One of the famous quotes that Albert Einstein never said is:
Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.
Should you search the internet you can find a lot of places that refute that Einstein said any such thing, I am glad of that because I would hate to publicly criticize the man. He’s dead and would not be able to defend himself.
Regardless of its origin, this quote is used a lot to explain how you should not be narrow in your evaluation of the intelligence (or skills) of other people. I think that is a great thing to promote. I just wish that this awful quote was not used for it.
What makes this quote awful? In a word, everything!
First things first, what is the deal with that first sentence: “Everyone is a genius.” It is just flat-out wrong. Everyone is not a genius. I think the sentence is meant to mean that everyone has something they are good at. Which may be true, but that does not make them a genius. Let’s just take that sentence out and see if that improves the situation.
If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.
While the sentence we removed was objectively wrong. This sentence is cruel.
The problem is that the first phrase says “If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree”. And the second phrase says “it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”
The first part says that you, the reader, are judging the fish, but second part says that based on the judgement of the observer the fish will believe it is stupid. Do you see the disconnect?
The observer makes a judgement about the ability of the fish to climb a tree. Presumably, the observer believes the fish does not have enough intelligent to climb a tree, an erroneous assumption based on the information provided. However, regardless of what the observer things of the fish, why does the fish think itself stupid?
It seems to me that the fish is spending to much time concerning itself with what the observer thinks. And, the observer should keep their negative thoughts to itself.
I get that the point is the fish should not be judged by arbitrary and non-fishy standards. But, my problem with the quote is that the fish is judged inappropriately, why should the fish care?
Can we fix this to make it better? I’ve thought about it, how about this:
If, as a fish, you judge yourself poorly because you can’t climb a tree, then you are being overly critical and should work on setting more realistic goals.
Okay, maybe I need to work on this longer.
As a final thought, I want to leave you with an excerpt from the sci-fi novel, Panglor by Jeffery A. Carver. In the book, Panglor and the rest of his spaceship crew are on a weird planet where the laws of physics appear to either not work, or work differently. On this planet Panglor discovers a lake where the fish don’t swim in the water, but in the air above the water. They act just like fish but always stay above the water, they don’t “swim” over the land. Here is an excerpt:
I read this book many decades ago and that argument has stuck with me. I like this better than the bumble bee story. You know the one where scientists determine that the aerodynamics of a bumble bee is such that it should not be able to fly, but it doesn’t know that, so it flies anyway. In the case of the “Airfish” the supposition is made that they may know that they shouldn’t be able to do it, but just don’t care.
I try to live my life like an airfish and try things regardless of what some nameless observer thinks of me. And I think you should too.
