3 ms·

Most of the really accomplished men and women I know in medicine have a wide range of interests, often including artistic pursuits. In fact it's quite a tradit

by jrapdx3 11y ago

Most of the really accomplished men and women I know in medicine have a wide range of interests, often including artistic pursuits. In fact it's quite a tradition among medical practitioners to take it very seriously to play a musical instrument, show great passion for photography, do fine woodworking, write inspired poetry, among an endless range of creative endeavors. The same applies to the top-flight programmers I know, though fewer seem to take up visual art forms vs. music or writing. Just a theory, but perhaps the talents that lead to programming excellence overlap more with non-visual expression. But that is the key: the best in any field very likely have more than one talent, so only natural to do a number of seemingly unrelated things well. While I'm hardly in the league of the individuals mentioned in the article, I have contributed worthy if modest accomplishments. Like the subset of physician colleagues juggling "parallel" artistic careers, I'm also a professional artist (printmaking, photography), and not coincidentally pretty handy at manipulating computers as well. It seems entirely natural for energetic, curious, motivated and gifted people to enjoy using their abilities in diverse ways. It follows that the most capable people will be show it in several domains. A final thought is the experience of intense interest in seemingly diverse fields is probably not as discontinuous as others may think. People often say to me art must be a nice diversion from practicing medicine. Actually for me going from one to the other is seamless, there are common elements among my whole range of activities, the essential problem-solving core is not different. Yes the goals and technologies are unmistakeably distinct, yet putting some part of myself into every task is a constant.

puranjay 11y ago
My fiancee's uncle is one of the top doctors in India. He is the private physician to some of the country's leading politicians and bureaucrats. He's often on TV to educate the general public about diseases. He is also a very serious musician and takes an hour of music lessons every morning.
001sky 11y ago
Need to control for the correlation of financial privledge and experience. Its a huge leap to conclude "showing great passion" for something is equivalent to talent. I would say in photography, the industry is supported by two main business models: (1) supporting ad-driven media; and (2) dentist-level dilletante hobbyists. The actual scale of (3) "true artists" as in art-gallery-collector level is staggeringly small. However, it is the work of (3) that really drives (1) and (2). Relatedly, it's a very difficult leap to correlate the various composites of "accomplished" with skill or underlying quality. Its not at all difficult to gain large followers on modern media platforms for reasons not at all relying on "quality". Asymetric access to information will almost always trump "talent" whatever that is when it comes to media-driven distribution networks. It doesn't matter if it is "writing" or "reportage (photography)", if you have information that is not widely available otherwise people will 'like' it, 'follow it' or 'pay' for it. This is a simple cost-benefit analysis by the consumer (its easier and cheaper to consume the experience via media than by actual-real-world means). It says nothing really of the skill underlying the product...the talent of the "writing" or the quality of the "photography" can be quite incidental to the consumer who lacks the relevant choices (this is the asymetric information distribution at play). This is why for the most part, journalists and pj's are not considered part of the artistic pantheon despite their widespread popularity...until they cross over using other formats (eg long-form/anthologies, published works, gallery exibitions etc). The point being that weath and asymmetric information are higly correlated, emprically. Wealth and artisinal-skill or artistic talent, not obviously, but in any even much more loosely, so.

by jrapdx3 11y ago

puranjay 11y ago

My fiancee's uncle is one of the top doctors in India. He is the private physician to some of the country's leading politicians and bureaucrats. He's often on TV to educate the general public about diseases. He is also a very serious musician and takes an hour of music lessons every morning.

001sky 11y ago

Need to control for the correlation of financial privledge and experience. Its a huge leap to conclude "showing great passion" for something is equivalent to talent. I would say in photography, the industry is supported by two main business models: (1) supporting ad-driven media; and (2) dentist-level dilletante hobbyists. The actual scale of (3) "true artists" as in art-gallery-collector level is staggeringly small. However, it is the work of (3) that really drives (1) and (2). Relatedly, it's a very difficult leap to correlate the various composites of "accomplished" with skill or underlying quality. Its not at all difficult to gain large followers on modern media platforms for reasons not at all relying on "quality". Asymetric access to information will almost always trump "talent" whatever that is when it comes to media-driven distribution networks. It doesn't matter if it is "writing" or "reportage (photography)", if you have information that is not widely available otherwise people will 'like' it, 'follow it' or 'pay' for it. This is a simple cost-benefit analysis by the consumer (its easier and cheaper to consume the experience via media than by actual-real-world means). It says nothing really of the skill underlying the product...the talent of the "writing" or the quality of the "photography" can be quite incidental to the consumer who lacks the relevant choices (this is the asymetric information distribution at play). This is why for the most part, journalists and pj's are not considered part of the artistic pantheon despite their widespread popularity...until they cross over using other formats (eg long-form/anthologies, published works, gallery exibitions etc). The point being that weath and asymmetric information are higly correlated, emprically. Wealth and artisinal-skill or artistic talent, not obviously, but in any even much more loosely, so.