6 ms·

We need more people in this world willing to do their own thing, even if others might find it intimidating or silly. The important thing is to have fun and lear

We need more people in this world willing to do their own thing, even if others might find it intimidating or silly. The important thing is to have fun and learn things. Compiler hacking is just as good as any other hobby, even if it's done in good jest. Sometimes, these things become real businesses. Not that this should be the intent of this, but it shows that what some consider silly, others will pay good money for. Example: Cards Against Humanity started as a bit of a gag game between a small group of friends and eventually became something that has pop culture relevance. Example: The founder of FedEx actually wrote a business pitch paper for an overnight shipping company. This paper was given a low grade by his professor. He went on to form this company, which become a success, despite this low grade. I like to think that he did this out of spite, and that Christmas letters to his old professor must've been fun.

citbl 9mo ago
It wouldn't hurt if they could capitalise their sentences every now and then.
godelski 9mo ago
You can't have paradigm shifts by following the paradigm. How I think of it is we need a distribution of people (shaped like a power law, not a normal). Most people should be in the main body, doing what most people do. They're probably the "most productive". Then you have people in the mid tail who innovate but it's incremental and not very novel. They produce frequently (our current research paradigm optimizes for this). But there aren't leaps and bounds. Critically it keeps pushing things forward, refining and improving. But then there's those in the long tail. They fail most of the time and are the "least productive". Sometimes never doing anything of note their entire lives. But these are also the people that change the world in much bigger ways. And sometimes those that appeared to do nothing have their value found decades or centuries later. Not everyone needs to be Newton/Leibniz. Not everyone should be. But that kind of work is critical to advancing our knowledge and wealth as a species. The problem is it is often indistinguishable from wasting time. But I'm willing to bet that the work of Newton alone has created more value to all of human civilization than every failed long tail person has cost us. In any investment strategy you benefit from having high risk investments. Most lose you money but the ones that win reward you with much more than you lost. I'm not sure why this is so well known in the investment world but controversial in the research/academic/innovation world.
- satvikpendem 9mo ago
  I don't understand how this is a power law and not normal. The "long tail" is usually mentioned in a normal distribution being the right-most end of it.
  - godelski 9mo ago
    I think you have a misunderstanding because a heavy tail is essentially one that is not exponentially bounded. A long tail being a subclass. There's kinda a big difference in the characteristics of a normal distribution and power and I think explaining that will really help. In a normal you have pressure from both ends so that's why you find it in things like height. There's evolutionary pressure to not be too small but also pressure to not be too large. Being tall is advantageous but costly. Technically the distribution never ends (and that's in either direction!). Though you're not going to see micro people nor 100' tall people because the physics gets in the way. Also mind you that normal can't be less than zero. It is weird to talk about "long tail" with normal distributions and flags should go up when hearing this. In a power distribution you don't have bounding pressure. So they are scale free. A classic example of this is wealth. It's easier to understand if you ignore the negative case at first, so let's do that (it still works with negative wealth). There's no upper bound to wealth, right? So while most people will be in the main "mode" there is a long tail. We might also say something like "heavy tail" when the variance is even moderate. So this tail is both long and the median value isn't really representative of the distribution. Funny enough, power laws are incredibly common in nature. I'm really not sure why they aren't discussed more. I think Veritasium did a video on power distributions recently? Might be worth a check. Heavy tail: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy-tailed_distribution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy-tailed_distribution Long tail: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_tail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_tail
    - austy69 9mo ago
      Glad you mentioned the veritasium video on these. Here is the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBluLfX2F_k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBluLfX2F_k Before I watched this I would default to thinking about most distributions as normal. It's really fun to think about whatever "game" you are playing - wether you are building a business or trying to win a carnival game - and consider if the results follow a normal distribution or a power law?
xxr 9mo ago
> The founder of FedEx actually wrote a business pitch paper for an overnight shipping company. This paper was given a low grade by his professor. He went on to form this company, which become a success, despite this low grade. Was the paper given a low grade because it was a bad idea or because Fred Smith wrote a bad paper? If his pitch didn’t work, did feedback from the professor help Smith sharpen his idea so he was in a better position to make FedEx a success?
- nanolith 9mo ago
  Allegedly, it was given a lower grade due to it not being a feasible business plan, in the professor's estimation. Of course, this forms part of the legend behind Fred Smith and FedEx, so that should be taken with a grain of salt. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/fred-smith-told-yale-professor-213146704.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/fred-smith-told-yale-professo...
johnnyanmac 9mo ago
Hard to have hobbies when you're spending your time doordashing and struggling to pay rent.
ant6n 9mo ago
It’s all fun and games, until the funding runs out.
lo_zamoyski 9mo ago
Josef Pieper wrote a book called "Leisure: the Basis of Culture"[0] - published in 1948 - in which he discusses the meaning of leisure, which is not what we mean by it today, and criticizes the "bourgeois world of total labor" as a spiritually, intellectually, and culturally destructive force. Today, we think of "leisure" as merely free time from work or recreation, something largely done to "recharge" so that we can go back to work (in other words: modern "leisure" is for the sake of work). This is not the original meaning. Indeed, etymologically, the word "school" comes from σχολή ("skholē"), which means "leisure", but with the understanding that it involves something like learned discussion or whatever. (Difficult to imagine, given how hostile modern schooling is, resembling more of a factory than a place of learning.) The purpose of work was to enable leisure. We labored in order to have leisure. What's also interesting is that unlike us, who think of "leisure" in terms of work (that is, we think of it as a negation of work, "not-working"), the Greeks viewed it in exactly the opposite way. The word for "work" is ἀσχολίᾱ ("askholíā"), which is the absence of leisure. The understanding held for most of history and explains why we call the liberal arts liberal: it freed a man to be able to pursue truth effectively, and was contrasted with the servile arts, that is, everything with a practical aim like a trade or a craft. This difference demonstrates an important shift and betrays the vulgar or nihilistic underbelly of our modern culture. Work is never for its own sake. It is always aimed at something other than itself (praxis and associated poiesis). This distinguishes it from something like theory (theoria) which is concerned with truth for its own sake. So what do we work for? Work for its own sake is nihilistic, a kind of passing of the metaphysical buck, an activity pursued to avoid facing the question of what we live for. Work pursued merely to pay for sustenance - full stop - is vulgar and lacks meaning. Sustenance is important, but is that all you are, a beast that slurps food from a trough? Even here, only in human beings is food elevated into feast, into meal, a celebration and a social practice that incorporates food; it is not merely nutritive. Are you merely a consumerist who works to buy more crap, foolishly believing that ultimate joy will be found in the pointless chase for them? Ask yourself: whom or what do you serve? Everyone aims at something. What are the choices of your life aiming at? [0] https://a.co/d/eCd0cJX https://a.co/d/eCd0cJX
- nanolith 9mo ago
  That is an excellent way of considering both leisure and work, and certainly, a testament to the importance of studying the humanities. Aristotle famously developed the Greek concept of εὐδαιμονία (eudaimonia), which dovetails into what you wrote. Roughly, the concept translates into "human flourishing" or "living well". While Aristotle's conception of what best constitutes this differed a bit from more ancient Greek concepts passed down through their oral tradition, and definitely differs from what we may consider today, it bears investigation. I definitely think that education and personal research fits into my conception of it, but tastes differ. Nietzsche gave what I considered some excellent responses to Aristotle, especially when it comes to finding / making meaning in our lives with respect to the modern world. The Transcendentalist school, in particular Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson, also provided some interesting flavor. I think that your questions should be asked continuously. We should all adjust our life trajectories based on our own flourishing, in ways that challenge us and lead to growth. There aren't clear answers to these questions. In fact, they should lead to a bit of discomfort, like sand in one's clam shell. Much as this sand will eventually form a pearl, these questions should drive us to better ourselves, little by little.
ericmcer 9mo ago
That still feels a bit off, as you are "having fun" because it ultimately is the road to success. There is a deeper hurt in the tech world, which is that we have all been conditioned to crave greatness. Every employer tries to sell us on how important what they do is, or how rich everyone will become. We can't even vacation without thinking how much better we will perform once we get back. That struggle with greatness is something every human grapples with, but for workers in tech it is particularly difficult to let it go. The entire industry wants us to hold onto it until we are completely drained. Anyway the result is sentiments like this, where having fun, exploring and learning can't just exist for the inherent rewards.
- nanolith 9mo ago
  As per my original comment, these examples are only indicative that profitable endeavors can come out of these things in unexpected ways, but that's not the point of doing these things. I'm never going to profit from, nor recoup the costs I've sunk into most of the mad science I do. That's not the point. I do it because it's fun and because I like building cool things. These examples are one justification for why we should embrace these kinds of hobbies, and not the desirable outcome for these kinds of hobbies.

citbl 9mo ago

It wouldn't hurt if they could capitalise their sentences every now and then.

godelski 9mo ago

You can't have paradigm shifts by following the paradigm. How I think of it is we need a distribution of people (shaped like a power law, not a normal). Most people should be in the main body, doing what most people do. They're probably the "most productive". Then you have people in the mid tail who innovate but it's incremental and not very novel. They produce frequently (our current research paradigm optimizes for this). But there aren't leaps and bounds. Critically it keeps pushing things forward, refining and improving. But then there's those in the long tail. They fail most of the time and are the "least productive". Sometimes never doing anything of note their entire lives. But these are also the people that change the world in much bigger ways. And sometimes those that appeared to do nothing have their value found decades or centuries later. Not everyone needs to be Newton/Leibniz. Not everyone should be. But that kind of work is critical to advancing our knowledge and wealth as a species. The problem is it is often indistinguishable from wasting time. But I'm willing to bet that the work of Newton alone has created more value to all of human civilization than every failed long tail person has cost us. In any investment strategy you benefit from having high risk investments. Most lose you money but the ones that win reward you with much more than you lost. I'm not sure why this is so well known in the investment world but controversial in the research/academic/innovation world.

satvikpendem 9mo ago
I don't understand how this is a power law and not normal. The "long tail" is usually mentioned in a normal distribution being the right-most end of it.
- godelski 9mo ago
  I think you have a misunderstanding because a heavy tail is essentially one that is not exponentially bounded. A long tail being a subclass. There's kinda a big difference in the characteristics of a normal distribution and power and I think explaining that will really help. In a normal you have pressure from both ends so that's why you find it in things like height. There's evolutionary pressure to not be too small but also pressure to not be too large. Being tall is advantageous but costly. Technically the distribution never ends (and that's in either direction!). Though you're not going to see micro people nor 100' tall people because the physics gets in the way. Also mind you that normal can't be less than zero. It is weird to talk about "long tail" with normal distributions and flags should go up when hearing this. In a power distribution you don't have bounding pressure. So they are scale free. A classic example of this is wealth. It's easier to understand if you ignore the negative case at first, so let's do that (it still works with negative wealth). There's no upper bound to wealth, right? So while most people will be in the main "mode" there is a long tail. We might also say something like "heavy tail" when the variance is even moderate. So this tail is both long and the median value isn't really representative of the distribution. Funny enough, power laws are incredibly common in nature. I'm really not sure why they aren't discussed more. I think Veritasium did a video on power distributions recently? Might be worth a check. Heavy tail: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy-tailed_distribution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy-tailed_distribution Long tail: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_tail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_tail
  - austy69 9mo ago
    Glad you mentioned the veritasium video on these. Here is the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBluLfX2F_k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBluLfX2F_k Before I watched this I would default to thinking about most distributions as normal. It's really fun to think about whatever "game" you are playing - wether you are building a business or trying to win a carnival game - and consider if the results follow a normal distribution or a power law?

xxr 9mo ago

> The founder of FedEx actually wrote a business pitch paper for an overnight shipping company. This paper was given a low grade by his professor. He went on to form this company, which become a success, despite this low grade. Was the paper given a low grade because it was a bad idea or because Fred Smith wrote a bad paper? If his pitch didn’t work, did feedback from the professor help Smith sharpen his idea so he was in a better position to make FedEx a success?

nanolith 9mo ago
Allegedly, it was given a lower grade due to it not being a feasible business plan, in the professor's estimation. Of course, this forms part of the legend behind Fred Smith and FedEx, so that should be taken with a grain of salt. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/fred-smith-told-yale-professor-213146704.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/fred-smith-told-yale-professo...

johnnyanmac 9mo ago

Hard to have hobbies when you're spending your time doordashing and struggling to pay rent.

ant6n 9mo ago

It’s all fun and games, until the funding runs out.

lo_zamoyski 9mo ago

Josef Pieper wrote a book called "Leisure: the Basis of Culture"[0] - published in 1948 - in which he discusses the meaning of leisure, which is not what we mean by it today, and criticizes the "bourgeois world of total labor" as a spiritually, intellectually, and culturally destructive force. Today, we think of "leisure" as merely free time from work or recreation, something largely done to "recharge" so that we can go back to work (in other words: modern "leisure" is for the sake of work). This is not the original meaning. Indeed, etymologically, the word "school" comes from σχολή ("skholē"), which means "leisure", but with the understanding that it involves something like learned discussion or whatever. (Difficult to imagine, given how hostile modern schooling is, resembling more of a factory than a place of learning.) The purpose of work was to enable leisure. We labored in order to have leisure. What's also interesting is that unlike us, who think of "leisure" in terms of work (that is, we think of it as a negation of work, "not-working"), the Greeks viewed it in exactly the opposite way. The word for "work" is ἀσχολίᾱ ("askholíā"), which is the absence of leisure. The understanding held for most of history and explains why we call the liberal arts liberal: it freed a man to be able to pursue truth effectively, and was contrasted with the servile arts, that is, everything with a practical aim like a trade or a craft. This difference demonstrates an important shift and betrays the vulgar or nihilistic underbelly of our modern culture. Work is never for its own sake. It is always aimed at something other than itself (praxis and associated poiesis). This distinguishes it from something like theory (theoria) which is concerned with truth for its own sake. So what do we work for? Work for its own sake is nihilistic, a kind of passing of the metaphysical buck, an activity pursued to avoid facing the question of what we live for. Work pursued merely to pay for sustenance - full stop - is vulgar and lacks meaning. Sustenance is important, but is that all you are, a beast that slurps food from a trough? Even here, only in human beings is food elevated into feast, into meal, a celebration and a social practice that incorporates food; it is not merely nutritive. Are you merely a consumerist who works to buy more crap, foolishly believing that ultimate joy will be found in the pointless chase for them? Ask yourself: whom or what do you serve? Everyone aims at something. What are the choices of your life aiming at? [0] https://a.co/d/eCd0cJX https://a.co/d/eCd0cJX

nanolith 9mo ago
That is an excellent way of considering both leisure and work, and certainly, a testament to the importance of studying the humanities. Aristotle famously developed the Greek concept of εὐδαιμονία (eudaimonia), which dovetails into what you wrote. Roughly, the concept translates into "human flourishing" or "living well". While Aristotle's conception of what best constitutes this differed a bit from more ancient Greek concepts passed down through their oral tradition, and definitely differs from what we may consider today, it bears investigation. I definitely think that education and personal research fits into my conception of it, but tastes differ. Nietzsche gave what I considered some excellent responses to Aristotle, especially when it comes to finding / making meaning in our lives with respect to the modern world. The Transcendentalist school, in particular Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson, also provided some interesting flavor. I think that your questions should be asked continuously. We should all adjust our life trajectories based on our own flourishing, in ways that challenge us and lead to growth. There aren't clear answers to these questions. In fact, they should lead to a bit of discomfort, like sand in one's clam shell. Much as this sand will eventually form a pearl, these questions should drive us to better ourselves, little by little.

ericmcer 9mo ago

That still feels a bit off, as you are "having fun" because it ultimately is the road to success. There is a deeper hurt in the tech world, which is that we have all been conditioned to crave greatness. Every employer tries to sell us on how important what they do is, or how rich everyone will become. We can't even vacation without thinking how much better we will perform once we get back. That struggle with greatness is something every human grapples with, but for workers in tech it is particularly difficult to let it go. The entire industry wants us to hold onto it until we are completely drained. Anyway the result is sentiments like this, where having fun, exploring and learning can't just exist for the inherent rewards.

nanolith 9mo ago
As per my original comment, these examples are only indicative that profitable endeavors can come out of these things in unexpected ways, but that's not the point of doing these things. I'm never going to profit from, nor recoup the costs I've sunk into most of the mad science I do. That's not the point. I do it because it's fun and because I like building cool things. These examples are one justification for why we should embrace these kinds of hobbies, and not the desirable outcome for these kinds of hobbies.