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What the smartest people do on the weekend, everyone else will do in 10 years

cdixon.org

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Re: What the smartest people do on the weekend, everyone else will do in 10 years

#51

Post by _delirium »

pg wrote: post #45
jacques_chester wrote: post #28

Let's all pat ourselves on the back with a fluffy blog post about how jolly wonderful we are. In about 10 years everyone else will be doing the same. Just kidding. Every profession I have even a passing familiarity with is absolutely chockers with self-congratulatory fluff. And it's usually hilarious to the outsiders who can see the narrowness of a profession's vision. Out of the professions I've seen, who have been…

This post is brief, but not fluffy. I wish he had dug more into the forces at work here. But it is an important point nonetheless. And we on HN could do better than merely dismiss it. We could try to dig into the underlying forces ourselves. E.g. not all hobbies consist of making the Apple I. So which do, and why? Are the things called hobbies two different types of work that are conflated by clueless observers simpl…

The problem is that it is fluffy, and self-congratulatory: it just pats us on the back and says, what we do in our spare time is the future. We are the future! Our hobbies are tomorrow's serious endeavors! This is boring pseudo-intellectualism, and what techie forums always risk decaying into. The part you identify as having been left out is the entirety of what would be interesting in the analysis: any kind of specificity beyond flattering the greatness and prescience of our very-smart techie hobbies.

Re: What the smartest people do on the weekend, everyone else will do in 10 years

#52

Post by iamwil »

pg wrote: post #45
jacques_chester wrote: post #28

Let's all pat ourselves on the back with a fluffy blog post about how jolly wonderful we are. In about 10 years everyone else will be doing the same. Just kidding. Every profession I have even a passing familiarity with is absolutely chockers with self-congratulatory fluff. And it's usually hilarious to the outsiders who can see the narrowness of a profession's vision. Out of the professions I've seen, who have been…

This post is brief, but not fluffy. I wish he had dug more into the forces at work here. But it is an important point nonetheless. And we on HN could do better than merely dismiss it. We could try to dig into the underlying forces ourselves. E.g. not all hobbies consist of making the Apple I. So which do, and why? Are the things called hobbies two different types of work that are conflated by clueless observers simpl…

To start, I'm thinking of tests for things that aren't cultural trends, like the fist bump:

I think some differentiators between the two types of work under the umbrella term 'hobbies' is:

It's something where people are asking the question, "What can I do with this now, that I couldn't do before?" Hobbies like stamp collecting, or star wars trivia seem to fail this test.

It's something where other people can build upon the hobby to do other things. Hobbies like being a foodie and MUDs seem to fail this test.

As far as I can gather, it's people taking advantage of a new piece of knowledge or technology to try to figure out what new things it enables them to do.

Re: What the smartest people do on the weekend, everyone else will do in 10 years

#53

Post by _delirium »

iamwil wrote: post #48
_delirium wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree if the sentiment is just: everything which is today popular was once more of a niche, experimental activity. But that is not so exciting a claim, is it? The more difficult part is going in the other direction, and figuring out which of today's niche hobbies will be popular tomorrow. Taken at face value, the article is claiming that it will be all of them , at least if they were niche hobbies of the "smartest"…

Well, like pg said above, I wish the OP dove into the forces at hand. However, that doesn't mean that we can't. I don't know why cdixon wrote the article. But I suspect that it's only not an exciting claim to you because you're already at a certain place in your understanding of innovation. I think there are plenty of people that believe innovation happens when an inventor hides away in a basement and tinkers with st…

If the idea is just that some things that now seem serious didn't seem serious in the past, sure, I buy that. But does anybody not buy that? I feel like that's the plotline of a dozen Discovery Channel shows. And it's also the justification behind many of the "why pure math/science should actually be funded" arguments, to take it in a different direction.

Re: What the smartest people do on the weekend, everyone else will do in 10 years

#55

Post by gruseom »

pg wrote: post #45
jacques_chester wrote: post #28

Let's all pat ourselves on the back with a fluffy blog post about how jolly wonderful we are. In about 10 years everyone else will be doing the same. Just kidding. Every profession I have even a passing familiarity with is absolutely chockers with self-congratulatory fluff. And it's usually hilarious to the outsiders who can see the narrowness of a profession's vision. Out of the professions I've seen, who have been…

This post is brief, but not fluffy. I wish he had dug more into the forces at work here. But it is an important point nonetheless. And we on HN could do better than merely dismiss it. We could try to dig into the underlying forces ourselves. E.g. not all hobbies consist of making the Apple I. So which do, and why? Are the things called hobbies two different types of work that are conflated by clueless observers simpl…

The word "smartest" in the title misses the mark slightly in a way that exposes the idea to too-easy dismissal. The way people commonly use "smart" (high IQ, basically) isn't super-correlated with what Chris is talking about. Many high-IQ people are too locked-in to Achievement to bother with disinterested play. You can redefine "smartest" to mean "those who turn out to have been most ahead of their time", but that's circular and doesn't help identify the quality.

The body of the post uses the word "hobby", though, and that's much better. Your hobby is the thing you do because you want to, whether or not anything comes of it and whether or not anyone thinks it's valuable. Hobbies are marginal, not one's main or proper thing (Woz was an engineer at HP). And they're often wild or eccentric. The main reason we wouldn't normally use the word "hobby" for important creative activity—that it seems too trivial—is actually a point in its favour. Incidentally, there's an earlier usage of the word "hobby" that was closer to what we now call "obsession" or "fixation". People would apologize for introducing their hobbies into polite conversation.

One must also insist on the fact that very often nothing does come of this quality. To imagine otherwise is to allow no room for randomness.

Re: What the smartest people do on the weekend, everyone else will do in 10 years

#56

Post by ryanmolden »

joshmlewis wrote: post #39

I was in a mentor talk over the summer and this veteran business-man who has turned a few failing companies into successful ones, and walked into his current company with hardly no pay and turned it around gave an interesting tid bit of advice. He drew three overlapping circles and they were: What am I passionate about? What can I be best in the world at? What drives the economic engine of it? He said it takes all th…

The whole "best in the world" schtick just seems like such pablum, and most people espousing it aren't best in the world at anything. The arrogance required to think you can be/are (literally) the best in the world at something is astounding. I mean if it is intended solely as an aspirational/inspirational idea you have in your own mind that is fine, but actually, legitimately, thinking that just seems to border on delusional, or seriously myopic.

I heard a great quote today that is almost the opposite of this: "There are no great men, just great challenges which ordinary men, out of necessity, are forced by circumstances to meet" - William Halsey

That seems like a much greater view than "you'll only succeed if you are the best in the world", which pretty much translates to "why bother" for just about everyone, because almost no one is objectively "the best in the world"

Re: What the smartest people do on the weekend, everyone else will do in 10 years

#57

Post by Helianthus »

pg wrote: post #45
jacques_chester wrote: post #28

Let's all pat ourselves on the back with a fluffy blog post about how jolly wonderful we are. In about 10 years everyone else will be doing the same. Just kidding. Every profession I have even a passing familiarity with is absolutely chockers with self-congratulatory fluff. And it's usually hilarious to the outsiders who can see the narrowness of a profession's vision. Out of the professions I've seen, who have been…

This post is brief, but not fluffy. I wish he had dug more into the forces at work here. But it is an important point nonetheless. And we on HN could do better than merely dismiss it. We could try to dig into the underlying forces ourselves. E.g. not all hobbies consist of making the Apple I. So which do, and why? Are the things called hobbies two different types of work that are conflated by clueless observers simpl…

It's fluffy because it's brief.

>And we on HN could do better than merely dismiss it.

What, embrace it? I'll take self-deprecation over rejection of self-deprecation.

>We could try to dig into the underlying forces ourselves. E.g. not all hobbies consist of making the Apple I. So which do, and why? Are the things called hobbies merely two different types of work that are conflated by clueless observers simply because they're not the worker's day job? Or is there some amount of crossover between inventing the future and merely playing around?

Maybe if the article did that it wouldn't be so fluffy. It's fluffy because its terminology is closer to "Rock Star" than "Guitar Lesson."

If you are still inclined to view jacques_chester's post as fluff, consider at least that _submission quality affects comment quality._

I know you're not likely to respond to my comment. I'm partially just wondering why you're wading into the field personally to address a meta point.

Re: What the smartest people do on the weekend, everyone else will do in 10 years

#59

Post by iamwil »

_delirium wrote: post #53
iamwil wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, like pg said above, I wish the OP dove into the forces at hand. However, that doesn't mean that we can't. I don't know why cdixon wrote the article. But I suspect that it's only not an exciting claim to you because you're already at a certain place in your understanding of innovation. I think there are plenty of people that believe innovation happens when an inventor hides away in a basement and tinkers with st…

If the idea is just that some things that now seem serious didn't seem serious in the past, sure, I buy that. But does anybody not buy that? I feel like that's the plotline of a dozen Discovery Channel shows. And it's also the justification behind many of the "why pure math/science should actually be funded" arguments, to take it in a different direction.

People always buy that looking backwards, but almost never going forward. In fact, most people are outright dismissive of new ideas yet unproven. If you do a search on HN about the viability of the currently unproven techs, like google glasses, 3D printers, you'll see plenty of evidence of that.

I'm not sure why this is, exactly. Perhaps it's just more fun to be cynical and shoot down the weird things that other people are doing. Or maybe people don't actually like change. Or maybe people don't like being wrong, and if you poo poo most everything, it's likely you'll be right, since most things aren't mainstream game changers. Or perhaps people don't like hyperbole. I know I have my bullshit flag raised when someone's raving about something.

Re: What the smartest people do on the weekend, everyone else will do in 10 years

#60

Post by ljd »

pg wrote: post #45
jacques_chester wrote: post #28

Let's all pat ourselves on the back with a fluffy blog post about how jolly wonderful we are. In about 10 years everyone else will be doing the same. Just kidding. Every profession I have even a passing familiarity with is absolutely chockers with self-congratulatory fluff. And it's usually hilarious to the outsiders who can see the narrowness of a profession's vision. Out of the professions I've seen, who have been…

This post is brief, but not fluffy. I wish he had dug more into the forces at work here. But it is an important point nonetheless. And we on HN could do better than merely dismiss it. We could try to dig into the underlying forces ourselves. E.g. not all hobbies consist of making the Apple I. So which do, and why? Are the things called hobbies two different types of work that are conflated by clueless observers simpl…

From an evolutionary perspective, all these side projects represent mutations in technology. Environmental pressures are acting on these mutations to select the project that is a best fit for the masses and reward that best fit by reproducing it or as the author puts it, make it into our daily lives in ten years.

So it may be impossible to build a model of what projects will turn out like the Apple 1 and which ones will never be heard of because if technology works like evolution then it doesn't have to be a linear progression forward. It's just whatever tool solves the problem today.

From a personal perspective, I work on projects because I can't help myself. I see something that I would love to use and I need to build it. It's addictive. I'm not sure if there is much more to it than that.

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