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Oct 05 2009
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Personal Development

Intellectual Polygamist

The Last Days of the Polymath

A polymath, a person who knows a lot about a lot, has always been a rarity. The most well known being Da Vinci. But as the article demonstrates, throughout history there have been people that have managed to master more than one field. The sad part and the essay’s premise, is that in today’s world of focused specialization, it’s probably impossible for people to master more than one field and it’s quickly turning the polymath into a myth. Here’s one of the last polymaths, Carl Djerassi, take on it:

The word “polymath” teeters somewhere between Leonardo da Vinci and Stephen Fry. Embracing both one of history’s great intellects and a brainy actor, writer, director and TV personality, it is at once presumptuous and banal. Djerassi doesn’t want much to do with it. “Nowadays people that are called polymaths are dabblers—are dabblers in many different areas,” he says. “I aspire to be an intellectual polygamist. And I deliberately use that metaphor to provoke with its sexual allusion and to point out the real difference to me between polygamy and promiscuity. To me, promiscuity is a way of flitting around. Polygamy, serious polygamy, is where you have various marriages and each of them is important. And in the ideal polygamy I suspect there’s no number one wife and no number six wife. You have a deep connection with each person.”

From this day forward I’m referring myself as intellectually promiscuous.

via

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Sep 11 2009
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People Aren’t Geniuses, They Only Make Works of Genius

Who Are You Calling a Genius?

Ron Rosenbaum over at Slate writes about genius-dom. He discusses Me and Orson Welles, an upcoming Richard Linklater film about Welles rise. He also writes about other artists that we have dubbed genius.

Has the term been applied somewhat—or wildly (Tarantino?)—indiscriminately of late? And have the prerogatives of genius too often been used to excuse transgressions or mediocrity? (“Not his best work, but he’s a genius!”)

Those are precisely the questions—the nature of genius, the profligacy of genius, the questionable allowances made for genius—that are at the heart of Me and Orson Welles, which is perhaps Linklater’s most ambitious film and is scheduled to be released this Thanksgiving. I think it will cause a stir. Oh, let’s not be restrained: When I saw it, I found it amazing and moving.

Chiefly because of Welles, his genius and his tragedy. The film celebrates the triumph of Welles’ genius, but it also gives us a Welles who abuses the prerogatives of genius in ways we know will eventually cost him. The future casts a melancholy shadow over the proceedings.

He concludes at the end of the essay that instead of tagging artist’s as geniuses, we should only tag their work as genius. I agree, but I still don’t like the idea of genius. First, genius-dom is controlled by the high brow society. If you’re low educated you’ll never understand what’s so great about Picasso. Second, most of the time it’s in hindsight. It took some years, about a decade or so, for Citizen Kane to become one of the greatest films of all time. Third and lastly, it implies that people have unique and inherent talent that comes out of nowhere… or mythical muses in a soul. And this inherent talent myth is something that the neuroscience field keeps debunking everyday. It’s not that I’m against holding people’s work and art in high esteem, but the genius idea should be left back with the guys with wigs of the Renaissance.

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Aug 24 2009
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Do Words Shape Thought?

Does Language Shape What We Think?

Do words shape thought? or Do thoughts shape words? It’s kind of like the chicken or the egg question. Some believe that words do shape thought and it’s called “Whorfianism”. Others think that’s hogwash. But a recent study done to an Amazonian tribe called the Pirahã, posits that the idea that “the more words you know, the more thoughts you can have” may have some merit. This tribe doesn’t have words for numbers and they count using three designations: “around one, some, and many”. From the Scientific American article:

The lack of number words had a profound and surprising effect on what the Pirahã could do. In a series of experiments, the researchers presented Pirahã participants with some number of spools of thread. The participants’ task was simply to give the researcher the same number of balloons. If the participants were allowed to line up the balloons next to the spools of thread one-by-one, they did fine. But if they weren’t allowed this crutch — for instance, if the spools of thread were dropped into a bucket one at a time, and then the participant had to produce the same number of balloons — they failed. Although they were generally able to stay in the ballpark — if a lot of spools went into the bucket, they produced a lot of balloons; a small number of spools, a small number of balloons — their responses were basically educated guesses.

Could it be that the Pirahã not understand the concept of “same amount”? That’s unlikely. When allowed to match the balloons to spools one-by-one, they succeeded in the task. Instead, it seems that they failed to give the same number of balloons only when they had to rely on memory. 

This actually makes a lot of sense. Try to imagine exactly seventeen balloons in your head, but without counting them. It’s impossible. Decades of research have shown that people can tell the difference between one object and two or between three objects and four without counting, but such fine distinctions with larger numbers like seventeen versus eighteen requires counting. You wouldn’t match seventeen balloons to seventeen spools by sight alone. You would count the spools and then count out the same number of balloons.

If your willing to go down a rabbit trail watch this video.

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Aug 17 2009
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Personal Development

Eighty Percent of Success is Showing Up

The Truth About Grit

Boston Globe article about how perseverance is a much more important trait than people assume in relation to intelligence and inherent talent.

The new focus on grit is part of a larger scientific attempt to study the personality traits that best predict achievement in the real world. While researchers have long focused on measurements of intelligence, such as the IQ test, as the crucial marker of future success, these scientists point out that most of the variation in individual achievement – what makes one person successful, while another might struggle – has nothing to do with being smart. Instead, it largely depends on personality traits such as grit and conscientiousness. It’s not that intelligence isn’t really important – Newton was clearly a genius – but that having a high IQ is not nearly enough.

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Jun 29 2009
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Technology and Web

In The Future We Won’t Need Bodies

Get Smarter

Atlantic article about the future of how our intelligence will keep on expanding using exocortical technology (geeky way of saying gadgets and computers), artificial intelligence, etc. It’s an optimistic article about the future in a very Singularity/Ray Kurzweil type of way. And dammit, it even mentions Twitter:

As processor power increases, tools like Twitter may be able to draw on the complex simulations and massive data sets that have unleashed a revolution in science. They could become individualized systems that augment our capacity for planning and foresight, letting us play “what-if” with our life choices: where to live, what to study, maybe even where to go for dinner. Initially crude and clumsy, such a system would get better with more data and more experience; just as important, we’d get better at asking questions. These systems, perhaps linked to the cameras and microphones in our mobile devices, would eventually be able to pay attention to what we’re doing, and to our habits and language quirks, and learn to interpret our sometimes ambiguous desires. With enough time and complexity, they would be able to make useful suggestions without explicit prompting.

We are in the utopian wave of a future vision. Which brings me to ask this question: Why do we only understand how the future would look like in utopian/dystopian views? I know it’s science fiction influencing reality and vice versa, but we can’t just seem to look at the future as just a little a better or a little worse.

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May 01 2009
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Personal Development

Intense and Deliberate Practice

Genius: The Modern View

NYT Op-Ed by David Brooks where he argues that what makes a person a “genius” is their intense and deliberate practice and not their genetic makeup. Like Gladwell, he mentions the 10,000 hour rule.

The latest research suggests a more prosaic, democratic, even puritanical view of the world. The key factor separating geniuses from the merely accomplished is not a divine spark. It’s not I.Q., a generally bad predictor of success, even in realms like chess. Instead, it’s deliberate practice. Top performers spend more hours (many more hours) rigorously practicing their craft.

Perhaps it still has a lot to do with genes, but the intelligence and creativity acquired doesn’t happen out of “thin air”. It’s individuals that are “hardwired” to do whatever it takes to learn everything they can about x subject.

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Apr 29 2009
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Why Being Smart Wont Get You Laid

Why Being Smart Wont Get You Laid

This is true and the correlation between peoples’ I.Q. and the number of children they have, has been studied.

Attracting a partner is all about the dance of polarity. Energy flows between positive and negative electrodes, anode and cathode, magnetic north and south. Unless you actually convey femininity as a woman or masculinity as a man, you’re not going to attract a suitable companion of the opposite sex.

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Apr 25 2009
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Food for Thought Links

Food For Thought Links

food-for-thoughtWhy Are People So Stupid: A Deep Philosophical Inquiry

We think that intelligence is what has made us survive and evolve in this world, but stupidity has a lot more to do with it. Our advantage and “top of the food chain” status has been made possible not because of our “logical brain” that plans and formulates theories, but because of  the “dumb brain” that reacts to instincts and emotions. Like the essay mentions, “stupid people breed”. Here’s a snip:

Stupidity does not hamper reproduction! Stupid people breed. Stupidity may in fact help our ability to reproduce quite a bit. Anyone who has ever gotten married, had children and later wondered – why did I do that anyway? Oh yeah, that’s right, I was really stupid – can attest to the helpful effects of stupidity on the mating, dating, and attraction process. Not thinking clearly is very helpful in making the whole mystery of chemical attraction seem worth pursuing.

This essay is long and divided in three parts, so bookmarking is highly suggested. Simply hilarious and genius.

Positively Misguided: The Myths and Mistakes of the Positive Thinking Movement

“Think positive. Look on the brightside. Don’t doubt yourself. Believe in yourself”… if all this stuff is starting to sound like blind optimism, well, it mostly is. The Skeptic Magazine article examines the positive mental attitude(PMA) movement and demonstrates why it has done more harm than good. Here’s one of the reasons why they think so:

The notion that the riddle of success is more easily solved by attitude than aptitude may be one of the more subtly destructive forces in American society. Not only is it a reproach to rational thought, but in a society already veering ominously towards narcissism, this “hyping of hope” also erodes reverence for hard work, patience, scholarship, self-discipline, self-sacrifice, due diligence and the other time-honored components of success.

*Note. The link doesn’t take you exactly to the article. Click the featured article link, or scroll down some.

Big Entertainment Wants to Party Like It’s 1996

Cory Doctorow on how the Government and entertainment industry are secretly making internet regulation laws to combat piracy and copyright infringement. 

The entertainment industry wants to retreat to the comfort of 1996. It was a good year for them. CDs were selling briskly, but no one had figured out how to rip them and turn them into MP3s yet. Music fans were still spending money to buy CD versions of music they owned on LP. DVDs had just been released, and movie fans were spending money to buy DVDs for movies they already owned on VHS.

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Apr 21 2009
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Hacking Your Brain with Pills

Brain Gain - The Underground World of “Neuroenhancing” Drugs

In depth New Yorker article about people using “neuroenhancers” such as Provigil, Aderall, and others to have a competitive edge. Ivy league college students around America have been taking so called brain steriods to “cheat” (or handle better) their tough academic schedules. It deals with the ethical questions it raises, the known or mostly unknown possible side effects, and really… people that are possibly addicted to drugs. From the article:

Unlike many hypothetical scenarios that bioethicists worry about—human clones, “designer babies”—cognitive enhancement is already in full swing. Even if today’s smart drugs aren’t as powerful as such drugs may someday be, there are plenty of questions that need to be asked about them. How much do they actually help? Are they potentially harmful or addictive? Then, there’s the question of what we mean by “smarter.” Could enhancing one kind of thinking exact a toll on others? All these questions need proper scientific answers, but for now much of the discussion is taking place furtively, among the increasing number of Americans who are performing daily experiments on their own brains.

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Mar 04 2009
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Music

Music That Makes You Dumb

music-that-makes-you-dumb

Virgil Grifith, a 25 year old grad student from Caltech, made a clever infographic correlating people’s SAT scores with the music they listen to. He did it using aggregated Facebook data about the favorite bands among students from various colleges. The results are hilariously predictable. The low scores are correlated with Lil’Wayne, Beyonce, and Reggaeton and on the high score side there’s Radiohead, Sufjan Stevens, and Bethoven.

Via P4k

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