4 ms·
one can wonder about the biological nature of the talent: "Like all of Erdös's friends, Graham was concerned about his drug-taking. In 1979, Graham bet Erdös $
by trhway 1y ago
one can wonder about the biological nature of the talent:
"Like all of Erdös's friends, Graham was concerned about his drug-taking. In 1979, Graham bet Erdös $500 that he couldn't stop taking amphetamines for a month. Erdös accepted the challenge, and went cold turkey for thirty days. After Graham paid up--and wrote the $500 off as a business expense--Erdös said, "You've showed me I'm not an addict. But I didn't get any work done. I'd get up in the morning and stare at a blank piece of paper. I'd have no ideas, just like an ordinary person. You've set mathematics back a month." He promptly resumed taking pills, and mathematics was the better for it."
- CaptainOfCoit 1y agoSounds like Erdős might have had ADD/ADHD or something similar, and amphetamines was his medication. Edit: Never read about Erdős before and came across this: "Erdős published around 1,500 mathematical papers during his lifetime, a figure that remains unsurpassed". Maybe he was just a functional addict :)
- maest 1y agore his prolificacy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erd%C5%91s_number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erd%C5%91s_number
- linkregister 1y agoMillions of Americans take amphetamines daily, yet very few publish papers. I wager that Erdös simply had talent locked behind a common dopamine disorder.