5 So-Called Signs Of Genius That Any Idiot Can Learn

#3. Win a Chess Game in Just a Few Moves









#2. Do Complicated Math Off the Top of Your Head


We mentioned Good Will Hunting a moment ago, but of course speed reading wasn't his main talent in the film: His genius was that he could do impossible math with ease. Likewise with the autistic savant in Rain Man, who showed that he had a superhuman brain hiding under his weird tics by instantly counting everything from toothpicks to cards.

But even if you suck at math, there are lots of ways you can at least create the impression that you're a human calculator. This won't get you a job with the NSA, but it will win you bets in bars.

Unless the bet involves getting a job with the NSA.

The flashiest, yet easiest way to impress people with numbers is simply to be really fucking quick with them. This, too, is a trick that can be learned with relative ease. There are tons and tons of ways to teach your brain into cheating at math, ranging from ridiculously easy to fairly challenging (but in no way impossible). For instance, if you have to multiply large numbers and one of the numbers is even, you can cheat by subdividing (doubling one figure and halving the other until the numbers make sense). A simple example:

32 x 125 = Wha'?
16 x 250 = Still on the difficult side.
8 x 500 = Almost there ...
4 x 1,000 = 4,000. Hell yes!

Or, if you're in a situation where somebody asks you the value of pi, instead of saying "3.14," rattle off 15 digits. You'll sound like a human supercomputer, when in reality all you need to do is memorize this phrase:

"How I wish a drink, alcoholic of course, after the heavy lectures involving quantum mechanics."

Congratulations, you've just memorized pi to 15 digits. Memorize that, or any phrase, where the number of letters in each word corresponds to a digit of pi ("How I wish" becomes "3.14," and so forth), and voila! You're pi'd for life.

"So long, suckers!"

What's that? You want an ability that can actually win you money? All right, let's go with the ancient black magic of counting cards in blackjack. That wasn't just the key plot point in Rain Man -- they've made whole movies about how impossible it is. However, there's a trick to it.

Card counting is essentially about assigning values to cards and adding and subtracting those values as the cards are dealt. In the high-low system, for example, you add one point for each 2 through 6 and subtract one point for cards 10 through ace -- cards 7, 8, and 9 are worth 0. High-value cards in blackjack are good for the player, and low-value cards are good for the dealer, so this system lets you keep a rough count of how potentially dangerous or advantageous the deck is. With practice, counting techniques are easy to expand from that starting point -- and before long, you, too, can get the shit kicked out of you in a casino backroom.

"Congratulations! You're about to qualify for much better parking."

#1. Give Someone a Sherlock Holmes Scan


Whether you prefer the movies with Robert Downey Jr., the TV show with Benedict Cumberbatch, or even (hahaha!) the original books, chances are you're well-acquainted with Sherlock Holmes, the great detective. Holmes' most prominent character trait is his deductive reasoning, a semi-superpower of "scanning" people and places for tiny bits of information and turning them into frighteningly accurate facts. The dude is all about reading insanely specific details from mundane observations: In this scene, Cumberbatch Holmes deduces the crap out of Bilbo Baggins based on nothing but a cellphone and a limp. It's kind of horrifying, actually -- there are a dozen reasons why we want to keep the reason behind our limp under wraps. So clearly it would be awesome to be able to do this to other people.

"Judging by the blister on your big toe and the daddy issues in your eyes, you're a stripper."

All you need to do is utilize the Forer effect, named after its inventor, psychologist Bertram Forer. In 1948, he set up an experiment where he gave personality tests to a number of subjects, then used them to see if he could construct an accurate personality summary. He could, too -- the subjects were astonished by his 84 percent overall accuracy in figuring out their innermost workings. Only Forer hadn't actually read their tests at all. He produced all of those super accurate summaries of peoples' personalities with zero prior knowledge of his subjects.

In fact, Forer's wizard-like deduction skills were so powerful that even though he's dead, he can analyze the shit out of you right now. Yeah, you, the person reading this article. Here's what he has to say about you:


"You also smell bad, but sometimes you don't."

Pretty scary, huh?

In reality, that is the exact same analysis Forer gave to every one of his subjects, compiled from a bunch of random horoscopes. Yeah, at this point it's probably worth mentioning that the alternate name for the Forer effect is the Barnum effect, named after the famous showman P.T. Barnum and specifically the "There's a sucker born every minute" quote (falsely) attributed to him. What Forer was really researching was the gullibility of people when reading descriptions of themselves, and what he found was this: We are so good at providing a coherent picture of what we hear and see that we flat out don't mind if the stuff we're told is vague and inconsistent. We're more than happy to fill in the blanks as long as the information is about us.

"And when he was talking about my insecurities, I knew that he meant my crippling fear of Velociraptors!"

And remember, when you do it, you really have to sell it. Stare hard into their eyes. Furrow your brow, as if deep in thought. Rub your chin, and pause between "revelations" as if you are working through them with your genius brain, drawing subtle clues only you can see. With this knowledge and confident behavior, you can join the ranks of many, many fake psychics and other quacks and give people inaccurate but extremely believable Sherlock scans all the damn time. Just don't quit your day job and embark on a brain war against professor Moriarty. Although, hell, he's probably faking it, too.

J.F. Sargent never wants to see a fucking Rubik's Cube ever again. Follow him on Twitter and read his blog.

For more ways you can just fake it, check out 5 Ways To Hack Your Brain Into Awesomeness. Or discover the 5 Pop Culture Classics Created Out of Laziness.

If you're pressed for time and just looking for a quick fix, then check out 4 Amazing Examples of Rock Stars Owning Obnoxious Fans.

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