I think this is pretty hard for me to explain, but please try to bear with me.
My observations are as anecdotal as anyone else's, but my experience is that there is a moderate negative correlation between someone's raw analytical ability and the capacity to appreciate the kind of ambiguity that good literature carries. Of course there are those rare gems who can juggle both pretty well- Poincare or Mandelbrot for examples.
And most of my personal experiences of very high raw analytical ability comes from academia, people who made through ICPC world finals & are doing their PhDs at top schools, and not startup world- where smart people are of a somewhat different mold.
Now there is nothing negative with not appreciating a broad set of literature, or having a more deterministic/ utilitarian view of life. They are to some extent different personalities and different mindsets.
I appreciate Taleb's world view to a decent extent [1], but I used to actively keep it in my head/ life when I was in pure research/ grad-school mode. Now as I am building shit/ taking big risks, my mindset is much more generic HN'ish view. For instance, earlier I used to read substantially more poetry, literature [2] and biological papers. Now I primarily focus on my core area - stats/ML/AI etc. and general HN stuff.
[1] To the extent of corresponding with him at length
[2] If there is a single book I would suggest to you or anyone else, it would be Kolyma Tales. It is probably the most despairing/ darkest thing I have ever read and made me appreciate human nature a lot more.
thanks for your thoughtful response. i too have a gut feeling about that negative correlation, and i believe brain research suggests at the least that these two characteristics are distinct, and vary in individuals.
could it be that those "rare gems" that you mention--who are both analytical and "creative"--are greater in number than you think--maybe even the majority? for example, the pure-analytical types and the pure-creative types could be a very vocal minority. They stand to gain the most by being divisive.
i also read less for pleasure nowadays as i run my startup. funny that you should mention russian literature. that is my favorite. i will read kolyma tales next based on your recommendation. the last russian work i read was the master and margarita, which was unbelievable. i have my own theories about the russians' views on human nature, but that is not for this thread!
My observations are as anecdotal as anyone else's, but my experience is that there is a moderate negative correlation between someone's raw analytical ability and the capacity to appreciate the kind of ambiguity that good literature carries. Of course there are those rare gems who can juggle both pretty well- Poincare or Mandelbrot for examples.
And most of my personal experiences of very high raw analytical ability comes from academia, people who made through ICPC world finals & are doing their PhDs at top schools, and not startup world- where smart people are of a somewhat different mold.
Now there is nothing negative with not appreciating a broad set of literature, or having a more deterministic/ utilitarian view of life. They are to some extent different personalities and different mindsets.
I appreciate Taleb's world view to a decent extent [1], but I used to actively keep it in my head/ life when I was in pure research/ grad-school mode. Now as I am building shit/ taking big risks, my mindset is much more generic HN'ish view. For instance, earlier I used to read substantially more poetry, literature [2] and biological papers. Now I primarily focus on my core area - stats/ML/AI etc. and general HN stuff.
[1] To the extent of corresponding with him at length
[2] If there is a single book I would suggest to you or anyone else, it would be Kolyma Tales. It is probably the most despairing/ darkest thing I have ever read and made me appreciate human nature a lot more.