the brain tends to fall out has been dealt with. Again: you need BOTH! Like I stated earlier for the trait of problem solving you need to have both. Primarily openness. If you want to be trustworthy as a potential competent guesser. The competence required when dealing with any problem where you know that you don’t yet know the answer as mankind. As soon as you have that then it no longer pays off to cheat. If you are not trustworthy AND! not trusted by the – wise = 10% of most open minded judges you lose. No hiding in loopholes of the law. Like it does pay off to do so in our more and more conscientious society because it has loopholes for the conscientious. The later sold as trustworthiness. Only then does arrogance no longer threaten the required genius.

Tar, Indeed trust is the key word IMO to organize properly between arrogance and genius. Economics, the legal system, education, trust in science. Our society as a whole is based on trust. Slippery stuff that: ”trust”. The discussion you refer to goes back to the philosopher King of Plato and your scruples have been dealt with also by Popper in “The open society and its enemies”. And indeed we have successfully come a long way. And, might I ad we’ve done this in the western society by putting in place checks and balances. I don’t know of any western society that has complete direct democracy. Because then you have the science of half plus one that decides what is right. That will go horribly wrong sooner or later. Just to add to your view that we have gone the right way, indeed, but bear in mind looking at human endeavor over the past 50.000 years then you will agree that the changes to society are becoming more rapid by the year especially the last hundred years. For the good indeed, yet also for the bad: horrible and rapidly rising overpopulation of the planet. Climate change with sea levels rising unpredictably fast threatening the overpopulated lowlands where we grow our food. I.e. creative intelligence based on relevant knowledge and relevant experience is called for and fast. This if we don’t want an extreme catastrophe on our hands, if it at all can be avoided. If it can then the creative will have to come up with potential solutions. We will have to trust their advice after having provided them with all the information they say they need. The 10 % most open minded in any field should provide the educated guesswork in the form of an advice. So they then only have limited and differentiated power: the power of advice. And the power to be informed properly. And, the power to do “air crash investigation” afterwards. Open minded research into “what the hell went wrong?” Followed by again: the power of – official called for - advice. That will have the natural tendency to have authority. And, because you haven’t sold perfection but an educated guess, the trust isn’t jeopardized. Because the expectations aren’t then that high. The only thing you have to check as society that indeed the ones giving the advice are indeed the most open minded ones. Now that is a taboo. Especially for those in power who know or think they are not all too open-minded. Yet they have to fear little – as long as they follow the advice. The science of psychology in the basic insight that follows from the Big Five shows you why this is so. In fact we should do what we did in the west a long time ago already. The correct system is basically already in place. In the legal system 10% of the most open-minded judges check on the investigation process and even in a jury system can give integral advice to the jury. I.e. the conviction of a judge (not the same judge as the one doing the actual court case for that requires conscientiousness. The jury can take it or leave it. If they leave it, that can form the bases of a retrial. Same goes for psychology and psychiatry: only the 10% most open minded should be the ones rendering diagnoses. Being a diagnoses at best an educated guess instead of an quasi exact evidence based science as DSM depicts it is. Resulting in declaring enormous amounts of children mad and sending our potential geniuses not to higher forms of education where they belong. DSM is an arrogant system. We as a society can’t afford these kinds of mistakes. The more conscientious ones are the ones that should do the treatment. The problem being of course 90% of psychologists / psychiatrists will oppose this. If we don't break through this we will remain being stuck with creatively intelligence wise complete idiots rendering diagnoses according to DSM as if it was a production line. Declaring everybody certifiably mad. The basic problem that what is forward becoming backward stems from the DNA not only of individuals but also in the way MN / God distributed that DNA across society. If you don’t choose to put the team in the right order then we’re sunk! Whether you believe it to be DNA or not doesn’t make a difference either if you agree that the distribution of personality traits of the Big Five indeed exists. (But then you believe that with pill and treatment you can change people. Talking about unsavory situations: well this is already a fact and a rapidly growing one at that!) The illusion MN / God provides is that people who score high on emotional intelligence (sales) are not seen to arrogant yet could very well be. Furthermore people who score well (but not too well) on IQ tests and are successful in our society are also not seen to be arrogant yet very often are, based on book-wisdom. Both these types can namely be very un-creatively intelligent concerning problem solving and the inherent creative guesswork that entails. That then is the arrogance that prevents geniuses from becoming manifest. Genius solutions that we desperately need and fast and all across the board. This can be had as German scientists showed in the war when called for, by simply accepting a lot of failures. In this proposed way you keep the present system – that is being threatened BTW – in its place. But you get a system in which more naturally have everyone find his or her way to the goal of having an as long as possible happy life, with the least infringement on others including future generations. As well as preventing others to say they want this as well butt arrogantly strive for the opposite. It is practically implementable in roughly the same way as the Fins changed their schooling system to become one of the best if not the best in the world. In so doing dispensing with a lot of arrogance and with yet to be shown geniuses coming out of it.

Q kristalris, You have some good points. I am not so sure though about personality being a strongly nature thing, I think it might lean more nurture. My dad, one of the PhDs I referred to earlier (bottom left in profile pic) is a psychologist and has told me that one's personality is pretty much developed, by the age of two. This would lead me to believe two things, one, that one's personality develops and two, that it developes early. Thus very early events and interactions in one's life, events that one might not consciously remember, could have great influence on choices of outward or inward sonance, for the remainder of ones life. EQ Well, I lean to the contention that the nature and nurture discussion is a non-discussion, because all human existence is in the basis DNA, and after that nurture based. So it’s both. This leads to the contention that basic insights as rules of thumb, such as the Big Five personality traits, must probably be talent (DNA) based. That the personality isn’t fully developed before a certain age doesn’t make that any different. I.e. the creative risk taking personality trait can be nurtured into a conscientious risk avoiding (pseudo) trait, via Ritalin drugs and training. And vice versa say with LSD. Yet I think it arrogant to do so. Let people be what they are. Q The last statement is mine, and I pretend no particular expertise in psychology, just because my dad told me one fact. It's just a guess, based on my muses about myself and others. EQ I don’t pretend any particular expertise in psychology either. Though I’ve put some study into it and have a lot of experience with clients and psychologists / psychiatrists, and have had assessments and coaches and discussions with researchers in psychology myself. Anyway all science IMO should be scrutinized in general by anyone claiming to have an academic level of thought. Now DSM V is clearly wrong where it would entail that MN has made it so that say 50 to more than 90% of all people have a psychiatric problem. Take psychopaths, they must be mad, or must they? The 1% of the populace that has this psychologists wonder why not more strange crimes are committed. Well, if you don’t look on them as mentally mad but as people without fear, I can see why MN has 1% of those in order to let humans as a species survive. Arrogance of those who think they know their stuff, taking themselves and a sick society as the norm and brandishing all serious deviation of that norm as dangerously mad. Implementing rigid systems such as DSM V to stem this fear. So if you attack a people/ culture like the Muslims then these 1% will start coming into play and let themselves – or have others – fly into world trade center’s etc.. I.e. if you keep it balanced it shouldn't pose a problem. Destabilize it, and it does pose a problem, that no shock and awe will remedy but only will aggravate. Q So different people, based on this guess, would hold different value to knowing they are smart, and having other people know they are smart. And in the case of this thread we could replace smart with genius, or near genius, or at least smarter than average, and still be talking about arrogance vs. genius. By this metric, I think I am sort of an inward sonance guy, who assumes that the outward world must make sense, by definition, because its already working and manifest, and it was doing so for a long time, before my personal sonace came into play. I sort of trust the place to be correct, and any inconsistencies are probably internally correctable. So personally I am not so concerned with other people thinking I am smart, cause I already know I am smarter than average, and less than a genius, and know my place, so to speak in the spectrum, but constantly have the internal battle of determining whether or not I am over or under estimating myself, when it comes to my importance and concurrent responsibilies, to the outward order of the world. In this regard humble or arrogant, either way, is a differencial, between ones own assessment of oneself, and an outside opinion. Still has little to do with genius. Current or backward looking. Unless backward looking allows an objective assessment to be made of objective assessments and one could assess the importance of a person to the world, from the fact that he had great positive impact on the actual real order of the outside world. We have little way of knowing such things, while we are engaged in the doing. Hey, did you know I was at the dinner table where the word Cascade was decided upon for a new dishwashing detergent, and it was my idea, to come up with a water related word, that was clean, and powerful, and poetic? That was pretty smart in retrospect. But I have taken IQ tests, and don't play speed chess, and think more slowly than many that I know, so I know there is genius out there, and its not me, so a glimmer, does not a genius make. And we are back to personality and human assessment being the decider of arrogance, with little link to genes. EQ You might be right, or wrong (of course) about yourself. As it has both difficult to ascertain absolute and equally difficult to ascertain relative problems. If I – for sake of the argument – where to divide intelligence into EQ (emotional intelligence) good for sales, IQ test (good in production) and creative intelligence, than looking at the Big Five this is difficult to ascertain. A quick thinking genius salesman (= more and more current politicians) can sell anything to anyone exceptionally well. Yet it seems then he could do well in production or research where he fails. Focused as he then is on influencing what others think. And maybe be perceived as someone who because he’s extrovert is a fast thinker. Although getting it wrong above average on difficult problem solving (= personality trait not to bother with what others think but at the problem). Someone who is introvert (as I understand you say you are) can be thought, by themselves as well, as being slow thinkers, even though they are extremely fast thinkers. It is relative. If you have a simple task you might tend to over-complicate that issue and take too long to solve it, or even get it wrong. More complicated tasks you do correctly, yet it takes time. However the other guy doesn't solve it (correctly) at all. Because difficult tasks even for a fast brain takes more time. Speed chess is for risk takers and not risk avoiders and thus says nothing on speed of thought. (In incorrect DSM lingo: ADHD (Newton, Churchill) are the risk taking dowers among the thinkers and ADD (Einstein) the risk avoiding thinkers. (Most geniuses are seemingly lazy underachievers. Only to become active when enticed.) Saying you are not an even potential genius is wrong IMO (as stating that you are BTW). Apart from my qualms with the term “genius” as such, as stated earlier, I’m becoming more and more convinced that it is so that we have say something like 10% potential geniuses on all fields and say 1 % potential geniuses on any particular field. I base this on the following (and more) (don’t mention the war, but I will anyway): when the US joined in WWII the Nazi’s indeed had only one real military chance to win: super weapons. So “the boss” ordered this to be so. If you look at the staggering array of genius idea’s / concepts and even hardware that came out of that, it is – proven – that there where many geniuses already present in Germany, that otherwise wouldn't have been noticed. Much was – too – far ahead of time. Many projects taken over by the US in the subsequent X programs, whereby a more prudent “brake” was applied to get it to fruition. The same applies to the creative mind of Churchill who’s many wartime idea’s where not all taken up on. He had an excellent staff that remained out of sight, curbing the all to wild idea’s. And, he let that happen. (He already had his Gallipoli) The creative mind thrives on counter argument. Seemingly arrogant, yet not. So, genius is probably only exceptional because it has overcome the arrogance of those who know their stuff, via the creative that give them this stuff to know. So no, arrogance and genius are interlinked. Thanks to the genius of the thread starter I came to this insight as well. The term “Genius” is thus overrated. It is a term in use to protect the status quo. This needs urgent rectification in our western society because it is out of balance.

Well, yes and no: arrogance and genius have a causal effect and correlate in the sense that a hindsight genius is a priori often perceived as arrogant and maltreated and even pestered for that and other reasons. This is not only bad for that individual but bad for society in general as for science as a whole. There are quite a lot of geniuses that have only been accepted as such after their death or after very hard times. Begging the question how many geniuses have not been seen as such with hindsight? The fact that we have hindsight geniuses proves that. The fact that what someone has said at a given point given a certain degree of knowledge on what was then known and experience and degree of creative intelligence should to all intent and purpose be deemed "genius" even when not hitting the mark, if you don't want to commit the fallacy of hindsight bias. Scoring high on creative intelligence and thus on the personality trait of openness is thus a prerequisite for being a genius. You don't have that many "one off" geniuses, i.e. accidentally having an idea that works and subsequently been accepted as a genius. Geniuses in general are people who have shown to perform the trick more often. I.e. a genius scoring (per definition) high on creative intelligence yet (not per definition, but by experience / upbringing or lack of talent) low on emotional intelligence will easily be deemed arrogant by someone who scores low on openness and high on conscientiousness. The latter being more and more the norm in our western society. Because they are misunderstood and pestered they indeed become more than average prone to social dubious behavior or even mental illnesses (depressions, anxieties and what not) More and more we are sending our potential geniuses not to university but to lower forms of education and having them swallow pills because they are deemed misfits in the schooling system to a high degree also seen as being arrogant know alls. It has even been formalized in DSM V. The majority of researchers on DSM taking themselves and our sick society as the norm, and measuring deviation by small groups and brandishing them as mad. Which shows stupidity on the creative intelligence scale and very destructive for society as well. Even though that person can score high on IQ and emotional intelligence. Being thus very arrogant but not perceived by those with low creative intelligence. The trait of creative intelligence in part goes with the trait of being low on fear and thus acceptance of risc. Incorrectly seen within DSM as being impulsive. Playing speed chess isn't so much impulsive as it is intuitive. Not being able to stop the urge to buy a chocolate bar and gulping it down is impulsive. This taking of risks is also quickly seen as arrogant when it fails and genius when it succeeds. Fallacy of hindsight. No, the confusion is not mostly language but stems IMO from the distribution by MN of talent i.e. dna. The Big Five personality traits will be seen to and in part are proven to be genetic in nature. No, dna based perception of one and other are at the heart of it. Someone scoring high on openness and fairly high on conscientiousness can deem someone who scores low on openness yet high on conscientiousness having a lot of experience and knowledge posing any position on a subject of which it is agreed that we know that we don't as yet know the answer as being arrogant. I.e. posing to be creative whereas the person is evidently not. In fact this is a running gag take the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy with the Vogons siting poetry and the mortal danger this causes. (And many more literature to that effect BTW.) This way of perceiving - and thus normative - arrogance is just as valid as the other way round in which someone who scores high on conscientiousness and low on openness deems the other as an arrogant know all for lack of emotional intelligence. So only using one norm on arrogance is arrogant and perceived as such. Take the way the rest of the world deems the west as being arrogant. Further more on your point that arrogance is always wrong, well yes and no. A captain on a ship that is in danger should always pose that he knows what he is doing even if he feels very uncertain or even if he feels in panic. The latter makes him a bad captain, but even worse if he shows his panic. He will then be perceived as arrogant. Yet his job requires it. Albeit indeed then a bad captain. Then we have the captain who is very competent yet not so much in the emotional intelligent part of the job. Not per se a bad captain yet perceived as arrogant. Nearly the same applies for geniuses, see my earlier post. So there is such a thing as the arrogance of having an extreme amount of knowledge, namely concerning issues where you know that you don't have all the agreed upon required knowledge and thus should know you are in want of creative intelligence, which you should know by self insight if you have that to the degree required to pose position on the question at hand. If not you can be perceived to be and are arrogant even if you pose it in a humble emotional intelligent guise.

You say that you don't see any common ground between the two and yet pose argument that there is common ground. Hmm... Anyway: in short arrogance can be seen both in an absolute way (as an objectifiable norm of sorts) as you use it and in a relative way (taking into account that different people look on that differently). Only looking on it as an absolute given a norm of a specific group is arrogant, because that group holds then an excessive self-importance for being unwilling or unable to look at it from the perspective of others. I don't know if there is any statistics on the correlation that you claim between geniuses being humble in stead of arrogant or being perceived as such. There is IMO causality between perceptions of the two as I stated earlier.

Dear Tar2 Arrogance versus genius has indeed a link to leadership / natural leadership. Plato had his philosopher King in the line I guess you want: the natural genius leader and Popper wrote the open society and its enemies Plato amongst them (qv). Churchill said about democracy that it is the least bad form of governance. I agree with Churchill, yet (as Churchill would of agreed) a democracy proper has checks and balances such as the trias politica. I hear worryingly enough more and more people talking about the need for a strong leader in the Netherlands. History shows this always goes wrong. A natural leader is for several people a different leader in different times and situations. Churchill no longer in 1945 for instance when he was voted out. Current psychology shows you why: people with the same intelligence on the axis of creative intelligence have a click. They understand each other. They have on average the same (more or less incorrect) associations on a given problem leading to a feeling of trust and understanding. People who are far less intelligent on this axis are seen as stupid and sentimental. On the other side people who are more intelligent on this axis are seen as being strange and insensitive / arrogant. These are thus in that sense then not born leaders, unless they have performed well on the plying field. That can subsequently work two ways: either it is deemed threatening (for the own position as a leader or for the position of the leader) or the person is haled as a leader (take Napoleon as a creatively intelligent brave general and Churchill ditto as a brave political leader.) (research department: relatively good guessers natural intuitive Bayes users) If you are of the conscientious personality trait you will accept someone who "knows his stuff" as a natural non arrogant leader. (production department: relatively good at empirical statistics and deterministic reasoning.) If you are emotionally intelligent you are good at selling a position and being followed as a leader. (Sales.) Thus to solve the arrogance versus genius riddle: always put your team in order: The leaders in research: the say 10% most open minded and at the same time reasonably conscientious personalities in every larger organisation. Leaders in sales: the 10 % most emotionally intelligent. Leaders in production: the most conscientious. Most people more or less fit here. (the totally open minded aren't usually leaders and don't want to be either.) The top of the organisation needs these three points covered as a team: on the long run and in crises: more research in the lead. Medium run production, and short term sales in the lead. All as a rule of thumb BTW!. The fundamental problem in our western society: the production and sales departments have taken over the research department: the rest f the world perceives us as arrogant and we ourselves as genius.

Come to think of it I would even question the need for the term "genius" at all. I wonder if the positive side of it ways up to the negative side especially concerning the furtherance of science (maybe to a lesser degree in other human en-devours such as music.) The positive side is that having hero's (geniuses) makes that more people strive for that and thus mankind having more of them and therefor more furtherance of science. On the down side: if we have say ten qua talent identical potential geniuses working on an as yet unknown question. Then what is this genius other than having a moment of inspiration on a given amount of evidence (your stuff) or even on basis of a mistake (i.e. not having known your stuff). Given that there are more possible solutions to the question (i.e. lowering the error rate on the question more or to a lesser degree) then chance of the creative brain will only provide several different potential solutions. All a priori given solutions will usually be deemed crank by the conscientious. Say one to be deemed as showing genius, two brilliant, one fair and six daft after getting in the test-results. Having then the genius funded the strongest and the brilliant ones less strong and dumping the rest (because they are all (including the genius) mad / crank anyway) doesn't seem to me to be the most wise way of dealing with the problem. There is no reason to think that the funded then genius will fare any better than the others if all were funded. I don't see why creative intelligence should be deemed any different (in the sense of better / worse) from all other sorts of intelligence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence & http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_problem_solving. I'm more and more convinced that you can simply create much more "geniuses" by dumping DSM V, copying and improving on the Finish schooling system and implementing that and ensuring team work by several novel ways and organizing research according the knowledge on the Big Five. The genius is then the team and not any individual.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genius#IQ_and_genius (BTW I don't quite agree with this Wikipedia.) Genius is - per definition - coupled with being exceptionally original. A genius in science thus provides an original insight on something science as such didn't know beforehand. At the moment psychology is putting a lot of effort into the personality trait of "openness". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits#Openness_to_experience this is thus an essential personality trait for any genius. "Knowing your stuff" is not per se that and has more to do with the personality-trait of conscientious (same link on Big Five). People with that trait will deem people of the open-minded trait quickly as being arrogant if they score high on this trait and low / lower on openness. I.e. they quickly deem geniuses when they actually meet them as being arrogant and think themselves geniuses when they know their stuff, get good marks in a test and being modest about that. Knowing the latter (their stuff) however only provides book-wisdom that per definition then isn't creative and thus does not show genius. A degree of book-wisdom and experience (street-wisdom) is required at least for any genius. A lot of these both of course doesn't stand in the way of being a genius, but sometimes does. The latter causes tunnel-vision / confirmation-biases. I.e. you remain conservative: see the link. Geniuses can thus be arrogant or not and can be per-sieved as such or not, mostly by incorrect use of both definitions. Correctly used I don't think there is any correlation between genius and arrogance.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pride I agree with Aristottle who made the distinction between pride (good i.e. not arrogant) and hubris (bad i.e. arrogant). As has been stated earlier arrogance and intelligence / genius are not related in the way the OP poses it IMO I guess. Arrogance IMO depicts the extent to which one holds oneself in higher esteem than is objectively correct on the claim: i.e. one claims more than one can make true on the claimed norm. I'd put the word arrogance on four different scales: one this (more or less) objective scale, divided in the objective claim on the one and the claim on the objectively majority norm of the paradigm on the other. I.e. all claims in the past of todays acknowledged geniuses where at the time of the claim thus held to be arrogant on the second scale but not to be held so on the first, even at the time of the claim. And a third: using the form of arrogance i.e. of acting superior by those who have reason to be regarded as superior, in a called for (questionable) or uncalled for (wrongful) situation, and fourth: the perception by others individually about the claimant being such (the - more or less - subjective scale). I.e. making a bold claim will easily be deemed arrogant saying thus both somthing about the claimant and the ones who deem that arrogant. I.e. it shows the extent of open minded versus narrow mindedness as well. So formal versus material and individual versus collective are to be taken into account in several ways in regard to the use of the term arrogance.

I guess I'm not allowed to react on whose job it is to do science, so I'll leave that be. After some thought on what would be deemed on topic, I'll react to that: I don't exactly know how much computing power is needed. But that is beside the point. Question one is it important? Well if it goes to order yes extremely even => extreme norm applies for science as a whole in order not to follow any lead. Question two can current science exclude the possibility that it would go to order? No, all that has been stated is that ideal gasses have been used that inherently involves gravity and not extremely accurate computer models. Question three: is there a lead? Yes, actually science should be testing this and keep on testing this every time a better computer comes along to check as matter of course (in US lingo: as a SOP) whether it goes to order at a higher attainable regime of accuracy until science has - maybe otherwise - found out where the unexplainable degree of order in the observed universe is coming from. AND last but not least it remains as has been acknowledged basically a simple test to do for any computer expert. All the more reason to keep at it, and not sit back assuming that science already knows the answer. I don't claim that by the way. I just say do the bloody test and keep at it, until you - maybe otherwise - do know! (BTW I gave the norm of a good billiard as required norm what would convince me that it is busted. Science should set even higher standards I guess. BTW 2 the sim is easier than a real billiard in the sense that the ball doesn't have to roll. Just a near as possible perfect absolutely rigid sphere and extremely accurate angels is what is needed.)

I would love to react and feel and am obliged to by the rules yet I'm not sure that it would be deemed off topic by the interpretation thereof.