Willpower is best used with care

The Australian ^ | August 10, 2006 | Cordelia Fine

[GSlob]

It happened in the late 1700s. And the teaching at the time was pedestrian by design.

[Northern Alliance]

I know I can take that one dollar to the corner store, buy ten 10-cent boxes of candy. and sell them at school for a quarter apiece.

Or maybe go buy a lottery ticket with the $1 and win $1,000,000.

Great screen name - appropriate too.

[Badray]

self ping

[Question_Assumptions]

Sounds like a reasonable take on it to me.

[RileyD, nwJ]

Really enjoyed the post. Also enjoyed the comments by fellow posters that offered some balance.

If you would like to read a short article that goes along with the same line of thinking try Chess & Basketball? Chess and Boxing? The correlations for achieving excellence are amazing!

RileyD, nwJ

[Badray]

I couldn't finish the article. Dog Eat Dog was on. LOL

Just kidding. Very interesting.

[lepton]

It happened in the late 1700s. And the teaching at the time was pedestrian by design.

Well, yes...I'll concede that I wasn't around in the 1700s and thus can't compete. On the other hand, I came up with it on my own from a simple visualization (at a time I was doing poorly in math because I was completely uninterested in the class). The teacher wasn't trying to teach us to think that way...as a matter of fact, it's closely associated with his publicly ridiculing me, and most likely he was simply being a smartass as I got sent to the principals office *again* shortly thereafter.

I'm not convinced it is an exceptionally big leap to be made. Certainly no bigger than looking at a multiplication table we were supposed to memorize and deducing algebraic patterns to relationships and using them to replace the rote memorization that was being requested of me in an earlier grade. I don't think either is an example that puts me in the same category as Gauss.

[GSlob]

"I don't think either is an example that puts me in the same category as Gauss."
Not yet. But those who could not do even that wash out immediately. Besides, Gauss at the time was about 8-9 years old, I believe. Later he did much more interesting stuff, but this one case is a perfect example how a flash of insight can effortlessly trump sweaty perseverance. Not everyone is capable of such sparks and flashes, and even those who are capable of them very rarely could produce them at will. Normal scientists, even good ones, usually have their lifetime good ideas countable on the fingers of one hand.