Looks like a case of an attention-grabbing headline not written by the article author. The book review itself seems to argue that the idea of polymathy can no longer be applied at all today.
Only in HN is the notion that the "geniuses" of this generation are working for the FAANGs, sure, some may be, but I am willing to bet 99% of them are not.
Or optimizing microseconds out of high-frequency trading algorithms. Quote James Tobin (1984),
> I [suspect] that we are throwing more and more of our resources, including the cream of our youth, into financial activities remote from the production of goods and services, into activities that generate high private rewards disproportionate to their social productivity. I suspect that the immense power of the computer is being harnessed to this 'paper economy', not to do the same transactions more economically but to balloon the quantity and variety of financial exchanges.
How do you figure? Intelligence / multi-talented-ness, and interest in changing the world, aren't necessarily correlated. Most "geniuses" still probably just want to get reasonable wealthy and retire to pursue their hobbies. (They just have more interesting hobbies than the average person.) And, for people who weren't born to wealth, the FAANGs are a good place to get one's f-you money from, without necessarily needing to dedicate the entirety of one's motivational resources to solving work-related problems.
Correct, on top of that it is a highly presumptuous and naive take. I originally wrote 99% of "geniuses" will never work for a FAANG (I was being generous). First of all there are dozens upon dozens of academic fields besides CS. Most of the people in the top of those fields (think people in medicine,chemistry, math, economics, history, finance and a long etc) will work with Ads. Then you have plenty of geniuses in non-academic fields (guys like Magnus Carlsen or Caruana), poets, writers, musicians, sportsmen, again none of them thinking about how making you click an add. Then you have lots of smart people in CS, but not in the US/Canada etc, plenty of smart Chinese/Indians/Russians and on and on etc who for many reasons wont work for a western company. Then you have also plenty of smart american CS graduates who dont want to work for a FAANG, or will work for a very short time and leave for greener pastures from their POV. All in all, assuming 1% of this generation "geniuses" work in SV is an extremely generous supposition.
Not going to rebut your entire comment—some of the assumptions are just that, assumptions about what the word “geniuses” would be implicitly taken to mean in context—but some specific points:
> people in the top of those fields ... math ... history
I don’t know any way for a “genius” mathematician or historian to get rich pursuing their own career. Some of the other examples, sure, but not these ones. It can actually make more sense for people in certain academic disciplines to take the underlying g factor that allowed them to become so good at their discipline, port it over to becoming good at programming, and then make the most money they can doing programming. (It’d be even better to port their intelligence over to an attempt at being an investment banker; but that field has far higher barriers to entry.)
> plenty of smart Chinese/Indians/Russians ... wont work for a western company
I think the presumption is that they’d work for China’s/India’s/Russia’s equivalent of FAANG. I.e., take the highest-paying “cog in the machine” programming jobs they could in their own markets.
> poets, writers, musicians
Many of the “geniuses” of these fields certainly do end up making their money in advertising, if not “ad tech” precisely.
If a songwriter/musician gets wealthy-enough to retire, most of the time, it isn’t usually from royalties from a hit single, or even from royalties from creating the soundtrack to a popular movie. It’s almost always from big-contract (but work-for-hire) advertising jingles.
Artists (or, moreover, illustrators and visual designers)? Again, usually the biggest contracts are with advertisers—or with product-design consultancies who get paid to increase products’ marketability through a visual refresh.
You have this weird assumption than making lots of money is the measure of being a genius, maybe it is a cultural thing, but I would consider Einstein, Godel, Turing, Grothendiek, Kafka geniuses and Steve Jobs, Rockefeller, Sam Walton et al not in that category, and it seems you will think the opposite.
I think his comment was implying that such individuals would have naturally gravitated toward the highest-paying jobs and thus adtech. The subtext being that we waste the brightest minds of our generation on trivial and useless jobs.
You know we might just have 7000 von Neumanns among us, but may be unable to recognize them. The vast majority of 7+ billion people on the planet are unknown to everyone some except family and a couple of friends.
The adage "Popular does not equal good" has never been more relevant.
> The adage "Popular does not equal good" has never been more relevant.
Eh, it depends. It's not true that popular ==> good, but I think there are plenty of areas where it's more true than it used to be that good ==> popular. For example, many more people now have a much better chance to get an education and demonstrate aptitude in some area. And better communication means talent is better matched to opportunity.
That's not to say we're really optimizing human potential. That doesn't even seem close to true. But I think we're doing a lot better than we were even 50 years ago.
>In fact these days we are all that man or woman; you only need to resort to Wikipedia to realise how outdated the idea of knowing everything — or indeed anything — has become.
The word is polymath, like polyglot. We don't expect a polyglot to speak all languages.
I don't think that's what defines a polymath, for if it does, then none existed. My view of what makes one a polymath is deep --likely cutting-edge-- expertise in several disciplines.
That being said, I agree with the general sentiment that it is increasingly harder to become a polymath these days, especially in the disciplines with lots of active research. To have an expertise in just one discipline it takes years of education (to catch up with progress) and then a considerable recurrent investment of time to stay up-to-date.
If one is to be a polymath in a varied set of disciplines where overlap is minimal (see Leonardo), one would have to go through the mentioned process of acquiring and maintaining expertise for each discipline. This is different for a polymath in a set of closely-related disciplines, because there's only so much more (compared to being expert in one discipline) one needs to do to be a polymath because there's a lot of overlap. But it is debatable whether that even counts as a polymath, a point raised in:
> Is Judith Butler’s supposed eminence in ‘philosophy, linguistics and politics’ enough to qualify her?
I agree with your point re: the depth of information in a field making it difficult to maintain competence in multiple fields.
On the other hand, I think society increasingly projects an expectation of this, that someone cannot possess skills in multiple areas, where areas are increasingly narrowly defined. I think in part this plays a role in stress over higher education, in that a degree is seen as a skill certificate (that is, a statement about what someone can do) rather than an opportunity to learn (that is, a statement about what someone has done).
The same Judith Butler that came up with 'performativity'? Good luck with that spectator!
I dont understand the polymath moniker, it seems to be a British definition that elucidates a role in life that requires multiple high level skills without describing where that applies in modern life. As if it were a position one could attain rather than a useful, purposeful skill.
Tech leads like Jobs described art and science at the highest level as the same thing. He demonstrated in production, high level knowledge in both distinct categories, but would likely never be discussed by the Brits.
Its strange to see someone like Stephen Fry being described as a polymath, when he works as a quiz show host and author. He is paid to learn and recite that learning independent of its application in society.
I prefer the older British term 'expert generalist' as it seems more accurate and discusses people who applied their learning more frequently.
One thing that struck me at an exhibit of Leonardo's notebooks is how totally wrong he was about so many things. It wasn't mentioned in the exhibit but for every one thing he was correct about, it seemed like there were many many, dozens perhaps, that he was completely incorrect about. Some of the ideas seem preposterous now, although it's difficult to view them appropriately as they would have been at the time.
This could be seen positively or negatively. One way of spinning it is that he was persistent in exploring ideas. Another way, though, is that something -- mythmaking, hype, his art, whatever it is -- has allowed history to ignore the fact that he seemed to have been wrong more often than he was right, along the lines of a broken clock being right twice a day.
In either case, I think there's something to be said for some kind of cultural and social context playing a strong role in how all of this is interpreted. A different person in the wrong place or wrong time might have been interpreted as a crackpot.
You’re saying the issue is more nuanced than it appears at first blush, requiring careful consideration taking into account cultural context then and now?! That’s preposterous, give us your 140 character hot take instead. :)
I noticed the same thing in one of Aristotle's books, where he tries to catalog his encyclopedic knowledge of natural phenomena. It might just be a sign of an earlier intellectual era.
I was told by a doctor that in his 1980s biology class, the professor opened by saying, "half of what I'm going to teach you is wrong - we just don't know which half".
I imagine it's similar with Leonardo, and likely with our own state-of-the-art knowledge. We are all broken clocks, and the trick is to figure out which part of our knowledge is wrong.
Same goes for Isaac Newton. He’s practically been elevated to godhood for his contributions to calculus and physics. What about his occult studies, alchemy, and chronology [1]? It seems only historians (academic and amateur), Newton buffs, and compulsive Wikipedia clickers know or care about these weird ideas that were so important to Newton.
I don't think this sort of thing is rare, or a reflection of the time period he lived in or his status as an extreme outlier in historical influence.
Many scientists spend a portion of their time in oddball or fruitless pursuits and sometimes it takes them over, particularly as they get older.
Linus Pauling and Vitamin C is one thing that comes to mind.
There was some scientist whose name I can't remember, was asked how he could be occupied by crazy ideas or obsessions and he said that these ideas came to him in exactly the same way as his deep scientific insights.
Just because someone looks silly to their contemporaries doesn't mean they're wrong. Look at Semmelweis. He figured out germs well before Pasteur. Doctors didn't accept it because they didn't like the implications: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis
I wasn't stating that he was "wrong", I was suggesting that regardless of whether you can find any merit to any of his opinions, it was kind of an odd, dubious obsession that people don't uniformly respect unlike other accomplishments he had.
Were these studies inconsistent with a curious mind and the limitations of knowledge at the time? In any research, some avenues of investigation are fruitful and others are not.
When people look back on us 300 years from today, they'll likely find many cases of geniuses working on things that seem naive or misguided in retrospect.
You can say the same thing about the limitations nowaadays. Looking back from the future we’ll have learned a lot of things that we are thinking now will be seen as preposterous when more knowledge is covered.
Natural philosophy and alchemy were names for science before science. Alchemy had a connotation of being very ceremonial; knowledge had to spread by group gatherings and word of mouth.
Cutting edge science today would have been called alchemy historically. Artificial intelligence, gene editing, etc. Fortunately scientists have a pretty good reputation now, where alchemists of the past had to research and convene in secret.
People don't realize, I think, how much modern science owes its tools and methodologies to alchemy.
I like your comparison between alchemy and AI. Even modern neural nets would fit alchemical concepts pretty well - "we flattened a rock, put lightning inside it, and made it speak to us with a human voice!"
> Same goes for Isaac Newton. He’s practically been elevated to godhood for his contributions to calculus and physics.
The way British write confuses many people. "Newton is the greatest of the greatest", "Shakespeare is the mos prolific writer that ever lived", ""... British writers love hyperbole. The fact that the writing style aligns with national pride helps to create a positive feedback of "grandiose writing".
That does not mean that there is ill intent. The target consumers of the writing are the British readers themselves, and almost all societies have a good self esteem. The fact that globally we communicate in English has tip the balance towards sharing American and British views of the world over the rest and created an over hype of some charismatic national myths.
Such excessive writing only occurs amongst very few people, them who feel their job is 'culture'. I've heard far too much of it about shakespeare, and I think it undeserved. He's not that great. Emperor/clothes etc.
I've really not heard anything similar about newton though.
Don't confuse those very few who surf their own hyperbole with the average brit (I'm one).
There are loads of people who don’t like Shakespeare (possibly due to being forced to read his plays in school) and that’s fine. Everyone is entitled to their opinion of him.
What is much harder to argue against is his influence on the English language. Shakespeare introduced, into everyday use, a monumental staggering number of words, phrases, idioms, metaphors, and ideas. And that’s just the text of his work. His influence on the institution of theatre and its role in the development of actors is equally staggering.
The comparison with Newton (and his influences on mathematics and physics) is apt.
> There are loads of people who don’t like Shakespeare (possibly due to being forced to read his plays in school) and that’s fine.
I'm one of them, but after one of my English teachers decided to bring us to see one of his other plays as a treat (Much Ado about Nothing), I can't help but think it's because schools are obsessed with the bad plays. I've never gone out of my way to read/see other plays, but that one was actually entertaining and I think if it was used instead of Romeo and Juliet & etc, less people would dislike Shakespeare.
Yeah, we did romeo and juliet. We had to pick apart the text to get at it. Shred it, almost. Why, what were we supposed to get from that?
I remember the teacher pointing out the cheap sexual innuendos in there (IIRC 'on the prick of noon' was one). In retrospect I find it hypocritical, she only drew our attention to it because it was shakespeare, and she seemed to laud it because it was shakespeare. In any other contexts she'd have dismissed it, but this was shakespeare! So saddo nob jokes ok.
A few years ago I tried to watch titus andronicus (this one, with Famous Actor https://www.amazon.co.uk/Titus-Blu-ray-Import/dp/B00HGGUO70/). I probably rewound[1] every section of speech at least once, and had the subtitles on, to try to understand. Christ what an effort, and for what.
[1] Thank you VLC for your easy 10 second jumping keys, one of mymost used controls ever.
Is it apt comparing being right about things to a broken clock? Unlike a clock, there's no guarantee that anyone might eventually be right about anything. Sure, a monkey at a typewriter will eventually produce Shakespeare's complete works, but the chance is pretty much negligible.
Being right on average isn't that useful for intellectuals. Much harder to be right even once about something important that others are very wrong about. It's easy to be right on average by always following the prevailing consensus.
People like Leonardo and Newton are valuable thinkers because they once in a while produce a really good idea, and it doesn't really matter if they know themselves which ideas are good or bad. This is a really bad trait for a leader or a trader though.
He might not actually have discovered or invented everything on his own.
What I most likely think, is that he was more like a Director of a government program or university who's tasked with key projects and allowed to interrogate or gather intelligence from anywhere.
He most likely met a lot of people from both east and west, learned a few things them and decided to document them. Maybe those people also documented it in their own language somewhere but ofc it didn't survive the test of time and only way we know any of those things is through Leonardo's illustrations.
The cities where he lived had influx of traders from all over the world.
It's otherwise seemingly impossible for someone to come up with so many things during his lifetime.
This is the focus of my main keynote presentation topic, On Being a Deep Generalist.
Specialisation came to the fore during the Industrial Revolution and achieved a form of preeminence in the 20th Century that hadn’t existed elsewhere in human history when knowing, at depth, a wide variety of skills and disciplines was either essential for survival or in order to be considered a well-rounded individual.
The internet, not without ongoing battles against vested interests, has solved the discoverability challenge faced with approaching the wealth of knowledge created in the past few centuries. For many of us aspiring polymaths (and I agree with the other comments here that a polymath isn’t someone who knows “everything about everything“, but rather knows “a lot about a lot” or “enough about enough”) the challenge is mental and societal.
We convince ourselves that we must specialize to succeed; most schools and many workplaces promote the same. Yet creativity and insight so often depends on interdisciplinary knowledge and the ability to use our brains to connect novel ideas.
It’s not the right choice for everyone. If you want to be the best in the world (or the top 1%) at something, then specialize. But most of us are more varied than that, which has benefits for us as business owners, or employees, and as humans.
“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”
Technically the quote belongs to a character in one of Heinlein's novels. He did love writing hyper-competent men though, so chances are he believed it himself at some point.
It's a decent description of a hyper competent person, but I wouldn't say a "deep generalist" in the sense of someone who has prolific knowledge of many different fields of human knowledge.
In my main keynote I talk about being in the top 25% of the field across 3 different domains, while also being at an intermediary level in a range of others.
In part, that’s to set an achievable first goal - most of the audience are probably already there in 1 or 2 fields, so it’s not insurmountable for them to progress, and hopefully from there they have the success to keep going wide as well as deep.
If I had to add a stronger definition it would be more onerous than that; but at the same time, I’m not keen to be a gatekeeper playing the ‘No True Scotsman’ game - I just feel people would be happier if they pursued their interests and let curiosity guide them, and that we would probably achieve more commercially and creatively if we embraced that part of our natural desires.
We're standing on the shoulders of giants - so many giants in fact, that it's quite possible to spend a lifetime just climbing upward these days. By comparison, in Leonardo's time, a curious mind would almost certainly have to jump laterally to find something to hold its attention.
Not so much "genuine", but rather celebrity polymath. There are plenty of polymaths who have no interest in fame and fortune, and simply keep to themselves.
Accelerated learning is fascinating because learning today is so inefficient. Combine that with the massive knowledge that accumulates over the years.
Elon Musks said it himself. Along with Solar Energy, Mars colonization, AI, knowledge acquisition needs to be disrupted. Something like bio-technology with transplanted chips.
Reading books is a very old way, and it doesn't scale well. Listening to podcast isn't very efficient either. Gamification has not been effective enough so far.
You can also see it in "Matrix", when training in a virtual world with a karate-training program that interacts directly with the brain. As you do when dreaming, but in an interactive way.
In the "Fifth Element", there's also a scene where Milla Jovovich (an advanced being) learn all Human History in a matter of hours/minutes with accelerated reading/watching the Internet.
I'm sure there are many other examples of people putting "accelerated learning" as one feature of the future.
When it comes to modern/living polymaths, it's worth mentioning Noam Chomsky. He did groundbreaking work in formal language theory that is fundamental to lots of theory of computation. He basically (re)invented modern linguistics. Then there's the media analysis work of Manufacturing Consent. Then there's the unending political criticism. It's pretty staggering.
While the definition of polymath is somewhat contested and arbitrary, my opinion is that the defining trait of polymathy is insatiable curiosity and a desire to invent things and solve problems, real or imaginary. I do not know how common this base set of traits is, and how variable it is in magnitude, but I suspect it is higher than 1 in 100. When you add in some combination of raw IQ, financial circumstance, educational circumstance, ambition, work ethic, and leadership skills, then you end up a more impactful polymath ranging from the software engineer who builds interesting things and blogs/researches various topics in her spare time to Elon Musk to Von Neumann.
I see many smart naysayer's on HN who argue "this would never work" or "this is considered bad practice" without offering some alternative idea. In fact, this is probably the most common type of comment. While they are usually correct, this is the exact opposite of how a polymath thinks. Polymaths have a confidence in their own ideas and a desire to explore and build a mental model for themselves before taking the tribal wisdom at face value. Thinking via first principles comes innately to these types.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 115 ms ] thread> I [suspect] that we are throwing more and more of our resources, including the cream of our youth, into financial activities remote from the production of goods and services, into activities that generate high private rewards disproportionate to their social productivity. I suspect that the immense power of the computer is being harnessed to this 'paper economy', not to do the same transactions more economically but to balloon the quantity and variety of financial exchanges.
> people in the top of those fields ... math ... history
I don’t know any way for a “genius” mathematician or historian to get rich pursuing their own career. Some of the other examples, sure, but not these ones. It can actually make more sense for people in certain academic disciplines to take the underlying g factor that allowed them to become so good at their discipline, port it over to becoming good at programming, and then make the most money they can doing programming. (It’d be even better to port their intelligence over to an attempt at being an investment banker; but that field has far higher barriers to entry.)
> plenty of smart Chinese/Indians/Russians ... wont work for a western company
I think the presumption is that they’d work for China’s/India’s/Russia’s equivalent of FAANG. I.e., take the highest-paying “cog in the machine” programming jobs they could in their own markets.
> poets, writers, musicians
Many of the “geniuses” of these fields certainly do end up making their money in advertising, if not “ad tech” precisely.
If a songwriter/musician gets wealthy-enough to retire, most of the time, it isn’t usually from royalties from a hit single, or even from royalties from creating the soundtrack to a popular movie. It’s almost always from big-contract (but work-for-hire) advertising jingles.
Artists (or, moreover, illustrators and visual designers)? Again, usually the biggest contracts are with advertisers—or with product-design consultancies who get paid to increase products’ marketability through a visual refresh.
The adage "Popular does not equal good" has never been more relevant.
Eh, it depends. It's not true that popular ==> good, but I think there are plenty of areas where it's more true than it used to be that good ==> popular. For example, many more people now have a much better chance to get an education and demonstrate aptitude in some area. And better communication means talent is better matched to opportunity.
That's not to say we're really optimizing human potential. That doesn't even seem close to true. But I think we're doing a lot better than we were even 50 years ago.
The word is polymath, like polyglot. We don't expect a polyglot to speak all languages.
Leonardo won't have known everything either.
I don't think that's what defines a polymath, for if it does, then none existed. My view of what makes one a polymath is deep --likely cutting-edge-- expertise in several disciplines.
That being said, I agree with the general sentiment that it is increasingly harder to become a polymath these days, especially in the disciplines with lots of active research. To have an expertise in just one discipline it takes years of education (to catch up with progress) and then a considerable recurrent investment of time to stay up-to-date.
If one is to be a polymath in a varied set of disciplines where overlap is minimal (see Leonardo), one would have to go through the mentioned process of acquiring and maintaining expertise for each discipline. This is different for a polymath in a set of closely-related disciplines, because there's only so much more (compared to being expert in one discipline) one needs to do to be a polymath because there's a lot of overlap. But it is debatable whether that even counts as a polymath, a point raised in:
> Is Judith Butler’s supposed eminence in ‘philosophy, linguistics and politics’ enough to qualify her?
On the other hand, I think society increasingly projects an expectation of this, that someone cannot possess skills in multiple areas, where areas are increasingly narrowly defined. I think in part this plays a role in stress over higher education, in that a degree is seen as a skill certificate (that is, a statement about what someone can do) rather than an opportunity to learn (that is, a statement about what someone has done).
I dont understand the polymath moniker, it seems to be a British definition that elucidates a role in life that requires multiple high level skills without describing where that applies in modern life. As if it were a position one could attain rather than a useful, purposeful skill.
Tech leads like Jobs described art and science at the highest level as the same thing. He demonstrated in production, high level knowledge in both distinct categories, but would likely never be discussed by the Brits.
Its strange to see someone like Stephen Fry being described as a polymath, when he works as a quiz show host and author. He is paid to learn and recite that learning independent of its application in society.
I prefer the older British term 'expert generalist' as it seems more accurate and discusses people who applied their learning more frequently.
This could be seen positively or negatively. One way of spinning it is that he was persistent in exploring ideas. Another way, though, is that something -- mythmaking, hype, his art, whatever it is -- has allowed history to ignore the fact that he seemed to have been wrong more often than he was right, along the lines of a broken clock being right twice a day.
In either case, I think there's something to be said for some kind of cultural and social context playing a strong role in how all of this is interpreted. A different person in the wrong place or wrong time might have been interpreted as a crackpot.
I imagine it's similar with Leonardo, and likely with our own state-of-the-art knowledge. We are all broken clocks, and the trick is to figure out which part of our knowledge is wrong.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton%27s_occult_studie...
Many scientists spend a portion of their time in oddball or fruitless pursuits and sometimes it takes them over, particularly as they get older.
Linus Pauling and Vitamin C is one thing that comes to mind.
There was some scientist whose name I can't remember, was asked how he could be occupied by crazy ideas or obsessions and he said that these ideas came to him in exactly the same way as his deep scientific insights.
https://nypost.com/2020/03/24/new-york-hospitals-treating-co...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5996765/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3937164/
Just because someone looks silly to their contemporaries doesn't mean they're wrong. Look at Semmelweis. He figured out germs well before Pasteur. Doctors didn't accept it because they didn't like the implications: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis
Sagan says it best. https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/85171-one-of-the-saddest-le...
When people look back on us 300 years from today, they'll likely find many cases of geniuses working on things that seem naive or misguided in retrospect.
Cutting edge science today would have been called alchemy historically. Artificial intelligence, gene editing, etc. Fortunately scientists have a pretty good reputation now, where alchemists of the past had to research and convene in secret.
I like your comparison between alchemy and AI. Even modern neural nets would fit alchemical concepts pretty well - "we flattened a rock, put lightning inside it, and made it speak to us with a human voice!"
The way British write confuses many people. "Newton is the greatest of the greatest", "Shakespeare is the mos prolific writer that ever lived", ""... British writers love hyperbole. The fact that the writing style aligns with national pride helps to create a positive feedback of "grandiose writing".
That does not mean that there is ill intent. The target consumers of the writing are the British readers themselves, and almost all societies have a good self esteem. The fact that globally we communicate in English has tip the balance towards sharing American and British views of the world over the rest and created an over hype of some charismatic national myths.
I've really not heard anything similar about newton though.
Don't confuse those very few who surf their own hyperbole with the average brit (I'm one).
I see your point. And, as any generalization, my point does not apply to all British citizens.
But, that grandiose talking is not uncommon (funny thou):
https://www.reddit.com/r/INGLIN/comments/1p76kk/good_to_see_...
What is much harder to argue against is his influence on the English language. Shakespeare introduced, into everyday use, a monumental staggering number of words, phrases, idioms, metaphors, and ideas. And that’s just the text of his work. His influence on the institution of theatre and its role in the development of actors is equally staggering.
The comparison with Newton (and his influences on mathematics and physics) is apt.
I'm one of them, but after one of my English teachers decided to bring us to see one of his other plays as a treat (Much Ado about Nothing), I can't help but think it's because schools are obsessed with the bad plays. I've never gone out of my way to read/see other plays, but that one was actually entertaining and I think if it was used instead of Romeo and Juliet & etc, less people would dislike Shakespeare.
I remember the teacher pointing out the cheap sexual innuendos in there (IIRC 'on the prick of noon' was one). In retrospect I find it hypocritical, she only drew our attention to it because it was shakespeare, and she seemed to laud it because it was shakespeare. In any other contexts she'd have dismissed it, but this was shakespeare! So saddo nob jokes ok.
A few years ago I tried to watch titus andronicus (this one, with Famous Actor https://www.amazon.co.uk/Titus-Blu-ray-Import/dp/B00HGGUO70/). I probably rewound[1] every section of speech at least once, and had the subtitles on, to try to understand. Christ what an effort, and for what.
[1] Thank you VLC for your easy 10 second jumping keys, one of mymost used controls ever.
(but glad MAAN worked for you)
People like Leonardo and Newton are valuable thinkers because they once in a while produce a really good idea, and it doesn't really matter if they know themselves which ideas are good or bad. This is a really bad trait for a leader or a trader though.
What I most likely think, is that he was more like a Director of a government program or university who's tasked with key projects and allowed to interrogate or gather intelligence from anywhere.
He most likely met a lot of people from both east and west, learned a few things them and decided to document them. Maybe those people also documented it in their own language somewhere but ofc it didn't survive the test of time and only way we know any of those things is through Leonardo's illustrations.
The cities where he lived had influx of traders from all over the world.
It's otherwise seemingly impossible for someone to come up with so many things during his lifetime.
Specialisation came to the fore during the Industrial Revolution and achieved a form of preeminence in the 20th Century that hadn’t existed elsewhere in human history when knowing, at depth, a wide variety of skills and disciplines was either essential for survival or in order to be considered a well-rounded individual.
The internet, not without ongoing battles against vested interests, has solved the discoverability challenge faced with approaching the wealth of knowledge created in the past few centuries. For many of us aspiring polymaths (and I agree with the other comments here that a polymath isn’t someone who knows “everything about everything“, but rather knows “a lot about a lot” or “enough about enough”) the challenge is mental and societal.
We convince ourselves that we must specialize to succeed; most schools and many workplaces promote the same. Yet creativity and insight so often depends on interdisciplinary knowledge and the ability to use our brains to connect novel ideas.
It’s not the right choice for everyone. If you want to be the best in the world (or the top 1%) at something, then specialize. But most of us are more varied than that, which has benefits for us as business owners, or employees, and as humans.
― Robert A. Heinlein
It's a decent description of a hyper competent person, but I wouldn't say a "deep generalist" in the sense of someone who has prolific knowledge of many different fields of human knowledge.
In part, that’s to set an achievable first goal - most of the audience are probably already there in 1 or 2 fields, so it’s not insurmountable for them to progress, and hopefully from there they have the success to keep going wide as well as deep.
If I had to add a stronger definition it would be more onerous than that; but at the same time, I’m not keen to be a gatekeeper playing the ‘No True Scotsman’ game - I just feel people would be happier if they pursued their interests and let curiosity guide them, and that we would probably achieve more commercially and creatively if we embraced that part of our natural desires.
A question on my mind is how is "different domains" defined (a loose definition and/or positive and negative examples would be OK):
* Running and swimming?
* Playing violin and singing?
* User Experience designer and sketch artist?
* Neuroscience and machine learning?
* Music and dancing?
* Programming and chess?
* Hardware and software?
* Music and sketching?
* Engineering and medicine?
* Physics and gymnastics?
:-)
Thanks.
Accelerated learning tech will open the polymath doors again.
Accelerated learning is fascinating because learning today is so inefficient. Combine that with the massive knowledge that accumulates over the years.
Elon Musks said it himself. Along with Solar Energy, Mars colonization, AI, knowledge acquisition needs to be disrupted. Something like bio-technology with transplanted chips.
Reading books is a very old way, and it doesn't scale well. Listening to podcast isn't very efficient either. Gamification has not been effective enough so far.
You can also see it in "Matrix", when training in a virtual world with a karate-training program that interacts directly with the brain. As you do when dreaming, but in an interactive way.
In the "Fifth Element", there's also a scene where Milla Jovovich (an advanced being) learn all Human History in a matter of hours/minutes with accelerated reading/watching the Internet.
I'm sure there are many other examples of people putting "accelerated learning" as one feature of the future.
(And I'm already excited to be there.)
I see many smart naysayer's on HN who argue "this would never work" or "this is considered bad practice" without offering some alternative idea. In fact, this is probably the most common type of comment. While they are usually correct, this is the exact opposite of how a polymath thinks. Polymaths have a confidence in their own ideas and a desire to explore and build a mental model for themselves before taking the tribal wisdom at face value. Thinking via first principles comes innately to these types.