Lending some of my experience and observations from within the High IQ community.
Author: Christopher Matthew Cavanaugh
Published: September 31st 2018
Edited: Original Edition
Original Quora question: “What should I do to be a genius?”
My answer:
Reincarnate or transubstantiate.
Or to be more helpful: maybe you shouldn’t be thinking about how to become a genius. That is not a concept with a clear scientific application. Instead, think about how to become a master of something. I recently read this book, and believe it offers a constructive way to become an eminently skilled person. If you attained the mastery described in this text, people would come to want to call you a genius. That’s what people really want. They just want to be called a genius by others.
The version of “genius” that is really of any use, relates to when people see evidence of ideation and productivity making them strongly desire to apply the term. If you create amazing things people will want to call you a genius, and in a sense you will be indistinguishable from other “geniuses” who had comparable productions. But would you then be a genius, really? I hope this conveys that there is no clear meaning here beyond the application. The word was not systematically developed.
So just focus on growing as a person, attaining a measure of wisdom, and producing new things.
Answer also available here on Quora: https://www.quora.com/What-is-a-genius-and-who-can-become-one/answer/Christopher-Matthew-Cavanaugh
[Mattanaw was not the author of the Quora question. Only the answer.]
I am a retired executive, software architect, and consultant, with professional/academic experience in the fields of Moral Philosophy and Ethics, Computer Science, Psychology, Philosophy, and more recently, Economics. I am a Pandisciplinarian, and Lifetime Member of the High Intelligence Community.
Articles on this site are eclectic, and draw from content prepared between 1980 and 2024. Topics touch on all of life's categories, and blend them with logical rationality and my own particular system of ethics. The common theme connecting all articles is moral philosophy, even if that is not immediately apparent. Any of my articles that touch on "the good and virtuous life" will be published here. These articles interrelate with my incipient theory of ethics, two decades in preparation. This Book and Journal is the gradual unfolding of that ethic, and my living autobiography, in a collection of individual books that fit into groups of book collections.
This Book and Journal is already one of the largest private websites and writings ever prepared, at nearly 1 million words, greater than 50,000 images and videos, and nearly one terabyte of space utilized. The entire software architecture is of my creation. Issues of the book for sale can be found under featured. These texts are handmade by myself, and are of excellent quality, and constitute the normal issues of my journal that can also be subscribed to. The entire work is a transparent work in progress. Not all is complete, and it will remain in an incomplete state until death.
I welcome and appreciate constructive feedback and conversation with readers. You can reach me at mattanaw@mattanaw.com (site related), cmcavanaugh@g.harvard.edu (academic related), or christopher.matthew.cavanaugh@member.mensa.org (intelligence related), or via the other social media channels listed at the bottom of the site.