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The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius

paulgraham.com

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Re: The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius

#441

Post by 77544cec »

"Spiritual" or "visionary" experiences are very saillent when considering exceptional scientific feats.

Heisenberg: suddenly realized he had to study physics on a bike when he was a teenage boy.

Einstein: was driven by Mach's teenage vision of a metaphysics of pure relativity.

Souriau (mathematician): would come up with new concepts in dreams.

Voevodsky: would get mathematical insights by talking to DMT-like entities (but did not consume DMT).

de Maillet (discovered sea level varied across millenia): had an angel tell him he had a destiny and would do great discoveries.

Etc...

Re: The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius

#442

Post by DrAwdeOccarim »

analog31 wrote: post #124
nobodyandproud wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what happens if you get caught? Or someone calls you out?

Nobody's checking. The focus is on what you're going to spend next year's money on, not how you spent last year's money. And if you're savvy, you can use tools that were already bought for some other purpose, or that don't cost much. Working a day job in industry isn't categorically different, except that someone is probably watching your spending more closely. You have to figure out a way to set aside some time to w…

So I moved into industry out of post doc and I can tell you as long as you're getting your day job done and it isn't that expensive you can test most any idea. I'd say it's even easier to do it in industry because "not that expensive" to industry is like 10-fold more than in academia.

Re: The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius

#443

Post by ralfd »

carapace wrote: post #183
brilee wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Special relativity is the set of equations that arises when you take a hypothesis: "you always perceive light as traveling at a speed `c`, no matter how fast you're going" and work out what would have to change in order to allow this statement to hold true.

Sorry to be pedantic, it was: 1.) Maxwell's equations permit no other speed for light than c. 2.) All physical laws (such as Maxwell's) are the same in all inertial reference frames. From those two the rest flows.

I found that useful. But why is 2 true? Was that proven by experiment or by math equations? It doesn’t seem intuitively true to me.

Re: The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius

#444

Post by DennisP »

This reminded my of a chapter from Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman (or perhaps its sequel).

At one point he was burned out on physics. He took a break. One day he saw a juggler spinning plates on sticks (or something like that) and started working out the physics of it, just for fun. People asked him what that was good for and he said nothing, it's just interesting. One thing led to another, and that's how he ended up with his Nobel.

Re: The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius

#445

Post by PeterisP »

knzhou wrote: post #262
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…

> 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. Really! That's news to me. Are you aware of how much scientists are paid and their general career prospects?

The big difference is that currently scientists are paid and their research equipment funded by someone else; contrasting to the earlier times where usually you could be a scientist if and only if had "passive income" (usually, inherited wealth), so that you would not need to work to earn money and could instead study (and pay for studies in a world without student loans) and research instead of that.

Re: The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius

#446

Post by DailyHN »

jacquesm wrote: post #212
kkylin wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And many parents we know (ourselves included) give up exercise. If at all possible, try to maintain some semblance of an exercise routine.

Simplest solution: if the traffic situation around you allows it get a bike. And use it for anything under 10 km or when you need to transport something heavy. Cheaper than the gym and far healthier, saves you money on w&t on your car as well.

Until you get hit by a car.

Re: The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius

#447

Post by PeterisP »

WhompingWindows wrote: post #146
ralfd wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which thought experiment?

What would it be like to ride on a beam of light? What would happen if you're on a motorcycle that's going the speed of light, that then has a headlight that's throwing light forward at the speed of light?

It's not possible even in a though experiment, as nothing that has mass (i.e. a motorcycle) can be going at the speed of light. It can be going (theoretically) at 99.999999% of lightspeed, but that's conceptually different.

Re: The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius

#448

Post by PeterisP »

graeme wrote: post #49
QueensGambit wrote: post #28

Having done passion projects for 15 years, the elephant in the room is: Do you have dependents and do they support you? At some point in time, your worthless obsession will feel like selfishness to your dependents and yourself. Its a material world after all. This is a great article, but a reality check will be helpful!

He talked about children in the article. And also, work that matters generally doesn’t leave a genius starving: it’s the difference between obsessive interest into things that matter and bus ticket collecting. You could of course be at the point where you started too late and you haven’t time to ramp up useful work into successful outcomes through obsessiveness, as you already have dependents. Or you could be in the…

Obsession with work that matters won't leave you starving, but it will leave you starved for time; anything that's a priority will draw away time and attention from other priorities e.g. relationships and family.

Re: The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius

#449

Post by sukilot »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #307
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…

>Telling your mother you want to be a scientist is far better than saying you want to be a musician. Are you joking? A small child literally has a better chance of growing up to become a professional athlete than a tenured research professor!

Of course very few tenured research professors grow up to be professional athletes, but that hardly seems relevant.

Re: The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius

#450

Post by carapace »

ralfd wrote: post #443
carapace wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry to be pedantic, it was: 1.) Maxwell's equations permit no other speed for light than c. 2.) All physical laws (such as Maxwell's) are the same in all inertial reference frames. From those two the rest flows.

I found that useful. But why is 2 true? Was that proven by experiment or by math equations? It doesn’t seem intuitively true to me.

I think both, I'm not a physicist, so I may get this wrong.

If it wasn't true, if there was a difference in some physical law due to your motion, you would be able to detect the One True Frame of the Universe. Now here's where I get a little fuzzy, I think it was up for grabs, and then they tried (Michelson–Morley experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelson%E2%80%93Morley_exper... ) and couldn't do it. (See also Mach https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Mach#Philosophy_of_scien... )

If you're in a spaceship with no windows, out in space, and you are in free-fall (not accelerating), there's no experiment you can do that will tell you whether you are moving or not.

If your spaceship has a window, and you look out and see another spaceship passing by (but nothing else) you can't tell whether you're still and it's moving, or you're moving and it's still, or you're both moving. You can detect the relative velocity between you and the other ship, but not the absolute velocity (because there isn't one.)

Intuitively we are used to a "absolute" reference frame provided by the bulk of the Earth but that's just a (highly) local context.

In space (which is to say, in our Universe) there's no absolute reference frame, so you literally cannot have an absolute velocity, and obviously you can't have a physical law described by an equation that includes a term that doesn't exist, n'est-ce pas?

Cheers!

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