Who are your favourite living thinkers / intellectuals?

Mine are:

Alain de Botton - he's vulnerable and humorous as well as intellectual; his books are really accessible for lay readers

Ryan Holiday -  American Stoic - I've followed his 'Daily Stoic' exercises for 7 years and found this hugely beneficial to keep calm 

Jim Al-Khalili - I don't always understand him but it's made me interested in hard science

Dr Michael Mosely [RIP] - again, he was so accessible and also funny

Alice Roberts - I love her documentaries

Great question and I honestly don’t have a definitive answer, I go more for the topics than the people and then i’m not sure i have any particular topic as a go to. Maybe at the moment it’s AI and Quantum computers, I am a big fan of computers so obviously anything to do with them is of interest and also like to read about space related advancements, anything star trekky in nature 

Smarter Every Day

I think he covers the facts and learning well, but also has interesting ways of looking and thinking about things.

The backwards bicycle video is an old but good one.

Yep, truly special person. Thanks for the link ArchaeC 

I loved that book and I read it over and over again. Since that time, her thinking evolved and expanded, making a difference to people, especially girls and women, through community led projects. 

Jane wrote the introduction to this book (2022) about her community led conservation. 


https://janegoodall.org/our-impact/

monopoly????? speaking for myself - nooooooooo!!!!  drafts and snap yes :-)  :-)

hehe Martin  "signs were used mainly as tools to obtain rewards" - and in what way is that not what most humans do??

I've had a quick "google" for Richard Dawkins and sign language - he's doing lectures with sign language support so perhaps you're right.

On a Pythonesque perspective perhaps they both might leave a sandal or gourd or two around... :-)

Carroll is new to me, thanks for the tip - ever since "The Dancing wu-li masters" the cross-over with science and spirituality has interested me,

Steven Pinker - I first came across his work in dialectic with Chomsky on linguistics.  Since then I especially enjoyed his work on popularising  "thinking about thinking".

the last one is a bit of a cheat as it really refers to a type of thinking rather than an individual : "Lao Tzu"

I read her book "in the Shadow of Man" when I was about 13 years old.  Terrific insight and observational skills that broke the mold of behavioural sciences.  Her work is inspirational.  " a life well lived" RIP her work lives on.

She was passionate about passing on her observations to others and continued this work up until her death, in her latter years mainly through her talks to groups around the country. In fact she had been due to speak to a group tomorrow. 

I have followed her work closely for many years and if circumstances had been different, I sometimes think I would have liked to have been a primatologist. I have always had a fascination with animals, especially dogs, horses and apes. For as long as I can remember, I used to spend hours staring at our dogs, horses and goats, since they were the animals around me. I dream of going to Uganda where eco tourism initiatives enable people to encounter mountain gorillas face to face in the wild. Local people are employed in eco hotels and safari lodges, trained in conservation, ecological farming, tree planting, hospitality and tourism. People endeavour to protect the mountain gorillas because their livelihood depends on them.

Access to the mountain gorillas is restricted to a group of only a few people each day and it must be accompanied by experienced guides and rangers. The gorillas have been habituated to the presence of the guides, and while there is an argument that they should be left undisturbed, they remain free to travel great distances and the initiatives have helped protect their habitat, welfare and the planet.

RIP Jane Goodall, we've lost one of the greats

ArchaeC said:

Jane Goodall for her studies on chimpanzee behaviour and her conservation and environmental work.

Dame Jane Goodall died today, aged 91 years. She was a zoologist, primatologist and anthropologist who inspired so many people to follow in her footsteps in animal welfare and conservation issues. I am very saddened about this. 

I agree Almond, I think it's one of the reasons I dislike working in groups, there's always somebody who wants to be in charge and sets a narrative and will broke no argument.

For me competing gets in the way of learning. It is hard to find people for thinking together. And many just love competing or find it natural.

Sometimes it is possible to think more collaboratively on the internet (uncommon though.)

I used to enjoy playing chess when I had someone to play with and I was in the school chess club. My next door neighbour taught me how to play. I am really attracted to the chess piece characters; the knight being the favourite because it is represented in the form of a horse, and because of how it moves. Like you, I am drawn to the patterns of the moves and of the board.

I don’t enjoy playing a bot online so much. No matter what standard you set it up to play at, the game seems weighted in its favour, so it’s not much fun. 

I was taught to play by my uncle who I think enjoyed winning to much, I wasn't very old when he tried to teach me. I think I just found chess boring, I dont' have anyone to play with even if I wished to learn.

I'm happy playing scrabble or some card games, I don't like competitive stuff or people, I don't think it makes me avoid learning as I don't see learning as in any way competitive. I've never been competitive, for as long as I can remember, maybe it was something that as an only child I never needed to do, and like so much else about school I didn't understand it. I feel uncomfortable around competitive people, if I win fairly, why do they get upset? If I lose why do they enjoy it so much? These things are supposed not to matter, but they obviously do, a great deal.

I also don't know many if any women who are chess players, I was brought up to think it was something for boys, which was the standard answer for anything like this.

It’s not for me, I prefer monopoly or drafts. Maybe a simple game of snap?

TheCatWoman said:

I've never understood chess

It is just a shortish list of rules about how pieces can move on the chessboard and you are competing against someone else to take their king.

Rules are something most autists can get and enjoy as they are not prone to interpritation and with practice it can be quite stimulating to work out a strategy to beat your opponent.

You have mentioned before that you don't like competing so do you think this could be making you avoid learning it? Not that you need to, but I'm just curious as to the driving force behind this.

I think that the can of non-human primate intellectual abilities has been kicked down the road a very great distance. First, they couldn't use tools, then they could. Second, they couldn't make tools, then yes they can. Some even make 'spears' out of small branches for spearing bushbabies inside their tree-holes.

It has been long known that Broca's and Wernicke's areas in great apes are lateralised, though not as obviously as in humans. Recent research has shown that chimpanzees in the wild are able to modify their communication by combining different basic calls. Call A, meaning resting, followed by call B, meaning 'affiliation', results in a new meaning, 'nesting', or 'nest-building'.

A little bit of language, at great effort, with very limited success. It is kind of evidence for his theory:

"""

After reviewing the results, Terrace concluded that Nim mimicked signs from his teachers in order to get a reward. Nim learned a variety of signs through a process of reinforcement, but these signs were not a result of creative or spontaneous language use.

"""

His theory is that we learning with poverty of stimulus means there is a LAD. The symmetries of languages across cultures also points to this. Chimps don't, or have a very primitive version. But anyways, interesting reminder.

I find that some criticising him did not read him, nor know he is one of the most cited scholars ever. But he can indeed get things wrong as well, but this isnt one imho.

I do suspect you were just joking but anyways, I like context.