How did the false idea, that Albert Einstein was bad at maths, ever take root in the public mind?

It’s a form of CRT so it has to be discredited!!!

The same as “Bill Gates and Steve Jobs are college dropouts but went on to change the world”.

These originated from those motivational posts that were written by people didn’t do much research other than quick Google in order to make people feel less bad about themselves and continue working on their goal. Over time it became perverted into comfort stories to justify people’s shortcomings and laziness. The lie then became too comforting to let go.

Such a delusion can only exist or arise in a silly or empty public mind.

He must have been pretty good at maths but he was a theoretical physicist rather than a mathematician.

I thought he got bad grades in school? Obviously one can be good at something and still get bad grades, but maybe this is the origin of the belief about Einstein being bad at math?

People commonly love to hear that famous people are really ordinary and no better than they are. They misunderstand the notion of equality.

Here’s a quick recap of Einstein facts.

This question brings Harrison Bergeron to mind.

Steve Jobs really was a hack con artist though.

@Blackwater_Park “Steve Jobs really was a hack con artist though.”

How so?

That’s a very long answer. The short answer is he had like no technical ability. He either stood on the shoulders of those who could do or straight up stole from them. Someone I’m acquainted with was around to witness how he was to other people, “supreme narcissistic asshole” was his description. He apparently would call up knowledgeable people by the dozen to make them big promises and get them to work on various problems and sit back and wait for who took the bait with a solution outside of any contract then steal it without any compensation. A lot of that type of thing. I know there is quite a bit of hearsay but…

Apparently he failed the entrance exam to a college in Zurich (although he didnt fail the math part – just all the other parts).

@Blackwater_Park “The short answer is he had like no technical ability.”

That’s not accurate. He was employee #40 at Atari and worked on video games. He did stand on the shoulders of giants, but the stories I’ve heard was that he could look at a device and tell you everything wrong with it from a usability perspective. That’s certainly a different kind of genius than someone technical like Steve Wozniak, but that’s enough to disqualify him from being a “hack” IMO.

Also, I don’t think many people are familiar with Jobs at NeXT and just how revolutionary what was being done there was. The foundation for OS X and iOS was being written in the late 80’s by a small team.

I’m sure he was a terrible person from all I’ve read, but he certainly wasn’t a hack. Anyways, I’m off topic. Sorry.

Describing Steve Jobs has a hack con artist with no technical ability is reductionist bullshit. Steve Jobs was able to take cutting edge technology distil it sown to a product that the masses could use. There were more powerful, more capable computers in the 80’s than the Mac – none of which you probably remember and produced by companies that went bust decades ago.
Lets take the iPod – again, it was never the most technically competent music player there were many that stored more music, had better sound reproduction etc but Jobs created a product that was so easy to use that my grandmother had one and could purchase music online, transfer it to the player and play it without help. The same with the iphone, the iPad even computer shops – compare Apple stores with other computer stores.

I never get what the Apple fanboys see in jobs. Some treat him like Willy Wonka in a magic chocolate tech factory. I still see him as a hack. I can’t get past the dick moves he has done and I don’t see any special tech prowess, or breakthroughs that were really owned by him other than being a little ahead of the curve on application and marketing.

@LadyMarissa I didn’t understand your post at first, but now reading it again I think I see where you are coming from.

And no, this has nothing to do with CRT or whatever US thing. The lie has been around much longer before that, and it existed in places that have no reason to subscribe to US belief, like my country. I still remember reading about Einstein on those motivational FB posts as a college student. It’s just pure motivational, nothing more.