ESRogs comments on Einstein's Superpowers - Less Wrong

30 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 30 May 2008 06:40AM

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Comment author: shminux 11 March 2013 07:15:37PM 0 points [-]

What's rarely appreciated is that Einstein also lucked out, besides being 1 in 10^? genius. A lot of things went right for him early on. On the other hand, a lot of things went wrong for him later on, and so he was left out of the mainstream scientific progress, save for his incisive QM critique.

Comment author: whowhowho 11 March 2013 08:10:07PM -1 points [-]

Nearly there: you can't predict backward from success to raw (non domain specific) ability, for just the same reason you can't predict forward from high IQ to success in arbitrary field.

Comment author: ESRogs 12 March 2013 01:33:21AM 1 point [-]

But you can predict forward from high IQ to success in an arbitrary field, at least to some degree. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient#Social_outcomes.