Simply genius: In awe of staggering insight

“One thing a person cannot do, no matter how rigorous his analysis or heroic his imagination, is to draw up a list of things that would never occur to him.”

—Thomas Schelling

What is intelligence? What is genius?

There is a relationship between genius and intelligence, but they’re not the same thing. Here is my definition of intelligence: Intelligence isn’t what you know.  It sure as hell isn’t what you think you know.  Intelligence is realizing how little you know. In essence, very smart people know very little about a staggering number of things—and realize this fact. 

Intelligence is related to genius, perhaps in the way that all poodles are dogs but not all dogs are poodles.  Genius requires innate intelligence, but not all intelligence results in genius.  Genius is the use of one’s smarts to come up with something amazing or awe-inspiring.  Genius is particularly stunning when it makes a discovery that countless other smart people under similar circumstances failed to do.     

Should we try to expand upon this, we find that coming up with a perfect definition of genius is perhaps an impossible goal; especially one that is universally applicable to the gamut of art, literature, invention, engineering, mathematics, and science.  A genius may not be up to the task.

A merely workable definition is difficult to fashion, and fraught with inadequacy and contention.  Perhaps each area of mankind’s endeavors requires its own definition of genius.

There are many things to consider.

Does it take a genius to define genius, or perhaps a lesser brain with some level of requisite objectivity?  What assessment metric do we use—and who devises it, and do the devisers themselves need to be geniuses, and if so, at what level?

It’s been proven that you cannot devise a computer debugging program that is capable of debugging all computer programs—itself a staggering example of genius, especially since this was proven prior to the Computer Age—therefore, by extension is it equally impossible for any genius to determine who is rightfully considered to be among the brightest brains?

Is it a lofty measure of IQ that one must obtain via a standardized test or tests?  Must it involve oodles of esoteric mathematics, impenetrable except to other geniuses?  Do television game shows that require increasingly difficult trivia questions identify it?  (Don’t scoff.  People who do well on such shows are no dummies.)

How about political or criminal genius (which are not always one in the same)?  What is it about a work of art or writing that leads one to say, “Wow, that’s brilliant”?  Can genius include a clever invention, “Not sold in stores!” as an infomercial repeatedly shouts?  Can it occur regardless of formal education?  (I say, yes.) 

Do we give less credence to things that, despite the obvious intelligence required, would’ve eventually been found out (e.g., scientific discoveries) versus discoveries which arose in the mind of one person and only that person (e.g., great works of art or literature)?

Do we assign different standards to a “one-hit wonder” discovery or creation when compared to a larger body of work?  How do we assess a collection of many brilliant minds working together in pursuit of a world-shattering scientific goal (e.g., the Manhattan Project) versus a single remarkable mind toiling in woeful isolation (e.g., Henry Darger)?

Does the accomplishment require general recognition as being a work of genius, or do a very few comprehending fellows suffice or even exemplify the triumph?  The latter is humorously epitomized by the physicist Arthur Eddington, who when told that only three people in the world understood Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, is reported to have replied after a pause to think, “I wonder who the third one might be?”

History is full of countless brilliant discoveries and creations across many fields.  Quantum mechanics, Theory of Relativity (Special and General), Theory of Evolution, the internal combustion engine, vaccines, and Abbott & Costello’s “Who’s on First?” comedy routine each required brains far beyond average.  Absent such smarts, these weren’t going to happen.

Genius is spectacularly demonstrated by the atom bomb, and much more subtlety in the brilliant nuances peppered throughout episodes of the Seinfeld television show.  Genius can serve grand purposes of direct and demonstrable benefit to mankind; for example, Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis’s discovery that the simple act of washing hands dramatically reduced the tragically unnecessary deaths associated with childbirth.  Or the result can be of far less practical importance but exalted nonetheless, as is evident in a great work of art or literature, such as Michelangelo’s frescos decorating the Sistine Chapel or Shel Silverstein’s seminal work, The Giving Tree, respectively.

Genius is essentially the realization of amazing things which were previously unknown, undiscovered, uncreated, or unconsidered, either about the world around us or within our own minds. This may manifest itself as something observed, discovered, or created, and then brought forth for the rest of us to see.

I’ll share examples, applying a definition of what I call simply genius.  By using the word “simply” I’m not diminishing the discovery or creation; quite the opposite.  I’m saying that the genius was laser-like in its focus, cutting through to incredible insight, which afterwards was readily understandable to those open to the profundity brought to light. In essence, they saw what the rest of the world failed to see, though it was right in front of us the entire time.

On many occasions in my life I’ve been struck dumb by spectacular discoveries or creations that were clearly works of genius, not necessarily in their scientific or mathematical complexity (which may certainly have been a part of the process), but by the fact that it took somebody possessed of staggering vision to see what was in front of our noses, realize the significance of what he or she noticed, and, most importantly, the person then had the courage to dare bring it out into the light of discovery for all the world to see. 

Courage is an indispensable if one’s genius is to be made known and shared with the world. It must eventually be fashioned, written down, or spoken of, at which point the creator or discoverer is put at peril. The person risked ridicule or the flames of the stake, depending on the historical context in which it occurred.  Human nature tends to prefer its sun orbiting the Earth and not the other way around— and those claiming enlightened tolerance or devotees of so-called “settled-science” tend to be the worst offenders. This is as true today as it was in the past.

In hindsight, the philosophical or scientific truths they saw were so painfully obvious that it awes the lesser mind.  Why didn’t anyone discover or create these things before they did? 

I doubt there’s a satisfactory answer to that question.  But this leads us to consider how many other incredible discoveries, readily apparent after-the-fact but as yet unseen, lie all around us awaiting the right person to notice.

Look about you. Maybe you’ll find one yourself.

Drownproofing

Our first example of simply genius is the drownproofing technique, which is exactly what its name optimistically implies.  I admit that “drown-resistance technique” might be a more apt description, as little in this world is proof from anything, be it water, children, burglars, fire, or fools; but I won’t quibble over terminology in this case.

A person finding himself in open water eventually drowns if not rescued or able to reach safety on his own.  It is natural that a person in this predicament might panic and then expend unstainable energy treading water.  This quickly results in fatigue, then death by drowning.  Even an experienced swimmer in excellent physical condition is limited in how long he can continuously tread water.

Human beings have swam, and sometimes drowned, since the first of our ancestors deliberately or accidently ventured into waters tens of thousands of years ago, so it’s amazing that it took until the mid-twentieth century for Fred Lanoue to invent an easy to learn technique to stave off the latter by greatly increasing the amount of time a person can survive in water (hypothermia notwithstanding).

An inspiration somehow came to him to dare ask a few key questions: Does a person need to continuously tread water in these circumstances?  Does a person need to keep his or her head above water the entire time?

He realized the answer to each question is quite simply, no.

The technique is preposterously straight-forward in its brilliance, and easy to learn: (1) Don’t panic; (2) Take several breaths, then take a final deep breath—filled lungs afford the body its maximum buoyancy; (3) After taking the last breath, relax into a vertical position, legs dangling straight down, arms loose, head forward and partially submerged; (4) Float this way until you need another breath of air; (5) Raise head to exhale, take several breaths, take another final deep breath, again filling the lungs; and (6) Repeat until you’re rescued or die.

They key point of this technique is that between breaths the swimmer does not flail around, but calmly floats face down, conserves precious energy, relaxes and waits until it’s time for the next breath.

What you’ve just read here may save your own life someday.

Protecting Bomber Aircraft

Abraham Wald was a mathematician who worked for the United States military during World War II.  He and others were tasked with research related to the need for improved armor-plating on bomber aircraft.  This was necessary due to huge losses of bombers on missions over Nazi-held territory. 

There is an obvious challenge in increasing a plane’s armor protection: Too little armor, the plane is more vulnerable to enemy fire; too much and the plane’s speed, range, maneuverability, and the number of bombs it can carry are greatly reduced.  In fact, too much armor and the plane becomes a lumbering target, perversely easier to shoot down.

For this project, bombers returning from combat missions were inspected for damage from enemy fire.  The locations of any bullet or shrapnel holes were carefully tallied and plotted.  It was found these injuries were clustered in certain areas on the planes surveyed.

The solution seemed obvious to the researchers: Increase the armor plating in those areas where the damage was most frequently evident.

Not so fast.

Abraham Wald realized that actually the opposite was true—increase armor where the holes ain’t.

Huh?

Yes, increase armor protection where holes were not typically found, for these are the locations likely damaged on the planes that did not return from missions to have their wounds counted.  The counter-intuitive logic turned out to have been the most intuitive of all.

Asymmetric Public Key Encryption

Public key encryption is necessary for secure commerce and other communication to take place over the Internet.  Without it the trillions of dollars in annual online transactions we now take for granted could not occur.

Yikes, you mean we might have to go to an actual store to shop? Yes.

This was the collective work of brilliant minds, starting with Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman. The basic premise of public key encryption is simply genius. I’ve seen several ways of explaining the gist of asymmetric public key encryption. The one that helped me appreciate its brilliance is the following analogy…

Say Betty wants to send Paul a secret message contained in a box, and she only wants Paul to read it.  The box travels a long distance and through many lands and hands, so the opportunity for others to read the private message is an unacceptable risk.

Betty comes up with a brilliant idea.  She builds a box that has two padlock assemblies side-by-side.  On one of these she places a lock, to which only she has the key.  The box is sent to Paul.  Along the way nobody can open the box to see what’s inside because it’s secured with Betty’s padlock.        

Paul receives the box, but he cannot open it because Betty has her lock on it.  He doesn’t have the key and she has no intention to risk sending him the one she has—obviously if she did, that would allow prying eyes to open the box.  He can’t read the message Betty sent him. What’s Paul to do?

What he does is attach his own lock (for which only he has the key) to the other lock assembly and sends the box back to Betty.  Betty receives the box, which now has two locks on it, hers and Paul’s.  She uses her key to remove her lock and sends the box back to Paul, now with only his lock attached.  Paul receives the box and removes the remaining lock (his) with his key and is finally able to read the private message from Betty.

This is a very simplified analogy, but it shows the idea behind asymmetric public key encryption. It is essentially virtual personal padlocks used by both parties, and the secure communication over the Internet happens in an instant.

The Extent of Our Universe

There exists a cosmological thread of genius particularly noteworthy by its stunning breadth of time, distance, and size; literally from smallest to largest, beginning to end, on both infinitely microscopic and hugely universal scales.

Though dense mathematics was employed to formalize various stops along this incredible trail, the philosophical underpinnings of the spectacular discoveries only required a clear sky and an open mind that dared ask, “What if…”

Here’s an outline of this thread of discovery from alpha to omega, a path along which occurred preposterously amazing realizations:

In the beginning: An unrecorded human ancestor looked at his feet and the ground on which he stood; then turned his eyes upward.  He saw the clouds, sun, moon, and the stars, all of which he’d seen countless times before.  But for the first time a sentient creature put it all together and realized there is something beyond the ground’s surface on which he walked, on which trees and other plants grew, on which mountains rose and rivers flowed; most importantly, he realized he could not touch these things beyond the Earth’s surface no matter how high the tree, hill, or mountain that he climbed.  He realized there is earth and sky, there is a universe.

Other suns: For thousands of years mankind shielded his eyes from the daytime sun but fully opened them at night as he lay on his back and gazed up at the stars.  “What are those pinpricks of light we call stars?” he asked.  Perhaps primitive man envisioned these lights to be jewels, far off campfires, the eyes of beasts or gods.  In 450 B.C., Anaxagoras offered the idea that stars were in fact suns like our own, only much farther away, and the universe was made bigger.

Other planets: Giordano Bruno is the earliest recorded person to have taken the next logical step.  He realized that if the stars are indeed far away suns, then there might be planets like our own orbiting them, and on some of these could live intelligent beings (cosmic pluralism).  He paid for his brilliant free-thinking with his life.  He was burned at the stake for heresy.  The settled-science of his time would tolerate no sacrilege, not unlike our settled-science of today.

Limited unlimitedness: Mankind debated the size of the universe, the distance to those far away suns suspended in the night sky.  “If one could walk there, how many days or weeks of travel would it take to reach these other suns?”  By extension, men wondered if the universe extended forever beyond these lights in the night sky, itself an incredible question when first pondered. 

Heinrich Olber realized that if the universe was infinite in size, we should eventually find a star in every direction we looked.  Rather than mostly dark, the night sky would be a blaze of light; in fact, we would not know of night, which of course is not the case.  This is known as Olber’s Paradox, and it told him that though the universe is large, it is not infinitely so.

Staggering size and expansion: The next great leap required a devastating thought, one that Einstein’s Theory of Relativity proved, but which he himself could not accept until years later: Is the size of the universe immutable? Einstein, like so many others, understood that the universe is huge in size, but believed its dimensions were static, unchanging.  In order to reconcile this conflict, Einstein put the brakes on an expanding universe by tacking a cosmological constant onto his equations.  He refused to see what was right in front of him, and later called this the biggest mistake of his life. 

(It should be noted that Einstein’s most famous formula, though it required mathematics to formally prove, arrives at a philosophical understanding that is itself simply genius; namely, that mass and energy are different “forms” of the same thing, in other words E = mc².  Even absent an exact formula, a keen mind could’ve considered this possibility at any point in history (once the concepts of mass and energy were understood), but it awaited Einstein’s to dare see this relationship and then rigorously prove the linkage.)

Atop a cold lonely mountain in California, astronomer Edwin Hubble tirelessly scanned the night sky, cataloging the light spectrum of numerous stars—and galaxies.  He finalized our understanding that some distant “stars” are actually far away galaxies, each comprised of millions or billions of stars that appear under lesser magnification as individual stars—this by itself was an astounding achievement, realizing that our gigantic galactic home, the Milky Way, is but one among billions and billions of other galaxies.

The universe became much, much larger, our own galaxy much smaller and inconsequential by comparison.

But even more importantly, Hubble noticed that the light spectra of most of these other galaxies are “shifted” in the red direction, which meant the galaxies are moving away from us, and by extension, each other.  He showed what Einstein did not originally accept—the universe is finite…but expanding in size.

Back to the beginning: The aforementioned facts can only mean one thing, and it took an extraordinarily daring mind to realize this, so stunning are the implications.  In 1927 Georges Lemaître, using Einstein’s equations, sans the Cosmological Constant, considered the repercussions of an expanding universe.  Working backward in time and space meant that an expanding finite universe must’ve arisen originally from a single point in space (now called a singularity), in an explosion we today call the Big Bang. 

A few years later Hubble’s discoveries confirmed by physical observations what Lemaître had concocted through contemplation.  Most importantly, Lemaître possessed the courage to consider that something as enormous as a universe can arise from something as infinitely small as a singularity.  This is an astounding achievement of human thought, perhaps the greatest in history—that we came to believe it and then prove it true, equally amazing.

The universe from small to gigantic—and perhaps back to small again someday, billions of years in the future (The Big Crunch)—is mankind’s seminal achievement in understanding.  Our universe did not arise from the loins of the gods or other superstitious notion, but from a singularity whose origin lies at the junction of science, philosophy, and religion.  Time, space, matter, and energy as we know it arose out of a single, infinitely small point for reasons as yet unknown—and perhaps that point is what we came to believe our gods.

Elevation of the Humble

As thinking beings we’ve pondered the lives of men and women, most of whom toil anonymously throughout their humble existences.  The people who feed, clothe, and otherwise provide for the geniuses, royalty, and the other notables of the world.  Whether we are great philosophers or humble servants, we ask ourselves where does each of us fit into the larger scheme of things?  Do our lives have meaning?  Do our lives matter?

Perhaps, most terribly, the peasants and peons, lower castes and lower classes, outcasts and nobodies may believe their lives are of no consequence, have no value, and that they lead lives possessed of no meaning or worth or significance.

It turns out they’re wrong.

George Eliot distilled it down brilliantly at the very end of her novel, Middlemarch.  The last sentence of this book puts all of life in its most proper perspective, having profound implications for such disparate areas as religion, philosophy, economics, science, and politics, and shows that the most humble life transcends wealth, power, fame, and any seeming influence arising from these foolish gauges of worth…

“But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts, and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”

As I write this, the most famous person in the world today is arguably President Barak Obama.  A case can be made, especially for American sports fans, that New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady lives an enviable life of fame, fortune, and athletic achievement (not to mention the supermodels!).  But a thousand years from now President Obama will be lucky if he’s a footnote in an unread history book.  Mr. Brady won’t even merit that much.

Yet the world a thousand years from now is utterly dependent on the countless nameless souls who toil in anonymity and sometimes despair.  If President Obama and Tom Brady had never lived, the world wouldn’t know it, nor care.  But if not for the billions of anonymous souls who live today, the world a thousand years from now won’t exist.

Three Laws of Robotics

The next example is Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics.  Mr. Asimov glanced into the future and saw the dangers faced by mankind that could arise from his future mechanical servants; especially if someday these machines decide to no longer remain obedient slaves.

Though much delayed from previous predictions, the human race moves toward that day when robots may pose a direct threat to us.

Isaac Asimov wrote extensively about robots.  At some point he must’ve asked himself how do we humans protect ourselves from our mechanical creations when their mechanical brains possess genuinely intelligent thought, and perhaps more terribly, free will?  Perhaps a robot Original Sin awaits them, only we are the ones to be cast out of their Eden.

He came up with a brilliant set of laws to program into robot minds when these become advanced enough to potentially pose a threat—hopefully, we humans realize when that day comes (actually, we better realize it prior to that day).  Time will tell if these laws, or some fashion thereof, are used, but it would not surprise me if they indeed are installed as he wrote them, as a digital conscience plugged into robot souls.

Asimov warned us.

Will we listen?

A Beautiful Closure

Our final example came from a war. The aftermath, to be exact.

Mustafa Kemal is the father of modern secular Turkey—he realized the importance of keeping religion separate from government affairs.  Sadly, secularism is a concept that is being dismantled in modern-day Turkey.

Before he became the first president of Turkey, Kemal was a general in the Ottoman army.  He commanded Turkish soldiers at the Battle of Gallipoli during World War I.  Many men died there.  Turkish, British, Australian, and New Zealander soldiers are among the dead buried there.

Closure is an important thing in life.  When we obtain it on a personal scale its value is more than gold.  When it occurs on an international scale it’s rare and beautiful, and incalculably valuable.

Much strife in the world results from festering unresolved geopolitical and religious issues, some centuries old.  People are killed today over these matters.  Disputes over past conquests, atrocities, insults, injustices, religious schisms, or territorial thefts await the occasional or frequent eruption of violence and hatred.  Sunnis and Shiites.  Catholics and Protestants.  Jews and Palestinians.  Argentinians and British.  Yankees and Rebels.  Serbs and Ottomans (Muslims in the Balkans are the stand-in for the Ottomans).  Muslims and the rest of the world, it seems.

War under any circumstances is a ghastly endeavor.  Both sides must inflict horrors upon the other.   That is war.  Afterwards, whether the surrender is unconditional or not, bad blood can linger.

Mustafa Kemal single-handedly brought about a beautiful closure to both sides that fought at Gallipoli.  In 1934 he wrote the below lines that grace a memorial in Turkey at Gallipoli.  He honored the dead, all of them, regardless of which side they fought for. Every year tourists from Australia and New Zealand visit Gallipoli to see these remarkable words firsthand.

People have the right to honor their warriors and war dead, the ones who fight and perish on behalf of the folly of mankind. Before writing these words, Mustafa Kemal first had to appreciate the importance of closure.  Real closure.  He then had to find a way to achieve it on a scale that involved nations.  He saw what so few humans have ever seen.  That true closure requires honoring all the dead, both friend and foe, rendering them one and the same when the war is over.

And in doing so, he made a discovery as momentous as that of any physicist who ever lived.

Simply genius.