Feynmans Darlings -- Or: How Anyone Can Become Brilliant

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Feynmans Darlings -- Or: How Anyone Can Become Brilliant

A Zettelkasten is a personal tool for thinking and writing that creates an interconnected web of thought. Its emphasis is on connection and not mere collection of ideas.

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chrisaldrich

The so-called Feynman Technique is apparently a myth: https://hypothes.is/a/v8slNHsVEe2jo6fXxuB62A

chrisaldrich

Sascha, it's not completely clear to me how you're defining and using the idea of anastrophes here. You're not using it in the direct rhetorical sense of word ordering as you've linked it, but are using it instead to suggest different, potentially random, re-orderings of ideas and thoughts toward a specific set of potential purposes?

I am a fan of the broader idea of 12 problems which I've also seen in related instantiations including what I would consider "directed" combinatorial creativity, Marshall Kirkpatrick's framing of "triangle thinking" (taking three random notes and seeing how they may interrelate to generate useful insights), Einstein's "combinatorial play", Raymond Llull's combinatorial arts which was done using memory rather than writing, and there's something similar brewing under the surface of the monastic practice of Lectio Divina from the 6th century, though this is more meditative and not as directed (except for as it relates to God).

Prior to this one can see some of these ideas in classic rhetoric when Seneca the Younger wrote in Epistulae morales:

"We should follow, men say, the example of the bees, who flit about and cull the flowers that are suitable for producing honey, and then arrange and assort in their cells all that they have brought in; these bees, as our Vergil says, 'pack close the flowering honey And swell their cells with nectar sweet.' "

This same sentiment was echoed in ~430 CE, by Macrobius in Saturnalia where he repeated the same idea and even used the bee analogy (he assuredly read Seneca, though he obviously didn't acknowledge him):

"You should not count it a fault if I shall set out the borrowings from a miscellaneous reading in the authors' own words... sometimes set out plainly in my own words and sometimes faithfully recorded in the actual words of the old writers... We ought in some sort to imitate bees; and just as they, in their wandering to and fro, sip the flowers, then arrange their spoil and distribute it among the honeycombs, and transform the various juices to a single flavor by some mixing with them a property of their own being, so I too shall put into writing all that I have acquired in the varied course of my reading... For not only does arrangement help the memory, but the actual process of arrangement, accompanied by a kind of mental fermentation which serves to season the whole, blends the diverse extracts to make a single flavor; with the result that, even if the sources are evident, what we get in the end is still something clearly different from those known sources."

daneb

As a psychologist, I would like to comment the statement "Feynman was a genius with a banal IQ of 125". It is not very proper statement:

1) IQ 125 means ranking on 95. percentile, I would definitely not call it "a banal IQ". It means higher intelligence than other 19 people from 20.

2) The (Feynman`s) statement that intelligence and "afford/hard work" is somehow unpaired is not correct. Intelligence has its innate and learnt part (which have many names, e.g. fluid and crystallised intelligence, as named by Cattell). Learnt part is exactly what is a result from hard work/formal and informal education/reading/thinking/family influences etc. So yes, we can become more intelligent by educating ourselves/hard mental work etc. (even later in life). Intelligence is not only born or learnt. It is both and the relation between both parts is still not very clear (if not in extremes deficits etc)

3) IQ as a result of intelligence test and intelligence itself are two rather disparate terms. Many IQ tests had (not only in history) problematic or none external validity, some had problematic norms (= standardization, from which IQ as standardized measure can be evaluated). I am now commenting the referenced article in the footnote at the statement "Feynman was a genius....". In fact, low mesured IQ can also mean that IQ tests was not reliable, valid or standardized, or that the measure was done incorrectly etc.

It is especially true with older approaches to IQ measuring which are sometimes shortsighted, sometimes absolutely silly (as for e.g. cross-cultural validity) - see Hunt: The Story of Psychology for particular chapter on unscientific/ridiculous IQ testing in the US history which promoted racism against immigrants etc. So I would definitely not take this historical accounts of "mesured" IQs of presidents/scientists etc as very valid from the point of recent psychometric theory or as an indicator of their real intelligence.

Sascha

@chrisaldrich said:
Sascha, it's not completely clear to me how you're defining and using the idea of anastrophes here. You're not using it in the direct rhetorical sense of word ordering as you've linked it, but are using it instead to suggest different, potentially random, re-orderings of ideas and thoughts toward a specific set of potential purposes?

It's the wrong link.

This is the correct link: https://de-m-wikipedia-org.translate.goog/wiki/Anastrophe_(Soziologie)?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=de&_x_tr_pto=wapp

In short: The opposite of a catastrophe.

I am a fan of the broader idea of 12 problems which I've also seen in related instantiations including what I would consider "directed" combinatorial creativity, Marshall Kirkpatrick's framing of "triangle thinking" (taking three random notes and seeing how they may interrelate to generate useful insights), Einstein's "combinatorial play", Raymond Llull's combinatorial arts which was done using memory rather than writing, and there's something similar brewing under the surface of the monastic practice of Lectio Divina from the 6th century, though this is more meditative and not as directed (except for as it relates to God).

Exactly. The idea is age old. The key is to guarentee its application. I think trigger implementation of ones workflow is the most reliable with the least cognitive load.

@daneb said:
As a psychologist, I would like to comment the statement "Feynman was a genius with a banal IQ of 125". It is not very proper statement:

1) IQ 125 means ranking on 95. percentile, I would definitely not call it "a banal IQ". It means higher intelligence than other 19 people from 20.

For a genius 125 seems pretty banal when you take into account that "intellectual giftedness" officially start at an IQ of 130. Banality depends on the reference group which is not the normal person in that case.

2) The (Feynman`s) statement that intelligence and "afford/hard work" is somehow unpaired is not correct.

I don't see that statement in his quote. Basically he said: "Yes, you can make yourself smarter with hard work. I am an example of a person who is not exeptionally gifted but made up for it with hard work." Not only he makes a connection between intelligence and hard work. He says that hard work can be the cause of an increase in intelligence.

(I read the third point but I don't engage with political or cultural topics on the internet with very rare exeptions.)

thenextguy

In the race to the moon, the U.S. and the Soviets discovered that their ballpoint pens did not write without gravity. The U.S. developed a $10 million ballpoint pen that could do it. The Soviets took pencils.

Broken lead in space are very very lethal.

thenextguy

It seems I was already doing this unconsciously. Setting all of them in a row in my master document has been helpful.

Sascha

@thenextguy said:

In the race to the moon, the U.S. and the Soviets discovered that their ballpoint pens did not write without gravity. The U.S. developed a $10 million ballpoint pen that could do it. The Soviets took pencils.

Broken lead in space are very very lethal.

The internet is busting my balls enough about this anecdote.

Leave Britney alone!!!!!!1oneleven.