10,000 Hours with Claude Shannon (2017)
I love stories about Shannon, Feynman, Weiner, Grothendeick, Turing, and others, but I've become suspicious of the idea of genius. While these and others are undoubtedly examples, and telling their stories inspires us to follow their paths at least for a while, the underlying idea is that these people, whose minds necessarily <i>took liberty first</i> to make their discoveries, are somehow unreachable Others.<p>This is where I diverge, as I think if we were to cultivate the core values of benevolence, humility, with iconoclasm in kids we could produce more minds like these. What makes genius so exceptional is less a magical quality of the person, but that they manage to achieve in spite of the rest of <i>us</i> in as we occupy our classrooms and offices. I suspect it's these values that are the necessary condition.<p>Such a pleasant article about such an amazing mind.