Everybody's a Genius... or Are They?

WARNING: This post has politically incorrect statements. You've been warned.

I was browsing failblog.org, when I came across this graph. According to Failblog, "Several years ago, a grad student at CalTech used Facebook data to gather the top 10 artists at various colleges and graphed it with CollegeBoard’s information on students’ average SAT scores at each college... The result doesn't really tell us much (correlation ≠ causation, the inherent Eurocentrism of the SATs, bullsh*t measurements of intelligence), but it’s very very trollworthy."

I will reiterate that correlation does not mean causation, but at a subjective viewpoint this does make sense. Based on simple stereotypes, we can give a brief look at this and say, "Yup, looks about right." After all, we're generally going to believe someone who listens to Beethoven to be more intelligent than someone who listens to Lil' Wayne (as I discussed in my first blog post here). But here's a question that haunts humanity time and time again... are our methods of measuring intelligence really that accurate? I argue no.

To quote Einstein, “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” The first thing that comes to mind when I hear this quote is test-taking. Those who are good test takers are considered intelligent, while those who aren't are... not. I can't help but be shocked every time I come across teachers/aids/etc. talking about a child with autism and saying, "oh, he's so brilliant!" Why? Because children with autism are generally terrible at learning in conventional ways and taking written tests, people expect them to be stupid. They expect them to be unable to read, to memorize things, to understand simple concepts. But the truth of it is, most of them are of average intelligence. It's just people's expectations of them were so low that they seem brilliant by comparison.

I know that sounds like a contradiction to title this "everybody's a genius" and then talk about how most people are average. But if I may draw a somewhat difficult conclusion based on what Einstein said, I would say this: Everybody is of average intelligence. It's just we're brilliant in different ways, which means that everybody's also stupid in different ways, which means that we're all average. I don't mean that in a bad way, I just wish we could see people for what they really are: we all have shortcomings, but also all have marvelous talents and abilities.


I may listen to Beethoven or Wagner or Mozart and tell you about how Beethoven shaped how we listen to music today, the use of motifs in an opera, to explain the structure behind a concerto and why it is structured in that manner. I've also long given up on being able to balancing a checkbook. Adam builds intricate computer projects that I couldn't even begin to understand, to program software with grace and mastery. But God bless him, he can't carry a tune in a bucket (although in his defense he's gotten much better). Did I mention he listens to country (see graph)?

Maybe this is just my way of getting back at all those tests I performed so terribly in, then getting annoyed at people calling me brilliant for being able to memorize movies and lyrics or being stunned at my creativity. I used to think, "Can the world not make up their mind on whether or not I'm intelligent?" Truth is, no, no it can't. So embrace the fact that you're average, because you're still unique.