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Beware the Casual Polymath

applieddivinitystudies.com

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Re: Beware the Casual Polymath

#71

Post by hackerfromthefu »

croissants wrote: post #67
rmrfstar wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Generalists are typically far better at motivating the relevance of a problem/situation and filtering out the important details from the unimportant. Couldn't agree more. John von Neumann is a perfect example. His colleagues would often lament his unwillingness to adopt a narrow specialty, but I think it was his wide range that allowed him to maintain the passion that made him so effective. [1] [1] http://paulgraha…

Well yeah, given the choice between specializing in one area and acquiring specialist-level expertise in a bunch of areas before you're 40 (which is what von Neumann did -- look at all of the sections in his Wikipedia page [1]!), it's better to do the second one. But most people are choosing between specializing in one or maybe two areas and having very-sub-specialist-level expertise in more. von Neumann's not an exa…

I think this illuminates the difference that makes the difference here.

A polymath is actually good at many things, not just has an opinion about them. This takes an unusual level of ability.

In other words a generalist is not a polymath, because the polymath is better at the generalised abilities.

That's what felt wrong about the article, it was conflating unusually talented polymaths with the ubiquitous averagely talented internet pundits :p

Re: Beware the Casual Polymath

#72

Post by codpiece »

gilleain wrote: post #11
dvt wrote: post #3

The article is interesting, and probably right -- albeit maybe slightly unfair to da Vinci -- but I don't really buy this premise: > We live in times of great disaggregation, and yet, seem to learn increasingly from generalists. Most teaching is done by non-generalists -- be it in schools, on TV, in documentaries, in courtrooms, or basically anywhere of any import. There's quite a bit of irony in the author quoting W…

The point about Leonardo da Vinci makes sense, but is definitely unfair. Of course, an art historian might assume Leonardo's mathematics was as great as his artistic ability. In practice, no one has the time or the ability to be equally great in all fields of knowledge. This paper : https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s00004-007-005... talks about what mathematics he did > . The equation a^n + b^n = c^n doe…

I have written that last sentence in my journal to record for posterity.

Re: Beware the Casual Polymath

#73

Post by unwoundmouse »

maybe this is just the trend towards greater understanding with increased information transfer speed - the average amount of knowledge one has will increase. The people back in hunter gatherer tribes knew very how to hunt and make weapons very well, i'm sure they would consider someone who knows about darwin's theory of evolution and newton's laws of physics a casual polymath, even though those are considered commonplace mental models today

Re: Beware the Casual Polymath

#74

Post by haihaibye »

dvt wrote: post #52
onecommentman wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most teaching is done by non-generalists -- be it in schools, on TV, in documentaries, in courtrooms. So you believe K-8 teaching, the greatest amount of teaching by far globally in the modern era, is done by non-generalists? Who specializes in arithmetic (number theorists and spreadsheet wizards aside)? If you define “pedagogy” as a specialty, perhaps, but that’s not the generalist/specialist discussion here. Even…

> So you believe K-8 teaching, the greatest amount of teaching by far globally in the modern era, is done by non-generalists? I think you're smart enough to know what I meant (and I even made the "of import" qualification). You don't need to hold a PhD in mathematics to teach kids their multiplication tables.

I think you should have been explicit that you mean say advanced or post graduate education.

Most people think there is great value in teaching people to read or learn simple maths.

Re: Beware the Casual Polymath

#75

Post by jodrellblank »

gerdesj wrote: post #47

Am I seeing the same thing as you? Below is a CnP from the start of what I see when I follow the link. It's absolute rubbish. This is an experiment. ------------------ 8 In the past, an expert in one field of Psychology might have been forced to teach a broad survey class. Today, you could have each lecture delivered by the world’s leading expert. Outside of academia, you might follow one writer’s account to learn ab…

... I don't think it's absolute rubbish?

"Aggregation" is centralisation, meaning centralising all information in the hands of a few - e.g. people who could only get an education from a religious school with a religion as well, or you must take every bit of advice from the local wise men and their ivory towers, or from the government, like buying all products from Walmart.

"Disaggregation" is de-centralisation, you can get information from many sources - e.g. theology from the Church, medicine from the doctors, happiness from the psychiatrists, education from the academy, like going to a baker for bread, a butcher for meat, a cheesemonger for cheese, instead of Walmart for everything, and get better quality bread, cuts of meat, cheese, from people who specialise in those things.

We live in times where small specialists can broadcast their information, freely, to people far and wide - the internet, social media - makes "going to" a specialist just as convenient as going to a central source. So you might expect people to do that, and get their information from many specialist sources, political news and ideas from someone who specialises in politics, gardening advice from a gardening forum. And yet, the author claims, we seem to congregate around popular people instead and try to get all information on all sources from them, somewhat paradoxically.

In the past, an expert in one field of Psychology might have been the only person available or accessible to teach many classes and the students would learn less well from the lack of expertise. Today, there are many more people, more specialists, and more options for remote education, they could have each lecture from a world expert on that topic, but we don't do that.

Outside of academia, a normal person might choose to follow many social media accounts on many topics, to gain specialist information in each area they are interested in. In economic terms, decentralising control of content and publishing ought to remove bottlenecks from running everything through a few people, remove problems such as only being able to access education if you also take religion and life advice from the same source, and create extra benefits because each specialist can go deep into their specialty.

Re: Beware the Casual Polymath

#78

Post by robocat »

liweiyang wrote: post #46

I'm about 95% certain this article was written with GPT or some similar algorithm. I don't have clear evidence for this other than that personal experience writing code that utilized the API looking at the outputs it gives on the playground defaults extensively. This looks exactly like what GPT output looks like to my eyes. If I'm wrong I apologize for the insult but the article doesn't appear very cohesive or cohere…

HN guidelines: “Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.”

There are multiple tells to me which indicate that the article is not GPT or similar. Edit: I do agree there is word salad, but many writers/thinkers do that as good as any ML system ;-)

Re: Beware the Casual Polymath

#80

Post by tzs »

gilleain wrote: post #11
dvt wrote: post #3

The article is interesting, and probably right -- albeit maybe slightly unfair to da Vinci -- but I don't really buy this premise: > We live in times of great disaggregation, and yet, seem to learn increasingly from generalists. Most teaching is done by non-generalists -- be it in schools, on TV, in documentaries, in courtrooms, or basically anywhere of any import. There's quite a bit of irony in the author quoting W…

The point about Leonardo da Vinci makes sense, but is definitely unfair. Of course, an art historian might assume Leonardo's mathematics was as great as his artistic ability. In practice, no one has the time or the ability to be equally great in all fields of knowledge. This paper : https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s00004-007-005... talks about what mathematics he did > . The equation a^n + b^n = c^n doe…

> And the final demonstration of the so-called “Fermat’s third theorem”, which is that the general equation does not have a solution for n > 2 , was given by Andrew Weil in 1993

That should be Andrew Wiles [1]. There was a mathematician who did important work in number theory named Andre Weil [2]. I wonder if they got him mixed up with Wiles?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Wiles

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A9_Weil

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