geniuses - how smart are they?

Further to the discussion on 20 year copyrights and who owns oil, this comes down to the genius argument. The word genius comes from the same root as genesis and generate, it means creator. The level of genius decides the level of ownership. (Note that even the most mundane job requires some creative effort, until such time as it is fully automated and its value approaches zero, but this post is about the extreme cases of genius.)

An oil prospector could claim absolute ownership of an oil field forever, because his input is so unique he is, in effect, an oil genius. But if it was a simple matter of looking in an obvious place, then he would not deserve much more reward than the market rate for wages and machinery. So the question is, was this guy a genius? And if so, what level of genius - just a few years ahead of his fellow man, or centuries ahead? Both theoretically and empirically, we can state with confidence that super-geniuses probably don't exist, or at least not in the commercial world.

First, how likely is it that a brain will be so far in advance of others? Intelligence follows a statistical distribution called the "normal distribution," hence standard deviations, etc. Maybe one in a hundred million people are likely to be twice as intelligent as average, but that is about the limit. Statistically, a super-genius is vanishingly unlikely. Note that for a genius needs to communicate his esoteric discoveries to others - adding an even greater requirement for brainpower.

Second, every super-genius relies heavily on previous discoveries, and if they don't publish their results, others come to the same conclusions within a few years. Just look at the lives of Newton, Einstein, etc. Or in the case of oil exploration, new techniques are developed that make finding the stuff much easier.

In conclusions, no matter how great the genius, it is reasonable to assume that in twenty years their discovery will be either irrelevant (in the case of some fashionable book) or duplicated by others. So the twenty year rule reflects true ownership, and nobody can claim monopoly ownership on their ideas forever.