From: H C (lphege@hotmail.com)
Date: Tue Nov 08 2005 - 21:24:11 MST
>From: Michael Wilson <mwdestinystar@yahoo.co.uk>
>Reply-To: sl4@sl4.org
>To: sl4@sl4.org
>Subject: Re: the ways of child prodigies
>Date: Wed, 9 Nov 2005 03:10:25 +0000 (GMT)
>
>Michael Vassar wrote:
> >> SIAI needs persons with expertise in computers and cognitive studies
> >> (roughly). Persons with expertise in pure maths or physics could be
> >> useful, but not particularly.
> >
> > SIAI needs geniuses in pure logic and applied rationality. The computer
> > and cog-sci stuff are only needed at the ordinary "expert" level,
> > though more is better.
>
>I would say that the SIAI needs both, ideally in the same person, but as
>that's not terribly realistic a mix of expertise in these areas would be
>best.
>
>Prodigies in maths tend to be vulnerable to an acute form of an affliction
>that many great mathematicians suffer from, which is to consider every
>other piece of science and engineering merely applied maths and thus
>necessarily trivial compared to what they're doing. This manifests as a
>belief that since they are good at manipulating some piece of maths,
>they must also be experts in any field that relies on that kind of maths
>(in practice or in their own minds). Extreme focused expertise in
>abstracting away implementation detail can be counterproductive when it
>comes to interacting with the real world.
>
Seeing as how abstract mathematical concepts are strictly useless (except as
some sort of "cognitive exercise") unless being used for an explicit
necessary purpose; it seems as though mathematics as a separate field
entirely outside of computer science is at best *potentially* useful, while
more realistically *a waste of time*. This doesn't include situations where
you recognize a specific mathematical field being necessary for background
foundational knowledge for a more specific implementation problem (such that
the utility of *knowing* abstract mathematical concepts is entirely derived
from a specific implementation necessity).
> * Michael Wilson
>
>
>
>
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