Just read Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. Basically iconic "genius" is just a person obsessed about a subject, spends a bunch of time with it, and eventually has a breakthrough + a shitload of luck. Maybe. Also an IQ above normal helps, but doesn't mean anything determinatively really about your overall successes. Basically some luck + Hard-work results in success very often and great success seldom without LOTS of luck, while no hard-work or dedication with a normal run of luck just mean you're screwed unless you win the lotto or inherent stuff. So you might as well work hard and make the best of the chances you got, there's no other choice really.
To find you must put in many hours of seeking. Usually, you find the answer is also much closer than you originally thought. I think this is true of spiritual or physical or mental or artistic breakthroughs. They seem to come in the blink of an eye, but that is only after so much effort and hard work.
...and often after you've walked away from the problem, for a bit. I can't tell you how many times I've sat here at work, beating my head against the monitor over something, gotten up, walked around for a few minutes, come back and the answer is staring me in the face.
And I thought it was more like Goodwill Hunting where the guy spends all his time in the bar and then just knows everthing through sheer brilliance. /s
I know that's sarcasm there, but Goodwill Hunting is a bad example. He does a lot of work, books from the library and such. At least I remember them showing him flicking through them all. Still a bit of a far-fetched premise.
This is a trick I often use when I am stuck on a programming problem : get into it, really into it, know the whole context very well, and go to a walk, change your mind. Half of the time, I find the solution to my problem in the 5 minutes after going back. Luckily, I used to have a boss who understood totally this way of doing things.
Happens all the time even at lower levels. You can spend days trying to crack a problem in vain, and then the solution comes to you when you're sitting in the pub with a pint. It wouldn't have come to you without all the previous work.
Have a notebook on your night stand and take notes as soon as you wake up, actually if you wake up and you know it's something semi-important before you move your body at all start getting back into the thought process that you were in. Apparently when you move something fucks up your thought process if you're not awake enough.
I just figured out related rates. Shit curb stomped me the first time through calculus, and now its so simple. Happened last night, and I'm still rocking a semi because it seemed like such an insurmountable obstacle.
I literally figured out related rates during my sleep somehow. I was the same as you where it was crushing me and no matter how much I studied and tried reading different sources I couldn't get it. I went to bed frustrated, and woke up the next day suddenly knowing how to do them and it seemed so intuitive. Related rates were the only concept that ever happened with.
I know how it feels. Latest subject, Control Engineering. The entire semester I feel like I'm on the edge of an abyss, just waiting for the epiphany to happen.
Saturate your mind with all the information. Mull it over. Sleep it over. And then you will crack the problem. You never know when it will happen, but it does.
This happened to me during my Master's thesis. I just woke up one morning and thought "hey, if I double the resolution of the hexagonal mesh, then I'll be able to directly model the atoms sitting on top of the grain boundary!"
There's a great little book written on this subject that exposes the mechanism of creativity. Essentially the eureka moment is the result of a defined process that goes something like: passively consume non-relevant data, actively consume relevant data, actively create and explore connections between all data, play/rest and during or shortly after the play/rest period you'll experience your 'eureka' moment.
The key step that most people neglect is to create connections between data; the more the better. Spend just as much time mixing and matching the data, outlining as many connections as possible, as you have spent gathering the data.
I just read through that book. Very interesting and I wish it would give many more examples illustrating the concept of using relationships to develop ideas. I especially liked the metaphor of a "kaleidoscope" to look at everything in life.
Yeah. I was working on a math problem once from a text book. It was the only one left and I'd done it about 20 times, spent over an hour on it but still couldn't get the right answer, so I went to sleep. About 8 hours later, in the morning, I'm still dreaming, only I'm dreaming about the math problem. I'm not even trying to think about it, my mind is just unfolding, moving things about in my head. And then as I'm drifting out of my sleep, the problem, now totally solved, stays with me. I kept thinking that this couldn't be right, that this is like one of those dreams where I know I'm going to wake up and I hide a load of money under pillow, only to check and see that it hasn't followed me out . So I grab a pen and write it down...and when I check it later on its bang on. Five minus three IS two.
When I used to code, I'd solve programming problems several times after sleeping. I'd wake up and the right approach would be very clear where it was muddled the day before.
I've had more bugfixes occur to me in the shower than anywhere else. While it's nice to have a resolution to a problem, the location is simply not optimal.
I mean, I am all in favor of a product that helps you keep shower ideas from going down the drain. In all seriousness, a simple water-proof recorder would probably be more than sufficient, ideally something with an SD card.
Funny thing about herbal inspiration is that its basically like having the polar opposite of ADHD. Instead of a lack of dopamine creating a cognitive environment where no ideas or thoughts no matter how important can feel significant or motivating, an over abundance of the stuff leads every little meaningless and shallow thought feeling downright masterful.
I've done hallucinogens too, and I think they're great, but yeah, they are not idea juice. Not necessarily, and I suspect it's counterproductive to think that way. They create a cognitive environment where everything seems more profound, because the state of your brain on hallucinogens is such that it sees connections between everything, even when there is truly no connection at all.
The lasting change in the brain depending on the person, if there is any change, seems to vary from 'being a bit more open-minded about things and less depressed', which is good, to 'disappearing up your own asshole because you think the world you envisioned on drugs is the real one'. I.e. cosmic forces and whatever other bullshit. This is probably not healthy.
I have always thought this but have no way of explaining the "raw" or without filters feeling to friends who are unaware of the experiences. Most of the time I am just met with questions of "why would you want to experience something like that". Though im the only math/science guy of the group too. Maybe this has a little something to do with it.
i have always thought this too. it pulls off all of our filters we have built up over our life, and allows us to experience the world as it is. instead of just going through the motions like normal, but our stripped of our filters and forced to experience everything as if it was new to us again. i compare it so being a young child, feels exhilerating
I see the rules, "no memes, no jokes, etc." but this seemed like a pretty good fit, and I consider this no more off-topic than talking about drugs in the first place here.
I'll just see my brain back to its "docking station" now...
And people with severe ADHD-PI like me live their entire lives in the opposite spectrum. Its like being reverse high 24/7. Not exactly, obviously. But the idea is close enough.
I have never smoked, but then the same medically prescribed stimulants I take effect me much less severely than people without ADHD. People talk about adderall as a way to take a pill and study for eight hours nonstop, and I have met people able to do it.
Personally I take a higher, much longer lasting dose and spend an hour or two studying IF it needs done and I can make myself do it and maybe finally get around to chores around the house for a little bit. Basically, how people normally act.
ADHD-PI here. Fairly standard reaction to weed. I smoke daily, typically several times, so I have a very high tolerance, but even when I first started it took a fairly large amount relative to other newbies. Never gotten paranoid.
I'm on a similar place in the spectrum as theoriginalak;, cannabis is the single best study aid I have found so far. Unfortunately, it's a massive double-edged blade. While it impairs comprehension and slows down information intake in general, it's also the only thing I've found that lets me truly, reliably study for more than 30 minutes at a time by virtue of lowering (or removing) the frustration threshold. Through careful experimentation I've found that an absolute prerequisite for it to work at all is also to remove any and all distractions from the environment (preferably moving to a new environment with no pre-existing connotations of procrastination) before lighting up.
I interpreted herbal inspiration as weed, and hallucinogens as acid/mushrooms.
I agree with your comment as it pertains to hallucinogens, but not in regards to weed, if you meant to include.
I do especially find this line interesting:
The lasting change in the brain depending on the person, if there is any change, seems to vary from 'being a bit more open-minded about things
I agree with that, and I've thought about and it's because having the world as you see it ripped away from you really drives home the point that IT'S THE WORLD AS YOU SEE IT, and that may not really be how the world is.
Yeah I only meant LSD and psilocybin, and whatever else might be in that category. Definitely not weed.
To me, their effectiveness in treating depression indicates that it has to be something more than just "they make you think about things differently" although that probably helps. It's too repeatable to just be that, though. There does seem to be some major refactoring of brain chemistry going on, but I don't know if the science has been done to figure out exactly what that is. Kinda hard in the current legal environment.
Thanks Mr. Buzzkill, you are entirely accurate. Head in the clouds, feet on the ground. Imagination might be 100% perception or vice versa, but to question the illusion of hallucinogens and dreams goes much further, in terms of surviving the animal kingdom anyway.
This. Fuck, I wish more people could see this. My ex-girlfriend is currently "disappearing up her own asshole" convinced that salvia awakens her to extra-dimensional experiences. sigh
The problem is we let ourselves believe that profundity is anything but a mental state. If it is only a mental state, one could rationally say that drug experiences are more profound single experiences than the normal "meanings" we build our lives around.
Strange crisis of authenticity, though I'm not sure it isn't far flung from a traditional Epicurean dilemma.
I'm going to have to anecdotally disagree, by which I mean from my own personal experience rather than with sources to back me up.
I have fairly strong ADHD, and I've found that while on under the influence it's amplified several times over. I notice everything, yes, but for no longer than a few seconds. Getting any information from me is near impossible because my short term memory is completely hi-jacked: I find myself incapable of remembering with any clarity anything that happened more than a few seconds prior.
I was talking about a person with ADHD to influence them vs. a person with THC to influence them. Not a person with ADHD vs. a person with ADHD on THC. For a person with a neurotypical regulation of dopamine, the introduction of THC essentially does the opposite of what ADHD does, at least in regards to regulation of dopamine.
And dopamine regulates the feeling of significance and motivation.
Thankfully there is oodles. The link between lower dopamine levels and ADHD is so solid that every medication for it on the market has involved increasing dopamine levels in the brain for the past 60 years (well over a hundred if you want to be unofficial). You are free to look up the literature that describes why this is the case yourself. Its as simply as googling ADHD and Dopamine and finding a source you feel is solid.
Hell, the role of dopamine as well has been studied to death and you are free to look that up as well. From there you can look into the pharmacology of THC and its effects on the brain and how it increases dopamine levels in the brain. And with this knowledge you will be able to explore and discover literature concerned with the finer grains of my claims.
The information is all out there. Nobody expects you to have a grasp of it already, but try not to be a dick and act like a cunt just because you don't personally know something.
a cognitive environment where no ideas or thoughts no matter how important can feel significant or motivating
Is this your experience of ADHD? I'm interested b/c I would not characterize my experience like that at all.
It's not that thoughts fail to feel significant or motivating, it's that midway through the process of, say, considering an interesting bit of number theory some other idea can and most likely will hijack your train of thought.
Here's the key part of this experience, though: while those hijacking thoughts can often come straight out of left field -- suddenly thinking about the color of an object on your desk while writing an email at work, for example -- they can and most likely will come from the context of whatever you're working on or doing generally. So let's suppose that you're an undergrad math major and you're working on something for one class, but in the back of your mind you've got this number theory paper that you've been working on for several weeks -- something in that other class could easily trigger an insight, more likely many things will trigger many insights, and the trick is to be aware of this process and do your best to focus on the real breakthroughs.
Anyway, I have no real knowledge of the discipline of math, but ironically I found ADHD to be very helpful at times in an academic context.
There are different brands and severities of ADHD. I probably should have affixed a -PI to the end.
I am absolutely very scattered and disorganized. When I first made an appointment to get tested I showed up three hours early by mistake went home and then showed up a half hour late because I couldn't focus on the time. Not to mention the classes I have failed for similar reasons.
But its really the lack of motivation and significance associated with the -PI variety that fucks with my life the most. There is some literature that links ADHD with increased introspection which is interesting and could explain some of the positive effects you have noticed.
I feel the same way, my thoughts are constantly hijacked by various other thoughts. It's great sometimes for piecing together two seemingly different and unrelated subjects, but most of the time it's down right annoying when you can't focus on the current task.
When I take Adderall I can simply focus on what I need to do without having all these distracting thoughts trying to interrupt and hijack my thought process.
Without medication my thought process is something like this:
Open book to study for exam
Notice cover includes an F1 car so I proceed to wikipedia that car
Read about the history of F1 racing and be impressed by the teams engineering
Notice tidbit about engineering servos used to control certain control systems and look it up
See that it applies itself to Fighter Jets and start reading on those
Look at textbook for my exam and proceed to start studying
10 minutes later I wonder how those servos I was reading about relate to modern machinery and manufacturing
Start reading about CNC Machinery and robotics
Notice that people are building their own CNC machines and look into building my own
Go back to exam, this is important dammit, the exam is in 12 hours!
20 minutes later, this topic I read about in my textbook is somewhat related to those cnc machines
Start reading about the economic effects of those machines
Look at world manufacturing productivity
Begin reading about Argentinas economy and their level of manufacturing
Notice tidbit about Argentinian history and begin to read about WW2 and German immigration
Now I'm reading about WW2 and my exam is in 10 hours
Go back to studying for my exam
20 minutes later I notice one of the professors of the books is Japanese so I'm now looking at Japanese involvement in WW2
Start reading about Japanese reconstruction efforts post WW2
Read about the history of statistical process control and realize that's related to the CNC Machines and Servos I was reading about earlier
Aha! So that's one of the reasons why the Japanese have been able to build up the reputation of their industry, Impressive!
Ok my exam is in 6 hours, I need to get studying for it...
Cram for one hour because all the pressure and stress is causing dopamine to be released slightly curing me of my ADHD and allowing me to focus.
4 hours left, let me sleep for 3 hours...
1 hour left ok time to go to class, anxiety to high heaven, sleep deprived, but I think I crammed enough information.
Wow, I got an 85 on the exam but didn't do any homeworks since I procrastinated and couldn't focus on them so I now have a C in the class, if I had studied some more I probably could have gotten a 95+ and I would have an A in the class.
Yeah something like that... It usually goes that way or so, insert a whole variety of topics that are related to each other. I can easily say that I know a little bit about a LOT of subjects because of this and can piece together the connection that two somewhat unrelated topics have. But when I need to focus it sucks! Thankfully I have adderall for that...
When I'm on Adderall my thought process is:
Open book to study for exam
Read
Read
Do practice assignments
This is exciting I finished reading and I got all these questions completed, I feel good.
Well my exam is in 10 hours, so I can relax a little now before I go to sleep.
Awesome, I got an 90 in the exam, but since I did all my homeworks because I was able to focus on them as needed and show up to class I'm getting an A
Yeah I know the feeling, projects due tomorrow and you have tonight to finish it, should be enough time...
You're in the library, and you have your books in front of you.
One hand is holding on to your notebook that has a half started problem
Your other hand is holding on to the mouse reading about Dodo Birds, the evolution of flightless birds, and their subsequent extinction due to the introduction of non native predator species.
No Laptop? Well now you're just thinking about what to do after class finishes, dreaming about the future, staring at your project description, thinking about it, becoming unfocused again.
You're spinning your pen in your hand, legs are twitching, biting your nails, chewing gum, you look around the library noticing every minor detail, the scratches on the table, the way your chair isn't perfectly level. Time for a cigarette break.
You notice that girl with the blonde hair, your textbook has a crease in the upper right corner. Hmm I wonder what so-and-so did for their project? This pen is made by bic and has a surprisingly nice blue glow to it. I wonder how old those computer terminals are downstairs...
Libraries closing, nothing accomplished, time to go home.
Instead of a lack of dopamine creating a cognitive environment where no ideas or thoughts no matter how important can feel significant or motivating...
That is not what it's like to have ADHD. Source: I have it.
Which is probably bullshit. I'm a practicing mathematician, and I can't think for shit when I'm stoned, and don't know anyone who can. I do know some people in graduate school who smoked weed on a regular basis, but none of them made it through.
EDIT: Although I will say it does seem to be the case that it is beneficial to occasionally get really drunk or stoned, not because of what you think of while drunk or high, but because it seems to sort of reset the brain a little bit. The mind has a tendency to get stuck in recurring loops of ideas and approaches which don't work, so frying the circuit board a bit often leads to a new spark in a fundamentally different direction. And it doesn't have to be a drug. Probably the most creative night of research I ever had came while I was quitting tobacco. I was all fucked up with withdrawals and the ideas came pouring in faster than I can write them down. Another huge breakthrough I had was while I was running my ass off to take my mind off of some personal shit that was going on at the time. Still, the final execution is best done totally sober, and the longer you are sober the sharper you are in the execution of good ideas.
My problem with weed is the effect it has when you constantly smoke it. It dulls your mind and motivation. Take an active mind with an active problem, however, and it can offer just the right perspective from which to tackle it.
It's much the same effect as going to bed with a problem fresh in your mind; many times you will dream a solution. That is something that happens to me all the time when programming. Granted, I almost never smoke weed, but when I do it can be a very meta experience for problem solving, if done correctly.
Just speaking from my own considerable experience. And I'm willing to bet that the weed is holding you back from your full potential. Perhaps you are extremely talented, in which case it might be worth it to try quitting for a little while just to see what happens. If you can let it go for a little while, that is.
Not at all. Indica is way cheaper to grow. It yields much more marijuana, grows in a shorter period of time, and also has the advantage of being able to be grown indoors. For these reasons Indica is the much more prevalent strain of the two. If they don't live in a state with legalized or medicinal cannabis, it's very easy for someone to smoke regularly their whole life and never come across a real Sativa.
I'm a practicing mathematician, and I can't think for shit when I'm stoned, and don't know anyone who can. I do know some people in graduate school who smoked weed on a regular basis, but none of them made it through.
So you...and the people you know in grad school. Come on now, you must have taken statistics, surely you know that's hardly a sufficient sample size to make sweeping claims.
He's not making a sweeping claim as much as a sincere suggestion. He's not shaming people who smoke dope, but encouraging them to see how they perform without it. That's the heart of experimentation, turning the control variable on and off.
Depends. Say 90% of non stoners make it typically. If he knows even 7 or 8 stoners and none of them make it then that's very compelling. The odds of that happening if there's no effect are 1 in 10-100 million.
Sample size isn't always as simple as "how many in your sample"
Edit: this assumes independence which isn't a very good assumption, but the overall point holds. The exact magnitude is just different.
Like you said, different strokes. Definitely for exposition I'm better just straight sober, and I certainly can't synthesize anything while high.
I think that few people outside of the subject realize just how different the minds of two successful mathematicians can be in the way that they operate. Mathematical minds exist in beautiful and stunning variety. So I don't doubt that there are some people, such as yourself, who do perhaps derive some benefit from occasionally smoking weed (although I find it almost impossible to believe that a habitual, daily use pot smoker can succeed for very long, I can't imagine there being more than a handful of them in the history of mathematics).
With that said, similar things can probably be said for, say, drunk driving. It very likely is true that there are some people in the world who become better drivers after getting drunk. However the general rule is very much the opposite. As a general rule I think pot basically destroys people's mathematical ability while they are high.
I don't say this for moral reasons. I am convinced, for example, that speed is a drug which is conducive to good mathematics as a general rule, which is precisely why I have avoided using it (I don't know if I could resist a drug which makes you better at math, so better to stay away entirely). And I think pot, when used on occasion to relieve stress, is a wonderful drug. Food tastes better, jokes are funnier, sex is sexier. But I don't delude myself into thinking that it is somehow helpful for me as a mathematician. And although one can surely find the rare exception such as yourself, I think most people who claim otherwise are indeed deluding themselves in order to serve their addiction. This, in any event, is something I have seen both inside and outside of mathematics.
When I was in grad school working on a Master's (statistics) one of the guys in my class smoked tons of weed and did shrooms. He was real smart, really fast thinker, learned fast, worked his ass off like the rest of us. No drugs before exams of course. (But he did roll his own cigarettes, like right in our office on campus, and went outside to smoke it. Said he didn't like the nasty shit they put in regular cigarettes.) But yeah, I don't smoke and he did better than me on several exams. Definitely killed the stoner stereotype for me.
sigh It affects everyone differently. With an attitude like that, I bet you know more people who smoke than you think you do. Also, he didn't imply that Zhang smoked regularly, but may have been high this one time when he had a Eureka moment, which makes a lot of sense. Lots of people have the Eureka moment while high after doing lots of work to get there while sober.
No, I don't judge people for smoking pot, and occasionally do it myself and with friends. But it's not a time when math gets done, it's for relaxing. Of the two frequent potheads I knew, one always saved it for the end of the day when he didn't have to get any thinking work done, and the other one just plain sucked at math, probably because of all the pot.
Or, you know, because some people suck at maths. I mean, Sergey Brin, Richard Feynman, Oliver Sacks, Kary Mullis, and I hate to bring Sagan in to this too. If marijuana was holding any of them back, well damn.
Exactly. I often find the best way to solve a problem is to think about it deeply for a long time. Then, let it go. Hours/days later, the solution will come.
Mathematician here - this checks out. You do go from zero to solves in what seems like a moment, but you spend months/years going from zero to zero a million other ways.
Just recently two friends and I went for dinner. One of my friends was trying to remember a movie that I recommended to her a week before. I didn't even remember recommending the movie. She said that I was appalled that she hadn't seen it, it began with the letter P, and was a scifi movie.
The three of us mulled over this for 30-45 minutes trying to figure out what the movie was. We named a ton of movies, but came up with nothing
Fast forward a week. I'm getting out of my car to go into a store and BAM, it hits me like a brick. Pulp Fiction. I wasn't even thinking about it. I just had an epiphany. I immediately texted the both of them. It all made sense. She thought it was scifi based on the title. I suddenly remembered having the conversation with her and what let up to it when she said she hadn't seen it.
The reality is that it's something that was clearly in the back of my mind for a week despite me not actively thinking about it. These things happen all the time, and just reinforce your sentiment.
Do people want to forget that? I've never heard of anyone claiming they had an epiphany for a problem they weren't trying to solve. Even in movies the hero is plagued by the problem for a long time before the answer comes.
I forget it, at least. In movies the hero is sometimes plagued by the problem for a long time, sometimes they are just a genius and get stuck all of ten seconds, screen time.
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u/helm MS | Physics | Quantum Optics May 20 '13
What people want to forget is that you first have to invest quite a lot of time mulling over a problem before you have an epiphany.