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The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius

paulgraham.com

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Re: The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius

#181

Post by jstummbillig »

Alex3917 wrote: post #150
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…

> Competitive gaming is a particularly good example of this. Anything competitive is emphatically not a good example of this. If you're in a competition, then by definition you're doing the exact same thing as everyone else. That's a guaranteed recipe for not accomplishing anything meaningful in life. Competition can be great for cultivating positive character traits and developing certain skills, but at some point y…

It might just be a matter of framing, but I do not understand: How could you ever do anything work related, void of competition for any significant stretch of time?

Even if you create or exploit something wildly new that is completely beyond reach for anyone else at that moment – let's say you made time travel viable tomorrow – as soon as you did and started commercialising it, competition would start forming later that day.

For everything else, you will right off the gate be competing with someone over something (at the very least time and money). Airbnb is competing with Hotels/Motels, Uber with Taxis, Facebook with MySpace. MySpace with more specialised communities and GeoCities. The internet was competing with telephones, mail, fax and the yellow pages.

Can you elaborate?

Re: The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius

#182

Post by stickfigure »

Alex3917 wrote: post #150
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…

> Competitive gaming is a particularly good example of this. Anything competitive is emphatically not a good example of this. If you're in a competition, then by definition you're doing the exact same thing as everyone else. That's a guaranteed recipe for not accomplishing anything meaningful in life. Competition can be great for cultivating positive character traits and developing certain skills, but at some point y…

Interesting perspective!

I guess the rebuttal might go something like: Business is inherently competitive. Creating startups, you are usually competing not only with old line businesses but with other startups.

I guess the rebuttal to the rebuttal might sound something like Thiel's startup lectures: Startups should try to be anticompetitive, ideally carving out new niches. You don't want to engage in head-to-head competition.

The 3rd degree rebuttal might be something like: There are plenty of examples of successful startups that began as clones of other businesses (Facebook seems the canonical example).

But then as you say, they moved beyond being a clone of Friendster/Myspace/Tribe/etc... but isn't that the competitive process?

Re: The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius

#183

Post by carapace »

brilee wrote: post #149
ralfd wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which thought experiment?

Special relativity is the set of equations that arises when you take a hypothesis: "you always perceive light as traveling at a speed `c`, no matter how fast you're going" and work out what would have to change in order to allow this statement to hold true.

Sorry to be pedantic, it was:

1.) Maxwell's equations permit no other speed for light than c.

2.) All physical laws (such as Maxwell's) are the same in all inertial reference frames.

From those two the rest flows.

Re: The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius

#184

Post by notatoad »

>we may be able, by cultivating interest, to cultivate genius.

That assumes that interest is something that can be cultivated, which i'm skeptical of. If somebody else had tried to become as interested in natural history as Darwin was, could they have achieved his genius?

I think interest is something that can be discovered, but not cultivated. You find something that you are interested in, you don't choose something to become interested in. Not everybody has the same innate level of curiosity, and not everybody will discover the thing that really interests them during their lifetime. But hacking away at something trying to cultivate interest so you can achieve genius doesn't sound productive to me - if you aren't naturally interested in something, don't waste your time on it. Or if you do sink your time into it, spend that time being productive, instead of trying to become interested.

Re: The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius

#186

Post by carapace »

NPMaxwell wrote: post #162
pmikesell wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the point of the story, but he didn’t do it though, right? It was probably this? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_1965

No. It was a local blackout: too much load with air conditioners in the summer

Did... did they not tell him it was a joke?

Re: The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius

#188

Post by taurath »

vsareto wrote: post #130
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…

>And the thing that I couldn't help thinking is: was it? I'm not sure that any rational person would make that decision. You have to weigh your current abilities and their earning potential vs. the costs of venturing into a new field. Being at the top of Dota is easier than being at the top of Math or Chess or Go, since Dota is a newer field. They aren't really comparable, but you still compare them if you are trying…

> Being at the top of Dota is easier than being at the top of Math or Chess or Go

I slightly disagree - neither Chess nor Go have nearly the millions of new players playing it obsessively as they come of age. Math is a bit different, but often times “good at math” isn’t very rewarding except as it pertains to an ancillary job, or if you’re one of the relative few who become a math major.

There’s also a major drop off over time with MOBA players - the average age is 22 or something for professionals. Eventually the reflexes get worse.

Re: The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius

#189

Post by friedman23 »

galfarragem wrote: post #91
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…

Society deify successful people when in reality they are nothing more than serial lottery winners. For every "Ronaldo" there are a myriad of people trying to get there that will end their life as losers because they made an high-stakes bet and lost. The truth in unconfortable and nobody wants to listen about it.

> For every "Ronaldo" there are a myriad of people trying to get there that will end their life as losers because they made an high-stakes bet and lost.

For every "Ronaldo" there are a small amount of moderately successful players playing soccer for a good living.

The myriad is the group of people that are coasting their way through life trying to put in as little effort as possible and naturally they don't succeed.

Re: The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius

#190

Post by friedman23 »

pmoriarty wrote: post #175
rhlsthrm wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but work ethic and obsession are the absolute baseline you need.

I find it sad and disturbing that so many people worship being a workaholic.

People worship success. Turns out to be better than other hard working people you need to work extremely hard.
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