Interesting article, but I think there’s a more useful conclusion to draw from the idea that major problems in technical fields are precisely those too difficult for most people to solve. While a little extra intelligence can make the difference, it’s also likely that an unusual tool set will make the difference. The key is that you have to try something that nobody has tried before. If you want to solve big problems in technical fields, then your biggest relative advantage should come from studying a wide variety of other fields, in search of methods that can generalize to any of the problems you’re interested in. On the other side of the equation, you need to know about lots of big problems, so you can try all your methods on a wide variety of problems.
In short, the key to solving hard problems isn’t just more intelligence. The key is relative advantage. Intelligence can provide one relative advantage. Rationality and Bayesian probability/statistics can provide another, as Metamed is demonstrating. And of course, we need to find problems where our relative advantages give us the most leverage.
Interesting article, but I think there’s a more useful conclusion to draw from the idea that major problems in technical fields are precisely those too difficult for most people to solve. While a little extra intelligence can make the difference, it’s also likely that an unusual tool set will make the difference. The key is that you have to try something that nobody has tried before. If you want to solve big problems in technical fields, then your biggest relative advantage should come from studying a wide variety of other fields, in search of methods that can generalize to any of the problems you’re interested in. On the other side of the equation, you need to know about lots of big problems, so you can try all your methods on a wide variety of problems.
In short, the key to solving hard problems isn’t just more intelligence. The key is relative advantage. Intelligence can provide one relative advantage. Rationality and Bayesian probability/statistics can provide another, as Metamed is demonstrating. And of course, we need to find problems where our relative advantages give us the most leverage.