10,000 Hours with Claude Shannon (2017)

https://medium.com/the-mission/10-000-hours-with-claude-shannon-12-lessons-on-life-and-learning-from-a-genius-e8b9297bee8f

by bmcn2020 • 6 years ago

157 82 6 years ago

medium.com

j7ake• 6 years ago

“His name may not ring a bell. Don’t worry, we didn’t know who he was either when we started.“

This really sounds like a weird quote that doesn’t help promote their book at all. Why would I want to read a biography written by people who didn’t know the person until five years ago?

I guess that sentence tells all about who the target audience is for the book.

Veen• 6 years ago

Why would I want to read a biography written by people who didn’t know the person until five years ago?

Professional biographers are generalists who turn existing primary and secondary sources into a narrative of someone's life, perhaps with input from the subject, friends and family, etc. They need a fair bit of background knowledge, but they don't need to be experts in the field. It's a biography, not a technical survey or intellectual history, although it probably includes some elements of that.

If you're interested in Shannon's life and want to understand something about his work in that context, this could be a useful to you. If you're primarily interested in his work, read a textbook or his publications.

(although this post's vapidity isn't encouraging)

cambalache4• 6 years ago

Professional biographers are generalists who turn existing primary and secondary sources into a narrative of someone's life

And that's why most "professional" biographies suck. I am not saying the biographer should dedicate their life to their subject , although it certainly does not hurt, but a certain level of competence beyond "just" reading the primary and secondaries sources is expected for a great biography. Sometimes you get that because of long experience, sometimes you get that because you knew the subject or because you have worked in the same field. If you want vapid books like this one or ,a little less charitably, Walter Isaacson's Einstein go for it. But if you want fantastic tour de forces like Westfall's "Never at Rest", Joseph Frank's series on Dostoevsky, Pais' "Subtle is the lord",Stach's books on Kafka you need an experienced world-class expert in the subject in a multi-year (sometimes, multi-decade) effort.

chrisseaton2• 6 years ago

Why would I want to read a biography written by people who didn’t know the person until five years ago?

Because they're a professional and competent biographer?

I don't know if these people are that or not, but biography is a skill you can apply to people even if you don't know them well.

spaetzleesser3• 6 years ago

One problem I see is that a lot of biographies are pretty good at describing the person's life as far as social relations go but they usually don’t have only very shallow information about the actual topics that made the person famous. When I read the Steve Jobs biography I would have like to hear more about how he thought about technology and how product decisions were made vs his relationship to his daughter and so on. Same for scientists.

Not sure how to do better but I think there is a risk that professional biographers describe only certain easily accessible facets of the person and not go into the depth of their work.

patrec2• 6 years ago

If you don't know who Claude Shannon is long before starting to write a biography about him, you are not competent to be his biographer.

Unsurprisingly the article reads like run of the mill click-bait cant like Sun Tsu's 31 best pieces of leadership advice.

wombatmobile• 6 years ago

Sounds like a bio from a sausage factory.

That would be better than nothing, and not as good as something written by a great writer who understood Claude Shannon's work.

At this point, we can only take what we can get.

nicholast• 6 years ago

It's true that this biography was not a great vehicle for understanding Shannon's technical contributions as they are in many cases glossed over, is much more focused on his professional arc, hobbies, family, kind of more about getting to know him outside of his papers.

But Shannon was a very interesting character, lot's of oddball moments and projects. It's a fun read.

danbruc2• 6 years ago

When I join a new software project I usually know nothing about the problem domain either. And sometimes not even about the tools or languages used. But that is not a problem because the skills actually required are the ability to become familiar with unknown problem domains and the ability to use your general knowledge about software development to make use of whatever language, framework, or tool the project asks for.

spaetzleesser3• 6 years ago

“But that is not a problem because the skills actually required are the ability to become familiar with unknown problem domains and the ability to use your general knowledge about software development to make use of whatever language, framework, or tool the project asks for.”

I think a lot of projects suffer from the fact that the people working on it don’t have deep domain knowledge. A lot of attempts to “disrupt” an industry fail because they don’t understand the status quo.

justin66• 6 years ago

Why would I want to read a biography written by people who didn’t know the person until five years ago?

Because you're the kind of thoughtful person who would evaluate the question of whether you should read a book based on more than the most superficial criteria. (or because you want to read about Claude Shannon and there aren't a lot of options)

hderms• 6 years ago

It might be an excuse to put in a Bell labs pun

motohagiography2• 6 years ago

I love stories about Shannon, Feynman, Weiner, Grothendeick, Turing, and others, but I've become suspicious of the idea of genius. While these and others are undoubtedly examples, and telling their stories inspires us to follow their paths at least for a while, the underlying idea is that these people, whose minds necessarily took liberty first to make their discoveries, are somehow unreachable Others.

This is where I diverge, as I think if we were to cultivate the core values of benevolence, humility, with iconoclasm in kids we could produce more minds like these. What makes genius so exceptional is less a magical quality of the person, but that they manage to achieve in spite of the rest of us in as we occupy our classrooms and offices. I suspect it's these values that are the necessary condition.

Such a pleasant article about such an amazing mind.

AcademicHamster• 6 years ago

I like the sentiment, but I have to disagree. I believe there is something genetically different about Grothendieck that makes him possess superior intelligence. I don’t think you can cultivate a bunch of Grothendiecks in mass by teaching a bunch of children advanced mathematics at a younger age.

musha68k• 6 years ago

It’s likely due to the factors both you and the parent are mentioning – and others – not known or in worst case unknowable.

fenderbluesjr• 6 years ago

I think László Polgár would disagree with you wholeheartedly:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A1szl%C3%B3_Polg%C3%A1r

Interesting read if you aren't already familiar

stainforth• 6 years ago

Off subject but on Wikipedia Grothendieck says Riemann was his only main or most admired mathematician. Do their fields match up for this to make sense?

strikelaserclaw2• 6 years ago

I think it is partially genetic, but also the type of environment that Grothendieck was raised in. He was raised in utmost uncertainty during WW2 (he was half-jewish), and i think he gravitated towards the certainty in mathematics. He was also mostly self taught early on, so he definitely had a different way of looking at things than those who came from regular academic backgrounds like serre. I like to think of natural brain power as hardware (genetics) and the set of beliefs, interests, fundamental ways of thinking about the world as software acquired through experience. Even the best hardware can't run shitty algorithms. In any creative fields, there are an extraordinary amount of brute force paths, it takes a special type of touch to find the correct path, and this seems to be very much a function of the life experiences a person had and this is really what differentiates special creative people like einstein or grothendieck from people who are just as intelligent but haven't done nearly as much.

dimitrios14• 6 years ago

I used to view things this way as well. It has a lot in common with blank slate psychology. I have come to not believe things like this anymore.

As I get older, I am returning more to it's more about nature than nurture: genetics matter much more than environment. I've realized just how hard it is to do some of these things, even with all the resources and tools at your disposal. I spent much time thinking of how environmental cultivation can help, and I do think it matters to a degree, but genetics matter much more, in as much that the only reason environment matters at all is that it helps bring forth expressions of your genes. Having children made me realize this even more. While they pick up on some things and mannerisms of their parents, I have no idea where their unique little personalities came from, and their tendencies towards certain subjects, hobbies, or activities. It amazes me every day I see them change and grow into their own person.

Additionally, it belittles the consistent effort and energy spent by these individuals to train their minds. Genius to an extent has a lot in common with madness, in that you have to be almost mad to take ideas they did to their conclusion. We see the result of their works, but not the countless hours and sleepless nights put in to get to that point, driven by the idea of novelty and discovery.

yrimaxi2• 6 years ago

Additionally, it belittles the consistent effort and energy spent by these individuals to train their minds.

If we have to choose between these two dichotomies, “nature” “belittles” it more.

bmitc2• 6 years ago

As I get older, I am returning more to it's more about nature than nurture: genetics matter much more than environment.

It is my understanding that modern science supports this. I’ve seen either a book or article (none of which I can recall at the moment) that echoes this sentiment.

willmw1013• 6 years ago

Additionally, it belittles the consistent effort and energy spent by these individuals to train their minds

Not following this logic and this seems to be at odds with the rest of your comment. You seem to be saying that the idea of 'nurture/environment' being more or as important than 'nature/genetics' belittles the effort made by individuals to train their minds? Isn't the complete opposite actually true, ie acknowledging the importance of 'nurture/environment' or epigenetic enabled knowledge/skill acquisition, would actually be to recognise rather than belittle the 'consistent effort and energy spent by these individuals to train their minds'?

bmitc2• 6 years ago

I think it’s probably a little of both. On one side, I am reminded of the quote “luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity”. Many of the big discoveries happened by very intelligent people being in the right place, at the right time where a certain idea was ripe, meeting the right people, and having just enough gusto, so to speak, to push in a new direction. I think that is probably applicable to people like Einstein and Shannon. I’m not taking away from them at all because they did it with work and intelligence. It’s just they had the right preparation at the right time and place.

But then there are other people that do seem to be on a totally different plane, usually in some specific field. One that comes to mind is someone like Grigori Perelman. I think that’s where the comment on genetics applies, because someone like that truly has biological horsepower that the rest of us don’t have.

Then there are others who are more generalist thinkers, at a system level, that seem to see things the rest of us don’t and have the capability to sort through it all. I’m reminded of people like Stafford Beer. Someone like Noam Chomsky is probably in this category as well but also in the former, like Perelman. If you’ve ever watched Chomsky debate or speak, he seems to have a basically infinite memory and instant recall of what he has read.

TameAntelope• 6 years ago

There are two types of genius. Ordinary geniuses do great things, but they leave you room to believe that you could do the same if only you worked hard enough. Then there are magicians, and you can have no idea how they do it. Feynman was a magician.

- Hans Bethe

I believe Feynman's "magic" was in how well he could explain things to others, and there isn't a "explain things well" gene...

coldtea2• 5 years ago

I believe Feynman's "magic" was in how well he could explain things to others, and there isn't a "explain things well" gene...

How so? There are people naturally skilled with language and communication.

stagger873• 6 years ago

You're forgetting the most common characteristic of the prolific, financial independence.

adolph2• 6 years ago

Do you mean a workplace like Bell Labs where the monopoly only had to come up with a significant game changer now and then instead of on a quarterly basis?

The below podcast, a TWIML AI interview of Charles Isbell is an interesting listen overall and the above question’s assumptions about Bell Labs come from the podcast’s depiction of Bell Labs.

https://twimlai.com/machine-learning-as-a-software-engineeri...

motohagiography2• 6 years ago

To summarize other comments on genetic component, I think survivor bias has more to do with it, as even if hypoethetically there is a genetic component, how many of those genetically "gifted" people come out the other side of our institutions and systems to be remembered as "geniuses?"

One doesn't need to subscribe to tabula rasa to bet that the real incidence of a Ramanujan intelligence is orders of magnitude higher than its appearance in european universities. The more plausible explanation is that our societies are exceptionally good at suppressing these intelligences because the problems they index on and the only ways to solve them are specifically orthogonal to the skills you need to rise in a bureaucracy.

Genetics might be a thing, but I'm saying any genetic component of intelligence is effectively cancelled out in all but a few celebrated instances by the leviathan mean-reversion machines we call societies.

Edit to add: I think the argument should be about the best way to discover how fat tailed the distribution of human intelligence really is instead of producing explanations for why we should think it's long and thin.

EForEndeavour2• 6 years ago

even if hypoethetically there is a genetic component
Genetics might be a thing

Wouldn't it be a huge surprise if genetics weren't a thing when it comes to intelligence (or imperfect attempts to quantify it)? Maybe my lay understanding is out of date or something, but research like [1] concludes that metrics of intelligence are "moderately to substantially heritable," along with "virtually all individual psychological differences."

[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12486697/

ta1234567890• 6 years ago

but that they manage to achieve in spite of the rest of us

This is a very important factor.

Whatever things these geniuses brought to the world, were not self-evident to other people. The geniuses not only had to come up with their ideas, but (maybe even more importantly) "sell" those ideas to others.

It is very hard to convince others to even pay attention to new ideas, it's even harder to get them to adopt them.

TriNetra• 6 years ago

I don't think anyone is genius in any field by birth. Yes, one can have some biological traits but those are mostly related to having a properly functioning brain. Then, with long, sincere effort and right environment starting early in life, one eventually attains the mastery in the given field.

I read this book 'The Children of Tomorrow' [0] in which the author has mentioned about a couple Laszlo Polgar (a psychologist) and Klara who intentionally and carefully planned making their children genius chess players. The result:

Their first daughter Susan Polgar won her first Under-11 chess tournament at age four. At twelve, she won the World (Girls) Under-16 championship. At fifteen, she became the top-rated female chess player in the world. Going through the conventional Grandmaster (GM) norms applicable to men, she became a chess grandmaster at the age of twenty-two. In 1996, twenty-seven-year-old Susan Polgar was crowned the women’s chess champion.
their second daughter Sofia who, at the age of eleven, became a world Under-14 girls chess champion.
their youngest daughter, Judit, who At age twelve, had thirty-five more points in FIDE rating (world chess rating) than the erstwhile world women chess champion. At age fifteen, she became the youngest chess grandmaster, far ahead of any male chess grandmaster throughout the history of the game. Judit is generally considered the strongest female chess player of all time. At age ten, she not only took on chess grandmaster Lev Gutman, but also won against him.
All three daughters were home-schooled by Klara with a specialization in chess. They figured a long time ago – as an increasing number of parents are discovering today – that there was little sense in sending their children to a traditional school where regard for individual growth and understanding the temperament of each child was negligible. By the time most children come back home from school in the afternoon, they are tired and a whole day seems gone. To expect that they would then pursue intensive training in anything else at all is neither practical nor reasonable.

0: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07PRP4HQ4

Bakary4• 6 years ago

Reflecting on the arc of his career, Shannon confessed, “I don’t think I was ever motivated by the notion of winning prizes, although I have a couple of dozen of them in the other room. I was more motivated by curiosity. Never by the desire for financial gain. I just wondered how things were put together. Or what laws or rules govern a situation, or if there are theorems about what one can’t or can do. Mainly because I wanted to know myself.”

This is one insight about actual geniuses that shun the "classic" trappings of life that has always intrigued me. They are essentially coerced by their own neurology to aim for academic pursuits, because anything else cannot scratch that itch. Money and power are nice (and Johnny von Neumann loved his parties and loud music) but in the end it's just not that stimulating in comparison to hard abstract problems. Social relationships still have their draw as well, but you have to hit the knowledge-pipe regularly or face withdrawal.

For people of that caliber, living in pre-modern societies must have been equivalent to torture. For the rest of us, it would have been like watching paint dry for our entire lives. Sounds like sour grapes, but in a way I am grateful not to have to deal with all of this. Looking at von Neumann's example again, the fear of death still caused him to lash out irrationally and in the end even he could not escape the human condition.

yrimaxi2• 6 years ago

> I don’t think I was ever motivated by the notion of winning prizes, although I have a couple of dozen of them in the other room.

Being a genius is a good thing, and also not having “ego” motivations is looked upon favorably. So this is like an egoless brag.

Also: look at what I managed to do indirectly/without even trying.

olau• 6 years ago

Don't know if he was bragging or not, but if you have achieved something, I think it's hard to talk about yourself without someone thinking you're bragging.

I once got a top grade after passing an exam where I had read one page beyond what was required (can't remember if it was by accident, or because I was curious about something - but we're talking one page). After my presentation, the examiner asked a final question. This was covered in that page, so I just had to connect two dots and could give him a little proof immediately. Very little brain activity needed. Pretty sure I couldn't have come up with a proof on the spot otherwise.

I sometimes bring up that story as an example of why grading is stupid, but even though the point is how arbitrary the situation was, I can't shake off the feeling that people might think I'm bragging.

I think we should cut people some slack, if we don't know their intentions.

willis9362• 6 years ago

Of course the freedom to scratch that itch means you need to have the option to not work a job you don't enjoy to meet the physical needs of living.

Today it's easier to overcome, but not everyone has the privilege of clawing their way out. By the time they do, then who they are is already defined as someone who is not interested in that itch. Name one scientific genius born into poverty.

vadansky• 6 years ago

Name one scientific genius born into poverty.

Ramanujan

FiatLuxDave• 6 years ago

Faraday

Supermancho• 6 years ago

https://www.famousscientists.org/scientists-harsh-begin/

If you want to split hairs about what "poverty" means, you might want to put down a line. There are plenty of other types of geniuses (literary, musical, etc) that were born in poverty, so I see no reason to think it's an exclusive club of the financially stable.

adolph2• 6 years ago

George Washington “ Carver was born into slavery, in Diamond Grove (now Diamond), Newton County, Missouri, near Crystal Place, sometime in the early or mid 1860s.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Washington_Carver

cambalache4• 6 years ago

For people of that caliber, living in pre-modern societies must have been the equivalent to torture.

Why? Vitruvius, Thales, Eratosthenes, Archimedes,Euclid all lived in "pre-modern" societies and I dont think they considered their lives "torture".

Bakary4• 6 years ago

That is an excellent point. In this case, I still can't help but think of all those whose circumstances did not allow them to produce anything that would be remembered by history.

"I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops." — S. J. Gould

clipradiowallet• 6 years ago

you have to hit the knowledge-pipe regularly or face withdrawal

I really like your phrasing of that. That feeling of learned-a-new-thing is addictive and your analogy is apt [to me].

JackMorgan• 6 years ago

I'm not a genius by any stretch, but I felt that way until I was given access to the internet and enough job stability to have a few hours of free time every day. The internet became a way to easily just read about whatever interested me, which is usually a few hours a day on various subjects. Before that, life was miserable.

As an adult I've realized that I need significant and varied diet of books, internet, social time, rigorous physical activity, problem solving, musical practice, and art making every day otherwise I quickly fall into a deep depression. I can see how in other times or other circumstances I'd be turning to substance abuse just to make it through the day. It feels like my mind requires constant effort or I'll be unhealthy and unhappy.

Several family members of mine who are quite a bit more intelligent struggle with this even more. Some have even fallen into substance abuse as a shortcut, but one that never achieves stability, only ruin.

andi999• 6 years ago

Ever tested for adhd?

jes• 6 years ago

If you haven't already seen it, I recommend the YouTube video on depression by Dr. Robert Sapolsky.

avs733• 6 years ago

I read the book last year and found it really interesting. That being said, it is still a biography about a person by people not in his field of expertise. It's a narrative about the person not the technology. In concert with 'the idea factory' it is an interesting T shaped perspective on innovation and creativity. That being said I've noticed two big concerns with how the book has been presented and advertised...

1) I find the implicit connection in the post title to Malcolm Gladwells 10k hours theory of expertise to be incredibly antithetical to everything in the book itself about how Shannon worked and thought and created. If they wanted to be pithy and make a connection to Shannon and expertise, mentioning Range: Why generalists triumph in a specialized world seems much more appropriate.

2) All of it seems to be a little to 'we discovered this interesting person' which frankly is a weird way to position a biography. It is a PATH to people learning about someone, but usually the greatest interest in a biography is going to come from people who know abotu a person but want to know more. It is part of a broader, fairly egocentric approach to advertising the work that seems to really make it about the authors not Shannon, which just strikes me as odd for a biography of someone else.

sandwall• 6 years ago

I agree with your comments 100%, I too read and enjoyed the book and found it very complementary to The Idea Factory

augustk• 6 years ago

I see it as common courtesy to mention everyone in a picture of a small group of people. The woman is not mentioned.

10,000 Hours with Claude Shannon (2017)

Related Stories