Re: "Genius" finding

Joi,

I've been thinking about your question of how to identify amazing =eople.

Here are several thoughts that don't necessarily cohere.

I think your approach has to depend partly on the goal. The =lgorithm I would construct to find the next great artist would differ =rom one to find a teacher, mathematician, cancer researcher, brain =cientist, etc... If you're totally wide open as to subject area, then =t seems to me you want to cast a wide net.

I would be tempted to try the Bayesian Truth Serum and ask something

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=ike Pick a really smart friend, who would that person say should win a =enius award.

Rather than try to identify people, you might instead seek out =apers/projects/programs/ideas and then identify the person after the =act.

You might want to consider asking people for the "coolest thing they
=now that's NOT on the web (yet)

So much filtering and assessment already goes on that most programs =ree ride on that -- giving award to people who have already won awards. = This suggests that one place to look is at the "losers" - contact =acArthur, NIH, NSF, DARPA, GOOGLE, and ask who do you regret not =unding?

Once you've got a long list of possibilities you have many options. =ere are some you may not have considered

You could also pay people on mechanical turk to write up little =lurbs on each one and then seed them on Facebook, Twitter, etc.. and =hen only look at the ones that get retweeted.

You could use Matt Salganik's pairwise comparison website.

hope this helps. Happy to think more.

scotte

--
Scott E Page
University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
Santa Fe Institute

Sent from my iPhone

On the right track- like the bayesian method. I think that the =nvironment matters a lot too- the people that we look for aggregate in =laces like Cambridge, where they can be with others who they can =esonate with. My guess is that many times they might not have formal =ositions, but are visitors to labs, research groups, etc. Is there any =ay to get lists of such people???

I think the brute force way of getting the interesting "attractors=E2 labs like George's to give us a list of the people who =hey think would fit this model.

The problem is, and I'm working on this at MIT, most researchers =nd post docs are sort of "undocumented immigrants" that =e don't normally track...

• Joi