[SwellJoe]

Anyone else see the flaw in asking a gifted mathematician about the human brain, merely because they're a gifted mathematician? cperciva is certainly very smart, and may also happen to know a thing or two about the subject...but mathematical ability doesn't necessarily correlate with knowledge of how humans learn or cognitive development.

[cperciva]

You're right, of course, that a mathematician is not the same thing as a cognitive scientist; but it's not completely crazy to ask me such a question. People are naturally interested in topics which touch on them directly -- this happens very frequently in medicine, where individuals having a particular disease frequently know far more about the disease than a general medical practitioner (but less than a specialist studying that disease, of course) -- so it's not unreasonable to think that a randomly selected genius is likely to have spent more time learning about the nature of genius than a random non-genius.

[jraines]

Yeah, but his answer is in line with what's known about cognitive development.

[SwellJoe]

Sure, but anyone with a couple of hours to spend on the Internet can find out what is in line with what's known about cognitive development (certainly more than a few threads at HN will provide). Since it was directed at cperciva specifically, there seems to be a desire to get something more than just knowledge. Permission, maybe? I dunno.

I just found the question interesting. And it's a common phenomenon. Musicians, for example, even not particularly gifted ones, get this kind of question pretty frequently--"can adults really learn to be good musicians?", "it just comes naturally to you, right?", etc. Humans have funny logic sometimes, I guess, including the people on the receiving end of the questions.

[yelsgib]

I definitely, definitely agree. A lot of mathematicians I know are kind of self-appointed "kings of the mind" and so pontificate tremendously on subjects they're not really qualified to talk about. Not saying that cpervia is, but it's definitely a trend.

That being said, mathematicians definitely have (as a class) some good mental attributes - they usually think very consistently and can see very subtle flaws in arguments (especially common ones (it gets frustrating)). They also solve really tough problems which means that their ideas about problem solving (probably pretty central to the question of "what is intelligence?") are probably good, assuming they're self-reflective.