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Many famous scientists have something in common: they didn’t work long hours

nautil.us

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Re: Many famous scientists have something in common: they didn’t work long hours

#121

Post by sarreph »

amelius wrote: post #37
whistlerbrk wrote: post #26

And then on the flipside there is Musk, Jobs, Gates and countless others who work(ed) all the time. All I'm saying is I see a lot of emulation-of-success articles posted here...

Those people are not scientists. Lookup Musk on Wikipedia and you'll find that he has a BSc. only, and he started a PhD only to quit after a few weeks to pursue his business endeavors. Jobs dropped out of University. And Gates is probably closest to a scientist, although I'm not aware of any research by him.

> And Gates is probably closest to a scientist, although I'm not aware of any research by him.

Gates' only research paper[0] is one on the Pancake Sorting algorithm[1] — which he wrote in his second year at Harvard.

[0] - https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~christos/papers/GP79.pdf

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pancake_sorting

Re: Many famous scientists have something in common: they didn’t work long hours

#122

Post by SmellTheGlove »

Reminds me of this:

http://www.theonion.com/blogpost/if-i-had-one-piece-of-advic...

I know it's The Onion, but irony being that Roy Halladay probably worked harder than any other pitcher in the same span. Natural talent still helps, though!

Re: Many famous scientists have something in common: they didn’t work long hours

#123

Post by Verdex_2 »

arcanus wrote: post #80
xiaoma wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regardless of the century, the credential is not the defining characteristic of science.

That's not why anyone gets a PhD. The training is designed to teach you research. Unlike any other schooling, the degree has little class work. The PhD is essentially an apprenticeship to a practicing scientist.

I would be really interested in someone elaborating on this idea "phd is an apprenticeship for researchers".

Several people have insisted that I should go into a phd program, but when I looked into it I saw a lot of: learn how to do grant applications, publish this non-reproducible and barely significant result just so you have something published, work on a phd adviser's bad idea so he can take the credit, etc.

If you're working on an idea no one has had before, what kinds of support can others give you and do modern phd programs give that support?

Re: Many famous scientists have something in common: they didn’t work long hours

#124

Post by jacobolus »

jartelt wrote: post #59
smokeyj wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I suppose because it's so easily quantified. I wonder what's being quantified.. intelligence or obedience. This would be like rating a strong-man competition by how much time was spent in the gym and how much unnecessary pain was self-inflicted. It's like there's a culture of "pain enthusiasts". They do things like talk about running until it hurts, they tend to get injured often, and of course they have nothing to…

Given that students are almost always graded on how well they do on assignments/exams rather than how long they studied, your strong-man competition analogy doesn't make much sense.

The assignments are often (even typically) crafted to be straightforward but require significant amounts of time to complete, and often graded more for diligence than understanding. Exams are sometimes more about flattering the grader or following a fixed procedure than developing an interesting argument and defending it well or solving novel difficult problems. Add course attendance and participation on top, and what you get is grades that generally correlate more to time spent than to competence per se.

Obviously someone clever can figure out how to get away with putting in less effort than the average student while still scoring well, but that’s more about learning to play the school game than learning how to think according to the methods of inquiry whatever field is ostensibly being studied.

It makes sense that school takes this form: instructor time is much more scalable to many students when assignments and exams are simple and uniform. Mentoring students who are working on real research problems takes much more time and effort.

Re: Many famous scientists have something in common: they didn’t work long hours

#125

Post by bbig3831 »

jackhammer2022 wrote: post #44

So Survivorship Bias in play in this article?

Exactly what I thought. Lots of not-so-famous scientists didn't work long hours either. This is just another case of the "Halo Effect".[1] Let's select a group based on an outcome (i.e. being a famous scientist) and then work backwards to find similarities that fit a narrative.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Halo-Effect-Business-Delusions-Manage...

Re: Many famous scientists have something in common: they didn’t work long hours

#126

Post by cableshaft »

jorasta wrote: post #64

Darwin was thinking during his walks. During his writing tasks much of the activity was mechanical or the consolidation of notions arrived at during leisure. What society regards as 'work' largely comprises the application of existing knowledge and the running of errands. >He was passionate and driven, so much so that he was given to anxiety attacks over his ideas and their implications. Emotions driving emotions? No…

I'd be perfectly happy if the takeaway companies got from this is to let people get away from the desk and do some thinking about work during work hours.

Let me take an extended walk and think about where I'm stuck on a problem during the work day, instead of forcing my butt in a seat for 8+ hours, and interrogating me if the time-tracker at my computer drops down below that.

Re: Many famous scientists have something in common: they didn’t work long hours

#127

Post by vram22 »

cgriswald wrote: post #60
YCode wrote: post #7

> Scientists who spent 25 hours in the workplace were no more productive than those who spent five. Anecdotally this is a concept I've run into in many areas of life, the most overt one being school, I suppose because it's so easily quantified. You can do a moderately acceptable amount of work on any given assignment and get a C+, work hard for a B/A or work your hands to the bone for an A+, but at the end of the day…

I agree about school. I see people constantly trying to use pattern matching and memorization to pass tests; always doing extra credit; putting too much effort into minor things; and exacerbating all of these problems by taking too many units in an effort to get out early. I don't know how they're not already burnt out. Meanwhile I never specifically study for a test. I've just studied regularly every day, thought ab…

>I think the core problem for most people is that they are attached to the wrong outcome. Their goal is the high GPA.

Likely to be true for many people. I remember my uncle, who was a prof. in the US, bemoaning the fact (and this was way back) that some of his students used to come and ask him "What do I need to do to get an A?" His point being, of course, that those students did not have a genuine interest in the subject for its own sake (which tends to lead to better outcomes anyway).

Re: Many famous scientists have something in common: they didn’t work long hours

#128

Post by Cyph0n »

wl wrote: post #85
Cyph0n wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure about you, but my university was very strict with cheaters because of how widespread cheating was. Gaining an extra 10 points on tough exam wasn't worth the risk of expulsion. I suppose that deciding whether to cheat or not is an optimization problem in and of itself. If no one else is cheating, the gains are huge, but if there are a lot of cheaters, it might not end up being worth the risk. Actually, there…

Virtually all my classes in college allowed me to have cheat sheets of varying sizes for exams. Creating that cheat sheet was a good way to focus my studying, to the point where I rarely had to use the cheat sheet.

Cheat sheets were limited to classes that had a lot of memorization, which is rare in EE. Professors usually included an equation sheet with the exam for courses with a shit ton of equations (EMAG, circuits, etc.).

And note that I was talking about a cheat sheet to be used for cheating.

Re: Many famous scientists have something in common: they didn’t work long hours

#129

Post by twoquestions »

smokeyj wrote: post #46
YCode wrote: post #7

> Scientists who spent 25 hours in the workplace were no more productive than those who spent five. Anecdotally this is a concept I've run into in many areas of life, the most overt one being school, I suppose because it's so easily quantified. You can do a moderately acceptable amount of work on any given assignment and get a C+, work hard for a B/A or work your hands to the bone for an A+, but at the end of the day…

> I suppose because it's so easily quantified. I wonder what's being quantified.. intelligence or obedience. This would be like rating a strong-man competition by how much time was spent in the gym and how much unnecessary pain was self-inflicted. It's like there's a culture of "pain enthusiasts". They do things like talk about running until it hurts, they tend to get injured often, and of course they have nothing to…

There is also people who enjoy finding out how much pain they can endure, where masochism is the point. For me, max-weight deadlifting is a measure of how much I can grit my teeth through the pain and how much I can pull off the ground. I know it's not terribly effective in how much progress I make as I do it so I keep it to a minimum, but it is fun to get a new high score!
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