Hello and welcome to how to take over the world. This is Ben Wilson. Welcome to the show and especially a big welcome to anyone who's coming from my first million, for those who didn't see, , my first million is running a little experiment. They're playing some episodes of how to take over the world and, uh, we're going to see how it goes. And if it goes well, then we're going to keep playing episodes on their feet. It's a big podcast for those who don't know in the tech and entrepreneurship space.

It's actually one of my favorite podcasts. If you are into business, if you're into making money, if you're in detecting entrepreneurship, I suggest you check it out my first million, wherever you get your podcasts. But, uh, it's an exciting development for how to take over the world. And it should mean a slightly bigger audience and, uh, and therefore I can rationalize dedicating more of my time to this. So, uh, yeah. Expect to see, uh, a few more episodes going forward,

Before today's episode,  ask yourself, what if there was a formula for genius? What if you could  engineer in a lab, a Caesar or a Mozart or Picasso? This episode's about a man who not only theorized that this was possible, but did it three times  and you'll have to excuse me, but this one is a somewhat self-interested episode.

I had my first child nine months.  And yeah, that is one of the reasons that production of this podcast slowed down for a little while. But now that I have a daughter, I'm thinking about how to raise her and it got me interested in the story of a man named Laszlo.

Polgar Laszlo was a Hungarian educational psychologist who studied the idea of genius. He believed that anyone could be trained to be a genius.  And then he went out and improved.  Um, he made his daughters, his test subjects and his three daughters went on to become three of the greatest chess champions of all time.

And so obviously as someone who's trying to figure out how to raise my own daughter, this story was interesting to me. And so I think it can teach us something about how to raise a genius, how to help teach someone else to be a genius, but also something about how to be a genius yourself, how to be great and successful yourself.

, So even if you don't have children, I think it's a worthwhile episode. So let's jump into it.

Laszlo pole guard was born in 1946. He got his first degree in philosophy, his second in psycho pedagogical education, which is just a fancy way of saying he studied the psychology of different teaching methods. He had a successful career as an academic and teacher, and eventually got his PhD with a dissertation on the development of capabilities.

In other words, he did his PhD on the idea of genius and developing geniuses. This really was his life.

But his interest was more than academic and professional. He had a personal interest in the subject and read the biographies of more than 400 famous and successful thinkers, 400, uh, from Socrates to Einstein. And he tried to kind of piece together what were the common links between them? So obviously I love this guy.

He was doing his own personal version of how to take over the world. And I feel like it's a major validation of my theory that studying these people is.  So when he was after studying all these biographies, he became convinced that anyone could become a genius with the right training and education.

So he decided to put his theory to the test and he dedicated his life to tutoring.  And raising them to be geniuses. One problem he had is he didn't have any children yet, but luckily he found a woman who was willing to go along with his experiment.

And fortunately, they also fell in love. So they got married and dedicated their lives to raising and educating children in a way that Laszlo believed would give them the best shot at becoming geniuses.  This was supposed to be the ultimate test of his theory. Can you really raise anyone to be genius?

Well, he's got three little lab rats that he can test this theory.  And see what the results are  for the area of their specialization, where they would become geniuses. He chose the field of chess. He chose chess primarily because it's easy to.  He considered mathematics languages and other disciplines, but decided on chess because of its objectivity. You have winners and losers with mathematics. You can see how there could be like some politics involved.

If you're in academia, you could say, you know, my daughter, I raised her to be a mathematics.  But that's really difficult for the outside public to evaluate. And there's always some politics involved of, you could say, well, you could have certain academics who are jealous saying, well, you know, her paper really isn't that interesting or isn't that much of a breakthrough.

, but with chess, you know, you have rankings, , you can see how good someone is by their winning loss.  So if Paul his method worked, his children would be top ranked chess players, and no one could dispute that. So it's an objective measure. You can look at the leaderboards and see if his daughters are there.

Then they really are geniuses. As he began teaching his daughters as young children, he encountered enormous opposition from the political and chess establishment.  On the political front, Hungary was communist at the time.

And as such private education was very much frowned upon. It was seen as elitist and working against equality for all. And if you think about it, you know, if private education is a bad thing to the authorities in Hungary, then what about private education that is specifically designed with the end goal of creating geniuses?

That's going to see like even more outlandishly elitist, right? An anti-Common.  So Laszlo had to fight tooth and nail to get the right, to educate his own daughters. He was absolutely dogged in petitioning for his right to do so and explaining why no, this is actually good for the state of Hungary and for communism and even so he was often willing to work in the gray area where it's kind of unclear if he was breaking the law,  the chess establishment in Hungary at the time, as I mentioned also opposed him in large part because.

Uh, he didn't have any sounds. He had only daughters and they really thought of chess as a men's game and something that women, especially young girls should not be interested in. So they were kind of discouraged from seriously pursuing chess

and he had other obstacles as well. He didn't exactly have a huge budget as an academic who was committed to staying home and instructing his daughters. Full-time he didn't have a lot.  He raised his family in a very modest, a very small apartment in Budapest.

And for my reading, I actually don't know how he got by it's unclear if he was receiving grants or maybe he had saved a little money. , I don't think he was teaching very much at the time, if at all, because he was full-time tutoring his daughters.   So for my reading, it's a little bit of a mystery, how he made money, but it is clear they weren't living large.

Uh, he was really making sacrifices in order to do this what little money he did have Laszlo spent on loads of chess books and not just books, but he had this entire card filing system that he developed his.  Where he would catalog different chess positions, whether openings or mid game or end game moves.

And the girls could consult this encyclopedia of chess whenever they wanted. Uh, you can see pictures of their little Budapest department and it is  it's small. And there's a lot of material it's like really overflowing with, with books and all this chasse information that he prepared for them.

And this was a situation that he would raise his three daughters in as his youngest, Judith would later say, quote, everything was about chess  and the results were pretty astounding. He had three daughters, as I mentioned, all three, went on to become incredibly successful chess players, top players in the world, the oldest Susan, , who was born in 1969.

Uh, her career started really early. She won the Budapest under 11 girls championship at age four. I don't know if you know any four year olds in your life right now.  That's incredible age four. She was able to beat her father Laszlo, , at chess at age five. So that's when he took her to the local chess club in Budapest and she started beating, accomplished local chess players.

She won the world under 16 girls championship at age 12. And by 15, she became the top rated women's chess player.  At age 22, she became the third woman to ever be granted the title of Grandmaster, a highly coveted title in chess.  I mean, it's, it's really hard to become a Grandmaster. it's really hard to become a Grandmaster, especially, you know, as a woman, as we mentioned in, in a country and in a chest establishment that is kind of discouraging your progress.  Very very remarkable

Laszlo, encouraged Susan to mostly compete against men. So she mostly entered in men's tournaments. And so she wasn't necessarily winning the championship every year, but eventually she did decide to compete in women's tournaments as well. And in 1996, when she finally did, she won the women's world champion.  Uh, and, and I think quite easily  in 2002, Susan became the first woman to win the us open blitz championship against the field, which included seven grand masters.

She won that title again in 2005 and in 2006, uh, the second pole guard daughter, Sophia was born in 1974. She was the world junior under 20 rapid champion in 1986, also in 1986 at the under 14 championships, which was a boys tournament, except for her.

She took second place and was declared the world  as declared the world girls champion by virtue of the fact that she nearly won the boys' tournament, which was much more.

In 1989, at the age of 14, Sophia won an elite chess tournament in Rome against a bunch of middle-aged men who were very accomplished and many of them were grandmasters. This became known as the sack of Rome. She was one of the top ranked women's chess players in the world. And in 1994, finished second in the world, junior chess, chess.

Once again, not in the girls' junior chess championship, but the overall, and again, this is the least successful of the three.  In 1996, she won the gold medal at the women's chess Olympiad, and it was the only gold medal that she won. But frankly, she would have won many, many more if it weren't for her sisters, but this was the only one that she won because it happened to be the one where neither of her sisters was competing.

And, you know, to say that she's the least accomplished at the pole guard. Sisters is a, is a little tough and she might, you know, she's probably one of the top 10, certainly one of the top 20 greatest women's chess players of all time, but she's also the third best women's chess player in her own family.

So that really, you know, take some of the shine off your accomplishments  

when she was in her early teens, she decided to pick up art and more than any of her other sisters, she has focused less on chess and more on other pursuits, including art painting, interior design, and I'm being a full-time mother as she raises her two children.

The most successful of the three was the youngest.  She was born in 1976 and she is the greatest women's chess player of all time, hands down and it's, it's not close. It's not really a debate. She won her first international chest tournament at age nine. She defeated a grand master for the first time. At age 11, she became the youth champion of the world, age 14 girls and boys.

She became a Grandmaster herself at age 15 in 2005 at age 29, she achieved her career high ranking of numbers.  And became the only woman to be ranked in the top 10 in the world. And she became the first woman to ever qualify for the men's world title championships.

She was ranked number one in women's chess for more than 20 years and only lost the ranking when she.  So again,  she's, she's like Serena Williams, times two, uh, in terms of her dominance of women's chess,

so, okay. Wow. You know, uh, we got to say for our guy Laszlo, uh, this is looking like pretty good evidence that he has it figured out in terms of how to raise.

And by the way, many people assume that, , this must've been really unethical and that heat drove these girls to the edge of mental breakdown in order to achieve all of this. Right.  But the girls are unanimous in saying that they had a happy childhood, that they're happy now that they do now and have always lived fulfilled and balanced lives.

Even Sophia, who basically gave up chess to focus on being a mother and.  As no ill will. , and she reflects on fondness with her time as a chess champion. She doesn't wish her father had done anything differently.  So how did he do all of this? Luckily Laszlo wrote a book called razor genius where he breaks down his methodology for raising geniuses.

And  amazingly to me, this just a mean, the book is like not popular. It's not really.  And hadn't even been translated into English until the blogger known as Scott Alexander of slate star codex paid to have it translated in 2017, the book was written in 1989. So for nearly 30 years, no one thought it was worth translating into English.

And again, I know I'm kind of crazy about this kind of stuff, but I still just, it blows my mind that no one thought this was worth translating or studying. Um, but luckily, uh, it was translated and it's a fascinating book in part because it doesn't focus very much on the methodology of how to raise a genius.

Laszlo actually focuses more on defending the idea of raising geniuses and why it should be done in.   Why, why anyone should do it? Why you should do it? The title of the book is not how to raise a genius. It's raise a genius

with an exclamation point. It's an exhortation, a plea for you to raise a genius. And that's because according to Laszlo, it's not hard. It's actually really simple to raise a genius. The difficult part is actually convincing people that they should do it. But if you want to, you can.  Okay. So with Laszlo saying, geniuses are not born, they're raised and it's not even that hard.

How do you do it? Einstein? How do you raise a genius? Okay. The first step, according to Laszlo is to begin education.  Uh, to quote from the book, he says, quote,   in my pedagogical system, early childhood occupies a central place in my concept early childhood. That is the period between three and six years.

The preschool years are more important and much more in need of utilization than thought in the current.  By my principle. One should begin instruction, which is in my concept, nothing other than a serious game at the age of four or five.

Okay. So he wants to start education really, really early. And he's not just talking about general education. He's talking about specialized education in the field that the child is to be a genius in.  And this is because according to him, this early stage is when a person's brain is most plastic, most able to learn new things to change.

Uh, he said in his book, quote, the first characteristic of genius education, I could say the most important novelty distinguishing it from contemporary instruction and it's necessary. Precondition is early specialization directed at one concrete field.  It is indeed true. What Homer said, a person cannot be experienced or first in everything  because of this parents should choose a specific field at their discretion.

It is only important that by the age of.  Some physical or mental field should be chosen and the child can set out on their voyage.

Okay. So that is obviously much earlier than most people think.  Choosing a specialized area of education for their children. Um,  most people don't undertake specialized education until they're in college. Right. So, uh,

So, obviously this is a much different way to approach it. How do you choose the area of specialization? So he thinks in one sense, a child can learn almost anything. So it's kind of arbitrary. A parent should maybe just decide, but also he does make nods. He, he acknowledges that the child should have some choice.

So if they really hate the field that you've chosen for them, uh, you should, should change. You should switch and you should try to kind of identify something that they are drawn towards, or that they really.  Um, if you can,

what should instruction look like when a kid is just four or five years old? ,  heard him mentioned it in that quote, that it's just kind of play.  But he says you shouldn't push them at all, which seems sensible. Uh, you can begin to push them a little bit, you know, encourage them to work harder after age six, but before then learning should be all play.

It should be 100% fun and enjoyable for the child. Uh, after that quote, he says the ability to learn by play decreases after six years of age,  when assimilation of information becomes more difficult, mental work.  Which, um,  so obviously, yeah, after they turn six, you have to push them a little bit and, and  get them to be somewhat disciplined, which is not to say that, you know, at age six, everything changes.

Now you have to be a task master and treat your child like a slave Laszlo says, quote, thus, I generally do not rigidly separate learning from play or work from hobbies at an adult level. I support doing work. That one likes, which is thus an enjoyable occupied.  But this can come about only when in choosing we come to passionately.

Enjoy it.

So that's another thing he emphasizes is a sense of play of passion, of enjoyment, of what you're doing. He calls it the unification of work in play. He says, you should never tell a child.  Hey, get to work. Don't play or the opposite. You shouldn't say them, you know, play have fun. Don't don't work so hard.

They should never get the idea in their head. At all that work is the opposite of play that they're mutually exclusive. You should try to get in their head, that work. The thing that they're studying this, this main thing they're specializing on is fun is play. They're the same thing.

The other thing he strongly recommends is specialist.  Uh, he thinks, you know, we already mentioned that, but he thinks in early childhood, , kids should spend five to six hours per day studying a single subject.

And the immediate objection by many people is whoa. If you specialize the kids to see.  Aren't they going to be like one dimensional and not well-rounded, you know, if you're spending that many hours per day on a single subject, we think of all the things they're not learning. I think of all the experiences they're missing  and it's worth pointing out that all of his daughters speak between five and eight languages.

We're fantastic athletes. , Judith in particular could have become professional table tennis player. She wanted, they were great. Conversationalists wrote various articles and books. They're generally engaging people with varied interest.  Uh, as previously mentioned, Sophia went on to become a painter.

So it's not like they were chess robots. I don't think you could say from looking at this experience that any of his kids were one dimensional or we're missing out on big life experiences. And yeah. Obviously, according to Laszlo, no specializing, doesn't make you one dimensional. In fact, by learning to do one thing extremely well, you teach yourself and you teach your child how to learn, how to set yourself up, to learn subsequent things.

And, uh, so they can have success in others.  He brings up the Seneca quote, uh, who said, who is everywhere, is nowhere in it's true. The person who just sort of dabbles in everything. Oftentimes actually doesn't learn how to do any of those things well, and is probably less well-rounded than the person who specializes at least to some extent.

And so again, I said that, , Laszlo's methodology is like pretty simple, pretty easy, and that's really it. Those are the main points of genius education. According to last.   One start early to specialize and three, the unification of work in play, , help them love what they do.

He does have other minor notes on genius education. I'll just run through some of them really quickly. He says that the optimal state for high performance or optimal performance is relaxed and aggressive. And I have tried to bear that in mind, whenever I'm doing something, I'm trying to keep it in mind right now as I'm narrating.

But I think it's a really great head state to try and put yourself in aggressive. You're looking for opportunities. You are kind of leaned forward,  you're, you're attacking, you're aggressive, but you're relaxed. You're not too intense. You're not, um, going to psychologically break down and things don't work out.

So I just think that's a really smart way to think about the optimal head state for high-performance relaxed and aggressive.   Um, another note he says,  quote and intensive collaborative contact between the child and an adult must be formed in which the child does not feel subordinate. Okay. So in other words,  The instructor, the tutor, or if you yourself are instructing your child, you should kind of put them, treat them almost as a peer.

They shouldn't be made, made to feel subordinate.  He also says that a child should experience success early and should not experience failure too often. In other words, if you got a kid playing soccer football for our friends outside of.  Don't put them in the super advanced league where the older kids are way more athletic than them and just dominating them.

Like, sure. It might be good for them on some level to get used to playing against superior competition. But according to Laszlo, it's going to do more harm than good cause it's going to crush their confidence. So especially when they're young, you should keep them at a level where they get used to.

And then only move them up a level, uh, when they're ready to start winning on a regular basis at that level too,

Laszlo also thinks every child should learn chess and every child should learn a foreign language, no matter what they're specializing in. Because according to him, it's an easy way for them to master a new skill and teaches them about learning.

So, yeah, those are some of the minor notes that I took, but those three things are really the heart of his pedagogical theory start early, specialized unify work and play.  And once you start looking at the world through that lens, you see it everywhere, especially when it comes to children's specializing early.

So if you look at history, many of the great ones started their specialized started their specialized education really early, for example, Serena and Venus Williams through the greatest women's tennis players.  Started serious tennis instruction from their father at age four, which meets that time deadline, that, that last load put out

there. Father Richard Williams later said he thought he started them too early and, and wishes that he hadn't started them so early. But according to pull guard, no he's wrong. Uh, starting them so early was actually one of the things that gave them such an advantage.

Mozart began playing the piano at age four and began composing at age five.

There's a, this is just a side note, but there's a great story, uh, about Mozart that, uh, someone comes up to him on the street and says,  uh, you know, Mozart, how do I, uh, how do I begin to learn to compose as well as you.  And Mozart says, well, how old are you? He says I'm 22. And he says, oh, you're too young to start composing already because I'm too young.

You started composing when you were only five in Mozart says, yeah, but I didn't run around asking someone how to do it.

 Okay. But that has nothing to do with anything. Uh, John Von Neumann, possibly the greatest mathematician of all time began his math education around age four or five. I actually couldn't find when he began.  But, uh, it is recorded that he was able to divide six digit numbers. By the time he was six, which means obviously he had to start serious math by at least age five Picasso was the son of a painter and a painting teacher.

And his first word was peace short for lobbies the Spanish word for pencil. He began his formal painting education at age seven, but was already receiving informal instruction from his father by age five. And so I could go on, but it is actually really remarkable as you look through history, how many geniuses began.

Their art or their field of study by the age of five. It's not all of them, of course, but Laszlo definitely seems to have a point here that it really helps.

But as I mentioned, the rest of Laszlo's book is a defense of the idea of intentionally raising geniuses. I think the idea it needs to be defended whenever I have brought up the story of the poll guards to friends.  Uh, and ask them if they think I should raise my daughter to be a genius, they have reacted with shock and borderline disgust and horror.

Um, so I do think it's important to outline his defense of why it's a worthwhile project.

He begins by quoting the Scots English historian and polymath Thomas Carlyle, who wrote quote, everything that we see realized in this world is nothing more than the external result. The practical realization,  the embodiment of thoughts that lived in eminent people throughout the world.

The soul of the full story of the world is we may assert there.  So according to Carlisle and probably according to pull guard as well, when it comes to pushing their field forward, geniuses don't contribute two or three more times than the average person. They contribute something more like a hundred times more than the average contributor in their field.  Art history, uh, our culture, our society, science, art, everything is pushed forward.

Monumentally by these geniuses. As Paul Gar says, quote, a genius is a collective creation who becomes a communal treasure.  Okay. So if geniuses are such a treasure, well, why doesn't anyone want to raise one? Why, why don't all people do this?  Well, here are a few of the objections that Laszlo raises in response to, and I've heard a lot of these as well, so we'll go through them one by one.

First, the idea that geniuses aren't well-rounded \ I already addressed this a little bit. Obviously I believe that this does not need to be the case. The geniuses can be well-rounded. I mean, I think it's funny. Like if you look at the Olympics, ,  do you think that the average Olympian has read more?  Or fewer books than just your average person.

Let's say your average American, since I live in America. And I'm willing to bet that it's more than that, that your average Olympian is more well-read than your average person. Right? So I just think this is not true at all. People who specialize in who are great at one thing, tend to also be pretty good at other things.

They tend to be more well-rounded than your average person. And obviously we see this with the poll guards who were incredible linguists and athletes and other things.  You may ask yourself, like, how is this possible? How do you have the energy to do all these things?  Have you have the energy to become the top women's chess player in the world and still have time to be competitive ping pong player and learn five languages.

And, uh,  I mean, obviously my first answer is, I don't know, I've never done it, but I do think that it comes from this idea of the unification of work and play. So they were spending five to six hours.  Not in Drudge work that they hated, but in playing, in doing things that they loved.

So instead of sapping their energy as normal school does, it gave them energy. When they were done playing chess for six hours, they had plenty of energy to do athletics or study languages or study anything else.

The other objection that you often hear is that these geniuses are going to be.  You know, you're just going to be worked to the bone. They'll have no friends, they'll have a horrible relationship with their father. Who's pushing them way too hard and they'll have these miserable lives and their childhood will be stolen from them.

Now, all three pole guard, girls refute this, they all say they're happy. And Laszlo refutes this in his book. He writes quote, I do not assert that the way of genius leads necessarily to happiness, but indeed that it is more likely to than otherwise as it concretely concerns my daughters, they confirm, thank God this last.

Those who think otherwise did not seem to have enough information or maybe are envious or jealous. My daughters are in fact fulfilled, joyful, happy people. Those who know them personally can confirm this.

I will say that I understand why people would have this concern. We've all seen the father,  Who wishes he had been a baseball star. So he berates his son, forces him to practice baseball all the time because he's trying to live his dreams through his son. Or sometimes it's the mom  here in the United States.

It's the cheerleader mom. Who's forcing her daughter to do cheerleading all the time, but you know, that's not pull GARS method at all.

You've got to do it for the benefit of the child, according to Laszlo and not for your own benefit, it's gotta be something that they enjoy doing and you can't force them to live out your dream.  And obviously we see this in his idea of the unification of work in play. If they're not enjoying it, then it's just not going to work.

Okay. So geniuses can be well-rounded. They can be happy. What other objections are there? Um, the last objection that I hear all the time is that they will be.  That these geniuses won't be like other kids. Right. So who cares if they're successful or they're happy? Okay.

I'll grant you that they might be, they might be successful at this and they might be happy, but they won't be like other kids.  And this is the one criticism that I actually think is true.  . One reporter asked Laszlo's neighbor. If the pole guard girls were happy and the neighbor responded, quote, certainly although maybe in other ways than other girls.

In other words, yeah, they're happy, but in a little bit of a different way, they're not like other girls, they are a little different  and this is by definition. True. To be great. Used to be weird is to be unlike other people. Alexander, the great was weird. Mozart was weird. Steve jobs was weird. Thomas Edison was.

like by definition, you're doing things that other people don't do. That's what makes you a genius? And that is true of anyone. Who's great. Not just child geniuses. So you can't be afraid of people looking at you sideways and asking why you're like that. And that's my final message for this episode, whether it's raising a child to be a genius or trying to become great.

People will think it's weird, but don't let that stop. You dare to be different and dare to be great. Have the courage to be great.  Okay. That's it. Uh, the long awaited Alexander, the great episode is coming. It is finally coming. Um, look for it here in the next couple of weeks, but until then, thanks for listening

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