Not only is writing not rocket science, rocket science isn’t rocket science.
“Rocket science” means something so hard that people of normal intelligence just can’t do it, no matter how long or hard they try. When we say something isn’t rocket science, we mean, yeah, almost anyone can do that.
Presumably, this means that major scientific accomplishments are out of reach of anyone but a genius. The problem is, looking at the IQs of Nobel prize winners, it turns out this isn’t true.
In one famous longitudinal study of IQ, this happened:
Two pupils who were tested but rejected for inclusion in the study because of low IQ scores grew up to be Nobel Prize winners in physics: William Shockley[81][82] and Luis Walter Alvarez.[83][84] … Richard Feynman, who had an IQ of 125 went on to win the Nobel Prize in physics and became widely known as a genius…
And on and on.
When I was younger, IQ squatted at the center of this venn diagram of scientific inquiry, racist eugenics, and misguided educational pedagogy.
Thirty years later, IQ remains stuck there.
So let’s not shout at each other about those things. Instead, let’s talk about how folks like Feynman, with his 95% percentile (1 in 20) IQ could do stuff that only a handful of humans since the dawn of time have done (made major contributions to our deepest understandings of reality as described by physics; helped build the Atom bomb, etc.)
The one in 20 mind doing the one in a billion thing. How does that happen?
Well. It takes time.
Humans live a long time; we’re neotenous apes, which means we are animals that carry aspects of childhood into our adult lives. This is why we are, or can be, lifelong learners. If you measure mammalian lives in heartbeats, humans get more than we deserve.
What this means is, if you have an average mind, but sustained focus, interest, will, or maybe just enjoyment of a thing, you probably have the time to get somewhere. If you don’t give up.
So you’re not a genius… you may have to settle for being a successful writer.
Or worse… just the one Nobel Prize.
