Observations on intelligence and physicists

For years now I have been working with intelligent people. Some few have been at the genius level. Others have been extremely close. But most have been merely intelligent. After getting to know so many people within those categories I have come to a conclusion. The primary characteristic that determines one's placement among those three categories is one's ability to understand relevance when faced with a new problem. A genius is able to quickly recognize what details matter and what details do not prior to conducting a rigorous analysis. As an individual moves away from the genius level to the merely intelligent, he begins to comparatively lose that ability, requiring that he waste time on thoughts and analyses that a genius would never conduct.

Most of us have stereotyped imagery of what an intelligent person looks like. For many people, this image is one of a nerd. What I have come to conclude, however, is that extremely intelligent people do not conform to that stereotype--at least, not at a rate much higher than that of the general population. Those in the merely intelligent category lose sight of what is important, and are more likely to appear nerdy than a genius is. Of the three extremely intelligent or genius individuals I've worked with who immediately come to mind, one looks like an uncle who would make a good Santa, one looks like a good person you'd meet at a synagogue, and the other looks like a former frat boy.

In contrast, everyone I've worked with who really looked like a nerd was much less intelligent than these other individuals. In fact, the nerdy looking ones seemed closer to "average" intelligence (with average being defined as people I know, who are pretty much all well above society's average intelligence). I remember a few physics students who weren't especially intelligent, quick, or able to differentiate between important and unimportant details, yet all of them "dressed the part." From their clothing, to their manner of walking and speaking, these guys tried to display "physicist." Unfortunately for them, the most brilliant physicists I've ever dealt with don't look like physicists. I remember entering some physics classes during my first couple years at the university and being intimidated by the really confident, nerdy-looking guys who were outspoken. It turns out, all of those guys who I would have thought would set the curve were average or below. The curve setters ended up being the relatively normal looking guys who sat alone and didn't answer questions in class. Eventually I learned who I should really be intellectually intimidated by--and nerds aren't them.

Again, all of that stems from my original conclusion. The people who desperately want to be viewed as intelligent focus on the wrong details. They fail to be intelligent but they are infatuated with looking the part. The truly genius-level people I've met know that the appearance of genius is irrelevant to being a genius. E.g., instead of joining Mensa, an organization designed to make a person feel smart, they go be smart, despite greatly exceeding the organization's membership requirements. They realize it is a waste of time to join an organization devoted to appearance.

Conclusion: sheer effort can partially substitute for genius. Most of the people at my lab are merely intelligent people who worked hard. But there are a few genius-level people here of intimidating intelligence. They didn't have to try as hard or waste as much effort on details as the merely intelligent--they can see what matters, seeing through the irrelevancies. The intelligent people here know how to do calculus, statistics, and matlab simulations, but the genius people here, who I respect so much, know which problems to apply those tools to. There is a lot to learn from that kind of person....