He could be autistic. Autists will have problems, severe problems, with grasping the concept that someone else can have different views, and they will struggle with seeing the virtues of trying to understand those views. They will, indeed, perceive it as if they're being asked to 'bend over backwards'. I'm not sure how common high functioning autism is within academia. But I don't see it as entirely implausible that a high functioning autist could also be a professor.
I keep a diary for some projects that I work on. It's basically one large, never ending text file that I keep versioned in git. I like the simplicity of the scheme. It's rare that I need to go back and look at something that I've written earlier. But when I do need to do it, it's there, and easily available. I think I'm going to continue using this scheme for all projects through the rest of my career.
As for logging of structured data, I've sometimes thought of coming up with some kind of annotation scheme, so that, if I need, in my writing, to log a measurable quantity of some kind, I could just annotate it in a special way. And then, later on, if the need should arise, I could just extract the annotated data from the text document. I've not taken it any further, but I think it could be useful. A sort of a "hybrid approach" that would let me focus on the writing and the flow of thoughts, while also letting me log tidbits of structured data in between.
It's a bit sad to ponder. On the other hand, the volume of white matter is still rather close to it's maximum, even at 60 years. And probably there are also individual variations, both when it comes to the timing of the onset of the decline, and the rapidity of it.
I read about Stradivarius the other day. His "golden years", the years when the quality of his work was considered to be at it's peak, was from he was 50 until he was around 80.
I'm not an AI expert, at all, but can the neural network of an app like Otter run locally on a phone? Is it even possible, processing power wise?
Apart from that, I'm assuming that there's an enormous cost sunk into the training of the network. I imagine that alone would make Otter hesitant to let the trained network out of the house, even if it was technically possible.
Judging from his book, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman, he was not a very modest person himself, with regard to his own accomplishments and ideas, maybe that's why he was shocked by the modesty and restraint of other men with (presumably) similarly great talents.
I think you have to distinguish between being socially humble and being humble about truth.
Feynman was humble in that he tried to learn what was true instead of assuming that he already knew. He was always looking to improve his understanding.
Being humble in the search for truth can sometimes even seem arrogant socially. It means that you'll regularly question not only your own beliefs but those of other people as well.
>Being humble in the search for truth can sometimes even seem arrogant socially. It means that you'll regularly question not only your own beliefs but those of other people as well.
Although according to Murray Gell-Mann, Feynman might have gone a bit too far in that regard
Doesn't it depend on whether you feel he had a substantially realistic view as to his talents or not? Few would disagree that he was correct on that score. Moreover Feynman told a number of stories against himself - of how he turned out to be quite wrong about something. We may agree that false modesty is not much better than hyping one's non-existent qualities.
I feel that the solution to this would be some kind of generic online storage solution. Like Excel, but for the whole web, where you can put any kind of data in, get an address (a web-ified pointer) to it, and be sure that you can look it up again at any time, from anywhere, using the address key.
A generic online storage system with Excel-like properties.
If that existed, then people would use it for bookmarks, and probably also for a host of other types of online storage needs.
Software is, ultimately, always about humans. Software is always there to serve a human need. And the "intelligence" that designs software will always, at some level, need to be intelligence that understands the human mind, with all it's knowledge, needs, and intricacies. There are no shortcuts to this.
So, I think AI as a replacement for software development professionals, that's currently more like a pipe dream. I think AI will give us powerful new tools, but I do not think it will replace, or even reduce, the need for software development professionals. In total it might even increase the need for software development professionals, because it adds another level to the development stack. Another level of abstraction, and another level of complexity that needs to be understood.
Grammarly ads say that they will help you to appear more articulate than you are, so that you can land jobs where articulacy is required. It stumps me a bit, always.
