The Last Days of the Polymath | Hacker News Reader

The Last Days of the Polymath

moreintelligentlife.com

16 pointsimgabe11 comments

I think the term "hacker" is synonymous with polymath in many significant ways. I personally find myself inexplicably divided between many fields, all of which I am passionate about. My hacker philosophy has lead me to be well-read in political science, literature, philosophy, and of course computing and maths!

As hackers we are driven by our insatiable curiosity. For me at least this curiosity is not often applied in the same direction.

The article did a rather nice job of talking about this, and the difference between mere interest in multiple subjects -- "flitting" from subject to subject promiscuously -- and actually doing real work in multiple subjects.

How many "hackers" here are accomplished authors -- not technical books, but social subjects or good fiction -- and accomplished programmers, and have accomplished something notable in another unrelated field?

Polyhackers?

http://mattlydonwrites.wordpress.com/2009/01/14/the-price-we...

I think you underestimate the significance of the term polymath. Polymaths don't just read about a lot of topics, they produce in a lot of topics. Brilliant minds like Da Vinci who painted, sculpted, wrote, experimented, philosophized.

Being a polymath doesn't mean you find lots of topics interesting, it means you significantly influence multiple very broad and diverse fields of knowledge. You write papers on nanotechnology, cured cancer, wrote, starred in and directed a blockbuster movie.

You also overvalue the term hacker. I can't tell you how many people I meet who think they are a hacker because they can get a Drupal site up and running or write a blog. I had a boss one time who was so happy that he had finally gotten back into coding. I said, "What'd you do?" He said, "I changed the HTML on the login form!" Ugh.

So, "hacker" is not synonymous with polymath. Hacking is just one small field of knowledge that may be a part of a polymath's repertoire.

My dictionary says

polymath: a person of wide-ranging knowledge or learning.

Wikipedia says

In less formal terms, a polymath (or polymathic person) may simply refer to someone who is very knowledgeable.

This is true; one of the points the article was making is that the current definition of polymath is much weaker than the one we had even a hundred years ago. The GP is probably referring to that one.

I'm sorry if I seemed like I was implying that hackers are polymaths, because I don't think that's the case at all. I think that there are aspects of being a hacker, and being a polymath that are common. A hacker is not somebody who "codes" HTML, a hacker is somebody who is driven to understand some facet of their environment on a fundamental level. Hackers compulsively wrap their heads round difficult concepts ("grokking", so to speak).

I feel like that compulsion to dive head-first into something is a feeling that hackers and polymaths must share.

I also didn't mean to imply that I was a polymath. I don't even really consider myself a "monomath". I am still very much a student.

There is a word for people who like knowledge: philomath. I'd say I'm one of those who's trying to become a polymath. Yes, I must agree that a strict polymath has made contributions to multiple fields, but that's very subjective. I'm not sure what the significance cut-off is contributions. If I have a widely read blog, a startup, and I've developed my own technology, am I a polymath?

>If I have a widely read blog, a startup, and I've developed my own technology, am I a polymath?

No.

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is the problem with the term "polymath" -- too many people seem far too keen to apply it to themselves.

I think the best strategy at this stage in history is the "know everything about something and something about everything" strategy. Aside from making life more interesting, the more you know about fields outside your own specialty the more likely you are to have great ideas in your own field, since most "new ideas" in a field are really just of the form "hey, why don't we try this approach which they use in another field on this field?"

Duplicate:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=844229

Reply on news.ycombinator.com