Another post with a lot of links to keep you entertained while I am away. Please comment here rather than at the individual links. Billy Sidis was reputed at one time to have the highest IQ ever, at 254. He was in Ripley's I think, the king of barely-sourced newspaper factoids. Most of my posts are longish, as are a few of the comments.
I first heard about Sidis from Grady Towers' essay "The Outsiders," in the late 80's. Perhaps vaguely before then, because he was from Boston. I wrote that up talking about Grady, whose story was also tragic and interesting.
And Another One Bites The Dust. An introduction as to why Sidis might not be the real deal. 7 comments, including the first of the argumentative ones.
The Doubt I discuss what the evidence of his IQ 254 or thereabouts is, and my initial suspicions that I want to "interrogate it" as we say these days. 14 comments, and things are heating up. One person accuses me that I thought Sidis was not all that smart, another calls him an outright fraud with no mathematical ability. Both thought it best to be insulting to me along the way as well. Thanks to Texan 99 for understanding what I actually said, deciding she agreed with it, and calmly defending it while I was getting testy with the others. Thanks to James for evaluating Sidis's writings about physics. Great fun, in retrospect.
Prodigy About whether genius always shows up in childhood. One comment, very decent.
About That Harvard Exam One of the critics suggested that entrance into Harvard in those days was always an indication of high intelligence, and therefore Sidis entering at 11 puts him in the absolute top rank. We examine the forbidding looking exam in detail and see that it is a bit less than that. 14 comments again, and this time even more snippy. I stand by my original opinion, thank you very much.
Smart, Wealthy, Athletic. A digression about definitions. One comment, quite to the point, by Texan99 again.
But If It's True We come to the final weighing. 4 comments, everyone has calmed down or left.
No comments:
Post a Comment