The Cult of Genius

Here is Gazebo's post about the cult of genius.

It links to some excellent comments in Cosmic Variance and Uncertain Principles about the Cult of Genius in physics and the messages that we should be giving to our students.

I have had a number of discussions over the years with friends, students, and colleagues about stuff like this because this really is something that discourages people to continue in science. Just who the fuck came up with the idea that you have to be a genius to be a successful physicist (or any kind of scientist, for that matter) because that's dead wrong. It helps to be smart -- don't get me wrong -- but I have seen way too many students turn away from science because they are wrongly led to believe this. And it's a bloody shame.

It's easy to see this among undergrads at Caltech. We all know plenty of people who were brilliant but got turned off for one reason or another, and you certainly shouldn't go away from science if/when you find out you're not a genius. Almost all of us find this out at some point because few people actually are geniuses, and coming to grips with this can be very difficult. I know a lot of people at Tech who couldn't do this or needed many years to do it. (A couple of the smartest people I have ever met flamed out of Tech. They are easily on par in terms of "pure intelligence" with numerous people I've met who have tenure-track jobs at the best schools in the world.)

Now, it would be nice if New York Times didn't portray subjects like string theory which tend to have very high barriers to entry as the pinnacle of human achievement -- personally, I greatly prefer nonlinear dynamics and complex systems -- but let's be realistic: newspapers are going to continue glorifying bullshit like that, so what do we do as teachers? Well, when I screw up, I let my students know. Admitting mistakes -- what a concept! Part of the reason I do this is that I know they will struggle sometimes (maybe a lot), and I want them to know that I still struggle too. I've been "successful" and have a great job waiting for me, but that doesn't mean that I didn't fuck up pretty majorly on occasion and that some of those occasions are pretty damned recent. And of course that I still make tons of mistakes. It's important to convey the idea that you can make mistakes and still get extremely far. These scientists who have poles up their asses and want their students to think that they're impervious to fallacies aren't helping anybody.

In fact, one of the most important things I learned in grad school was that all these so-called geniuses with stuff named after them aren't any better than I am. (OK, there are a few freaks who are, but I'm a theorist and get to drop people on the extreme of the distribution.) They struggled just like I did. And I want my students to know that I struggled and that I continue to struggle. It's not a cake-walk for any but an exceedingly small number of people, so why are we giving the very damaging impression that it is.

So, if you're a student of mine (and I know some of you read my blog on occasion), please read the content in the links above. I'm afraid I wasn't overly coherent in this post, but there are some important issues here. This is a marathon, not a sprint. The most important thing you can do is work your ass off.