The Very Many Questions-Not-Worth-Their-Own-Thread Thread XXXII

[cardgame]

Two.

Should the amish be forcibly assimilated? I imagine it would be incredibly easy, since they can't use telephones, we can just separate them by geographic distance too far for horse and buggy.

 

[Mouthwash]

Amish already live in extremely spread-out settlements.

 

[Live trash can]

What is the most important characteristic of a good scientist?

I take characteristic to mean either trait of character or a method or similar.

 

[Hrothbern]

What is the most important characteristic of a good scientist?

I take characteristic to mean either trait of character or a method or similar.

a team of scientists wirh different characteristics that add up in a synerchistic way.

 

[Live trash can]

a team of scientists wirh different characteristics that add up in a synerchistic way.

Okey, so a team of scientists can be better than single scientists working by theselves. Interesting..!

and, as you say - this can be important!

 

[The_J]

Yeah, hard to pin down on a single thing.
Integrity, curiosity, ability to work in a team and logical thinking would go to the top though.

 

[Hrothbern]

Okey, so a team of scientists can be better than single scientists working by theselves. Interesting..!

My post was a bit short....

The thing is that each kind of target needs a different mindset to be handled best.
If a target consists out of several sub targets, it is likely that differing mindsets are optimal for each of the several sub targets.

Two simple examples:

1. Einstein was relatively not that well in mathematics, so he lost a lot of time there, at the edge of not succeeding to deliver.

2. There is a nice controversery, especially good visible in fundamental physics, between the theoreticians thinking out mostly elegant theories and the empirists putting their brains in better measurements (to disprove theories and add "facts")

Einstein was a clear example of such a theoretician, BELIEVING the correctness of his theories because they were so beautifully elegant.
Some theories needing a long time before measurements could support them. Gravitational waves a nice example.
Many of contemporary scientists had difficulties with that theoretical speculating, leading to a long delay for a Nobel prize up to the empirist school (German, also NAZI at a moment) who denied that Einstein was a true scientist.

 

[Traitorfish]

Should the amish be forcibly assimilated? I imagine it would be incredibly easy, since they can't use telephones, we can just separate them by geographic distance too far for horse and buggy.

The Amish a distinct ethnoreligious group, at this point, rather than just an eccentric religious movement, so forced assimilation seems a bit, well, genocide-y.

 

[Takhisis]

Should the amish be forcibly assimilated? I imagine it would be incredibly easy, since they can't use telephones, we can just separate them by geographic distance too far for horse and buggy.

Besides the considerations offered by Mr. Traitorfish above, there's also teh fact that it might be contagious.

 

[Synobun]

What is the most important characteristic of a good scientist?

I take characteristic to mean either trait of character or a method or similar.

Motivation and drive. You can be as intelligent as you want, as curious as you want, as clever as you want, but none of it matters if you lack the drive to execute any of it. The greatest inventors and theorists were as great as they were because they could spend countless hours focused on the task and ambition.

 

[Live trash can]

Motivation and drive. You can be as intelligent as you want, as curious as you want, as clever as you want, but none of it matters if you lack the drive to execute any of it. The greatest inventors and theorists were as great as they were because they could spend countless hours focused on the task and ambition.

I didn't think of that! When I was in high school, I had a strong drive leading me towards physics. I felt i could achieve A LOT and was very interested.

Later I got other interests that were stronger. And without a drive towards physics it seed impossible to go that way...

 

[sophie]

Motivation and drive. You can be as intelligent as you want, as curious as you want, as clever as you want, but none of it matters if you lack the drive to execute any of it. The greatest inventors and theorists were as great as they were because they could spend countless hours focused on the task and ambition.

Well, except for Leonardo.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Motivation and drive. You can be as intelligent as you want, as curious as you want, as clever as you want, but none of it matters if you lack the drive to execute any of it. The greatest inventors and theorists were as great as they were because they could spend countless hours focused on the task and ambition.

Thus all my greatest successes involve scores in computer games.

 

[Live trash can]

Motivation and drive. You can be as intelligent as you want, as curious as you want, as clever as you want, but none of it matters if you lack the drive to execute any of it. The greatest inventors and theorists were as great as they were because they could spend countless hours focused on the task and ambition.

connected with drive is I believe belief in oneself.

From what Synsensa and I have said, it seems like the best scientist is a barbarian?

 

[Takhisis]

Thus all my greatest successes involve scores in computer games.

Stop living my life!

 

[Mouthwash]

Motivation and drive. You can be as intelligent as you want, as curious as you want, as clever as you want, but none of it matters if you lack the drive to execute any of it. The greatest inventors and theorists were as great as they were because they could spend countless hours focused on the task and ambition.

Out of curiosity, you ever read Blindsight by Peter Watts?

 

[Synobun]

Well, except for Leonardo.

I know very little about Da Vinci except that he hoarded schematics and theories but never did anything with them. And he was an okay painter I guess. Did he have issues with drive in his life?

Out of curiosity, you ever read Blindsight by Peter Watts?

Nope, but based on this line it seems up my alley: "The novel explores questions of identity, consciousness, free will, artificial intelligence, neurology, game theory as well as evolution and biology."

I'll check it out.

 

[Takhisis]

I know very little about Da Vinci except that he hoarded schematics and theories but never did anything with them. And he was an okay painter I guess. Did he have issues with drive in his life?

I read somewhere he introduced deliberate mistakes into some of his more dangerous inventions so that if outsiders tried to build or use them they would not work or explode.

 

[Hrothbern]

I know very little about Da Vinci except that he hoarded schematics and theories but never did anything with them

his theoretical horizon was much further and wider than the material technology available !
and he missed the developments in mathematics form giants that contributed in later centuries.
All in all: he was missing the tools to get something constructed from his insights.

His balloon made of thin sheets of copper had no chance, because copper was to heavy, not enough tensile strength per weight.

his thoughts and drawings about turbulent and laminar flow are amazing, Da Vinci spending lots of time at small water streams looking and drawing the flow around obstacles.
But he missed the developed math.

As potential great scientist in terms of achieving tangible results, you need to be in the right setting (tools, resources, fellow scientists, etc)

A nice example is the short story "The Young Archimedes" of Aldous Huxley.
Where the young Archimedes ends up in the wrong setting, produces nothing and commits suicide.

 

[sophie]

I know very little about Da Vinci except that he hoarded schematics and theories but never did anything with them. And he was an okay painter I guess. Did he have issues with drive in his life?

He was notoriously unreliable. Although an undeniable genius, he often left projects unfinished or had to be compelled to finish them by his patrons, and even then only after much delay, usually because he'd get bored or distracted or hung up on some minute detail, and would move on to something else before it was done.

Also Leonardo was not a scientist in the traditional Baconian sense of the word.