I suppose so, but I'm not sure that geniuses must be rude and eccentric in style, in fact if these factors are based in rejecting a normal society perhaps the genius would reject that society's assumption of the stereotype.
I think I've met one true genius in my life so far, and what struck me is that he simply didn't have time for all those things that we consider politeness. It just wasn't on his radar at all, he didn't mean to be rude, it's just that without all that syntactic sugar that we are used to he appeared to be rude. But if you simply ignored that part there was a lot to learn, and only over time did I come to realize and understand some of the bits that passed right over my head and how deep those insights are. It must be super frustrating to be that smart and to have continuous interfacing issues with other people, even the ones that try their hardest to keep up.
> I think I've met one true genius in my life so far
I'm really curious what your criterion or threshold for genius is. I realize it's likely a fuzzy topic and we don't need to get into a tangent about the philosophy of intelligence (although I'm not opposed to it, just trying to avoid a larger discussion), but you must have some way of deciding that the person you are referencing is a genius. How did you determine that?
I'll try to pin it down, but it will be an approximation. The depth of insight gained from simple observations that turned out to be undeniably true over a long span of time is the thing that convinced me of this. It wasn't luck of the draw or something like that just piercing thought aiming at the heart of the problem and never at the symptoms. It's mostly about clarity rather than anything else. And I only realized the level of insight that went into this years after the fact, at the moment it did not even strike me as particularly special. So think of that as a label tagged on much later.
At my organization (large thinktank that works with IGO’s) we use mensa testing and have a bias towards pattern recognition. Its not perfect but it serves as metric for aptitude.
Yes but of course the majority of smart people aren't creative geniuses. Their motivations are different. They apply their smarts to fitting in better, exploiting the social and work environment, etc.
I don't think a genius need necessarily be rude. It's really just of part of how he made it to maturity with his gifts intact. Once he is sufficiently shielded then he may relax and become a bit nicer, perhaps.
