331–340 of 439 posts
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This sentiment is humorous, as I'm an optimist apparently. More children will learn more quickly. Applying AI to education should supercharge the smartest.
> Applying AI to education should supercharge the smartest. What does that mean?
True
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I think about this often. Having studied mathematics, it's a field where there is a huge range of talents, even at 18 (and younger). There are genuinely gifted people who stride ahead, but the sad reality is that even at top institutions most of the undergraduate cohort will be merely averagely clever people who have received great (often private) tuition. In a field where finding every genius really matters because…
I don't think this is the whole story. Of course, it is a tragedy when people who had undeniable raw talent are neglected or passed over and don't get to achieve as they might. It's also sad and disappointing when we observe structural injustices in our society. However, isn't it possible that giving great teaching resources to people who aren't already at the top level in terms of raw talent, allows them to succeed…
There's a catch in it as well, which is that you cannot really identify a genius up-front. A genius is, by definition, someone who thinks differently. A lot of people think differently. But the thing with the genius is that he thinks differently and correctly. The latter part won't be obvious until after the fact.
When Alex Ferguson started out as a Manchester United manager he probably already was a genius, but it wasn't obvious until many years later.
Same with Sergey Brin and Larry Page. They probably had a genius vision for the company right from the start. But it's only in retrospect that we recognize that it was, in fact, a genius vision.
Finding a genius is, I think, almost by definition, impossible.
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Someone needs to make a movie about his life, or at least a documentary.
Good luck finding a movie about Isaac Newton or Einstein, or literally anyone whose value to the world is more than pretending to be someone else or lying a lot, let alone a very interesting mathematician no one recognizes. (Ok I know there’s a few movies about folks like Turing and Nash, but it’s pretty slim pickings).
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An unfortunate parallel: the best physics professor (unfortunately, just an adjunct) I ever had was a Russian immigrant. He quit teaching to go run a blini restaurant because it paid way more :(
Why is this :( though? The market is working and filling a market opportunity. Maybe he likes running his own business? Unless he was being discriminated against for being a Russian immigrant and treated unfairly?
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Good luck finding a movie about Isaac Newton or Einstein, or literally anyone whose value to the world is more than pretending to be someone else or lying a lot, let alone a very interesting mathematician no one recognizes. (Ok I know there’s a few movies about folks like Turing and Nash, but it’s pretty slim pickings).
There is a tv show about Einstein, well, only the first season is about him.
Math used to be a young person game, but it now requires so much knowledge just to get to the frontiers of human knowledge, not to speak of making a dent into uncharted territory, that results are being obtained later and later in life. When mathematicians have had time to accrue sufficient knowledge while still being sharp enough to make the intellectual leap. The sad part is that as the trend continues we may reach…
I would say that it supports the idea that only young people are able to change the fundations of maths, while older people can still use the existing techniques to push the bord, specially on those super technical fields where experience and knowledge are an advantage.
Math used to be a young person game, but it now requires so much knowledge just to get to the frontiers of human knowledge, not to speak of making a dent into uncharted territory, that results are being obtained later and later in life. When mathematicians have had time to accrue sufficient knowledge while still being sharp enough to make the intellectual leap. The sad part is that as the trend continues we may reach…
>Math used to be a young person game, but it now requires so much knowledge just to get to the frontiers of human knowledge, not to speak of making a dent into uncharted territory, that results are being obtained later and later in life [...] The sad part is that as the trend continues we may reach a point where a mathematician's intellectually productive life is not sufficient to contribute anything novel, statistic…
Speaking as a former undergraduate math student producing “new” results in REU programs, all but a few of these results are completely negligible. There’s still a genius here and there though.