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Claude Shannon: Mathematician, engineer, genius and juggler (2017)

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Re: Claude Shannon: Mathematician, engineer, genius and juggler (2017)

#5

Post by jjcc »

One of the photo shows his highly concentration. I have a hypothesis that many world class masters have talent to get into "Flow State". Juggling is one of the activity that associate with the state.

Another example is DHH who created RoR eventually became professional sport car racer.

It's well know that in sports area, many top players have the talent. My guess is it's also applicable on "mind sports".

Re: Claude Shannon: Mathematician, engineer, genius and juggler (2017)

#7

Post by lqet »

Kind of off-topic, but one thing that really confuses me about Shannon's biography is the following: according to the authors of "A Mind at Play", Shannon was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in 1983 [0], and the illness progressed "very quickly". They continue:

> In too-brief moments, the family was given a flash of the Claude they knew. [His daughter] Peggy remembered that she “actually had a conversation with him in 1992 about graduate school programs and what problems I might pursue. And I remember being just amazed how he could cut to the core of the questions I was thinking about, I was like, ‘Wow, even in his compromised state he still has that ability.’”

So in 1992, an actual meaningful conversation with him seemed to be unexpected, and after 9 years of "quickly progressing" Alzheimer's, I would expect him to be in really terribly shape and barely coherent. Yet there is an article about him from 1992 [1], which shows him at age 75, in good shape, still able to juggle and to hold a conversation about his achievements and about information theory:

> “My first thinking about [information theory]," Shannon said, “was how you best improve information transmission over a noisy channel. This was a specific problem, where you're thinking about a telegraph system or a telephone system. But when you get to thinking about that, you begin to generalize in your head about all these broader applications."

[0] https://www.quora.com/How-did-Claude-Shannon-come-to-terms-w...

[1] https://spectrum.ieee.org/claude-shannon-tinkerer-prankster-...

Re: Claude Shannon: Mathematician, engineer, genius and juggler (2017)

#8

Post by machiaweliczny »

jjcc wrote: post #5

One of the photo shows his highly concentration. I have a hypothesis that many world class masters have talent to get into "Flow State". Juggling is one of the activity that associate with the state. Another example is DHH who created RoR eventually became professional sport car racer. It's well know that in sports area, many top players have the talent. My guess is it's also applicable on "mind sports".

I’ve watched vide with guy that supposedly has 200IQ and in his view IQ is ability to focus on small on small set of things but many high IQ ppl can’t „refocus” it easily and aren’t doing well in life.
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