this post was submitted on 23 Oct 2024
255 points (90.7% liked)

Technology

59534 readers
3209 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

Todd’s urgent dismissal of the documentary reads to Hoback like an attempt to throw Satoshi-hunters off the scent. “It doesn’t surprise me at all that Peter would go on the offense. He’s a master of game theory—it’s what he does. He has spent a lot of years now muddying the waters,” says Hoback. “He’s an unbelievable genius.”

I haven't seen the docu, but I did like his (Hoback's) docu about Qanon, Q: Into the Storm.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] utopiah@lemmy.world 11 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

there’s just specialists, people who get lucky, people who work hard.

I believe the point is to dispel myths about geniuses. I don't know about Elsburg but wouldn't you say Chomsky is both a specialist (linguist and politics) while being working very hard? He is 95y/o and STILL working affiliated to institutions like MIT or University of Arizona, publishing, answering interviews, writing reviews, etc.

How I interpret it is that he is putting such amount efforts in such a concentrated fashion, probably even strategically, that it is "normal" that he is so good relatively to the vast majority of people. He did not became so knowledgeable by "just" being.

[–] jagged_circle@feddit.nl 1 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago) (1 children)

I don't think most people could have the same capacity to store the knowledge in their brain (with immediate recall) no matter how hard they worked.

[–] utopiah@lemmy.world 2 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago)

I bet, but that's just my intuition, that being a linguist and an academic, again just by the very practice of having to study the tool that is language and writing about it, makes it a very different situation compared to "most people" who have never written essays since high school and I possess only a very basic understanding of grammar, etymology, etc. I bet the very topic and context makes his situation not normal.

That does not mean he does not have cognitive capacities that most people might not have, but, again the practice itself most likely changed him, not solely "selected" him for the practice.