13 Comments
Mar 8Liked by Andrew Smith

Just goes to show, you should never invest money in ventures that aren't backed by real value and tangible assets.

On an unrelated note, anyone want to take this priceless collection of Beanie Babies off my hands?

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Sir Isaac, victim of a sham? Astonishing.

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Yeah. Maybe not so astonishing after all, but I think folks conflate being smart in one area for being smart in all areas. That's a big mistake!

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Very engaging historical drop, thanks;

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Well, you made me think a lot with this. Sometimes, great thinkers simply trust logic, and the world, the way it works (especially finance, which always cheats), can screw up any logic. The problem with bright people (on Sir Newton's scale) is that they often have no defense against the cleverness of those who are less bright but more shrewd. Only my two pence, though.

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I think that's right. The notion of absolute intelligence is really silly when you come down to it, and even though I'm sure Newton had more calculating power than me, I am also sure I'd be way better at some things than him (and know way more about the way things work in the real world, so to speak).

Even the smartest person in one area is a complete dummy in another.

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Yes, sort of. I believe that absolute intelligence exists, but I also believe that it creates asymmetries in people who have it. Kind of like Nash in Howard's A Beautiful Mind. Well, it's a movie, but there's something true there. BTW, it's an high intriguing topic. Thanks a lot :-)

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Glad to have some good ideas to toss around!

I tend to agree. I guess what I was trying to say is that you can certainly allocate a ton of brilliance to, say, mathematics, but all that brain power you're directing over there is going to create deficiencies elsewhere, no matter how powerful your brain is. I'm not sure if that's the ONLY thing that happened to Nash, though- he had some other broken things going on inside there, but OTOH, maybe that's why he had such amazing insights.

TL;DR: this is complicated stuff!

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Yep! I totally agree.

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He and Leibniz created a new version of math, but they could not join it with the others. This is why Cauchy was important: he showed that the calculus flowed from algebra and his proof of the fundamental theory of Calculus. This was 150 years from calculus be so important that it was allowed even though it broke the cardinal rule set by Euclid: all of mathematics should be a whole from the same group of axioms.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/2975545

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Stirling, have you considered writing about something like this? I think you could do a good job.

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I am writing about this. It is why I am writing a book on logical systems. in my latest post on what I am thinking...

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Do you mind sharing it here in the comments? Some of the readers here might enjoy checking that out.

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