You Don't Need to Be Brilliant to Do Brilliant Work • Hacker News Board

Re: You Don't Need to Be Brilliant to Do Brilliant Work

#61

Post by jkuria » Sun, May 26, 2019, 4:31 PM UTC

TheTrotters wrote: post #60

jkuria wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So true. This is also the 'Dilbert Theory of Value Creation' that I have used to great profit. Scott Adams likes to say, he is not the funniest guy around but funnier than most people. At best, he'd be a mediocre comedian. He can also draw better than most but hardly a Picasso. And yet, by combining both skills he has something "rare and valuable" that has led to enormous financial success. He also adds that it easie…

> There are more than 2,000 billionaires worldwide but only about 480 NBA players (32 teams with roughly 15 people on the roster). And if you think about it, becoming a billionaire usually involves multiple skills (good at programming + business, bill gates. Good at research/analysis + cultivating a rare temperament that allows you to act on the insights produced by the research even when everyone around you is losin…

You have a point but there is also quite a bit of churn in the billionaire ranks. So if you include all that have been billionaires in the last 10 - 20 years you'll have many more than just 2,000. And for practical purposes, having $500 million vs. $1 billion is really the same league of wealth. So if we make the criterion $500 million my point is absolutely true! 5,000 at any given time vs 480.

Re: You Don't Need to Be Brilliant to Do Brilliant Work

#62

Post by gpsx » Sun, May 26, 2019, 7:01 PM UTC

zxcmx wrote: post #47

gpsx wrote: post #21

A friend recounted a conversation where he was talking to one of his friends, saying he couldn't understand how these people could be so dumb. (I don't recall what "these" refers to...) His friend said, "I don't think it's that they're dumb. They just aren't curious." That was an enlightened comment. I think that is one of the elements that is needed to do brilliant things, just as Csonger says he was interested in u…

Not even “not curious”, but often just “not curious about that thing, right now”. Heck, most people understand very little about the myriad of everyday systems that keep them alive. Forget engines, computers or say, type theory. Most literally don’t know where their water comes from (to any level deeper than “it comes in a pipe”) or where their poo goes - and collectively that’s ok because the benefit of society is t…

That's a good point about specialists building empathy. One of my college physics professors complained about how dumb the ROTC people were - but a lot of them are humanities majors forced to take physics, which they couldn't care less about. Meanwhile, my political science professor was berating the science and engineering majors because all they would do is memorize and not learn concepts. That was on the day I scored higher on my physics test than my government test, and the physics test was out of 50 and the government test was out of 100.

Re: You Don't Need to Be Brilliant to Do Brilliant Work

#63

Post by anhedonic_igor » Sun, May 26, 2019, 11:21 PM UTC

hprotagonist wrote: post #25

rl1987 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can one learn or acquire this trait?

just start drinking from the firehose. the trick is to convince yourself not to care about the immediate utility of what you’re learning. And store pointers to data, it’s lighter weight.

Could you give a concrete example of what you mean by storing pointers to data? Do you mean having trigger words or ideas that you use to rebuild complex ideas?