What the smartest people do on the weekend, everyone else will do in 10 years • Hacker News Board

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

#121

Post by jacques_chester » Sun, Mar 03, 2013, 11:42 PM UTC

gamblor956 wrote: post #109

DannyBee wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's funny because most i've met are narrow minded about their own field. At least when I went chatting with lawyers and interviewing after I first got out of law school, every non-academic lawyer I met in the field of IP law was fairly narrow minded. Even asking them things that their businesses depended on, like "What do you think will happen as patents on computer implemented inventions become significantly more…

Jacques seems to mean that as a group, lawyers are more open to other domains. This is probably because there is no domain of "the law" by itself--law is merely a reflection of society. For example, regulatory laws must take into account political restrictions, economic theory and realities, and the goals and pragmatic realities and of the specific industry or industries being regulated. Criminal laws must do all tha…

That's got a lot to do with it. A lawyer might specialise in some area of law, but the clients who come in will have troubles in or questions about an unlimited number of problem domains. So lawyers get to a surprising amount of the rest of the world outside of their profession.

Some other professions off the top of my head that can't "stick to their knitting": mathematicians, programmers, philosophers, psychologists and economists.

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

#122

Post by logn » Mon, Mar 04, 2013, 12:00 AM UTC

jamesbritt wrote: post #118

logn wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't fluff. It's saying that what you love doing (if you're not getting paid) might be the future. If the activity has enough value on its own to be worthwhile without immediate monetary reward, then it's a good bet there's something valuable about your activity that will ultimately be recognized by the market. It's not much different from investing. If we see company X investing in space mining even though it'…

If the activity has enough value on its own to be worthwhile without immediate monetary reward, then it's a good bet there's something valuable about your activity that will ultimately be recognized by the market. Where is the evidence for that? Where are the broad data that looks at what has been done over, say, the last 20 years and examines what has been recognized by the market and what has not? You can't just lo…

That's a good point. And in that respect, my comment and the blog post are fluff since they're not backed up by any research. And I think I overstated my point in the quote you selected.

But I think you can research it by looking at popular languages/libraries/technologies and who invented them for fun and their impact on the market. Yes, it's false to say that everything that's a hobby now is serious business in 10 years. The article limits it to very smart people. I'd limit it further to very smart and lucky people, like Linus for instance.

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

#123

Post by teeja » Mon, Mar 04, 2013, 12:28 AM UTC

EwanG wrote: post #94

pg wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

On the off chance anyone actually reads this... :-) He somewhat, and you more so, get to a point that has been bothering me a fair bit recently. How much should I care about meaning in what I do in my spare time. Possibly due to my upbringing, until recently I felt that if I had spare time I should be doing things that could ultimately lead to a new career, or that at least would produce things that are important. IO…

to just veg and to play the two games I actually enjoy playing.

Really. I try hard to keep my tech-hobby time from being "productive". What I do with computers and/or sound is -fun- and the world'll be damn lucky if anything comes out of it but my amusement. When I was a kid I'd lay on the lawn staring at clouds (hard in winter) or run around everyone's houses and lawns with kids (several reasons that's no longer an option). Got another harness, go get yourself a horse.

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

#124

Post by AutoCorrect » Mon, Mar 04, 2013, 4:36 PM UTC

EwanG wrote: post #94

pg wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

On the off chance anyone actually reads this... :-) He somewhat, and you more so, get to a point that has been bothering me a fair bit recently. How much should I care about meaning in what I do in my spare time. Possibly due to my upbringing, until recently I felt that if I had spare time I should be doing things that could ultimately lead to a new career, or that at least would produce things that are important. IO…

I don't know how old you are, but I'm in my mid-40s. For the longest time, everything I did was related to learning more about computers. Over the past couple of years, that changed - I found that I was no longer interested in learning new stuff so much. It's easy to pick up new skills, but I don't seek them out the way I did.

I realized that I had completely forgotten what I LIKED to do, in favor of doing what I HAD to do to keep making money. I actually had to sit down and write a list of things I liked to do, and make sure to start doing them. It's easy to lose sight of why we are hear. No one ever wished they had worked more, as they lay dying.

My point is, don't feel bad about doing what you want to do.