Why separate genius from common sense, when the latter remains so mysterious to us? "We shouldn't let our envy of distinguished masters of the arts distract us from the wonder of how each of us gets new ideas."
Genius is built from everyday components, but also includes unusually effective ways to learn. Minsky suspects that giftedness might emerge from learning powerful new ways to learn.
(NB: This makes me think a little bit about a general strategy in cognitive psychology, to make very general claims about human cognition. Individual difference work -- and identifying genius could be regarded as looking for individual differences -- does not make up very much of the cognitivist view of the mind.)
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