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Mo Putera's Shortform — LessWrong

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When Marcello Herreshoff had known me for long enough, I asked him if he knew of anyone who struck him as substantially more natively intelligent than myself.  Marcello thought for a moment and said "John Conway—I met him at a summer math camp."  Darn, I thought, he thought of someone, and worse, it's some ultra-famous old guy I can't grab.  I inquired how Marcello had arrived at the judgment.  Marcello said, "He just struck me as having a tremendous amount of mental horsepower," and started to explain a math problem he'd had a chance to work on with Conway. Not what I wanted to hear. Perhaps, relative to Marcello's experience of Conway and his experience of me, I haven't had a chance to show off on any subject that I've mastered as thoroughly as Conway had mastered his many fields of mathematics. Or it might be that Conway's brain is specialized off in a different direction from mine, and that I could never approach Conway's level on math, yet Conway wouldn't do so well on AI research

x Mo Putera's Shortform — LessWrong Mo Putera's Shortform by Mo Putera 16th Jan 2025 1 min read 410 15 This is a special post for quick takes by Mo Putera . Only they can create top-level comments. Comments here also appear on the Quick Takes page and All Posts page . Rendering 0 / 410 comments, sorted by top scoring (show more) Click to highlight new comments since: Today at 12:33 PM Moderation Log More from Mo Putera View more Curated and popular this week 410 Comments 410 Comment Permalink Mo Putera 8mo 88 5 Over a decade ago I read this 17 year old passage from Eliezer When Marcello Herres

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