Daniel_Burfoot comments on A Sense That More Is Possible - Less Wrong

61 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 13 March 2009 01:15AM

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Comment author: Daniel_Burfoot 13 March 2009 04:21:16AM 6 points [-]

For a nice literary description of what it means to have an "aura of awesome" try "The String Theory" by David Foster Wallace. Wallace writes of a mid-level pro tennis player: "The restrictions on his life have been, in my opinion, grotesque... But the radical compression of his attention and sense of himself have allowed him to become a transcendent practitioner of an art."

Perhaps in the future humans will achieve the same level of excellence at the Art of Rationality as some currently do at the Art of Tennis.

http://www.esquire.com/features/sports/the-string-theory-0796