The top ten most overrated geniuses (not about music).

[Enrique]

I'm reading Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time. I always had the feeling that the mass media have risen him high above his real place, and this article

http://itsnobody.wordpress.com/2011/...ated-geniuses/

seems to agree with me. It seems to me that the those persons are justifiably included in the list, most of them, though according to my taste I would place Einstein as the most overrated, because by considering him as the most inteligent human being ever, the public unconsciously put him on top of Newton and Gauss, among others. Einstein had the good fortune to go to the US, which has the greatest propaganda machinery in the world and overnight he became a celebrity. Instead, the public has barely heard of Max Planck, the originator of quantum theory.

[RobertH]

I agree about Hawking's , he does do remarkably well considering his disability and deserves every credit for that. He is far from being a genuis however, and appears to be only a moderately competent physicist, but goodness me, he is astonishingly stupid or niaive in virtually everything else he says.
He is literally clueless about philosophy, history , politics culture generally.


Bill Gates, far from being a genius. Or as a friend of his once said, Bill just hung around computers and listened to all the geeks talking.

D.H. Lawrence & James Joyce. Superb con artists though who managed to generate whole schools of literature in universities, who have spent the last hundred years coming up with esoteric meanings to all the tripe they wrote.

Einstein, vastly overrated. Was the one who gave us all this piffle about bendy space and multiple dimensions. He posited something called relativity saying that if a person left some other person at the speed of light, the first person would return younger , and yet totally ignored the processes of time on the person that remained. Einstien was so crooked , he had to invent his own geometry to make the maths work. Almost more than any other person, he introduced this notion of relativity, which has bee so destructive in western society in terms of the uniqueness of culture and man and morals etc.


Verdi, almost total crap.


Churchill. Perhaps the greatest con artist of the 20th century next to Einstein. It is a very sad comment that Britain was so politically bankrupt, that it seemed to have little choice other than to put in this failed public schoolboy in the 1930s. What many people missed about Churchill was the fact that he was enormously wealthy , born in Blenheim Palace, and yet people were taken in by him thinking he had the common touch. How did people listen to him with that faux biblical rhetoric without guffaws?


Picasso. How anyone could regard this man as a genius completely eludes me. His painting is just awful.


Edward Gibbon. The Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire, is the most overrated historical work ever written. It is an interesting book with some entertaining insights, but Gibbon's blind prejudices turn it into a pamphlet for the provisional wing of the unenlightened Enlightenment.


Rabbi Burns. , I cannot understand the reverence Scots have for what I think is a very average poet and celebrated every year.
Sir Walter Scot is a vastly greater writer but he's a unionist so not in favour with the Edinburgh mafia.


The Beatles. I always detested this band when I was growing up, but could never get away from their dirge like tunes when i was at school.
I cordially loathe them and all their works.


Rowling and Harry Potter. Absolute crap. People talk about her imaginative sense, but its negligible , compared to Tolkein, C.S. Lewis and a number of other very talented English writers. She is actually a bad writer of English.


One of the true greats? Dr. Manson , who discovered the insect transmission of disease, which has been the most important discovery from the view of public health in the whole history of medicine.

[Enrique]

Happy to know we agree on Hawking and alt. About the true greats, allow me to disagree. Pasteur discovered the impossibility of spontaneous generation, which makes him greater than Manson. About woman writers, I think critics, for the most part men, tend to give them more credit than fair, because of politeness. Also, women get more publicity for the sheer fact of their sex. For instance, I have heard E.B.Browning quoted in motion pictures, but never his husband which, as a writer, is above her.

[RobertH]

Pasteur was a great scientist no question, I agree. But Manson is the greater on sheer numbers alone, because of the prevalence of malaria in Africa and the Far East and also in the whole way in which food is packaged and prepared all over the world.
Pasteur's discoveries cannot said to be as widespread in any comparable sense.

[Peter]

I agree about Hawking's , he does do remarkably well considering his disability and deserves every credit for that. He is far from being a genuis however, and appears to be only a moderately competent physicist, but goodness me, he is astonishingly stupid or niaive in virtually everything else he says.
He is literally clueless about philosophy, history , politics culture generally.


Bill Gates, far from being a genius. Or as a friend of his once said, Bill just hung around computers and listened to all the geeks talking.

D.H. Lawrence & James Joyce. Superb con artists though who managed to generate whole schools of literature in universities, who have spent the last hundred years coming up with esoteric meanings to all the tripe they wrote.

Einstein, vastly overrated. Was the one who gave us all this piffle about bendy space and multiple dimensions. He posited something called relativity saying that if a person left some other person at the speed of light, the first person would return younger , and yet totally ignored the processes of time on the person that remained. Einstien was so crooked , he had to invent his own geometry to make the maths work. Almost more than any other person, he introduced this notion of relativity, which has bee so destructive in western society in terms of the uniqueness of culture and man and morals etc.


Verdi, almost total crap.


Churchill. Perhaps the greatest con artist of the 20th century next to Einstein. It is a very sad comment that Britain was so politically bankrupt, that it seemed to have little choice other than to put in this failed public schoolboy in the 1930s. What many people missed about Churchill was the fact that he was enormously wealthy , born in Blenheim Palace, and yet people were taken in by him thinking he had the common touch. How did people listen to him with that faux biblical rhetoric without guffaws?


Picasso. How anyone could regard this man as a genius completely eludes me. His painting is just awful.


Edward Gibbon. The Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire, is the most overrated historical work ever written. It is an interesting book with some entertaining insights, but Gibbon's blind prejudices turn it into a pamphlet for the provisional wing of the unenlightened Enlightenment.


Rabbi Burns. , I cannot understand the reverence Scots have for what I think is a very average poet and celebrated every year.
Sir Walter Scot is a vastly greater writer but he's a unionist so not in favour with the Edinburgh mafia.


The Beatles. I always detested this band when I was growing up, but could never get away from their dirge like tunes when i was at school.
I cordially loathe them and all their works.


Rowling and Harry Potter. Absolute crap. People talk about her imaginative sense, but its negligible , compared to Tolkein, C.S. Lewis and a number of other very talented English writers. She is actually a bad writer of English.


One of the true greats? Dr. Manson , who discovered the insect transmission of disease, which has been the most important discovery from the view of public health in the whole history of medicine.

First off the word 'genius' is so abused, like the word 'hero' and consequently has lost its true meaning. So I notice names such as Churchill - I wasn't aware that he was even considered a genius. However, whatever his flaws (and he had many), he alone recognised the threat of Hitler when most of the world was blind - once Prime minister he refused to capitulate despite the tremendous pressure there was for surrender at the time and Britain stood alone against Hitler for 2 years.

Whoever said Rowling was a genius? I'd agree that she is an overrated writer. I'd agree that the Beatles are a vastly overrated group, but neither of these are really candidates for a thread about genius in the first place. Regarding popular music there is a general misconception that it all started with the Beatles, as though the Jazz and swing bands of the 20s, 30, and 40's never existed! Or how about the music halls of the Victorians, or the Minstrels or the Troubadours? - very popular groups in their day! The fate of popular music has always been to die with the generation that grew up with it.

[Chris]

Well, I agree about Hawking. I'm not sure about his intelligence and whether or not he should be called a "genius", but he (and other present-day physicists) seem to share a common weakness - they know little (if anything) of philosophy, and when they comment on something that touches on it, they seem rather foolish. Physicists of previous generations thought more about this.

I don't know about Einstein - maybe he's overrated, but he really did do some incredible work.

[Quijote]

What about the guy who invented the atom bomb? I reckon he's well overrated!

[Megan]

What about the guy who invented the atom bomb? I reckon he's well overrated!

Oppenheimer, was also a very sad and tragic man.
The other Godfather of the bomb, Edward Teller was simply evil.

[Enrique]

Well, I agree about Hawking. I'm not sure about his intelligence and whether or not he should be called a "genius", but he (and other present-day physicists) seem to share a common weakness - they know little (if anything) of philosophy, and when they comment on something that touches on it, they seem rather foolish. Physicists of previous generations thought more about this.

I don't know about Einstein - maybe he's overrated, but he really did do some incredible work.

Yes, Einstein for instance had read a lot of Hegel before coming with general relativity. Einstein is for physicists what Cantor is for mathematicians. Both certainly showed us new horizons.

I agree with Peter about the misuse of that word, 'genius'. People think geniuses are found turning the corner (which strictly can be the case) and aren't aware that only one or two of them are born in a century.

If I may change the subject, in Hawking's book I read the following passage:

At roughly the same time as Penzias and Wilson were investigating
noise in their detector, two American physicists at nearby Princeton
University, Bob Dicke and Jim Peebles, were also taking an interest
in microwaves. They were working on a suggestion, made by George
Gamow (once a student of Alexander Friedmann), that the early
universe should have been very hot and dense, glowing white hot.
Dicke and Peebles argued that we should still be able to see the glow
of the early universe, because light from very distant parts of it
would only just be reaching us now. However, the expansion of the
universe meant that this light should be so greatly red-shifted that
it would appear to us now as microwave radiation. Dicke and Peebles
were preparing to look for this radiation when Penzias and Wilson
heard about their work and realized that they had already found it.
For this, Penzias and Wilson were awarded the Nobel Prize in 1978
(which seems a bit hard on Dicke and Peebles, not to mention Gamow!).

That is, Penzias and Wilson discovered the background radiation by mere chance whereas Dicke and Peebles used the theory to predict its existence. And that venerable Swedish institution tends to prefer experimental findings to theoretical work (though they awarded Einstein the prize in 1921). Plus, there is not a Nobel prize for mathematics, the most disinterested human endeavour, apart from art.

[Preston]

To my mind it depends on how one views the word genius. I have said before that the highest form and most true form of genius has a lot to do with spirituality. I still believe this. But my point is that there are different types of genius - mathematical, musical, literary, etc. So I think it would be safe to say that Einstein was a mathematical genius. Even though, Einstein disgusts me for what he did to his first wife!

A good thing to keep in mind is that there are different levels of genius, imo.

I, too, agree it is a word too easily used.

[PDG]

What about the guy who invented the atom bomb? I reckon he's well overrated!

I hear he had an explosive personality...

[PDG]

Einstein disgusts me for what he did to his first wife!

Maybe, but Marilyn Monroe fancied him, so for that reason alone, he is a genius in my book. Mother Nature always has the last word...

[PDG]

I'd agree that the Beatles are a vastly overrated group, but neither of these are really candidates for a thread about genius in the first place. Regarding popular music there is a general misconception that it all started with the Beatles...

Not just over-rated, but 'vastly over-rated', you say. You have to look beyond the music and consider the influence. The Beatles have changed the thinking processes of more people in the 20th Century than even Beethoven has done these last 200 years. You joked recently that there wouldn't be 30,000 people lining the streets for Harrison Birtwhistle's funeral, but it is a certainty that there will be far more interest in the passing of Paul McCartney. Deserved or not.

On the verge of your 50th birthday, Peter, I suggest that this 'old' thinking tries to get along with the 'new', the whole thing in danger of becoming one big, blurred image...

[PDG]

Nobody's mentioned Isaac Newton?

But a 'thumbs down' from me for Shakespeare. Just a load of old tosh...

[Enrique]

The Beatles are a product of the music of Elvis Presley who, in turn is a product of jazz, the one original contribution of Americans to music.