Is this man the smartest human that ever lived ?

Is this man the smartest human that ever lived ?

Have you heard of William James Sidis , do you know his story ?
Here are some of his incredible accomplishments:

This man seems to be the smartest human that ever lived on Earth.
Other people often say that Da Vinci was the smartest.
Who was/is the smartest of all the people that ever lived on this planet ?
Discuss

 

For some reason, this seems totally unrealistic. Anyone else agree with me?

 

Einstein, he's not.

The reason why all his achievements seem so unrealistic is that he never accomplished the number of things that Edison, Da Vinci, and Einstein did (almost all of Sidis' achievements were unpublished or at the very least, unpublicized). He's considered a "failed genius" because few people today remember what he did or even who he was (which is a shame, as some of his theories have merit and are being borne out as truth even today).

The smartest person on the planet was probably Albert Einstein as he composed his theories long before the technology existed to prove them. Stephen Hawking, Nikola Tesla, and Thomas Edison were or are all geniuses but not quite on par with Einstein.

 

And then one day he died without inventing a single usefull thing and all that was left of him was the memory of his accomplishments which all dissapeared in an instant upon is death.

 

Actually he did write a quite good number of manuscripts , however he did not want fame/publicity, hence no publications.Besides, he was criticized for his attitude , so he did not receive the interest that he deserved at that time.
What he did is in his manuscripts,they are real and can be read online.

About Einstein vs Sidis:
At 20 - Sidis wrote a book called 'The Animate & The Inanimate' - predicting the existence of Black Holes long before Einstein thought of them - this was around 1920.

 

I would say whoever the first guy was to eat oysters was either insane or a genius.

Lickin slime outta rocks in the ocean, who would have thought.

 

That proves he is not the smartest man on earth.
Everybody knows lawyers are good for nothing.

Grr pIER

 

how can you write a book or give a lecture at the age of 7 - or so?

 

Same way how adults do it; write with pen and ink and stand at the podium to lecture.

 

Yeah, well. Easy come, easy go.

 

Is it even possible for the brain to develop that quickly? Learning a new language just to read Homer by age four is pretty damn hard to do. . .

 

actually, its easier to learn languages when you are younger, because at those younger years, your brain is still developing its " circuitry " and as we grow older, the pathways that make up your brain become more hardset, making the language harder and harder to learn quickly.

 

Making a prediction is generally pretty useless unless the reasoning leading to it is correct.

 

http://www.highiqsociety.org/common/puzzles/puzzle04.htm

Fun stuff.

Garbad

 

I believe that it's possible to do all what he did because the human brain only uses 10 % of its capacity.Einstein was said to use 30 % of the capacity of his brain ( at least that's what I read).
Intelligence is determined by the number of neuronal connections, so the more, the smarter.
If Sidis was able to use 100 % of his brain by maximizing its neuronal connections, then he must have been able to learn that quickly.

 

Correction - 10% of your brain is used at a time.

Different parts of your brains do different things. Rarely do you use more than one section at a time, but all of your brain is used regularly.

Garbad

 

The only thing on that list I just can't buy is his supposed ability to learn a language in a day and master every language in the world (there are more than 200). He might have been able to understand the mechanics of every language and learn a lot of vocabulary in a short period of time, but to be able to actually vocally communicate in any language after that level of study would be, in my opinion, impossible. It takes more than just recognition and recollection to be able to speak and understand a language. Your oral-motor skills must be trained by repetition. The nerves in your lips, tongue and larynx can't "learn" to pronounce new sounds soley from information that you read. Likewise, your ears can't recognize sounds from only knowledge of the shapes that symbolize them. They must be heard repetitively in context so that patterns and correlations may be recognized. I don't doubt his phenomenal intellect, but I wonder if some of those achievements might be a tad exagerrated.

 

Well, if a kid can spell at 1 yr old....I'm impressed enough.

 

Perhaps arguably a "super genious", I also have credibility issues with some of the "achievement" claims that are made there. I don't buy all of it.

1000 years from now though... he will be long forgotten as will I.

 

Whats more impressive is the leap from learning to eat with a spoon at 8 months to spelling at 12. Smells a little fishy.

Garbad