A Curious Finding...

I. Thin Line Between Genius &…

“There is no great genius without some touch of madness” — Aristotle

A friend once told me to?“be careful, bro, because genius is only one step from insanity!”

I nodded. “Umm, but you still haven’t told me if it was the step before or the step after?” ??

Bingo! ?

Years ago I came across an old article about Albert Einstein.

Yes, that Einstein! Take a glance at the dictionary and notice his actual name listed as a synonym for genius.

Literally:

Doesn’t seeing an actual person’s name — Einstein — listed with abstract nouns stand out like seeing Shaquille O’Neal in a room filled with gymnasts?

For this reason, insight into how Einstein's mind worked is important. Niccolo Tucci's classic piece , in The New Yorker, allows us to do just that...

...Tucci replays a memorable visit to Einstein’s Princeton home. Apparently Tucci’s mother-in-law, Bice, and Einstein were old pals.

Bice’s brother, Michele, was a contemporary of Einstein ... an old friend. They started out on the same promising career path — both hoping to excel in mathematics.

“Herr Professor [Einstein], this I really meant to ask you for a long time …” Bice said. “Why hasn’t Michele made some important discovery in mathematics?”

Einstein sighed.?

“Aber, Frau Bice, this is a very good sign," he said.?"Michele is a humanist — a universal spirit —?too interested in too many things to become a?monomaniac.”

After all,

“Only a monomaniac gets results” — Einstein

Bingo! ?

II. Sign of the Times

"Just stop your crying..." Harry Styles sings. "It's a sign of the times."

The zeitgeist of the Information Age births particular personalities ... personalities inclined to code. On computers. For months.

In isolation.

...For large chunks of lonely hours. Coding. Most people, you see, can't stand being alone — let alone programming computers in isolation. For months.

In isolation.

Just stop your crying. It's a sign of the times...

Take a glance around this lovely Information Age of ours, and you’re bound to glimpse?Elongated?fingers that twitter more than birds…

...Take a glance around this lovely Information Age of ours, and you’re bound to glimpse how “liking” a post on FaceBook is similar to liking a beauty?Mark?on a face…

...Take a glance around this lovely Information Age of ours, and you’re bound to glimpse how NFT?artists use software ?to climb over traditional?Gates…

In short, take a glance around this lovely Information Age of ours, and you’re bound to glimpse?why “monomania” rules the day.

After all,?Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates all fall on the autism spectrum—

—That beautifully thin line between genius and insanity.

III. Mathematics = Science of Patterns

“Mathematics is the language of nature” — Galileo (father of modern science)

If something happens once ... chalk it up to chance, a wise man said. If twice, chalk it up to coincidence.?

But?three times — that’s a?pattern!

And as you well know:?mathematics is the science of patterns.

“I am truly a ‘lone traveler,’ ” Einstein wrote in?The World as I See It .?“I have never belonged to my country, my home, my friends, or even my immediate family, with my whole heart.?I have never lost a sense of distance and a need for solitude.”

Ahem, "poor social interactions” and “obsessions” top the?list of symptoms?attributed to?Asperger’s syndrome? … right?

So obsessed was Einstein with work that his first wife, Mileva, openly complained he loved physics more than her and the children.

“He is tirelessly working on his problems; one can say that?he lives only for them,”?Mileva cried to her friend ?Helen Savi?.?“I must confess, with a bit of shame, that we [children] are unimportant to him and take second place.”

According to autism experts ?such as Simon Baron-Cohe,?there’s a word for Einstein’s love of?isolation?and downright?obsession?with doing one thing: Autism.

In Einstein’s study, his hero Isaac Newton’s stoic face graced a portrait. And his other hero, Arthur Schopenhauer, frowned in a marble bust.

Aha! Because “genius see, genius do,”?unsurprisingly Newton and Schopenhauer were both on the autism spectrum. At least scholars thinks so.

Newton — the genius who discovered calculus and gravity — personified autistic behavior.?He rarely spoke! Heck,?Newton was so cold to the warmth of human relationships that?“if no one turned up to his lectures, he gave them anyway — talking to an empty room.”

As for Schopenhauer, he concluded pretty much?“all of our sorrows spring out of our relations with other people.”

Needless to say, like so many other great philosophers (Plato, Kant, Spinoza, Hume, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Sartre, Wittgenstein, Locke, Adam Smith and so on), Schopenhauer died unmarried and childless.

Think about that for a second... ??

Ah, but Newton and Nikola Tesla took it?a step?beyond — both died a virgin.

“Umm, but you still haven’t told me if it was?a step?before or?a step?after?”

As for?why?the lack of romance, Newton huffed. He then cited a “lack of time for anything else but work.”

In short,

If something happens once, chalk it up to chance. If twice … chalk it up to coincidence. But three times — that’s a pattern!

IV. Why the Curious Link?

If you’re unfamiliar with autism, just know this:?Asperger’s is?linked to having an obsessive-compulsive personality .?That is,

Asperger’s → Obsession

Bingo!

Show me a genius, and I’ll show you someone obsessed.?No wonder, then, Musk hinted at a potential link between his legendary, almost mythical, capacity for 80-hour workweeks and having Asperger’s.

As he?put it :

I found it rewarding to spend all night programming computers, just by myself. … But?I think that is not normal.

Let me say it again — Musk “found it?rewarding to spend all night programming computers.” Ahem, for months...

In isolation.

As for non-human computers, though fascinating … even charming, nevertheless — non-humans.

Musk even describes himself as “obsessed” with physics.

Sound familiar?

“Genius is 1 percent talent,” said Einstein, “and 99 percent hard work.”?And just as Einstein and Newton were?obsessed?with physics, mathematical geniuses such as Ramanujan and Perelman are both believed to fall on the autism spectrum.

Ramanujan was so obsessed ?with formulating proofs that, get this,?his family?literally had to “spoon-feed him his meals.”?

But the curious pattern ends not there. …

V. Harvard's Two Most Successful Students

Harvard’s two most successful students both dropped out. And, oh, Gates and Zuckerberg both have, pardon, may have Asperger’s.

Aha! No wonder a former colleague described Zuckerberg as being “a robot” who “has a touch of the Asperger’s.”

Again, just as Musk’s peculiar relation was to a nonhuman entity (computer), Zuckerberg was likened to a nonhuman entity (robot).

Because steam engines were to the Industrial Revolution what computers are to the Information Age, unsurprisingly today’s Rockefeller and Carnegies named Musk and Zuckerberg excel in programming —?where numbers and logic are king.

As a?Learning People article ?puts it:?if they were to highlight their “useful traits to employers in a CV, an autistic person would more often than not be able to write”?the following:

• Maths-orientated fast thinker
• Incredibly focused
• Less prone to distraction
• Huge memory
• General intolerance for mistakes and errors

In short, just as being born with genes for Shaquille O’neal’s?abnormal?height would be a hindrance in most walks of life yet benefited Shaq in basketball, the same holds for having autism in certain intellectual pursuits.

Apparently.

VI. The Takeaway Insight

After years of publishing online, nowadays inspiration births my articles. As for this piece, the source of?inspiration (in + spirit)?came from a professor.

Though Dr. Bernard doesn’t agree with my Biological Code ?outright, especially my knack for what he dismissed as “the interpolation of your personal theology into neo-Darwinism,” he nevertheless acknowledged?“the sheer breadth of the treatment borders on startling.”

Dr. Bernard then closed by hinting at, given my lack of formal?training?in the field, ahem, perhaps “Asperger’s, or something along the lines of a ‘clever heuristic’ ” served me well.

Because the greater the?known, the greater the?judgment, perhaps he sensed such an “incredibly focused” work reflects the handiwork of…

…Au contraire, dear professor,?here’s?why?Mama loves to say?common sense?will take you further than any other trait.?

Or as Emerson once put it:

“Common sense is as rare as genius.”

Bingo!

Because success leaves clues, my senior year in college I glimpsed the writing on the wall: Genius see … Genius do!

Whereas Newton and Einstein’s “incredible focus” came by way of hardwiring, I rewired my brain to mimic such results.

How?

Years of?meditation and mindfulness rewired key areas ?of my prefrontal cortex.

Bingo!

Whereas Musk and Zuckerberg’s “intensity” and “workaholicism” primarily reflect a glitch in their 3-pound organs — what geneticists call an?inherited mutation in a gene ,?I nurtured Nature with the technology of my age.

How?

After years of trial and error, I mastered the?science of stacking ?nootropics (‘smart pills’).

(*Note: my personal stack consists of the following: acetyl-l-carnitine, vinpocetine, alpha gpc, noopept, nadh, ginkgo biloba, huperzine-a, etc.)

Oh, also, be sure to honor the ancient maxim mens sana in corpore sano ('a healthy mind in a healthy body'). After all, it's impossible to mirror key autism-spectrum traits without ample energy at your disposal.

Lastly, a monomaniac's mindset is merely a?mind?that's?set?to the following attitude:

Success is the only option.

#genius #bigideas #autism #science