Here is the Wikipedia article on what a polymath is. Also known as a renaissance person. A well known person who demonstrates it is Leonardo Da Vinci.

On usage of the term:

• Even though the name of the group has it, we're not big on using the term. It's a placeholder.
  Because, firstly, most people do not really understand what it means, which defeats the purpose of widespread usage or endeavor. Second, it would be akin to calling yourself a good or smart person---something better left for others to say about you if they choose to and if it's truly suitable.
  So it's just the endeavor and ideal that matters~

Our definition of a polymath:

• someone who is curious without bias
• has a deep interest in both the arts/humanities and sciences
• develops has competencies and actively executes in such diverse areas

On being multidisciplinary

• "Multidisciplinarity concerns itself with studying a research topic in not just one discipline only, but in several at the same time. Any topic in question will ultimately be enriched by incorporating the perspectives of several disciplines.
  
  Interdisciplinarity ... concerns the transfer of methods from one discipline to another. ... interdisciplinarity ... goal still remains within the framework of disciplinary research. Interdisciplinarity even has the capacity of generating new disciplines, like quantum cosmology and chaos theory."
• We are primarily multidisciplinary, not interdisciplinary nor transdisciplinary. Interdisciplinary people only intersect usually 2 different specific subjects, and usually only in tangentially similar areas. We go farther

There are a lot of people who have cursory interests, but they do not live it, they haven't executed, or it's simply not a part of their soul.

However, it is possible to better ascertain if a person is a polymath by meeting them and just feeling it.

That said, some additional indicators:

• Unsatisfied: If you feel underwhelmed by most others. You make do with people who are solely into arts/humanities or sciences, unlike yourself.
• Alone: You rarely come across others who go to same lengths as yourself. Or if you simultaneously fit in everywhere, but fit in nowhere (It's okay! That's why we're here)
• Duality, socially: If people don't get this other part of you.
• Duality, interests: You're a technical/logical/deductive thinker, but also very social/emotional/empathetic/in-touch-with-arts.
  Being deeply both 'left' and 'right' brained.
• Unbiased Curiosity: you're so curious, you make no distinctions between HASS and STEM. You go where your curiosity leads you. Inevitably going out of your way to do a variety of things beyond one area, ensuring your curiosity is by definition not biased. (We heavily weigh this criteria in application submissions)

It's almost indescribable, but it's how this group was started. If the traits are met, here's what you might feel meeting us:

• We finish your sentences and thoughts, yet add to them too.
• It feels as though you're looking at a mirror image.
• When we discuss, there is a sort of synergy.

Not really. People who are obsessively curious can't help themselves. This is just who we are, what gives us happiness, and what makes us excited!

That being said, to try to answer the question, endeavoring for polymathy is important because:

• Ideal: It is closer to the highest ideal one can set for oneself. Renaissance person ≃ "Übermensch", or superman —Nietzsche
• Ethics: To help others effectively, you must first improve yourself. “Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.” – Leo Tolstoy
• Humanity: It is closer to what it means to be human, just by virtue of doing everything more
• Happiness: It increases happiness, for endlessly chasing the material realm does not lead to happiness. "Do not gain the world and lose the soul; wisdom is better than silver and gold." —Bob Marley
• Prosperity: One is more likely to prosper, as a result of constant improvement, constant learning, and a growth mindset
• Adaptability: One is more likely to prosper in changing times such as today, which require adaption and flexibility | Less likely to be slammed by the unknown in life
• Creativity: Provides better problem solving, as a result of more creative insights. Because you can't use the same tool for the various problems and desires in life (Maslow's Law of the Hammer)
• Foresight: Allows one to be an early adopter and ahead of the curve by virtue of exposure to diverse new ideas and practices
• Openness: Prevents close mindedness as a result of avoiding echo chambers

Besides making connections, really good conversations!

Here are discussions we had at one of our meetups in November 2024:

• How we use social media to explore our interests
• Sharing music and listening to two or three songs together while talking about them
• AI use in organizations, and whether slow or quick in technological adoption
• Someone pulled out their laptop with a minecraft knockoff on a browser, maybe it was the first AI created game of minecraft, a whole group were checking it out
• Randomness and surprise in life and reality, and why that's vital to the meaning of life
• How do you conduct yourself in your mind? And a conversation about the Toltec South American civilizations philosophy of The Four Agreements
• Math and the aspect of creating systems from simple truths. The book Gödel, Escher, Bach
• Color theory. And how our minds add colors that don't exist, going from a mapping of 1D data/stimuli to 2D perception
• The power of memes in society
• Brainrot. Creating a content farm. Also North Korea television streams. And joking about Kim Jong Un
• Lamarckian evolution and mimesis, and the degree to which whether behaviors lived within the life of an individual organization can be genetically passed on
• Division in society and culture wars via algorithms, bubbles, and echo chambers. The consumption of information. And whether the future will be better or worse in this regard
• Creating a tool which figures out the slant along a spectrum for any given topic, akin to this political news website called Ground News. Potentially using Principal component analysis (PCA) to do so and making it automatic
• Why unserious people tend to be successful, or vice versa. And how it's a good coping mechanism
• Road trips around the United States. On The Road by Jack Kerouac and Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer.
• Writing systems for better knowledge absorption and idea spread. The Feynman learning system. Children's books as ways to convey ideas as simply as possible and help guide children at scale.
• Autofiction as a genre to experience the mundanity of real life through the lens of others.
• The perspective of insects and the cruelty with which we kill them without consideration for their pain and sentience.
• Why covering a word in a sentence and having children guess it by the surrounding context is bad for language learning and why it is adopted as a technique in the first place. It leads to early results but it plateaus and then children adopt a bad habit of guessing the meaning of a word based on the words they already know, often greatly missing the mark.
• A road trip through Europe from Milan to Switzerland and Zurich. An overheating car engine. Getting stuck on the highway in bumper to bumper traffic. Zurich being a sad, empty city in August. A bridge with thousands of spiders on it.
• Gothic church architecture. The destruction of churches during bombings in World War II. The rebuilding of a certain church in a mosaic-like fashion, using pieces of the destroyed church to reconstruct it in an asymmetric and warped form. The addition of normal modern translucent windows in the place of the old stained glass windows.
• The Virgil Abloh design trait of ironically printing the function of an object on it in text.
• Brazilian music. Bossa nova and funk. The rigidity of the rhythm and structure of Bossa Nova, and yet the beauty of the genre.
• The differences between organic chemistry, physical chemistry, inorganic chemistry, analytical chemistry.
• The process of AI-driven drug discovery and the roadblocks to taking an actual drug to production. The drug testing pipeline of rat to dog to monkey to human. The depressing nature of working as a lab technician administering deadly drugs to rats.
• The prevalence of gang activity in Rio De Janeiro. The relationship between political parties and gangs. Politicians getting caught with drugs. The civil war-like aspect of gang conflict in Rio.
• The narrowness of academic research and the tendency of researchers to spend their careers working on a topic suggested/assigned to them by their advisor.
• The freedom of earlier scientists to be generalists.
• Isaac Newton's interests in alchemy as the precursor to chemistry. Newton starting the field of optics by poking his eye with blunt objects to see how it affected his vision.

• Facilitate making like-minded friends, and hanging out with them 🤝
• Group deep discussions, open mics, focus groups, and brainstorming nights. 🗣️💭
• Project sharing, open projectors, performances, and exhibition nights. 📊🎭
• Game nights. 🎲
• Going to related events in the area together. 🚶‍♂️
• STEM and HASS reading groups. 📚
• Provide leadership positions for those interested.
• Throw monthly parties at MIT 🎉💃
• Have free food ツ. 🥗🍴

• “It was a compelling, inspiring evening. I went back home and I had to write for one hour in order not to lose the many ideas that arose from the conversations I had. Thank you for organising this event: it has never been easy in my life to find like minded people and I felt I did. Not only bright people, but all of them - I found - involved in a process of personal evolution and transformation. Everyone a seeker, everyone interested in how to contribute to the future of humanity from different perspectives. I am curious to get to know better everyone!” - S.M.
• “I enjoyed the event. It was affirming to meet others with a breadth of curiosity, many of whom shared interests that overlapped with my own. I did worry that there were many people with whom I didn't get a chance to speak but otherwise might have bonded with” - G.R.
• “Fantastic idea! I loved the vibes and getting to meet likeminded people. Also, I feel compelled to praise how diverse the group was as there was a similar number of people from nearby universities across different degrees, specialties, and ages” - T.K.
• “I should frontload by saying that I really enjoyed the party, and that's saying something, because I've never enjoyed being at a college party until now!” - Y.A.
• “Thank you for organizing this-- especially all the care you put into it.” - B.V.
• “The recent event at Starbucks and the rooftop was fantastic and I loved meeting people. In the end I left because I can only talk about deep cool things for so long before I get a bit exhausted. I think this mode of hangout - the deep conversations - are SO valuable because it's incredibly rare to have a group of people that can engage in them.” - I.B.

Boston Polymaths was created in November 2023 at MIT because one of us met someone we resonated with for the first time in Boston (literally finishing each other's sentences for hours, and looking at a mirror image of ourselves).

We realized people we vibe with aren't necessarily from our cultural background, nor from our colleges, nor our majors, nor related intellectual interest groups like rationalists, transhumanists, effective altruists, forecasting, art and tech, design, sciences, philosophy, makers, hackers, nor AI.

Our core common interest and defining characteristic was actually intense curiosity without limits. Both the arts and sciences. Ie, polymaths.

We're now properly launching in Fall 2024 across Boston

We had 110+ applications across Boston in our first month. About 40 people were invited and attended the launch party

We are now expanding. We are setting a representative from each university, including MIT, Tufts, BU, NU, Berklee, and Harvard. Applications for the leadership positions are shared in-person and via emails.

Our interuniversity focus is essential. Curious, multidisciplinary people who like learning in their free time are very few, even at top schools like MIT, so we must unite across Boston. Limiting and siloing ourselves to one university would restrict perspectives, while an interuniversity approach fosters a true multidisciplinary group.

• We're looking for wicked creative ninjas/intellectual ninjas!
• Excellence and elegance are important.
• It's not just about what you know, but more importantly how you think.
• Everything isn't just about AI, startups, or biotech. There are grander things in life. Bigger ideas in the universe. More beautiful and potent forces in the world.