Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by mlevental 2740 days ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/László_Polgár
2 comments

Well I don't generally consider chess mastery to be a sign of genius. Or maths, or music either. Fundamentally they are not creative, generative activities. There's a reason they are called a prodigy and not a genius. Of course there are the rare genius composer (eg Mozart) or mathematician (eg Euler).
I consider mastery of anything to be a sign of genius. Someone out there is in the top .001% of skill for underwater basketweaving, and I think they're a genius in that category.
Mathematics is a creative activity, at least at the professional level.
If he wanted to prove his thesis, he should have adopted.