Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Big Breakthroughs Come in Your Late 30s

m.theatlantic.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 111 posts

Re: Big Breakthroughs Come in Your Late 30s

#81

Post by coldtea »

poolpool wrote: post #19
dhfjgkrgjg wrote: post #16

Who would have thought? That in your late thirties, you have gained experience, knowledge, contacts, maybe even a degree of financial support, all of which lend towards the formation of breakthrough ideas. Now, where is my prize?

Its common sense that universal health care and higher taxes for everyone is a great idea. Depending on who you ask its also common sense that universal health care is a ridiculous concept and no one wants to pay for other people's hospital visits.

>Depending on who you ask its also common sense that universal health care is a ridiculous concept and no one wants to pay for other people's hospital visits.

That's why you don't ask brain dead people.

Re: Big Breakthroughs Come in Your Late 30s

#83

Post by bananamansion »

moens wrote: post #59
vidarh wrote: post #34

I co-founded my first startup at 19, and several more before I was 25. I've done a couple since. I'm now nearly 39. Not had the big payoff, but I'll try again sometime. To me, it feels like the biggest thing is the combination of willingness to take risks coupled with outlook on life and experience. At 19 I had no business experience, no experience at the business I went into (4 of us started an ISP), had never set u…

I created 4 reasonably successful companies in my life, and about 12 that fell flat. The first success was in high school. But the first million+ was at age 34. At first I thought the article was a little too academic, but... honestly it fits my life pattern. So... there you have it.

12 fell flat? what made you keep going?

Re: Big Breakthroughs Come in Your Late 30s

#85

Post by tomp »

jostylr wrote: post #71
cynicalkane wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to be "that guy", but a lot of this is terribly incorrect: * General relativity did not come from "grasping the mathematics" of special relativity. SR can be completely understood by an undergraduate and is an internally consistent description of mechanics and electromagnetic phenomena. Like Newtonian mechanics before it, it doesn't need anything more to be consistent. * Local hidden variables are not "likely wro…

Note local hidden variables is impossible. The pilot wave theory is the theory of "hidden variables" that led Bell to his theorem. Basically, EPR shows that either nature is nonlocal or there were hidden variables. Bell showed that hidden variables had to have something nonlocal about them. So Einstein created relativity and helped to highlight how nature has an aspect that seems incompatible with it (basically, ther…

Hi! I'm a mathematician, I've always been curious about physics, but I've never understood some of the concepts of QM, such as what is "observation" in the Schrodinger's cat paradox, why QM means the universe is not deterministic, why hidden variables cannot exist, ... mostly because every physicist that I was able to talk to has been unable to properly explain these concepts. Do you know any books/articles/sources about QM that could understand these concepts, without going in unnecessary mathematical and physical details (i.e. using the least physics and mathematics necessary to explain the paradoxes of QM)?

Re: Big Breakthroughs Come in Your Late 30s

#86

Post by jostylr »

tomp wrote: post #85
jostylr wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note local hidden variables is impossible. The pilot wave theory is the theory of "hidden variables" that led Bell to his theorem. Basically, EPR shows that either nature is nonlocal or there were hidden variables. Bell showed that hidden variables had to have something nonlocal about them. So Einstein created relativity and helped to highlight how nature has an aspect that seems incompatible with it (basically, ther…

Hi! I'm a mathematician, I've always been curious about physics, but I've never understood some of the concepts of QM, such as what is "observation" in the Schrodinger's cat paradox, why QM means the universe is not deterministic, why hidden variables cannot exist, ... mostly because every physicist that I was able to talk to has been unable to properly explain these concepts. Do you know any books/articles/sources a…

Tough question. The reason you probably did not understand them is that there are reasons are faulty.

The textbook QM says that when experiments happen, the continuous wave function evolution stops and a new wave function is used in its place, chosen randomly based on a prescription using probabilities coming from the original wave function's decomposition in terms of an operator's (matrix) eigenvalues. This is a postulate in their view and that's that.

It makes no sense since what is an observation? They don't explain. They just know it. They use it when doing their experiments and it works well enough. Attempting to formalize it leads to wrong conclusions.

Bohmian mechanics/pilot wave theory is a deterministic, hidden variable theory that works. Within that context, you can understand the rise of operators as observables and the entire collapse rule which turns out to be a convenient approximation to reality in this theory; no actual collapse occurs. There is just one wave function on configuration space (3n dimensional space, n being the number of particles in the universe) evolving continuously via Schrodinger's equation and the particles themselves being guided by the wave function. It is the configuration space for the wave function where nonlocality arises from. Understanding its role in relation to relativity is the key question to understand.

The wave function evolves with lots of its branches being irrelevant which is why we can effectively get rid of them, i.e., collapse the wave function.

As for resources, I recommend the stanford page I linked to above. There is also http://www.bohmian-mechanics.net which has a great deal of material including an introduction: http://www.bohmian-mechanics.net/whatisbm_introduction.html and some faq videos http://www.bohmian-mechanics.net/videos_faq.html

I like Bell's book of his articles, Speakable and Unspeakable in Quantum Mechanics. A wonderful read from a master.

Re: Big Breakthroughs Come in Your Late 30s

#87

Post by shiven »

lkrubner wrote: post #4

A distinction I read somewhere, that I think is useful, is that people tend to be either primarily conceptualist in their thinking, or they are empiricists who learn from experience. Conceptualists have their big breakthroughs before the age of 35, and empiricists have their big breakthroughs after 35. In conceptual fields, such as math and physics, the big breakthroughs happen young. Werner Heisenberg was 27 when he…

Precisely the ideas discussed by S. Chandrasekhar (White dwarfs; Chandra X-ray telescope) in his book "Truth and Beauty: Aesthetics and Motivation in Science"[0]. The book draws a large number of examples from (astro)physicists, but he also expands into Beethoven and Shakespeare among others.

A must read if such ideas interest you. And even if they don't, it is an awesomely well written book, well worth a read!

[0]http://www.amazon.com/Truth-Beauty-Aesthetics-Motivations-Sc...

Re: Big Breakthroughs Come in Your Late 30s

#88

Post by CmonDev »

moens wrote: post #59
vidarh wrote: post #34

I co-founded my first startup at 19, and several more before I was 25. I've done a couple since. I'm now nearly 39. Not had the big payoff, but I'll try again sometime. To me, it feels like the biggest thing is the combination of willingness to take risks coupled with outlook on life and experience. At 19 I had no business experience, no experience at the business I went into (4 of us started an ISP), had never set u…

I created 4 reasonably successful companies in my life, and about 12 that fell flat. The first success was in high school. But the first million+ was at age 34. At first I thought the article was a little too academic, but... honestly it fits my life pattern. So... there you have it.

Did you start as a developer?

Re: Big Breakthroughs Come in Your Late 30s

#89

Post by vidarh »

bananamansion wrote: post #83
moens wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I created 4 reasonably successful companies in my life, and about 12 that fell flat. The first success was in high school. But the first million+ was at age 34. At first I thought the article was a little too academic, but... honestly it fits my life pattern. So... there you have it.

12 fell flat? what made you keep going?

Consider that the vast majority (something like 9/10) of companies fail within 2-3 years. If you're not willing to deal with failures, chances are you'll stop trying long before you get to 12. If you deal with the odds, you keep going as long as you get something out of it

Also, even companies that "fall flat" may be worth it. For my part, a large part of my current salary is down to my experience and contacts from my various startups. And each one of them have been fun for the most part.

Re: Big Breakthroughs Come in Your Late 30s

#90

Post by vidarh »

basicallydan wrote: post #50
10feet wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you really lived in the UK you would now that lots of people complain about everything, all the time. Especially the NHS. Now, that doesn't change the point that universal health care exists in most countries, and they are better of for it.

Actually, strictly speaking I do live in France at the moment, so your bizarre implication is actually true - but I did just move here 7 days ago. Anyway, yes people do complain about the NHS in general, for all sorts of reasons, but I'd wager that most people don't complain about the fact that we have the NHS, and realise that it's actually really great compared to the situations in countries which don't have univer…

Everyone complains about the NHS, but NHS runs yearly surveys about how pleased people are with various parts of the service, and it consistently shows about 2/3 or more are satisfied with most of the NHS services and NHS as a whole. Some exceptions, and there was a huge, temporary dip in 2011 (coinciding with massive spending squeeze), but overall NHS is one of those things everyone complains about because a) everyone cares about health, and a large proportion of us is in contact with NHS every year; b) there's always tension between how much we're willing to spend and how much we want - you can always spend more on healthcare.

The best evidence for the depth of support for the NHS, in my eyes, is that the Conservatives fought tooth and nail against establishing it. But within a year or so after it was introduced, they realised they'd never get elected again ever if they kept arguing to have it dismantled, as the NHS has consistently had vastly higher public support than either they or politicians in general have. So today they're resigned to cutting spending and increasing private provisioning of services within the NHS.

Post reply on HN