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The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius

paulgraham.com

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Re: The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius

#491

Post by dobleW »

carapace wrote: post #186
NPMaxwell wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Very dubious that a electronics mini-wizard could not figure by himself that it's impossible to take down the electric city distribution system from your house.

I' vaguely remember confronting my father over a similar issue during my electrical experimental days as a kid, asking him why our house had no adequate protection (those days simple fuses where still normal).

Re: The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius

#492

Post by isodude »

retromario wrote: post #487
galkk wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any advice?

This was a godsend: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40873423-no-drama-discip...

As to answer the parent as well. Most books going forward is always a recommend after something like the book above.

There should be a site like parenting.com which lists all of these.

Kids is never at fault really, they just try their best with given tooling.

Re: The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius

#493

Post by arthurjj »

brokenmachine wrote: post #474
dual_basis wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many of my relatives seem to have no interests or hobbies. I mean sure, they watch TV and movies, but it's not like they are deeply interested in them, they serve more as pastimes. They don't have anything they are actually passionate about.

Most people I meet seem to simply survive on instinct and mimicking others around them. I find it really refreshing when I discover that someone is passionate about something, no matter what it is. The possibility exists that I could just be a bad interviewer though.

> The possibility exists that I could just be a bad interviewer though.

Making small talk with people I have this thought constantly. Is the format of small talk what's preventing us from having a discussion about what you're passionate about or do they lack a passion?

Re: The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius

#494

Post by amirswoop »

As I read the article I could really relate to being able to get really deep into a subject even though it might not be whats "popular" by society. I truly believe its very important for parents to let their kids "obsess" over things that might not "scale". At the same time, it's important that kids get deep into the things that they are interested in rather than just consume and waste their time.

Re: The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius

#496

Post by nobodyandproud »

DrAwdeOccarim wrote: post #442
analog31 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody's checking. The focus is on what you're going to spend next year's money on, not how you spent last year's money. And if you're savvy, you can use tools that were already bought for some other purpose, or that don't cost much. Working a day job in industry isn't categorically different, except that someone is probably watching your spending more closely. You have to figure out a way to set aside some time to w…

So I moved into industry out of post doc and I can tell you as long as you're getting your day job done and it isn't that expensive you can test most any idea. I'd say it's even easier to do it in industry because "not that expensive" to industry is like 10-fold more than in academia.

Except that you’re not allowed to be bored and mentally daydream.

Newton and Einstein both hit on some big ideas during lulls (@home to avoid plague for the former; patent office work for the latter).

Re: The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius

#497

Post by nobodyandproud »

mythrwy wrote: post #410
nobodyandproud wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with modern science is that there is no room for the unusual. Faraday had no formal training, but his natural intuition, interest, and tenacity made him standout. Newton was a brilliant, paranoid asshole. Instead funding goes to credentialed career scientists whose greatest ability is self-promotion, fund raising, and stringing-along the public. As an example: The next big particle accelerator sucks up bi…

In Newton's day a single person could probably learn all the math and science there was to be learned in the entire world. Now things are much more specialized and require years of formal study just to get a base level of knowledge in one tiny aspect.

I doubt this is the case at all.

We have the luxury of hindsight to know which peculiar schools of thought were rubbish, so we don’t even teach them.

I’m sure there are many, many theorems built up with Euclidean Geometry that we don’t bother teaching anymore.

Because modern methods make the results trivial.

Today, what are we burdening upcoming scientists with unnecessarily?

Re: The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius

#498

Post by monocasa »

ken wrote: post #264
INGELRII wrote: post #32

Side note about Newton and occult. Newton was not just a physicist who dabbled with occult. He turned occult into physics. Before Newton scientists and natural philosophers like Descartes believed that movements were caused by physical contact. Newton started traditionally and proposed the existence of ether that transmits forces. When he became interested in alchemy, he replaced ether with occult forces that repel a…

Here's something I'd love for someone to explain about "magicians". I've read that Einstein was a great physicist for his work on relativity. I still don't know what he actually did . Did he have some mountain of experimental data, to which he found a model which fit? Did he have sub-models which he unified, or simplified? What exactly were his inputs and outputs? In school we're taught that the scientific method inv…

For one, Mercury's orbit was pretty confusing, and needed a fudge factor when calculated with existing Newtonian methods. This is why some were so convinced that there had to be a tiny planet Vulcan between it and the sun. When you use Relativistic equations rather than Newtonian, the math just works out clean without a fudge factor.

Re: The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius

#499

Post by classified »

Those are incoherent ramblings of an underdeveloped brain. My advice: If you're going to obsess over something that may or may not be pointless, at least make it so that you're getting sordidly rich doing it. Maybe somebody notices that you made pointlessness a moot point and calls you a disruptive genius.

Re: The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius

#500

Post by tome »

gist wrote: post #469
drongoking wrote: post #323

Two reactions to this. I almost believe these: 1. The difference between collecting bus tickets, working on mathematics, and figuring the crystallization patterns of snowflakes is virtually nothing. To the people obsessed with it, it is all-important; to outsiders, all three look indistinguishably pointless. Only in retrospect can anyone say whether the activity led to something society considers important. The truly…

> But for nearly every invention and idea, history shows that multiple people were working on it at the same time. Agree and not to mention we don't have any data on people who loved and were obsessive and that did not lead to anything. I am actually surprised in how simplistic PG is when he writes some of what he does. For example he states that Darwin was obsessed (as he was) but ignores that just like the bus tick…

> I was an obsessive commenter on a site and most would say I was wasting my time. But that activity has led to over 7 figures of income.

That's amazing! Can you tell us more?

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