10,000 Hours with Claude Shannon (2017)
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This is where I diverge, as I think if we were to cultivate the core values of benevolence, humility, with iconoclasm in kids we could produce more minds like these. What makes genius so exceptional is less a magical quality of the person, but that they manage to achieve in spite of the rest of us in as we occupy our classrooms and offices. I suspect it's these values that are the necessary condition.
Such a pleasant article about such an amazing mind.
One doesn't need to subscribe to tabula rasa to bet that the real incidence of a Ramanujan intelligence is orders of magnitude higher than its appearance in european universities. The more plausible explanation is that our societies are exceptionally good at suppressing these intelligences because the problems they index on and the only ways to solve them are specifically orthogonal to the skills you need to rise in a bureaucracy.
Genetics might be a thing, but I'm saying any genetic component of intelligence is effectively cancelled out in all but a few celebrated instances by the leviathan mean-reversion machines we call societies.
Edit to add: I think the argument should be about the best way to discover how fat tailed the distribution of human intelligence really is instead of producing explanations for why we should think it's long and thin.
> Genetics might be a thing
Wouldn't it be a huge surprise if genetics weren't a thing when it comes to intelligence (or imperfect attempts to quantify it)? Maybe my lay understanding is out of date or something, but research like [1] concludes that metrics of intelligence are "moderately to substantially heritable," along with "virtually all individual psychological differences."
I think their point was that no matter how strong it might be, it often may not visibly materialize due to various environmental factors, including passive or active suppression and the way our societies and economies are organized. So assuming for the sake of argument it's 50% or even 90%, there are still a lot of reasons why such gifted people may not get recognized and/or reach their full potential.
Ramanujan very easily could've died with almost no one remembering him if none of the letters he wrote were taken seriously. The first two mathematicians he contacted ignored him. If not for the third, G. H. Hardy, giving him a chance, we might not be talking about him. And even he initially suspected he was a fraud of some kind, until he scrutinized the work more carefully and shared it with others.
The culture, tools and values we grow around with has so much power to shape our thinking and values (not even talking about opportunities) that I would be surprised if it didn't dwarf most genetic influence. (Hard to prove: how do you know success was passed down via culture vs genes?)
This is why we are so interested to learn about geniuses: by adapting their values and thinking, we might be able to copy some of their success. This is the process of cultural learning, for better or worse.
By studying twins separated at birth (reared-apart twins), which establishes that genetics accounts for more variation in intelligence than environment, culture, etc. One starting point for further reading: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/20/well/family/what-twins-ca...
The later probably requires one to be quite intelligent, the former, not necessarily, it'd be just one of many advantages.
Throw in the creativity and propensity to think or daydream, frankly I don't know how many professors could do anything else with their lives. We all know profs who literally would put ties on backwards.
But then there are other people that do seem to be on a totally different plane, usually in some specific field. One that comes to mind is someone like Grigori Perelman. I think that’s where the comment on genetics applies, because someone like that truly has biological horsepower that the rest of us don’t have.
Then there are others who are more generalist thinkers, at a system level, that seem to see things the rest of us don’t and have the capability to sort through it all. I’m reminded of people like Stafford Beer. Someone like Noam Chomsky is probably in this category as well but also in the former, like Perelman. If you’ve ever watched Chomsky debate or speak, he seems to have a basically infinite memory and instant recall of what he has read.
So, for example, Riemann came up with Riemann surfaces, which were the inspiration for Riemann manifolds. Finding ways to generalize that was a major starting point for algebraic geometry. Which Grothendieck did a lot of work in.
As an example, Grothendieck's first famous theorem in algebraic geometry was the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grothendieck%E2%80%93Riemann%E.... Which finds an appropriate generalization of a result originally due to Riemann in a much more limited context.
Side note. When the name Riemann appears on HN, it almost always is in reference to the Riemann hypothesis. Which is a conjecture in number theory. This might mislead you into thinking that Riemann was a number theorist. He was not. His total contribution to number theory was a single paper where he used his complex analysis techniques to prove the prime number theorem, and made his famous conjecture.
The only other context that most on HN will know the name from was the Riemann integral. Which is the main integral that most who take Calculus will know.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A1szl%C3%B3_Polg%C3%A1r
Interesting read if you aren't already familiar
As I get older, I am returning more to it's more about nature than nurture: genetics matter much more than environment. I've realized just how hard it is to do some of these things, even with all the resources and tools at your disposal. I spent much time thinking of how environmental cultivation can help, and I do think it matters to a degree, but genetics matter much more, in as much that the only reason environment matters at all is that it helps bring forth expressions of your genes. Having children made me realize this even more. While they pick up on some things and mannerisms of their parents, I have no idea where their unique little personalities came from, and their tendencies towards certain subjects, hobbies, or activities. It amazes me every day I see them change and grow into their own person.
Additionally, it belittles the consistent effort and energy spent by these individuals to train their minds. Genius to an extent has a lot in common with madness, in that you have to be almost mad to take ideas they did to their conclusion. We see the result of their works, but not the countless hours and sleepless nights put in to get to that point, driven by the idea of novelty and discovery.
Not following this logic and this seems to be at odds with the rest of your comment. You seem to be saying that the idea of 'nurture/environment' being more or as important than 'nature/genetics' belittles the effort made by individuals to train their minds? Isn't the complete opposite actually true, ie acknowledging the importance of 'nurture/environment' or epigenetic enabled knowledge/skill acquisition, would actually be to recognise rather than belittle the 'consistent effort and energy spent by these individuals to train their minds'?
>Additionally, it belittles the consistent effort and energy spent by these individuals to train their minds
Let's for the sake of this conversation narrow down our definition of intelligence as "the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills" which also presupposes some form of ability to maintain intense lengths of focus and concentration required to learn these skills and acquire said knowledge.
I will preface by saying surely there have been people whom society would have viewed as "not having the right genes" accomplished many great feats and tasks. And surely there have been geniuses, or what we view in a certain lens as "genius" without having had a reputation for being particularly intelligent.
But the point I am making has three parts:
Point one: If you take the purely metaphysical approach, there is a maximum capacity for intelligence that any one individual has. Evolutionary biology has told us, thus far to our understanding, that this is brain size. Going down this same road, that means certain people have evolved, or fitted more advantageously for intelligence, and some for other things like strength, others for other traits that are important, so on and so forth (by the way to go ahead and nip in the bud, this isn't saying one is better or more important, so don't take this as any kind of statement of supremacy). Genetics plays in part your maximum capacity, for some function of intelligence: whether its the sheer number of skills and knowledge you can acquire, I haven't done enough research personally to make an accurate statement there, but I do know that we have limitations and those limitations are determined by genetics.
Point two: You can certainly overcome some limitations. But your effort to overcome efforts and become "genius" at a given field is still hampered versus someone who puts in the same effort and has the genetic platform. That is why you still have the "scrappy" players in the NFL that are clearly inferior genetically but have carved out a niche for themselves, or you have business people that have a "stroke of brilliance" But in order to obtain maximum human potential for intelligence, the genetic platform first needs to be there, and then you need to put in the consistent effort to acquire the skills, to put them to use.
Said another way someone genetically inclined to gather knowledge is going to accomplish more knowledge gathering than someone not genetically inclined to do so. Just as my lanky and bony arms are never going to lift as much weight as someone who has tree trunks for arms if we hit the gym the same amount of times.
Point three: Yes there are scrawny and scrappy, the "brainless" that have strokes of genius, the people who overcome improbable disadvantages to achieve greatness. But we are talking about the most likely scenario. I have 3 brothers and my oldest was always considered the most intelligent. We had the exact same upbringing and exposure to resources and tools. Our genetic expressions determine our propensities to engage in certain behaviors, which lead to certain interests, which lead us down different roads. Our environments help carry us along those paths.
The ones that are truly great, or "genius" or "best of all time" in a sport, have gone down a road they have the genetic propensity for, and utilized their capacity to its fullest, through consistent effort and energy.
This is at least my current model of the world through my life experiences. Do you think it is grossly incorrect? Happy to be corrected, or incorporate more factors.
Oh and btw...
>If you take the purely metaphysical approach, there is a maximum capacity for intelligence that any one individual has. Evolutionary biology has told us, thus far to our understanding, that this is brain size.
I don't think these days that it's accepted that 'brain size' necessarily determines 'maximum capacity for intelligence' for the record. My understanding is that this is a rather outdated way of thinking about the brain and intelligence.
https://neuroscience.stanford.edu/news/ask-neuroscientist-do...
>Luckily, there is much more to a brain when you look at it under a microscope, and most neuroscientists now believe that the complexity of cellular and molecular organization of neural connections, or synapses, is what truly determines a brain’s computational capacity. This view is supported by findings that intelligence is more correlated with frontal lobe volume and volume of gray matter, which is dense in neural cell bodies and synapses, than sheer brain size. Other research comparing proteins at synapses between different species suggests that what makes up synapses at the molecular level has had a huge impact on intelligence throughout evolutionary history. So, although having a big brain is somewhat predictive of having big smarts, intelligence probably depends much more on how efficiently different parts of your brain communicate with each other.
If we have to choose between these two dichotomies, “nature” “belittles” it more.
It is my understanding that modern science supports this. I’ve seen either a book or article (none of which I can recall at the moment) that echoes this sentiment.
Even if it mentions dozens of studies.
You can find a book on every position in science. In some you can find tens, or thousands supporting a position. And they all references studies and statistics, and such.
But they can still not reflect any real consensus in "modern science".
Either because they cherry pick from a side far away from the consensus (e.g. there are hundreds of such books from climate change denier scientists, but the consensus is elsewhere).
Or because the consensus itself is broken to 2 or more equally strong directions.
I now tend to only consider "settled" science (and that's mostly "settled for now") what has been studied and distilled so long, it's in 101 university books and such.
- Hans Bethe
I believe Feynman's "magic" was in how well he could explain things to others, and there isn't a "explain things well" gene...
How so? There are people naturally skilled with language and communication.
The below podcast, a TWIML AI interview of Charles Isbell is an interesting listen overall and the above question’s assumptions about Bell Labs come from the podcast’s depiction of Bell Labs.
https://twimlai.com/machine-learning-as-a-software-engineeri...
I read this book 'The Children of Tomorrow' [0] in which the author has mentioned about a couple Laszlo Polgar (a psychologist) and Klara who intentionally and carefully planned making their children genius chess players. The result:
> Their first daughter Susan Polgar won her first Under-11 chess tournament at age four. At twelve, she won the World (Girls) Under-16 championship. At fifteen, she became the top-rated female chess player in the world. Going through the conventional Grandmaster (GM) norms applicable to men, she became a chess grandmaster at the age of twenty-two. In 1996, twenty-seven-year-old Susan Polgar was crowned the women’s chess champion.
> their second daughter Sofia who, at the age of eleven, became a world Under-14 girls chess champion.
> their youngest daughter, Judit, who At age twelve, had thirty-five more points in FIDE rating (world chess rating) than the erstwhile world women chess champion. At age fifteen, she became the youngest chess grandmaster, far ahead of any male chess grandmaster throughout the history of the game. Judit is generally considered the strongest female chess player of all time. At age ten, she not only took on chess grandmaster Lev Gutman, but also won against him.
> All three daughters were home-schooled by Klara with a specialization in chess. They figured a long time ago – as an increasing number of parents are discovering today – that there was little sense in sending their children to a traditional school where regard for individual growth and understanding the temperament of each child was negligible. By the time most children come back home from school in the afternoon, they are tired and a whole day seems gone. To expect that they would then pursue intensive training in anything else at all is neither practical nor reasonable.
This is a very important factor.
Whatever things these geniuses brought to the world, were not self-evident to other people. The geniuses not only had to come up with their ideas, but (maybe even more importantly) "sell" those ideas to others.
It is very hard to convince others to even pay attention to new ideas, it's even harder to get them to adopt them.
This is one insight about actual geniuses that shun the "classic" trappings of life that has always intrigued me. They are essentially coerced by their own neurology to aim for academic pursuits, because anything else cannot scratch that itch. Money and power are nice (and Johnny von Neumann loved his parties and loud music) but in the end it's just not that stimulating in comparison to hard abstract problems. Social relationships still have their draw as well, but you have to hit the knowledge-pipe regularly or face withdrawal.
For people of that caliber, living in pre-modern societies must have been equivalent to torture. For the rest of us, it would have been like watching paint dry for our entire lives. Sounds like sour grapes, but in a way I am grateful not to have to deal with all of this. Looking at von Neumann's example again, the fear of death still caused him to lash out irrationally and in the end even he could not escape the human condition.
As an adult I've realized that I need significant and varied diet of books, internet, social time, rigorous physical activity, problem solving, musical practice, and art making every day otherwise I quickly fall into a deep depression. I can see how in other times or other circumstances I'd be turning to substance abuse just to make it through the day. It feels like my mind requires constant effort or I'll be unhealthy and unhappy.
Several family members of mine who are quite a bit more intelligent struggle with this even more. Some have even fallen into substance abuse as a shortcut, but one that never achieves stability, only ruin.
Today it's easier to overcome, but not everyone has the privilege of clawing their way out. By the time they do, then who they are is already defined as someone who is not interested in that itch. Name one scientific genius born into poverty.
If you want to split hairs about what "poverty" means, you might want to put down a line. There are plenty of other types of geniuses (literary, musical, etc) that were born in poverty, so I see no reason to think it's an exclusive club of the financially stable.
Ramanujan
> Ramanujan (literally, "younger brother of Rama", a Hindu deity[14]:12) was born on 22 December 1887 into a Tamil Brahmin Iyengar family in Erode, Madras Presidency (now Tamil Nadu, India), at the residence of his maternal grandparents.[14]:11 His father, Kuppuswamy Srinivasa Iyengar, originally from Thanjavur district, worked as a clerk in a sari shop.[14]:17–18[15] His mother, Komalatammal, was a housewife and sang at a local temple.[16] They lived in a small traditional home on Sarangapani Sannidhi Street in the town of Kumbakonam.
He wasn't born in a rich family but it wasn't poverty either. He did become very poor at certain point in his life due to his inability to focus on anything other than mathematics but then recovered financially as his genius started to be known by more.
Being a genius is a good thing, and also not having “ego” motivations is looked upon favorably. So this is like an egoless brag.
Also: look at what I managed to do indirectly/without even trying.
I once got a top grade after passing an exam where I had read one page beyond what was required (can't remember if it was by accident, or because I was curious about something - but we're talking one page). After my presentation, the examiner asked a final question. This was covered in that page, so I just had to connect two dots and could give him a little proof immediately. Very little brain activity needed. Pretty sure I couldn't have come up with a proof on the spot otherwise.
I sometimes bring up that story as an example of why grading is stupid, but even though the point is how arbitrary the situation was, I can't shake off the feeling that people might think I'm bragging.
I think we should cut people some slack, if we don't know their intentions.
I really like your phrasing of that. That feeling of learned-a-new-thing is addictive and your analogy is apt [to me].
Why? Vitruvius, Thales, Eratosthenes, Archimedes,Euclid all lived in "pre-modern" societies and I dont think they considered their lives "torture".
"I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops." — S. J. Gould
This really sounds like a weird quote that doesn’t help promote their book at all. Why would I want to read a biography written by people who didn’t know the person until five years ago?
I guess that sentence tells all about who the target audience is for the book.
Professional biographers are generalists who turn existing primary and secondary sources into a narrative of someone's life, perhaps with input from the subject, friends and family, etc. They need a fair bit of background knowledge, but they don't need to be experts in the field. It's a biography, not a technical survey or intellectual history, although it probably includes some elements of that.
If you're interested in Shannon's life and want to understand something about his work in that context, this could be a useful to you. If you're primarily interested in his work, read a textbook or his publications.
(although this post's vapidity isn't encouraging)
And that's why most "professional" biographies suck. I am not saying the biographer should dedicate their life to their subject , although it certainly does not hurt, but a certain level of competence beyond "just" reading the primary and secondaries sources is expected for a great biography. Sometimes you get that because of long experience, sometimes you get that because you knew the subject or because you have worked in the same field. If you want vapid books like this one or ,a little less charitably, Walter Isaacson's Einstein go for it. But if you want fantastic tour de forces like Westfall's "Never at Rest", Joseph Frank's series on Dostoevsky, Pais' "Subtle is the lord",Stach's books on Kafka you need an experienced world-class expert in the subject in a multi-year (sometimes, multi-decade) effort.
We can with some reasonable degree of certainty conclude that some bios are better than others and some bios are not worth reading at all, but in all cases you are left with an illusory understanding of the person.
But let's compare the Einstein biography written by Pais: He had a PhD in physics, also a degree in mathematics, personally knew Einstein, personally knew most of the greatest physicists of the 20th century. Worked at the IAS in Princeton, published a lot in Quantum Physics,had several contributions to the theory, was a tenured professor, wrote several excellent books in the history of physics. Now imagine a book on Einstein which starts "Dont worry if you dont know who Albert Einstein was, I didnt know either five years ago"
Anyway, here are some recommendations, hopefully you can pick one or two you still dont have:
Einstein -> Subtle is the lord, Abraham Pais (Already mentioned)
Newton -> Never at rest, Richard Westfall (Already mentioned)
Galileo -> Galileo, John Heilbron
Oppenheimer -> Inside the centre (Ray Monk), more technical: "Robert Oppenheimer, a life" A. Pais
Euler -> Euler: The Master of Us All, William Dunham (This is less a biography more like a compedium, still recommended)
Archimedes -> Archimedes, E.J Dijksterhuis(As many on this list, this is considered the seminal biography)
Dirac -> The strangest man ,Graham Farmelo (This is a popular account by a good writer). Dirac: A Scientific Biography, Helge Kragh. More technical.
That would be better than nothing, and not as good as something written by a great writer who understood Claude Shannon's work.
At this point, we can only take what we can get.
But Shannon was a very interesting character, lot's of oddball moments and projects. It's a fun read.
I think a lot of projects suffer from the fact that the people working on it don’t have deep domain knowledge. A lot of attempts to “disrupt” an industry fail because they don’t understand the status quo.
Because you're the kind of thoughtful person who would evaluate the question of whether you should read a book based on more than the most superficial criteria. (or because you want to read about Claude Shannon and there aren't a lot of options)
Because they're a professional and competent biographer?
I don't know if these people are that or not, but biography is a skill you can apply to people even if you don't know them well.
Unsurprisingly the article reads like run of the mill click-bait cant like Sun Tsu's 31 best pieces of leadership advice.
It's not necessarily the job of the biographer to know the subject - they talk to people who know the subject.
I'm wondering though: have you read a biography you really loved by someone who completely lacked any personal insight into the work of his subject?
Not sure how to do better but I think there is a risk that professional biographers describe only certain easily accessible facets of the person and not go into the depth of their work.
1) I find the implicit connection in the post title to Malcolm Gladwells 10k hours theory of expertise to be incredibly antithetical to everything in the book itself about how Shannon worked and thought and created. If they wanted to be pithy and make a connection to Shannon and expertise, mentioning Range: Why generalists triumph in a specialized world seems much more appropriate.
2) All of it seems to be a little to 'we discovered this interesting person' which frankly is a weird way to position a biography. It is a PATH to people learning about someone, but usually the greatest interest in a biography is going to come from people who know abotu a person but want to know more. It is part of a broader, fairly egocentric approach to advertising the work that seems to really make it about the authors not Shannon, which just strikes me as odd for a biography of someone else.