Genius After Psychoanalysis: A Conversation with Daniel Cho

[@mattmethod]

I recently told a friend that Todd might be an emissary of the big Other. My friend told me that I’d been duped: Todd signified nothing. Whatever the case, I can’t figure out what he wants from me!

[@EMC2Scotia]

Neither does Todd know what he wants or why! Besides buying this book perhaps...

[@james-cal]

the part about benjamin and adornos correspondence is absolutely hilarious, wb was too real for that. also the point really does hit home for me which is that how prolific one is does not necessarily bear on the quality of what one is doing. really ties in nicely with this larger theme i pick up within the limited hegelian psychoanalysis i’ve taken in of rejecting the super-egoic imperative of our times. also edit: the part about the grand canyon is so incisive and i think for me me highlights this troubling tendency or confusion i see in our times of overemphasizing the positive aspects of something in our mental conception of it and therefore in doing so diminish the full reality of it. this is true of nature of course, and i don’t mean this in like the stupid anti-environmental sense, but i think this glorified picture of nature causes us to lose reverence for it and idealize/diminish it in its full complexity and what living in communion with it on a micro-macro level may require or demand. but also this is why pathologically positive people in the public sphere can kinda irc me specifically because i consider them really well intentioned. i’m thinking of hank green if you know him, science communicator who i really like but will occasionally talks about politics and it just rubs me the wrong way in the way liberals can often - but i think liberal in the way i’m using it here is really this broader thing than that which really kinda invades all of our subjectivities , liberal consciousness i suppose , that undermines the value of the negative and not necessarily in a way that is explicitly harmful but i think implicitly degrading to our confronting the other. i think we haven’t made peace with our yin, shadow, whatever you wanna call it if that makes sense. edit no.2: it’s so interesting you disliked the film oppenheimer, would love to know why or be directed somewhere to you explaining your ‘take’ cause i recently had the thought watching it for the second time several months back that it was my favorite nolan film specifically for the reason daniel points about about how it romanticizes the collective scientific creative process (score is ill) so brilliantly and also shows how dumb mccarthy was plus i just like historical fiction hence me liking it maybe more than his other works. and for a hist-fic film to be that huge? kinda wild. i’ve been thinking about rewatching memento and the magic one but idk i’d rather watch sum old shit i haven’t seen than rewatch nolan lol.

[@luxembourg.blues47]

Having trouble finding Why Theory! Help me, Todd!

[@JD-td8kl]

On iTunes podcast app? Should come up

[@toddmcgowan8233]

@@JD-td8kl Both itunes and spotify should work

[@keeper2010]

Can you drop a link for that hoodie?

[@toddmcgowan8233]

Someone gave it to me as a gift, sadly

[@tjjackson9190]

It's from the Acid Horizon Podcast, I believe, featuring the Franz Fanon Tarot card one of them designed. Whether the hoodie is or isn't for sale, I'm not sure.

[@Lobishomem]

As an old man can you tell me why most podcasters wear hoodies with optional baseball hat either worn normally or reversed?

[@SeekingApatheia]

im genuis

[@doclime4792]

Hmm... and do you have duty?

[@ngsq12]

Zero, NaN, Null. In that order.

[@ZanarkandIsntReal]

I think genius is just someone with exceptional intelligence and intelligence is just computational efficiency. Intelligence is just how efficiently you process information. Its hardware whereas sublimation is software. Sublimation is a specific program you run to analyze data. And your hardware (intelligence) is how efficiently and effectively you can run that program.

[@matthewevans5960]

I think the problem with this theory though is the reality of many wunderkinds, who often illustrate enormous computational, as you put it, intelligence, but rarely translate that into anything meaningful in their adult lives. William James Sidis may be the best example for this. A man with unbelievable intellect, but who was never able to sublimate that into a chosen discipline and thus why no one remembers him as one of the great geniuses of the early 20th century. Sublimation is the key to producing a true genius.

[@ZanarkandIsntReal]

@matthewevans5960 Well I don't think popularity or even creating anything of value determines whether someone was a genius or not. I think those things may be indicators to others that someone is a genius but if a genius was locked in a cage from birth and therefore couldn't create anything of value he would still be a genius. It's just nobody would know it. Think how many geniuses of the past are lost to history. Think how many pre historical geniuses there were that we would have no way of knowing about. It doesn't mean there were no geniuses in the human race just because writing hadn't been invented yet.

[@ashiok]

@@ZanarkandIsntReal Boring take skewed by modernist bias; once the zeitgeist passes this definition too will prove outdated. The brain is no more a computer than it was a locomotive, a particular humor, a ghost in the machine, a miracle, etc.

[@ZanarkandIsntReal]

@@ashiok Terrible analogy as nobody has ever thought locomotives to be computational pieces of technology lol. The legs are locomotives though... and the brain is a computer.

[@petrrut8544]

@@ZanarkandIsntReal Every time you use this "nothing but" reasoning you are setting yourself for a failure. You do not know the whole truth, do not pretend you do.