6 ms·

It would be nice to believe that, but I would posit that output per unit of input differs. Given infinite time, anyone could obtain a Ph.D, but some people just

It would be nice to believe that, but I would posit that output per unit of input differs. Given infinite time, anyone could obtain a Ph.D, but some people just find it easier than others. Those that find it easier are much more likely to do something great than someone who finds it extremely difficult and time consuming. I know doing maths and statistics at university that there were many spending more than 40 hours a week studying and still obtained poor grades AND more importantly had less understanding than others doing no study. Claiming that we are all equal is nice, but ignores the fact that the fundamental relationship between time invested and output is not constant between individuals. Some of us run faster, some of us are leaner, some of us have beauty, some of us greater knowledge acquisition rates. There's nothing elitist about it in my opinion. I'm never going to be michael jordan, just like I'll never be Terrence Tao or Knuth, and I'm okay with that!

fmora 16y ago
You will never be a michael jordan but if you practice hard enough you will become close. That is my point. The differences that you are talking are superficial differences. And how can you compare beauty to potential to learn? Beauty is on the eye of the beholder. Even in races the difference between the top world runner and his peers is not by much. Genetically speaking we humans are pretty much identical. Which means that all of us are given almost the same amount of tools to exist in this world. >>I know doing maths and statistics at university that there >>were many spending more than 40 hours a week studying and >>still obtained poor grades AND more importantly had less >>understanding than others doing no study. This is just an anecdote and you are using this as your entire argument to disagree with me. I find this incredibly disturbing. The first thing that a genius will tell you is that he had to work really hard at it. That nothing was free. He had to spend hours upon hours working at it.
- corruption 16y ago
  Minute differences in genomes lead to large differences in phenotype. Ever heard of databases of SNP's or CNVs? A single base change can make a world of difference. Actually, I'm not basing this on anecdote, as there is a ton of literature to back me up here. The first thing I searched for is quite remarkable for a single generation: http://www.springerlink.com/content/r44140388u23t768/ http://www.springerlink.com/content/r44140388u23t768/ But, without going to the extensive literature, are you seriously claiming that the rate of learning is EXACTLY the same for every human, or that the variance is so tiny that differences are negligible? Both claims are provably false if you have a quick look at the literature.
  - fmora 16y ago
    I do agree that some people may have higher learning rates than others but the differences are too small to matter. I will even agree that there may be outliers, a super tiny amount of the population (although I've never met one, and some that are considered true geniuses have some serious mental deficiencies). Overall the differences when it comes to the general population are too small to be that much significant. The people getting phd degrees have in general the same degree of potential learning ability as the general population. If there were really that big of a difference between their potential ability to learn as opposed to the general population than they would be passing this down to their kids. Since you claim that the difference is so large than with careful breeding we should be able to produce a super race of geniuses within a couple of generations. That is not how evolution works. Improvements are infinitesimally small and I don't see why would intelligence be any different. We all evolve as a species, not as individuals. I do not get the sense that we have been getting that much smarter based on our overall written history of the past thousand years. The reason why some choose to pursue a phd and some don't is the same as why some choose to pursue a career as a painter, musician, writer and why some just choose to be a blue collar worker. It is what they feel passionate about. Some don't feel passionate about anything. Culture and environment also play a major role and this is really what makes a difference between people choosing to do a phd or not. If you or your peers tell you that you cannot get a phd and believe it then it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. There are differences in rates in learning but they are not large enough to matter. Culture and environment play a major role. Edit: Not even Einstein could be called an outlier. He was a bright person but I hardly believe that his potential ability to learn was that much higher than yours or mine. He was even considered mediocre by many of his professors. It really was luck that he happened to be born at the right time in history to be able to make the contribution he did. Even he had to ask one of his mathematician friend for help when doing the mathematics for relativity. (you need to read his biography). Newton considered a giant of physics was considered a pretty ordinary student. He didn't amaze anybody by showing a high potential for learning during andy of his school years nor did anybody imagine that he would come to make such huge contribution to physics.
    - corruption 16y ago
- nostrademons 16y ago
  "And how can you compare beauty to potential to learn?" There's a big difference between potential to learn and actually learning. Yeah, everyone probably could, if they spent enough time at it, attain Ph.D levels of intellectual achievement. But they won't. At some point, they'll say "This is stupid. I have better things to do with my life," and go do those. "Even in races the difference between the top world runner and his peers is not by much." There's not much difference between the top world runner and his peers. There's a huge difference between the top world runner and you or me. The people at the top of the field are already putting in as much effort as is humanly possible. On top of that, they have talent. There're lots more people who also put in as much effort as is humanly possible, but find they're still nowhere close to the top. Usually, they get discouraged by this and choose a passion where their effort gives them a bit more reward. "Genetically speaking we humans are pretty much identical." That all depends on how broadly you define "identical". We share about 99.9% of our genes with other humans. We share about 98% with chimpanzees. Most people would say that there's a fairly large difference between a human and a chimpanzee. In a broad sense, yeah, virtually everything alive is practically identical. A human and an ebola virus are made of the same elemental building blocks, and the roughly million-fold difference in their size and complexity is peanuts compared to the breadth of the universe or the minisculeness of the Planck length. But most of what makes us human is the ability to discriminate, the ability to look at details and pick out tiny differences. So yeah, there's probably a few milliseconds separating the top two sprinters in the world. But those few milliseconds might as well be an eternity for them. The difference is probably irrelevant for a layperson, but it matters a lot for someone in the sport. There's a distinction between "everyone is equal" and "everyone is equal at everything they do". The former is a way of defining equality - I find it a pretty useful way, but I recognize that this says more about me than it does about the world. The latter is just factually incorrect.
  - fmora 16y ago
    I would just add a couple of more nines to that 99.9%.
    - corruption 16y ago
chegra 16y ago
Auto Generate your PhD: http://chegra.posterous.com/auto-generate-your-phd-thesis http://chegra.posterous.com/auto-generate-your-phd-thesis I wrote this code as a laugh when I was doing my Master Dissertation.

fmora 16y ago

You will never be a michael jordan but if you practice hard enough you will become close. That is my point. The differences that you are talking are superficial differences. And how can you compare beauty to potential to learn? Beauty is on the eye of the beholder. Even in races the difference between the top world runner and his peers is not by much. Genetically speaking we humans are pretty much identical. Which means that all of us are given almost the same amount of tools to exist in this world. >>I know doing maths and statistics at university that there >>were many spending more than 40 hours a week studying and >>still obtained poor grades AND more importantly had less >>understanding than others doing no study. This is just an anecdote and you are using this as your entire argument to disagree with me. I find this incredibly disturbing. The first thing that a genius will tell you is that he had to work really hard at it. That nothing was free. He had to spend hours upon hours working at it.

corruption 16y ago
Minute differences in genomes lead to large differences in phenotype. Ever heard of databases of SNP's or CNVs? A single base change can make a world of difference. Actually, I'm not basing this on anecdote, as there is a ton of literature to back me up here. The first thing I searched for is quite remarkable for a single generation: http://www.springerlink.com/content/r44140388u23t768/ http://www.springerlink.com/content/r44140388u23t768/ But, without going to the extensive literature, are you seriously claiming that the rate of learning is EXACTLY the same for every human, or that the variance is so tiny that differences are negligible? Both claims are provably false if you have a quick look at the literature.
- fmora 16y ago
  I do agree that some people may have higher learning rates than others but the differences are too small to matter. I will even agree that there may be outliers, a super tiny amount of the population (although I've never met one, and some that are considered true geniuses have some serious mental deficiencies). Overall the differences when it comes to the general population are too small to be that much significant. The people getting phd degrees have in general the same degree of potential learning ability as the general population. If there were really that big of a difference between their potential ability to learn as opposed to the general population than they would be passing this down to their kids. Since you claim that the difference is so large than with careful breeding we should be able to produce a super race of geniuses within a couple of generations. That is not how evolution works. Improvements are infinitesimally small and I don't see why would intelligence be any different. We all evolve as a species, not as individuals. I do not get the sense that we have been getting that much smarter based on our overall written history of the past thousand years. The reason why some choose to pursue a phd and some don't is the same as why some choose to pursue a career as a painter, musician, writer and why some just choose to be a blue collar worker. It is what they feel passionate about. Some don't feel passionate about anything. Culture and environment also play a major role and this is really what makes a difference between people choosing to do a phd or not. If you or your peers tell you that you cannot get a phd and believe it then it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. There are differences in rates in learning but they are not large enough to matter. Culture and environment play a major role. Edit: Not even Einstein could be called an outlier. He was a bright person but I hardly believe that his potential ability to learn was that much higher than yours or mine. He was even considered mediocre by many of his professors. It really was luck that he happened to be born at the right time in history to be able to make the contribution he did. Even he had to ask one of his mathematician friend for help when doing the mathematics for relativity. (you need to read his biography). Newton considered a giant of physics was considered a pretty ordinary student. He didn't amaze anybody by showing a high potential for learning during andy of his school years nor did anybody imagine that he would come to make such huge contribution to physics.
  - corruption 16y ago
nostrademons 16y ago
"And how can you compare beauty to potential to learn?" There's a big difference between potential to learn and actually learning. Yeah, everyone probably could, if they spent enough time at it, attain Ph.D levels of intellectual achievement. But they won't. At some point, they'll say "This is stupid. I have better things to do with my life," and go do those. "Even in races the difference between the top world runner and his peers is not by much." There's not much difference between the top world runner and his peers. There's a huge difference between the top world runner and you or me. The people at the top of the field are already putting in as much effort as is humanly possible. On top of that, they have talent. There're lots more people who also put in as much effort as is humanly possible, but find they're still nowhere close to the top. Usually, they get discouraged by this and choose a passion where their effort gives them a bit more reward. "Genetically speaking we humans are pretty much identical." That all depends on how broadly you define "identical". We share about 99.9% of our genes with other humans. We share about 98% with chimpanzees. Most people would say that there's a fairly large difference between a human and a chimpanzee. In a broad sense, yeah, virtually everything alive is practically identical. A human and an ebola virus are made of the same elemental building blocks, and the roughly million-fold difference in their size and complexity is peanuts compared to the breadth of the universe or the minisculeness of the Planck length. But most of what makes us human is the ability to discriminate, the ability to look at details and pick out tiny differences. So yeah, there's probably a few milliseconds separating the top two sprinters in the world. But those few milliseconds might as well be an eternity for them. The difference is probably irrelevant for a layperson, but it matters a lot for someone in the sport. There's a distinction between "everyone is equal" and "everyone is equal at everything they do". The former is a way of defining equality - I find it a pretty useful way, but I recognize that this says more about me than it does about the world. The latter is just factually incorrect.
- fmora 16y ago
  I would just add a couple of more nines to that 99.9%.
  - corruption 16y ago

chegra 16y ago

Auto Generate your PhD: http://chegra.posterous.com/auto-generate-your-phd-thesis http://chegra.posterous.com/auto-generate-your-phd-thesis I wrote this code as a laugh when I was doing my Master Dissertation.