20 People Famous for Being Geniuses Who Turned Out to Be Dopes

Jack Parsons’ trajectory is pretty tragic
20 People Famous for Being Geniuses Who Turned Out to Be Dopes

There are lots of different types of scams — Ponzi schemes, Nigerian prince emails, the ol’ “hey, look over there!” — but the greatest con of all is convincing people that you’re smarter than you are. If people think you’re a genius, they’ll throw money and power at you, believing you can make the world a better place or at least make them more money.

It sounds great — right up until you get found out. Or maybe, at one point, someone truly was a genius, but they got so high off their own supply and corrupted by yes men that their brains turned to (usually racist) mush. 

Whatever the case, there was no shortage of examples when user saigalaxy asked r/AskReddit, “What’s the biggest example of (going) from ‘genius’ to ‘idiot’ has there ever been?”

Rdce 1y ago Kanye. Everyone thought he was a genius about 10 years ago and now, not so much
carmenknisely 1y ago Steve jobs. Genius of Apple and then ended up dying cause he thought he could cure his cancer naturally.
purelypopularpanda 1y ago Dr Oz. Once a respected physician and now he peddles snake oil to gullible people.
atlmobs 1y ago Ben Carson, world acclaimed neurosurgeon and believer that the pyramids of Egypt were built to store grain.
7urz 1y ago Luc Montagnier - discovered HIV (genius) and promoted homeopathy and anti-vax theories (idiot).
basmatiR 1y ago that elizabeth holmes lady, she was just delusional enough to convince people to invest in her revolutionarly technology, when it literally never existed.
InfernalOrgasm 1y ago Stockton Rush - I mean ... he did manage to put together a company that built a submersible to successfully traverse thousands of meters of ocean. Не just went and been an idiot about it.
OutrageousStrength91 1y ago Alan Greenspan. From economic genius of the late 80's to mid-2000s to the dope that led us into the financial crash of 2008
strapped_for_cash 1y ago Don't understand how Sam Bankman-Fried isn't on this list yet. Dude was in magazines being called a prophet and genius, turns out he was just a fucking idiot the whole time
 1y ago Thomas Midgley. All his inventions were thought to be great contributions to mankind until we found out they were dumping crazy amount of toxins into the atmosphere and burning a hole in the ozone layer.
battleofflowers 1y ago Linus Pauling. Не went from being a preeminent chemist and biochemist to a quack who wrote books claiming that megadoses of vitamin с cured all disease and was the key to an insanely long life.
Lawsoffire 1y ago Edited 1y ago The guy that invented PCR (which was ground breaking in early DNA research, got a nobel prize, though most probably remember it from the Covid days) went off the rails, denied that HIV caused AIDS even after it was scientific consensus and spent his time talking to a glowing racoon in the forest at night.
Carloanzram1916 1y ago Alan Dershowitz is making a pretty strong case. Harvard law professor, widely considered one of the preeminent legal experts in the country, was on OJs defense team as well as many other major cases. For some reason he went off the deep end, supported Donald Trump in almost every conceivable scenario, including his actions around January 6th and slowly became a punchline.
IdontGiveaFack 1y ago Jack Parsons, pioneering rocket engineer, pioneered JATO (Jet Assisted Take Off), one of the founders of what would become the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at CalTech. Started following Aleister Crowley, got swindled out of his life savings and wife by L. Ron Hubbard. Tried to summon a goddess. Blew himself up in a home laboratory explosion.
 1y ago William Shockley led the team at Bell Labs that invented the transistor. That breakthrough yielded portable radios and hearing aids, and made computer microchips possible in the decades that followed. Не essentially allowed computers to go from filling a room in a building to eventually fitting in a desktop and then in your pocket. Не received a Nobel prize along with his team, and then spent the rest of his life spewing racism and eugenics garbage.
beautifulslyfittin 1y ago literally Bobby Fischer. this man was one of the greatest chess players of all time and regarded as a genius. In his later years, he started publicly voicing his love for Adolf Hitler, and his hatred for jews. Не was also adamant that the holocaust never happened and a bunch of other hateful stuff. How can a genuis be so brainwashed??
GrymEdm 1y ago He's not the biggest example, but Jordan Peterson seems to fit the description of genius to idiot. It actually makes me sad, because years ago it seemed he just legitimately wanted to help people. I first heard him telling people to value taking many small steps towards progress instead of trying to rapidly do everything at once, and for some I'm sure that makes sense. Then he got popular and being in the public eye means taking criticism he clearly was incapable of dealing with in a healthy manner. Не became bitter and cynical, fell apart mentally,
Taran345 1y ago Edited 1y ago Gerald Ratner - made two ill-thought statements during a speech in 1991 in which he called his own products crap and lost half a billion gbp (1991 gbp at that!) off the value of his company overnight! costs less than a prawn sandwich from marks and spencer, and probably lasts just as long & people say, how can you sell it for such a low price, I say, because it's total crap! Не said this to a room with a high number of journalists which took the story and ran with it. After this, anyone buying
Worried_Place_917 1y ago John McAfee. Not sure of the genuis part, but the downfall was legendary. Не wrote and marketed the first commercial antivirus software after cutting teeth at NASA, Univac, and Xerox as a coder. Might have peaked around 100 million dollars. Then he sold his stake, told everyone to uninstall his companies product, retired, got into recreational drugs, lost tens of millions, possibly murdered a man in Belize, probably fucked a literal whale, ran for president of the US, and then was arrested in Spain for US tax evasion and then either killed himself or was murdered.
No-Mechanic6069 1y ago I don't need to say this one. I'll just leave an X in the spot instead.

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