"Deterministic fairytales can’t account for black swan events." How Bill Thurston's childhood helps us make sense of people like Gauss and Ramanujan. Link right below ⤵️

@AntiDyatlov I found the transition from mathematician to founding CEO quite natural. Mathematicians are often shy and introvert, but they're surprisingly aware of human psychology.

@phil49472744 @tunguz Look, we're having an interesting conversation and I don't think it would have taken place had I written a pondered tweet with 1K views. Of course I write differently on Substack.

@phil49472744 @tunguz As you see my culture is to read everyone, esp. the people I disagree with.

@phil49472744 @tunguz I got the same replies (even worse) to a post where I wrote that "math talent isn't primarily driven by genetics", so I suspect that it's the core message and not the specific phrasing that drives the responses.

@Jonathan_D003 @julianboolean_ @nickcammarata Bunch of reasons. First, neuroplasticity isn't the same as at 1, 2 or 3. Second, the journey is long and hard and it's hard to imagine you would have the positive feedback and motivation to keep pushing hard for 15 years.

@phil49472744 @tunguz Thanks for the ref, by the way. It's better than the ones I had on this.

@Augustus_kaizer @uerbum @akaSpaceHombre Cite an active Field medallist who has stated that math talent is primarily innate. Or are you going to say they're afraid to speak out because of woke terrorism?

@Augustus_kaizer @uerbum @akaSpaceHombre And of course some mathematicians have thought and still think math talent is innate. It's becoming rarer though.

Cool! And of course you're not dismissive and derogatory in any way. Did it occur to you that maybe these mathematicians went through striking experiences of changing their approach and becoming miraculously better? And are struggling to communicate the details, because it's all about unseen actions you perform in your brain?

@AaronJay954127 Precocious and mysterious != Innate

@phil49472744 @tunguz Which heritability figure do you have in mind for, say, IQ. As to the argument for EEA violation being mild, I find the really weak. Especially wrt math talent.

@bigguyuuuu69 @EverydayFinance I'm the opposite of blank slatist. Read my substack if you're curious.

Well, it was a fairly typical French language at the time for saying that math genius isn't a trainable skill, which I agree with. Brillat-Savarin: "On devient cuisinier, mais on nait rôtisseur." In 19th century French, "born" was commonly used in metaphorical sense. Nerval: "Puisque la nuit heureuse Qui sert mes vœux hardis du balcon m'a fait naître" I wouldn't take this verb too literally.

@Vert_Noel @AlexTISYoung You have no idea what laypeople fantasize about math talent, and how obstructive it is to proper teaching.

@Vert_Noel The ones who study actual genomes (GWAS).

@King_kVAR My substack post precisely explains why your reasoning is a fallacy.

@mattnwalsh @memeticsisyphus GWAS is large scale approach that's exactly designed to detect low freq signal and intra-family filters out the social idiosyncrasies. It finds good signal for height. If it finds zero signal for math talent vs "normal people", it's likely there's none.

RT @ruchawalawalkar: @davidbessis *sigh* I wish more people were taught this. I didn't have "innate math talent". I got one good teacher wh…