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Why Some People Are Impossibly Talented

bbc.com

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Re: Why Some People Are Impossibly Talented

#11

Post by amelius »

RBerenguel wrote: post #9
thejohnconway wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess the question is: would these people be significantly better at any of these fields, if they specialised more? That seems like an open question to me. My personal experience as a jack-of-all-trades is that if I try to specialise, I dry up creatively and get less effective.

I recently found out about the concept of “scanner personality”, which covers what you mention (I’m also a “sufferer” of it). If I specialise (too much) I feel constrained and dry up creatively as well.

The trick might be to always imagine multiple angles along which you can approach a problem, however specialized the problem might be. That way, you never feel "constrained".

Re: Why Some People Are Impossibly Talented

#12

Post by yabadabadoes »

suyash wrote: post #6
octosphere wrote: post #3

Yeah but the article overlooks the many polymaths who spread themselves thinly across a variety of different fields, never achieving true mastery of a particular field. The phrase 'Jack of all trades, master of none' springs to mind. There are however polymaths who achieve mastery of all the fields they choose to pursue, although I imagine they are rare.

The articles mentions a criteria that to be a PolyMath one has to make to make at least a major contribution in three different fields. For someone to make a major contribution, by definition they are an expert in that field, therefore there are a fewer people number of Polymaths vs those who are considered as "Jack of all trades".

The question is really how common each base group is and then how many single field experts each accounts for..

I.e. on one extreme every Expert is a jack of all trades that hasn't reached acknowledgement in more fields. A little absurd, but not as absurd as the other extreme: that all jack of all trades that reach expertise in a field simultaneously get acknowledgement in enough fields to be a Polymath.

The only evidence I see in the article towards that question is the analysis of arts hobbies in Nobel prize winners vs average scientists.

Re: Why Some People Are Impossibly Talented

#13

Post by keithwhor »

octosphere wrote: post #3

Yeah but the article overlooks the many polymaths who spread themselves thinly across a variety of different fields, never achieving true mastery of a particular field. The phrase 'Jack of all trades, master of none' springs to mind. There are however polymaths who achieve mastery of all the fields they choose to pursue, although I imagine they are rare.

... is this a joke? The article covers this in almost exactly these words. I wonder how often HN commenters actually read the full text of the article they're commenting on?

> There are, of course, some good reasons why we might be hesitant to pursue multiple interests. One is the fear that we might spread ourselves too thinly if we devote ourselves to more than one avocation. With a divided attention, we would fail to achieve success in any domain – the idea that the “Jack of all trades is the master of none”.

Re: Why Some People Are Impossibly Talented

#14

Post by yowlingcat »

'According to his son and daughter, he would play music whenever he faced an intractable problem, and would often finish the performance by saying, “There now, I’ve got it”. It was a much better use of his time than continuing to fruitlessly agonise over the maths or physics.'

Fascinating. Definitely have experienced this with hard problems and writing music. There must be some kind of orthogonality going on there.

Re: Why Some People Are Impossibly Talented

#16

Post by z3t4 »

thejohnconway wrote: post #5
octosphere wrote: post #3

Yeah but the article overlooks the many polymaths who spread themselves thinly across a variety of different fields, never achieving true mastery of a particular field. The phrase 'Jack of all trades, master of none' springs to mind. There are however polymaths who achieve mastery of all the fields they choose to pursue, although I imagine they are rare.

I guess the question is: would these people be significantly better at any of these fields, if they specialised more? That seems like an open question to me. My personal experience as a jack-of-all-trades is that if I try to specialise, I dry up creatively and get less effective.

Many world class athletes are also very good at other classes or sports. But by specialising in one event, it will be enough to take them from just outside an OS final in multiple events - to inside an OS final in one event. This can be the difference between a 1 million sponsor contract or no contract.

Re: Why Some People Are Impossibly Talented

#17

Post by copperx »

ackbar03 wrote: post #10
suyash wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The articles mentions a criteria that to be a PolyMath one has to make to make at least a major contribution in three different fields. For someone to make a major contribution, by definition they are an expert in that field, therefore there are a fewer people number of Polymaths vs those who are considered as "Jack of all trades".

I don't think even Einstein fits by that definition. An instrument as a hobby hardly is a contribution. Da Vinci is probably one of the closest I can think of by that definition and even he said something like "tell me if anything ever was done" since he felt like he never managed to finish anything properly

The definition also fits Von Neumann perfectly.

Re: Why Some People Are Impossibly Talented

#18

Post by morelisp »

ackbar03 wrote: post #10
suyash wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The articles mentions a criteria that to be a PolyMath one has to make to make at least a major contribution in three different fields. For someone to make a major contribution, by definition they are an expert in that field, therefore there are a fewer people number of Polymaths vs those who are considered as "Jack of all trades".

I don't think even Einstein fits by that definition. An instrument as a hobby hardly is a contribution. Da Vinci is probably one of the closest I can think of by that definition and even he said something like "tell me if anything ever was done" since he felt like he never managed to finish anything properly

There are plenty of uncontroversial polymaths in the 20th century alone - von Neumann (hopefully no need to list here), Chomsky (political science, linguistics, computer science), and Nabokov (literature, chess, entomology) come to mind quickly.

In retrospect, many polymaths look like an expert in only one field because they more or less invented it. (Chomsky synthesized computation and lingustics into computational linguistics; Helmhotz synthesized physics, medicine, psychology, and philosophy to help found modern psychophysics; Frege, Russell, and Whitehead synthesized logic and mathematics into, uh, mathematics.)

Another issue seems to be assuming that all or at least one of the fields is a science (or even a hard science), but this isn't the case. Paul Robeson has been cited as a polymath due to his contribution across several dramatic arts, law degree, his political activism, and football career.

Re: Why Some People Are Impossibly Talented

#19

Post by solinent »

octosphere wrote: post #3

Yeah but the article overlooks the many polymaths who spread themselves thinly across a variety of different fields, never achieving true mastery of a particular field. The phrase 'Jack of all trades, master of none' springs to mind. There are however polymaths who achieve mastery of all the fields they choose to pursue, although I imagine they are rare.

Jack of all trades, mater of none, better than a master of one.

Re: Why Some People Are Impossibly Talented

#20

Post by adamgia »

yowlingcat wrote: post #14

'According to his son and daughter, he would play music whenever he faced an intractable problem, and would often finish the performance by saying, “There now, I’ve got it”. It was a much better use of his time than continuing to fruitlessly agonise over the maths or physics.' Fascinating. Definitely have experienced this with hard problems and writing music. There must be some kind of orthogonality going on there.

It implies the existence of a common underlying connection between music (or should I say art in general) and pretty much everything else. And there's the science-society-art triangle that seems to work really nicely together as three pillars of knowledge you can pursue. There's a perspective based on either of those three you can take when considering anything. I have no punchline, it's fascinating to me too.
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