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I'm not sure why this was front-paged. Twice. I disagree with the premise that a mere mortal can spontaneously boot strap him-self to a higher plane of thinkin

I'm not sure why this was front-paged. Twice. I disagree with the premise that a mere mortal can spontaneously boot strap him-self to a higher plane of thinking through a simple change in perspective. Revolutionary breakthroughs are a product of obsession and hard work. Aha moments are built on top of a lot of grinding. The Principia Mathematica stands testimony to this. This post could have been written in a much more terse manner. There is a very low information density. We don't need wireframes and tangentially related TED talks to understand this stuff. It feels pedantic at best.

espeed 16y ago
It says it's takes "a lot of grinding": "Developing these rare or unique perspectives usually takes a deliberate and devoted focus on something. Einstein said, 'It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer.' Malcolm Gladwell talks about the 10,000-hour rule. He says, 'Studies suggest that the key to success in any field has nothing to do with talent. It's simply practice, 10,000 hours of it — 20 hours a week for 10 years.'" Think of it this way, if you were omniscient -- meaning you perceive everything, you see everything from every angle -- you would have total perspective. But we're not omniscient -- our perspectives are relatively sparse, but the more associations/connections you make, the the more your perspective grows and you start to see a "bigger picture". You don't develop understanding by learning raw facts -- understanding comes from relating to other things. It's the connections that matter.
- Synthetase 16y ago
  I will concede that it covers it tangentially before the article starts veers from psychology into questionable neurology. However, the author of the article definitely comes from the camp which mistakes the perspective shift as more important than the hard work. How? Let me count the ways. 1.Sadly, this article succumbs to the myth that Einstein was bad at math. Einstein had fully mastered integral calculus and differential equations by the time he was 15 and achieved full marks for most of his high school subjects. His huge amount of ability allowed him the critical perspective shifts. The author mistakenly thinks dwarves have the vision of giants. 2.The section "Insights from Weak Association" slips into this solipsism with gratuitous flair. I don't believe the "NeuroLeadership Journal" is peer reviewed. However, according to the esteemed, Mark Beeman detecting weak associations may help problem solve. How wonderfully useless. This precedes which states how understanding the problem is "easy" after all. 3. Perspective before focus. This is the title of the third section Sadly, you will not get perspective if you do not focus. Being able to see differently is a product of sweating over it a million different ways. You have it backwards. Tight mental frameworks are the product of focus. Thinking about how you can revolutionize the field before studying it is premature optimization. I believe that I am exceedingly clear both in my arguments and my opinion of the blog post.
  - espeed 16y ago
    1. It doesn't say Einstein was bad at math, it says his math skills aren't the reason he is considered a genius. 2. The Google TechTalk it references explains "insights from weak associations" in more detail: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeJSXfXep4M http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeJSXfXep4M 3. If you don't have perspective, how do you know the thing you're focused on is of any importance? You can see practical examples of this everywhere: "One of my favourite tuppences for engineers struggling to find a bug is 'breadth first not depth first'. This can be annoying for someone working through complex technical details, because it implies that the solution is actually much simpler if they only looked...I coined this saying because in software matters I find that if we force ourselves to examine the top level considerations first, before tunneling down into the detail of a particular line of inquiry, we can save enormous time" (http://ria101.wordpress.com/2010/02/24/hbase-vs-cassandra-why-we-moved/ http://ria101.wordpress.com/2010/02/24/hbase-vs-cassandra-wh...).
    - Synthetase 16y ago
      1."Einstein wasn't a genius because he was most skilled in math -- he wasn't" Pretty ambiguous imho. And it blatantly plays upon that misconception. "Just" sticking with a problem for a long is not an easy undertaking as the passage makes it out to be. 2."David Rock is a thought leader for the brain-based approach to coaching. David coined the term 'NeuroLeadership' and co-founded the NeuroLeadership Institute, Journal and Summit. He is also the founder and CEO of Results Coaching Systems," His resume speaks volumes. 3.I was working a matrix multiplication algorithm this weekend. I improved by 13x over the naive case. It ended up being one of the faster ones among my peers. How? I ground it the fuck out. I read 4 papers. I coded for hours on end and when I wasn't coding I was thinking hard about it. You cannot see the vista if you deign not to climb the mountain.
      - espeed 16y ago
        But if you just started coding, before you read the papers, you wouldn't have had as much success. You had perspective before you started. Take it to the extreme -- what type of algorithm would a completely naive person have produced? Insight: - the power of acute observation and deduction, penetration, discernment, perception called intellection or noesis. -an understanding of cause and effect based on identification of relationships and behaviors within a model, context, or scenario (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insight http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insight) How would you have been able to come up with a new algorithm without understanding why it works? Perspective is understanding "why".

espeed 16y ago

It says it's takes "a lot of grinding": "Developing these rare or unique perspectives usually takes a deliberate and devoted focus on something. Einstein said, 'It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer.' Malcolm Gladwell talks about the 10,000-hour rule. He says, 'Studies suggest that the key to success in any field has nothing to do with talent. It's simply practice, 10,000 hours of it — 20 hours a week for 10 years.'" Think of it this way, if you were omniscient -- meaning you perceive everything, you see everything from every angle -- you would have total perspective. But we're not omniscient -- our perspectives are relatively sparse, but the more associations/connections you make, the the more your perspective grows and you start to see a "bigger picture". You don't develop understanding by learning raw facts -- understanding comes from relating to other things. It's the connections that matter.

Synthetase 16y ago
I will concede that it covers it tangentially before the article starts veers from psychology into questionable neurology. However, the author of the article definitely comes from the camp which mistakes the perspective shift as more important than the hard work. How? Let me count the ways. 1.Sadly, this article succumbs to the myth that Einstein was bad at math. Einstein had fully mastered integral calculus and differential equations by the time he was 15 and achieved full marks for most of his high school subjects. His huge amount of ability allowed him the critical perspective shifts. The author mistakenly thinks dwarves have the vision of giants. 2.The section "Insights from Weak Association" slips into this solipsism with gratuitous flair. I don't believe the "NeuroLeadership Journal" is peer reviewed. However, according to the esteemed, Mark Beeman detecting weak associations may help problem solve. How wonderfully useless. This precedes which states how understanding the problem is "easy" after all. 3. Perspective before focus. This is the title of the third section Sadly, you will not get perspective if you do not focus. Being able to see differently is a product of sweating over it a million different ways. You have it backwards. Tight mental frameworks are the product of focus. Thinking about how you can revolutionize the field before studying it is premature optimization. I believe that I am exceedingly clear both in my arguments and my opinion of the blog post.
- espeed 16y ago
  1. It doesn't say Einstein was bad at math, it says his math skills aren't the reason he is considered a genius. 2. The Google TechTalk it references explains "insights from weak associations" in more detail: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeJSXfXep4M http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeJSXfXep4M 3. If you don't have perspective, how do you know the thing you're focused on is of any importance? You can see practical examples of this everywhere: "One of my favourite tuppences for engineers struggling to find a bug is 'breadth first not depth first'. This can be annoying for someone working through complex technical details, because it implies that the solution is actually much simpler if they only looked...I coined this saying because in software matters I find that if we force ourselves to examine the top level considerations first, before tunneling down into the detail of a particular line of inquiry, we can save enormous time" (http://ria101.wordpress.com/2010/02/24/hbase-vs-cassandra-why-we-moved/ http://ria101.wordpress.com/2010/02/24/hbase-vs-cassandra-wh...).
  - Synthetase 16y ago
    1."Einstein wasn't a genius because he was most skilled in math -- he wasn't" Pretty ambiguous imho. And it blatantly plays upon that misconception. "Just" sticking with a problem for a long is not an easy undertaking as the passage makes it out to be. 2."David Rock is a thought leader for the brain-based approach to coaching. David coined the term 'NeuroLeadership' and co-founded the NeuroLeadership Institute, Journal and Summit. He is also the founder and CEO of Results Coaching Systems," His resume speaks volumes. 3.I was working a matrix multiplication algorithm this weekend. I improved by 13x over the naive case. It ended up being one of the faster ones among my peers. How? I ground it the fuck out. I read 4 papers. I coded for hours on end and when I wasn't coding I was thinking hard about it. You cannot see the vista if you deign not to climb the mountain.
    - espeed 16y ago
      But if you just started coding, before you read the papers, you wouldn't have had as much success. You had perspective before you started. Take it to the extreme -- what type of algorithm would a completely naive person have produced? Insight: - the power of acute observation and deduction, penetration, discernment, perception called intellection or noesis. -an understanding of cause and effect based on identification of relationships and behaviors within a model, context, or scenario (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insight http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insight) How would you have been able to come up with a new algorithm without understanding why it works? Perspective is understanding "why".