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by nessus42 2462 days ago
> If anything, it shows you're not really a genius after all.

Plenty of geniuses have not treated people well. Newton was a complete asshole. Even Einstein, who was a staunch defender of civil liberties at a time when most of his peers weren't, wrote some rather unpleasant things about the Chinese in his personal journal.

I agree completely that being a genius is no excuse for treating people poorly. But unfortunately history is littered with such people.

1 comments

> Plenty of geniuses have not treated people well. Newton was a complete asshole. Even Einstein ... wrote some rather unpleasant things about the Chinese in his personal journal. ... being a genius is no excuse for treating people poorly. But unfortunately history is littered with such people.

I suspect that many of these "geniuses" only became difficult personalities after they recieved recognition and had a taste for power. Power corrupts, it allows people to do things without regarding people that may be affected by their actions.

I don't think there's just a simple correlation between people deemed geniuses and them having difficult personalities. Rather, I suspect there's a causal effect between being granted the "genius" title and abusing the accompanying power that leads to a difficult personality.