Stop Trying to Be Smart: Feynman's Proof That High IQ Is a Trap

Comments · 252

• HC

  @hcronos · 7 months ago

  Knowing and understanding is two different things.

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• DA

  @Dan-e4h7b · 8 months ago

  Einstein always talked about how important imagination was.

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• TE

  @TerryUniGeezerPeterson · 5 months ago (edited)

  In a nutshell: intelligence without imagination and creativity is like an engine without a transmission.

  2

• QD

  @qdav5 · 7 months ago

  No way Feynman's IQ was "only" 125.  He did things nobody else ever did.  He made the highest score in the country (by a wide margin) on the Putnam Mathematics Competition in 1939.  That exam is so hard that the median score is almost always less than 1 - students celebrate if they get even one question correct.  He got a perfect score on the Physics portion of the Princeton Graduate School entrance exam, something nobody else has ever done.  He won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965.  And anybody who has ever heard him lecture or read The Feynman Lectures on Physics is familiar with the astonishing depth of his understanding.  He understood physics in a way nobody else could.

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• SA

  @SavantChess · 7 months ago

  "Talent hits a target no one else can hit; genius hits a target no one else can see." - Arthur Schopenhauer

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• PH

  @phoenix-wc5vx · 7 months ago

  I agree... I believe real intelligence is the ability to create and solve problems with little information ❤ 😊

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• DA

  @davep2945 · 8 months ago

  High I.Q. has never directly correlated with great success or functional intelligence. It's sort of like having a 1000 horsepower engine in your car. You have great potential for either straight line acceleration or overall track performance but you will always sacrifice somewhere. You can also fail miserably to beat other cars with less than half the horsepower if you don't also have a great transmission, chassis and suspension. Not to mention a great driver. High I.Q. is merely potential and that potential goes to waste far more often than it leads to meaningful advances in science, technology or processes that lead to overall well being.

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• LE

  @lesliehourihan600 · 7 months ago

  Society says a few people are clever and everyone else isn't..

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• RU

  @rudela9900 · 8 months ago (edited)

  Feynman's alleged 125 IQ, is as bogus as a 32.74-dollar bill. The guy was way the hell off the charts; otherwise, any glorified bureaucrat would be Nobel material

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• JI

  @jijizaza-l9x · 7 months ago

  Feynmann technique is a cummulative efficient effortful kind of learning. The better one, is brainstorming different kind of ideas by making exhaustive research about the topic and make a conclusion. Old school research paper is the most productive kind of learning.

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• DO

  @dogan1405 · 7 months ago

  Nothing is as simple or straightforward as it appears. Intelligence and creativity are deeply personal capacities, and attempts to measure or classify them through conventional tests often produce misleading conclusions. Such systems are frequently used as instruments of differentiation — to assign status, confer advantage, and grant academic titles. Yet formal recognition alone does not guarantee originality. Without genuine creativity in their field, individuals may spend their professional lives merely reproducing existing ideas rather than generating new ones. Richard Feynman’s investigation of the Challenger disaster at NASA illustrates this distinction clearly: true understanding does not arise from institutional position or formal credentials, but from the ability to see and question the underlying reality.

  2

• AV

  @avx4281 · 7 months ago

  Great man.