Who's your intellectual idol?

4 grumpy juniors would normally come to mind but since you emphasise on intellectual... for me it can only be Ed Witten

On 5/25/2018 at 11:49 AM, grumpyOldDude said:

for me it can only be Ed Witten

I'm watching a youtube presentation done by the guy. So interesting.

This maybe sounds silly, but for me it would be Isaac Newton. So much of what we use in Game development was discovered by him. The most amazing part is that the stuff I learned from Newton doesn't only work in games, everything has a practical use.

I don't think there has ever been anyone who has influenced me more than that.

Here's mine ^ _^ y

John Carmack - Known for 3D graphics innovator and of course most of us already played Doom.

Anders Helsberg - The original author of Turbo Pascal, Delphi, TypeScript and the father of C# .

I thought about it, and it is difficult to come up with any particular person off the top of my head. Darwin perhaps. It feels unfair to nominate some and not others.

There are a great many people / fields you can learn areas from, but what I will say it that most people who are 'experts' in a particular field study quite a narrow branch, and you can usually learn their findings relatively quickly (or maybe 80-90% of them) and at that point you can either invest a lot more time to extract that final bit of knowledge, or move on and learn from the next person / field.

More important I believe than any particular person's knowledge is learning how to think, think critically and think scientifically. That gives you a framework to think objectively about other peoples work / ideas.

A good aim is to make yourself your intellectual idol, and this should be the answer to your question. And don't forget to cultivate your body as well as your mind, what use is being a great thinker without the body of a greek god?

8 hours ago, lawnjelly said:

More important I believe than any particular person's knowledge is learning how to think, think critically and think scientifically. That gives you a framework to think objectively about other peoples work / ideas.

A good aim is to make yourself your intellectual idol, and this should be the answer to your question. And don't forget to cultivate your body as well as your mind, what use is being a great thinker without the body of a greek god?

Very important points, targets and essential skills you mentioned here

In addition one could also be inspired by great intellects and their stories. Drawing inspiration from those who have broken new grounds,... kinda gives you some mental strength to have a go at something in your own little way

So @lawnjelly was that your way of saying " My intellectual Idol is.... ( drum roll )... "

For me at the moment it would have to be Joe Rogan. While he's not particularly intellectual in any specific field, the discussions he has lead in his podcasts are often highly intellectual. He is really good at asking the right questions and extracting all of the information out of someone on a particular subject.

The most recurring individual is probably Douglas Hofstadter.

At some tender adolescent age I found my Dad's copy of "Metamagical Themas" on the bookshelf, which among other things expanded my mind on programming - something I had just started to dabble in. The sheer breath of interesting but wildly different topics and the playful and earnest way he wrote touched my youthful mind.

This was later followed by several attempts to grapple with "Gödel, Escher, Bach" - with limited success in my earliest attempt but with each successive try (a few years in between) my growing intellectual capacity allowed my to take more away from it. After a year or two, I would felt the need to return - each time struggling yet feeling like I was circling closer to understanding something of the nature of consciousness, creativity and other such fascinating yet near indescribable phenomena.

It was only in the last couple of years, after a prolonged gap, I bought my own copy and finally read it through and felt I followed more or less the whole thing.

In fact, just today I finished reading another of his books," I am a Strange Loop", that I happened across on a recent trip to Amsterdam.

I'm sure that without his influence, I would be a different person today...

I personally consider Bertrand Russel and Richard Feynman to be exceptionally admirable people for their contributions and philosophies. I also really like Liebnitz, Newton, Einstein, Grace Hopper, James Mattis, James Conway, Julius Caesar, Marcus Aurelius, and Socrates.

I am a fan of science greats, some artist greats, and a few others. Many have mentioned some of those.

Let me enter another arena: films.

Sylvia Chang: she's a director of some complex films, and I mean very complex. For example, Murmur of the Hearts, not to be confused with Murmur of the Heart. But she's also a screenplay writer, and for fairly big directors. She's also an actress, and a really big one. She's also a songwriter, and a fairly big one. A producer too.

But definitely Wong Kar-wai. He's a director. His films are a little different. And excellent. He employs a writing method for his films which is fairly unique. Have you seen Chungking Express or say, Days of Being Wild, or say, 2046? There are at least six other films as well, at least one or two more well known than those I mentioned.

Did I mention Chris Doyle? Christopher Doyle, technically. He's mostly a cinematographer. Quirky fellow.

There's a lot more. Jia Zhangke, for one. Hirokazu Kore-eda, for another.

My admiration also goes to the past as well. the trio of Hiroshi Teshigahara, Kobe Abe, and Toru Takemitsu are one such example. Geniuses by themselves as are all of the above. Combined in the same project, and you get pure art.

Plenty more.

At the moment I've been watching a bunch of Jordan Peterson lectures, he's got a lot to say about keeping your head in order.

On 6/4/2018 at 2:09 PM, rip-off said:

The most recurring individual is probably Douglas Hofstadter.

Hofstadter is certainly interesting. Have you read The Mind's I? I have not read all of it, but some interesting questions arise regarding the beaming of individuals in Star Trek. Basically, one might think stepping into a transporter is suicide. That's what I think anyway. Isn't it just suicide while a duplicate of yourself is made elsewhere? We're supposed to be thinking of consciousness.

I am a Strange Loop is where Hofstadter discuss Chalmers. As in David Chalmers, who was a student of Hofstadter. Chalmers is another individual I think of as someone I idolize. Others are mentioned in my original post. Chalmers has written some books himself, as well as doing various TED talks and some YouTube videos. Probably his most famous book is The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory. Great reading, if a little dense.

Gödel, Escher, Bach, of course, as you mentioned, is great as well, He mentions Lisp, SHRDLU, among other things. The title is interesting in itself, especially related to this thread. Einstein walked a lot with Gödel. I admire Kurt Gödel too. His incompleteness theorem is well worth reading more about. And of course, Escher, as in M. C. Escher. Who doesn't like his drawings? I'm surprised at the number of individuals not familiar with his work. Must be an age thing. As for Bach, well, all I really know is not much more than anyone else.

On 7/3/2018 at 10:02 PM, JoshuaFraser said:

At the moment I've been watching a bunch of Jordan Peterson lectures, he's got a lot to say about keeping your head in order.

Actual Peterson quotes:

‘He was angry at God because women were rejecting him. The cure for that is enforced monogamy.’ (on the incel van attack)

‘The people who hold that our culture is an oppressive patriarchy, they don’t want to admit that the current hierarchy might be predicated on competence’

‘Violent attacks are what happens when men do not have partners.’

‘Feminists avoid criticizing Islam because they unconsciously long for masculine dominance’

http://angry-chef.com/blog/thermidor-part-1

Get a better idol. You could probably find smarter rocks.

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Hofstadter is certainly interesting. Have you read The Mind's I?

Not yet! It is on my list, but I normally wait until I trip over such books in a bookshop, and Hofstadter isn't the easiest to find (G.E.B. aside). Likewise, I shall keep an eye out for David Chalmers.

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I have not read all of it, but some interesting questions arise regarding the beaming of individuals in Star Trek. Basically, one might think stepping into a transporter is suicide. That's what I think anyway. Isn't it just suicide while a duplicate of yourself is made elsewhere? We're supposed to be thinking of consciousness.

He touched on the same topic in I am a Strange Loop. It is an interesting question.

Perhaps this was discussed in the other books you've mentioned, but one "counterargument" is that we regularly lose and regain consciousness, every night and morning, and this discontinuity doesn't trouble us much, most people don't think ", I'm sleepy, I guess I should go to my deathbed and end my life".

However, perhaps we just a succession of clones that get to live consciously for a single day, like mayflies with generational memory? Pity the clones whose sole taste of consciousness is to groggily guide us to the toilet and back to bed during the middle of the night!

5 hours ago, rip-off said:

Perhaps this was discussed in the other books you've mentioned, but one "counterargument" is that we regularly lose and regain consciousness, every night and morning, and this discontinuity doesn't trouble us much, most people don't think ", I'm sleepy, I guess I should go to my deathbed and end my life".

It's not only a counterargument, it also calls into question what consciousness is. I don't know, None of us know of course. Chalmers' whole book is about the Hard Problem. not the Easy Problem. The Easy Problem is how the brain functions, which is to imply the mechanics of how the brain thinks, how neurons work, etc. He admits that is by no means easy at all. But the Hard Problem is decidedly harder, and that is what makes consciousness, and why qualia exists. Some people can't even distinguish between the two, or insist they're the same problem.

I'm very pleased to see most people nominated various folks outside the industry, often not related to IT.

I'm also surprised John Carmack has been nominated only once so far. I haven't had the chance to follow him lately but I found his work extremely inspiring.

Despite his interests in physics and astronomy his bachelor's degree was in history (rebelled as a teenager ) yet he received the highest awards in mathematics and physics

On 7/15/2018 at 12:23 AM, grumpyOldDude said:

Despite his interests in physics and astronomy his bachelor's degree was in history (rebelled as a teenager ) yet he received the highest awards in mathematics and physics

Very interesting, I just researched a bit about him, he amazed me a lot.