6 ms·

It has occurred to me, after meeting so many successful researchers in so many disciplines, that the ideal scientist is smart only to an intermediate degree: br

It has occurred to me, after meeting so many successful researchers in so many disciplines, that the ideal scientist is smart only to an intermediate degree: bright enough to see what can be done but not so bright as to become bored doing it. And: There is also an introversion in the innovator that keeps him from team sports and social events. He dislikes authority, or at least being told what to do. He is not a leader in high school or college, nor is he likely to be pledged by social clubs. From an early age he is a dreamer, not a doer. His attention wanders easily. He likes to probe, to collect, to tinker. He is prone to fantasize. He is not inclined to focus. He will not be voted by his classmates most likely to succeed. This is not the type of person the elite universities are looking for. Whether it's Harvard, Stanford, Sorbonne, Beida, IITs, etc., they're looking for high-scoring, blindingly bright geniuses for undergraduate and many graduate programs, too. If they're confident extroverts, i.e., "natural leaders," even better. Are they doing it all wrong?

api 9y ago
They are looking for future high earners who will pad the endowment. Inventors are often not the highest earners. Tesla died broke.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
mcguire 9y ago
Speaking for myself, with limited experience, the best scientists don't make good managers or leaders, but the universities are looking for managers or leaders, not scientists. The best scientists probably won't be recognized during their lifetimes. The scientists you do recognize while they're alive, are probably not the best at "science".
- wallace_f 9y ago
  >The best scientists don't make good managers This brings up an important point. People are good at different tasks. Some people are exceptional with gleaning and regurgitating information from texts and lectures. This is what we mostly label as "smart" today. Others can be great at different things, such as any of the vast sets of social skills, critical thinking, maths, strategy, etc. The problem is that while intelligence in one skill is correlated with intelligence in another, it is not necessarily the case. We probably all have met engineers who openly admit they're not the greatest writers. Another example was one I learned from my interest in chess. Bobby Fischer was one of the greatest at the game, but notoriously struggled with memorizing opening game lines and theory. I am sure many of us here have also met engineers and academics with a lot of knowledge in their field, but whom also hold missconceptions, or easily come to factually erroneous conclusions on things which they have not studies. When I read the story, I was a bit incredulous at the author's words that "IQ is real and it does matter," not because it's such an obvious over-simplification. However, universities will be reluctant to disavow their beliefs in the mystical IQ--an idea which rests in the scholarly literature as an estimation of G, general intelligence--as this is a set of institutions which benefits from their faith not just that it is something which can be measured on a test, but that they do accurately measure it. They're running in circles with this "medium brilliance" because they're out of ideas about why their faith's predictions failed. Turns out those who score the best on IQ tests are those who are the best at scoring well on IQ tests--not the same set of skills needed to be the best scientists.
  - reefoctopus 9y ago
    Do you have a source for that Bobby Fischer anecdote? I’ve read several biographies, and I’ve never heard it mentioned that he had trouble memorizing openings. There were, however, quite a few stories that suggest he had perfect recall.
    - wallace_f 9y ago
      Maybe my characterization of his memory should be revised to instead say he had particular disdain for the necessity of memorizing opening game theory to play at a high level. In the case of your background, you are aware of him complaining about this through many interviews in his later life, and that he was known to struggle with this. He even invented a new variant of chess for specifically this specific reason. Here is one such interview: https://youtu.be/7EuxVOgrEig https://youtu.be/7EuxVOgrEig
      - gowld 9y ago
        That interview is after his mental illness caught up with him. When he was a champion, he was so much better than everyone that it's silly to say he struggled with openings. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_Fischer#Opening_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_Fischer#Opening_theory > "He employs a limited range of openings. Of course, this is not a sign of Fischer's limited creativity, since he compensates for this by a very profound and sound knowledge of the variations he favours [sic]." Plisetsky & Voronkov 2005, p. 270. > Fischer was renowned for his opening preparation and made numerous contributions to chess opening theory He promoted (not invented) Fischerrandom / Chess960 because he felt that memorizing ever-long opening sequences was boring and ruined the game, and that would be soon dominated by computers with their far-superior memory.
        wallace_f 9y ago
        I'm not sure what your source is, but perhaps update the Chess960 Wikipedia page with this information because what you're saying here contradicts what's there. Fischer was, despite being, at one point, the greatest chess player in the world, and on people's all-time greatest lists, predictable in his use of openings, as you know since this is widely documented and you're well-read on him. Your quote even admits this. So I'm not sure what you are exactly disagreeing with that I said. Maybe the source of disagreement is that I unintentionally gave the impression that he has a bad memory, or a bad opening game. As he was one of the greatest chess players, this was clearly not true. Rather, the idea was that he had a notable disdain and discouragement from memorizing learning opening game theory. He was never able to master a very large number of openings... This was a notable feature of him as a player. Perhaps he could have, but that would be speculation. I think he just wasn't as good at it as the other top players.
- dsacco 9y ago
  > The best scientists probably won't be recognized during their lifetimes. The scientists you do recognize while they're alive, are probably not the best at "science". Hard disagree, unless what you mean by recognition is popular fame of the sort Stephen Hawking enjoys. Within their fields, scientists are typically recognized well before they die. Feynman was extremely well known to physicists, but he’s still basically unknown compared to Neil Degrasse Tyson. Alan Turing and Claude Shannon were renowned. Terence Tao, Ed Witten and Andrew Wiles are probably in the top percentile of mathematicians in the world, and they’re heaped with awards despite still being alive. But ask random passerby on the street about any of these people and you’ll get a vague guess at best. Frankly, if anything I feel Einstein’s legacy has enjoyed outsized fame compared to his actual contributions. I think his work was the best of the field in the 20th century, but I’m not sure it’s realistically possible to become as recognized in modern science.
unmole 9y ago
IITs don't really 'look' for any traits with the exception of the ability to crack the entrance examination. For undergrad, there isn't even an interview.
opportune 9y ago
There are not enough geniuses for the top universities to be filled with them. As someone who went to a “top” university (but not as top as those you mentioned) I think only a small percentage of students are really blindingly bright. Most are just significantly above average, get their work done, have at least adequate social skills, and come from wealthy families that pushed them towards selective universities. From there most students fall into “buckets” such as being an athlete, coming from a specific high school with highly wealthy students, playing a certain instrument, etc. Only a small portion get in from pure brains
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
billfruit 9y ago
IITs don't even have an interview, they chose people based on test,for which dubious sweatshop like coaching centres have become an industry by themselves.
b0rsuk 9y ago
I can't be sure about the first quote - 120 could be called the high end of average - but holy crap, the second quote describes me almost perfectly, word for word! The reason I didn't became a scientist is that it SUCKS being a scientist in Poland. Last time I checked the best Polish university is outside the top 400 universities of the world. It's the last foothold of feudalism in my country. The academic environment is dominated by middle aged and senior men who are only concerned about keeping what they have. In many other ways, Poland has an innovation problem. That, and childhood traumas I don't want to bother you with. When you get a bachelor's degree in CS, but you only have so-so grades and it took you 5 years instead of 3, it's hard to impress anyone in academia. So I became a programmer. It was hard getting used to doing stuff initially, but I learned to enjoy it. However, I'm quickly bored by repetitive tasks and programming languages worse than Python. I seem to love learning new programming paradigms, libraries, programming languages even if they're difficult (I wrote a Rust program). I like programming, but I'm not super excited by it. I wonder if you could suggest me some other career I can pursue if I don't have success as a programmer? I thought about an investigative journalist, but few people value good journalism around here.
- romankolpak 9y ago
  Replace Poland with Ukraine and you’ve described my situation as well, with uncanny precision. I’m thinking about continuing my education in US after a 6 years break from academia. I’m a bit anxious no one will want me, a 28 y/o guy with a degree from an unknown university. I also find myself leaning towards journalism and social studies, which doesn’t play nice with my CS degree. Anyway, I wish you luck in any direction you end up taking.
  - thraway180306 9y ago
    I think you are both gravely mistaken or may even externalize as the parent poster said, some trauma. Academia is hierarchical ("feudal"), is so everywhere, and this is by design. And it works. There are wholly different factors such as complacency of local academics in dishonest practices of some of their subset. There does exist a genius loci, the whole social, administrative contexts matter. Also the Wallerstein centre/periphery theory applies, developing countries are at a disadvantage and that is not for the lack of smart among their people or even in the pockets of their academia (remember, Oxford also has a lot of dead wood, the difference lies they have at least 50% of it while you might approach 90%). I would not place the selection process among those factors. It may be romantic to think the US grant system as meritocratic. However historically it was first introduced by Vannevar Bush who in the war time has lead the State's scientific efforts. He saw public subsidy as the modus operandi of a successful effort and also saw the Soviets realizing the same while the US government was barred by the Constitution from direct subsidy. So the NSF was set up not for selection, that's a byproduct, but as a workaround enabling government to pour streams of money to the usual suspects. Wallerstein's dynamics also applies to the inter-US provincial relations with the centres. I find your fears about age premature. I know of many academics who started late or took enormous time. The whole system in Sweden is set up around taking enormous time for everything. If you are able to show good research you might have a honest chance. If all you want to show is pedigree, you set yourself up a rat race with all the Asians for example. There are fields combining CS and media, such as for example the so-called digital storytelling lately combining grammars of graphical visualization, and probabilistic programming in spreadsheets, NLP and what not.

api 9y ago

They are looking for future high earners who will pad the endowment. Inventors are often not the highest earners. Tesla died broke.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

mcguire 9y ago

Speaking for myself, with limited experience, the best scientists don't make good managers or leaders, but the universities are looking for managers or leaders, not scientists. The best scientists probably won't be recognized during their lifetimes. The scientists you do recognize while they're alive, are probably not the best at "science".

wallace_f 9y ago
>The best scientists don't make good managers This brings up an important point. People are good at different tasks. Some people are exceptional with gleaning and regurgitating information from texts and lectures. This is what we mostly label as "smart" today. Others can be great at different things, such as any of the vast sets of social skills, critical thinking, maths, strategy, etc. The problem is that while intelligence in one skill is correlated with intelligence in another, it is not necessarily the case. We probably all have met engineers who openly admit they're not the greatest writers. Another example was one I learned from my interest in chess. Bobby Fischer was one of the greatest at the game, but notoriously struggled with memorizing opening game lines and theory. I am sure many of us here have also met engineers and academics with a lot of knowledge in their field, but whom also hold missconceptions, or easily come to factually erroneous conclusions on things which they have not studies. When I read the story, I was a bit incredulous at the author's words that "IQ is real and it does matter," not because it's such an obvious over-simplification. However, universities will be reluctant to disavow their beliefs in the mystical IQ--an idea which rests in the scholarly literature as an estimation of G, general intelligence--as this is a set of institutions which benefits from their faith not just that it is something which can be measured on a test, but that they do accurately measure it. They're running in circles with this "medium brilliance" because they're out of ideas about why their faith's predictions failed. Turns out those who score the best on IQ tests are those who are the best at scoring well on IQ tests--not the same set of skills needed to be the best scientists.
- reefoctopus 9y ago
  Do you have a source for that Bobby Fischer anecdote? I’ve read several biographies, and I’ve never heard it mentioned that he had trouble memorizing openings. There were, however, quite a few stories that suggest he had perfect recall.
  - wallace_f 9y ago
    Maybe my characterization of his memory should be revised to instead say he had particular disdain for the necessity of memorizing opening game theory to play at a high level. In the case of your background, you are aware of him complaining about this through many interviews in his later life, and that he was known to struggle with this. He even invented a new variant of chess for specifically this specific reason. Here is one such interview: https://youtu.be/7EuxVOgrEig https://youtu.be/7EuxVOgrEig
    - gowld 9y ago
      That interview is after his mental illness caught up with him. When he was a champion, he was so much better than everyone that it's silly to say he struggled with openings. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_Fischer#Opening_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_Fischer#Opening_theory > "He employs a limited range of openings. Of course, this is not a sign of Fischer's limited creativity, since he compensates for this by a very profound and sound knowledge of the variations he favours [sic]." Plisetsky & Voronkov 2005, p. 270. > Fischer was renowned for his opening preparation and made numerous contributions to chess opening theory He promoted (not invented) Fischerrandom / Chess960 because he felt that memorizing ever-long opening sequences was boring and ruined the game, and that would be soon dominated by computers with their far-superior memory.
      - wallace_f 9y ago
        I'm not sure what your source is, but perhaps update the Chess960 Wikipedia page with this information because what you're saying here contradicts what's there. Fischer was, despite being, at one point, the greatest chess player in the world, and on people's all-time greatest lists, predictable in his use of openings, as you know since this is widely documented and you're well-read on him. Your quote even admits this. So I'm not sure what you are exactly disagreeing with that I said. Maybe the source of disagreement is that I unintentionally gave the impression that he has a bad memory, or a bad opening game. As he was one of the greatest chess players, this was clearly not true. Rather, the idea was that he had a notable disdain and discouragement from memorizing learning opening game theory. He was never able to master a very large number of openings... This was a notable feature of him as a player. Perhaps he could have, but that would be speculation. I think he just wasn't as good at it as the other top players.
dsacco 9y ago
> The best scientists probably won't be recognized during their lifetimes. The scientists you do recognize while they're alive, are probably not the best at "science". Hard disagree, unless what you mean by recognition is popular fame of the sort Stephen Hawking enjoys. Within their fields, scientists are typically recognized well before they die. Feynman was extremely well known to physicists, but he’s still basically unknown compared to Neil Degrasse Tyson. Alan Turing and Claude Shannon were renowned. Terence Tao, Ed Witten and Andrew Wiles are probably in the top percentile of mathematicians in the world, and they’re heaped with awards despite still being alive. But ask random passerby on the street about any of these people and you’ll get a vague guess at best. Frankly, if anything I feel Einstein’s legacy has enjoyed outsized fame compared to his actual contributions. I think his work was the best of the field in the 20th century, but I’m not sure it’s realistically possible to become as recognized in modern science.

unmole 9y ago

IITs don't really 'look' for any traits with the exception of the ability to crack the entrance examination. For undergrad, there isn't even an interview.

opportune 9y ago

There are not enough geniuses for the top universities to be filled with them. As someone who went to a “top” university (but not as top as those you mentioned) I think only a small percentage of students are really blindingly bright. Most are just significantly above average, get their work done, have at least adequate social skills, and come from wealthy families that pushed them towards selective universities. From there most students fall into “buckets” such as being an athlete, coming from a specific high school with highly wealthy students, playing a certain instrument, etc. Only a small portion get in from pure brains

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

billfruit 9y ago

IITs don't even have an interview, they chose people based on test,for which dubious sweatshop like coaching centres have become an industry by themselves.

b0rsuk 9y ago

I can't be sure about the first quote - 120 could be called the high end of average - but holy crap, the second quote describes me almost perfectly, word for word! The reason I didn't became a scientist is that it SUCKS being a scientist in Poland. Last time I checked the best Polish university is outside the top 400 universities of the world. It's the last foothold of feudalism in my country. The academic environment is dominated by middle aged and senior men who are only concerned about keeping what they have. In many other ways, Poland has an innovation problem. That, and childhood traumas I don't want to bother you with. When you get a bachelor's degree in CS, but you only have so-so grades and it took you 5 years instead of 3, it's hard to impress anyone in academia. So I became a programmer. It was hard getting used to doing stuff initially, but I learned to enjoy it. However, I'm quickly bored by repetitive tasks and programming languages worse than Python. I seem to love learning new programming paradigms, libraries, programming languages even if they're difficult (I wrote a Rust program). I like programming, but I'm not super excited by it. I wonder if you could suggest me some other career I can pursue if I don't have success as a programmer? I thought about an investigative journalist, but few people value good journalism around here.

romankolpak 9y ago
Replace Poland with Ukraine and you’ve described my situation as well, with uncanny precision. I’m thinking about continuing my education in US after a 6 years break from academia. I’m a bit anxious no one will want me, a 28 y/o guy with a degree from an unknown university. I also find myself leaning towards journalism and social studies, which doesn’t play nice with my CS degree. Anyway, I wish you luck in any direction you end up taking.
- thraway180306 9y ago
  I think you are both gravely mistaken or may even externalize as the parent poster said, some trauma. Academia is hierarchical ("feudal"), is so everywhere, and this is by design. And it works. There are wholly different factors such as complacency of local academics in dishonest practices of some of their subset. There does exist a genius loci, the whole social, administrative contexts matter. Also the Wallerstein centre/periphery theory applies, developing countries are at a disadvantage and that is not for the lack of smart among their people or even in the pockets of their academia (remember, Oxford also has a lot of dead wood, the difference lies they have at least 50% of it while you might approach 90%). I would not place the selection process among those factors. It may be romantic to think the US grant system as meritocratic. However historically it was first introduced by Vannevar Bush who in the war time has lead the State's scientific efforts. He saw public subsidy as the modus operandi of a successful effort and also saw the Soviets realizing the same while the US government was barred by the Constitution from direct subsidy. So the NSF was set up not for selection, that's a byproduct, but as a workaround enabling government to pour streams of money to the usual suspects. Wallerstein's dynamics also applies to the inter-US provincial relations with the centres. I find your fears about age premature. I know of many academics who started late or took enormous time. The whole system in Sweden is set up around taking enormous time for everything. If you are able to show good research you might have a honest chance. If all you want to show is pedigree, you set yourself up a rat race with all the Asians for example. There are fields combining CS and media, such as for example the so-called digital storytelling lately combining grammars of graphical visualization, and probabilistic programming in spreadsheets, NLP and what not.