Kevin Pezzi, MD

Disagree with something I wrote? So do I! Read more

“To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing.”

— Elbert Hubbard, American editor, publisher, and writer (1856–1915)

Trivia: He and his wife, Alice Moore Hubbard, the noted feminist and writer, died aboard the RMS Lusitania, which was torpedoed and sunk by a German submarine on May 7, 1915, when they were heading to Europe to cover the war and interview Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany.

If you disagree with something I wrote, feel free to challenge it. Some of my viewpoints are the antithesis (exact opposite) of what they once were. That isn't flip-flopping; that is changing opinions with scant evidence to support them into convictions with a firmer foundation of facts.

My political philosophy is an amalgamation of libertarian, conservative, and liberal principles. My opinions have changed so significantly that my conservative friends might be horrified by how I strongly believe that liberals are correct on certain issues. I've previously written about some of them, but to make this more fun, I will present others as challenges in which I offer $100,000 to the first person who can refute the logic I used in forming that opinion. Please note that due to my limited time and difficulty using my hands after I broke my neck, I cannot quickly update my previously published opinions. However, now that I am balancing the promptings of head and heart, I strongly disagree with many opinions I expressed in my writings.

I like finding people who make me think, not necessarily those who agree with me. Genius Robert Heinlein said, “I never learned from a man who agreed with me.” If you can educate me, I'm all ears.

“Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.”
— Albert Einstein

“Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.”
— Albert Einstein

“What I would like to see more often in this nation is an open and intelligent conversation, not people just casting aspersions at each other … it's unbelievable to me the way people act like third graders. And if somebody doesn't agree with them, they're this and they're that … it comes from both sides. And it's just so infantile.”
— Dr. Ben Carson, neurosurgeon

“The ultimate ignorance is the rejection of something you know nothing about and refuse to investigate.”
— Dr. Wayne Dyer

“If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking.”
— General George Patton

“Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.”
— Oliver Wendell Holmes

“A lot of people risk their lives in a brief act of heroism, which is kind of cool, but Jill has what I call slow heroism. She is risking her professional life on something that her own calculations show may not work for a thousand years—may not ever. So I like to support people that are risking their lives.”
— ex-Microsoft billionaire brainiac Nathan Myhrvold speaking about Jill Tarter, who inspired the character played by Jodie Foster in the movie Contact. It takes a brilliant person to see that others who go against the grain of conventional wisdom may be sages although lesser minds often ridicule their ideas.

“I am not young enough to know everything.”
— Oscar Wilde

“You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life.”
— Winston Churchill

“Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish.”
— Euripides, Greek tragic dramatist (484 BC - 406 BC)

“It is socially unacceptable to be right too early.”
— Robert Heinlein

“I'd rather stand alone on the truth than with millions on a lie.”

“The most distinctive mark of a cultured mind is the ability to take another's point of view; to put one's self in another's place, and see life and its problems from a point of view different from one's own. To be willing to test a new idea; to be able to live on the edge of difference in all matters intellectually; to examine without heat the burning question of the day; to have imaginative sympathy, openness and flexibility of mind, steadiness and poise of feeling, cool calmness of judgment, is to have culture.”
— Arthur H. R. Fairchild

“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”
— Theodore Roosevelt

“It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.”
— Abraham Lincoln

This reminds me of something stressed by one of my psychology professors, who said that society imposes rigid boundaries for what behavior is acceptable, and applies tremendous pressure trying to force people to conform to the behavioral expectations. Some of the most brilliant and productive outside-the-box thinkers led unconventional lives. One of the side effects of forcing people to think inside the box is that by lopping off outside-the-box behavior, potentially great outside-the-box ideas are lost, too.

“We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it.”
— Edward R. Murrow, American journalist (1908-1965)

“You will not do incredible things without an incredible dream.”
— John Eliot

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My strategy to leave China in the dust

Many people are now glum, thinking that China is bound to surpass us. Wrong! We can leave them in the dust. Here's how.

If you're losing the game, trying harder isn't always the solution; sometimes the answer is to play another game. We can't compete with China in terms of price—or can we?

Yes. Here's how: Chinese leaders know that our one ace up our sleeves is American ingenuity that spawned outside-the-box ideas that transformed the world, with us leading the way. We can't compete on price unless our products offer features and performance that cannot be matched.

Would you pay more for a “car” that drove itself, never crashed, required almost zero maintenance, consumed very little energy, was almost as green as grass, could get you from one place to another faster than a jet, and would last a lifetime? Yes, but you could have such a vehicle for a fraction of what automobiles now cost.

That may seem to be a pipe dream, but it is not; it is a good example of what can be accomplished with outside-the-box thinking. (Intrigued by how to achieve this? I'll present it in a subsequent article. Subscribe to this blog to be sure you don't miss it.)

Most major advances did not incrementally tweak existing ways of doing things but instead radically transformed them, which often slashed its cost. In my youth, I loaded lead type into my father's huge, complicated, and expensive printer. Printing is now much better, faster, and less expensive not because of improvements to that type of printer but by a quantum-leap change in how printing is done. In the 1980s, I made a printer the size of a dime that cost less than a dime—and hence less than a single piece of lead type. It could print at ultra-high speed, making laser printers seem as speedy as chiseling words into stone.

Car buffs care about cars; the rest of us care about transportation: getting from Point A to Point B in the shortest possible time with the least cost.

History has repeatedly shown that people are not wedded to products. If there is a better way to fulfill one of their wants or needs, consumers will flock to the improvement. Bought a slide rule or sent a telegram lately?

By ushering in a major advance, competing on price is easy. Would you pay for a robotic chef that saved you money, time, and improved your health? Yes, and you will after I complete that project. When a product's net usage cost is less than zero, buying it is a no-brainer.

I refuse to participate in this recession. You?

Perhaps the robotic chef isn't a good example because it is a sure-fire dream come true for consumers and its manufacturer. The CEO of an investment firm contacted me out of the blue, wondering if I—as a doctor and inventor—had any new medical inventions her group might be interested in funding. Yes, I explained, but I also have something even more valuable: the robotic chef. Even without knowing its details (which I won't prematurely disclose), she offered to send me a check for millions of dollars in return for a small percentage of its future profits.

Now how often does that happen? Once in a blue moon. For a better example of how I and other inventors strike out even when we have good ideas, read my articles on the pigheaded CEO who is fettering our economy, why big shots are often close-minded, and how the Big Three have big heads, not big ideas.

Few companies are receptive to new ideas. The unwillingness to consider ideas from outsiders is so common that it has a name: the Not Invented Here syndrome. Some corporations fear patent infringement lawsuits from inventors alleging their ideas were stolen, while other firms mistakenly assume their engineers can do all the inventing they need.

That's what the pigheaded CEO assumed, too, even though he doesn't have any of the 17 inventions I have pertaining to snowblowers, so year after year his products have no standout features. More importantly, he is still stuck in the Stone Ages of Snow Removal. Car buffs abound, but I don't know of anyone who has a thing for snowblowers; we just want to remove snow from driveways and sidewalks as rapidly as possible with the least hassle, noise, pollution, maintenance, and expense.

I found hundreds of better ways to robotically prepare food; collectively, they form the robotic chef. I also found a better way to remove snow. It is considerably less expensive than a snowblower but much faster, quieter, less polluting, and could last a lifetime (unlike snowblowers) with little maintenance.

So what's not to like about it? Well, from the standpoint of the pigheaded CEO, he didn't think of it, nor did any of his inside-the-box engineers. He wouldn't accept the ideas I offered to give to him because it would threaten his ego, which clings to his tenuous sense of superiority by putting on blinders. By refusing to look at other ideas, it is easier to think that he has the best ones.

As I mentioned in another article, we do not live in a meritocracy: a social system in which the smartest people with the best ideas have the most power. The United States is dominated by an old boys' club (OBC) in which Ivy League grads and other well-connected people help their buddies with third-rate ideas and products instead of the best ones.

Leonard Mlodinow, author of The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives, wrote a fascinating and provocative article entitled The Meritocracy Paradox for Forbes magazine that discussed how hotshot CEOs are often just the beneficiaries of luck, not everlasting talent. In another article, I explained how one of my well-connected Facebook friends (she gets one-on-one time with Donald Trump) suggested a meeting-of-great-minds summit to brainstorm ideas on how to kick-start our economy. That's a wonderful idea, but she proposed limiting it to CEOs—tacitly suggesting they have all the great ideas. Hardly.

You might think that the desire of businessmen to maximize their profits would compel them to always favor the best ideas and the best job candidates, but people are influenced by emotion, not just logic. Hence it is absolutely no surprise when they reward beautiful women with lucrative jobs even when less attractive ones are clearly more qualified. Nor is it surprising when they hire friends, relatives, or people they met in college, especially the Ivy League universities that teach one lesson exceedingly well: how to use nepotism to keep power in the hands of the upper class, putting stumbling blocks in the path of others, to keep them in their place.

Pigheaded big shots are deathly afraid of people like me with a cornucopia of bright ideas, because if people knew about what those ideas could do for them, they would stop paying attention to the no-nothings who are bereft of imagination.

The ruling class maintains its grip on power by perpetuating the myth that the Ivy League and other elite are smarter and have better ideas than us. Poppycock. The indoctrination centers also known as Ivy League universities excel in creating drones filled with hot air and ego but robotic inside-the-box thinking. Almost all major advances were made by outsiders who don't think like others think—which is Cardinal Sin #1 in their PC rule book that inculcates this message: if you don't think in lockstep with others, there is something wrong with you.

Like women who keep their boyfriends from meeting prettier friends, fearing they will flock to the hotter babes, our elite fear that if a critical mass of people paid attention to people like me with good outside-the-box ideas for stimulating our economy and solving our national problems, they would prefer to receive a check in the mail instead of paying through the nose for taxes.

Another pipe dream? No. Alaska residents pay no sales or state income taxes, yet the state is so rich it sends a check each year to every resident and funds projects that cost millions of dollars to benefit a handful of people. That bounty stems from oil revenue, but there are even better ways to create wealth.

There's a better way to do just about everything, but change threatens the status quo. Improving things is better for almost everyone but often a nightmare for those at the top, who may fall from their perch on top of the tree if things are shaken up. Rocking the boat may cause them to fall overboard and, unable to swim, drown.

If you look at many of the idiotic things done by business and political leaders, it is not surprising that they use underhanded methods and blatant favoritism to keep others from ascending the ladder of success. Their often not-so-bright ideas are insufficient to keep them ahead, so the OBC network gives a helping hand to the many airheads within it.

Now how can we successfully compete with China? How can we leave them in the dust? I could tell you the answer in one sentence, but you wouldn't believe me unless you know me, so I'll need to preface my explanation with proof of how I transformed myself from dunce to doctor and did things that should have been impossible for someone like me, who was once labeled a “slow” student. As you're reading this, keep asking yourself, “Wow, if Dr. Pezzi the erstwhile idiot could do all that, imagine what I could do! Even more!”

More examples of outside-the-box thinking

After my propane company hiked its prices by 44% in one year, I modified my clothes dryer so I piped in free energy instead of propane, and I modified my home without insulation (or other inside-the-box measures such as new windows) so it needed about 75% less energy to heat in the winter. Cost? About $75.

I was frustrated by how I was ignored by the national media even when I knew how to solve a mystery that puzzled them. I was also frustrated when my sheds got more attention from around the world than in the U.S., so I implemented an outside-the-box way to receive attention. I have zero interest in being in the limelight or receiving awards (I didn't even bother to attend my medical school graduation ceremony), but I love to help others, and I can't maximally help them without exposing them to my ideas. No matter who you are or what you do, you would give your right arm for at least one of them. What I learned about health in medical school was a drop in the bucket compared with what I learned afterward.

I belatedly realized that the best way to revere the medical school professors I held in such high esteem was not to blindly accept what they said as set-in-stone fact, but to question it. In doing that, I was receptive when I stumbled across a way to do something many men dream about, and I also had my eyes wide open when I discovered a new class of nontoxic antifungal compounds; most antifungal drugs are fairly toxic. I'm also working on a device that might help stroke patients recover more fully. It works in animals, so it will likely (but not certainly) work for humans, too. That's what research is for. :-)

I had so many pimples when I was younger that I sought a way to instantly camouflage them (without makeup, of course) so I could go on a date and completely conceal the huge zit on my nose that would otherwise make me look like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

Knowing that people are reluctant to use condoms because they decimate sexual pleasure, I developed two simple ways for people with various sexually transmitted diseases (including HIV) to have sex while greatly minimizing the risk of disease transmission. I also developed a low-cost gel that reduces the risk of most STD transmission while intensifying sexual pleasure so people want to use it.

I thought of a tire that can instantly morph into a track (or vice-versa), an easy way to lose weight, how to quickly treat styes without surgery or antibiotics, a new method of fractional multiplication, a novel and inexpensive way to deter burglars, how to thread holes from the inside out, how to make current flow through a circuit when there is no loop to return the current to the source (supposedly impossible, but it's not), a TV/radio volume control that automatically compensates for ambient sound, a keyless mailbox lock that keeps out thieves but not postal workers, a histographic accelerometer, and a novel way to make light penetrate heavy fog or snow so drivers can see well without the drawbacks of typical night vision systems.

I developed a new tomography system to give doctors information about the function of the body, not just its structure, and a new CAD-CAM system that will dramatically lower the cost and complexity of designing and manufacturing parts so that even kids could design and make parts without assistance.

In the 1980s and early 1990s I made a portable prescription printer, an invasive/noninvasive ferrous/nonferrous metal foreign body detector (think “shrapnel sniffer”), a noninvasive cardiac output monitor (a device that measures the amount of blood pumped by the heart per minute), an echophonocardiograph with integral electronic stethoscope, pocket phonocardiographs, multiple electronic stethoscopes, a “trauma scope” that allowed paramedics to hear in a noisy ambulance, an EKG circuit that costs less than an order of fries at McDonald's, an intubation detector that differentiated tracheal from esophageal intubation, a new type of finger splint, automatic cards for stool Hemoccult testing, and a robotic lawn mower that outperformed the best ones available today.

I thought of how we could legally circumvent TSA screenings, how to make paying taxes so much more rewarding that some might even choose to pay more, and how to make the welfare system much more of a win-win for recipients and taxpayers. I also thought of how to instantly cure racism. I wrote about that years ago, and I'll soon release a book (or online equivalent) that discusses this topic in more depth. I don't sweep this topic under the rug, as the PC police do with their silly games about what words are acceptable, because that PC game is just a Band-Aid that hides racism without eradicating it. Believe me, we need to eradicate it. I once believed that racism was almost vanquished, but when a paramedic told me about how some of his colleagues intentionally killed black patients (by purposely using the wrong drugs or overdoses of the correct ones), I knew the battle was far from won.

I thought of how people could spend their lives doing what they want to do instead of working like slaves. I developed a free way to send a message to someone via the Internet without knowing the recipient's e-mail address (& another way to achieve the same result), multiple free ways to make Internet dating free (here's another example), how to give people new ways to meet offline (you guessed it, also free), how to give people the freedom to leave their contact info anywhere without worrying about spammers (free), and how they could securely send messages from any computer—even public ones (free again).

I thought of how computer programmers can visually balance braces { }, parentheses ( ), brackets [ ], and tags <> in their code—even if it is highly nested. The best solution by the $15 billion Adobe company (producer of Dreamweaver, the most popular web page authoring software) is to manually balance one set at a time; my process is complete, fully automatic, and free.

I created a free site so people can drag and drop to form and rearrange keyword (and other) lists, another to create a dating profile essay and headline without writing (free), and another to add a subscription feature to any online or offline content (free). I also developed the world's simplest mailing list manager. While it is free, it has features unmatched by even the most powerful commercial versions, which can drive you bonkers with their nightmarish complexity and bugs.

I developed a new way to rapidly generate even multi-page, highly complex reports that are grammatically correct, yet take a small fraction of the time required to produce them using the Stone Age (but still common!) “modify the template” method. (This is currently on a restricted access site for use by a friend, but I'll later open it to everyone.)

After I complete the robotic chef (progress on it was slowed but not stopped because of a bulldozer accident that broke my neck), I will make an invention that gives people an easy way to solve what is arguably the greatest threat to health. Then I'll develop a device I call the Holy Grail of Happiness. Much of what we do in life is a deliberate attempt by our brains to maximize our happiness, fun, pleasure, or enjoyment. The brains of most people are like misers when it comes to doling out pleasure, so people often cheat by using drugs, alcohol, or engaging in risky activities like sexual affairs or speeding. There's a much better way to achieve happiness, and I found it.

My best invention isn't the robotic chef or the Holy Grail of Happiness; my best invention is a method for making the world's most powerful computer—the human brain—even more amazing.

My slow beginning—and why it is relevant to our national success

Through my sophomore year in high school, my great ambition was to drop out and hopefully get a job working in one of the Big Three auto assembly plants. People cautioned me that dropping out was the path to failure, but I was tired of struggling in school. I heard the teachers' words, many of which sounded like Greek to me. I received Ds in some classes that I should have flunked. My sixth-grade teacher said I was “slow,” and I still agreed with him. Frankly, I was embarrassed by my pathetic school performance and dull intellect. My sole source of pride was that I could beat four people at the same time, including the captain of the football team, in an arm wrestling contest. When the father of a friend asked me about my career plans, I felt like crawling under a rock. Plans? Droppin' out, pumpin' iron, and punchin' a time clock in a factory, or just keep mowin' lawns and doin' odd jobs.

During the summer vacation preceding my 11^th grade, I serendipitously discovered how to substantially increase brainpower. When I returned to school, I was no longer a dumbbell. I could go toe-to-toe with the smartest kids in school, and I effortlessly aced everything, soaking up knowledge as if I were a dry sponge. Instead of settling for a future in an auto plant, I read medical books and planned to become a doctor. I aced the rest of high school and college, and scored so well on the MCAT exam that I was accepted into medical school after just three years of college—something my med school did for only one applicant per year.

All of my medical school classmates were very bright, and some were brilliant, with Ph.D.s in science.

Thanks to my foreshortened time in college, I worried how I'd do in medical school units like biochemistry and pharmacology since I'd never had them and I was competing with classmates with Ph.D.s in those subjects, but I beat every one, every time and ended up graduating in the top 1% of my class. The director of my residency program once commented that I was the smartest resident they ever had, and one of my former bosses told me that I was the smartest doctor he ever met. Aren't these implausible accolades for someone who once was a class dunce?

So what does all this have to do with reinvigorating our economy? By following my plan for intellectual metamorphosis, virtually everyone could be much smarter and more creative, and many of you could leave me in the dust because you'd start from a higher baseline.

I went from one end of the bell curve to the other in terms of IQ and creativity. I went from having a teacher making fun of me (in front of the class, nonetheless!) because I was so “slow” to doctors praising me because I was so smart. Therefore, as I've told readers for years on my ER sites (ER-doctor.com and ERbook.net), it is indeed possible to permanently boost brainpower. Neuroscientists once thought that IQ was relatively fixed, but I knew they were wrong, based on my experience and how I helped other struggling students replicate my dunce-to-doctor transformation. In the past few years, researchers found ways to achieve long-lasting increments in intelligence, but their results are a light-year behind what my methods can do.

Now imagine if even 10% of Americans followed my recipe for enhancing IQ and creativity. Think of the robotic chef and the other inventions and ideas listed above, add in my hundreds of other ones I didn't mention, and multiply that by 30 million. We would ignite a technological revolution that would put our economy into hyperdrive. We could live like kings and easily repay our crushing national (and state and local) debt and unfunded liabilities. We would leave not just China in the dust, but Bill Gates, too, as average Americans surpassed his wealth.

For as long as men have walked the Earth, there's always been dirt, water, and energy that could turn those raw materials into useful stuff. The value of raw materials is dwarfed by the value of ideas that transform them. Technological advancement proceeded at a snail's pace until the Industrial Revolution kindled progress. There is no reason why Columbus couldn't have traveled in a jet if the ones who lived a few hundred years before him did what people have done in the comparable time preceding the present. Ideas are the catalyst that fuel progress. Better ideas, and getting them sooner, is all we need to have 25^th century technology in the 21^st century.

We live in a world that often values style and OBC connections over substance, and we're paying a heavy price for that. However, the primary reason why we're on the verge of an economic collapse has much less to do with our politicians than our failure to think of and implement big ideas at the pace we once did. In the 19^th and 20^th centuries, inventors produced countless ideas that radically transformed life. Other than surf the Internet, what can you now do that you couldn't do a few decades ago? Record TV on a disk instead of a tape? Listen to music on an iPod instead of a cassette player? Pull food out of a refrigerator clad in stainless steel instead of one painted two-tone olive (remember that?) or stark white? Big deal! That didn't change your life!

Most of what passes for an invention these days is a trivial change on an existing product. These Mickey-Mouse tweaks are cluttering the Patent Office but not improving our lives. We need major advances that give us the ability to do things not now possible; things that surpass our wildest dreams.

We can't keep doing what we've been doing. Our national economic problems are far worse than most people imagine. The Virginia legislature is considering how to respond “if the dollar loses its status as the world reserve currency, which appears increasingly likely.” If that happens, “the U.S. economy will suffer devastating consequences caused by the resulting hyperinflation.”

Remember the German Weimar Republic? Its rampant hyperinflation made life miserable, and Hitler exploited that misery to make sane people do insane things. For the chance to figuratively escape from a noose, they were willing to put others in one. When people are sufficiently desperate, they will do shocking things, as the Donner Party proved.

Are the good times over?

When Plan A isn't working, it's time for Plan B. Donald Trump said the U.S. may enter an economic death spiral, and to sidestep it, he and other rich people may leave the country. In a radio interview on Bob Brinker's Moneytalk, Thomas Mackell, Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, discussed the possibility of intergenerational warfare in the United States. It is alarming to hear such a dire forecast from a mainstream person, but it, unfortunately, conforms with predictions from other experts. In 1998, I predicted the same thing in True Emergency Room Stories. When everyone else thought we were headed for a stock market of 20,000 and beyond, I knew we were headed for economic disaster. Senator Judd Gregg (R-NH), the ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee and the man who Obama initially selected to be Secretary of Commerce, said that “we're basically on the path to a banana-republic-type of financial situation in this country” within 10 years.

Is Google Making Us Stupid?

Nicholas Carr's best-selling book The Shallows, based on his Is Google Making Us Stupid? essay in The Atlantic magazine, suggests that use of the Internet is “altering the way we think to make us less capable of digesting large and complex amounts of information, such as books and magazine articles.” And likely blog postings such as this one!

A freezing home woke me up in the middle of a night when the outside temperature was way below zero (Fahrenheit). My furnace wouldn't turn on. From the day of the week, I knew I couldn't get a repairman in time, so I disassembled the furnace, diagnosed the problem, corrected it, and reassembled it — without a service manual, online help, or a shot of whiskey.

I'd never worked on a furnace before, other than to change a filter, so dissecting this one was initially unnerving, but every adult and most teenagers should be able to do what I did—but how many can? Our culture teaches us to be more dependent than independent, but dependence comes with a big price.

---

Article: Young People Don't Know How to Fix Anything, Scientist Claims

The dwindling number of big ideas and big breakthroughs is the proverbial canary in the coal mine in terms of giving us advance warning of how our brainpower ain't what it used to be, to put it colloquially. The intellectual decrement is not immediately apparent because much of human intelligence resides in our culture and systems, not in us individually. Schools have made us increasingly dependent on our society for survival, and made us less able to think for ourselves, invent, and improvise. Two hundred years ago a man could walk into the wilderness with nothing but an axe and comfortably live the rest of his life, but most people today couldn't figure out how to transform the rabbits zipping by into a tasty meal.

Teachers and professors administer tests that often require little more than the ability to parrot information. The most challenging test I took on my way to becoming a licensed doctor wasn't the MCAT or a medical board exam but a genetics final exam written by a professor with a stratospheric IQ who crafted each question so it could be correctly answered only by knowing almost everything in the class, integrating it, and logically using that information to extrapolate from it. I've never seen anything else like it. Most test questions can be answered by a well-trained monkey. Monkey see, monkey do.

The dictionary definition of genius provides a big clue why we have less of it than before:

The sine qua non of genius is exceptional creativity: that is, thinking outside the box: intellectually going where no man or woman has gone before. However, if you think outside the box, you are by definition not thinking as others do. As I discussed in Ridiculing good new ideas, independent and highly original thought is often ridiculed by jealous lemmings and experts who cling to what they know, even when it is dead wrong.

In 1905, Orville and Wilbur Wright tried to interest the United States War Department in their new invention, a practical airplane, but they were repeatedly turned down. The War Department initially thought that they were crackpots, and later deemed the airplane to be of no military significance.

Great advances are often met with resistance and mocked by people who think that someone must be a nut for not thinking like others. Thus our most esteemed generals and politicians believe that we must combat terrorism and fight wars with guns and bombs, not realizing there are outside-the-box ways to achieve better results much quicker, with enormously less expense and no American casualties. Even when it is clear that our wars are bankrupting us, the government still wants to do things the old way, and voters are usually thrilled to vote for inside-the-box politicians who look for inside-the-box solutions, not realizing there are better ways.

Most people think of the brain as a repository of information, but it is also like a computer that can program itself, like computer code writing even better code, and that improved code writing code that's better still, giving the computer the ability to do things it could not do before.

That's the process I used to go from dunce to doctor, but the process I stumbled upon and so greatly benefited from is one that is now as rare as a dodo bird. While I subsequently discovered thousands of ways to further enhance brainpower, the core dunce-to-doctor techniques are just a handful of things anyone can do—but, thanks to the Internet and other intellectual distractions, most brains languish instead of improve because we don't get all the links in the chain that are necessary to maximally benefit; even smart people who think usually don't get the most essential piece of the puzzle. Without that big piece, they won't see the big picture on how to radically catalyze IQ and creativity. Thus it may not be a coincidence that the Internet was our last great invention.

Close-mindedness has always been prevalent but it appears to be worse than ever. You believe what the supposedly sophisticated elite believe, or you're a yahoo just itching to be an outcast. When the elite who can't think insist we think like them, we don't think outside the box, so we don't create and invent and prosper.

Eric Hoffer (who was an “intellectual giant” according to Thomas Sowell and one of my professors, who raved about his intellect) said, “In times of change learners inherit the earth; while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.”

Even the dimmest among us know we are living in times of change, yet even the brightest usually don't realize they are beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists. We need to get in overdrive stat, as we say in medicine when we need something now, but even many of the brightest folks don't have the intellectual horsepower to get us up to speed in time. We need a boost by using the tips that enabled me to go from dunce to doctor. The robotic chef and my other inventions listed above are just the tip of the iceberg. Imagine 30 million times that (with 10% of the population participating), or even 30,000 times that (with just 0.01% of the population participating): unimaginable wealth and the power to do things that now seem like a pipe dream.

I discovered that fountain. Care to drink from it? I used it to go from dunce to doctor, so you could use it to go from who you are to Einstein or beyond. Don't think you could? My sixth-grade teacher—the one who called me “slow”—would have said it was utterly impossible for me to do what I did, so don't underestimate your potential.

An advertising slogan created for Apple Computer in 1997 brilliantly explained how “the round pegs in the square holes, the ones who see things differently” who are “crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”

Watch the best 1-minute video ever produced and think about what I said. Encourage your friends to read this, and their friends. Together, we will change the world, solve our problems, and turn the dark days ahead into ones brighter than we can imagine.

You hold the world in your hands.
You can keep doing what you were doing,
or you can spread the word about how
we can leave China in the dust.

Want to improve your brain? Contact me.

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