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The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius

paulgraham.com

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Re: The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius

#161

Post by dx87 »

soneca wrote: post #131
rapsey wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is objectively irrational. The ones who made a lot of money are 1%. The rest wasted their youth pursuing an impossible dream. They sacrificed their social development and their future job prospects.

No it is not. If someone is playing 14 hours of a game that is not even giving a lot of money (not even to any 1%, which is the initial situation mentioned before DOTA was big), then obviously they are not doing that for the money.

You'd be suprised. It's not uncommon to see players that only play that much because they want to become a pro player, but in the end they never make it, or qualify to 1-2 tournaments. The lucky ones end up making money from streaming, but a lot depend on their parents or girlfriend's for a place to live since they don't make enough money to live off of.

Re: The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius

#162

Post by NPMaxwell »

pmikesell wrote: post #156
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

No. It was a local blackout: too much load with air conditioners in the summer

Re: The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius

#163

Post by NPMaxwell »

mantap wrote: post #159
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"

That's a great contrast. Yes, Feynman had a thriving business fixing electronics as a kid. Difference: his parents didn't worry that he was going to grow up weird. They were happy with what might have become his bus ticket collecting

Re: The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius

#164

Post by dx87 »

lazyjones wrote: post #115
barrkel wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The luck is that that game turned out to be lucrative.

Which highly competitive endeavours, that millions of young people spend many hours per week on, aren't?

Tons of other games didn't become big esports, and most of the people who dedicated years to those games ended up wasting their time.

Re: The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius

#165

Post by agumonkey »

Is there a place for people passionated but disinterested ? the mental burden of company structures forbids me to work there, but even if I do another job, I keep reading about combinatorics, trees and grammars on the side .. it's just an innate need I always had even as a small child (obviously not the combinatorics of grammatical structures .. just comtemplating and thinking about abstract ideas)

Re: The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius

#166

Post by agumonkey »

galfarragem wrote: post #91
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…

Society deify successful people when in reality they are nothing more than serial lottery winners. For every "Ronaldo" there are a myriad of people trying to get there that will end their life as losers because they made an high-stakes bet and lost. The truth in unconfortable and nobody wants to listen about it.

Maybe the serial lottery winning is what society subconscious worships.. they know that even with insane amounts of dedications, the others failed when a few particular ones got "lucky".

Re: The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius

#167

Post by account73466 »

Jamwinner wrote: post #120
account73466 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

he sounds paranoid but hate sells well

How did you read 'hate' into that? Genuinely curious. As an aside, I recently feel at odds with the language many people are using. The mere word 'hate' seems to have grown weird political connotations, while is suddenly okay to hate 'hate'. Is this not fostering the very emotion you revile, under twisted pretense? I remember 'love thy enemy' to have been the twist of the knife in peaceful protest, not sinking to the…

There is a trend to demonize the Chinese and Russians governments (it is always about governments but then it translates to companies and then to people). This trend is very useful to promote different kinds of online censorship and put people into political boxes (e.g., you like this then you are that). Basically, when every single piece of material about a country is negative, you get a set of feeling where hate is not the least common. Then you go full paranoia cycle and expect that these same people also will punish you for what you write about them. One can benefit from these tendencies and ride them to get attention and respect of like-minded people, basically sell hate.

Re: The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius

#168

Post by chongli »

agumonkey wrote: post #165

Is there a place for people passionated but disinterested ? the mental burden of company structures forbids me to work there, but even if I do another job, I keep reading about combinatorics, trees and grammars on the side .. it's just an innate need I always had even as a small child (obviously not the combinatorics of grammatical structures .. just comtemplating and thinking about abstract ideas)

I think pg is arguing that passionate, disinterested people ought to be founders, if their object of passion matters anyway.

Re: The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius

#169

Post by Aardappel »

This made me realize how harmful the focus on "impact" at BigCo's is. You got all these decently talented people, who all can see a variety of paths of how they can help the company, some which uniquely use that persons obsessions, but instead we're asked to cut all those paths short in favor of the one which ahead of time we think will make numbers go up the most for BigCo's core business. No wonder we end up with all these half-assed me-too products.

But yeah, thanks Paul for giving me an excuse to keep noodling with programming language design and implementation. I'm sure there's genius to be found in there one day ;)

Re: The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius

#170

Post by chongli »

astrodev wrote: post #94
galfarragem wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Society deify successful people when in reality they are nothing more than serial lottery winners. For every "Ronaldo" there are a myriad of people trying to get there that will end their life as losers because they made an high-stakes bet and lost. The truth in unconfortable and nobody wants to listen about it.

To be fair, Ronaldo is known for exceptional work ethic.

I think pg is trying to argue that passionate disinterest is different from work ethic. For a person like Ronaldo, all of the off-field training might be enjoyable. If it is, then is it really work ethic? Or is it just Ronaldo doing what he wants to do and would be doing anyway, if there were no such thing as money?
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