
Why Some People Are Impossibly Talented - andrewl
https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20191118-what-shapes-a-polymath---and-do-we-need-them-more-than-ever
======
yowlingcat
'According to his son and daughter, he would play music whenever he faced an
intractable problem, and would often finish the performance by saying, “There
now, I’ve got it”. It was a much better use of his time than continuing to
fruitlessly agonise over the maths or physics.'

Fascinating. Definitely have experienced this with hard problems and writing
music. There must be some kind of orthogonality going on there.

~~~
adamgia
It implies the existence of a common underlying connection between music (or
should I say art in general) and pretty much everything else. And there's the
science-society-art triangle that seems to work really nicely together as
three pillars of knowledge you can pursue. There's a perspective based on
either of those three you can take when considering anything. I have no
punchline, it's fascinating to me too.

------
onetrunna
This tweets says it all:

[https://twitter.com/onetrunna/status/1198329720896516096?s=2...](https://twitter.com/onetrunna/status/1198329720896516096?s=21)

~~~
AA-BA-94-2A-56
Galatians 4:16

(Paraphrased) “And they hated him because he spoke the truth.”

------
andrewl
From the introduction:

Polymaths excel in multiple fields. But what makes a polymath – and can their
cross-discipline expertise help tackle some of society’s most pressing
challenges?

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octosphere
Yeah but the article overlooks the many polymaths who spread themselves thinly
across a variety of different fields, never achieving true mastery of a
particular field. The phrase 'Jack of all trades, master of none' springs to
mind. There are however polymaths who achieve mastery of all the fields they
choose to pursue, although I imagine they are rare.

~~~
thejohnconway
I guess the question is: would these people be significantly better at any of
these fields, if they specialised more? That seems like an open question to
me.

My personal experience as a jack-of-all-trades is that if I try to specialise,
I dry up creatively and get less effective.

~~~
RBerenguel
I recently found out about the concept of “scanner personality”, which covers
what you mention (I’m also a “sufferer” of it). If I specialise (too much) I
feel constrained and dry up creatively as well.

~~~
amelius
The trick might be to always imagine multiple angles along which you can
approach a problem, however specialized the problem might be. That way, you
never feel "constrained".

------
ken
> Studies have found that Nobel Prize-winning scientists are about 25 times
> more likely to sing, dance or act than the average scientist.

This is a remarkable claim, so I set out to find out if it's justified, or yet
another mis-interpreted statistic in a pop science article. I'm leaning
towards the latter. The vague phrasing of "studies have found" immediately
makes me suspicious.

Google first led me to the book "The Polymath: Unlocking the Power of Human
Versatility" by Waqas Ahmed, mentioned in this article (a submarine?), which
contains this paragraph:

> "According to a study by American psychologist Bernice Eiduson titled the
> 'Sigma Xi Survey' based on testimonials by numerous Nobel laureates, most
> great scientists often have multiple avocational interests. In-depth
> analysis of Nobel laureates in literature between 1901 and 2002 found that
> great artists and writers often have multiple avocational interests. He
> found that the science laureates were highly accomplished outside the lab:
> more than half had at least one artistic avocation, and almost all had an
> enduring hobby, from chess to insect collecting; one quarter were musicians;
> and 18% practiced visual arts such as drawing or painting. These laureates
> are 25 times as likely as the average scientist to sing, dance, or act; ..."

I was not able to find a specific "Sigma Xi Survey". I assume the title is a
reference to Sigma Xi, the scientific research honor society [1]. I don't know
when or how this particular Survey was given, or where the results were
published.

I did find several other publications by a Dr. Bernice Eiduson, all from the
1960's. Then I discovered that she (not "he") died in 1985 [2], and therefore
probably wasn't doing much analysis of Nobel laureates in 2002.

The link just before this claim in the BBC article is to a 2004 paper,
"Artistic Scientists and Scientific Artists: the Link Between Polymathy and
Creativity", by Robert and Michele Root-Bernstein. This paper seems to be
unmentioned in "The Polymath" book, but is perhaps another part of the claim,
as its Table 1 and Table 2 are about "NOBEL LAUREATES IN LITERATURE, 1901--
2002".

The only mention in this paper of dancing with respect to any science
laureates is Table 4: "Frequency of Arts Avocations in Chemistry Nobel Prize
Winners Compared with Sigma Xi Members" \-- "DANCING" is a big "0" in both
cases. Where are all these dancing Nobel scientists they're alluding to? And
the table doesn't mention singing at all.

Table 3 is "Hobbies X Citation Cluster for Scientists of the Eiduson Study",
which sounds promising but doesn't mention dancing or acting at all.

Is it possible to substantiate the 25x claim? It's really starting to seem
like a made-up statistic, and an excuse to sell books. Out of all the alleged
singing, dancing, acting scientists, they picked _two_ photographs of Einstein
playing the violin. Where's the rest?

And if the first pull quote I chose to check is so emphatic yet so difficult
to confirm, what confidence do I have that any of the rest of it is true?
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigma_Xi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigma_Xi)
[2]: [https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-
xpm-1985-08-10-fi-3906-s...](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-
xpm-1985-08-10-fi-3906-story.html)

(Do the Snopes researchers read HN, or BBC?)

