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Some people just seem to be born with the gift and are simply better. I recommend reading about Srinivasa Ramanujan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srinivasa_Ra

by tekla 3y ago

Some people just seem to be born with the gift and are simply better. I recommend reading about Srinivasa Ramanujan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srinivasa_Ramanujan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srinivasa_Ramanujan

jonplackett 3y ago
This is fascinating. Thanks for sharing.
hakdbha 3y ago
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mycologos 3y ago
Ramanujan is an interesting comparison. He was an outstanding mathematician, but it feels like his prowess came from a deep love of math and concomitant time spent on it. There's an anecdote somewhere about child Ramanujan working his way through thousands of elementary lemmas for fun, and I wonder if this gave him the almost occult intuitive ability reported by his collaborators. The stories about him have a tone of awe, but not fear. In some contrast, von Neumann seems to have been able to take his enormous fluid intelligence and speed and apply it to pretty much whatever problem he decided, and he did it across many areas, including non-scientific ones. The stories about him are tinged with a little unease, and it's a little harder to see the human underneath his achievements.
- rowanG077 3y ago
  You are really deluding yourself if you think anyone can reach Ramanujan levels of skill by simply trying hard enough. This takes insane innate talent in addition to trying hard.
  - laichzeit0 3y ago
    Yeah it’s like people thinking anyone can be a Micheal Jordan or Tiger Woods if they just tried hard enough, started young enough, were born in the right place to the right parents enough. Some people just have the gift, it’s like neural networks: some random weight initialisations are just better, some maybe even so close to optimum that almost no training is needed at all.
  - andxor_ 3y ago
    Ramanujan was extra-terrestrial. His note books have produced so many papers and PhD theses. Probably will continue to do so for many more years.
nradov 3y ago
Edward Witten probably falls into that category as well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Witten https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Witten

by tekla 3y ago

jonplackett 3y ago

This is fascinating. Thanks for sharing.

hakdbha 3y ago

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mycologos 3y ago

Ramanujan is an interesting comparison. He was an outstanding mathematician, but it feels like his prowess came from a deep love of math and concomitant time spent on it. There's an anecdote somewhere about child Ramanujan working his way through thousands of elementary lemmas for fun, and I wonder if this gave him the almost occult intuitive ability reported by his collaborators. The stories about him have a tone of awe, but not fear. In some contrast, von Neumann seems to have been able to take his enormous fluid intelligence and speed and apply it to pretty much whatever problem he decided, and he did it across many areas, including non-scientific ones. The stories about him are tinged with a little unease, and it's a little harder to see the human underneath his achievements.

rowanG077 3y ago
You are really deluding yourself if you think anyone can reach Ramanujan levels of skill by simply trying hard enough. This takes insane innate talent in addition to trying hard.
- laichzeit0 3y ago
  Yeah it’s like people thinking anyone can be a Micheal Jordan or Tiger Woods if they just tried hard enough, started young enough, were born in the right place to the right parents enough. Some people just have the gift, it’s like neural networks: some random weight initialisations are just better, some maybe even so close to optimum that almost no training is needed at all.
- andxor_ 3y ago
  Ramanujan was extra-terrestrial. His note books have produced so many papers and PhD theses. Probably will continue to do so for many more years.

nradov 3y ago

Edward Witten probably falls into that category as well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Witten https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Witten