In another exciting Required Reading episode, Chris and Matt offer their penetrating, high IQ thoughts on the latest book by journalist and podcast quizmaster, Helen Lewis. Titled 'The Genius Myth: The Dangerous Allure of Rebels, Monsters, and Rule Breakers', the book tears into some of the long-enduring myths surrounding historical and contemporary geniuses from Picasso to Elon Musk. It's a critical dissection of gurus and devoted fans, so very on topic! And yes, it is better than Cod...Full episode is available to Patreons on the Revolutionary Genius tier! (1hr 13 mins).Join us at: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingTheGurusLinksThe Genius Myth: A Curious History of a Dangerous Idea by Helen LewisSnippy Review at The Philosophers MagazineLess snippy review at the ObserverRequired Reading: The Genius Myth00:00 Book Review: Genius Myth04:11 The Genius Myth: Book Thoughts!07:02 Exploring the Concept of Genius08:49 IQ Tests and High IQ Societies10:55 Social Perception of Intelligence12:20 Elon Musk and Modern Genius16:08 Historical Perspectives on Genius18:42 The people behind the Geniuses25:15 The Role of Context and Luck27:44 Mythmaking and Cultural Icons45:01 The Flawed Genius Stereotype50:50 What about Tim Robinson?52:51 The deranging impact of attention01:03:33 Overall Thoughts01:12:44 Better than Cod
You might have forgot, but this is a book review segment as part of the Decoding Academia series.
That's a good idea.
That's a good idea because as Finos, we're multiplying.
There are too many of them.
I like that we can do book reviews and we can also review articles in the same thing.
Yes.
It makes sense when you think about it.
It's a completely coherent.
They're both forms of the written word, Chris.
That's right.
Yeah, they're not gurus talking shit in the audio format.
Although, to be fair, in this case, as many people will already know, this is the genius myth, the dangerous allure of rebels, monsters, and rulebreakers by Helen Lewis.
Published by Penguin.
It has a little penguin thing in the wow.
Because it is.
Yeah.
Helen Lewis, friend of the podcast, about to become an enemy as we tear her books.
That's right.
That's right.
We are here not to critique Helen, but to bury her.
Actually, I will mention that I saw some very snippy reviews on this.
I mean, there were, you know, whatever.
There's different views.
There's people that liked it and didn't like it.
That's fine, Matt.
Everyone's allowed their opinion.
But I did see one particularly like just very, very snippy review by philosophers on Philosopher Magazine or something like that.
Yeah.
Circulation 23.
Yeah, they were very upset about it.
And as it turned out, they were kind of heterodox philosophers as well.
So yeah.
What made them upset?
Do you remember?
Yeah.
They were, I mean, by and large, they were just like, they seemed to think that she was wanting to take geniuses down a peg or two and that she wasn't specific enough.
So like, was she saying that genius doesn't exist?
And she didn't define the words properly.
And she was, she's just all about tearing down, you know, geniuses.
They mentioned Elon Musk.
They had lots of little asides, like they noted, oh, yes, well, you know, Helen mentioned that she has to do seven times a year on a calculator.
So what does that say about her?
Oh, God.
Yeah.
And when since when were philosophers?
I think good math arithmetic.
Not mostly famous for it.
Yeah, I can, you know, I could see, I could see people being, you know, like Elon Musk fans.
Anyone who likes Elon Musk?
Oh, yeah.
You're not going to like this book.
But, you know, well, let's fight.
Let's see, Chris.
I mean, what do you think?
That's right.
Fair, unfair.
We are the deciders.
We will decide.
That's right.
Screw Daniel Codzy and John Meyer, who are the ones that wrote the review for the Philosopher's Magazine.
That's what it's called.
I just find it.
But, you know, we determine here the overall quality of the books that we review.
And it's not subjective at all.
It's more objective.
It's based on our, you know, our extensive background.
But mainly vibes.
Anyway, mainly vibes.
It's not a book review.
We just read the book.
It's like a book club.
There's only two of us.
It's the book club meeting before the real book club with the Patreon members.
And, you know, it's a jumping off point to talk about whatever we want connected to the book.
So that's right.
So I should mention that for those who are in the Decoding Academia tier, there is a like a live hangout book discussion because a bunch of people read it.
And we will be there and we will listen to other people's opinions.
So like if you find yourself infuriated by our tics, you can, you know, you can tell us to our face.
So just bear that in mind.
If you pay us, you can tell us to our faces.
Oh, yeah, that's right.
You have to pay us.
And books like this are voted for.
The only reason we've read it is because.
That's not the only reason, Matt.
I was already reading it.
That's what prompted me.
Well, I mean, this is very familiar.
It's very thematically connected to our topic.
I mean, we're mentioned and should we get that out?
Let's get that out of the way.
We got a shout out.
My name, my name was mentioned, and the podcast is mentioned, and your name was mentioned.
Probably just and some of the concepts we use, and you know, but that wouldn't sway us because that's just as it should be.
That's just normal.
Yeah, that's just a sign of like bare confidence.
But and I will also say that, Matt, just for disclosure, I listened to the audiobook.
So I had Helen's Dulcet Tones reading it to me.
She's a good audiobook reader.
I don't know, the narrator.
That's the term I'm very fussy with my audio narration voices.
There are many books that I'm like, I really want to listen to this.
And I check the narrator and I'm like, I just can't know.
I can't do it.
I'm sorry, but there's a certain kind of American accent.
And it's not even a normal American accent.
It's the kind of accent they choose for audio narration.
And it's too much, man.
It's just too much, too much of a good thing in terms of the.
Yeah, I can't explain it anyway.
Well, can I, there's a, I'll only only sidetrack us for like 40 seconds warm up, but there's a the Gamer Thrones book were read by this guy called Roy Daltreese.
And he did it fantastically.
Like he's a great narrator, right?
But many people have noted that his portrayal of women makes them all sound like hags or kind of ancient matrix.
Hey, up, you know, and it's supposed to be like the sultry countess or whatever.
So I don't know why he chose that.
But otherwise, he's regarded as a very good narrator.
So, you know, there you go.
That's a little bit of a nugget of information for you.
And like I said, only 40 seconds.
That's all it took.
Yep.
That's well, that's fine.
Well, you know what that's not connected to?
The theme of Helen's book.
No.
Go on.
Yeah.
So, I mean, how to sum it up, Chris?
I would say it's a bit of an examination of the social construction of extreme talent and genius.
So how people think about genius, how genius gets made, and is it a real thing, really?
Yes.
In the Western world, might be a caveat that I would add, but which I think Helen also kind of acknowledges, like, you know, due to scope limitations of time and language and whatnot, she's talking about the countries and contexts which she's most familiar.
But there is like it is not a worldwide tour around the concept of genius.
And that's not a big issue, but there were just points where whenever there was reference made to, you know, I don't know, Matt, I think this is just an anthropologist thing, but like whenever there's reference to like our appreciation, I'm like, well, oh, you know, this is where all the geniuses are.
And I'm like, well, not in China, but that's, you know.
So you're saying Chinese people don't think that Einstein was a genius, although they think about his geniusness in a completely different way.
No, well, I think they, I think they do.
I think all the examples given in the Western world apply, but it's just like, it's just times when you're talking about this is where all the geniuses were perceived to be in the 19th century or whatever.
I was kind of thinking in Western societies, this is where people perceive them to be.
But yeah, but I know it's a very pedantic thing, but she flanks it up as well, right as a limitation.
So I'm not saying it's something she didn't consider.
It's just a footnote.
Okay.
Footnote noted.
So yeah, she sort of gets started in talking about, I think she sort of starts off with like the measurement of intelligence and at IQ tests and, you know, this idea of, yeah, you know, particularly extremely talented people and finding out who they are and everything.
And there's obviously just like the history of IQ, it's been links to unpleasant things around eugenics and race science and so on.
But yeah, you know, I found that part, you know, interesting because that's an area that I know a lot about.
And I thought she dealt with it pretty fairly.
I think there are, you know, interesting things there about trying to measure intelligence or talent kind of at the extreme level.
I mean, in short, simplifying it a bit, IQ tests and stuff pretty good at just, you know, finding out if someone's got a learning disability, finding out whether someone is legally competent to stand trial or whether or not they need special remedial training or whatever.
But once you get above, you know, the sort of pretty, you know, middle of the road type stuff, I think the validity starts to drop pretty strongly.
So I found it quite funny when she was covering those at the high IQ societies.
As some of our gurus got to mention, what's his name?
Chris Langen.
Chris Langen.
I was so glad that.
I'm Keith Fernier of Nixium was there.
But yeah, the dysfunction in the high Q. societies and the people that set them up or administer them or are concerned.
It is almost infallible, Matt, that like an overweening concern with IQ is a bad sign, even in the case of like people who are genuine scientists who have achieved something.
Once they get too much in the IQ, it seems that they become very stupid.
It's like the curse of IQ.
No, I know.
But that's when she starts, I think, gets getting into some of the interesting stuff around the social perception of it.
Because I think she's right in identifying that there is a conflation in people's minds with this idea of an innate quality or a trait, a persistent trait that somebody has describes a person and what they accomplish in life.
Like the amazing things they do or don't do, success, in other words.
And that's really obvious in the big figures like Elon Musk, who despite all appearances to the contrary, people will be absolutely convinced that he has to be like one of the most intelligent people on the planet, if you can measure such a thing.
And they'll point to all of the success, right?
All of the money, all of the successful businesses, all of that stuff.
And I think, you know, I think that's a thing.
It's like it's a real conflation.
And it goes to, I think, the theme of the book, which is what are you talking about?
Are you talking about a quality that someone that describes the sort of essence of a person?
Or are you talking about what they've done in life?
Because what they've done is obviously dependent on a whole bunch of other things, not to mention luck.
Yeah, yeah.
And I mean, she raises obviously the specter of Elon Musk in the last section comes up, right?
And she is taking the position that, you know, objectively, he has achieved rather significant things.
And like, whether that's by, you know, bamboozlement or genuine insight, it's still an achievement, right?
And you should be able to approach someone and say, well, they did this and they achieved that.
And they are affecting Egypt in, you know, their social commentary or whatever, or their concerns with high IQ societies or whatever, right?
Like the same thing with Luc Montague, is it?
Luc Montagnier, I don't know how to pronounce his name, but the French biologist who like won the Nobel Prize, mere genuine precursor, and went on to endorse distance homeopathy for reprogramming genetics and all this kind of thing.
Like it doesn't mean that his earlier achievements were based on insanity, right?
Like or that he was always that terrible.
It doesn't have to be the case.
It can be that people are productive good in certain sports and maybe less or in different areas or different times.
So that, I think, is a thing that people in general think in very essentialized terms about individuals.
Yeah.
So I think the idea of talent and intelligence as like a unitary construct, right?
As a single thing, right?
That can be measured with a number more or less.
That maybe makes some degree of sense in a certain range.
But if you're talking at a kind of exceptional level, I think what you see is a very jagged frontier.
And that's a term from AI, right?
This is the thing that most people have noticed.
We have these AIs that are incredibly smart in many ways, indisputably now.
The AI skeptics can all go to hell because they've been winning Math Olympiads and things like that.
At the same time, they will have manifest flaws, right?
So this is what they call the jagged frontier, right?
There is this whole spectrum of abilities and some of them are incredibly high, some of them are middle of the road, and there are these little gaps and wedges.
And, you know, I think that's a good sort of mental model for capturing people's capacities, especially at the more special, at the higher kind of levels, because it gets very jagged, I think.
And that's why you have these people who are very, very good indisputably at something, right?
It could be painting, could be maths, whatever.
And then they have a terrible take or a delusional thing and they've fallen for the most obvious misinformation in some other area.
And we shouldn't be so surprised about that.
No, no.
And speaking about AI and people expressing skepticism, did you note that Helen expressed her skepticism about the kind of revolutionary utility of AI?
And I was kind of like, you told me that journalists in general seem to be kind of more non-plus about it.
So Helen is off that genre.
But I was just, I'm so far from their assessment of like, well, it hasn't really done that much transformative.
I'm like, God, you should live my life.
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