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Seven Ingenious RulesHow to become a MacArthur genius.

By David PlotzPosted Tuesday, Sept. 25, 2007, at 3:06 PM ET

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Rule No. 4: Do not, under any circumstances, work for the government or the private sector. This cannot be stressed enough. Many MacArthur geniuses advocate government activism, but all fellows assiduously avoid public service. I found only two MacArthur winners from the public sector, small-town Mayor Unita Blackwell and then-Congressional Budget Office Director Alice Rivlin. Similarly, geniuses should not soil themselves with earning a profit. It's fine to run a nonprofit that helps disadvantaged people start their own businesses, but almost no MacArthurs run or work for profit-seeking corporations.

Rule No. 5: Upset conventional wisdom. You don't have to be right, but you must be provocative. It's not enough to study quantum physics. You must, like 1999 winner Eva Silverstein, "question the fundamentals of quantum physics." MacArthur honored the classicist who reinterpreted the Parthenon friezes as a human sacrifice and the paleontologist who says that Tyrannosaurus Rex ate carrion rather than hunted. If you're a mathematician, set yourself one of math's great insoluble problems: MacArthur knighted Andrew Wiles for cracking Fermat's Theorem and Michael Freedman for proving the four-dimensional case of Poincare's Conjecture.

The best kind of provocation is a doomsday theory. MacArthur adores folks who foresee the end of the world, especially if that end is caused by Western avarice or stupidity. MacArthur has blessed Paul "Population Explosion" Ehrlich; Richard Turco, who popularized the idea of nuclear winter; and several scientists who have sounded warnings about global warming. (Prediction: MacArthur will soon reward someone who studies how water shortage is plunging Africa and the Middle East into war.)

Rule No. 6: Be left wing. MacArthur generally finds genius on the left. Only a handful of the 588 genies could be considered conservative. (Black community developer Robert Woodson is the most notable.) On the other hand, four Dissent editorial board members have won the MacArthur, according to the American Spectator. The foundation likes artists who campaign for racial minorities and the needy. Alfredo Jaar, a 2000 winner, creates art that "focuses on injustices around the world—poverty, exploitation, genocide." 1997 winner Kara Walker constructs silhouettes about racial and sexual exploitation. 2000 fellow David Isay produces brilliant radio documentaries about the lives of poor Americans. The foundation favors activists who fight for low-income housing, disability rights, and racial justice. Libertarians, religious conservatives, and free marketeers are never geniuses. MacArthur routinely consecrates the causes célèbres of the left, from sex discrimination to right-wing human rights abuses in Central America (see: Mark Danner, Tina Rosenberg, and Alma Guillermoprieto).

The MacArthur's reliable support of left-wing causes makes it fun to guess future winners. My bets: 1) Jerry Berman from the Center for Democracy and Technology for lobbying to protect Internet privacy; 2) an agriculture activist for showing the dire health risks of genetically modified food; and 3) Edward Hooper, author of The River: A Journey to the Source of HIV and AIDS, for theorizing that vaccination experiments in Southern Africa caused the HIV virus to cross from monkeys to humans.*

Rule No. 7: Be slightly, but not dangerously, quirky. MacArthur favors the eccentric choice over the ordinary. Economist Rabin wears tie-dyes, listens to Abba, and has Johnny Depp posters all over his office wall. David Stuart won when he was an 18-year-old prodigy. Recluse Thomas Pynchon took a MacArthur; social butterfly John Updike has not. And it surely helped Seattle "sound sculptor" Trimpin that he goes by only one name.

All the rules suggest that the perfect MacArthur genius is still out there: a one-named Berkeley professor who choreographs interpretative jazz dances about how genetically modified food will destroy humanity.

Correction, Oct. 10, 2006: This piece misspelled Edward Hooper's name, incorrectly calling him Edward Hopper. (Return to the corrected sentence.)