Dumb Genius

By Rod Martin, Jr

Subtitle: How Intelligence is sometimes its own worst enemy.

Rod Martin, Jr. claims to be an expert on the Dumb Genius syndrome, having suffered this malady on numerous occasions. This, he says, made him uncomfortably aware of the symptoms of this syndrome in all his fields of interest—from history, myth and legend, to climate science, geology, mathematics and education. This syndrome has even corrupted religion and spirituality.

The syndrome starts with knowledge and a cocky sense of sedentary certainty that blinds the individual from seeing evidence which would otherwise show them to be wrong.

The book gives over 30 examples—from the bizarre to the obscene—showing how intelligence can sometimes be its own worst enemy.

This includes such personalities as Stephen Hawking, Michael Shermer, Paul Kurtz, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., President Biden, President Obama, President Bush, Jr., Nancy Pelosi, Origen of Alexandria, Gregory of Nyssa, Michael Mann, Phil Jones, Lord Christopher Monckton, David Ray Griffin, Aristotle, Plato, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and even the fictional villain, Lex Luthor.

The Dumb Genius syndrome is a very real threat to an individual's Effective Intelligence, but there is a simple cure. Delivering that cure is made difficult by the ego that holds the Dumb Genius syndrome in place.

Throughout history, the Dumb Genius syndrome can be found destroying institutions, even hobbling one entire discipline for over a millennium. The Dumb Genius can sound profoundly wise to the naive and gullible. To those with a modicum of good critical thinking, the Dumb Genius can sound immature and sloppy in their conclusions.

The cure is always simple, but only rarely easy. Like a beast fighting for its very survival, the Dumb Genius syndrome does not go quietly into the long night of oblivion. But it does not need to be this way. The medicine to cure this syndrome must be applied for the remainder of an individual's life, but it provides immense relief to the individual's inherent intelligence.

• Language: English
• Publisher: TharsisHighlands
• Release date: Feb 17, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005426354

Rod Martin, Jr

Rod Martin, Jr. was born in West Texas, United States. He has been a Hollywood artist, a software engineer with a degree summa cum laude, a writer, web designer and a college professor. Rod Martin's interests have ranged from astronomy to ancient history, physics to geology, and graphics arts to motion pictures. He has studied comparative religion, worked as a lay minister and spiritual counselor, and taught ethics in college. While doing graphic arts in Hollywood, he also studied electronic engineering. In 1983, as Carl Martin, he published his first novel, "Touch the Stars: Emergence," co-authored by John Dalmas (Tor Books, NY). He continues to write science fiction under that pen name. Later, switching careers to computers and information technology, Mr. Martin worked for Control Data, Ceridian Payroll, Bank of America, Global Database Marketing and IPRO Tech. He also created "Stars in the NeighborHood" 3D astronomy space software. He currently resides in the Philippines with his wife, Juvy. He has taught information technology, mathematics and professional ethics at Benedicto College, in Cebu. He continues to teach online and to write books and blogs.

Book preview

The circle is such a perfect shape. The ancient Greeks studied circles in great detail, developing geometry, rudimentary logic and more advanced forms of mathematics.

But it seems, from our modern perspective, that the Greek love of circles tended to destroy scientific advancement for over a thousand years.

Boy, that was dumb!

We can say such things in hindsight. This type of armchair judgment is easy to make now that we know better.

But do we really know better? On closer inspection, apparently not. We only know the superficial problems, but not their underlying causes.

The problem was not in the Greek love of, or fixation on, circles and other things they considered to be perfect; the real problem was their lack of humility on virtually all topics!

Dumb Genius Claim: Circles are perfect. Nature is perfect. Orbits are part of nature. Therefore, all orbits are circular. This is part of what ruined astronomy for over a millennium.

Categories: Science, Astronomy.

Key Flaw: Poorly defined terms and imperfect premises.

Chief Culprits: Aristotle (384–322 BC), Claudius Ptolemy (AD c.100–c.170) and countless followers.

Breakthroughs: Nicolaus Copernicus (AD 1473–1543), Galileo Galilei (AD 1564–1642), Johannes Kepler (AD 1571–1630).

The Greeks were notorious for choosing a truth which seemed logical. Behind the choosing was an egoistic need to fix the meanings of things; working with a malleable unknown was too unsettling. However, real breakthroughs came later, when scientists learned to let evidence tell them relative truths, rather than have researchers choose truth. A bigger part of their flawed thinking involved their certainty that they had all the information they needed. Another part involved their poor thinking and their jump to an unfounded conclusion based on flawed premises. Throughout the days of the Roman Empire, including those in Constantinople, scientists kept finding evidence which seemed to work against the circle thesis. So, they added other circles to account for the peculiarities nature had shown them. The complexity of their worldview was collapsing under the weight of all the patches and fixes.

Circles are perfect, but in what context? What exactly does perfect mean in this regard? Does that perfection apply to all parts of nature, and, if not, why not? These are some of the questions they did not ask.

Greek judgments dominated the science of astronomy in Europe for nearly two thousand years. But far more than astronomy was affected by this kind of derailed thinking. It also corrupted religion. As early as the second and third centuries AD, church scholars wanted to mimic the Greeks and to create for Christianity a science of biblical analysis. They needed this, because they needed to finalize or fix the meaning of scripture to some finite, discrete meaning. Throughout most of that period, politics, and not reason, held sway. This was the politics of the know-better attitude—of voting to establish agreement on biblical meaning.

The biggest flaw in any Dumb Genius reasoning is frequently one of assuming self’s ability to see all evidence clearly. As we mentioned, the Greeks thought of circles as perfect, but did not become specific enough with regard to context and purpose. They implied that nature was driven by the Greeks’ biased view of perfection. But how many mountains, rocks or trees are perfect Greek forms? Arguably, none of them.

But a far deeper problem is revealed by closer inspection of the Greek crisis with circles. And this deeper problem, as we have already seen, involves their lack of humility.

Déjà Vu of the Dark Kind

Throughout history, a lack of humility has led people astray, sometimes with deadly consequences. Thus, those who discovered the deadlier side of hubris were not alive long enough to pass on their hard-won wisdom.

A lack of humility has destroyed countless disciplines, groups, organizations and carefully designed plans. Sometimes, the destruction is slow and agonizing. And quite often, the participants do not see the slow moving wave of damage being done.

But that is the nature of egoism. A sedentary certainty tends unknowingly to constrain your ability to see more evidence and ideas. Even the most intelligent among us can get caught up in consensus thinking—the lazy man’s intelligence.

"And God said, Let there be light: and there was light" (Genesis 1:3).

This famous line, from the best selling book of all time, is not talking about electromagnetic radiation, but awareness. Thus, the opposing darkness is merely a lack of awareness. Criminals and Dumb Geniuses tend to like darkness. The light hurts their egos.

What Is ‘Dumb Genius,’ Really?

"There is no relationship between being smart and being wise" Jordan Peterson (PragerU poster).

Dumb Genius? Been there; done that. Yes, your author has been a Dumb Genius, at times. And no, the book’s title is not an oxymoron—a self-contradictory phrase. Regrettably, and all too often, some people who would otherwise have extremely high IQs find themselves in the unenviable position of doing or saying some incredibly stupid things.

Here, we are not necessarily referring to the social gaffe that turns the culprit into a pariah amongst their peers, though this phenomenon can include that. Our focus will be on a far darker beast—a monster that works to destroy civilization rather than to add value to it. At the very least, it acts as a stumbling block or impediment to discovery and progress. At worst, it leads to the unintended consequences that create for others a living Hell on Earth.

Personally, your author has an IQ that registers as genius only on a few, more generous scales which rate various levels of intelligence. At 139, your author’s IQ resides in the top 1% of humanity on the scale of raw intelligence, but remains sufficiently outclassed by others in his many fields of interest that he has been left scrambling to catch up. That deficit has made your author keenly aware of this phenomenon, because the solution to this Dumb Genius darkness is the light made possible by humility.

This is not to say that your author is entirely humble or even a little humble all of the time. Quite the contrary, this writer and researcher has an immense ego which usually requires great effort to tame. Still, the observations of this phenomenon could prove quite valuable to the future of humanity and to the wellbeing of all life on this planet. It is in this context that the following facts and analyses are presented for your examination.

The objective is one of shining a light on this phenomenon so that, through greater public awareness, we can reverse the tide that has been eroding some of the progress made by civilization through science, politics, religion and spirituality.

The book’s title uses the word dumb, not in the sense of an inability to speak, though that can apply in some respects. Its key focus is on the more colloquial use of the word to indicate a lack of Effective Intelligence.

So, what does Dumb Genius really mean?

This seemingly self-contradictory phrase refers to the potent effect wielded by exceptional intelligence in reducing Effective Intelligence. In other words, if a truly gifted person takes the lessons in this book to heart, they can preserve more of their own innate intelligence for use on the problems they encounter in life. Without this wisdom, they may find themselves to be shackled by the Dumb Genius syndrome—blinded to solutions which may prove obvious to less lofty intellects.

Derailed Agriculture

One of the more tragic examples from history comes to us from supposed improvements in agriculture which ended up being disastrous. But you would never know about the down sides of fertilizers; there is merely too much money involved. Justus Von Liebig (1803–1873) was a Dumb Genius who later in life realized he had sinned against God with his discovery of NPK fertilizer theory. But by that time, he could not put the evil genie back into the bottle. Too many big corporations were making fortunes off of the toxic chemicals that destroy soils and produce less nutritious crops. Like so much of the health and nutrition industries, Dumb Geniuses have found simple chemicals at the heart of health and nutrition, but ignored the messy complexities (other, organic chemicals) which actually allowed those simple chemicals to work within the body. Dumb Geniuses proved the adage about penny wise and pound sterling foolish.

Derailed Mathematics

Another prime example of the Dumb Genius syndrome involves mathematics. From your author’s first-place, award-winning essay, Outsiderness in the Scientific Community (see Appendix for the full essay), the following excerpt highlights one educator’s encounter with this beast:

Division between sciences has existed on an unbelievably broad scale. In fact, entire branches of science have shunned one another. In his best seller, Chaos: Making a New Science, James Gleick quotes Mathematics Professor Ralph Abraham on one such schism:

"...in 1960... modern mathematics in its entirety—in its entirety—was rejected by physicists, including the most avant-garde mathematical physicists.... The romance between mathematics and physicists had ended in divorce in the 1930s. These people were no longer speaking. They simply despised each other. Mathematical physicists refused their graduate students permission to take math courses from mathematicians: Take mathematics from us. We will teach you what you need to know. The mathematicians are on some kind of terrible ego trip and they will destroy your mind. That was 1960. By 1968 this had completely turned around."

[End excerpt from essay]

But the roots of this problem extend even further back in time, back into the 19th century. British engineer, Sylvanus P. Thompson (1851–1916), had noticed the obscene egoism of mathematicians, and their penchant for mangling the education of their own field. He became so fed up with their incompetence that he wrote a bestseller in the field of calculus (advanced mathematics), which is quite an accomplishment, especially for an outsider. When your author discovered this powerful little book in the mid-1980s, it had already been through more than two dozen printings since its first publication in 1910. The book: Calculus Made Easy.

In his Prologue, Thompson makes it clear his disdain for the pomposity of mathematicians.

"Considering how many fools can calculate, it is surprising that it should be thought either a difficult or a tedious task for any other fool to learn how to master the same tricks.

"Some calculus-tricks are quite easy. Some are enormously difficult. The fools who write the text-books of advanced mathematics—and they are mostly clever fools—seldom take the trouble to show you how easy the easy calculations are. On the contrary, they seem to desire to impress you with their tremendous cleverness by going about it in the most difficult way.

Being myself a remarkably stupid fellow, I have had to unteach myself the difficulties, and now beg to present to my fellow fools the parts that are not hard. Master these thoroughly, and the rest will follow. What one fool can do, another can.

Thompson is a hero to the reformed Dumb Genius. His brilliance remains popular after over a century helping students overcome the imaginary terrors of calculus—trumped up fears created by the immense egos of people who should know better. But, smitten by the Dumb Genius syndrome, they have polluted the minds of their peers and their students with a lust for obscurity and opaque teaching methods.

Your current author had already noticed the incompetence of mathematicians in their writing of textbooks on calculus. The concepts were extremely simple and easy, yet in the two textbooks purchased from a local college bookstore in Los Angeles, both excelled in making that simplicity obscure enough to force this humble fool to read both books in parallel, attempting to understand what they were so incompetently attempting to present. It seemed that first year calculus text books were written for those with PhD’s in mathematics. A bit backwards, that!

New Zealand scientist, Ernest Rutherford (1871–1937), sometimes called the father of nuclear physics, is reported to have claimed,

"An alleged scientific discovery has no merit unless it