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What I Worked On

paulgraham.com

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Re: What I Worked On

#211

Post by btilly »

aborsy wrote: post #164
btilly wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any idea how many areas of science were opened up by our attempt to get to the Moon? The range is literally from discovering that unit tests are good in software to discovering the Van Allen belts to learning about the geology and history of the Moon from the rocks that we brought back. Could we have learned more science by doing something else with the money? Of course. But it is a dramatic overstatement…

Yes, and I tell you very few if any. If you don’t believe an anonymous person here, see what prominent physicists say clearly on this topic, e.g., Steven Weinberg. This is not to dismiss experimental research which is quite important, but to distinguish (experimental or theoretical) science from product development.

Why don't we see what he says?

In https://www.thespacereview.com/article/1037/1 you'll find that he is very critical of manned spaceflight in general, but about Apollo he says, "No, at the time of Apollo, the astronauts did do some useful things. They brought back Lunar samples. They placed a laser reflector on the Moon that has been used ever since to monitor the motion of the Moon with incredible accuracy."

Earlier in the same interview he criticized NASA for canceling Apollo 18 and 19 because he wanted the science that would have been done, to be done.

I guess he didn't say what you thought he said.

That said, his criticism of NASA's efforts with manned flight isn't because he doesn't think that it is useless to go to the moon. It is because it takes a lot of work to get humans there, and robots can do the job much more safely and cheaper. Which also explains why he thought Apollo was useful. At the time the technology of robotics was much worse so humans were the only way to do the job.

Re: What I Worked On

#212

Post by pdimitar »

dang wrote: post #191
mdorazio wrote: post #170

This is a well-written essay even if it's a bit long and somewhat navel-gazing (it is, after all, written for pg himself). However, I was continuously struck by just how ridiculously privileged and serendipitous pg's early life was to the point where I just can't even relate to it. He basically meandered his way from an expensive (today) college to an even more expensive (today) grad school, then to art school becaus…

I think we see what we're predisposed to see in these things. When I read the essay, what stood out to me was how long he got by with almost no money. Living on $7 a day etc. If there's privilege here (and if we're using that word in something other than a Twitter putdown sense), it seems to me more more intellectual than financial. pg has clearly always been single-minded about doing what he wanted to do / was inter…

Agreed. An empowering upbringing is a factor with a huge weight. Upbringing that actively attacks the learned helplessness and never allows it to even show itself is what makes people confident and be able to utilize a good luck.

Re: What I Worked On

#213

Post by cam0 »

boreas wrote: post #187
increscent wrote: post #55

For me the theme of this narrative is that PG always relentlessly pursued what he wanted: AI, art school, Florence, Lisp, etc. He would often find out after pursuing those things that he didn't really want them, but that was helpful feedback. I'm usually stuck wanting things but not pursuing them so I don't know if I would really want them. It seems better to take initiative and go for it.

This is why I found this essay very interesting but not very useful. I don't have trouble identifying interests, I have trouble pursuing them with the intensity of a PG. I don't mean this as a criticism at all. I don't think it would be possible to write an essay that would solve this problem.

That's a personal problem, and one that I also have struggled / still struggle with.

Re: What I Worked On

#214

Post by gugagore »

tasogare wrote: post #175
colincooke wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The smattering of new techniques seem to have made the difference between success on toy problems vs. being able to match or exceed human performance on many difficult tasks. So while naysayers are correct that "the math hasn't changed since the 90s!", enough has changed to make calling DL a paradigm shift accurate. For reference, I can now get an intern to images for a few hours, then train a black box algorithm to…

> then train a black box algorithm This is part of the problem. Finding a the value of a few hyperparameters is hardly something I consider interesting science.

In the recent success stories on images, audio, and text, it's not "a few hyperparameters" by any stretch of the imagination.

That's like saying "finding the sequence of assembly instructions / nucleotides / ... is hardly something I consider interesting science"

Re: What I Worked On

#215

Post by jzer0cool »

In retrospect, knowing what you know now, what would you have done different, or really glad what you did in the past? Can you share an excerpt on translating some of this and how it might apply to us today - what would you encourage us to be doing now.

Re: What I Worked On

#217

Post by dang »

jeremysalwen wrote: post #173
dang wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you might be overestimating how much money pg's family had; I'm pretty sure they were squarely middle-class (e.g. the next sentence reads "The gold standard then was the Apple II, but a TRS-80 was good enough," and that took "years of nagging"). Strictly from a class point of view his background would have been risk-averse. But your point about the intellectual environment seems solid.

I think people have different definitions of "upper class". Maybe "Upper-middle class" would have been a better term, since pretty much everyone in the U.S. calls themselves some flavor of middle class. But my point is is that most people are not doing nearly as well financially as a mathematician/manager working at Westinghouse modeling nuclear reactors[1][2]. For example, 70% of americans have less than $1,000 of s…

I agree. The question is whether they were above or below the financial threshold where kids know they'll be fine no matter what they do, and so are freer to take risks and pursue their interests. That's a popular argument to make about entrepreneurship being a class privilege, for example showing up in many comments in this thread. I don't know where that line is, but my impression is that people making this argument usually draw it somewhat higher than Westinghouse engineers and middle-managers (except maybe when they want the line to turn out somewhere relative to a particular person they're arguing about).

My sense is still that pg's intellectual background was more significant than this factor, but that's based on my own experience. Even though my upbringing was at the poorer end of the middle class (raised by a single mother who was a nurse), I didn't grow up risk-averse—and I also got the computer (a better one than a TRS-80, and totally not appreciating what my mom must have sacrificed to buy it). What I lacked was intellectual relationships or mentorship of any kind.

Re: What I Worked On

#218

Post by sjg007 »

desireco42 wrote: post #130

So a weird thing is happening today. When I was a kid, like Paul, I had to beg my parents to get me a computer ie. spend money on it. Once I got it, I couldn't stop using it and hacking and figuring things out. Kids these days... :) have everything, I made sure my kids have all good equipment, they have good instruction but they are kind of not interested it all. If they do something, this is more to please me, as th…

I have the same problem. One thing to try to get them to do is build their own Roblox game with you or maybe build some compute machines inside Minecraft. My kids also want to make their own you tube channel so I look at it as broadcasting experience, story telling, and they also Facetime with their friends while playing so they get socialization as well.

Re: What I Worked On

#219

Post by sjg007 »

boreas wrote: post #187
increscent wrote: post #55

For me the theme of this narrative is that PG always relentlessly pursued what he wanted: AI, art school, Florence, Lisp, etc. He would often find out after pursuing those things that he didn't really want them, but that was helpful feedback. I'm usually stuck wanting things but not pursuing them so I don't know if I would really want them. It seems better to take initiative and go for it.

This is why I found this essay very interesting but not very useful. I don't have trouble identifying interests, I have trouble pursuing them with the intensity of a PG. I don't mean this as a criticism at all. I don't think it would be possible to write an essay that would solve this problem.

What do you think is stopping you?

Re: What I Worked On

#220

Post by nojvek »

I've started writing at-least one thing every 2 weeks, and pg's essays have been a huge inspiration. Also amazes me how little the site look has changed over the years.

There is something about writing, hitting publish and have readers. The joy of creating something other people consume. It's the same thing that still makes me want to be a coder, even though all my friends I grew up with have become managers. They proly make more, but I can't quite give up the joy of producing things.

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