climb genius walls
I visualize Ava's "genius wall" from that one friend who's good at everything and the genius wall more like a climbing wall than a divider between prodigies and non-geniuses.
Take this excerpt from [Redacted]'s AI Music:
Some music is sought after for its sheer difficulty. 'Math Rock' is a genre that basically exists to prove that you are better at counting than anyone else. (If you've never heard of math rock before it's pretty neat⤻, but I digress.)
The video linked above is a guitar playthrough of Floral - Climbing a Wall by the band's founding member, Nathan. He wasn't magically born with his songwriting, production, and performance chops. Instead, he developed his multi-disciplinary talent over countless iterations of conscientious practice.
Mason's Genuis wall illustrates that reality. His friends allude to a supposedly impenetrable divide between them and him: "You're just too smart, that's why I can't understand it." That screams to me as "I'm not as practiced as you are, that's why I can't understand it."
In addition, they might not be as interested in math as he is. Conditions worsen with how misaligned students' personal interests can be compared to the framing of subjects they must learn. I'm reminded of how in fish, Mason's new year level leader treats the following personal expressions in his homeroom as distractions: flags, a fish tank, and students' gifts for their teacher. My immediate thought was, "Aren't students already distracted from learning about interests they hold deep within themselves in the classroom?"
Speaking of, I believe that action breeds motivation better when chasing your ambitions align with your interests:
On ambition, this Tyler Cowen quote from Parker Conley's Tyler Cowen – Learning, History, and Investing in Ideas (found from Etan's Tyler Cowen on compound personal growth) seems pertinent:
You just have to do what interests you because there’s higher compound returns when you stay involved through, you know, these pretty selfish reasons that you’re enjoying it.
Exploring enough disciplines shows how there are, in fact, infinite genius walls. Ava's amazed at how her friend from piano class has slightly better grades while maintaining the attention and dedication for piano. Yet, Ava explores the intricacies of creative writing, language learning, and even creating constructed languages. That shows how geniuses can very well be non-geniuses for procedures which they haven't practiced, let alone had exposure to. In fact, they can be primed to help each other should their strengths and weaknesses interlock.
There's so much more that one could get good at in life beyond what traditional school subjects indicate. Consider how many leaderboards exist for games and sports that you know of. Now, consider how many more exist outside of your awareness. What about rankings for entire classes of activities which haven't yet been imagined nor invented? How many more genius walls exist far into the future compared to the present?
These walls are even more complex than meets the eye. Your perspective of the personal hierarchy of any given niche most likely differs from someone else's. Ava's best friend at school thinks of her as a prodigy, while Ava thinks of her friend from piano class as one. Who does Ava's friend from piano class see above and atop her wall of piano practice? How does that change depending on a person's definition of "genius" which factors in context, convention, and contemporaneity?
Unlike regular climbing walls, people can remain on genius walls or sit atop them for however long. Although, newcomers can spontaneously appear at any part of the wall. Any climber can also ascend, descend, or fall off it for whatever reason, voluntarily or not. Like reality, scaling rock faces can be fulfilling, but not every send ends up being worthwhile or working. You can afford to balance doing things and getting good with enjoying what the gift life has to offer you. Geniuses and non-geniuses alike share the innate human quality of mortality after all.
Mason closed out his post about genius walls with this set of directives:
Look at what the people behind it are actually doing, question if thats what you want to be doing and then change yourself and learn to get where you need to go.
How can you adapt his formula to look at what people on and atop any given wall are doing. Keeping his steps in mind, how can prospective and current climbers alike help you climb or surmount the wall? Better yet, what walls are there to climb once you climbed up those before you?