What we are looking for

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 are not big on using the term. It is 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 is truly suitable.
  So it is just the endeavor and the ideal that matter~

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

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

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 is okay! That is why we are here)
• Duality, socially: If people do not get this other part of you.
• Duality, interests: You are 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 are 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 is almost indescribable, but it is how this group was started. If the traits are met, here is what you might feel upon meeting us:

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

People who are obsessively curious cannot help themselves. This is just who we are, what gives us happiness, and what makes us excited

That being said, endeavoring for polymathy is important because:

• Ideal
  In a world of post-scarcity values, it is among 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 cannot use the same tool for the various problems and desires in life (the Law of the Hammer, after Maslow)
• 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

Things we have done include:

• Collaborated on our diverse interests during and after our events. Shared presentations, three startups, two mentors, and a research project 🚀
• Competed in online forecasting competitions 📊
• Traveled together to Vietnam for over half a month ✈️
• Lived together via our hacker house 🏠
• Conducted niche events beyond general parties
• Election watch party
• Reading room sessions
• Oddities & Curiosities Expo outing
• Clubing together
• Gaming tournament
• Cross-pollinated ideas. Here are discussions we had at one of our meetups in November:
  • 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
  • Randomness and surprise in life and reality, and why that is vital to the meaning of life
  • 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
  • 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 do not 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 is 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. Books written for children 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.
  • The interests of Isaac Newton 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.
  Show more (25 more topics) ↓

• "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 the sentences of one another for hours, and looking at a mirror image of ourselves).

We realized people we vibe with are not 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 have since expanded. We have set 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 are looking for wicked creative/intellectual ninjas
• Excellence and elegance are important.
• It is not just about what you know, but more importantly how you think.
• Not everything is about AI, startups, or biotech. There are grander things in life. Bigger ideas in the universe. More beautiful and potent forces in the world.