5 ms·

Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned [video]

96 points by henning 11y ago

lkrubner 11y ago
This was much better than I expected from the title.
- jakeogh 11y ago
  Agreed. The book has gotta be worth $20: http://www.springer.com/us/book/9783319155234 http://www.springer.com/us/book/9783319155234
  - sah2ed 11y ago
    The kindle version on Amazon [0] is slightly cheaper at $16.19. [0] http://www.amazon.com/Why-Greatness-Cannot-Planned-Objective/dp/3319155237 http://www.amazon.com/Why-Greatness-Cannot-Planned-Objective...
- agumonkey 11y ago
  I dismissed it and only watched it because it was linked on this HN thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11123374 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11123374
kevinwang 11y ago
Some of the extrapolations from the picture platforms to other domains are a bit hand-wavy in the talk, but his response to the Edison question [0] is pretty enlightening. Additionally - just pondering here - this heuristic of novelty seems present in human nature: - the drive that scientists, mathematicians, researchers, and technologists have to discover new things - the drive that hackers and artists have to make new and different things Does anyone agree that these aspects of humans are in tune with what the subject of the talk, or are they more unrelated than I think? [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXQPL9GooyI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXQPL9GooyI
coderKen 11y ago
Found this pretty much enlightening, I think this applies to careers as well. When I look back at the steps I took towards getting to where I am now, I don't see any connection, they were seemingly random steps.
- thewarrior 11y ago
  Didn't Steve Jobs say the same thing ? You cant connect the dots going forward. They only make sense when looking back.
greggman 11y ago
Interesting talk. I really couldn't tell how much of it really meant something and how much of it was fluff like "power poses". In any case he's been giving similar talks for a while. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZBViI8ZaU0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZBViI8ZaU0
ssivark 11y ago
The story of how Feynman found out about the Challenger disaster is quite interesting. It is not that he was a clever detective ferreting out the facts -- it's just that he tried something different and let himself be nudged along in the process. To quote from his book "What do you care what other people think?"... Well, a few days after the accident, I get a telephone call from the head of NASA, William Graham, asking me to be on the committee investigating what went wrong with the shuttle! [...] When I heard the investigation was going to be in Washington, my immediate reaction was not to do it: I have a principle of not going anywhere near Washington or having anything to do with government, so my immediate reaction was -- how am I going to get out of this? [Gweneth, his wife says] "If you don't do it, there will be twelve people, all in a group, going around from place to place together. But if you join in the commission, there will be eleven people -- all in a group going around from place to place together -- while the twelfth one runs around all over the place, checking all kinds of unusual things. There probably won't be anything, but if there is, you'll find it." She said, "There isn't anyone else who can do that like you can."
kevindeasis 11y ago
I'd like to hear arguments against his claim. Even better if it is a machine learning experiment that invalidates his idea. It would be interesting to compare the two sides.
turbohz 11y ago
But there are still too many javascript libraries out there!
- thewarrior 11y ago
  That's a very interesting point. When I look at React and React native , I do feel that they could be stepping stones to something really interesting. The Decco app that was posted on HN only reinforced this idea. I feel that one day we'll be flinging fully formed react compoenents as fast as we fling for loops while coding today. Some form of smart component search and automatic insertion could speed up programming by a huge amount. Abstracting out the DOM rendering means we could have universal components. But these aren't here yet. You don't have to use the latest framework in your project if you don't need. But that shouldn't stop the experimentation and the evolution. So go forth and write ye Single page app frameworks and ye Coffee script to brainfuck transpilers.
argonaut 11y ago
Speaking from an AI/ML perspective, I'd like to point out one flaw, which is that exploration (of unexplored states) is certainly something that can be incorporated into your objective function, or accounted for in other ways, depending on the specific AI/ML algorithm and domain. This is a very common thing to do in reinforcement learning, for example.
- chillacy 11y ago
  I think he just about says this in his talk when he discuses developing "novelty search". The applications to AI seemed more straightforward (don't blindly run up to a local maxima if your search space isn't monotonic), but the application to life is less straightforward but more interesting.
WalterBright 11y ago
This fits right in with the Connections thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11075430 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11075430 which is all about serendipitous discoveries.
WalterBright 11y ago
There are counterexamples, for instance, the Wright Bros. invented the airplane through a directed research and development process.
chillacy 11y ago
Steve jobs said something like: You can only connect the dots looking backwards. I've found that to be true in many ways. If you look at any success story, it usually involves many degrees of luck, chance, crazy coincidence, etc. From business stories, to how you met your closest friends, or even your significant other. Of course, this is survivorship bias, and we're constantly missing great opportunities every day.. but it's still interesting how things turn out.
- agumonkey 11y ago
  But there's a metalevel theory there. After spending years failing to learn music, I finally hit a few sweet spots. I couldn't be more wrong before. But knowing how failing can lead to knowing, how being wrong helps you map the possible space to home in the right leads you to a very different approach on discovery.

96 points by henning 11y ago

lkrubner 11y ago

This was much better than I expected from the title.

jakeogh 11y ago
Agreed. The book has gotta be worth $20: http://www.springer.com/us/book/9783319155234 http://www.springer.com/us/book/9783319155234
- sah2ed 11y ago
  The kindle version on Amazon [0] is slightly cheaper at $16.19. [0] http://www.amazon.com/Why-Greatness-Cannot-Planned-Objective/dp/3319155237 http://www.amazon.com/Why-Greatness-Cannot-Planned-Objective...
agumonkey 11y ago
I dismissed it and only watched it because it was linked on this HN thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11123374 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11123374

kevinwang 11y ago

Some of the extrapolations from the picture platforms to other domains are a bit hand-wavy in the talk, but his response to the Edison question [0] is pretty enlightening. Additionally - just pondering here - this heuristic of novelty seems present in human nature: - the drive that scientists, mathematicians, researchers, and technologists have to discover new things - the drive that hackers and artists have to make new and different things Does anyone agree that these aspects of humans are in tune with what the subject of the talk, or are they more unrelated than I think? [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXQPL9GooyI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXQPL9GooyI

coderKen 11y ago

Found this pretty much enlightening, I think this applies to careers as well. When I look back at the steps I took towards getting to where I am now, I don't see any connection, they were seemingly random steps.

thewarrior 11y ago
Didn't Steve Jobs say the same thing ? You cant connect the dots going forward. They only make sense when looking back.

greggman 11y ago

Interesting talk. I really couldn't tell how much of it really meant something and how much of it was fluff like "power poses". In any case he's been giving similar talks for a while. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZBViI8ZaU0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZBViI8ZaU0

ssivark 11y ago

The story of how Feynman found out about the Challenger disaster is quite interesting. It is not that he was a clever detective ferreting out the facts -- it's just that he tried something different and let himself be nudged along in the process. To quote from his book "What do you care what other people think?"... Well, a few days after the accident, I get a telephone call from the head of NASA, William Graham, asking me to be on the committee investigating what went wrong with the shuttle! [...] When I heard the investigation was going to be in Washington, my immediate reaction was not to do it: I have a principle of not going anywhere near Washington or having anything to do with government, so my immediate reaction was -- how am I going to get out of this? [Gweneth, his wife says] "If you don't do it, there will be twelve people, all in a group, going around from place to place together. But if you join in the commission, there will be eleven people -- all in a group going around from place to place together -- while the twelfth one runs around all over the place, checking all kinds of unusual things. There probably won't be anything, but if there is, you'll find it." She said, "There isn't anyone else who can do that like you can."

kevindeasis 11y ago

I'd like to hear arguments against his claim. Even better if it is a machine learning experiment that invalidates his idea. It would be interesting to compare the two sides.

turbohz 11y ago

But there are still too many javascript libraries out there!

thewarrior 11y ago
That's a very interesting point. When I look at React and React native , I do feel that they could be stepping stones to something really interesting. The Decco app that was posted on HN only reinforced this idea. I feel that one day we'll be flinging fully formed react compoenents as fast as we fling for loops while coding today. Some form of smart component search and automatic insertion could speed up programming by a huge amount. Abstracting out the DOM rendering means we could have universal components. But these aren't here yet. You don't have to use the latest framework in your project if you don't need. But that shouldn't stop the experimentation and the evolution. So go forth and write ye Single page app frameworks and ye Coffee script to brainfuck transpilers.

argonaut 11y ago

Speaking from an AI/ML perspective, I'd like to point out one flaw, which is that exploration (of unexplored states) is certainly something that can be incorporated into your objective function, or accounted for in other ways, depending on the specific AI/ML algorithm and domain. This is a very common thing to do in reinforcement learning, for example.

chillacy 11y ago
I think he just about says this in his talk when he discuses developing "novelty search". The applications to AI seemed more straightforward (don't blindly run up to a local maxima if your search space isn't monotonic), but the application to life is less straightforward but more interesting.

WalterBright 11y ago

This fits right in with the Connections thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11075430 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11075430 which is all about serendipitous discoveries.

WalterBright 11y ago

There are counterexamples, for instance, the Wright Bros. invented the airplane through a directed research and development process.

chillacy 11y ago

Steve jobs said something like: You can only connect the dots looking backwards. I've found that to be true in many ways. If you look at any success story, it usually involves many degrees of luck, chance, crazy coincidence, etc. From business stories, to how you met your closest friends, or even your significant other. Of course, this is survivorship bias, and we're constantly missing great opportunities every day.. but it's still interesting how things turn out.

agumonkey 11y ago
But there's a metalevel theory there. After spending years failing to learn music, I finally hit a few sweet spots. I couldn't be more wrong before. But knowing how failing can lead to knowing, how being wrong helps you map the possible space to home in the right leads you to a very different approach on discovery.