Arthur Lewbell, who knew Shannon personally, wrote a eulogy for him [1] and included photos of his "gadgeteers paradise" toy room[2][3] which is mentioned in the article.<p>I collected photos of the gadgets he built to play games (now in the MIT Museum) and put them on this list in boargamegeek[4].<p>[1] <a href="https://www2.bc.edu/arthur-lewbel/Shannon.html" rel="nofollow">https://www2.bc.edu/arthur-lewbel/Shannon.html</a><p>[2] <a href="https://www2.bc.edu/arthur-lewbel/toys1.jpg" rel="nofollow">https://www2.bc.edu/arthur-lewbel/toys1.jpg</a><p>[3] <a href="https://www2.bc.edu/arthur-lewbel/toys2.jpg" rel="nofollow">https://www2.bc.edu/arthur-lewbel/toys2.jpg</a><p>[4] <a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/143233/claude-shannon-man-games-and-machines" rel="nofollow">https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/143233/claude-shannon-man...</a>
I went to school with his grandson - incredibly, ridiculously, intelligent guy, who was the only person three years ahead at the school - I and one other were two ahead, and a dozen or so were a year ahead.<p>That said, I always felt for the chap, as socially inept didn't begin to cover it (as someone who graduated school two years early I can say with surety that it wasn't solely the temporal displacement that fettered his sociality - it was definitely a factor for us all, but he couldn't/wouldn't communicate even with other maths geeks), and I could only see him pursuing a career in academia - which he is.<p>I also felt for him as as a mathematically brilliant Shannon expectations couldn't have been higher - I was going to cap this off by saying I'm sure he'll do great things, but instead, I'll say I hope he has a happy life.
As a psychology enthusiast (and soon to be student), I'm quite annoyed with our fascination with "geniuses".<p>It seems obvious that people who are very famous in their field became "very intelligent" because of a combination of hard work and genetics. But it's as if these books capitalize on the faint hope of being a repressed genius of some sort. I highly doubt Einstein or Shannon (as the article implies) ever saw themselves as more than passionate. And the ego required to want to find your inner genius goes contrary to the enormous humility they seemed to display.<p>That aside, these books and articles all make the same mistake of studying a single person <i>after the fact</i>. It's similar to mimicking Steve Jobs: That's not how he became Steve Jobs. We literally cannot know how much luck was involved in his (or Einstein's) success. Might as well study the lives of lottery winners.<p>So if not that, how can we maximize our potential and generally better ourselves intellectually? Simply by referring to the very vast fields of learning, motivation and general cognitive science.<p>But "learn the science" doesn't have quite the same ring to it as "how to be Einstein", now does it?
Interestingly, I just listened to a decent podcast with Ed Thorp (an interesting man in his own right) who briefly talked about his work with Shannon.<p><a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/audio/2017-07-14/ed-thorp-the-man-who-beat-the-dealer-and-the-market" rel="nofollow">https://www.bloomberg.com/news/audio/2017-07-14/ed-thorp-the...</a>
Was curious enough about the thesis paper, I went searching for it.<p><a href="http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/11173/34541425-MIT.pdf?sequence=2" rel="nofollow">http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/11173/34541425...</a>
Vint Cerf's article on Claude Shannon: <a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v547/n7662/full/547159a.html?foxtrotcallback=true" rel="nofollow">http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v547/n7662/full/547159a...</a>
>But if his tendency to follow his curiosity wherever it led sometimes rendered him less productive, he also had the patience to keep coming back to his best ideas, over the course of years.<p>[snip]<p>>“He never argued his ideas. If people didn’t believe in them, he ignored those people.”<p>I think there's a connection here which reveals a common misconception about intellectual creation, namely that scientific theories are born in a legalistic fashion by criticism, argument and debate. In reality the role of criticism is to defend against ideas we <i>don't</i> like. Ideas we <i>do</i> like are shielded from explicit criticism, for instance by ignoring critics, and allowed to grow in our brains over time. It's a pleasure to return to such ideas again and again, while they remain interesting, so 'patience' isn't required either.
> "Letters he didn’t want to respond to went into a bin labeled “Letters I’ve Procrastinated On For Too Long.” ... Inbox zero, be damned."<p>moving things to folders is... the definition of "inbox zero"?
Boy is this article filled with unwarranted hyperbole. And Tim Ferris, really?<p>Substance is overwhelmingly like a self-improvement article, cherrypicking details to support whatever point the author stands to posit.
> <i>During World War II, those friends included Alan Turing, with whom Shannon struck up a lively intellectual exchange during Turing’s fact-finding trip to study American cryptography on behalf of the British government.</i><p>This little tidbit has always fascinated me from a <i>What-If</i> perspective, because of course because of the War and secrecy, Turing and Shannon did <i>not</i> discuss cryptography, the Bombe (Turing's Enigma-cracking machine) or the Colossus (arguably the first electronic computer, except its very existence remained a secret until the 1970s).<p>How would've things gone had they been able to talk freely?
There seems to be a lot of parallels in how Shannon lived and how Feynman lived. Obviously, Feynman was more gregarious, but they both found inspiration and solace in curious play. I think more than curiosity, which most people have, they both showed a profound disinterest in hiding their interests or fear of looking dumb.<p>That might be the biggest difference between smart guys who work jobs and geniuses who pave new paths. It is both sad and empowering because it means we simply get in our own way when we try to be "serious adults".
One thing that occurred to me is that if Einstein or Shannon hadn't discovered their respective theories, someone else would have. It probably wouldn't have taken very long, either.<p>I'm not sure what to do with this information, but it seems true.
I read The Idea Factory, about Bell Labs, and they had a few sections on Shannon. Honestly, from what I read, it sounds like the guy didn't want to work, or have a job. And the Fates were kind, and dropped him into a situation where not only was he able to make that a reality, but he was able to provide several meaningful contributions to the fields of programming and information theory while doing so. He was able to not have to "work", and get to be part of some pretty amazing stuff.