Intellectual challenge

[VetLegion]

Two questions.

1. Do you sometimes feel a need for intellectual challenge?

2. What is intellectual challenge for you and how/where do you get it?

[Barinthus]

Whenever I want intellectual challenge I come over here....

[MrFun]

My ex-boyfriend, when he was alive, and I lived with him, provided me with intellectual challenge in the form of thoughtful, and in-depth philosophical questions and discussions.

I was younger then, and he opened my eyes wider than they were before.

[BeBMan]

Re: Intellectual challenge

Originally posted by VetLegion
Two questions.

1. Do you sometimes feel a need for intellectual challenge?

2. What is intellectual challenge for you and how/where do you get it?

1. All the time

2. I don't understand what you're saying

[Asher]

1) I usually get enough of that (to the extreme) at work. I sometimes feel the need for an intellectual challenge outside of work, and when that happens I geek out and work on my work-in-progress 3d "engine" that I started a long time ago. A lot of that is very mathy, and a lot of it I was rusty on or never learned in school so I've got to look it up myself.

2) At work it's a huge array of problems that I regularly am tasked to solve. A random example from today is we have a very large oil company that is in the process of "acceptance testing" a cluster of high-performance computers, and is finding the performance is not what they expect. Similarly, a large organization encountered performance issues on a BlueGene machine that indicate a defect of some kind in the compiler (runtime performance is reduced 2.5x compared to gcc, when it should be considerably faster).

In both of these cases, they couldn't let me see the code, or send any sort of test case. In the first case, the company was extremely protective of the code and has a virtually nonresponsive legal department. We couldn't sign an NDA so we could view the code... In the second case, it was a "top secret"/classified program that requires some kind of US national security clearance to see. Obviously, that wasn't an option.

So, I get to figure out the right questions to ask to see how they're using the compiler (which is enormously complicated software), analyze the performance profiling output I had them collect to see what type of functions/operations ate up the most time, etc.

It's really mentally taxing. :/

----

At home I usually don't do anything "intellectually challenging", but I do spend a scary amount of time reading highly technical websites/books about technology so I can learn more about it.

[Urban Ranger]

1. Sometimes

2. Currently my obsession is magic. Specifically, mentalism. What I am doing now is trying to figure out the tricks, then, create a few of my own.

[DeathByTheSword]

@asher bluegene it is going to power the biggest radiotelescope in the world it covers almost all of the Netherlands and part of germany too....bluegene 27,4 teraflop per second

http://www.lofar.org/

[Atahualpa]

Who would have thought that of Levi Strauss & Co...

Besides, since it covers all of Netherlands, are you going to extend even more into the sea or will you all move somewhere else now? Just in case that I could prepare for another invasion of Rudis, Lindas and knows the devil what you are still hiding.

[DeathByTheSword]

HA we all know that spanish men all fall for our lindas...and some even for our rudies

[Flubber]

I like an intellectual challenge and I get it all the time at work.

My job includes tasks such as :

- make sense of often conflicting regulations
- draft tight and unambiguous contracts related to complex matters-- I think people underestimate the challenge this is when using a language as fraught with ambiguity and nuance as the English language. I enjoy it though

[VetLegion]

Thanks for the replies.

BeBro, for 2) see what others have replied.


As for me, I've found that lately I get little intellectual challenge and I am searching for something to take up. A game, a hobby of a kind, I don't know... I was interested what others do when they feel they can and want to use their brainpower, yet aren't. Mine is underused I think

I'm a student btw., but I find most of the things I study at the moment boring.

[Atahualpa]

Originally posted by DeathByTheSword
HA we all know that spanish men all fall for our lindas...and some even for our rudies

so far only the germans fell
But wait, then I am closely related to Germany

[Sirotnikov]

Originally posted by MrFun
I was younger then, and he opened my eyes wider than they were before.

Are you sure it had to do with this thread?


Yeah, sometimes I feel the need for an intellectual challenge. Even though I frequently get this at work, but only in a very certain field. Many of the topics i'm interested in such as ethics, philosophy, economy and whatever are not challenged there.

I usually try and read Arts and Letters Daily, or talk to my friends, whom I regard as well educated and intellectual. And of course the casual once per 6 month, phone discussion with Az.

Speaking of which, Az - we really should meet up as I'm going away for officer's training in a week.

[MrFun]

Originally posted by Sirotnikov

Are you sure it had to do with this thread?

I will let you ponder that on your own.

[BeBMan]

Originally posted by VetLegion
Thanks for the replies.

BeBro, for 2) see what others have replied.

I know I just found it too intellectually challenging to write more....