A genius, or just a very clever parrot?
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 21/07/2007
The Telegraph
In My Brilliant Brain (Five, Mon), the narrator said that Susan Polgar, the first female chess grandmaster, is living proof that any child, however bog-standard, can be turned into a genius. However, it is not enough just to rush down to the Early Learning Centre and buy your offspring an intellect-expanding wooden fire engine. Oh good lord, no.
You need a father like Susan’s, who was not only a psychologist, but also the author of a book on how to make your child a genius. He believed that anyone can do anything brilliantly, but this programme was not itself brilliant enough to tell us in sufficient detail how he did this exactly.
Apparently Susan’s dad thought that genius requires two things: “Fortunate circumstances” (a happy home) plus “hard work”. This did not sound right at all, but nobody questioned it.
Instead this documentary kept rushing off down side alleys until frequently one had forgotten all about Susan in long passages that explained the workings of the brain more generally.
In a nutshell, she learnt to play chess without looking at the board and developed such a good memory that she could remember hundreds of possible opposition moves. However impressive, this is just a knack. How does it make her a genius and not a highly advanced parrot?
It is worth noting that none of these things apply in the slightest to Ingmar Bergman, the fabulously depressing cinema director who must count as some sort of genius.
Source: The Telegraph
I haven’t seen the “MBB” episode (I live in the U.S. and don’t have cable — anyone have any ideas on how I could get access to it?) but based on all the hubbub about it, I just have to make one comment:
Susan Polgar, however much her father and her upbringing and her circumstances may have helped her, is just plain an innate genius. Far off the end of the IQ charts. I just have to say that. Some of these reviews make it sound like “anyone can be a genius, all you need is a father like hers and a lot of hard work,” but c’mon, does anybody really believe that? That you could take any ordinary person and turn them into Bobby Fischer or Susan Polgar with enough training? Surely there’s a lot of natural ability that factors into it, right?
Anybody remember Dustin Hoffman’s role in the movie Rainman?
A genius? A very clever parrot?
Is there a difference? In either case we’re discussing individuals who possess highly specialized capabilities that operate at levels significantly beyond those of the average individual.
Notice that the two terms: “genius” and “a very clever parrot” are used to describe the same physical reality — in this case, the ability to play chess much better than the average chess player.
The choice of words has no effect on reality. Classifying Susan Polgar as a “genius” or as “a very clever parrot” has no effect upon Susan’s ability to play chess at an exceptional level.
The real question here is whether or not such extraordinary abilities can be achieved via nurture as opposed to nature.
An individual’s answer will depend more upon the individual generating the answer than upon whether or not nurture is more important than nature. For some people, religious (or lack of religious) beliefs will be a factor of greater or lesser importance in how they will respond to this question.
But the only “real” answer can be arrived at via a controlled, scientific experiment.
In my opinion, despite the lack of (to the best of my knowledge) a control for Lazlo’s experiment, he has still succeeded in his objective. He has shown that nurture is an extremely strong force in the molding of a human mind.
Nevertheless, for the skeptics, perhaps a similar experiment could some day be performed upon three pairs of monozygotic twins. For each twin pair one would be raised in a conventional, “normal” manner while the other is raised in a different household utilizing the same methods that were used with the Polgar sisters.
It might be even more revealing if a different goal were used for each of the three twins that were slated for “specialized” traning. Chess could be used with one, art with another, and physics with the third.
I have no doubts concerning the outcome of such an experiment. Nurture is EVERYTHING!!
I think the first ‘anon’ fails to distinguish between ‘skill in a particular field’ and ‘IQ’. SP makes no claims to having a high IQ but does make a claim to specific, historical (not current) chess achievements.
Nature vs. Nurture is an interesting idea and I am sure debated by many. I have found an article that is of some interest that outlines that experts are always made and not born.
The July-August 2007 Harvard Business Review has a very interesting article entitled “The Making of an Expert” authored by Ericsson, Prietula, and Cokely. They introduce this concept with the story of Laszlo and Klara Polgar “challenging the poular assumption that women don’t succeed in areas requiring spatial thinking, such as chess”. They stated that the Polgars home-schooled their three daughters and chess was a part of their education. The rest as we know is history with Judit becoming the world youngest grandmaster at age 15, surpassing Bobby Fischer by one month.
This story points out that nurture can make the expert. They support this by saying “that all superb performers had practiced intensively, had studied with devoted teachers, and had been supported ehtusiastically by their families through their developing years” (citing Benjamin Bloom, 1985).
Reference:
Ericsson, M.J., Prietula, M. J., & Cokely, E.T. (2007). The Making of an Expert. Harvard Business Review. July-AUgust 2007. p. 115-121.
I wouldn’t be too concerned Susan. You have a far better vocabulary than any parrot I have ever seen 🙂
Well, it is easy to oversimplify this deep subject; most of us live fast-paced lives and we “need” fast answers to our questions to keep pace.
Some brilliant people rise to dizzying heights in spite of humble upbringings devoid of external stimuli, their internal drive trumps all obstacles. Some brilliant people rise to dizzying heights, in part aided by both their upbringing stimuli and internal drive. Yet others rise to the top in a more conventional, socially balanced setting. And occasionally, some even overcome truly daunting obstacles to their creativity (Solzhenitsyn comes to mind).
What appears common in all cases is the brilliant person’s exceptional ability combined with unusual devotion to succeed (hard work).
An interesting question to ponder is: How many brilliant people, through a combination of extremely poor fortune, timing, appearance, etc. failed in their quest?zsy