Post: #51

Giant Steps by John Coltrane. I had always thought Coltrane was overrated before I had listened to it, but it's one of the single best albums I have ever heard in my life, period. (It's even better while drunk or high.)

Post: #52

The guys on Stormfront say that Einstein was a plagiarist who stole ideas from others when he he worked as a patent clerk. Any truth to these allegations?

Post: #53

There is an abundance of genius to be found within the Western Canon; stick with it, and defend it against SJWs who want to tear it down as part of their campaign against the patriarchy.

Suggestions in literature: Goethe, Céline, Fitzgerald, Evelyn Waugh, the British Romantic poets, John Dos Passos.

Post: #54

I am not a fan of Japanese animation in general, but Kaiji is one of those rare works that appears maybe once every 100 years regardless of the underlying medium.





Besides having a fantastic storyline, Kaiji delves pretty deeply into certain life and risk psychologies that I had previously thought were rather difficult to explain to others unless they had also lived through them. The author must have tried and succeeded at being a professional gambler or some variation of such at some point in his life, otherwise he would not have understood some of these themes.

Post: #55

Wagner and Mahler.

The two greatest composers to have ever lived.

Post: #56

'Anna Karenina' by Leo Tolstoy is fantastic. Anna Karenina is praised as Tolstoy's first real novel, as well as his greatest. It's seeping with red pill themes, and I highly recommend it.

While translated versions normally lose idiomatic expressions, the edition done by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky is one of the best out there, so I suggest checking out that one.

Post: #57

Breaking bad.

Post: #58

(05-11-2016 08:11 PM)Mr. Accuride Wrote:  I am not a fan of Japanese animation in general, but Kaiji is one of those rare works that appears maybe once every 100 years regardless of the underlying medium.

Hey, nice to see some love for Kaiji! Akagi, by the same author, is very fun as well.

Anyway, I don't know whether I agree with AB that genius is "the result of a combination of factors, such as discipline, study, experimentation, refinement, commitment and craft. There's also more random factors, such as opportunity and luck."

When I say "I don't know whether I agree," I mean just that; I really don't know. Nietzsche seems to take this view, that genius isn't that rare and is more about the "500 hands" needed to seize the opportune moment.

On the other hand, I'm confounded by people like Gauss and others. In fields like Mathematics, at the highest levels there is a ceiling on what you can understand based on either your IQ or your potential for mathematical aptitude. What I mean by this is that someone with an average IQ, no matter how hard they try will not be able to understand certain things or make progress in fields that someone with a higher natural affinity for math would, perhaps easily, be able to grasp.

I guess what I'm poorly trying to say is that every now and then some people show such an intuition or innate talent and it is so magnificent to behold that they are considered geniuses in their field, sometimes even at a very young age, as is the case with Gauss.

So, on one hand, we have people who are reasonably talented and produce very great works, even world historic works, through a combination of opportunity and persistence - and I think this is the majority of great works.

Yet, on the other hand, we sometimes encounter people who have such a great natural talent in a field that they end up being defined by that talent and we also have guys like Kim Peek, the real life Rain Man, who was seemingly born with the ability to memorize gargantuan volumes of information and could do things like read both pages of an open book at the same time, reading one page with one eye and the other page with the other eye.

Talent coupled with persistence is very respectable, but, in some fields, it has its limits. At the same time, you sometimes encounter people that barely need persistence at all, and if they also have it, they go very very far.

Edit: Grammar.