Is this article really worthy of so many votes?
Many famous scientists have something in common: they didn’t work long hours
281–290 of 304 posts
Re: Many famous scientists have something in common: they didn’t work long hours
#282Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The problem is final GPA means almost nothing. High School Valedictorians are an interesting population because they tend to do poorly in life. Prodigies similarly underperform vs expected results. Interesting, do we have any explanations for this phenomena?
I think the posters are making some subjective judgements that vary from the norm. There was a Boston College study awhile back that tracked a group of valedictorians. The were almost all successful and satisfied with life, but were more likely to be in professions. (Doctor, nurse, accountant, etc) In this forum, entrepreneurs are on a pedestal. It's a different personality type -- when people with entrepreneurial in…
I am not saying they are more likely to end up in prison. Rather, if you rank people and pick the top ~1/1000 and then preform about as well as the top 1/10 there is something wrong with your ranking.
PS: I also had a valedictorian sister who went on to Disney and is now a solid cog in their profit machine. The trap is she never really had a need to strike out on her own. Another sister was salutatorian and became a nursery school teacher. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Re: Many famous scientists have something in common: they didn’t work long hours
#283Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem is final GPA means almost nothing. High School Valedictorians are an interesting population because they tend to do poorly in life. Prodigies similarly underperform vs expected results. So, when you look objectively you find the most highly paid author has zero relevant accolades. in academic terms, gave the appearance of doing what was necessary".[18] Rowling recalls doing little work, preferring to list…
> The problem is final GPA means almost nothing. High School Valedictorians are an interesting population because they tend to do poorly in life. Prodigies similarly underperform vs expected results. Interesting, do we have any explanations for this phenomena?
I would guess that being a valedictorian is not so much a sign of being smart but of obedience. Certain subjects like history require rote memorization rather than intellect/understanding. That's why the intelligent anti-social folk tend to do good at subjects like mathematics yet could care less about subjects that are testing pure memorization.
I honestly think that having As in subjects that don't matter much, shows a form of mental illness like OCD or a lack of self-identity. It may be a grim and rather crass outlook so if you have a counter-example, I'd love to hear it.
Re: Many famous scientists have something in common: they didn’t work long hours
#284Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The problem is final GPA means almost nothing. High School Valedictorians are an interesting population because they tend to do poorly in life. Prodigies similarly underperform vs expected results. Interesting, do we have any explanations for this phenomena?
Not sure how much research backs this up, but I think it's a change in what's important. A 10 year old who copies someone else brilliantly is praised, an adult doing the same thing makes minim wage. "Even prodigies who avoid burnout and resist social pressures are unlikely to make a big splash as an adult. The problem, notes giftedness researcher Ellen Winner, is that to make a major contribution in the arts, and eve…
That's exactly what I was thinking when I commented above. Getting the highest marks across the board in school shows more about obedience and spending all your time studying, rather than an innate intellect.
Re: Many famous scientists have something in common: they didn’t work long hours
#285Earlier quoted context omitted.
I didn't say that. This is why it's hard to have civil discussion online because people take words out of context and use whatever interpretation they have. If you are one of the people who are in unfortunate situations, you can choose to live two different lives: either believe that you're done for and live a loser life, or try hard to get out of it. It's your choice, but there's plenty of evidence where people who…
> I didn't say that. This is why it's hard to have civil discussion online because people take words out of context and use whatever interpretation they have. How about I just agree and say you are right? Its pretty hard to have a civil discussion when you top level post and accuse HNers of commenting like lemmings. > This is at best an irresponsible piece of writing that's clearly targeting discussions like what's h…
Like I said, if you're scared to even try because it will "never happen", be my guest. There are tons of other people in the same situation who will try, and succeed to become the character in your "cinderella story". "cinderella story" never happens to someone who slacks off.
No one is saying "work hard" => "100% success!". I'm saying success doesn't happen to people who slack off (especially if they're in a bad position to succeed). If you can't tell the difference between the two expressions, learn logic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contraposition
Re: Many famous scientists have something in common: they didn’t work long hours
#286Earlier quoted context omitted.
As far as I know, most people wish on their deathbeds that they'd have worked less, been with their loved ones more, and generally would have done more anything else than work. I get that there are extremely driven individuals who want to achieve great things - and some of them are even able to do so - but articles like this should be understood in the context of a culture where common people work themselves to death…
> "As far as I know, most people wish on their deathbeds that they'd have worked less, been with their loved ones more, and generally would have done more anything else than work." No, this is just a hackneyed cliche that gets repeated every time work-life balance gets discussed. I know quite a few people in late middle age that dearly wish they have worked harder and earned more money, now that they need it and can'…
And you counter with personal anecdotes. But of course they must be true because they fit your narrative.
Re: Many famous scientists have something in common: they didn’t work long hours
#287Earlier 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…
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!
Keep in mind though that that max effort pull is a tangible measure of what you can accomplish and your progress toward goals.
Your training, and time-in-gym particularly, is only partially related to that. Train on a stupid program (squat-rack curls, sets of 100 reps), and you're not going to progress.
Use a properly periodised training schedule, with complementary and auxiliary lifts that work toward your goal, mind your time between lifts, avoid overtraining, etc., and you can make rapid progress.
Powerlifting's easy, from a measurement perspective, because the end result is so tangible and measureable: legal lift, known weight, success or fail. Speed events, whether sprint or endurance, likewise. Direct contests, whether competition (tennis, darts, rugby), or fighting sports (MMA, wrestling, boxing) largely the same, though some subjectivity of scoring may come into play.
Determining who is the better programmer or systems administrator from a 15 minute assessment is all but impossible if the contestents are even remotely evenly matched: the criteria for drawing judgements are much more complex, and may not become apparent for months or years.
Re: Many famous scientists have something in common: they didn’t work long hours
#288I will add a personal anecdote from software development. On one project I had a difficult objective (to write a database that met certain criteria). I had never done database work before.
For the first year, I worked with almost no supervision and developed a routine where I would select an area to work on, give it a week, and if I could find no good solution, would switch to something else. All the while I read many related technical papers. Often after a couple weeks of "not working on the problem" I would think of a clean solution and implement it fairly quickly.
After that year, I got a new boss who insisted that I schedule my work using agile techniques, which meant that when I started something I had to focus on it until it was delivered, while trying to meet my estimates, planned to at most a two-day delivery cycle.
My productivity in the second year was terrible and much of the coding I did then sucked, as it was full of hacks designed to make my first, sloppy approach work quickly.
For me, downtime, and reading papers that were indirectly related to my problem area, vastly increased the quality and quantity of work done.
Re: Many famous scientists have something in common: they didn’t work long hours
#289> 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…
When I was in grad school, I took a middle ground: I determined to get a B or B- (if it could be done with reasonable effort) for all the courses. This let me have extra time to put into the courses I found most interesting and I would spend longer hours on those with the goal being learning rather than grades. It kept school fun.
Re: Many famous scientists have something in common: they didn’t work long hours
#290What a load of bullshit. Most of the scientists have spent a long time actually working, especially in the modern era. None of the successful physicist/mathematicians of those whom I have seen slackers. Each one of them (without exception) have worked extremely hard. Also, more importantly, I have seen level insight into solving difficult problems being directly and causally proportional to the amount of work people have put in trying stuff that hasn't worked till now.