Originally posted by Tearman
Probably some person we've never heard about because they wasted their talent or didn't have the right nobby parents or something.

I was thinking that we've probably never heard of the smartest person who ever existed because they were smart enough to keep a low profile. Look what happened to people like Galileo. Why risk your life, and the security of your family, trying to improve the plight of relative morons, when it would be so much easier to set up your own personal utopia and live happily for the rest of your life. Let someone else change the world and suffer for it.

Nikola Tesla. end of debate

If we would narrow it down to "Smartest human currently alive" i would definitely go with Grigory Perelman, however for all time... who knows, one can only speculate there, but after looking at the movie idiocracy, i doubt the smartest person alive have been alive anytime recently... just because we collectively make technological progress does not mean we are smarter than our predecessors. The smartest man alive ever might very well be one of the ancient egyptians or even sumerians, or someone waaaay before that, someone we would have no idea ever existed.

The smartest human was smart enough not to get noticed!
Sorry, just had to throw that in for the hell of it.

Originally posted by volafox
The smartest human was smart enough not to get noticed!
Sorry, just had to throw that in for the hell of it.

actually, there's been a whole bunch of these.

so far in order i think we have,

tesla, jesus, newton, and someone whom we don't even know about.

I would vote for Nikola Tesla.

He had plenty of useable inventions and most of all, he was first to try to implement "free energy" for mass scale, for all people. His "wireless energy" is still "uninvented", god knows why.

Maybe he is not highest IQ, but smart perk should be practical for all ppl(?), and Tesla invented lots of practical things.

Smart? By what and whose calculation? Simple IQ, assessment tests among those mentioned only measure certain things that can be statistically quantified, but not always qualified. Defining "smart" is to me much more complicated, and I do value those with route learning skills sometime called "actionable memory", those who can do complicated multiple mathematics, what we consider "smarts". Also active but with memory&applicability to "unrelated" situations.

What I consider, for what it's worth IMO, the best type of intelligence, are those who can assemble several aspects of actionable cognition in as many areas as possible. I love those who are, and this is subjective (something often dismissed as opinion or just noise) as I hate this lame but useful phrase, "thinking out of the box". When you can combine good general information selection, what you pay attention to, aware of or not, and have the ability, what I call unique "packaging" or ability to optimize information, and add that special, perhaps what would be called creative touch, I'm impressed.

We all have heard of savant's; remarkable people who can do truly amazing things but often have other limitations. But not always. But often the extreme someones ability in an area, it can be so intense it scares some people. They can't relate. Thats our problem. Bottom line for me I value creativity, but also with their feet on ground but not so firmly their stuck in the mud, as in obsessive in one area to exclusion of other. Or so disconnected with everything they can become a flying humanoid. The creative ones and those with the ability to integrate a broad range of skills, thats intelligence. And solving problems in such a unique way as in a group trying to solve the same problem and having all the same information yet they can "see" what no one else can. Thats very cool.

I also value those who are artists and musicians at any level. Why? My cat is a better artist and musician (when he walks on the piano at least) then me. And thats just embarrassing.

The guy who tried raw oysters for the first time in history.

If not the smartest, then at least the most adventurous!