There Are No Miracle People

bamahabir

I don't believe in equality, I believe in hard work.

If the guy is willing to put in the time and work to understand something that is supremely complex, who are you to tell him he can't do it because he isn't intelligent enough?

zoobyshoe

I think there are "miracle people" but they're pretty rare. The stories I've read about Gauss and Von Neuman, for example, indicate they were preternaturally gifted in math, that they had a facility for it that would be impossible to learn.

Most of the innovators weren't prodigies, though. I've frequently read that, as mathematicians go, Einstein was neither gifted nor enthusiastic. Newton would agree with Feynman, I think. He taught himself algebra from a book, but he complained that this was very hard and recalled it as a considerable undertaking. He would likely lay his success to his focus and drive rather than any ease with math.

I think a large percentage, over half certainly, of great physicists were tortoises rather than hares. They plodded along inexorably never resting or giving up.

H2Bro

Von Neuman had legendary faculties for mental computation, unlikely anything that could be learned or developed even with decades of devotion.

Here I relate an anecdote of reasonably high veracity (as told by Daniel Dennett): A physics professor was interviewing colleagues, both mathematicians and physicists, to see if there was differences in how they approached math problems. The professor had a hunch: mathematicians always do things the methodical and long way around, while physicists are more likely to strike upon heuristics or short cuts to the answer. To test this he set about asking, verbally and in person, both sets of people the following question. Two trains, 100 miles apart, are approaching each other on the same track, one going 30 miles per hour, the other going 20 miles per hour. A bird flying 120 miles per hour starts at train A (when they are 100 miles apart), flies to train B, turns around and flies back to the approaching trainA, and so forth, until the trains collide.

How far has the bird flown when the collision occurs? "Two hundred forty miles," Von Neumann answered almost instantly. "Darn," replied his colleague, "I predicted you'd do it the hard way." "Ay!" von Neumann cried in embarrassment, smiting his forehead. "There's an easy way!"

Clearly, there are those out there like von Neumann and Stephen Wolfram who publish highly cited particle physics papers at the age of 17 and go on to found entire new disciplines in their wake, but they are the vanishing minority. I'm with zoobyshoe on this one: The great deal of science, I strongly believe, is not achieved by intuitive feats of genius but by the methodical application of talents hard-won through years of learning and practice.

However, most of us "do" science by applying and making use of heuristics and tools developed by others, like GR, EM, Feynmann diagrams, etc. We can make steady progress using these, and they are accessible to many, but it may well be it takes a supreme intellect to first establish these scaffolds, which may then be climbed and made use of by others.

kelvinng

I'm the OP.

I have a BSc(Hons) (Third Class) in 1999 and a BSc (Merit) in 1998 from a reputable university in Singapore. I was diagnosed with schizophrenia in 2005 and was hospitalised. I am still interested in Physics, but I can't seem to make any progress. Whether it is a lack of will, or confidence or intellect or whether the disease has incapacitated me, I'm not sure. Probably all of the above. Plus Physics is hard.

BobG

I disagree. It has as much validity as saying anyone could play basketball as well as Michael Jordan if they just put in the time and effort.

The only difference between the two is that differences in physical ability (height, for example) tend to be obvious, while differences in mental ability are physically indistinguishable.

That doesn't mean that the average person can't master shooting or dribbling a basketball, nor does it mean the average person can't master (or understand) a lot about physics. It just means there are a lot of people that are never going to excel at physics.

I still remember the guy in electrical engineer that finally passed the electronics "weed out" course on his third try - and then promptly switched majors. He wasn't going to be defeated, but it was also obvious to him that he just wasn't cut out to be an electrical engineer. Wise choice.

Lavabug

Let's not compare anatomic barriers to mental/psychological barriers. The limitations of the brain are nowhere close to an exact science as it might be for the musculo-skeletal system, where some things are just not mechanically possible for some people. A person with literally half a brain can still lead a high functioning life and perform well at school, look up this story:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MKNsI5CWoU

Passing all the courses in a degree is one thing, I don't think anyone can honestly say it cannot be achieved by anyone without a severely incapacitating mental disability. A phd holder I know failed upper level quantum a total of 5 times before passing (granted the level at which this was taught was way beyond anything most people ever see as an undergrad and quite possibly grad level). He has half a dozen publications now in reputable journals in quantum information theory. Of course he took longer than most people to finish his degree (at a distance university) though.

Doing original, publishable work let alone groundbreaking research is a whole other story.

AlephZero

I'm not sure what you are saying, except that "psychology" in its present state is arguably barely a science at all (though it's a very profitable commercial operation - expecially child psychology that is marketed as a way to fix educational problems.)

Giving a few "happy-clappy" examples doesn't prove anything much IMO, and if you are arguing that the human brain somehow works outside of the laws of physics, you need to give some convincing proof of that.

Lavabug

What I am saying is that making predictions on educational achievement is nothing even remotely related to making predictions based on physiology. Ie: A person with motor-neuron disease or a deformed leg will never be able to compete with other NBA all stars. There is no evidence that similar clear-cut predictions apply to university education outcomes, as BobG was stating.

I am not arguing that the brain works outside of the laws of physics. What I don't like is the attitude that being able to complete a science degree somehow demands a highly vague and ill-defined trait that cannot even be blind-tested for and account for every case of people's educational outcome.

The air I am gathering from naysayers is that there is some kind of "magical minimum" of intelligence required to complete the requirements of a university science degree. For people that claim to be scientists or have a science degree under their belt, this is not a very scientific way of thinking.

The onus of proving anything is on the people who claim "some just can, some can't", which as of yet hasn't extended beyond anything other than anecdotal examples either. I'm not putting lower or upper bounds on the achievement potential of anyone without some solid evidence behind it, just like nobody puts a lower or upper bound on the mass of an elementary particle without a ton of measurements and a sound theory behind it. Let's be humble about what we don't know.

I'm not accusing anyone here of this, but it seems like everyone who grew up in a culture that supported their interests in science grew up hearing how smart they were from the people around them, and as a consequence like to feel they're "special" because they got their degree or some similar achievement, that no "regular schmoe" could have achieved. I rarely got this kind of encouragement and spent a large part of my leducation feeling dumb and mediocre, especially in mathematics, and was thoroughly discouraged by my family to pursue physics on both financial and intellectual incapability arguments. I'm 3 exams away from proving them wrong on the latter, and I've overcome far harder challenges in my degree than these 3 upcoming tests.

Like I said in another thread, will my heart suddenly stop beating before I get my degree because I don't qualify as "smart enough"? Please.

phosgene

Before we start arguing about who can and can't, we really need to define what we mean here. It seems to have gone toward 'can everybody get a degree in physics?'. Which I think the answer is clearly yes. Given a lifetime, somebody with no mathematical ability at all could eventually memorize everything that they can't intuitively just 'get'. They might not get a good grade, but a good chunk of undergrad seems to be regurgitating what's been said in lectures, but maybe in a more creative way. Or maybe we're talking about reasonable times, in which case I think the answer is most probably a no. Otherwise we come to the (in my opinion, silly) conclusion that everybody who fails is brain damaged, lazy or whatever else has been discussed. Looking back to highschool, there were *many* people that were motivated to get A's in calculus, business maths, whatever, but just couldn't, no matter how hard they tried. Some of these people couldn't even *pass*. Are we supposed to believe that, somehow, when the maths gets harder, that the hard work is somehow going to yield more results and they'll still be able to keep up?

And I don't think anybody here is trying to 'prove' one way or the other. The only way to do that would be with real data. It's just personal opinions on what some study might determine is the case. But I'm not convinced that our default position should be that 'everybody can do it'. I mean, we've had the extreme examples, but don't tell me that you've never seen people that aren't brain-damaged do their best and fail at it? Just because one position hasn't been 'proven', doesn't mean the alternative is the default.

Lavabug

That was the extent of my argument, I thought it was clear.

And yes, more work and more importantly different methods can produce better results. I never got a single A in a math class throughout middle or high school. I struggled to learn my multiplication tables. I remember having a tutor in precalc. I struggled hard with calculus. The fear of math instilled into me by experience in school made me avoided a math heavy subject in university. Then I realized it wasn't so bad, learned how to study math properly and jumped ship to physics and did quite well in a school with a very high attrition rate, and in fact my better grades were in math subjects.
I made a specific mention: no severely incapacitating mental disorder. And I'm not convinced it is going to swing either way. My anecdotes are just as good as yours. But what is stated without evidence ("some can't") can also be dismissed without evidence. What you're advocating is making an assertion based on a hunch and not data or a testable model, as I said, not a very objective scientific way of approaching this. What I'm saying is: let's stop pretending that we can make clear-cut predictions for people, measuring intellectual ability and achievement potential isn't a perfected science by any stretch.

A vaguely related anecdote: I've heard some educators have managed to overcome the "double-hump" problem with teaching university students how to program.

phosgene

I don't disagree, like I said, it's just my opinion from personal experience. I don't claim that this is in any way scientific and I admit that I could be dead wrong in my views. What we need is some real data to give us an idea of what the case really is. But the conversation seems to be more of the idle speculation type, it is the general discussion section after all.

I don't see what's wrong with offering up our views (or our predictions, whatever you want to call them), so long as we acknowledge that it's just a casual discussion not based on rigorous investigation.

Yanick

I don't mean to be picking on you but this just caught my eye so I want to respond. What does Physics have to do with intelligence and brain function, aside from some kind of general Philosophical assertion that Physics is fundamental and everything in the universe must follow the laws of Physics. I would ask you to expand on your statement and derive the conditions necessary for language starting from Newton's First Law. I'll even be nice and let you start from Maxwell's equations if you'd like.

Yes the brain likely follows the laws of Physics, there is nothing known about the brain to suggest otherwise. However, suggesting that Physics can be used to ascertain brain function is pretty absurd really. Maybe certain tools of Physics may be used, but the study of the brain and its capabilities is the study of Neuroscience and it is a system entirely too complicated to be studied using pure Physics. Your statement comes awfully close to being a straw man.

I think too many people have thrown out too many over-generalizations in this whole thread. It sucks to say, but we, as a whole, do not yet understand enough about brain function to make any assertion either way for the average person (covering my bases there). There are entirely too many factors to consider and everyone seems to be talking about different things.

Becoming a Feynman or Dirac likely takes some kind of "special something." Its exactly why people like them come around once in a great while. Circumstances also play a major role. For instance, if we were to switch Feynman and Maxwell at birth would Feynman reconcile E and M and would Maxwell work out QED? Impossible to say really, but there is a chance the answer is no. Then what do we use to describe their great success in Physics?

There are plenty of people who will not make the contributions of the "Great Ones" but that doesn't mean they don't or won't contribute in very important ways to science. Going with zoobyshoe's post about Newton learning Algebra. Does anyone know who wrote the book on Algebra which Newton used to learn the Math? Was that an important contribution? Also, does anyone even remember the name of the guy who won the Nobel for the graphene work a couple of years ago (it doesn't count if you are in a somewhat related field mind you)? Do you think history will remember the "graphene guy" (I really don't remember the name and I'm not Googling it right now) like it does Einstein or Feynman?

Let's forget Nobel Laureates, there are plenty of people who will never be known by anyone outside the 20 or so people in their field. They will never win Nobels or even make it into Science or Nature. Many of them trudged through Math and Science classes in school and went on to do very important work Science (maybe not GR or QED but important nonetheless). Not every contributor to the Science and Math world is a prodigy who learned calculus by 10 years old from a Calculus for Dummies book. Are people here really implying that grades in school are really a good metric for success? My own theory is that the education system is complete garbage and works more as a barrier to success than a catalyst.

goingmeta

Somebody asked me a similar question before and I don't think I gave a good answer: what separates mathematical tasks from all others (why do people think you need to be a genius to perform them?) and why would it not be teachable?

There is definitely a perception of mathematics, or problem solving, as being very fundamental. A common train of thought might be: "if I cannot grasp something this fundamental, which requires no other knowledge, then there is nothing I can learn which will help me, and therefore I am unfit or incapable". But I don't care about this perception. It may be completely irrelevant. I'm asking from the computational, biological, or neuroscience perspective: what makes it different? Our brains, otherwise, seem to be able to learn computationally sophisticated things.

By the way, I completely acknowledge the edge cases. Like everyone else, I'm talking about educating the "average joes".

leroyjenkens

When I first started algebra, the simplest ideas were difficult to me. The negative sign in front of parentheses changing the sign of every term inside the parentheses was just not making any sense to me. And people describing it by saying there's an implicit -1 in front of the parentheses just made it more confusing. At that time you definitely would've said that I'm just not a math person and just like one of the people you tutored.
Now several years later, I've taken 3 calculus classes, linear algebra, differential equations, and aside from calc 2, they were all pretty easy for me.

WannabeNewton

If I may say something on a personal note here, I find that physics is harder than the math as used in physics in most cases. I wouldn't say math is what is necessarily obstructing people from learning but rather the physics. Whoever went into an honors mechanics class and thought "boy this basic calculus is hard!" vs "boy applying the various physical concepts and approximation / dimensional analysis tools readily to problems is hard!".

nitsuj

I remember grade 11 math (my last year of forced math) a student commented to the class and teacher that algebra is useless to him, he will never use these equations to calculate stuff. blah blah blah.

The teachers response was along the lines of It's really important to know math, and it's part of the curriculum.

An unconvincing sell in other words

At the time I agreed with the students comments, it did seem stupid.

Years later I realize that The teacher was actually teaching us a new language. A very specifically designed language of absolute logic. A language that describes some of the most fascinating physics.

I woulda tried harder then, if I had known the language/communication perspective of math.

arildno

Those who think "intellectual" capacities are in some deep, mysterious ways different from "physical" capacities (like dexterity, capacity for swift acceleration of the body etc.) or "aesthetic" capacities (like musicality or an eye for visual harmony) are the ones upon the burden of evidence lies, not upon those who think the intellectual capacities might be as variable as any other capacity.

For those who think there are "so many factors" that might explain away different Levels of performance, those are the one to come up With evidence that those factors are..significant enough.