>[Besso's] weakness is his truly insufficient spirit of decision
That sounds like a slightly Victorian way of describing ADHD. The entire quote is basically a paraphrasing of something every intelligent kid with ADHD has probably heard a million times, "You are so smart, why don't you just do your work?"
Very well-written article. I had no idea Ernst Mach had a mystical experience that he based his theories on. Very interesting.
“On a bright summer day in the open air, the world with my ego suddenly appeared to me as one coherent mass of sensations,” he later wrote. He felt, in that moment, there was no reality sitting “out there,” independent of his sensations, and likewise that there was no self sitting “in here,” independent of its sensations. He grew certain that there could be no real difference between mind and matter, between perceiving subject and perceived object. “This moment was decisive for my whole view,” he wrote.
Wish I had a circle of academically awesome, out-of-the-box thinking friends. Does such a thing even exist? All the smart people I know are busy working hard, no one is coming up with wild stuff "on a bright summer day in the open air" any more it seems.
The problem is that it happens in little cliques of 2-3 people, and it's hard to meet a new clique. (I mostly do intoxicated at parties.)
I've been thinking of trying to organize "Work in Chalk" parties or something next summer, where we can all go hang out and work on our theories in sidewalk chalk at the park. (I used to do homework this way in uni.)
It's just hard to guage how many people would be interested and how to reach them.
I know what you mean. I think there are a few problems here:
1. There's a fine line between open-minded and irrational, and unfortunately a lot of people end up crossing it. This becomes a negative feedback loop wherein more and more people don't want to risk their reputations by sounding like they identify with irrational / fringe groups or ideas.
2. It's easy to identify genius in retrospect, but prior to being validated, people who really think ahead of their time are by definition in the minority, so they either have to get used to being laughed at / criticized, or give up. So I guess I would say, keep looking for peers who are open-minded but not irrational. I went to Carnegie-Mellon (`03) and knew hundreds of bright people there, but only 1 or 2 who I considered to be able to think out of the box, as you say. They're people worth finding, though!
I'm not sure a ban on irrationality is exactly what you want. Even psychosis can be a very creative and valuable moment of insight or growth, and people inclined to (admittedly unreliable) irrational thought need to be supported by others rather than shunned. See also this recent article: http://arstechnica.co.uk/science/2016/11/election-ourage-mor...
Also, HN in particular can have a kneejerk objectivist flavour that discourages intuitive, unconventional discussion. Dismissing people who seem irrational is not a good way to encourage healthy cognitive diversity, and we could do with less of it.
Sure; I think you may have read my comment wrong, I'm talking about people who, for example, think they're channelling the Archangel Gabriel or that they can materialize objects into existence, or make other totally unfounded claims.
The point I was making was that those people do a disservice to open discussion because nobody wants to be painted with that brush, so it ends up becoming an HN-type situation where, as you rightly pointed out, there is a resistance to new ideas. There's probably a formal-discourse type term for it.
Most of the brightest people I know you can't tell just by casually talking to them so in my past when I tried to find out of the box thinkers what I mainly found was pretentiousness. I'm not saying it's inevitable or even that some pretentiousness is always a bad thing but it would definitely be something that you would need to look out for.
Just because I have never been made aware of one, it never caused me to doubt the existence of these circles ... just the existence of my own genius :)
Well, some of us have those experiences, but we don't go around pretending the whole universe has revealed great secrets to us because our brain chemistry went awry for 45 seconds.
"Ernst Mach had a mystical experience", It's interesting to put that quote in context:
"I have always felt it as a stroke of good fortune that early in life, at about the age of fifteen, I lighted, in my fathers library, on a copy of Kant's Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics. The book made at the time a powerful and inextinguishable impression on me, the like of which I never afterwards experienced in any of my philosophical reading. Some two or three years later the superfluity of the thing in itself abruptly dawned upon me. On a bright summer day in the open air, the world with my ego suddenly appeared to me as one coherent mass of sensations, only more strongly coherent in the ego. Although the actual working out of this thought did not occur until a later period, yet the moment was decisive for my whole view. I still had to straggle long and hard before I was able to retain the new conception in my special subject. With the valuable parts of physical theories we necessarily assume a good dose of false metaphysics, which it is very difficult to sift out from what should be preserved, especially when those theories have become very familiar to us. At times, too, the traditional, instinctive views would arise with great power and place impediments in my way. Only by alternate studies in physics and the physiology of the senses, and by historico-physical investigations (since about 1863) and after having endeavoured in vain to settle the conflict by a physico-psychological monadology (in my lectures on psychophysics...) have I attained to any considerable stability in my views." from 'the Analysis of Sensations'
About Mach relativism, I often wonder if the relativity of measure and geometry should be made explicit early on for children. I was partly confused as a kid, and most my peers were completely eluded.
Interesting. The theories of relativity have philosophical implications, and it's interesting to see that they didn't come only from mathematics and experiment, but also from reading and debating philosophy.
Very interesting read, thanks for sharing. It seems the people of that era had a whole perspective we no longer share, or at least no longer share with each other. Will articles in the future convey the inspiration and humanity of modern ground-breakers, their relationships with each other, the connections they had to each other? I truly hope so.
A lot of great ideas come from collaborations between people.
Thinking Fast and Slow was written by one man but he talks about the great walks he took with his friend which he claims was the best work he ever did.
A married couple figured out X-rays and revolutionized medicine.
Jobs and Wozniak revolutionized computing.
It takes two to tango... very few people are alone in their ventures. The most successful people are those who can surround themselves well.
The lessons of this story are hugely important. Coming of age in a state of hyper-anxiety about our careers (as many of us do), we're used to thinking of our heroes role models as paragons of not just of efficiency and discipline, but above all, clarity of purpose and direction. In reality, quite often the reverse is true.
Wonderful! So the theory of relativity is at it's heart an attempt to give non dualism a firmer footing. I shall be using this in conversation with my overly reductionist friends.
It's a shame Einstein couldn't see the work being done now in constructing space-time from quantum entanglement relationships. I wonder if he would have accepted it.
There was another paper where (IIRC) they flat out derived basics of geometry from entanglement, but I don't remember what it was called. Hopefully someone else knows...
30 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 65.8 ms ] thread> Besso was short with narrow, pointed features and a thick pile of coarse black hair on his head and chin.
That's a fairly objective description - there's even a photo of him. Moving along.
> ...Einstein had a look of cool detachment. Besso had the look of a nervous mystic.
Come on! We need an "artist's impression" disclaimer here.
That sounds like a slightly Victorian way of describing ADHD. The entire quote is basically a paraphrasing of something every intelligent kid with ADHD has probably heard a million times, "You are so smart, why don't you just do your work?"
“On a bright summer day in the open air, the world with my ego suddenly appeared to me as one coherent mass of sensations,” he later wrote. He felt, in that moment, there was no reality sitting “out there,” independent of his sensations, and likewise that there was no self sitting “in here,” independent of its sensations. He grew certain that there could be no real difference between mind and matter, between perceiving subject and perceived object. “This moment was decisive for my whole view,” he wrote.
The problem is that it happens in little cliques of 2-3 people, and it's hard to meet a new clique. (I mostly do intoxicated at parties.)
I've been thinking of trying to organize "Work in Chalk" parties or something next summer, where we can all go hang out and work on our theories in sidewalk chalk at the park. (I used to do homework this way in uni.)
It's just hard to guage how many people would be interested and how to reach them.
1. There's a fine line between open-minded and irrational, and unfortunately a lot of people end up crossing it. This becomes a negative feedback loop wherein more and more people don't want to risk their reputations by sounding like they identify with irrational / fringe groups or ideas.
2. It's easy to identify genius in retrospect, but prior to being validated, people who really think ahead of their time are by definition in the minority, so they either have to get used to being laughed at / criticized, or give up. So I guess I would say, keep looking for peers who are open-minded but not irrational. I went to Carnegie-Mellon (`03) and knew hundreds of bright people there, but only 1 or 2 who I considered to be able to think out of the box, as you say. They're people worth finding, though!
Also, HN in particular can have a kneejerk objectivist flavour that discourages intuitive, unconventional discussion. Dismissing people who seem irrational is not a good way to encourage healthy cognitive diversity, and we could do with less of it.
The point I was making was that those people do a disservice to open discussion because nobody wants to be painted with that brush, so it ends up becoming an HN-type situation where, as you rightly pointed out, there is a resistance to new ideas. There's probably a formal-discourse type term for it.
Then I switched to the computer industry when I finished my studies, and the atmosphere suddenly changed.
This is a lot more common than most people realize.
"I have always felt it as a stroke of good fortune that early in life, at about the age of fifteen, I lighted, in my fathers library, on a copy of Kant's Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics. The book made at the time a powerful and inextinguishable impression on me, the like of which I never afterwards experienced in any of my philosophical reading. Some two or three years later the superfluity of the thing in itself abruptly dawned upon me. On a bright summer day in the open air, the world with my ego suddenly appeared to me as one coherent mass of sensations, only more strongly coherent in the ego. Although the actual working out of this thought did not occur until a later period, yet the moment was decisive for my whole view. I still had to straggle long and hard before I was able to retain the new conception in my special subject. With the valuable parts of physical theories we necessarily assume a good dose of false metaphysics, which it is very difficult to sift out from what should be preserved, especially when those theories have become very familiar to us. At times, too, the traditional, instinctive views would arise with great power and place impediments in my way. Only by alternate studies in physics and the physiology of the senses, and by historico-physical investigations (since about 1863) and after having endeavoured in vain to settle the conflict by a physico-psychological monadology (in my lectures on psychophysics...) have I attained to any considerable stability in my views." from 'the Analysis of Sensations'
Thinking Fast and Slow was written by one man but he talks about the great walks he took with his friend which he claims was the best work he ever did.
A married couple figured out X-rays and revolutionized medicine.
Jobs and Wozniak revolutionized computing.
It takes two to tango... very few people are alone in their ventures. The most successful people are those who can surround themselves well.
There was another paper where (IIRC) they flat out derived basics of geometry from entanglement, but I don't remember what it was called. Hopefully someone else knows...