21–30 of 500 posts
Can you make yourself intentionally interested in a topic?
However, I think that a prerequisite to this is to be a naturally curious person.
Can you make yourself intentionally interested in a topic?
There are many ways to do this, like meditation, or some substances.
You basically imagine yourself in the future, having achieved some goal, or being in a situation that you like. This image has to be rich and invoke many emotions, so it becomes engraved in your neural paths.
You then work backwards from there, imagining different roads and specific steps on how to achieve that.
It literally and physically changes your brain over time, as you repeat it.
About 20 years ago I was having a quiet pint with a friend and he casually says "I wish I was passionate about something". It always stuck with me, still haven't found anything I'd consider I'm passionate about, still looking though!
I think this is correct. The bad news is we are creating systems which minimise the number of geniuses entering each field. In the past, science was an eccentric hobby, not particularly valued and certainly not a viable career option. Today it's all of these things - like becoming a doctor. Telling your mother you want to be a scientist is far better than saying you want to be a musician. A hundred years ago that wou…
I think this is correct. The bad news is we are creating systems which minimise the number of geniuses entering each field. In the past, science was an eccentric hobby, not particularly valued and certainly not a viable career option. Today it's all of these things - like becoming a doctor. Telling your mother you want to be a scientist is far better than saying you want to be a musician. A hundred years ago that wou…
What's the topic that just doesn't leave you alone? For me it's an interest in animal consciousness and communication, even though I am a physicist by training.
Of late, I'm particularly fascinated by ideas in Cybernetics, but I don't see anyone else being interested in them right now. I think there might be interesting insights into both biological and artificial intelligence (with communication definitely being an important component; consciousness is a word I avoid till I can find a more concrete handle on it), but it's primarily based on interest/taste, rather than motivated goal chasing :-)
(I'm more interested in concrete ideas from Wiener, Ashcroft, etc. rather than the fluff that came later as the word's usage got stretched beyond meaning, as is now happening with "AI")
"One interesting thing about the bus ticket theory is that it may help explain why different types of people excel at different kinds of work. Interest is much more unevenly distributed than ability. If natural ability is all you need to do great work, and natural ability is evenly distributed, you have to invent elaborate theories to explain the skewed distributions we see among those who actually do great work in various fields. But it may be that much of the skew has a simpler explanation: different people are interested in different things.
The bus ticket theory also explains why people are less likely to do great work after they have children. Here interest has to compete not just with external obstacles, but with another interest, and one that for most people is extremely powerful. It's harder to find time for work after you have kids, but that's the easy part. The real change is that you don't want to."
Both fathers and mothers care about their children, but on average mothers care more and think more obsessively about them.
I think males are more likely than females to become obsessed with narrow domains. (I used to be obsessed with chess, especially chess openings.) This may be a partial explanation of why there have been more male geniuses. Graham must be careful about what he writes, but he does say this: "One interesting thing about the bus ticket theory is that it may help explain why different types of people excel at different ki…
I don't think this is the case. Males just have low visibility into typical female 'obsessions' (or just don't care all that much about them), but the reverse is also generally true. Females tend to obsess about things that have a 'social' side, like their shoes collection - whereas males are more into physical, material things that can be played with.
Side note: there might be coming more new essays from pg again: https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1198189199641452544