Brane Space: Turns Out The Ex-Prof Vegas Mass Shooter Was A Mensan

Anthony Polito's brain finally short-circuited from the bunkum he ingested

Anthony Polito’s rampage on the UNLV campus Wednesday is now another sordid chapter in this nation's history of mass shootings and mayhem, e.g.

UNLV shooting: Ex-professor had 'target list' when he killed three on campus (bbc.com)

What may never be known, like in most of these events, is why he did it. But we do know he was well educated and also a Mensa member. (From lead NBC News segment last night). His LinkedIn account states he was a “semi-retired university professor” based in Las Vegas and attended Radford University in Virginia, where he graduated with a double major in mathematics and statistics before he earned his master’s degree at Duke University and completed his Ph.D. at the University of Georgia.

Polito served as an associate professor for 15½ years at East Carolina University from August 2001 to January 2017. Then he resigned, evidently as a tenured prof, but no indication why. However, one local (NC) news report documented he was paranoid about student reviews of his teaching on the school's website - and he'd often go all out to try to identify those who wrote negative reviews.

During that time at ECU, he also ran a personal website about his life, in which he posted a 15-page theory claiming he decoded the messages left by the Zodiac Killer, who operated in Northern California in the late 1960s. Why anyone in his right mind would invest so much intellectual energy in the Zodiac killer's messages is beyond me. But it recalled for me the haywire act by mathematician John Nash's brain when he tried to parse a massive conspiracy from news clippings plastered all over his office wall - as seen in the film 'A Beautiful Mind', e.g.

A Beautiful Mind (2001) - John Nash Office Wall Scene - YouTube

And, of course, what we derive from this is that highly intelligent people often have peculiar mental quirks and obsessions. In Nash's case it was trying to use thousands of newspaper and magazine clippings affixed to his office walls to unravel a massive CIA-NSA conspiracy he believed existed. In Polito's case it was using 15 1/2 pages and likely dozens of hours of misapplied statistics to try to unravel the gobbledegook left by the Zodiac killer. And then we have the usual defensiveness that comes with the territory, as when Polito wrote (in his paper preface):

“Just so you won’t initially write off my solution as that of a total crackpot, let me first say that I have been a member of MENSA for 35 years, I hold a double undergraduate degree in Mathematics & Statistics (two skills closely associated with successful cryptographers) … and I hold a masters degree and a doctoral degree from top-tier universities as well,” Polito wrote in the introduction. So I am not a dumb guy!”

Maybe not. But you were nevertheless a Mensan with an overworked, overwrought brain - too given to overthinking and hyper imagination- when simplicity of approach might be preferable. Reminding me of other Mensans (and Intertel members) with whom I've waged verbal battles over their cockeyed beliefs and conspiracy nonsense. Whether Mensa member Evan Jon Wright who once argued (in The Mensa Bulletin) that "CO2 can't be absorbed by the oceans or they'd turn into sodie pop", or like a certain former Hopkins immunologist (Alana Sullivan) who insisted - after an Intertel Journal piece I wrote about climate tipping points- that I was trying to "BS and snowjob her brain."

In Ms. Sullivan's case she claimed not only to know more about climate tipping points than I did, but also knew that Dr. Anthony Fauci was full of it with his vaccine endorsements. (Odd coming from a Hopkins immunologist)

In Polito's case he further claimed to "have solved" the fate of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 and "figured out the true meaning of Leonardo DiCaprio’s 2010 film “Inception.”

What does all of this show? Well, that high I.Q. brains - if not properly trained and disciplined- can short circuit and "blow a fuse" as it were. In each such case the brain in question displays a reach that exceeds its grasp- but it isn't aware of that because of the Dunning -Kruger effect.

Basically, the Dunning -Kruger bias represents the metacognitive inability of the unskilled to recognize their ineptitude in a given field or matter. Thus, Ms. Sullivan and Mr. Evan Wright didn’t recognize their deficits in climate physics, and Mr. Polito didn’t recognize his in the field of aerodynamics – or criminal investigations. Else, he’d not have believed he knew more than those experts. As psychologist David Dunning (the discoverer of the Dunning-Kruger Effect) once explained to Errol Morris, writing in an essay series,The Anosognosic's Dilemma: Something's Wrong but You'll Never Know What It Is (Part 1) - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

for the New York Times:

“If you’re incompetent, you can’t know you’re incompetent … [T]he skills you need to produce a right answer are exactly the skills you need to recognize what a right answer is.”

Alas also for Polito and his victims he didn't recognize the limits of his own brain's capacity for codswallop nor his desirability as an academic. Brutally exposed after refusing to accept 'No!' from UNLV administration officials after applying for a job there umpteen times. He would have done better, instead of wallowing in conspiracy ideations, to plumb the depths of his own hubris, arrogance, entitlement and obsession with nonsense. Starting with using his high I.Q. to read Donna Jackson Nakagawa's superb book 'The Angel and the Assassin' - on how high I.Q. brains can go haywire if their microglial cells get out of control and 'eat' the brain synapses, e.g.