I was reading a book about Nikola Tesla, and that man was WEIRD! He was a genius, but he had strange obsessions:
-he would not enter a room if a woman was in that room (who was wearing pearls)
-he would arrive at his restaurant for dinner a precisely the same time every night…and proceed to use 13 napkins to polish his glass and silverware
-he would mentally calculate the volume of food that he was to sonsume
Other smart people’s weirdnesses:
-Samuel Johnson would avoid stepping on cracks in the sidewald
-he would also touch each baluster of a railing (with his walking stick) as he passedby
-Howard Hughes would have the same meal for decades…campbells’ chicken noodle coup , and vanilla ice cream for dessert
Are such behaviours charcteris of brilliant people (whoare slightly crackers)?
Just a question!
I hear Alan Turing was a thoroughly weird bloke. I don’t know the specifics. Perhaps someone else can fill us in.
I, however, am a perfectly sane super intelligent perwibbleson.
Turing was gay, but I don’t seem to recall anything else about him.
Well, I suppose this is a bit stereotypical, when I bring to mind even cartoon images of a nutty professor type, but I notice the wild hair. Einstein is a good example, but I watched a show on PBS a while ago about this really interesting (and still living) composer. He had the craziest hair, and it seemed totally subconscious when he ran his fingers through his hair, making it even wilder. Then again, there’s Don King, but he seems to be a pretty brilliant marketer, so I don’t know. Okay, Carrot Top, that’s blows my theory all to pieces.
To add to the list in the OP, didn’t Howard Hughes quit trimming his fingernails? I read that he became irrationally afraid of germs, but at the same time refused to trim his nails. 
Wasn’t that C. Monty Burns??
I was told in a psych class that Howard Hughes apparently had a BAD case of OCD, which pretty much ruined his life, seeing as he had the money and power to give into it. I’ve also read that Samual Johnson may have had it. Historical diagnosis is not an exact art, but he was an odd one, apparently.
It may be that highly intelligent people can have a compulsive attention to detail that complements their analytical abilities.
It may also be that frivolity is a concomitant of higher intelligence. Intelligent creatures “play”.
It may also be that some intelligent people simply suffer from the same petty insanities which plague lower intellects, and which exist entirely separate from other mental faculties (a separation exhibited in idiot/savant phenomena), but which are less noticed in average folk.
I have a theory that superstitious or redundant behavior arbitrarily fills the chinks in intellects so that progress can be made.
You guys might be interested in a book about eccentrics, also called Eccentrics. I think that’s the one I read, although it has a different cover.
There was an interesting article in Smithsonian a few years back about the eccentricities of the world’s greatest chess players. They all had special foods to eat before or during games. Bobby Fischer preferred milk. One other player, I can’t remember which, ate several cans of yogurt during every game. An opponent once accused him of cheating by recieving messages in his yogurt. There were plenty of other amusing stories.
I think that Alan Turing was the one who always wore a gas mask while jogging or bike riding, but that may have been someone else.
Kind of related to all this, I believe I remember reading somewhere that people with higher IQ’s are more likely to have psychiatric disorders such as OCD and Bi-Polar, which might explain some of this.
Post on the SDMB.
Karpov, I believe, with the specific incident being in the (possibly) Korchnoi - Karpov match? it was one that had an obscene number of rounds and all sorts of allegations flying around the place anyway.
Yogurt comes in cans??
Yep, Campbell’s has always wanted to overthrow the Imperialistic Monster and replace it with a People’s Democratic Republic. That’s why there are secret chemicals in the soups they produce: to corrupt our precious bodily essences and turn us into a race of mindless slaves. Melting pot my ass! They want a stew, with the mindless proles bouying up the thick chunks of militaristic steak and governmental noodles.
Chicken Noodle Coup. Spread the word.
Oh, and Sigmund Freud was afraid of ferns.
I think I watched a show which posited an interesting theory, but I don’t know the validity of it. Basically the guy thought that super-intelligent people were so smart because their brains wired themselves differently, with shortcuts which allowed information to travel a lot faster. However, this re-wiring could sometimes cause neuroses to develop as it wasn’t always that reliable and could short-circuit the mind.
And Tallayan, my Psych 101 professor mentioned that as well. OCD most especially is found disproportionally in those with greater testable intelligence. It is, for lack of a better term, often considered a “smart person’s neurosis”. Bi-polar disorder I know less about, but I think thats been proven to have a major genetic component to it.
In that episode (where Burns starts a casino in Springfield), Burns’ transformation into a paranoid, germ-obsessed recluse was a parody of what actually did happen to Hughs (minus the realization that he had gone over the edge and subsequent reversion to his old self).
Not sure I’d put Hughes and Tesla into the same category.
Hughes was a smart fellow, sure… but at least part of his disintegration, I suspect, was because of his wealth. If you or I feel a little unhinged, we can seek psychiatric help without being sued nine ways from Sunday by various enemies and ex-wives anxious to take advantage of the fact that we’ve just admitted that we may not be totally sane. Hughes could not do this, and from what I hear (although I may be misinformed,) it is possible that even if Hughes had WANTED to seek help, those around him may not have permitted it… because it would have endangered THEIR positions.
Tesla was a brilliant guy… and there is, at least so far as I know, no evidence that he ever thought he was anything but perfectly sane, despite his many eccentricities and what some might call self-destructive behavior, towards the end of his life… and Tesla didn’t have a full-time team of bodyguards, sycophants, and hiney wipers to interfere with his interactions with the real world…
All the OCD style stuff mentioned here as “genius weirdness”, perfectly normal people have in abundance as well. It’s interesting that these behaviors in otherwise very intelligent and/or accomplished people are often viewed as “eccentricities”, but in the middle and lower end of the bell curve they get to be just plain nuts.
Well, yeah. A crazy rich person is a “wealthy eccentric.” A crazy poor person is a “menace to society.”
In addition, my weirdnesses often go unremarked because I am not famous. Michael Jackson’s weirdnesses, on the other hand, are in near-constant public view.
…although, having made that analogy, I feel kinda obligated to remark that IMHO, Michael Jackson is considerably weirder than I am…
This fits with my experience. It does seem like highly intelligent people are much more likely to engage in obsessive/compulsive behavior than your average person.