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The Risk of Discovery

paulgraham.com

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Re: The Risk of Discovery

#91

Post by gwern »

lisper wrote: post #76

What exactly was Newton risking? An entrepreneur who quits her job and takes out a mortgage to start a business is risking her livelihood. If she fails, she and her family could end up on the street. Newton came from a wealthy family. If he failed in his intellectual endeavors the "risk" for him was to live out his life as an ordinary rich person and only ending up in the more obscure history books. I think Fredrick…

Newton's theology was extremely heretical (to all major religious factions, as he was an anti-Trinitarian!) at a time when religious politics in England were brutal and could easily be fatal; being expelled from Cambridge for violating the religion oaths/tests would've only been the start. And, incidentally, alchemy was, besides being highly disreputable & associated with con artists, illegal in England for centuries before and for most of Newton's career: punishable by death and then confiscation of the deceased's estate (Levere, _Transforming Matter: A History of Chemistry from Alchemy to the Buckyball_). So if the full extent of Newton's activities & beliefs had been known, he could have lost his good name, job, life, and any family wealth.

So what exactly was Newton risking?

Everything.

Re: The Risk of Discovery

#92

Post by throw2016 »

The most valuable thing we have is time. Unless you are born rich or wealthy time is sustenance and living money. The tradeoffs and risks involved for those born rich and those who have to work for a living are world's apart.

In the era Newton came from you would have to be wealthy to be able to afford other interests beyond surviving. So a lot of the big leaps were made by those from rich families or those lucky enough to have some sort of wealthy backer.

Plus certain things like education, family, kids are attached to specific timelines in a typical life. Health and the ability to do things are also attached to timelines. When you take a risk you could be putting all of those on line.

The ability to expend time with no certainty of returns is a luxury only those from a wealthy background have. And naturally they will be more successfuly as there are more efforts from people of those backgrounds.

Re: The Risk of Discovery

#93

Post by ggame »

Newtons dabbling in Alchemy made him very sick, so there was definitely a risk there. He also invested and lost his life savings in a speculative stock bubble. The bet that really paid off financially was his occult connections that got him a job as warden of the royal mint where his currency manipulation lead to an increase in demand for coins and made him a huge personal fortune. At least that's what I heard. Happy to be corrected.

Re: The Risk of Discovery

#94

Post by swalsh »

I urge anyone to play a bit of 'why' with a young child, mixed with the Socrates method. If you can get them to try and answer beyond "I don't know"... you'll be taken to some crazy mental places no adult can take you.

Re: The Risk of Discovery

#95

Post by sahrizv »

I agree with the core insight that we sometimes ignore the risk taking of high achievers while looking at their life in hindsight. However, I would not say with certainty that Newton was pursuing these fields with the mindset of betting on them. He could have been certain about the validity, value and fruitfulness of intellectual pursuits in those fields.

Interestingly, this is the second time in the past 24 hours I've encountered the idea of comparing a VC (Marc's reference) with another class of high achievers. (previous one, a comparison with entrepreneurs: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13371813)

Re: The Risk of Discovery

#96

Post by btilly »

seiferteric wrote: post #71

Wait, I thought alchemy and theology were pretty mainstream back then? How was it risky? Just because they turned out to be wrong, I don't think it was crazy for someone to be studying these things back then. Seems like a modern example would be someone studying something like string theory or dark matter and later we discover these things are wrong... but there is no reason to think that today.

The penalty for unsanctioned alchemy was hanging.

His theological conclusions would have been considered heresy. The penalty for heresy was the loss of all property and status and, sometimes, death.

He was indeed taking a serious risk in studying these things.

Re: The Risk of Discovery

#97

Post by js8 »

zanny wrote: post #74
js8 wrote: post #48

I find it funny that capitalism requires what is essentially an irrational behavior. It seems to me that big public corporations, which avoid risk, and only buy startups once they have been established, are the rational actors. On the other hands, three guys in the garage doing a startup often do it not because they calculate expected profits, but because they want to do it for other than monetary reasons - typically…

Startups are not much risk, though. You start out without, you try to make something, if it doesn't work out just having the experience as long as it wasn't a total catastrophe makes you hirable anywhere you want or you try again. The most you might lose is the support of friends and family if your dreams aren't fully realized. Which can be a lot, but that is why the people who have the most to lose don't try startup…

There is opportunity cost which is working for a big company from the start.

If startups are not risky enough to be irrational to get involved, are you saying then the big companies are acting irrationally when not getting involved?

That's of course a dual view. But it seems to me that the big corporation is more likely the one that calculates the correct expected ROI than the startup in the unknown space..

Re: The Risk of Discovery

#98

Post by ccvannorman »

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…

Yay! I was going to mention Cosmos but you beat me to it. I certainly appreciated the deep and rich history associated with Newton in particular among others in the fields of math and science. Their lives were often hard and wrought with conflict vs. the powers of their times, which is hugely important.

Re: The Risk of Discovery

#99

Post by js8 »

nabla9 wrote: post #82
js8 wrote: post #48

I find it funny that capitalism requires what is essentially an irrational behavior. It seems to me that big public corporations, which avoid risk, and only buy startups once they have been established, are the rational actors. On the other hands, three guys in the garage doing a startup often do it not because they calculate expected profits, but because they want to do it for other than monetary reasons - typically…

Capitalism don't require irrational behavior. What is needed are things like comparative advantage and economic profit[1]. Someone who has capital has different incentives than someone who whose major offering is labor or expertise. Newton's studies were motivated by his dislike of farming and need to revenge a bully. He got time for his most productive work because plague closed the University for two years. ---- [1…

Do you agree there is a difference in behavior between startups and big companies, though? In the way they are willing to invest into something?

If you agree, then how can you say both act rationally?

Why wouldn't rational people who have labor to offer, instead of joining a startup, go work for a big company? The pay is usually better I hear.

Addendum: I am sure you can explain the difference in behavior by invoking "preferences" or "utility" (which is actually meaningless in humans, cf. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13276760, but that aside) of monetary rewards; however, that doesn't explain why there is the difference in the first place. If some entities are rational, they should perceive the world the same way and thus have the same preferences.

Re: The Risk of Discovery

#100

Post by gdubs » 

  "I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost
   almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the
   game winning shot and missed."
- Michael Jordan
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