[ExI] ep again

[spike at rainier66.com]

> On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat
Subject: Re: [ExI] ep again

 

>…No - OCD is no study aid.  It's a serious disease in the literal meaning of that word.  They drive everyone around them crazy and themselves as well, and dearly wish they could stop…  bill w

 

 

Ja.  One of the things that sometimes comes as a package deal with OCD is super-focus.

 

Consider classical chess.  Ordinarily each player has 2 hours for the first 40 moves, and a typical high level game is decided by then, but not necessarily.  A tournament game can go 5 to 7 hours if it is one where they play one round per day (high level competition.)

 

Often in a critical position, a player will concentrate for an hour on one move.  Not everyone is capable of that level of concentration.

 

We had a former ExI poster, no longer with us, who had super-focus.  He was a chess master, but also a mathematician.  He could be a most difficult person, and had trouble fitting in.  Never married, smart as a whip.

 

Whenever I would go see him, he wanted to decide ahead of time what we would discuss so he could study and prepare for my visit.  This part really blew me away, because he didn’t just visit, he planned for my visit, and figured out how much time, what we would talk about.  That part was a little unnerving.  He lived only a coupla miles from where I lived, but I could never just drop by and suggest we walk over to the local fried chicken, like a coupla fellers with nothing better to do.  His life had STRUCTURE!

 

When I went over, he would stay right on that topic, whatever it was, right on that and never deviate.  For instance, we were talking about Mersenne primes and how I was doing that prediction business on Robin Hanson’s Ideas Futures.  He studied up on the Ideas exchange, then asked me to come over and teach him the algorithm, which I did.  I was over there about three hours.  We didn’t deviate a trace from the pre-planned path, even when we walked over to KFC for lunch and back.  He didn’t let me go until he understood Mersenne Primes and how the internet project works.  It was exhausting, so single-minded was his visits.

 

A local guy inherited his math notebooks.  I am arranging to see if we can publish his notes.

 

He was a most remarkable person.

 

BillW might be able to offer insights on people who are super-planners and have super-focus.

 

spike

 

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