What makes a person a Genius?

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To me, the label genius emphasizes not awesomeness of person, but awesomeone of innovative/insightful idears/applications that person has worked (99% perspiration) to develop over time. When I learn about this kind of thing, I feel motivated to push myself to also develop such things for the benefit of people/society through 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration, the 1% not possible without the 99%, so genius should not feel like genius while developing genius idears, but should feel like difficult drawn-out struggle instead.

I have "gifted" I.Q., as specified earlier, but I am unsure if I am a genius.

I think most people are dumb. However, my opinion is rather useless since the dumb people are the majority of the population and thus "average." I've only come across a few people in college I'd call smart. None I'd call a genius. I guess when I think of genius I think of Einstein (of course), Benjamin Franklin, etc. It's a word I associate with people who did extraordinary things in math and science.
I don't mean to offend anyone. I'm simply expressing my opinions based on the limited number of people I have known. I also have a strict definition of intelligence that does bot include things like "social intelligence" or "emotional intelligence."

So Mozart would not be a genius? Shakespeare ? Davinci ? Michelangelo? Aristotle ? Freud? Agatha Christie ? Mark Twain? All would not be genius because they are not in the math and science realms?

I expect if we met Einstein, Franklin, and the rest named above that we would not think much of them. It would be like meeting Mark Zukerburg the inventor of Facebook , and having a short conversation with him, and not being that impressed with his intellect.

I would love to meet Mark Twain though.

I think every endeavor is a realm of genius, and I think a lot of these above named genius-recognized people are not as intelligent as their legends would have you believe. They all worked hard though, and as someone said above, to be recognized as a genius is 99% perspiration.

In the future, perhaps the history books will promote the "genius inventor" known as Mark Zuckerberg, and young people will be amazed by the stories of his genius. Though, many today think he is an idiot (search google "Zuckerburg idiot quotes")

Fortunately for Franklin, Einstein and the above named, they got recognized before the internet and mass-media, or surely people would of collected a long list of dumb things they said or did.

Why do you rank "math and science" as realms of geniuses, and not philosophy, art, music, psychology and creative writing ?

Is it that math and science people self-promote their own accomplishment ?

"Newton's laws of motion" could of been called "Laws of motion", and Newton could of faded into obscurity. Instead, Newton is "people-worshiped" by the science community. Has this influenced your beliefs on what it means to be genius? WOW, this guy must be a genius cause they named something after him ! !! ????

Zuckerburg is a technical genius?

Just my thoughts.

^Franklin might have said dumb things. But he said a lot of wise things in his Almanac and essays. I'm not sure what you're even trying to say. Is it: everyone says dumb things? I'm positive if I met Einstein or Franklin, I would think they were intelligent. I know Einstein's teachers thought he was dumb though. Well I definitely disagree with you. I believe geniuses exist, and they have always been a small percentage of humanity. And lastly, those laws were not just "named" after Newton. He MADE them. Even if no one ever knew his name, he'd still be a genius. I didn't say anything about popularity. Some scientists, like Rosalind Franklin and the guy who figured out how to use vaccines, don't become renowned. That doesn't matter.
No, I do not consider the people you named geniuses, except Aristotle and DaVinci, sorry.

Not Mozart or Michelangelo....LOL that's funny. I'm sure Mozart was twice the genius Franklin was....please Franklin was a hack, a whoremonger and a glorified celebrity. Franklin could not even carry Edison hat... and Edison's genius was stealing.

On Michelangelo. Do you understand the mental gymnastics to paint on curved surfaces? Let alone sculpting stone, not clay like some common animal but stone. Michelangelo was a genius, sorry but your judgment is overturned by history.

Lastly Newton did not make those laws, he discovered and quantified them. Gravity existed before he defined it. Newton was "witch" and an alchemist...I love how we made him reputable today.

I am not interested in which people are geniuser than which other people. Their intellectual insights and accomplishments and the processes by which they made them are much more interesting, I think.

I'd like to second this!

I had not heard this quote before, but I love it!
In college a teacher told us something that really stuck with me. It is how I personally view genius. Because I honestly don't care much about how society defines anything, I like using this.

The mind is like a battery. Every battery is different. Some can last months, while others are made to last a few hours before they need to be recharged.
If the battery is capable of lasting 5 months (mental potential such as an IQ of 140) but it is only ever partially charged and only lasts 2 months, that is not genius.
But if a battery is made to hold 6 hours (mental potential such as an IQ of 80) and every time the battery is able to be fully charged and it lasts the full 6 hours, that is genius.

Sorry for the analogy, I had to think about it for several days when my teacher first told me about it, but after I got it I decided that is how I would determine if someone was a genius or not. If someone has the IQ of 140 but only lives up to the potential of a 110, they are not as genius as someone who has the IQ of 100 and uses that 100 fully. That person is the genius in my book.

Ok, "made" was poor word choice. I didn't say he made gravity. Whatever lol, I hope that was a bad attempt at humor.
I recognize the accomplishments of all the people she named. But I don't consider them geniuses because of the reason I already gave.
I'm not sure if Franklin was a hack. You must know something I don't. Please expound on how Franklin was a dumb hack.

No, I do not know what goes into sculpting. I don't know (or care) much about art or its history. I know of artists like Van Gogh, Picasso, Kahlo. I don't know if they were geniuses. They're just really good at painting. Better than I could ever be, I can't draw for the life of me.
And I enjoy reading a lot. I also like to write. I don't consider authors geniuses. I admire their talents and creativity though.

I want to give this another go:

Genius is by no means limited to mathematics or the mathematical sciences. Geniuses include writers, composers, philosophers, sculptors, painters, inventors, engineers, architects. Any discipline which involves some ordered language will have its geniuses.

A genius will be that person who can "speak" said "ordered language" (i.e. music, paint, symbolic logic, words) in such manner as to 1) have gained mastery over that language and 2) have discovered and developed an area of unknown potential in that language. A good example would be Claude Debussy, who mastered tonal harmony and counterpoint to such degree that he created his own musical language. Another example might be the poet William Carlos Williams whose poetry explored free-verse expression according to the rhythms of common speech. There are also the unknown geniuses out there who make breakthroughs in computer programming or materials science.

Are you are a genius? To determine such, I would ask, What have you accomplished which demonstrates your genius? There must be accomplishment to establish genius.

Yea, being a venius requires the ability to use logic. I believe most humans are more instinctual than logical.
So I wonder, do you consider Lebron James (basketball player) a genius? What about Rachel Ray (cook) or Ellen DeGeneres (talk show host) or Tom Hanks or Mick Jagger? I'm sure many would consider them geniuses, but they don't fit my definition.
Nah, I'm no genius.

That's an excellent question. Certainly a chef can be a genius (i.e. Escoffier) because the "language" is the ordering of properties of food and their preparation.

Now what about athletics? Is there a "language" to the physical coordination required for sport? If not, then what about the brilliant concert pianist or the world-renowned ballet dancer? I suppose that we would have to say, if we are going to be consistent, that one who excels in a sport in an extraordinary was can be called a genius as well.

However, ought we come to another matter of distinguishing geniuses according to the language of the subject? We could, for example, arrange a Platonic hierarchy of kinds of geniuses, with the philosophers at the top, then the mathematicians and scientists, then the composers, writers and painters, then way at the bottom those whose genius predominantly concerns the flesh. But I don't know if I can really buy into that kind of hierarchy; it seems too facile for me.

In any event, these are good things to consider under the title of this thread.

I find it very interesting all of the different ways people think of genius. Technically, it is about the IQ, but people include achievement, character, and whether or not the subject says dumb things.
I find it hard to believe any human has ever failed to say the occasional dumb thing in their life, so I would not use this as a criterion.

I have always been able to learn anything I wanted, and to get really good at it if I tried hard enough. I have been called gifted in art, maths, music, and to my great surprise, structural geology, by my teachers. I was always the 'class brainiac' at school, and when I finished high school I was one of the top two or three students. It was a huge, reputable school with over 2000 students, from grades 8 to 12, and one of the best in the state.
I never had to study at school, and have an exceptionally good memory for everything. I could learn an entire semester's content in a week at Uni and get a grade of 85-95%, just by going over it once (but slowly, so I could memorize) (This is per subject worth a quarter of a full time load) . I am 46 and still remember detailed images in my head from my entire life.
I always believed anyone could do anything if they just tried hard enough, but they all said it was not true, and I did not believe them, because it was true for me.

I never saw myself as superior. I knew I was smart, but I could never be sure others weren't just not as into learning as I was. I was not social, and got treated as stupid on a regular basis, so always questioned myself. Looking back, they didn't use rational arguments against me, just nastiness or shutting me out.
This year I finally had a real IQ test. I got 146, and 'very superior in all areas'. I also got diagnosed with autism.
I have not achieved anything notable in my life. Now I going to see what I can do. Now I think people didn't understand me, and it was not because of MY inadequacies.
Yeah, maybe a bit bitter.

Sculpting does take a lot of brain power. If you are making something predetermined, and not randomly making it up as you go along, you have to keep assessing proportions in three dimensions, and problem solving. You have to consider steps that can't be undone, and weight distribution, and stability of the finished product, and things like adding texture and maybe paint or glaze, and how to add them without causing damage.

I have an IQ of 143 but in no way think of myself as a genius; I think I simply happened to be quite good at the type of test that measures IQ.

I heard a player of my favourite football (soccer) team called a genius for the amazing way he plays the game, yet he can barely string two sentences together when interviewed. He has said his talent was always there, he just practices a lot to exploit it. I could practice for a month of Sundays, but I'm still not sure I could kick a ball in a straight line. Can you describe a person as a genius just for kicking/hitting a ball with an implement - does financial gain have to be factored in? If so, then there are a lot of sporting geniuses out there, but I'm not convinced, very few create a new and innovative way of doing things, they just do it very well.

I can't work with numbers, have no idea about money, my partner gives me my 'pocketmoney' most days to buy lunch or suchlike but I still get confused and bamboozled by it. I used to get high 90's in History exams, yet at the same time I regularly forgot where I parked my car. I am very uncoordinated yet I passed an advanced driving course with ease. I had two books of poetry published when I was young and I once moved an entire room of 30 people to tears when I read some of it - it was about my life experience and far too personal to share on here - but still struggle with basic mathematics. How can I be a 'genius' given there are such disparities in my life and capabilities and such a lack of achievement? The closest I have come to genius was being in the same lecture hall as Prof. Hawking.

To the OP I would say, chase your dreams, I wish I had and now a lot of them are gone. I think we can all be talented, but there are far fewer 'geniuses' out there than society would have us believe; I voted no.

Here we go again...back to I.Q. and memory skills.
Great measure of potential, and memory is a great skill ... but not enough to constitute genius.