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I'm sure some people do that. That's business acumen, however, not my personal forte. Not many brilliant people ever become rich. To become rich takes not just

I'm sure some people do that. That's business acumen, however, not my personal forte. Not many brilliant people ever become rich. To become rich takes not just cleverness or even genius, but the ability to convince others to invest in it and not simply fuck you over. For myself, I'm just not interested in inventions. I'm far more interested in math and geology, so I spend most of my free time just being amazed by the earth. I'm no better at inventing a million dollar idea than the next guy. Probably worse, since I have literally spent hours investigating the wear patterns and flaking on a rock outcropping and considering the forces involved in it.

_yosefk 10y ago
I didn't mean inventions, necessarily, just a high-paying job where you can retire early, certainly programming is like that today for a brilliant and even a somewhat less than brilliant person. I'd expect that if you loathe spending time on things you aren't inherently interested in, you might be willing to suffer through a few years of that to then never have to do it again. (This is how I thought about things at age 15, at any rate, and I'm pretty sure my intelligence wasn't nearly high enough relatively to how unimpressive my people skills were.)
- di4na 10y ago
  Because none of the "highly intelligent" skills pays that well. This is sad but true.
Moshe_Silnorin 10y ago
Satoshi did it with some mild social engineering, a mailing list, and C.
jpt4 10y ago
Interested in mathematics and geology, so you say? Behold, I am the polypontian, and spin links 'twixt diverse nodes not my own: http://www.aleph.se/andart/archives/2014/02/torusearth.html http://www.aleph.se/andart/archives/2014/02/torusearth.html Perhaps this Anders would be interested to discuss the particular brand of paint you enjoy watching dry [0]. [0] Which if one has any fascination at all with viscous fluids or amorphous solids, one really must try sometime.
- henrikschroder 10y ago
  Wow, I love the randomness of coincidences like this. I got to know Anders over 20 years ago, he was clearly crazy intelligent, and great fun, because he would always go off in funny what-if scenarios. Checking his blog confirms that he's still doing exactly this, and still thinking very hard about it. :-)
astrange 10y ago
You sound ADHD symptomatic, it might be worth looking into that. That includes both regularly doing three things at once and occasionally focusing on inappropriate things for hours.
yourapostasy 10y ago
> I'm far more interested in math and geology... Uh, normie here, so the following question likely has an obvious answer, but it sounds like you are bored not because of a lack of interesting problems, but a lack of capability to tackle interesting problems in your preferred problem domains. To my knowledge, we don't really empirically know what the earth is composed of beneath the crust. Could there be open problems that might happily engage you in the area of determining/cataloging the math behind using say, neutrino interactions with various types of geologic matter to put in the theoretical foundations to an empirical experiment to establish what we really are standing on top of? If not neutrinos, then perhaps you could work on other ways we might be able to harness what we know of particle physics to interact with the matter beneath our feet? As beautifully weird and wonderful as the universe is, and as fractally complex as it reveals itself the more we look into it, I can't even imagine having the intellectual firepower you have and being bored. I'm constantly frustrated that I'm not smarter, and unable to absorb new material faster than I currently able; I could literally access and integrate new material like Data in Star Trek and still not be satisfied, because there simply isn't enough time to enjoy it all.

_yosefk 10y ago

I didn't mean inventions, necessarily, just a high-paying job where you can retire early, certainly programming is like that today for a brilliant and even a somewhat less than brilliant person. I'd expect that if you loathe spending time on things you aren't inherently interested in, you might be willing to suffer through a few years of that to then never have to do it again. (This is how I thought about things at age 15, at any rate, and I'm pretty sure my intelligence wasn't nearly high enough relatively to how unimpressive my people skills were.)

di4na 10y ago
Because none of the "highly intelligent" skills pays that well. This is sad but true.

Moshe_Silnorin 10y ago

Satoshi did it with some mild social engineering, a mailing list, and C.

jpt4 10y ago

Interested in mathematics and geology, so you say? Behold, I am the polypontian, and spin links 'twixt diverse nodes not my own: http://www.aleph.se/andart/archives/2014/02/torusearth.html http://www.aleph.se/andart/archives/2014/02/torusearth.html Perhaps this Anders would be interested to discuss the particular brand of paint you enjoy watching dry [0]. [0] Which if one has any fascination at all with viscous fluids or amorphous solids, one really must try sometime.

henrikschroder 10y ago
Wow, I love the randomness of coincidences like this. I got to know Anders over 20 years ago, he was clearly crazy intelligent, and great fun, because he would always go off in funny what-if scenarios. Checking his blog confirms that he's still doing exactly this, and still thinking very hard about it. :-)

astrange 10y ago

You sound ADHD symptomatic, it might be worth looking into that. That includes both regularly doing three things at once and occasionally focusing on inappropriate things for hours.

yourapostasy 10y ago

> I'm far more interested in math and geology... Uh, normie here, so the following question likely has an obvious answer, but it sounds like you are bored not because of a lack of interesting problems, but a lack of capability to tackle interesting problems in your preferred problem domains. To my knowledge, we don't really empirically know what the earth is composed of beneath the crust. Could there be open problems that might happily engage you in the area of determining/cataloging the math behind using say, neutrino interactions with various types of geologic matter to put in the theoretical foundations to an empirical experiment to establish what we really are standing on top of? If not neutrinos, then perhaps you could work on other ways we might be able to harness what we know of particle physics to interact with the matter beneath our feet? As beautifully weird and wonderful as the universe is, and as fractally complex as it reveals itself the more we look into it, I can't even imagine having the intellectual firepower you have and being bored. I'm constantly frustrated that I'm not smarter, and unable to absorb new material faster than I currently able; I could literally access and integrate new material like Data in Star Trek and still not be satisfied, because there simply isn't enough time to enjoy it all.