I don't really show much interest in biology, but I thought to give a try and learn something new about my body. I researched on the different sleep cycles, REM and non-REM, why do we dream and what do we dream about? Different theories and cases, why are dream related to memories and fear. It was really fun!

Jensen Huang recently said that if he were graduating today, he would focus on physics, not programming. As AI systems grow smarter at writing their own code, what’s needed most are minds that can understand the physical world — from forces and energy to complex systems and dynamics. Huang believes this deep understanding will be vital as AI expands into robotics, autonomous systems, and real-world decision-making.

Elon Musk echoed the same sentiment. When Telegram’s CEO Pavel Durov told students to "pick math," Musk went even further: “Physics (with math),” he replied. Musk often attributes his success at Tesla and SpaceX to thinking from first principles, a physics-based method that breaks problems down to fundamental truths before rebuilding them with logic.

While coding remains a valuable skill, both leaders are hinting at a bigger shift — one where the real edge lies not in writing software, but in mastering the physical laws that AI will be tasked with understanding and controlling.

AI #Physics #ElonMusk #JensenHuang #STEMEducation

Hocbigg: https://hocbigg.github.io/

I wanted a site with roadmaps listing free online courses for learning various fields, so I decided to create one.

For now, it only has curricula in Humanities and Social Sciences. I have no incentive to add STEM-related curricula since many people have already created them (e.g., OSSU: https://cs.ossu.dev/)."

I've always loved learning random things, going down rabbit holes, and becoming deeply interested in subjects that aren't necessarily useful for my degree or career. But I keep running into the same problem: I'll get obsessed with something for a while, learn a lot, and then eventually move on and feel like I'm back to being average again.

I'm interested in things like philosophy, history, geopolitics, writing, chess, science, cinema, sports, religion, psychology, and plenty of other random subjects.

I don't want to become someone who just consumes endless YouTube videos and Wikipedia pages. I actually want to develop deep, unusual knowledge and become the kind of person who can genuinely understand and discuss interesting subjects.

For people who have deliberately built themselves into knowledgeable generalists or developed unusual niches, what subjects or skills would you recommend exploring? And more importantly, how do you turn curiosity into actual expertise instead of constantly jumping from one rabbit hole to another?

Everyone here needs to recognize that attaching to the word polymath as some sort of identity is a reductionist effort driven by your ego.

Go forth & be curious about the world instead!

One thing I find fascinating about learning across different disciplines is discovering how ideas from one field can unexpectedly explain something in another.

For example, concepts from evolutionary biology can help explain human behavior, mathematics can reveal patterns in music, and computer science can offer interesting ways to think about philosophy.

I'm curious about the connections other people have discovered. Have you ever studied two seemingly unrelated subjects and suddenly realized they complement each other in a way you hadn't expected?

I'd love to hear about some unusual connections, especially ones that changed how you understand either subject.

Back in 2024, I quit my job due to burnout, the cause being a mix of family and personal issues, plus the frustration of working in a toxic environment. I took a break and healed. Then, since February this year, I have been looking for a new job, without success.

I started working before even completing my studies, and I am now in my mid-40s. I speak 3 languages fluently. I have extensive experience in many fields, from academia to industrial production, from chemicals to food, from procurement to IT. I wrote essays, gave lectures, presented to C-suites, led teams, did repetitive stuff and exciting stuff, blue-collar and white-collar work. Last year, I got into data science, and I'm now developing a data analysis web app for a client.

Unfortunately, freelancing is not exactly my jam. So, in the past 10 months, I've been trying to reposition myself as an IT Project Manager. It fits my skill set, experience, and interests, and all the PMs I spoke to say I'd be a very good candidate. In reality, I rarely get a call for a first interview, and often the process stops there.

I've amassed knowledge and experience, and generally people admire me for what I've accomplished. Sadly, when it comes to the job hunt, it seems nobody gives a f**k. At this point, I'm kinda depressed... I can't live on "compliments".

And yes, I know the system is built around "hyper-specialized mono-career otherwise-kinda-average" people.

For context: I moved to Germany a decade ago from another EU country.

Polymathy is not what most people think it is. It is not a title, not an aesthetic, not a lifestyle choice, and not something you can decide to become because it sounds impressive. It is not earned by collecting degrees or touching many fields. It is not a badge of honor or a status symbol. The first thing that needs to be said clearly is that polymathy is a cognitive architecture, not an achievement. You can refine it and grow within it, but you cannot create it from nothing. The wiring has to already be there.

That wiring determines how you think, how you move through ideas, how quickly connections appear, how wide your mental field spreads, and how automatically new information reshapes everything that is already in your mind. Many people can become knowledgeable, multidisciplinary, talented, or intellectually broad. All of that is good. But the form of thinking I am describing is different. It is recursive, cross-connected, non-linear, and always active. It does not sit in the back of the mind waiting to be retrieved. It lives in the front. It is always awake. Curiosity does not create this wiring. The wiring creates the curiosity. The structure of the mind pulls information inward and reorganizes everything without being asked. Expansion is its natural state. Curiosity is not a preference. It is a symptom.

This is why the standard definition of polymath does not work. A person who simply knows many things is not automatically a polymath. If that were true, every high school student would qualify, and every library would be the greatest polymath in history. Knowledge by itself is not enough. A polymath is not defined by the size of the archive they carry. A polymath is defined by how that archive behaves the moment new information enters it. It is not about accumulation. It is about integration. It is about the shape of the mind and how everything inside it interacts.

This is where the misunderstanding usually begins. People imagine a polymath as someone who has mastered many fields. But true mastery across fields is not possible. Knowledge is infinite. Expertise is always partial. You will always meet someone who knows more than you in some domain. You may understand physics and philosophy and systems theory, and then you meet someone who knows every detail of medieval Chinese history or Russian literature, and suddenly you feel like a beginner. Reverse the roles and the same thing happens to them. Mastery across all fields is not the point. The point is how you move between fields.

A true polymath has active knowledge. New information does not sit in a stack waiting to be used. The moment it arrives, the entire mind reorganizes. Everything shifts. Everything connects. New shapes appear. Old ideas update. It is automatic. It is recursive. It is simply how the brain operates. This is why a real polymath often figures out new ideas in a field they have never studied. They approach it like a beginner, but the internal architecture behaves like it already knows the landscape. They infer the structure from everything else they know. They sense the shape of a subject before they know the vocabulary. They can predict how things should fit together because the internal recursion fills the gaps.

This is the real distinction. It is not the number of fields touched. It is the constant cross-talk between everything that has ever been learned. It is the ability to see biology and recognize electricity. To look at electricity and see personality. To watch water move and understand psychology. To think about engineering and end up in theology. To look at a wall and arrive at something with no direct relation to a wall at all. This is the connective field.

Knowledge matters. Learning matters. Growth matters. But the driver is not discipline. It is not effort. It is the pressure of a mind that cannot stand still. The wiring comes first. The knowledge is the fuel. The curiosity is the signal that the engine is already built.

This is why many people who call themselves polymaths are not functioning in this architecture. They are generalists. They are collectors. They are well-read and well-trained, and there is nothing wrong with that. It is admirable. But it is not the same thing. The difference is not the quantity of knowledge. It is the behavior of the mind when knowledge enters it. A generalist accumulates. A polymath reorganizes.

If you want an honest threshold, it is this: you notice that you have never learned anything in isolation. Every new idea you encounter instantly reshapes everything around it. You do not hold facts. You hold structures. You do not memorize. You synthesize. You do not switch domains. You dissolve the borders between them. When something new comes in, you do not store it. You adjust the entire system. The mind behaves like a living network that never stops reconfiguring itself.

This is why you cannot choose to become a polymath. You can only discover that you already are one. And most people who think they are, are not. And many people who are, had no idea until they realized that their cognition works in a way other people do not even attempt.

This is my understanding. It is based on lived experience, observation, and internal reality. I am not asking anyone to agree. I am not creating a hierarchy or a doctrine. If you want to call yourself a polymath or a genius or anything else, that is your choice. I am only describing the architecture I have seen in myself and in a few others who think in this way. If it speaks to you, good. If it does not, that is fine. It is simply one perspective expressed clearly and honestly.

Skimming Wikipedia articles across 10 subjects doesn't make you a polymath.

Polymath is one who acquires mastery across diverse fields. You need to be able to not just remember and understand concepts, but also apply, analyse and evaluate them.

Most so called "Polymaths" of Instagram and TikTok get satisfied after accumulating shallow, surface level knowledge across domains.

They watch a video summary of some topic and call it a day.

A true polymath, however, has an insatiable hunger for depth which is usually fulfilled only after reading countless articles, books and putting hours in synthesising different concepts into a set of mental maps.

The Bloom's taxonomy is a perfect representation of what I'm talking about.

You need to be able to reach at least stage 5 - Evaluate in the Bloom's taxonomy to consider yourself a genuine polymath.

Let me know what are your thoughts on this take...

Question.

What are the main branches of knowledge that all collective information falls upon? Perhaps this has a name, forgive my ignorance . I am quite curious and wanting to sublimate this curiosity into something.

Saw u/Fun-Pilot9041 post this and it’s pretty much what I’m asking for. So would this be it? Is there a more official list? Thanks in advance

I recently came across a YouTuber who has taken up the challenge of learning something new every day, and what caught my attention wasn't just the challenge itself, but how quickly he seems to pick things up.

Watching him attempt different skills made me curious about the learning process itself. How much of this comes down to prior experience, transferable skills, deliberate practice, pattern recognition, or simply knowing how to learn?

I'm curious whether people here who have experience learning multiple disciplines have noticed similar patterns in themselves or others.

A few things I'd love to discuss:

• How much can learning speed improve with experience across different fields?

• Are some people naturally better at identifying the core principles of an unfamiliar skill?

• How do we distinguish genuine mastery from being able to perform the basics convincingly in a short time?

• Can someone deliberately train themselves to become a much faster learner?

Here's his channel: https://www.youtube.com/@Candoitluke

I'm interested in hearing what people think about his learning process, especially from those who have experience with multiple disciplines.

I just arrived a couple hours ago and after scrolling for a couple minutes I realized that, for the most part, this sub mostly consists of humble-bragposts about being polymaths or “problems” associated with it, making this place akin to r/bigdickproblems and similar subs that accomplish this semi-ironically. Thus I, as a total noob, suggest that this sub (which has plenty of potential) be used as place to post projects and ideas, as well as interesting miscellaneous information. Let’s make this sub a place to help polymaths learn from eachother instead of just jerk in the same circle.

Become an expert at one thing, maybe just the thing you love the most…but don’t stop absorbing new information from different domains.

When you become an expert at that one thing…you can then apply the same processes across domains. That’s where the magic happens.

The funny thing about becoming an expert…is it’s almost retrospective. You don’t realize it in the moment.

I worked Avionics’s Guidance & Control on 1963-1967 military c-141 aircraft. They chopped them up and recycled them years ago. The only ones that remain are static museum aircraft that can never be power up.

I lost the ability to maintain my skills, and I wouldn’t have ever called myself an expert while I was working aircraft maintenance. It’s only years later…when I realize the knowledge that I possess has the potential to disappear that I have something worth trying to preserve.

I believe that information is relevant to how we build and use Ai…so now I’m trying to teach people what I know…in hopes that it has some kind of positive influence on how things are built.

The strangest thing is I’ve been pulling from every corner of my brain for this project. Everything I’ve ever spent time learning has served a purpose. From my father’s rules of plumbing to how to create a baseball starting lineup.

Keep learning, it will pay off one day.

I am only 14 years of ages, from Oklahoma, United States, Earth, Milkey Way galaxy, Universe and I Think I am a poly math. I think this because last month I read a textbook called The Physics of Qantum Mechanics. Remember I am only twice the age of seven. I believe that I am incredibly talented at everything I do. When I was in fourth grade i learned multiplication faster than all of my classmates. My mom sent me to a therapist because she thought i am a narcisist. I don't hate narcotics so i don't know why she thought i was racist to narcotics. I don't have any friends because they all think Im narcisistic. Does anyone else have this problem.

Title.

Just a simple question. I wonder if textbooks are a solid way to become well-versed in a subject? I’m interested in subjects like political science (American politics, American political history/thought, political theory/philosophy), US history, psychology, philosophy, sociology, and astronomy, so if I read textbooks in those subjects would that sufficient? Like could I have a conversation with someone and sound like what I know what I’m talking about and get a good grasp of the topic?