The Genius Rights Manifesto

This is likely one of the most unusual articles ever written. It is an article that many will not understand for several years.

Yet it is a topic that has full scientific, legal and philosophical merit, therefore someone should write it.

In this article I will try to elaborate why the protection of genius rights has scientific, legal and philosophical merit.

I will discuss that several basic human rights of geniuses including identity, freedom of speech and safety are currently violated.

I will discuss how most neurological outliers (geniuses) face significant discrimination, bullying and broader harm all throughout their lives.

I will also discuss that because of emerging social networks, Genius-phobia is currently on the rise and does not have any counterweight, unlike other xenophobic phenomena.

Neurological outliers (geniuses) are born as biological exceptions and they have no choice over it.

While the Homo-Sapien species is evolving as an animal, every once in a while evolution creates a new and more advanced type of information processing organ called the brain.

These new types of brains can sometimes be significantly different than the standard brain. Hence this anomaly impacts the interaction between a genius and its surrounding.

If one analyzes history, it becomes clear that some people have always been attacking and harming geniuses just for the way they were born.

This is a form of injustice that no one discusses.

No human being should face discrimination or violence for the way they were born.

Therefore, from a legal perspective this phenomenon constitutes a Human Rights Violation!

Throughout history, the process of human civilization has been to continually include different sociological or biological minorities into the collective, majority discourse, with the goal to understand the life experience of a specific minority and to mitigate any sources of human rights violations towards that minority.

Examples of this civilization process were racial minority rights movements, gay rights movements and several other movements that included different minorities into the collective discourse.

An important step in this process was to openly discuss the life experience of different minority members to understand to what extent the majority structure is discriminatory towards a specific minority, or if there are any isolated but consistent sources of discrimination.

One minority that has been so far absent from this examination process are neurological outliers (colloquially referred to as geniuses).

Most neurological outliers face significant discrimination all throughout their lives. And this prolonged discrimination gives rise to psychological scars and even more severe outcomes.

Therefore, an important step would be to discuss the life experience of neurological outliers (colloquially referred to as geniuses) to understand to what extent their rights are violated.

A critical aspect to emphasize is that currently society negates that geniuses are real and biologically determined.

Yet it is scientifically easily provable that geniuses have a biologically deviant brain!

(Another article, linked here, discusses in detail the Neurobiology of Genius)

Negating that geniuses are real and biologically determined is analogous to negating that gays are real and biologically determined, or negating that a specific racial minority is real and biologically determined.

This is a dangerous and slippery slope. Because the moment you negate the existence of a minority, you take away the possibility of discussing and protecting the rights of that minority.

Someone like Einstein or Mozart or Elon Musk are born neurological outliers and are noticeably different from a very young age (age 3 or 4). They are real and their differentness is biological. Their brain can process reality differently.

Yet we all have heard the commonly spread statement that “Everyone is a genius, but if you tell a fish to climb a tree bla bla bla….”

That is not true.

Not everyone is a genius. Geniuses are real and very rare.

When you are a genius you are a neurological exception and you are born that way. And this is obvious from a very young age.

Because society is uncomfortable discussing the existence of this specific minority, society continuously violates the rights of the minority members.

If one reads the life stories of most geniuses throughout history, their lives are full of discrimination and attacks. This discrimination was true for Einstein, Mozart, Jobs, Turing, Wittgenstein, Tesla, Rousseau, you name it.

After having researched the lives of about 60 historical geniuses, there is a clear pattern.

And there is significant survivorship bias, because many neurological outliers face so much discrimination and violence, that they succumb under that pressure at a young age and we do not hear about them.

Therefore, society needs to discuss and protect genius rights!

The question is not to discuss who is a genius, or who is not a genius. But it is important to comfortably and openly discuss what the world is like for a genius, and what it is like growing up or going through life as a genius.

This is something that no one ever talks about publicly and openly.

And unfortunately, because Genius-phobia is on the rise now, the cost, friction and violence is increasing.

And talking about it is the only way to mitigate any sources of discrimination and violence towards this minority.

At this point I want to briefly discuss the outward expression of a genius brain. The previously mentioned article discusses the biological roots of a genius brain. But I want to discuss the outward expression of a genius brain.

A genius is NOT someone who is smart or very smart or very very smart!

Of course many geniuses are very smart. But a genius is more than very smart.

A genius is someone whose brain can do an unusual and exceptional information processing. Hence this brain can capture and process reality differently than a “normal/average” human brain. Therefore the person exhibits unusual abilities from a young age.

For example

• There is an autistic person who can fly over New York in a helicopter just once and draw the entire New York skyline in greatest detail just from memory
• There is a Chinese kid who can solve three Rubik’s cubes simultaneously in less than 5 minutes, while juggling the cubes in the air.
• There are more examples of people with exceptional abilities, some who process dynamic systems differently, some who process visual details differently, some who process space layouts differently, some who process other information differently

These are not skills that can be learned. These are innate abilities of unusual information processing. Oftentimes, but not always, this exceptional information processing is tied to the visual system.

So imagine a person, with unusual abilities of processing reality, going through life. Over time the person captures and puts together a different portion of reality and the world.

Therefore the person can see and understand things about the world that “average” humans can’t.

This was the case with Steve Jobs. Hence he had that seemingly magical “intuition”.

Someone like Elon Musk, who continuously proves the doubters wrong, is clearly a genius. Peter Thiel once mentioned in an interview that Elon can probably see something that others can’t.

This seems to be also true for Evan Spiegel, who also continuously proves the doubters wrong. He also seems to capture things about reality that others can’t.

Anecdotally, an interesting way to spot geniuses is that oftentimes they make meaningful statements (regarding reality) that no one has made before.

So a genius is not someone who is just very very smart. A genius is someone who can capture or do something that normal humans can’t. Someone whose brain has unusual information processing abilities.

And this unusual information processing ability can become a source of significant discrimination.

First — Childhood

To start out I want to discuss a common childhood experience for most neurological outliers (geniuses).

Most geniuses, because they are significantly different from a very young age, are likely to face physical bullying or psychological bullying at a very young age, probably somewhere around age 5 or 6.

Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, Alan Turing were all severely bullied at a young age. This experience is common for many neurological outliers.

For children aged 5 or 6 this bullying is a traumatic experience. It is their first introduction to the world and how the world receives their identity. It can be very confusing and can oftentimes create long-term psychological scars for the rest of their lives.

Good Will Hunting’s fictional story is actually not too unrealistic. It is common.

Early in life most geniuses face an unusual decision, either to maintain their real identity or to suppress their identity to avoid bullying.

This process of identity suppression can sometimes be completely unconscious, because it occurs at a very young age.

Many neurological outliers can go through most of their lives, while unconsciously suppressing their real identity and still maintaining their unusual abilities.

This process of identity suppression is psychologically unhealthy and usually leads to the need to continuously validate their constructed identity. Also oftentimes the memories of this traumatic childhood experience are suppressed.

As they hide their identities, many geniuses lean towards experimental experiences while moving between settings. This is something J.J. Rousseau or Steve Jobs probably experienced.

Some genius children may not suppress their real identity and may overcome this initial challenge. Yet they will be exposed to physical bullying and psychological discrimination throughout most of their childhood.

Second — Reality perception and misunderstood independent thinking

After childhood a genius is likely to face significant discrimination in form of psychological bullying.

The main reasons for the discrimination are misunderstandings that arise because a genius captures a different portion of reality than its surrounding people do.

This is a source of significant misunderstandings, because the genius has no way of knowing what part of reality its surrounding cannot capture and just perceives its surrounding as confused.

And the surrounding people are likely to misunderstand the genius, because the surrounding cannot capture what the genius can capture. This is one reason that most geniuses are misunderstood.

This experience is even more pronounced for geniuses who are extreme outliers.

People like Einstein, Turing, Wittgenstein or Nietzsche were misunderstood by their surrounding most of their lives.

There is also something interesting in the character and identity of geniuses.

Geniuses are usually very independent thinkers and they question most things presented to them and need their own independent validation.

The reason for this is their life experience.

They go through their lives observing that their surrounding seems confused and unable to capture some parts of reality that they can capture.

Therefore they naturally have little confidence in the judgement and reasoning of their surrounding.

This is one reason why geniuses tend to question conventions and rules, because their life experience did not provide them enough confidence in the reasoning and judgement of their surrounding.

Early in life, geniuses like Einstein or Wittgenstein often disagreed with established professors. Someone like Elon Musk may disagree with the SEC.

Geniuses tend to disagree with authority, because the source and reason for that disagreement seems pretty obvious and correct to them.

This is likely to make the authority perceive the genius as a troublemaker. But in most cases the genius is right and the authority is unable to understand the reasoning, because the authority is unable to capture certain nuances about reality.

So this label as a troublemaker, who is just misunderstood, will likely be a source of continuous psychological discriminating, which is very unhealthy. Usually no one takes the time to understand the genius and to have an actual discussion. And also most people are not open-minded enough to consider a different view.

Third — Envy

Another source of significant discrimination that geniuses face throughout their lives stems from envy. Geniuses have exceptional abilities and therefore are likely to excel in specific fields with little effort. This will likely trigger envy in other people involved in that same field.

One way to see if someone has exceptional abilities in a given information processing area is not just by outstanding results, but also by the amount of effort. If someone has exceptional abilities in a specific area, the person is likely to achieve outstanding results with much less effort.

Benjamin Franklin once said, if you want people to wish you well, don’t give them a reason to be envious.

For geniuses this is oftentimes difficult to do, because it is just an innate part of their brain’s information processing, over which they have no control. They were just born like that.

So the only way to avoid envy is by intentionally sabotaging their own performance. In a sense to avoid envy geniuses have to intentionally underachieve, which is odd, because everyone naturally wants to reach their full potential.

If somehow their results and achievements trigger envy in others from the same field, geniuses will face psychological discrimination from their colleagues.

If unlucky, geniuses could face serious, detrimental damage to their well being, because there will always be people, who will intentionally harm them.

For every Mozart there is always more than one Salieri.

Independent of how accurate the story of Salieri poisoning Mozart is, in the lives of geniuses there are usually several people, who eventually become so envious, that they try to intentionally harm the genius in some cowardly way.

Hence witnessing prolonged injustice over time can psychologically break a genius and can lead to some form of retaliation against society.

The story of the Unabomber Ted Kaczynski is probably an example of this. He was a mathematics prodigy and a professor at UC Berkley. It is likely that he faced life long discrimination and other forms of attacks, until he psychologically snapped and began harming others.

That is a sad outcome, which could have been avoided, if society openly discussed genius rights.

So to summarize the above three scenarios

1. Early childhood bullying because of being different
2. Discrimination because of being misunderstood by their surrounding and by authorities, who are likely wrong and mis-capture reality
3. Discrimination and harm from colleagues, friends, relatives stemming from envy because of exceptional abilities

And the genius has no control over all three of these scenarios, because the source is an innate part of how the genius was born and how the brain functions.

This is something that the genius had no choice over, as it was determined by biology.

Hence if the source of discrimination is due to something that the genius had no choice over, this discrimination should be considered a Human Rights Violation!

Any human being has the right to live its life without facing any violence for the way that human was born! This should also hold for geniuses!

But because society currently does not openly discuss the existence of geniuses and the life experience of geniuses, geniuses face significant discrimination all throughout their lives and have to find other means of avoiding that discrimination, by either suppressing their identity, intentionally underachieving or other methods.

We all praise historical geniuses, who have moved the human race forward with their unusual abilities and achievements. We idolize people like Newton, Einstein, Edison, Tesla, Mozart, Beethoven, Turing, Jobs, etc. But many of these Geniuses had really difficult and tragic lives.

And most geniuses that are alive today face significant discrimination and harm throughout their lives, and many of them succumb under that pressure at a young age and never reach their potential.

When I was a graduate student at Stanford, I met a young undergrad, who was a very nice guy. He clearly was somewhat unusual and an exceptional thinker. He often complained that he was mistreated by his surrounding and his classmates, and over time became misanthropic.

And years later he committed suicide! This is very tragic.

Not only does this issue affect the life experience of a genius and is a Human Rights Violation, but also society misses out on progress by not reaping the fruits of their unusual abilities.

Hopefully society will discuss this issue one day!

Now I want to discuss few examples why protecting genius rights can be so important for society:

• Elon Musk was severely bullied at a young age. He was kicked down some stairs and had to go to the hospital. Imagine Elon would have suffered some serious brain damage in the process. Then we would have no electric cars for another 20 years and would be dealing with more severe global warming phenomena
• Steve Jobs was continuously and severely bullied as a child. So severely that he asked his parents to move to another city or he would not go to school anymore. Imagine Steve would have been psychologically more fragile and would have committed suicide in the process. Then we would have no iPhone and would have lost out on the entire smartphone revolution
• Many people do not realize how much discrimination Einstein had to withstand before he made his breakthrough. What if he would have given up? Was there anyone like Einstein, who was working on a breakthrough and gave up because he couldn’t handle the discrimination?
• Is it a coincidence that Mozart died at such a young age (35) or did someone, who was envious of his abilities intentionally harm him?
• Is it a coincidence that Ramanujan died at such a young age (32) from health issues or did someone intentionally harm his health?
• Franz Kafka died from tuberculosis at the age of 40 and most of his writing did not reach the broader public until after his death. How was his health impacted? Did anyone intentionally harm him?
• The Italian Renaissance painter Raphael suddenly died at the age of 37. Why is it that the most talented geniuses all tend to die so young?
• Nietzsche faced so much discrimination that he collapsed at 45. Only decades after Nietzsche’s death were his writings re-discovered and understood by Freud, Jung, Picasso
• If one closely analyzes the lives of historical geniuses these scenarios are all apparent. Almost any genius faced significant discrimination and harm all throughout their lives. How many give up?
• Turing died of cyanide poisoning at the age of 42. But the exact circumstances of his death are unknown. Is it not odd that the guy who helped the allies win WW2 by cracking the Nazi code tragically died at such a young age? How much computing progress did we miss out on due to his untimely death? What if he would have died about ten years earlier, what would have happened to the war outcome?
• Nikola Tesla in his last letter to his mother stated: “ All these years that I had spent in the service of mankind brought me nothing but insults and humiliation”. This is a common and representative experience for many geniuses. Could we have gotten more from Tesla, if we would have treated him better?
• There was an interesting genius named Khachatur Abovian, who was one of Armenia’s biggest geniuses. He was far ahead of his time, very misunderstood and mysteriously disappeared in 1848 at the age of 39. He wrote just one novel that was published after his death. It became one of the best novels in Armenian literature. What happened to him? How much potential did he have?
• Ettore Majorana, the Italian physicist, mysteriously disappeared at the age of 32 in 1938. In 2006, the Majorana prize was established in his memory. But that does not help him anymore. Why is it that many geniuses disappear?
• The Russian poet Alexander Pushkin, considered by many the greatest Russian poet, died in a duel at the age of 37. Prior to the duel Pushkin was facing reputation violence and rumors were being spread about him from several sources. Was this duel an attempt by Pushkin to defend himself against his detractors and to right his reputation?
• J.J. Rousseau, the author of the Social Contract, also faced a lot of discrimination and violence throughout his life. This is maybe one reason that he thought about the Social Contract. Curbing violence is one of the main objectives of the Social Contract. Maybe it is time to update Rousseau’s Social Contract, because we now understand the life experience of geniuses better.
• Ted Kaczyinsky, the math prodigy who became the Unabomber, was bullied as a child and later also faced discrimination from his colleagues at Berkeley. Imagine if we would have protected him from all that discrimination and psychological trauma. Maybe he would have helped us to significant breakthroughs in mathematics and driven forward research in AI, which would have helped everyone. Instead he snapped psychologically and became a criminal.
• Avicii the EDM artist, who committed suicide at the age of 28 in 2018, is the latest public genius that paid a price.
• Around that same time, in 2018, Kanye West was going through a serious health battle and he was being attacked from several sources.
• Around that same time, in 2018, Elon Musk, arguably the most important innovator of our time, was being attacked and harassed by many sources, including incompetent media outlets, a misinformed public, short sellers and the SEC.
• Around that same time, in 2018, Travis Kalanick, was facing different forms of genius-phobia, while he was processing a tragic accident in his family that killed his mom. And he was simultaneously under a lot of stress as a CEO of one of the fastest growing companies in the world. Somebody should have realized that he could use some slack at that point.
• 2018 was a difficult year for many geniuses. I know few other geniuses that paid a price that year. The emergence of an interconnected, social-graph world and a changing media landscape is amplifying Genius-phobic phenomena.
• We don’t know how many other geniuses face so much harm that they succumb under that pressure at a young age and we do not hear about them. There is significant survivorship bias!
• How many Elon Musks and Steve Jobs and Einsteins do we not hear about, because they give up on society, commit suicide, or end up in prison for violent retaliation? I am sure there are several!
• The irony is that this problem is as old as the ancient Greek geniuses Socrates and Pythagoras, both of whom experienced premature deaths by death sentencing and killing, respectively. And if we don’t talk about this issue, nothing will change.

How much progress does society miss out on by not protecting geniuses from discrimination and violence? Geniuses are the ones that have the biggest impact on human progress, yet they face the most discrimination.

My research also shows that the harm vector is the strongest between the ages of 25–40, because this is when geniuses flourish and begin chasing and achieving their dreams. So this is when the envy component in their surrounding becomes the biggest and the potential for harm becomes the biggest. During this time period many geniuses succumb, since others in their surrounding collude and harm them. One can call this time period the critical period of Geniuses.

The five types of violence that Geniuses are exposed to are:

1. Physical violence
2. Health violence
3. Psychological violence
4. Reputation violence
5. Performance sabotage

Health violence specifically seems to be a common mode of harm towards geniuses. Intentionally infecting an unsuspecting genius with a disease is not difficult to do and the law cannot do anything about it. Hence many people use infectious diseases as weapons against geniuses.

Reputation violence has become common towards public geniuses in today’s changing media landscape. Many media outlets cater their message towards Genius-phobia as a means to capture audiences. But reputation violence can occur at any scale and at any age.

Because reputation violence is a collective phenomenon, several sources could independently spread different levels of misinformation about a genius. But only the genius will feel the cumulative impact.

Some sources also just throw around standard DSM diagnoses, including narcissistic, psychopathic, sociopathic, anti-social to attack the personalities of geniuses.

And physical violence can start as childhood bullying, but can go as far as the assassination of public figures like Kennedy (age 46) or MLK (age 39).

For most people these deaths are tragic events. But for Kennedy and MLK it is the premature end to their only life.

The modes of violence that geniuses face are fairly diverse.

With some creativity one can even imagine additional modes of violence beyond the above five modes. It only takes one primitive person to harm one Genius.

And because of the emergence of social networks and a more interconnected world, Genius-phobia is currently on the rise and the modes of violence against Geniuses are increasing.

All these different modes of violence can be a high cost to one of the most valuable resources that evolution provides us. We cannot afford to lose too many Geniuses, because they are so rare and because they change things, they push the human race forward.

Geniuses are the most valuable natural resource.

We have animal rights, but we don’t have genius rights.

We should think about this and we should talk about this!

To mitigate the issues discussed in this article, the first step would be to openly accept the biological roots of geniuses and to openly discuss their entire life experience!

This will help us educate the broader public about this issue, just as we do with other forms of minority discriminations.

Ultimately, to stop discrimination against geniuses, society could treat any significant harm against geniuses as a hate crime, similar to what is done with other Human Rights Violations.

To be continued…

If you are interested in this topic, here are some additional thoughts on genius rights in another article.

Disclaimer:

Since I am a dyslexic, I am prone to spelling and grammar mistakes. Hopefully it does not distract from the substance of the article.

Thank you for reading this article