The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius • Hacker News Board

Re: The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius

#151

Post by jawns » Sat, Nov 23, 2019, 4:24 PM UTC

> If I had to put the recipe for genius into one sentence, that might be it: to have a disinterested obsession with something that matters.

A big missing piece of the equation is wealth, or at least financial support. That gives a budding genius the freedom to pursue their interests, the ability to fail knowing that their life or livelihood doesn't hang in the balance.

Granted, sometimes genius begets wealth, but usually a person needs at least some support early in their life/career.

And then, who knows whether the wealth they accumulate (if they play their cards right) is enough to allow them to hit repeated dead-ends in pursuit of their disinterested obsession.

Re: The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius

#152

Post by WhompingWindows » Sat, Nov 23, 2019, 4:29 PM UTC

jakobmi wrote: post #114

tompccs wrote: post #16

I think this is correct. The bad news is we are creating systems which minimise the number of geniuses entering each field. In the past, science was an eccentric hobby, not particularly valued and certainly not a viable career option. Today it's all of these things - like becoming a doctor. Telling your mother you want to be a scientist is far better than saying you want to be a musician. A hundred years ago that wou…

The BIGGEST problem with research is this: it's HARD, not easy, to understand. Most papers written are absolute trash. Not because the content is. Because it's written in a shitty, overly braggy way (especially mathematics and physics), that's mostly shouting "I'm better than you and if you don't get it, you're an idiot". They are not written with any USER, let alone, READER, in mind. Anyone would immediately be fire…

You could not "easily" become a billionaire by improving Wikipedia, which is the result of millions of hours of writing and editing. The fact is most low-hanging fruit has already been plucked, thus every scientific discovery relies upon more and more background knowledge. Yes, we do make innovations in explaining/teaching science more quickly to successive generations, but I doubt if we'll ever see a Newton or Darwin who can single-handedly, obsessively write and observe and calculate, by themselves, and then push science forward by leaps and bounds. The best research today is all done by teams, with experts on statistics, study design, clinicians, hardware experts - there are just so many niche fields that we MUST collaborate on extremely advanced work.

Re: The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius

#153

Post by csa » Sat, Nov 23, 2019, 4:33 PM UTC

lordnacho wrote: post #98

This is very close to some of my own observations about talent. Whenever I've had the info to compare, I tend to find a different degree of skill among coders who started as teens compared to those who came to it later. I put it down to interest. Obsessive teens end up spending huge amounts of time learning things. Teenagers know very little about what makes money, at least when I was a kid. The cat may well be out o…

> On a related note, the disinterested interest thing is why I've never met a talented professional. By that, I mean the classic suit-and-tie professionals. Lawyers, doctors, accountants,...

I think your comment is directionally correct if you look at the bulk of practitioners, but I wonder if you’ve looked in the right places for the exceptions.

As one example, some of the best legal thinkers I have met were in law schools. That said, I’ve also met some “practicing” lawyers who had that passion — at retirement age, they are often the sages that people make pilgrimages to see (my friend’s father was one of these for estate law).

There are also professionals who pursue their compulsory continuing education aggressively. For doctors, this is actually a litmus test I use when I am looking for a new one (usu. due to moving). I had a dentist who, after establishing his practice, went back to school to get his MD so that he could work on the more interesting problems of oral surgery. He then joined the Army reserves as a doctor/dentist to help the Army with some of the unique medical problems they have (iirc, it was mostly oral surgery).

> ... bankers

You may be right here.

That said, if you expand “banker” to “financier” or something like that, you can probably find some. Buffet and Munger come to mind. John Mauldin as a writer on economics/finance also comes to mind as a lesser-known personality. There seems to be a potentially long list.

> I don't think of retired accountants doing taxes for fun.

Although rare, they exist. I have a retired family member who is one of them.

Re: The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius

#154

Post by ralfd » Sat, Nov 23, 2019, 4:40 PM UTC

dsaavy wrote: post #127

_Microft wrote: post #3

What's the topic that just doesn't leave you alone? For me it's an interest in animal consciousness and communication, even though I am a physicist by training.

If you use Instagram I would encourage you to look at this profile: https://instagram.com/hunger4words It’s a lady who is a speech therapist who has taught her dog to communicate with pre-programmed push buttons.

If that is real it is amazing!

Re: The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius

#155

Post by gerikson » Sat, Nov 23, 2019, 4:40 PM UTC

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…

I kind of enjoyed Gleick's bio of Newton:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17098.Isaac_Newton

It doesn't shy away from what later hagiographies deride as "religious superstition", but what according to Gleick was integral to Newton's worldview.

Re: The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius

#156

Post by pmikesell » Sat, Nov 23, 2019, 4:43 PM UTC

NPMaxwell wrote: post #135

You may think there is some rational choice to be made about obsessive curiosity. Maybe not. In 1960, my mom lived near a six year old who could fix electric stuff. Everyone in the neighborhood knew him and brought him things to fix. TV's were no problem; dead radios were great; telephones were cool. He was a super happy kid with a constant enthusiasm and a sparkle in his eye, running home from school every day to se…

Not the point of the story, but he didn’t do it though, right? It was probably this? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_1965

Re: The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius

#157

Post by wtvanhest » Sat, Nov 23, 2019, 4:43 PM UTC

Alex3917 wrote: post #150

sgentle wrote: post #72

Competitive gaming is a particularly good example of this. I followed most of the rise of Dota from trashy Warcraft 3 mod to Valve's multi-million-dollar-prize-pool juggernaut. The first few crops of Dota millionaires all had the same backstory: "I played this game 14 hours a day. If there were tournaments at all they didn't really pay anything. My parents said I was wasting my life. I never had a girlfriend. Everyon…

> Competitive gaming is a particularly good example of this. Anything competitive is emphatically not a good example of this. If you're in a competition, then by definition you're doing the exact same thing as everyone else. That's a guaranteed recipe for not accomplishing anything meaningful in life. Competition can be great for cultivating positive character traits and developing certain skills, but at some point y…

Competitive gaming was an extreme niche 20 years ago. Now its just a niche with lots of people. When these people started, the concept of competitive gaming didnt even really exist.

Re: The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius

#158

Post by dominotw » Sat, Nov 23, 2019, 4:45 PM UTC

tompccs wrote: post #16

I think this is correct. The bad news is we are creating systems which minimise the number of geniuses entering each field. In the past, science was an eccentric hobby, not particularly valued and certainly not a viable career option. Today it's all of these things - like becoming a doctor. Telling your mother you want to be a scientist is far better than saying you want to be a musician. A hundred years ago that wou…

thats why we have bad doctors?

Re: The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius

#159

Post by mantap » Sat, Nov 23, 2019, 4:45 PM UTC

NPMaxwell wrote: post #135

You may think there is some rational choice to be made about obsessive curiosity. Maybe not. In 1960, my mom lived near a six year old who could fix electric stuff. Everyone in the neighborhood knew him and brought him things to fix. TV's were no problem; dead radios were great; telephones were cool. He was a super happy kid with a constant enthusiasm and a sparkle in his eye, running home from school every day to se…

I thought this story was going to end with "and that kid was Richard Feynman"

Re: The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius

#160

Post by csa » Sat, Nov 23, 2019, 4:49 PM UTC

martonlanga wrote: post #7

Can you make yourself intentionally interested in a topic?

Do you mean interested in something or interested in a specific topic?

If you’re not curious about the world in general, then I’m not sure anything can change that trajectory, although I could be wrong.

For a specific topic, I recommend learning about that topic from someone who is passionate about it and who is a good teacher.

Sometimes this can be as easy as reading books by a good author. When I was in high school, I despised history. It turns out that I despised it because I had never been exposed to compelling history. I ended up becoming friends with someone who was a passionate historian, and he pointed me to compelling resources that totally changed my mind about history.

In college, I had no interest in art or art classes. A friend of mine took a drawing class that she said “blew her mind”. I couldn’t believe it, but she just told me to trust her and take the class. I asked a few other people, and they all said the same thing. I took the class, and they were all correct. While the topic was technically drawing, the professor pushed us to explore what our drawing told us about ourselves, how we could expand our minds through drawing, and how our drawing related to our interactions with the world. Just re-reading that, it sounds like hippy-dippy bullshit, but to experience it was something else, and it is something most participants in that class took away in a positive way.

I ended up minoring in art, and I worked with another professor who really stretched my mind.

While these are my personal experiences (and there are many more that I didn’t mention), I think I have seen this pattern amongst my friends and acquaintances as well. As such, I recommend finding a good, highly recommended, talented teacher if you want to get interested in a new topic. Note that they are not always easy to find.