Steve Hsu points us to an NYT op-ed by Walter Isaacson, in which he ponders the crucial question, "Was Steve Jobs smart?" Isaacson has written biographies of both Jobs and Albert Einstein, so he should know from smart. One might think that the answer is an obvious "yes," and Isaacson admits this. But then he tells this anecdote:
But I remember having dinner with him a few months ago around his kitchen table, as he did almost every evening with his wife and kids. Someone brought up one of those brainteasers involving a monkey’s having to carry a load of bananas across a desert, with a set of restrictions about how far and how many he could carry at one time, and you were supposed to figure out how long it would take. Mr. Jobs tossed out a few intuitive guesses but showed no interest in grappling with the problem ...
