Sunday, September 7, 2014

How to become a genius
An instruction manual

The principle of dialectical reason is that a contradiction indicates the need for a more comprehensive theory. So, for example, light must travel at the same speed in all moving frames. If a spaceship travels at 0.5c, how fast is light from its headlights going? The contradiction is resolved by special relativity.

The difference between common sense and dialectal reason is that common sense takes the easy path, tolerates contradictions, tries to live with them, while dialectal reason attempts to develop a more difficult framework in which contradiction disappears. I ask myself, what keeps me from becoming a genius? Could it be the fact that I’m accepting contradictions in my thought? Suppose I were to say contradictions are unacceptable. Then I would be forced to learn the theories that reconcile them. I would become a genius, or die trying.

A broken limb won’t support weight. A broken network of concepts—a network that includes contradictions—won’t support intellectual weight. If I shirk the effort of creating or learning a difficult theory, my mind will be crippled by contradictions it might have avoided.

They tell me intelligence is genetic, but I believe what keeps most of us from becoming geniuses is not lack of genes, but lack of will. If you don’t have that “genius or bust” mentality—where you simply have to be a genius before you die—then you will certainly never become one.

Online you can find reading lists for PhD programs of distinguished universities. Check out some books. Start reading. If you don’t understand, go back to the master’s program. If you must, go back and reread The Tempest and everything you read in high school. Learning is more like a spiral staircase than an escalator.

Why is Proust so obsessed with memory? Because memory is the essence of genius. The genius remembers all he learns and synthesizes it into a grand theory of everything.

If you don’t know calculus, Bohr can never explain to you the theory that reconciles our contradictory notions about light. We need very abstract and difficult concepts to understand the correct theory. Why should we suppose it’s different in other fields?

Of course the most likely outcome of my quest to develop my genius will be nothing. But a failed life devoted to cultivating genius is, in my estimation, far more laudable than a successful life devoted to cultivating reputation, wealth and honors. For me, giving up studying, giving up on the attempt to synthesize a grand theory of everything, would be like giving up on life. Yet this is precisely what my contemporaries demand.

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