Child genius my ass!

[Silentknight]

A copy of a topic I just posted on JREF, though I don't often post my rants there, since I'm bound to say something offensive.  I'll let you decide.

Ever since the 2000 elections I've seen this so-called "child genius" named Noah McCullough running the talk show circuit, who appeared again on Oprah today.  He is allegedly an expert on presidential trivia, and is usually shown challenging adults to contests of presidential trivia questions and besting them every single time.  He has already published a book containing such trivia and factoids, and says he plans to run for president in the year 2032 on the Republican ticket.  What's more, he has repeatedly stated that he believes President Bush is the greatest president our nation has had since Abraham Lincoln, and that when he runs for president, he intends to model his presidency after Bush's.

I do not consider this kid to be a child genius by any stretch of the imagination.  All he has proven himself capable of is memorizing a bunch of disparate facts, without any understanding whatsoever of the historical context or political relevance.  He impresses me no more than a religious fundamentalist who has memorized the bible in its entirety and is able to spew random quotes from scripture at me.  Memorization is not the same thing as comprehension, it involves no critical thinking whatsoever, and it doesn't make one's beliefs valid or authoritative.

People tend to be impressed and amazed by things they have little grasp of themselves, and this includes instances where genius intelligence shows up at a young age.  There is nothing superhuman or magical about having a high intelligence, and there is nothing about Noah McCullough that suggests to me that he possesses any kind of extraordinary intelligence.  He's just some Bush-worshiping delusional kid who regurgitates what he reads and convinced the right people to fawn over him for the wrong reasons.

[Ungodly]

Anyone who fails to see the obvious fact that George Warcriminal Bush is a horrible President has no political insight at all.

I agree about the difference between a bearer of factoids and a person capable of independent thought.

[The Force]

Hmm, I'll have to do more research on this kid, I've never heard of him. The Wiki entry on him is a joke, probably written by McCullough himself.

Agreed with SilentKnight, people who can memorize vast amounts of information have got a neat and useful skill, but it is not in any way indicative of intelligence or critical thinking faculties. I could memorize scripts to entire movies when I was a child; that did not make me a child prodigy. The children who make it to the Scripps spelling bee are not child geniuses, though most are assuredly very smart nonetheless. They are kids who have demonstrated a talent for memorizing how words are spelled and regurgitating those spellings upon prompting.

And, don’t even get me started on fucking Reverend Oprah and her Ministry!  She has been proselytizing her New Age bullshit on her show through the New Age gurus she has as guests.  She has a large cult following too who think she is god.

  Yay Storybook!