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Somehow people who are most convinced of their genius are the least interesting to me. Contrast with Roger Penrose and you couldn't meet a more humble, interest

Somehow people who are most convinced of their genius are the least interesting to me. Contrast with Roger Penrose and you couldn't meet a more humble, interesting and interested conversationalist

moelf 3y ago
idk which is more cringeworth, Wolfram's computational reality https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/physicists-criticize-stephen-wolframs-theory-of-everything/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/physicists-critic... or Penrose's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orchestrated_objective_reduction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orchestrated_objective_reducti...
xdavidliu 3y ago
Don Knuth and Preet Bharara too. I had an advisor in undergrad in plasma physics named Roscoe White who was also quite humble and brilliant.
Mistletoe 3y ago
Feynman never needed to tell you how smart he was, it just flowed out naturally as he talked about things in his beautiful clear way.
- thefaux 3y ago
  Disagree on Feynman. He seemed extraordinarily invested in showing off and self-mythologizing.
  - vunderba 3y ago
    Yeah, very obviously a highly intelligent man but it's immediately obvious that he was very carefully crafting how he wanted to be perceived by others in several of his self aggrandizing memoirs.
  - xetplan 3y ago
    Murray Gell-Mann said exactly this. He basically got tired of working with him because everything about his personality was to generate stories and mythologies about himself. To me, this whole idea shows what a fool the average man is. As if we all know so much about Richard Feynman compared to Murray Gell-Mann because of what a great scientist Richard Feynman was. When OBVIOUSLY, the reason is because of the degree Feynman self promoted himself compared to other scientists.
- bdjsiqoocwk 3y ago
  Jesus Christ what an awful example. If there's one thing that feynman did whenever he met anyone, was made it clear to them that he's smarter.
aleph_minus_one 3y ago
> Somehow people who are most convinced of their genius are the least interesting to me. I know some people who are great in their area of research, but are, to put it very midly, not the most humble persons (to give an example of one such person (a great research): "the people who could learn a whole lot from me are all tenured professors in my area of research"; just to be clear: his judgement is right :-) ). In my experience, great researchers who are full of themselves nearly always had to work/fight very hard for where they are now, and are thus very bitter about worse researchers who have it easier.

Somehow people who are most convinced of their genius are the least interesting to me. Contrast with Roger Penrose and you couldn't meet a more humble, interesting and interested conversationalist

moelf 3y ago

idk which is more cringeworth, Wolfram's computational reality https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/physicists-criticize-stephen-wolframs-theory-of-everything/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/physicists-critic... or Penrose's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orchestrated_objective_reduction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orchestrated_objective_reducti...

xdavidliu 3y ago

Don Knuth and Preet Bharara too. I had an advisor in undergrad in plasma physics named Roscoe White who was also quite humble and brilliant.

Mistletoe 3y ago

Feynman never needed to tell you how smart he was, it just flowed out naturally as he talked about things in his beautiful clear way.

thefaux 3y ago
Disagree on Feynman. He seemed extraordinarily invested in showing off and self-mythologizing.
- vunderba 3y ago
  Yeah, very obviously a highly intelligent man but it's immediately obvious that he was very carefully crafting how he wanted to be perceived by others in several of his self aggrandizing memoirs.
- xetplan 3y ago
  Murray Gell-Mann said exactly this. He basically got tired of working with him because everything about his personality was to generate stories and mythologies about himself. To me, this whole idea shows what a fool the average man is. As if we all know so much about Richard Feynman compared to Murray Gell-Mann because of what a great scientist Richard Feynman was. When OBVIOUSLY, the reason is because of the degree Feynman self promoted himself compared to other scientists.
bdjsiqoocwk 3y ago
Jesus Christ what an awful example. If there's one thing that feynman did whenever he met anyone, was made it clear to them that he's smarter.

aleph_minus_one 3y ago

> Somehow people who are most convinced of their genius are the least interesting to me. I know some people who are great in their area of research, but are, to put it very midly, not the most humble persons (to give an example of one such person (a great research): "the people who could learn a whole lot from me are all tenured professors in my area of research"; just to be clear: his judgement is right :-) ). In my experience, great researchers who are full of themselves nearly always had to work/fight very hard for where they are now, and are thus very bitter about worse researchers who have it easier.