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I like the thesis, but peeling the onion back, there's an implicit assumption that one is always optimizing for world-changing impact. Looking back at Newton a

I like the thesis, but peeling the onion back, there's an implicit assumption that one is always optimizing for world-changing impact. Looking back at Newton and sorting his work into useful/worthless buckets after a few hundred years tells us nothing about how he actually valued these pursuits, and what motivated him at the time. As silicon valley culture goes mainstream, salaries at big tech soar, and increasing numbers of young people buy into the value of creating "impact", the irony is that it pushes more young talent towards local maxima instead of truly novel pursuits that might could lead to world-changing innovation. IMHO the only way out of this conundrum is actually to be okay with not making world-changing innovation and directly embrace the creative process of ones pursuits.

knzhou 7y ago
I thought the point of the essay is that the obsessed will be obsessed, with possibly great results, regardless of whatever the lucrative career path of the moment is. It's not about anybody "optimizing" anything.
- eVoLInTHRo 7y ago
  The first half of the essay aligns with your takeaway. But the second half does start to delve into how to identify useful obsessions, starting with "But there are some heuristics you can use to guess whether an obsession might be one that matters." Which sounds like an optimization, and which seems at least somewhat at odds with a major starting premise that you mentioned ("They're not doing it to impress us or to make themselves rich, but for its own sake."). I agree with OP, the thesis makes sense assuming the primary goal of one's life is discovering world-changing ideas (what he's calling "genius"). That's understandable from a VC perspective since that's basically what VCs do. But most of us here aren't VCs, and while idea discovery is a great goal to have even if you're not a VC, it doesn't have to be the primary one.

knzhou 7y ago

I thought the point of the essay is that the obsessed will be obsessed, with possibly great results, regardless of whatever the lucrative career path of the moment is. It's not about anybody "optimizing" anything.

eVoLInTHRo 7y ago
The first half of the essay aligns with your takeaway. But the second half does start to delve into how to identify useful obsessions, starting with "But there are some heuristics you can use to guess whether an obsession might be one that matters." Which sounds like an optimization, and which seems at least somewhat at odds with a major starting premise that you mentioned ("They're not doing it to impress us or to make themselves rich, but for its own sake."). I agree with OP, the thesis makes sense assuming the primary goal of one's life is discovering world-changing ideas (what he's calling "genius"). That's understandable from a VC perspective since that's basically what VCs do. But most of us here aren't VCs, and while idea discovery is a great goal to have even if you're not a VC, it doesn't have to be the primary one.