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michael_nielsen's profile
michael_nielsen
michael_nielsen
michael_nielsen
@michael_nielsen

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michael_nielsen

@michael_nielsen

Searching for the numinous. Co-purveyor of https://quantum.country/ 

San Francisco, CA
michaelnielsen.org
Joined July 2008

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    1. Erik Torenberg‏Verified account @eriktorenberg Jun 14
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      Thinking: The leaders who run Silicon Valley, while focused, tend to be generalists. They're T-shaped, but not *the* domain expert. If true, why don't specialists run SV? Maybe: generalists can convene across disciplines & networks—bridging capital, talent, & opportunity.

      27 replies 62 retweets 451 likes
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    2. michael_nielsen‏ @michael_nielsen Jun 14
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      Replying to @eriktorenberg

      I like this question when contrasted with: why is it specialists who make the greatest intellectual & creative leaps? Historically, people like Einstein, Darwin, Newton, Picasso, etc. Still mostly true, though small teams are becoming more common in breakthrough conceptual work

      4 replies 4 retweets 31 likes
    3. michael_nielsen‏ @michael_nielsen Jun 14
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      Replying to @michael_nielsen @eriktorenberg

      A fair number of people are replying with the assertion that Einstein et al were really generalists. I doubt this is true in the way Erik originally meant his tweet. Darwin spent ~decade writing a treatise on snails. Such a person would not be considered a generalist in SV.

      2 replies 0 retweets 16 likes
    4. michael_nielsen‏ @michael_nielsen Jun 14
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      Replying to @michael_nielsen @eriktorenberg

      The key point: each knew far more about particular very narrow topics than anyone else in the world, and that was the source of their advantage. This seems relatively rarely true of SV generalists (except about their network; in some sense, that's their specialty).

      2 replies 0 retweets 14 likes
    5. michael_nielsen‏ @michael_nielsen Jun 14
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      Replying to @michael_nielsen @eriktorenberg

      michael_nielsen Retweeted

      A lot of people making the mistake in the tweet below: https://twitter.com/resolvingdust/status/1139687833835204608 … Einstein was a pretty good amateur musician, a pretty good mathematician, a largely ineffective activist... and one of the two greatest theoretical physicists in the history of the human species.

      michael_nielsen added,

      This Tweet is unavailable.
      1 reply 0 retweets 5 likes
      michael_nielsen‏ @michael_nielsen Jun 14
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      Replying to @michael_nielsen @eriktorenberg

      As a musician he seems to have been at the level of a good local tennis player; as a mathematician, at the level of a top local pro; as a theoretical physicist he was much better than a Roger Federer type. The gap is enormous.

      9:26 PM - 14 Jun 2019
      • 2 Likes
      • Bushra Farooqui
      1 reply 0 retweets 2 likes
        1. New conversation
        2. michael_nielsen‏ @michael_nielsen Jun 14
          • Report Tweet
          Replying to @michael_nielsen @eriktorenberg

          He certainly did get a lot from his breadth of interests. Eg his strength as a mathematician helped in general relativity. But there's a letter somewhere where Hilbert laments that "every boy in Goettingen" (roughly) knew more about the mathematics than E, but E discovered GR

          1 reply 0 retweets 1 like
        3. michael_nielsen‏ @michael_nielsen Jun 14
          • Report Tweet
          Replying to @michael_nielsen @eriktorenberg

          So, at least as I'd use the term, he was a mind-bogglingly talented specialist who benefited a lot from having other interests at which he was pretty darned good, but certainly not nearly the best in the world.

          0 replies 0 retweets 3 likes
        4. End of conversation

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