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Natalie Portman - Scientist

nytimes.com

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Re: Natalie Portman - Scientist

#111

Post by haploid »

kenjackson wrote: post #23
StudyAnimal wrote: post #9

Come on, she is an actress with a BA in Psychology. Lets have this discussion again when she gets her PhD. Until then, perspective.

The point wasn't the degree. But more that she made the semifinals of the Intel Science Talent Search -- that in itself is prestigious, but at the same time (and I quote): "She’d been in films directed by Woody Allen, Tim Burton and Luc Besson, appeared opposite Julia Roberts, Jack Nicholson, Matt Dillon, Uma Thurman, Drew Barrymore and I’m getting tired of typing celebrity names here. She took on the major role of Q…

"To be honest, I'm not sure there's any degree where the mere act of receiving it would be more impressive than the above feat."

Because being in the presence of popular people is a major accomplishment, right? Far greater an accomplishment than the defense of any original PhD thesis, right?

I can drive to the Viceroy hotel bar right now and be in the presence of a random A-list celebrity if I so choose. By your logic, that act alone sets me worlds apart from the entire body of original research being done by PhD candidates all over the world.

I will never understand the nature of being starstruck. If I want to shut down my rational faculty, I have a bottle of Glenkinchie at the ready.

Re: Natalie Portman - Scientist

#112

Post by vacri »

trunnell wrote: post #104
edw519 wrote: post #45

Nice article. Two sentences jumped out at me. First: “There are very few who are as inherently bright as Natalie is, who have as much intellectual horsepower, who work as hard as she did. She didn’t take a single thing for granted.” then: If anything, stories like Ms. Portman’s show that great success, like DNA, is constructed of a few basic building blocks: tenacity, focus, and the old Woody Allen line about just sh…

Intelligence is real but very difficult to quantify. The last time I was familiar with the literature (~10 years ago), intelligence was best defined as having many dimensions. It's a collection of weakly related gifts. Spatial reasoning, for example, is a different kind of intelligence than musical ability. Perhaps someone more up to date on the science can chime in. In any case, attempts to squash all those dimensio…

Way back when I was studying intelligence there were a number of specialties, but there were three broad groups that these specialties seemed to cohere under:

1) Algorithmic intelligence: the layman's usual picture of intellegence around working with concepts, figures, space, so on and so forth

2) Verbal intelligence: working with language and expression, vocabulary, etc

3) Social intelligence: being able to read people and social situations

This was the state of play ~15 years ago and things may have restructured, but it points out that acuity can be in places other than the usual geeky fare. The sales guy that can sell you something you don't want and make you feel good about it is able to read your cues and formulate responses to counter 'incorrect' behaviour.

Re: Natalie Portman - Scientist

#113

Post by jacques_chester »

acconrad wrote: post #37

I'm envisioning a Chuck-Norris-esque meme evolving from said article. Personally, I'm much more of a fan of Greg Graffin, frontman of Bad Religion and Evolutionary Biology PhD from Cornell, who also happens to be a faculty member at UCLA: http://www.spotlight.ucla.edu/faculty/greg-gaffin_bad-religi...

Regrettably, the meme-space vis-a-vis Natalie Portman has already been staked out by hot porridge made of roughly ground corn.

Re: Natalie Portman - Scientist

#115

Post by J3L2404 »

My favorite celebrity/scientist is Mira Aroyo http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mira_Aroyo. Musician, model and a published research geneticist from Oxford University's Biochemistry department. She co-authored an article published in Molecular Microbiology in 2003 and sometimes sings in her native tongue - Bulgarian.

Re: Natalie Portman - Scientist

#116

Post by acconrad »

jacques_chester wrote: post #113
acconrad wrote: post #37

I'm envisioning a Chuck-Norris-esque meme evolving from said article. Personally, I'm much more of a fan of Greg Graffin, frontman of Bad Religion and Evolutionary Biology PhD from Cornell, who also happens to be a faculty member at UCLA: http://www.spotlight.ucla.edu/faculty/greg-gaffin_bad-religi...

Regrettably, the meme-space vis-a-vis Natalie Portman has already been staked out by hot porridge made of roughly ground corn.

I see this image (http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_KMqOPeCgoT0/S_ABM6dl-II/AAAAAAAAF0...) atop a radiantly-colorful meme backdrop, a la Courage Wolf, with such sayings as "I Just Divided By Zero" and "Maybe You Should Have Kept Your Documents in the Cloud, Tesla"

Re: Natalie Portman - Scientist

#117

Post by Tichy »

jhamburger wrote: post #87
TheSOB88 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if the reason people are 'smart' is because of the way their brain has organized itself over the years in response to learning so much? Then it isn't that dumb people are dumb, just behind.

That isn't reality. The genetic factors of intelligence are well documented. I could have played basketball six hours a day, every day for the last 25 years, and I'd be really really good. But I wouldn't be as good as Lebron James was when he was 12 years old.

How do you know that?

Another case in point: taxi drivers apparently have growing brain regions for geographic stuff (learning their city by heart). I guess you wouldn't expect most taxi drivers to have above average intelligence, but if you tested their geographic "senses", they might register as geniuses. But they also probably didn't become taxi drivers because of their talent - it developed by them being taxi drivers.

Re: Natalie Portman - Scientist

#118

Post by vacri »

ajays wrote: post #2

That was an interesting article. I wish more of the media would highlight Natalie Portman's scientific cred. The last sentence, "You can be a scientist, but if you want your name in lights, you’d better play one on TV." made me a little sad. Eventually, we get what we celebrate; if we celebrate being a cheerleader (or a beauty queen) more than being a scientist, then we'll get more of those. I don't know how much pro…

Why be sad? It's the way of things. A scientist does science, interested in analysing something. An actor is interested in presenting themselves to huge numbers of people and being popular in doing so. It's the whole point of the job - the actor's job is inherently self-promoting; it can't exist without some form of self-publicising.

Re: Natalie Portman - Scientist

#119

Post by electromagnetic »

Devilboy wrote: post #103
scott_s wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This recent submission and its discussion is relevant to your claim, "General factor of intelligence g, a Statistical Myth": http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2210147 I disagree with your claim about Lebron James, but I don't think there's enough data for an evidence-based debate. I do think, however, that people want to believe that others who operate at the genius level in various activities have genetic gifts. I…

Why is it so easy to accept that pretty much everything in our bodies is genetic but not intelligence? I don't see why it would be any different. We already know that the brain is not just one big 'computing mass' but instead consists of many thousands of extremely specialized systems interconnected in a genetically-determined way shaped over thousands of years of evolution. If some of these systems are missing or no…

Everyone isn't born equal, but everything we have doesn't solely come from genetics. Nurture plays a huge role in our development. Saying Natalie Portman is successful solely because of her DNA is wholly disrespectful to her hard work. She didn't get best actress and a masters degree by just slumming it because her genes did all the work.

It's naive and ignorant to ignore nurture in the debate. A lack of Vitamin D or cholesterol can inhibit myelin growth, which notably in the womb causes a miscarriage or still-birth/brain dead baby. It's reasonable to assume that a lack of Vitamin D or cholesterol in a child's formative years is going to cause severe developmental problems.

Natalie Portman has a degree and an oscar for one simple thing: She works hard.

If she didn't work hard she might be a recognizable actress, but she'd be like a huge number of university enrollees in that they never get any degree.

Genetics is a firm foundation, bad genetics can cause lots of problems. But only work is going to build a house, and only hard work is going to build you a mansion.

Re: Natalie Portman - Scientist

#120

Post by cdavoren »

scott_s wrote: post #97
mv wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I find odd is that most people want to believe everyone is born equal. They want to believe this so badly they ignore any evidence to the contrary. For example, I can eat anything and won't gain weight, yet someone else is morbidly obese on the same diet. I can glance at something once and memorize it easily whereas else may have to spend hours and hours. We are not born equal, BUT we can improve ourselves.

I sincerely doubt that you are skinny on a diet that would make someone else morbidly obese [1]. What I think is more likely is that you eat as much as you want and are skinny. You're just lucky that, either through nature or nurture, what you want to eat, and the amount you want to eat, balances out with what your body needs. I agree that there are going to be variations in inherent intelligence, body composition, o…

This is backed up by medical knowledge. It has been repeatedly shown that metabolism varies very little between people when corrected for body mass. What does vary considerably is appetite, and this is the major contributor to body weight.
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