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I enjoyed the article, but I think the author learned the wrong lesson from his friend's success story. Csongor says: > Then learning the answer revealed that
by wsxcde 7y ago
I enjoyed the article, but I think the author learned the wrong lesson from his friend's success story. Csongor says:
> Then learning the answer revealed that it's actually something that can be fixed --- as is always the case with these things if you think about them enough.
The author focuses on the consequent, thinking long and hard about something, but misses the antecedent, acquiring a deep understanding of a problem area.
I'd say the antecedent is as important as the consequent, if not more important. If you went to grad school you likely knew tons of brilliant people who worked long and hard on important and difficult problems and got nowhere. What they were missing was not some secret effortsauce, but that they picked a problem on which they didn't have an opening or insight into, so all their hard work was them spinning their wheels while standing still.
One thing I tell my students now is that they should always pick problems where they have something everybody else working in the same area doesn't. Like if you want to do formal verification but your background is years spent in industry as a kernel developer, you should avoid the temptation to chase the latest fad (e.g., adversarial machine learning or Spectre/Meltdown), and instead pick a poorly understood and validated module in the kernel and try to find out what you can do to make that module more secure.
- zwkrt 7y agoLots of people have one skill, few people have two, and only a tiny fraction ever put multiple skills to use at once.
- jkuria 7y agoSo true. This is also the 'Dilbert Theory of Value Creation' that I have used to great profit. Scott Adams likes to say, he is not the funniest guy around but funnier than most people. At best, he'd be a mediocre comedian. He can also draw better than most but hardly a Picasso. And yet, by combining both skills he has something "rare and valuable" that has led to enormous financial success. He also adds that it easier to do this (combining two or more skills) than it is to be the very best at one thing e.g. an NBA player--it is actually easier, statistically, to become a billionaire than it is to become an NBA player. There are more than 2,000 billionaires worldwide but only about 480 NBA players (32 teams with roughly 15 people on the roster). And if you think about it, becoming a billionaire usually involves multiple skills (good at programming + business, bill gates. Good at research/analysis + cultivating a rare temperament that allows you to act on the insights produced by the research even when everyone around you is losing their shirt, Warren Buffett etc, etc). Being an NBA player requires one skill at a minimum. Being tall!
- wolco 7y agoThe path to billionare is unique and can't be copied and involves luck and usually some business skills and almost always communication skills or skills to get others to do work for you. Being an nba player involves luck and hard work and a high spacial iq. Anyone could become a billiarie with luck (powerball lottery in one extreme). Only 100,000 people in the world would even have a chance to compete to be an nba player.
- xodast 7y agoYou do realize there are 6 foot NBA players right. Hardly 100000 in the world. So if you're gonna go to the power ball extreme on one end then you must extend the analogy just as far on the other side of the argument. Most billionaires were born in top 0.01 percentile of their respective population pool. And had to be lucky and smart amongst other traits.
- pbourke 7y agoDo you think that the population of potential NBA players is determined solely by height?
- smnplk 7y ago>> Being an NBA player requires one skill at a minimum. Being tall! Muggsy would disagree ;)
- sn9 7y agoThe billionaire vs NBA comparison would make more sense if the number of billionaires allowed to exist was a fixed number.
- TheTrotters 7y ago> There are more than 2,000 billionaires worldwide but only about 480 NBA players (32 teams with roughly 15 people on the roster). And if you think about it, becoming a billionaire usually involves multiple skills (good at programming + business, bill gates. Good at research/analysis + cultivating a rare temperament that allows you to act on the insights produced by the research even when everyone around you is losing their shirt, Warren Buffett etc, etc). That's not really true. Once you are billionaire you can stay a billionaire for decades. Meanwhile most NBA players don't have long careers, many stay in the league only for a few years. I'd expect that over 10-20 years there have been more NBA players than billionaires.