
Elite scientists are more likely to have a hobby in the arts and crafts - yarapavan
http://priceonomics.com/the-correlation-between-arts-and-crafts-and-a/
======
danso
Was just watching a Knuth Q&A with Stanford from 2011 in which his pipe organ
skills are praised, and then went over to his Stanford homepage [1]...He has a
page devoted to his pipe organ. He also has a page for a hard-to-find book of
his, "3:16 Bible Texts Illuminated", in which he examines every 3:16 verse in
the Bible [2]

[1] [http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/books.html](http://www-cs-
faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/books.html)

[2] [http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/316.html](http://www-cs-
faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/316.html)

edit:

And of course, Feynman and his "very, very many female nudes"...he has a
hilarious chapter in one of his memoirs about visiting strip clubs:
[http://www.brainpickings.org/2013/01/17/richard-feynman-
ofey...](http://www.brainpickings.org/2013/01/17/richard-feynman-ofey-
sketches-drawings/)

------
ggambetta
This is extremely interesting, and something that I have wondered about
myself. Although I am not, by any stretch of the definition, an "elite
scientist", my professional life is all about algorithms, distributed systems,
race conditions, memory leaks, linear algebra, binary arithmetic... but in my
free time I write (novels, screenplays) and do some acting.

Something like 10 years ago I wouldn't have hired someone who didn't write
code as their main/only hobby, for not considering them "vocational enough". I
think many people here can relate to that feeling. But to my surprise, I have
now become that person. Not that I don't love what I do, but my programming
cravings are satisfied enough by my job, so I enjoy my free time becoming a
richer, better-rounded human.

Part of this was getting over the feeling that every single minute of my
existence had to be "productive". Now I can enjoy baking some cookies without
considering the equation that says it would be "better" to buy them and do
something more "productive" with that time. I enjoy writing novels that only a
handful of people will read and screenplays that will almost certainly never
be produced. Ironically, "unplugging" from my job is probably the best vaccine
against burnout and thus making me _more_ productive on the long term... not
to mention generally happier :)

~~~
javert
I find that I get the most mental and spiritual energy, by far, when I just
"do what I want to/feel like doing." Rather than trying to live by some
rational maxim like "maximize productivity." Part of what you said sounded
kind of like this.

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a_bonobo
This fits well with the "Babylonian vs. Greek" approaches to science that
Feynman talked about (a few days ago linked here, too), the Greek approach
being "linear, logical", while the Babylonian approach is more all-
encompassing, but possibly more messy, too.

If you like to read more about this, take a look at Mlodinow's "Feynman's
Rainbow" \- it's a small autobiographical book about his time as a starting
physics post-doc after a highly promising PhD thesis. He had his office a few
doors down from Feynman (Babylonian) and Gell-Mann (Greek) and the book
juxtaposes both positions.

Mlodinow took up screenplay writing as a hobby, similar to OP's text his old
PhD supervisor got angry when Mlodinow told him about his new hobby, "what a
waste of time and thinking power" (paraphrased quote). He actually did end up
writing a few episodes for Star Trek: TNG and is still a accomplished
scientist, with quite a few successful popular science books published (one
with Hawking: "The Grand Design").

Another thing:

>Salvador Dali would dream in his chair as part of his work routine. The
authors of the paper “Dual thinking for scientists” suggest controlled risk-
taking, and artistic hobbies, and so called “mind-wandering” into future
scientific education.

You might have heard this (I think unproven) story a few times. Descartes
always famously slept until lunch-time. One day he was idling in bed and
watching a fly, which gave him the idea to describe the fly's movement in
terms of three coordinates. Thus the Cartesian coordinate system was born.

~~~
dzhiurgis
Would 'The Cathedral and the Bazaar' fit here too?

For me it is translates to lists vs maps (or hierarchy vs network) data
structures. Where working on your topic it is very hard to thing outside the
box, but as soon as you do some other intellectual task the chances of some
random neural network mutation dramatically increases. These novel neural
connections is a sole definition of creativity.

I wonder what is the correlation between left and right brain here (which are
often mistakenly assigned to logic and emotion)?

~~~
a_bonobo
Yes! I think that's why people like to push mind-maps, they "force" you to
create all possible connections on a piece of paper.

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Menge
I think this analysis method is rather suspect.

If you ask an average person with no great accomplishments about their hobbies
they are inclined to downplay them into temporary activities. When you go to
make a biography of someone after an accomplishment everything they did seems
like it may be of significance.

Hobbies that leave a lot of artifacts may have been a passing phase and not
how the person would describe their hobbies 95% of the time when randomly
polled.

Taking Feynman as an example, if his drawing weren't his official hobby then
his percussion playing would be. Both of these could have been rather sporadic
and therefore wouldn't be his responses as an anonymous scientist most of the
time. He may also have been more into percussion, but drawing was much more
likely to leave artifacts in those times.

~~~
laxatives
They included scientists who have documented music, art, writing, etc., even
if it wasn't self reported. Those samples are also going to be heavily biased
towards the most accomplished scientists.

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marincounty
I think hobbies are important for everyone. I know just getting by is enough
of a hobby for most of us, but to those who have a little free time--develop
some interests?

My father was content with his job. He loved to talk about his job, something
I didn't inherit. He was his job. He never pursued any hobbies. When he
retired he literally didn't know what to do with his free time. He had the
money to do pretty much whatever he wanted--within reason, but was lost.
Looking back, he never should have retired?

Well he decided to retire at 55. The first few weeks were o.k., but I was
worried because he didn't cultivate any outside interests/hobbies. Well he
started drinking more, and died a painful death from liver cancer 10 years
later.

My mother is afraid to retire because she saw what happened to my father. I
got her into photography years ago, but she still needs something more. I
think the secret is incorporating a hobby with others in a social setting?
She's not into meeting new people, like myself, so I just hope she finds a
group of people she feels comfortable with. She's not a drinker, so I don't
have that to worry about. She is prone to depression though.

When I hear people stating I just don't care about "that stuff". I tell them
just give it(whatever) a shot? The Internet has made learning a hobby so much
easier?

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Asbostos
I wonder if/how they controlled for age and free time. Surely those elite
scientists are more likely to be old, retired or at least have a secure career
so they have time to spend on their hobbies.

~~~
kcorbitt
Totally. Scientists typically aren't given Nobel prizes until decades after
the fact. And while I don't have any numbers to back it up, I suspect that
more mostly-retired 70-year-olds have time to pick up a hobby on the side than
the 35-year-olds in the heat of their career. Controlling for age is critical
to relevance in a study like this.

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jrapdx3
Most of the really accomplished men and women I know in medicine have a wide
range of interests, often including artistic pursuits. In fact it's quite a
tradition among medical practitioners to take it very seriously to play a
musical instrument, show great passion for photography, do fine woodworking,
write inspired poetry, among an endless range of creative endeavors.

The same applies to the top-flight programmers I know, though fewer seem to
take up visual art forms vs. music or writing. Just a theory, but perhaps the
talents that lead to programming excellence overlap more with non-visual
expression.

But that is the key: the best in any field very likely have more than one
talent, so only natural to do a number of seemingly unrelated things well.

While I'm hardly in the league of the individuals mentioned in the article, I
have contributed worthy if modest accomplishments. Like the subset of
physician colleagues juggling "parallel" artistic careers, I'm also a
professional artist (printmaking, photography), and not coincidentally pretty
handy at manipulating computers as well.

It seems entirely natural for energetic, curious, motivated and gifted people
to enjoy using their abilities in diverse ways. It follows that the most
capable people will be show it in several domains.

A final thought is the experience of intense interest in seemingly diverse
fields is probably not as discontinuous as others may think. People often say
to me art must be a nice diversion from practicing medicine. Actually for me
going from one to the other is seamless, there are common elements among my
whole range of activities, the essential problem-solving core is not
different. Yes the goals and technologies are unmistakeably distinct, yet
putting some part of myself into every task is a constant.

~~~
001sky
Need to control for the correlation of financial privledge and experience.

Its a huge leap to conclude "showing great passion" for something is
equivalent to talent. I would say in photography, the industry is supported by
two main business models: (1) supporting ad-driven media; and (2) dentist-
level dilletante hobbyists. The actual scale of (3) "true artists" as in art-
gallery-collector level is staggeringly small. However, it is the work of (3)
that really drives (1) and (2).

Relatedly, it's a very difficult leap to correlate the various composites of
"accomplished" with skill or underlying quality. Its not at all difficult to
gain large followers on modern media platforms for reasons not at all relying
on "quality".

Asymetric access to information will almost always trump "talent" whatever
that is when it comes to media-driven distribution networks. It doesn't matter
if it is "writing" or "reportage (photography)", if you have information that
is not widely available otherwise people will 'like' it, 'follow it' or 'pay'
for it. This is a simple cost-benefit analysis by the consumer (its easier and
cheaper to consume the experience via media than by actual-real-world means).
It says nothing really of the skill underlying the product...the talent of the
"writing" or the quality of the "photography" can be quite incidental to the
consumer who lacks the relevant choices (this is the asymetric information
distribution at play).

This is why for the most part, journalists and pj's are not considered part of
the artistic pantheon despite their widespread popularity...until they cross
over using other formats (eg long-form/anthologies, published works, gallery
exibitions etc).

The point being that weath and asymmetric information are higly correlated,
emprically.

Wealth and artisinal-skill or artistic talent, not obviously, but in any even
much more loosely, so.

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astazangasta
Elite scientists also have more money and spare time to do this shit. This is
pretty poor science; one presumes the author has no artistic inclination.

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iamleppert
Not shocking to me that passionate, intellectual people pursue hobbies outside
of their work. It gives the mind something to do and provides for curiosity
and sense of fulfillment that is completely under one's own control (vs.
things in professional life, oddly may be limited based upon where one works,
work place politics, etc).

------
gull
Fascinating.

Here's a simplistic analysis viewing everything as data.

Average scientists like music and photos. Music is patterned data. Photos are
dense data (1 picture=1000 words). They don't like writing as much, which is
thinking. They don't like arts and writing as much, which is associative
thinking.

Nobel prize winning scientists like music even more (patterned data), photos
less (dense data dilute quality?). They like writing (thinking) more. They
like arts and crafts (associative thinking) even more.

~~~
dr_zoidberg
What about taking photos? That packs the thing you associated more with
average scientits with the creativty and art that would belong to top
scientists.

(Not a criticism, I just thought that up and would like to hear your point of
view).

~~~
gull
I think I made I mistake when I called photos dense data.

I think I meant photos are high quantity of data (1 photo=1000 words).

But high quantity doesn't equal high quality. High quality (high data density?
high signal?) is found in a single, 10-word succinct sentence more often than
it's found in a photo. In that sense the signal in a photo is more diluted by
more noise.

This definition is in line with what I said about elite scientists. They
prefer photos less than average scientists do, because the signal is low. It's
interesting that this difference isn't as big though. Maybe it's harder in
general to find the signal in high noise (the few good words in the 1000 words
of a photo), irrespective of being elite or average.

Maybe that's where painting comes in. It isn't as fixed of a medium as a
photo, which may make it easier for the elite to capture the few good words a
photo may not. Although this is probably connected with time too. You can
continue working on a painting; paintings are abandoned. Whereas a photo is a
still in time, often completely uncapturable at other times.

I wish the study had also captured physical exercise. That'd be more data on
kinetic thinking.

A thought on music, which is off the charts for elites. Music is patterns and
paradoxically patterns compress very well. Literally, think .mpeg, deflate,
arithmetic coding and dictionary compression that can yield 100x benefit.
Music is probably an uncompressed spider web that reels us in to some small,
powerful data function. Music is the macroexpanded source code and its data
expression is the macro.

~~~
dr_zoidberg
As an amateur photographer (luckily praised by friends and family, thought I'd
never try to make a carreer of it), I can tell you a good photograph, and
photography as an art, are extremely difficult.

Technically it requires a deep understanding of lenses, film/sensors (and file
formats in digital photography too), but mostly how light behaves. And then
comes composition, imagination (to "see" a shot before you even try it,
prepare the lens at a set focal distance, focus, aperture, exposure, ISO
levels, if you need a filter or not, and how that would affect the shot), the
"artistic" characteristics of the image, making the subject feel comfortable
if it's a person, timing for the precise moment that will make or break the
picture.

However, I didn't find it clear if you were referring to "seeing photographs"
(apreciating them?) or "doing photography". Like I said, having a small
knowledge on it, I find it as artistic and complex as all the other mentioned
alternatives. Different too, but I wouldn't call it better or worse.

------
srdev
I read the article and I don't think they answered one of my biggest
questions: is there a causative link from artistic endeavors to improvement in
scienctific endeavors? Learning a musical instrument has been on my todo list
for a while and I can't help but wonder in light of articles such as these if
it would have other ancillary benefits to my cognition.

~~~
analog31
If you're interested, then I suggest pursuing it for enjoyment, and see how it
goes.

I'm a scientist and a musician. If there's a link between art and science, I
think it may simply be that both are sources of enjoyment. And maybe the great
scientists are the ones who have elevated themselves to a level where they can
afford to pursue science as an art form, rather than as a competition or job.

For me, playing music is like a way to recharge my mental batteries. The
benefit may lie in what I'm not doing, i.e., thinking about work. And since I
play in groups, it forces me into a different social environment than what I
encounter at work. But it can also be an individual pursuit -- I know
musicians who love to play at home but have no interest in performing.

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roflchoppa
Perhaps it could be a deeper understanding of the subject matter, and the
ability to apply the material to other topics. In the case of sculpture and
mechanical engineering, there are many skills that overlap.

Application of studies and science is really neat too, I always reuse things
that i learn to my car restorations, comes in handy to be sneaky.

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tim333
I guess creativity's good. I guess it applies to coders - I know Paul Graham
paints. I wonder if deliberately being artistically creative helps.

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gaius
A hobby in a hobby field, seems reasonable enough.

~~~
navbaker
What about science makes it a "hobby field"?

~~~
gaius
Science for work, art for a hobby

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hanlec
I recently finished reading Walter Isaacson's The Innovators books. One of the
things that caught my attention was that for many of the people mentioned in
the book there was a mention of extra-curricular interests.

