Researchers and Founders • Hacker News Board

Re: Researchers and Founders

#101

Post by KKKKkkkk1 » Sat, Jun 20, 2020, 5:44 AM UTC

randomsearch wrote: post #74

eanzenberg wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VCs, too. Interesting how researchers are a bit more humble or realistic about achievements.

This is entirely inaccurate. Researchers are not as you describe at all, at least those who become professors. They are exactly the same.

There is a type of professor that's exactly like a VC. The guy who wrangles a team of postdocs writing grant applications, farms out the funding to students and postdocs for them to do the actual work, and then puts his name on the resulting papers.

Re: Researchers and Founders

#102

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jun 20, 2020, 5:50 AM UTC

throwawaygh wrote: post #77

yt-sdb wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right? Feels like an absurdly low-effort attempt at "thought leadership" with easily made connections to recently popular topics like Hamming and that ML guide. As a researcher, I have also thought about the similarities between starting a lab / research agenda and a startup, but this is a superficial analysis.

> As a researcher, I have also thought about the similarities between starting a lab / research agenda and a startup, but this is a superficial analysis. Yeah, academic research labs are strikingly similar to seed-stage start-ups (mid six/low seven annual burn for 3-20 employees laser focused on a particular vision). It's not at all surprising that the two career tracks attract similar types of people.

[deleted]

Re: Researchers and Founders

#103

Post by itsmefaz » Sat, Jun 20, 2020, 6:31 AM UTC

John Schulman's article provides better practical insights than the one Sam has authored himself. So, people looking for more concrete views and pieces of advice I'd suggest taking a look at the John Schulman article: http://joschu.net/blog/opinionated-guide-ml-research.html

Re: Researchers and Founders

#104

Post by fuzzfactor » Sat, Jun 20, 2020, 7:42 AM UTC

mkl wrote: post #97

pphysch wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A mathematician once said something like, "if the solution to the problem in front of you is not obvious, then you are not yet ready to work on it". Which is to say that intellectual pioneers are often necessarily humble about their achievements, yet worked very hard to get there. One wonders if it might be the opposite for some founders who were in the right place at the right time to hit the VC/acquisition jackpot.

Your comment is the only Google result for that quote as is, so I'm not sure you have it right. If it were true about mathematics, then it would be almost impossible to work on unsolved problems. Working on the problems is how you become ready to solve them, and for many real world problems it is far from obvious that you have found a correct solution until much later.

>"if the solution to the problem in front of you is not obvious, then you are not yet ready to work on it".

This could be interpreted favorably toward unsolved problems, which some of us still have thousands of, most of which will remain unaddressed forever.

Any solution requiring significant (or especially massive) effort can most confidently be undertaken the more obvious it is.

To some extent might as well pick an obvious one to invest major effort, where even sporadic progress will at least all be in the correct direction.

It could be good to put a lot of that under your belt to help better approach the less obvious problems, even if there is already an unfair advantage about things which are not so directly visualizable.

There could be unique outcome among your obvious problems if you choose one where others do not see any visible solution at all.

And you can become more ready for things put in front of you.

Re: Researchers and Founders

#105

Post by not_a_moth » Sat, Jun 20, 2020, 7:59 AM UTC

bonoboTP wrote: post #34

This post would not survive blind review, though. The author's brand makes it look very insightful but if you look closely it's really cliche. Yeah, no shit, successful people work hard on important problems, they have small-scale laser focus and also large-scale vision. Seems like the wisdom tree has been plucked, these startup wisdom blogs are getting emptier and emptier (see also Paul Graham...).

But the author's brand - his unique position working among world class talents - is what gives weight to the words.

But I think the post called for examples of specific founders/researchers and their situations, e.g. how they manage going deep in weeds vs. steering long term vision, either practically or emotionally, is there something special in how they manage this? Or on persistence is he seeing people sacrificing weekends for 2 years in a row or mastering deep work practices or...

Re: Researchers and Founders

#106

Post by oklol123 » Sat, Jun 20, 2020, 8:14 AM UTC

Reading all these comments makes my tummy grumble

Re: Researchers and Founders

#107

Post by fuzzfactor » Sat, Jun 20, 2020, 8:54 AM UTC

Isamu wrote: post #62

bonoboTP wrote: post #34

This post would not survive blind review, though. The author's brand makes it look very insightful but if you look closely it's really cliche. Yeah, no shit, successful people work hard on important problems, they have small-scale laser focus and also large-scale vision. Seems like the wisdom tree has been plucked, these startup wisdom blogs are getting emptier and emptier (see also Paul Graham...).

But a surprisingly common alternative view is: it’s all about BORN TALENT, no amount of work will help you if you are not anointed. Personally I find the born talent view to be lazy and not a little bit creepy.

I can imagine in their time lots of everyday brilliant people used that as an excuse not to try and achieve if they couldn't be like DaVinci, Mozart or Edison were doing.

Not lazy icons these anyway.

Re: Researchers and Founders

#108

Post by lowdose » Sat, Jun 20, 2020, 12:16 PM UTC

vikramkr wrote: post #47

Frost1x wrote: post #23

>Although there are always individual exceptions, on average it’s surprising to me how different the best people in these groups are (including in some qualities that I had assumed were present in great people everywhere, like very high levels of self-belief). This is an interesting quote. From my experience and personal perspectives, many of the best researchers and scientists doubt themselves, a lot, and are typica…

I'll second that. In my anecdotal and limited experience, the outliers in successful entrepreneurship are the ones that project vulnerability/self-doubt, while the outliers in successful research are the ones that project a lack of self-doubt and create reality distortion fields around their work. The best of both seem to have self-confidence in their ability to succeed, and successful researchers seem confident that…

> the outliers in successful entrepreneurship are the ones that project vulnerability/self-doubt,

Isn't it exactly the other way around? Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg have a reality distortion field. The outliers in entrepreneurship sell a new world that they are going to create. When Elon Musk started talking about electric cars and space travel to Mars 99% of the people thought he was batshit crazy.

Re: Researchers and Founders

#109

Post by vikramkr » Sat, Jun 20, 2020, 3:12 PM UTC

lowdose wrote: post #108

vikramkr wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll second that. In my anecdotal and limited experience, the outliers in successful entrepreneurship are the ones that project vulnerability/self-doubt, while the outliers in successful research are the ones that project a lack of self-doubt and create reality distortion fields around their work. The best of both seem to have self-confidence in their ability to succeed, and successful researchers seem confident that…

> the outliers in successful entrepreneurship are the ones that project vulnerability/self-doubt, Isn't it exactly the other way around? Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg have a reality distortion field. The outliers in entrepreneurship sell a new world that they are going to create. When Elon Musk started talking about electric cars and space travel to Mars 99% of the people thought he was batshit crazy.

I'm referring to the outliers among that group. The first level of outlier is being successful. The second level of outlier is being full of self doubt and successful

Re: Researchers and Founders

#110

Post by pphysch » Sat, Jun 20, 2020, 3:47 PM UTC

mkl wrote: post #97

pphysch wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A mathematician once said something like, "if the solution to the problem in front of you is not obvious, then you are not yet ready to work on it". Which is to say that intellectual pioneers are often necessarily humble about their achievements, yet worked very hard to get there. One wonders if it might be the opposite for some founders who were in the right place at the right time to hit the VC/acquisition jackpot.

Your comment is the only Google result for that quote as is, so I'm not sure you have it right. If it were true about mathematics, then it would be almost impossible to work on unsolved problems. Working on the problems is how you become ready to solve them, and for many real world problems it is far from obvious that you have found a correct solution until much later.

Hence "something like". Paraphrasing. The message was conveyed though.

As a trained mathematician it certainly mirrors my experience. Banging away at a narrow problem typically either results in a) no solution or b) enough bullshit to convince everyone that you know what you are doing. The latter is sufficient to carry a career in many branches of pure mathematics.

What usually works better is understanding the holistic environment around the problem, which is not always obvious at the outset, and then the "problem" becomes this little hole in a fabric of understanding and we go "duh" and solve it.