First Blog

The short answer is, “Who knows. Ask one.” However, there are markers I’ve noticed over many years having worked with and read about a few of them. a. Finding the “genius” solution is more than just picking up the right pebble on the beach. It is rejecting what doesn’t work. Researching a topic means sifting and winnowing idea after idea. The  genius can reject the bad ideas quickly  and move on. There is an anecdote about John von Neumann, who worked on the “Super,” H-bomb, and with the military. The report is that some engineers were working on a project for months, and one day handed it to von Neumann. He rifled through the pages for a few minutes, looked up and said it wouldn’t work. After months more of work, the engineers concluded, it doesn’t work. This is legend to the point that, “If Johnny says it will work or not, that is it.” BTW, Von Neumann was considered the best mathematician of the 20th century. Johnny had a great memory and one night at a party he got into an argum

It is almost foolish to speculate on why or how someone like Albert Einstein was a genius.   People like Einstein and Newton are essentially off the scale of human intelligence.   Yet, they live among us, make very human errors, and act in very human ways. So, we take them for humans, albeit just really smart specimens. As to Einstein, he told us his formula for discovery. That was through the thought experiment , wherein he would conceive of a physical situation such as what would happen as he looked in a mirror as both were accelerating toward the speed of light. This was, for Einstein, the beginning of relativity.   But what for you and I, had we been given this experiment? The implication is that Einstein dwelled on the problem endlessly until some ideas emerged.   Then, by sheer strength of will he managed those ideas into the beginnings of a theory.   Finally, it became a fait de complet. What is not mentioned is that Einstein also had an intense proclivity to indepen

You hear an explanation of something almost everyday.   What do you do?   First of all, you consider it mostly on the surface of the brain.   Some new input, as it were. Then comes the decision.   You can Understand what was explained Believe what was explained Accept what was explained. These three key words, understand, believe, and accept comprise a gross summary. But they typify three principles by which the brain or mind holds explanations. There are variations, exceptions, and exclusions. Just one is important now, and that is you may take the explanation as an example of several others in your mind, none of which have any of the attributes.   It sort of sits there awaiting further processing. Before getting to the picayune details, note that understand, believe, and accept are mostly exclusive, meaning one does not imply the other.   For example, you may accept global warming into the future, but neither understand nor believe it.   Similarly, you ma

June 24, 2016 The Constant Conundrum of Science - and Lately for Us A ll Most scientists envision the world where their theories are taught to all children at the appropriate time in their education.   They believe in standardized instruction of their theories.   To most, this is the ultimate affirmation of truth; such theories are carried to the next generation increasing their likelihood of survival in the test of time..  At any rate, this seems to be current thinking among practitioners and researchers in many subjects – that their accepted theory has reached something of an ultimate maturity – that future changes will not be revolutionary but at most mildly evolutionary – that we are within only a few discoveries of the final truth. Remarkably, it is an artifact of our modern era for scientists to believe that we have the final and ultimate theory.   We are there, they believe, with just a few more details to fill in. Indeed, the entire 18 th and 19 th cent