Hey. Good article. I'd like to see the same filter applied against Silicon Valley memes, and what I see as as the near-fatal lack of education in history, languages and arts. Just see Elon for a person who can really do amazing engineering, but is so stupid about foreign affairs that he thinks he can weigh in on Russia and the Middle East.
I am a big believer in the 'fail-fast' methodology - for software - and maybe rockets - but there is a huge hypocrisy in ignoring and failing to learn from the psychology and culture failures. And of course there is the ever-present scourge of financial incentives that are orthogonal to community good.
I think "math person" is just a euphemism for "high functioning autistic person".
As a self-aware rationalist blogger once said: "highly autistic communities might have some systematic epistemological problems related to the high prevalence of autism.”
(Reposting the same reply I wrote for Reddit) I 100% see where this is coming from, but I really, really do not mean "math person" to be a euphemism for "high-functioning person on the autistic spectrum".
I think the distinct traits of a math person, distilled into their essence, yes, are effectively the same as autism. But I have seen these traits reside within people who could never be diagnosed "high-functioning autistic people", unless you made that category so broad that it could include anyone who likes math, logic and reason. Sure, if a person is maximally in love with logic and structure and almost never considers other people or social cues, they're likely on the spectrum. But in math people, I see people who easily pick up on social cues, have a strong sense of empathy, consider other people, would never be diagnosed as autistic, but still sometimes slip up and make the math-people-mistakes I describe in the post. Maybe you'd consider these people "really high functioning autistic people", but this seems like stretching the definition.
Again, I understand the feeling that it's euphemism. As I was writing the post, I was worried of this exact reaction. Still, I mean for math people to be a broader category, albeit one that does include autistic people as a sort of extreme case.
Hey. Good article. I'd like to see the same filter applied against Silicon Valley memes, and what I see as as the near-fatal lack of education in history, languages and arts. Just see Elon for a person who can really do amazing engineering, but is so stupid about foreign affairs that he thinks he can weigh in on Russia and the Middle East.
I am a big believer in the 'fail-fast' methodology - for software - and maybe rockets - but there is a huge hypocrisy in ignoring and failing to learn from the psychology and culture failures. And of course there is the ever-present scourge of financial incentives that are orthogonal to community good.
I think "math person" is just a euphemism for "high functioning autistic person".
As a self-aware rationalist blogger once said: "highly autistic communities might have some systematic epistemological problems related to the high prevalence of autism.”
(Reposting the same reply I wrote for Reddit) I 100% see where this is coming from, but I really, really do not mean "math person" to be a euphemism for "high-functioning person on the autistic spectrum".
I think the distinct traits of a math person, distilled into their essence, yes, are effectively the same as autism. But I have seen these traits reside within people who could never be diagnosed "high-functioning autistic people", unless you made that category so broad that it could include anyone who likes math, logic and reason. Sure, if a person is maximally in love with logic and structure and almost never considers other people or social cues, they're likely on the spectrum. But in math people, I see people who easily pick up on social cues, have a strong sense of empathy, consider other people, would never be diagnosed as autistic, but still sometimes slip up and make the math-people-mistakes I describe in the post. Maybe you'd consider these people "really high functioning autistic people", but this seems like stretching the definition.
Again, I understand the feeling that it's euphemism. As I was writing the post, I was worried of this exact reaction. Still, I mean for math people to be a broader category, albeit one that does include autistic people as a sort of extreme case.