Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius

paulgraham.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 500 posts

Re: The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius

#81

Post by arminiusreturns »

zozbot234 wrote: post #13
arminiusreturns wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really enjoyed this article. For me, I have two main ones. Professionally, it is four freedoms computing and ways to empower people with it. Privately though, since I got out of the military, has been an obsession with geopolitics and geostrategy. You might be surprised how interrelated I increasingly think the two are.

What's it about geopolitics that makes it so interesting to you? It has always seemed like politicized BS to me. I think history shows quite well that once individuals and polities alike start on the path of pursuing/promoting some variety of economic freedom and classical liberal values (often including but not limited to what's known as liberal democracy), safety and stable cooperation become enough of a common int…

For me it just started as trying to understand the why of the Iraq war. I worked my way up the chain from my grunts eye view and kept going up that chain. I think it had a very similar appeal to computers when I was younger, in that I could understand things that most others couldn't, and that was and is a good feeling in a strange way. Combined with a very American upbringing and the fact I swore an oath to the constitution also makes me feel like it is my duty in some way, especially given the kind of insight I have grown into. I started with the question "why", and my eyes didn't really open till I realized I was leaving all the other W's out. This is the obsessive part as referenced in the post, because a part of me wants to let it all go and just focus on trying disrupt society through tech, or art, or something equivalent, but it seems a Sisyphean task I can't let go of.

Re: The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius

#82

Post by lazyjones »

sgentle wrote: post #72

Competitive gaming is a particularly good example of this. I followed most of the rise of Dota from trashy Warcraft 3 mod to Valve's multi-million-dollar-prize-pool juggernaut. The first few crops of Dota millionaires all had the same backstory: "I played this game 14 hours a day. If there were tournaments at all they didn't really pay anything. My parents said I was wasting my life. I never had a girlfriend. Everyon…

> Perhaps the message is just that millions are delivered to those with a combination of luck and the freedom to pursue rationally unjustifiable interests.

Where do you see that message? No luck was involved in your example, just hard work on behalf of the good players and of the Dota developers, and pursuing a hobby with passion is perfectly rational.

Re: The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius

#84

Post by zhynn »

sgentle wrote: post #72

Competitive gaming is a particularly good example of this. I followed most of the rise of Dota from trashy Warcraft 3 mod to Valve's multi-million-dollar-prize-pool juggernaut. The first few crops of Dota millionaires all had the same backstory: "I played this game 14 hours a day. If there were tournaments at all they didn't really pay anything. My parents said I was wasting my life. I never had a girlfriend. Everyon…

You could take this argument all the way down. Why did valve pick it up? I don't think they saw dota2 as a profit engine necessarily, though there is some argument for that. The company does tend to engage in bus ticket obsessions (VR, dota2). Sometimes it fails (artifact). But I strongly suspect that Gabe Newell bus tickets dota2. I would guess that like myself, he has no real skill at the game, but he just loves it. And he hired the guy (icefrog) that bus tickets dota2 mechanics. The combination is an enormously entertaining (for us fans) wildly unlikely tournament that has a 30 million dollar purse.

Tarn and Zach Adams are also bus ticketers.

Re: The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius

#85

Post by astrodev »

sgentle wrote: post #72

Competitive gaming is a particularly good example of this. I followed most of the rise of Dota from trashy Warcraft 3 mod to Valve's multi-million-dollar-prize-pool juggernaut. The first few crops of Dota millionaires all had the same backstory: "I played this game 14 hours a day. If there were tournaments at all they didn't really pay anything. My parents said I was wasting my life. I never had a girlfriend. Everyon…

> combination that is increasingly rare in an economic system designed to squeeze out the inefficient

As a result, more and more areas of science and technology get stuck near local maxima. The same happened in all ancient civilisations.

Re: The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius

#86

Post by glofish »

lazyjones wrote: post #82
sgentle wrote: post #72

Competitive gaming is a particularly good example of this. I followed most of the rise of Dota from trashy Warcraft 3 mod to Valve's multi-million-dollar-prize-pool juggernaut. The first few crops of Dota millionaires all had the same backstory: "I played this game 14 hours a day. If there were tournaments at all they didn't really pay anything. My parents said I was wasting my life. I never had a girlfriend. Everyon…

> Perhaps the message is just that millions are delivered to those with a combination of luck and the freedom to pursue rationally unjustifiable interests. Where do you see that message? No luck was involved in your example, just hard work on behalf of the good players and of the Dota developers, and pursuing a hobby with passion is perfectly rational.

In my interpretation of the reply, they were "lucky" in that the field took off and became economically viable to be good at it.

Frankly, back 20 years ago I would have never thought that watching someone play a game would become a form of entertainment.

Re: The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius

#87

Post by paulryanrogers »

lazyjones wrote: post #82
sgentle wrote: post #72

Competitive gaming is a particularly good example of this. I followed most of the rise of Dota from trashy Warcraft 3 mod to Valve's multi-million-dollar-prize-pool juggernaut. The first few crops of Dota millionaires all had the same backstory: "I played this game 14 hours a day. If there were tournaments at all they didn't really pay anything. My parents said I was wasting my life. I never had a girlfriend. Everyon…

> Perhaps the message is just that millions are delivered to those with a combination of luck and the freedom to pursue rationally unjustifiable interests. Where do you see that message? No luck was involved in your example, just hard work on behalf of the good players and of the Dota developers, and pursuing a hobby with passion is perfectly rational.

> ...pursuing a hobby with passion is perfectly rational.

To a point, yes. Though we may disagree on the threshold where it crosses over from rational to unhealthy obsession. And there is certainly luck involved when there are tens who found fortune out of millions participating.

Re: The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius

#88

Post by lazyjones »

zozbot234 wrote: post #29
Bostonian wrote: post #27

I think males are more likely than females to become obsessed with narrow domains. (I used to be obsessed with chess, especially chess openings.) This may be a partial explanation of why there have been more male geniuses. Graham must be careful about what he writes, but he does say this: "One interesting thing about the bus ticket theory is that it may help explain why different types of people excel at different ki…

> I think males are more likely than females to become obsessed with narrow domains. I don't think this is the case. Males just have low visibility into typical female 'obsessions' (or just don't care all that much about them), but the reverse is also generally true. Females tend to obsess about things that have a 'social' side, like their shoes collection - whereas males are more into physical, material things that…

Difficult terrain. Perhaps all these obsessions are fundamentally antisocial (hence some people call them autistic etc.) and women are raised to be more concerned about not being antisocial.

Re: The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius

#89

Post by keiferski »

sgentle wrote: post #72

Competitive gaming is a particularly good example of this. I followed most of the rise of Dota from trashy Warcraft 3 mod to Valve's multi-million-dollar-prize-pool juggernaut. The first few crops of Dota millionaires all had the same backstory: "I played this game 14 hours a day. If there were tournaments at all they didn't really pay anything. My parents said I was wasting my life. I never had a girlfriend. Everyon…

Does being good at Dota count as being a genius?

I think you are confusing financial success with contributing to artistic/scientific/intellectual progress.

Re: The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius

#90

Post by satyrnein »

rhlsthrm wrote: post #34
zozbot234 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think males are more likely than females to become obsessed with narrow domains. I don't think this is the case. Males just have low visibility into typical female 'obsessions' (or just don't care all that much about them), but the reverse is also generally true. Females tend to obsess about things that have a 'social' side, like their shoes collection - whereas males are more into physical, material things that…

This is exactly right. I've come across this theory of obsession on my own and I've been helping my wife find what she's obsessed with. She watches things on YouTube like makeup tutorials that are things I would have never thought she was obsessed with.

Let's not be too hasty in concluding women's attention to their appearance and their children is completely genetic when all throughout history these were duties pushed onto them.

Darwin got to say "I'll be in my study" and "you take care of the kids and dinner and everything else" was just automatically implied.

Post reply on HN