[HN Gopher] The genuine polymath is still one in a million
___________________________________________________________________
The genuine polymath is still one in a million
Author : Hooke
Score : 22 points
Date : 2020-05-17 01:57 UTC (21 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.spectator.co.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.spectator.co.uk)
| 0d9eooo wrote:
| One thing that struck me at an exhibit of Leonardo's notebooks is
| how totally wrong he was about so many things. It wasn't
| mentioned in the exhibit but for every one thing he was correct
| about, it seemed like there were many many, dozens perhaps, that
| he was completely incorrect about. Some of the ideas seem
| preposterous now, although it's difficult to view them
| appropriately as they would have been at the time.
|
| This could be seen positively or negatively. One way of spinning
| it is that he was persistent in exploring ideas. Another way,
| though, is that something -- mythmaking, hype, his art, whatever
| it is -- has allowed history to ignore the fact that he seemed to
| have been wrong more often than he was right, along the lines of
| a broken clock being right twice a day.
|
| In either case, I think there's something to be said for some
| kind of cultural and social context playing a strong role in how
| all of this is interpreted. A different person in the wrong place
| or wrong time might have been interpreted as a crackpot.
| bluquark wrote:
| Looks like a case of an attention-grabbing headline not written
| by the article author. The book review itself seems to argue that
| the idea of polymathy can no longer be applied at all today.
| ginko wrote:
| I was about to say that. If a genuine polymath were 1 in a
| million we should have 7000 von Neumanns right now.
| danharaj wrote:
| Maybe they're all working in sweatshops or mining cobalt.
| tomrod wrote:
| For the past few decades, we've absorbed them into adtech.
| cambalache wrote:
| Only in HN is the notion that the "geniuses" of this
| generation are working for the FAANGs, sure, some may be,
| but I am willing to bet 99% of them are not.
| derefr wrote:
| How do you figure? Intelligence / multi-talented-ness,
| and interest in changing the world, aren't necessarily
| correlated. Most "geniuses" still probably just want to
| get reasonable wealthy and retire to pursue their
| hobbies. (They just have more interesting hobbies than
| the average person.) And, for people who weren't born to
| wealth, the FAANGs are a good place to get one's f-you
| money from, without necessarily needing to dedicate the
| entirety of one's motivational resources to solving work-
| related problems.
| monkeydreams wrote:
| I think it might be an allusion to the Jeff Hammerbacher
| quote "The best minds of my generation are thinking about
| how to make people click ads".
| segfaultbuserr wrote:
| Or optimizing microseconds out of high-frequency trading
| algorithms. Quote James Tobin (1984),
|
| > I [suspect] that we are throwing more and more of our
| resources, including the cream of our youth, into
| financial activities remote from the production of goods
| and services, into activities that generate high private
| rewards disproportionate to their social productivity. I
| suspect that the immense power of the computer is being
| harnessed to this 'paper economy', not to do the same
| transactions more economically but to balloon the
| quantity and variety of financial exchanges.
| glitchc wrote:
| You know we might just have 7000 von Neumanns among us, but
| may be unable to recognize them. The vast majority of 7+
| billion people on the planet are unknown to everyone some
| except family and a couple of friends.
|
| The adage "Popular does not equal good" has never been more
| relevant.
| [deleted]
| lostinroutine wrote:
| > the idea of knowing everything
|
| I don't think that's what defines a polymath, for if it does,
| then none existed. My view of what makes one a polymath is deep
| --likely cutting-edge-- expertise in several disciplines.
|
| That being said, I agree with the general sentiment that it is
| increasingly harder to become a polymath these days, especially
| in the disciplines with lots of active research. To have an
| expertise in just one discipline it takes years of education (to
| catch up with progress) and then a considerable recurrent
| investment of time to stay up-to-date.
|
| If one is to be a polymath in a varied set of disciplines where
| overlap is minimal (see Leonardo), one would have to go through
| the mentioned process of acquiring and maintaining expertise for
| each discipline. This is different for a polymath in a set of
| closely-related disciplines, because there's only so much more
| (compared to being expert in one discipline) one needs to do to
| be a polymath because there's a lot of overlap. But it is
| debatable whether that even counts as a polymath, a point raised
| in:
|
| > Is Judith Butler's supposed eminence in 'philosophy,
| linguistics and politics' enough to qualify her?
| 0d9eooo wrote:
| I agree with your point re: the depth of information in a field
| making it difficult to maintain competence in multiple fields.
|
| On the other hand, I think society increasingly projects an
| expectation of this, that someone cannot possess skills in
| multiple areas, where areas are increasingly narrowly defined.
| I think in part this plays a role in stress over higher
| education, in that a degree is seen as a skill certificate
| (that is, a statement about what someone can do) rather than an
| opportunity to learn (that is, a statement about what someone
| has done).
| JacobAldridge wrote:
| This is the focus of my main keynote presentation topic, _On
| Being a Deep Generalist_.
|
| Specialisation came to the fore during the Industrial Revolution
| and achieved a form of preeminence in the 20th Century that
| hadn't existed elsewhere in human history when knowing, at depth,
| a wide variety of skills and disciplines was either essential for
| survival or in order to be considered a well-rounded individual.
|
| The internet, not without ongoing battles against vested
| interests, has solved the discoverability challenge faced with
| approaching the wealth of knowledge created in the past few
| centuries. For many of us aspiring polymaths (and I agree with
| the other comments here that a polymath isn't someone who knows
| "everything about everything", but rather knows "a lot about a
| lot" or "enough about enough") the challenge is mental and
| societal.
|
| We convince ourselves that we must specialize to succeed; most
| schools and many workplaces promote the same. Yet creativity and
| insight so often depends on interdisciplinary knowledge and the
| ability to use our brains to connect novel ideas.
|
| It's not the right choice for everyone. If you want to be the
| best in the world (or the top 1%) at something, then specialize.
| But most of us are more varied than that, which has benefits for
| us as business owners, or employees, and as humans.
| friendlybus wrote:
| The same Judith Butler that came up with 'performativity'? Good
| luck with that spectator!
|
| I dont understand the polymath moniker, it seems to be a British
| definition that elucidates a role in life that requires multiple
| high level skills without describing where that applies in modern
| life. As if it were a position one could attain rather than a
| useful, purposeful skill.
|
| Tech leads like Jobs described art and science at the highest
| level as the same thing. He demonstrated in production, high
| level knowledge in both distinct categories, but would likely
| never be discussed by the Brits.
|
| Its strange to see someone like Stephen Fry being described as a
| polymath, when he works as a quiz show host and author. He is
| paid to learn and recite that learning independent of its
| application in society.
|
| I prefer the older British term 'expert generalist' as it seems
| more accurate and discusses people who applied their learning
| more frequently.
| [deleted]
| toohotatopic wrote:
| >In fact these days we are all that man or woman; you only need
| to resort to Wikipedia to realise how outdated the idea of
| knowing everything -- or indeed anything -- has become.
|
| The word is polymath, like polyglot. We don't expect a polyglot
| to speak all languages.
|
| Leonardo won't have known everything either.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2020-05-17 23:00 UTC)