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The Risk of Discovery

paulgraham.com

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Re: The Risk of Discovery

#21

Post by 1337p337 »

cfmcdonald wrote: post #4

Sorry, Newton didn't "make bets", he was not a Silicon Valley VC. He worked on problems that he found interesting and that he believed would reveal eternal truths established and maintained by God.

There wasn't quite the sharp division of disciplines, either. Thinking about it that way comes from the public school system (which the author ought to know, because if I'm not mistaken, he mentioned that in a previous essay). Mathematics (which didn't warrant a mention as a bet that paid off in a blurb about the guy that invented calculus), metaphysics, and the natural sciences were all areas of study, but they weren't different bets: they were interrelated components of our understanding of the universe.

Re: The Risk of Discovery

#22

Post by [deleted] »

rubidium wrote: post #9
cfmcdonald wrote: post #4

Sorry, Newton didn't "make bets", he was not a Silicon Valley VC. He worked on problems that he found interesting and that he believed would reveal eternal truths established and maintained by God.

Exactly. PG: Get your grubby money-first hands off the biographies of those who are driven by a genuine interest in understanding the world.

[deleted]

Re: The Risk of Discovery

#23

Post by huckabeen2017 »

The other anecdote concerning Sir Isaac Newton that seems most apt, and it was particularly well dramatized in Neil DeGrasse Tyson's updated Cosmos series, arose when the Royal Society delayed publishing his Principia due to the spectacular failure of their Encyclopedia of Fish the year before! I am not sure which amazes me more: that "natural philosophy" encompasses everything in the cosmos from optics to marine life. Or contemporaneous short-sightedness can imbue one subject with the most paramount economic and social import, whilst viewing the other as nothing more than a mere parlor trick. Only to have the perspective of history upend such dogma centuries later!

Re: The Risk of Discovery

#24

Post by balsam »

cfmcdonald wrote: post #4

Sorry, Newton didn't "make bets", he was not a Silicon Valley VC. He worked on problems that he found interesting and that he believed would reveal eternal truths established and maintained by God.

Existential risk of goingg/being-seen-as crazy.

Re: The Risk of Discovery

#25

Post by dsugarman »

cfmcdonald wrote: post #4

Sorry, Newton didn't "make bets", he was not a Silicon Valley VC. He worked on problems that he found interesting and that he believed would reveal eternal truths established and maintained by God.

your time is finite and your most valuable resource (usually), betting your time is the biggest bet you can make

Re: The Risk of Discovery

#26

Post by Santosh83 »

huckabeen2017 wrote: post #23

The other anecdote concerning Sir Isaac Newton that seems most apt, and it was particularly well dramatized in Neil DeGrasse Tyson's updated Cosmos series, arose when the Royal Society delayed publishing his Principia due to the spectacular failure of their Encyclopedia of Fish the year before! I am not sure which amazes me more: that "natural philosophy" encompasses everything in the cosmos from optics to marine lif…

Short-sightedness or a matter of economics, considering printing was probably not as easy and cheap in those times as it is now?

Re: The Risk of Discovery

#27

Post by curun1r »

There are plenty of discoverers who incurred some level of risk and lost in a way that isn't covered up by history. Marie Curie's discovery killed her. Tesla's genius manifested not only in groundbreaking discovery, but also mental illness and isolation. And just ask Elisha Gray about the risks of discovery.

But, yes, history has a survivorship bias. But that's literally one of the oldest observations made. It's often said, "History is written by the victors." What PG is saying is just another version of that age-old observation.

Re: The Risk of Discovery

#28

Post by cfmcdonald »

cobbzilla wrote: post #11
cfmcdonald wrote: post #4

Sorry, Newton didn't "make bets", he was not a Silicon Valley VC. He worked on problems that he found interesting and that he believed would reveal eternal truths established and maintained by God.

Please don't get stuck on semantics. When you decide to take a longer route because you think there will be less traffic, you "make a bet". You "make a bet" by deciding to go to college instead of straight into the working world. Anywhere there is a decision to be made with uncertain outcomes, you "make a bet". It doesn't have to be about money, although it often is.

I didn't 'make a bet' by going to college, it was the assumed thing in my family, it was culturally ingrained that I would go to college. This way of looking at life as a series of 'bets' that one makes is it's own particular kind of culture, one that Newton did not belong to.

Newton didn't investigate alchemy and theology because he was trying to diversify his fame investment portfolio. To see him this way is to do a disservice to him and to history.

Re: The Risk of Discovery

#29

Post by eachro »

cfmcdonald wrote: post #28
cobbzilla wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't get stuck on semantics. When you decide to take a longer route because you think there will be less traffic, you "make a bet". You "make a bet" by deciding to go to college instead of straight into the working world. Anywhere there is a decision to be made with uncertain outcomes, you "make a bet". It doesn't have to be about money, although it often is.

I didn't 'make a bet' by going to college, it was the assumed thing in my family, it was culturally ingrained that I would go to college. This way of looking at life as a series of 'bets' that one makes is it's own particular kind of culture, one that Newton did not belong to. Newton didn't investigate alchemy and theology because he was trying to diversify his fame investment portfolio. To see him this way is to do…

Replace 'bet' with 'choice.' It's the same message.

Re: The Risk of Discovery

#30

Post by rwj »

1337p337 wrote: post #21
cfmcdonald wrote: post #4

Sorry, Newton didn't "make bets", he was not a Silicon Valley VC. He worked on problems that he found interesting and that he believed would reveal eternal truths established and maintained by God.

There wasn't quite the sharp division of disciplines, either. Thinking about it that way comes from the public school system (which the author ought to know, because if I'm not mistaken, he mentioned that in a previous essay). Mathematics (which didn't warrant a mention as a bet that paid off in a blurb about the guy that invented calculus), metaphysics, and the natural sciences were all areas of study, but they were…

guy that co-invented calculus...
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