P Coderch said...
Bobby Fischer was an extremely interesting character. If you have ever listened to his rants on Philipine radio, you know what I'm talking about. Fischer was interesting because his personality was so simple and yet he had such a monstrous intellect. He could look at 30 different chess boards and announce checkmate in all of them with 20 moves ahead, or look at a complex differential equation and solve it in seconds without the need for writing it down. Yet, when you analyse the things he said about geopolitics, history, etc, he struck one as almost dull. Not only that, he struck one as an immature person filled of prejudices and oversimplifications that most bright people abandon in adolescence.
I think the reaon for this is not lack of intelligence - we are talking about perhaps the greatest chess player ever -, but the many psychiatric ailments he suffered, especially a tendency towards paranoia and pathological obsession.
In fact, Fischer shared several similarities with English physics colossus, Isaac Newton: both had abnormally high IQs, that were exceptional even by genius standards, coupled with an amazing photographic memory and a tendency towards severe psychoticism and mild schizofrenia. Medical doctors average an IQ of 125, MIT professors 145 and most historical geniuses would score an IQ around 160. Fischer's IQ was a stratospherical 190,a level of intelligence that less than ten out of every thousand million people have.
The things Fischer said and his rabid anti-Semitism were the result of his personality and not of his intellectual capacity. He also showed an unusual amount of imagination. Consider this statement his made on Philipine radio:
"The Jews are trying to drive elephants to extinction because the trunks of elephants reminds them of uncircumcised penises."
While you don't need to have an absurd IQ of 190 to make such an incredibly stupid comment, it does show his unusal creativity and paranoic personality.
Another thing that made Fischer interesting was that, unlike other chess masters, he was tall, athletic and aggressive. He was a very good tennis player and loved ccompeting for the sake of it. Or in his words:
"I love the moment I crush a man's ego."
He was also not modest in any way:
"The difference between me and dogs like Kasparov is that I am an overral genius who just happens to play chess, whilst he is an idiot savant who knows nothing but chess."
Of course, the reverse was true: Kasparov is a brilliant man who knows a lot of many things, whilst Fischer never knew anything in his life but chess.
Listen to Fischer's rants on radio and you'll see how aggressive he was. He saluted the September eleventh terrorist attack, said the U.S is nothing more than a farce controleld by Jews and that all Jews should be rounded up and executed. Fischer ranting like a madman with his deep voice saying that millions of peoplpe who be executed makes it almost unbelievable that this man was a professional chess player. This ultra-high IQ bully with the personality of a child is fascianting, although loathable in numerous ways.
9/21/09 6:38 PM
http://isteve.blogspot.com/2009/09/cuckoos-eggs.htmlPosting under Pedro Coderch.
