The Best Examples Of Someone Going From 'Genius' To 'Idiot'
Reddit user saigalaxy asked: 'What’s the biggest example of from “genius” to “idiot” there has ever been?'
My Father was considered a genius.
At 16 he graduated high school as Valedictorian, joined the United States Navy as soon as he turned 17 then was promptly recruited by Admiral Hyman Rickover's team converting the Navy from diesel to nuclear power.
He served as a nuclear and electrical engineer on naval vessels after the conversion project ended, then as a reactor inspector for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission after retiring from the Navy.
He also needed a full time babysitter in order to survive. Things like paying bills, buying groceries, feeding himself all escaped him. He lacked any semblance of common sense.
Really smart people doing very unsmart things isn't uncommon.
And sometimes a person is labeled a genius who's really an idiot with good brand marketing.
Reddit user saigalaxy asked:
"What’s the biggest example of from 'genius' to 'idiot' there has ever been?"
Gerald Ratner
"Gerald Ratner—made two ill-thought statements during a speech in 1991 in which he called his own products crap and lost half a billion GBP (1991 GBP at that!) off the value of his company overnight!"
"'Costs less than a prawn sandwich from marks and spencer, and probably lasts just as long'.”
“'People say, how can you sell it for such a low price, I say, because it’s total crap!'.”
"He said this to a room with a high number of journalists which took the story and ran with it. After this, anyone buying anything for a gift for a loved one from one of Ratner’s stores branded themselves as cheap, so sales plummeted.
"He was ousted as chairman within a year and they had to change their name!"
"Shooting your own company in the foot like this has since became known as 'the Ratner effect' or 'doing a Ratner'."
~ Taran345
Kary Mullis
"The guy that invented polymerase chain reaction (PCR)—which was ground breaking in early DNA research, got a Nobel Prize, though most probably remember it from the Covid days—went off the rails, denied that HIV caused AIDS even after it was scientific consensus and spent his time talking to a glowing racoon in the forest at night."
~ Lawsoffire
"The whole story behind him coming up with PCR was about him driving around San Diego while on an acid trip and while going through traffic he pictured DNA unwinding."
"Dude definitely took way too many drugs."
~ ChesterComics
"I've heard from people who worked with him that he was always pretty out there, did a lot of work drunk or high in lab even when a graduate student and post doctoral."
~ erehin
Linus Pauling
"Linus Pauling. He went from being a preeminent chemist and biochemist to a quack who wrote books claiming that megadoses of vitamin C cured all disease and was the key to an insanely long life."
~ battleofflowers
"He went on to promote crazy Vitamin C supplements that you just peed out."
"If you're taking Vitamin C for a cold, it's probably because of him and peer-reviewed research shows as long as you're not Vitamin C deficient, it's useless."
~ adenovir
John McAfee
"John McAfee. Not sure of the genuis part, but the downfall was legendary."
"He wrote and marketed the first commercial antivirus software after cutting teeth at NASA, Univac, and Xerox as a coder. Might have peaked around 100 million dollars."
"Then he sold his stake, told everyone to uninstall his company's product, retired, got into recreational drugs, lost tens of millions, possibly murdered a man in Belize...ran for President of the US, and then was arrested in Spain for US tax evasion."
~ Worried_Place_917
Elizabeth Holmes
"Elizabeth Holmes, founder of Theranos."
~ Random-Username7272
"She went all in on 'fake it til you make it' until enough people asked tough questions and it became obvious she was just faking it."
~ MossyHarmless
"Simple, it was pure hubris. Elizabeth Holmes, who didn't have a degree in any sciences, let alone a PhD didn't believe the experts when they told her what she wanted was physically impossible to achieve."
"She thought that she was gonna prove all of them wrong by duping lots of people out of their money and throwing it into her company. Then throwing money at lawyers to intimidate whistleblowers into fearing for their lives."
~ sharraleigh
"This is one of the situations where anyone with a science background looked at what that company promised and realised it was all a mirage."
"'We can fit the operation of a whole lab, and tests that take atleast a day into a little box, and it can do it all in minutes!! Please invest'."
"Riiiiiiight."
~ Konnichiwagwann
Elon Musk
"Even now that it's become more accepted to say Musk is an idiot, people still get incredibly offended when I compare him to Elizabeth Holmes even though 'autopilot' is clearly the same sh*t as Holmes' Edison."
"His other promises are also bullshit, but FSD is very much so Edison where the realistic timescale is anywhere from a decade away to literally never, but that hasn't stopped him from saying it's coming this year every year for the past 6."
~ Mezmorizor
"This is pretty much how a lot of people look at Musk's claims but thousands of people will get offended when you say it."
~ dbag_darrell
"Elon Musk comes to mind immediately. Well, he was probably an idiot the whole time but he had the veneer of a genius for a while."
~ crispier_creme
"I'll give him credit for his personal branding when he first became a household name. He had most of us fooled. I remember telling my wife, 'This dude is a genius! He's going to get us to Mars!'."
"Then he started posting on Twitter."
"And then I found out who he really was."
~ keep_it_kayfabe
"I was fooled as well. I can remember the exact time the veil started to lift too."
"It was when he called that cave diver a pedo just because they didn't use Elon's dumb idea for rescuing those kids in Thailand. It was all downhill after that."
~ Sabatorius
More on Musk
"Musk should be an example to never trust a hype man. Regardless of how sucessful they are, they are at the end of the day just a face to the actual work being done by hard working and intelligent people."
"People like Musk don't really do anything."
~ TacticalSanta
"He's only smart enough to hype someone else's vision and have other people complete it but then he takes all the credit, making it seem like he does all the work."
"For example, he keeps saying he founded Tesla when he didn't join until a year after it was up and running. And even then he joined as an investor not as an engineer or anything like that."
"He's constantly spouting his political opinions on Twitter as though they were facts and he's even getting involved in geopolitics by cutting crucial internet access to Ukraine when they need it the most."
"And speaking of Twitter, he had to eat his words when the SEC forced him to buy the platform after he kept trying to get out of it."
"Now 'the genius' is stuck with a 40 billion dollar company that's losing value because of his mismanagement and can't turn a profit, no matter what idiotic policy change he implements."
~ WHALE_BOY_777
"Why on earth would you remove the brand name off a brand you paid 40b for? The name Twitter, and Tweet, has value so you discard it for a name that will only ever have the suffix 'formerly Twitter'."
"It's like buying Coca Cola and changing it's name to X—it devalues the brand."
~ Monday0987
"Nah, he doesn't even have the vision. He just had money and says, 'let me get in on this'."
"Legit all his own ideas have been terrible. Hyperloop? A tunnel in which you can ride in your Tesla."
"Cybertruck? Looks terrible and he wants the metal panels to be at a smoothness that's physically impossible to achieve."
"Twitter? Well, just look at how big the dumpster fire became after he threw gasoline on it."
~ panatale1
William Shockley
"William Shockley led the team at Bell Labs that invented the transistor. That breakthrough yielded portable radios and hearing aids, and made computer microchips possible in the decades that followed."
"He essentially allowed computers to go from filling a room in a building to eventually fitting in a desktop and then in your pocket."
"He received a Nobel prize along with his team, and then spent the rest of his life spewing racism and eugenics garbage."
~ DoctorGarfanzo
"Oh, the BEST part is he wanted to set up sperm banks where people like him (the 'smart' ones) could donate and then women from the 'lesser' classes would be able to get some good smart boy juice."
"He was so full of himself he was overflowing."
~ The_Bred_Loaf
Rudy Giuliani
"Rudy Giuliani went from 'the man who saved NYC' to 9/11 'America's Mayor' to henchman sidekick—a la Renfield or Igor—overnight."
~ Yagsirevahs
"He was the media darling to win the 2008 Republican nomination. Turns out, people just didn't like him and he had to drop out of the race."
~ kevkos
Lech Walesa
"Lech Walesa—he posts the stupidest sh*t you could imagine on social media, always speaks about himself as a sole savior of the entire human race, everything, EVERYTHING is happening thanks to him."
"He is posting this on a Polish equivalent of Reddit, so people are just teasing him there to post even more of such stupidities and he always falls for that."
"On top of that he posts there his naked photos in a bathtub full of beer, posts poorly photoshopped posters of himself with other historical figures… basically the guy made a walking meme out of himself."
"And he is still giving lectures on European Universities as a special guest somehow."
"He is a Nobel Peace Prize winner, the face and one of the leaders of the Polish solidarity movement and a former president of Poland."
~ JustYeeHaa
Alexander Hamilton
"Alexander Hamilton"
"Genius by playing a deep role in developing robust mechanisms for the US government to operate from the ground up."
"Idiot by tarnishing his political career with openly admitting to cheating on his wife with a prostitute for months."
"Also stupid by agreeing to duel with someone who wanted to kill him, putting on glasses to show intent in winning, then pointing his gun away mid-duel and getting himself shot and killed."
~ RamblinGamblinWillie
Steve Jobs
"I think Steve Jobs was a marketing and sales genius."
"Then when it came to his treatable cancer ... well I wouldn't call him an idiot, but he placed his faith in the wrong person and his 'I always win' attitude cost him his life."
"He was unlucky to get cancer, but lucky that it was treatable at the stage it was discovered ... but he ignored his doctors and thought that changing his diet would heal him."
~ ClownfishSoup
Ben Carson
"In a previous job, some of our dumbest and most frustrating clients were doctors."
"I'm sure most of them were great at being doctors, but they couldn't seem to read or understand the fairly basic info we sent them and often asked the most stupid questions."
~ MildlyUnusualMax
"Ben Carson is the perfect example of the idiot doctor."
"He is legit one of the world's best brain surgeons. If you need brain surgery you'd be very lucky to have him as your surgeon. He's probably top 25 surgeons on the planet."
"However, the man put every skill point he has into brain surgery, and into no other skills of any kind. He's a moron in every other field aside from brain surgery."
~ Hyndis
"I'm still pretty convinced Trump thought 'urban development' meant 'secretary in charge of Black people', and that's why he picked Carson for HUD."
~ suitcasedreaming
Sam Bankman-Fried
"Don’t understand how Sam Bankman-Fried isn’t on this list yet."
"Dude was in magazines being called a prophet and genius, turns out he was just a f**king idiot the whole time."
~ strapped_for_cash
"The entire Forbes Thirty Under Thirty list is pretty much a bunch of smooth-talking scamming idiots."
"Sam Bankman-Fraud was also on there in 2021."
~ bart416
"It pisses me off that media still refer to him as a former billionaire. In what way was he a billionaire? The money he spent was all other people’s; FTX and Alameda Research didn’t even keep financial records, even Bankman-Fried had no idea how much money he had access to."
"Like if I take a piece of paper and I write on it that it represents one billion fudge tokens, then I take another piece of paper and write on it that it represents one fudge token and I convince my friend to buy the second piece of paper for a dollar, does that mean I’m a billionaire?"
"That’s the only sense in which Bankman-Fried was ever a billionaire."
~ superfudge
"To me that is such an Emperor’s new clothes scenario. It seems like he was never really that bright, but a roomful of investors thought he was a genius for no apparent reason and pumped him up."
"The story of how he took a call with investors while he was playing video games and half paying attention comes to mind. Apparently they took it as a sign that he was a real silicone valley whiz kid and invested heavily."
~ Anonbrowser22
Thomas Midgley Jr.
"Thomas Midgley Jr.—All his inventions—leaded gasoline and CFCs—were thought to be great contributions to mankind until we found out they were dumping crazy amounts of toxins into the atmosphere and burning a hole in the ozone layer."
~ creepysink77
"He f*cked up so much sh*t. All that lead screwed up several generations to brain damage."
"And its STILL effecting people. Lead gets trapped in your bones and as you age and your bone density decreases that lead is re-released back into their system."
~ Grogosh
"This is probably the best answer there is. They guy really, really was considered a genius, and now he's probably on the top five list of people without military or political power who has done the most harm to the world."
~ Imsdal2
These are pretty well supported examples.
Who would you add to the list?
People Explain Which Everyday Skills They Never Quite Mastered
There are some things that society just seems to expect adult humans to be able to do, but it looks like not everyone got the memo.
Whether due to never being taught, or a simple inability to pick up the skill no matter how much you practice, there are some things that some folks just can't do.
I was a teenager before I was finally able to properly ride a bicycle, and even now I'm not a stranger to falling off. Let me tell you: flying over the handle bars of a bike hurt a heck of a lot more at 25 than it did at 15.
Reddit user DeterminedGames asked the folks over on AskReddit:
"What common skill do you lack?"
Whistle While You Work
I can't whistle.
I'm certain it has something to do with the shape of my mouth and tongue. Been trying to whistle for 20 years and all i've managed is a very deep single tone that sounds like wind through an old building lol
Ugh I even watched YouTube tutorials and read a whole wikiHow article and I am still unable to do it.
Sticking With It Is Hard
Long-term passion for an activity.
There are people who remain active in a single hobby or club for decades. I can't do that. I burn out on most things after a couple months max.
I'm the same but I've convinced myself it isn't such a bad thing.
I enjoy trying new things and I'm kind of the 'jack of all trades but master of none' type, which I think is probably more useful in day to day life, rather than being really specialised at something.
I’ve always struggled with that. lately I’ve been trying to wrap new hobbies into my old ones. Oh, you’re tired of woodworking but doing photography? Guess what we’re filming your woodworking now!
Is It Worth It, Though?
Neatly folding the laundry. Usually it looks... acceptable. Unless it's a fitted sheet, then it just looks chaotic.
Shower thought: but is it worth it?
Rrrolling
I can’t roll my R’s
So I’ll never be able to properly speak Spanish or impersonate AOSTH Robotnik
Same, my mother tongue has a lot of rolling Rs and I just never clicked it. It's taken me years of practice to even manage to do it properly occasionally, and if there are a lot of consonants around the R, there's no way I'm gonna say it right. People frequently laugh at my pronunciation of certain words in said language bc I sound like a lil kid or that dude in the Princess Bride. Meanwhile my younger brothers, who've lived in the UK all their lives, can speak the language with perfect accents. :/
Words Are Hard
I forget words and end up silent or saying something really stupid and then it's awkward.
I feel that, people always seem to have every word they need ready, and I'm just sitting there thinking of a single world that fits the situation...
I feel you. Sometimes I’m at the end of my sentence and then just forget the last part. I just give up on the sentence when that happens. Sometimes other people finish the sentence for me which is pretty awkward.
As Long As It Works
I can only tie my shoes by doing bunny ears
Yeah same and I don’t give a damn that I can’t do it the ‘adult’ way.
What's That Look For?
When someone gives me 'a look' I have absolutely no idea what they mean
People shouldn't always expect people to pick up on subtle signals, even if they think it's very obvious themselves.
And then they get mad because I couldn’t understand the “weshouldgotalkoutsidewhiletheyaregoingtodancesothatwecanbealoneandeatsomefreepizza” look. what the f**k?
Express Yourself
Drawing.
I can't even make straight lines due to my hands being so shaky. Fortunately I can get around this by using art programs with bézier curves and other shaping tools.
Drawing is an unfathomable mystery to me. I just don't understand how people can do it. I've never been able to.
Can't Initiate
Talking to people randomly. I can carry the conversation for hours with literally anyone, but they have to initiate it
My brother is 48. He mostly has his same friend circle as we did in high school. Other people can be around for years but if they haven't initiated a conversation with him. He doesn't speak to them. People have said they thought he was an arrogant a*s but one day they said something to him directly and he talked their ear off. He's shy, not arrogant.
I Want To Ride My Bicycle
Bike riding. Never learned because I had supposed epilepsy and fainted a lot when younger.
I can't ride either. Tried to learn as a kid but couldn't get the hang of it. Friends tried to teach me as a bigger person. I can go, but can't turn. I'm afraid of getting hit by a car too.
You might get teased for not being good at any one of these skills. But the likelihood is, if you've made it this far without the skill, you're probably fine.
There are just a few life foundations we assume everyone is taught by a certain age or it's been acquired through breathing. These simple life musts tend to allude some and that can be a shocking discovery to many. It's like learning that someone doesn't know it's not ok to kill because it will get them into trouble. Like... how did you miss that day in Life 101?
Redditor u/MissVikingQueen wanted to discuss the simple things in life that should be a no brainer by asking....
I live in Asia though.
Laundry and cooking saves money if you can do it yourself. Shina_nyaw
I get my monthly laundry done for what I earn in an hour. Otherwise, I'd spend 6 hours or more doing it myself. If you include the electricity, water, and detergent cost I'd have to pay each month (never mind the machine cost), it is more like half an hour's wage.
I can also buy a noodle soup off a street seller for what I earn in about 5 minutes.
I live in Asia though. buffalodumb
Thanks for reading my TED Talk.
How to do CPR
I'm an EMT and I worked in a very rural area for a couple years, almost every CPR Call (Code) I've run was 10-20+ minutes away, and when we got on scene no one had started CPR. Different sources will tell you different numbers, but after 5-7 minutes without oxygen brain cells will begin to die, and after 10-15 minutes if we get someone back they may have a severe mental deficit, by the 20 minute mark there's almost no chance of getting someone back and if we do they'll most likely be in a vegetative state. The longer someone has been down without CPR, the less of a chance we have to help them.
I rural EMS the 10+ minute travel time to a call is normal, lights and sirens only cut off a few minutes at intersections and traffic lights but you can only go so fast through residential areas and back roads.
In bigger cities it's a bit quicker for response time, but even still my parents house is 10 minutes from the fire station and it still took them about 7 minutes to get there when we called once (dad woke us up choking, he's ok now). So regardless of where you live you still could be waiting.
If you're afraid of hurting someone or doing CPR wrong, bad CPR is better than no CPR, or the way my instructor had put it when I was a student, 'they aren't getting any deader,' so you might as well try anything you can. It's fairly easy to learn and most classes last only a few hours and are fairly cheap and some places even do it for free. And if you don't want to put your mouth on a stranger's, they have key chain CPR masks that cost a few dollars or even 75¢ depending where you look, and with the new AHA standards you can do CPR without any rescue breaths. Learning it could help save a friend, family member, or a complete stranger. It can happen to anyone any age too, we've had babies code, high schoolers, people in their 20s and 30s and so on.
Thanks for reading my TED Talk. DrScienceSpaceCat
Zip-Zap.
GiphyZipper Merge. And ffs, if you are getting on the highway, get up to at least the speed of the traffic. ahfuqT
That's funny, I know you're supposed stop right before you swerve blindly into the next lane.
Then you use your blinker if you have enough fluid. WitchBerderLineCook
Stop Whining....
Telling people what you want instead of complaining about not getting what you wanted. Wrong_Answer_Willie
My ex didn't know that, there's things I forgot about because she told me it was ok and then learned she was mad about it. cizhiresb
To the Water....
Swim, it blows my mind how many grown adults don't know how to swim properly. Pyrazoid
Same here. Couldn't go kayaking on Lake Powell in Arizona because the minute i got in a Kayak, saw the depth of the water and "nope"ed my way back to the shore. bob-lob
Robert A. Heinlein
"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."
- Robert A. Heinlein Gymnos84
Save the Coin!
GiphyBudget money. u_Uncirculated
Yea and no. It all depends on the individual situation at hand.
I've been in situations where no matter how hard I budgeted my money and lived like a student in poverty, I was still in the red at the end of every month. Au_Uncirculated