This is great because I get to tell people about one of my favourite little random things, time use surveys - https://www.timeuse.org/mtus - and plenty others of its ilk
Is being a genius a fact? Whether true or false? You judged Mill's usage to be an overstatement, and indeed I have had friends that used the term "genius" rather freely, as a hyperbole. Not unlike many people use the word "literally". But it seems to me that genius is more a matter of convention, not unlike the determination that pieces of silver are "money", a matter of judgment rather than a matter that could be settled clear cut like the length of an object, whether it rained at a certain place at a certain time, or somebody's place of birth. A person is a genius if everybody agrees that is the case. On Wikipedia's genius page, the side bar lists historical figures. In no caption does it state "a genius" but "widely regarded as/ often considered/ acknowledged as/ deemed as/ cited as a genius". John Stuart Mill simply put his two cents on the matter of Harriet Taylor.
Anyway, I find it curious you chose to touch, discussing the reliability of diaries and letters, the usage of a word. I'd think that a point where people err more often with regards to autobiography is in narrative. Constructing a story, whether when reproduced for the sake of another or in the simple process of making sense of one's life, one throws a retrospective glance on one's experience, pieces discrepant memories and searches for meaning. Memory is hardly infallible, and so events are innocently permutated in time, displaced in space, lacunas are pastiched, dialogues garbled, reasoning and motivation is extrapolated.
You’ve been writing a play about them? Good subject for a play. I think she was the braver of the two.
Don't believe the autobiographies and letters! Read Freud instead!
This is great because I get to tell people about one of my favourite little random things, time use surveys - https://www.timeuse.org/mtus - and plenty others of its ilk
Is being a genius a fact? Whether true or false? You judged Mill's usage to be an overstatement, and indeed I have had friends that used the term "genius" rather freely, as a hyperbole. Not unlike many people use the word "literally". But it seems to me that genius is more a matter of convention, not unlike the determination that pieces of silver are "money", a matter of judgment rather than a matter that could be settled clear cut like the length of an object, whether it rained at a certain place at a certain time, or somebody's place of birth. A person is a genius if everybody agrees that is the case. On Wikipedia's genius page, the side bar lists historical figures. In no caption does it state "a genius" but "widely regarded as/ often considered/ acknowledged as/ deemed as/ cited as a genius". John Stuart Mill simply put his two cents on the matter of Harriet Taylor.
Anyway, I find it curious you chose to touch, discussing the reliability of diaries and letters, the usage of a word. I'd think that a point where people err more often with regards to autobiography is in narrative. Constructing a story, whether when reproduced for the sake of another or in the simple process of making sense of one's life, one throws a retrospective glance on one's experience, pieces discrepant memories and searches for meaning. Memory is hardly infallible, and so events are innocently permutated in time, displaced in space, lacunas are pastiched, dialogues garbled, reasoning and motivation is extrapolated.