

The Complexity of Greatness: Beyond Talent or Practice - tokenadult
http://www.creativitypost.com/psychology/the_complexity_of_greatness_beyond_talent_or_practice

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wslh
If you liked this article, you might like "How Life Imitates Chess" by
Kasparov himself: [http://www.amazon.com/How-Life-Imitates-Chess-
ebook/dp/B0049...](http://www.amazon.com/How-Life-Imitates-Chess-
ebook/dp/B0049U443Q/ref=sr_1_1)

The name of the book is not the more imaginative title but the content of the
book is very interesting. He separates the romantic era of chess to the
professional one and speaks about many different chess players with different
skills. The concepts from the book can be also applied to science in general:
there was a romantic science era where one person alone could learn and
produce a lot of stuff. Now we are in a professional era where we need teams
to discover something, just look at the number of people involved in writing
new papers in science.

Personally, I have not lost the romantic view but in a specialized world it is
difficult to produce a lot of impact alone.

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ilaksh
Chess and music are very narrow domains. If you think that abilities in music
or chess make one great, then your worldview is extremely deficient. In fact,
computers have already surpassed humans in terms of chess or musical ability.

A word like "greatness" should be reserved for more ambitious and helpful
pursuits, such as creating inventions or new social structures that improve
the human condition.

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kvb
I'd argue that music and other forms of entertainment clearly improve the
human condition. And if computers have surpassed humans in the production of
music, can you point me to some of the great computer-generated compositions?
I'm not aware of any, but I confess that it may just be ignorance on my part.

