Since applying the term “genius” to a person depends on consensus, usually after their death, I will provide instead some examples of high achievers of very high IQ who were perceived as slow or unintelligent by their teachers and/or parents. On February 11, 1847, Thomas Alva Edison was born in Milan Ohio, the seventh and …
Emotional intelligence (EQ) is typically assessed by these five traits: self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills. Certainly, someone who is low in all these attributes is unlikely to be a successful leader. To be a strong leader, you must possess a high motivation, evident through your passion for a cause. You must also have …
Assessing someone’s intelligence is extremely difficult, whether or not you take into account their educational credentials or achievements. I have seen people who are highly educated, but who believe in superstitions that are entirely unsubstantiated by scientific observation. When their opinions are challenged, they become defensive and move quickly from rational to emotional mode. I …
All humans feel emotions, especially fear, anger, frustration, sexual desire, envy and loneliness. These are all hardwired into our psyche to improve our chances of survival as individuals and as a member of a species. However, the intensity of these emotions varies significantly across individuals The term “empathy” is used to describe our emotional connection …
The answer to this question depends to some extent on the role in which the person is functioning. In a role that has high public visibility, such as a political position, the foolish know-it-all usually presents little danger because their incompetence becomes widely observable and their influence is therefore, minimal. We have seen examples of …
The greatest danger in saying, “I am not good at XXXX,” is that it signifies surrender. Once we declare that we are not good at something, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy, because we give ourselves permission to abandon the struggle to improve our level of competence. This surrender is most frequently found in the declaration, …
What are the potential negative effects of saying “I’m not good at math”? Read More »
Around 1637, Pierre de Fermat, one of the giants of modern mathematics, issued what became the most famous mathematical conjecture in history. In his copy of Diophantus’ Arithmetica, he wrote: …it is impossible for any cube to be the sum of two cubes, or in general for any number that is a power greater than …
Who proved Fermat’s last theorem and what was the level of difficulty in proving it? Read More »
The Celebrity Entrepreneurs Those celebrities or famous people whose high IQ is most apparent are the billionaire entrepreneurs like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Mark Zuckerberg. Elon Musk earned degrees in Economics and Physics and was enrolled in a Ph.D. program at Stanford before dropping out to co-found with …
In this post, I won’t declare myself as a wise person, but will describe what I have observed as the steps required to reach wisdom. Let’s start with a logical poser. Peter is looking at Mary, while Mary is looking at Paul. Peter is married. Paul is unmarried. Is a married person looking at an …
There are many cases in the history of science and technology in which ignorance has been more beneficial than knowledge (rather than intelligence), because our “knowledge” is often incomplete or flawed. A dramatic example of this occurred when Einstein was formulating his field equations for his General Theory of Relativity. His original equations, expressed as …
