
The Last Days of the Polymath - imgabe
http://www.moreintelligentlife.com/print/2078
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amackera
I think the term "hacker" is synonymous with polymath in many significant
ways. I personally find myself inexplicably divided between many fields, all
of which I am passionate about. My hacker philosophy has lead me to be well-
read in political science, literature, philosophy, and of course computing and
maths!

As hackers we are driven by our insatiable curiosity. For me at least this
curiosity is not often applied in the same direction.

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fnid
I think you underestimate the significance of the term _polymath_. Polymaths
don't just read about a lot of topics, they _produce_ in a lot of topics.
Brilliant minds like Da Vinci who painted, sculpted, wrote, experimented,
philosophized.

Being a polymath doesn't mean you find lots of topics interesting, it means
you significantly influence multiple very broad and diverse fields of
knowledge. You write papers on nanotechnology, cured cancer, wrote, starred in
and directed a blockbuster movie.

You also overvalue the term hacker. I can't tell you how many people I meet
who think they are a hacker because they can get a Drupal site up and running
or write a blog. I had a boss one time who was so happy that he had finally
gotten back into coding. I said, "What'd you do?" He said, "I changed the HTML
on the login form!" Ugh.

So, "hacker" is _not_ synonymous with polymath. Hacking is just _one_ small
field of knowledge that may be a part of a polymath's repertoire.

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jonsen
My dictionary says

polymath: a person of wide-ranging knowledge or learning.

Wikipedia says

In less formal terms, a polymath (or polymathic person) may simply refer to
someone who is very knowledgeable.

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tudorachim
This is true; one of the points the article was making is that the current
definition of polymath is much weaker than the one we had even a hundred years
ago. The GP is probably referring to that one.

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nickpinkston
There is a word for people who like knowledge: philomath. I'd say I'm one of
those who's trying to become a polymath. Yes, I must agree that a strict
polymath has made contributions to multiple fields, but that's very
subjective. I'm not sure what the significance cut-off is contributions. If I
have a widely read blog, a startup, and I've developed my own technology, am I
a polymath?

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foldr
>If I have a widely read blog, a startup, and I've developed my own
technology, am I a polymath?

No.

~~~
hughprime
And this, ladies and gentlemen, is the problem with the term "polymath" -- too
many people seem far too keen to apply it to themselves.

I think the best strategy at this stage in history is the "know everything
about something and something about everything" strategy. Aside from making
life more interesting, the more you know about fields outside your own
specialty the more likely you are to have great ideas in your own field, since
most "new ideas" in a field are really just of the form "hey, why don't we try
this approach which they use in another field on this field?"

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jonsen
Duplicate:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=844229>

