The Conservative Cat

Bruce came to understand the nature of genius a few decades ago when he was working as a consultant to Lotus Development Corporation (which was a very successful software firm before being swallowed by IBM in the Nineties). Bruce had just purchased a 300M hard drive to supplement the 110M drive that came with his PC. (It was a long time ago and a different world.) Bruce couldn't get the drive to work, so he called some friends at the Boston office and they said there was only one person who could help: Bob Frankston, part of the pair that invented the electronic spreadsheet. So Bruce calls him up and explains the problem. Bob tells him to connect the two drives to the same controller. Bruce points out that the user's manual says you can do that with two 300M drives, but not a 300M and a 110M. Bruce remembers Mr. Frankston's reply like it was yesterday.

I see no reason why it shouldn't work. You may have to move some resistors around.

It was at that moment Bruce realized what separates a true genius from merely gifted people such as himself: a genius is used to making guesses and having them turn out to be correct. See, when Bruce makes a guess, he always prefaces it with the qualifier "in a sane universe" and people automatically know he's not at all convinced that he's right. Geniuses, however, can make all sorts of bald statements without any worry. It's a completely different way of thinking.

And that's why Bruce is able to figure out what a cat is thinking: he understands the nature of genius.

Respectfully submitted,

Ferdinand T. Cat