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> If you lock yourself in a room and do the most marvellous work but don't tell anyone, then no one will know, no one will benefit, and the work will be lost. Y

> If you lock yourself in a room and do the most marvellous work but don't tell anyone, then no one will know, no one will benefit, and the work will be lost. You may as well not have bothered. That's a questionable premise and an entitled perspective from "the world" in my opinion. If one decides that they don't really give a fuck about the "impact" of the work on the world and doing it for its own sake, the "world" has no right to push them to release/advertise for their benefit. The premise also implies all entertainment is completely useless. Devil's advocate might argue it's quite the opposite: everything else in the world exists for you to focus on joy and entertainment and not be bothered with the bullshit the world brings on to you :)

warent 6y ago
You're mixing up terms and inferring "entertainment" when that's not what's being talked about. The operative word is "work" which is used in contrast to "play"
- mehrdada 6y ago
  Well, I see that as a false dichotomy, and an important one at that. The most marvelous work the world has seen is a product of love, not a desire to maximize money or exposure. If you were doing number theory in 1500s, you were not thinking of how I would apply it to make the world a better place with secure communications. You do it for its own sake. ffs, I'm writing this comment on a website titled "Hacker News" after all, which I hope implies some audience care about the spirit of "doing something for its own inherent pleasure".
  - zck 6y ago
    If you invented number theory in the 1500s, then burned your manuscripts, the world will be no different from if you wrote ten thousand pages saying only "all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy". If you are doing something entirely for your benefit, that's fine. But people generally want someone to see the things they make, even if those things are not intended to be a billion-dollar startup.
    - mehrdada 6y ago
      I see your point, but I think the framing is important: yes, you generally want to benefit from some of the things you do, and most of your work is generally not your marvelous work. I indeed believe the best work is done when you are not constantly looking over your shoulder thinking about how to sell. The paradoxical thing about this typical simplistic Western-society benefit maximization framework is if you actually think about it in principle, to maximize benefits, you are usually better off minimizing doing the real work altogether (almost to a halt), and singularly focus on the selling whatever shit you get your hands on and focus on coordination and leveraging other people's work to capture the value, which empirically works, but is somehow crass to rewrite the article and just say so. You certainly won't hit HN first page that way.
      - notahacker 6y ago
        There are diminishing returns to selling whatever shit you can get your hands on, especially if you're actually good at solving problems. Conversely, your most marvellous work probably becomes marvellous round about the point it moves from the realm of being perfect inside your own head to actually helping someone else. Whether that happens by means of a full-throttle sales approach and a patent so you can extract every last dollar out of it or is gifted to a world not yet fully ready to appreciate it, it's a lot more marvellous if you've put the effort into sharing it, even if that bit sounds like work.
      - zck 6y ago
        I think you're going down a slippery slope. You say: > I indeed believe the best work is done when you are not constantly looking over your shoulder thinking about how to sell. I, too, believe this. But let's look at what Hamming counts as "selling", as quoted in the sidebar to the article: > You have to learn to write clearly and well so that people will read it, you must learn to give reasonably formal talks, and you also must learn to give informal talks. "Selling", to Hamming, includes being able to tell people about what you are making. Not necessarily "pay me $999/month for my SAS I created in a weekend", but even "here is how to understand my mathematical proof". It counts everything needed to communicate to others. That can be communicate why a thing you made is worth paying for, certainly. But it also includes knowing how to get your painting framed properly, so it is in a context for people to enjoy your art. I would get far more enjoyment out of almost anything I make if someone else also enjoyed it, rather than my creation being hidden in my apartment. And so it is useful to me to publicize it, to put it into the world for people to see, to even just be able to explain what it is. It is not all about the almighty dollar.
tambourine_man 6y ago
Also, Kafka, Vivian Dorothy Maier and many others did essentially that and were posthumously discovered, so you never know. You shouldn’t count on it, of course, if recognition is important to you.
apocalypstyx 6y ago
The thing I find about this quote is, barring the existence of a deity or secular equivalent, all work is, in the end, lost, everything comes down to nothing as the universe is overcome by entropy and heat death or the big crunch. As the song goes: It all returns to nothing, it all comes tumbling down. Which, of course, leads right back to the foundational existential question: free of the perceived delusion of eternity, why do anything? Or why not do everything? Or why, just, why?
- pasquinelli 6y ago
  Gotta do something
- pdimitar 6y ago
  IMO only most of the things come to nothing. A good way to deal with existential crises in my life has been to ask myself this question: "If somebody were to objectively reduce my life to several deeds only and say that those were my most important actions, which ones would they be?" This question also helps me put my energy expenditures in perspective. Is what I'm doing really important to me? So yes, probably 99% of what we'll ever do will amount to nothing. Makes it all the more crucial to focus on that important 1%.

warent 6y ago

You're mixing up terms and inferring "entertainment" when that's not what's being talked about. The operative word is "work" which is used in contrast to "play"

mehrdada 6y ago
Well, I see that as a false dichotomy, and an important one at that. The most marvelous work the world has seen is a product of love, not a desire to maximize money or exposure. If you were doing number theory in 1500s, you were not thinking of how I would apply it to make the world a better place with secure communications. You do it for its own sake. ffs, I'm writing this comment on a website titled "Hacker News" after all, which I hope implies some audience care about the spirit of "doing something for its own inherent pleasure".
- zck 6y ago
  If you invented number theory in the 1500s, then burned your manuscripts, the world will be no different from if you wrote ten thousand pages saying only "all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy". If you are doing something entirely for your benefit, that's fine. But people generally want someone to see the things they make, even if those things are not intended to be a billion-dollar startup.
  - mehrdada 6y ago
    I see your point, but I think the framing is important: yes, you generally want to benefit from some of the things you do, and most of your work is generally not your marvelous work. I indeed believe the best work is done when you are not constantly looking over your shoulder thinking about how to sell. The paradoxical thing about this typical simplistic Western-society benefit maximization framework is if you actually think about it in principle, to maximize benefits, you are usually better off minimizing doing the real work altogether (almost to a halt), and singularly focus on the selling whatever shit you get your hands on and focus on coordination and leveraging other people's work to capture the value, which empirically works, but is somehow crass to rewrite the article and just say so. You certainly won't hit HN first page that way.
    - notahacker 6y ago
      There are diminishing returns to selling whatever shit you can get your hands on, especially if you're actually good at solving problems. Conversely, your most marvellous work probably becomes marvellous round about the point it moves from the realm of being perfect inside your own head to actually helping someone else. Whether that happens by means of a full-throttle sales approach and a patent so you can extract every last dollar out of it or is gifted to a world not yet fully ready to appreciate it, it's a lot more marvellous if you've put the effort into sharing it, even if that bit sounds like work.
    - zck 6y ago
      I think you're going down a slippery slope. You say: > I indeed believe the best work is done when you are not constantly looking over your shoulder thinking about how to sell. I, too, believe this. But let's look at what Hamming counts as "selling", as quoted in the sidebar to the article: > You have to learn to write clearly and well so that people will read it, you must learn to give reasonably formal talks, and you also must learn to give informal talks. "Selling", to Hamming, includes being able to tell people about what you are making. Not necessarily "pay me $999/month for my SAS I created in a weekend", but even "here is how to understand my mathematical proof". It counts everything needed to communicate to others. That can be communicate why a thing you made is worth paying for, certainly. But it also includes knowing how to get your painting framed properly, so it is in a context for people to enjoy your art. I would get far more enjoyment out of almost anything I make if someone else also enjoyed it, rather than my creation being hidden in my apartment. And so it is useful to me to publicize it, to put it into the world for people to see, to even just be able to explain what it is. It is not all about the almighty dollar.

tambourine_man 6y ago

Also, Kafka, Vivian Dorothy Maier and many others did essentially that and were posthumously discovered, so you never know. You shouldn’t count on it, of course, if recognition is important to you.

apocalypstyx 6y ago

The thing I find about this quote is, barring the existence of a deity or secular equivalent, all work is, in the end, lost, everything comes down to nothing as the universe is overcome by entropy and heat death or the big crunch. As the song goes: It all returns to nothing, it all comes tumbling down. Which, of course, leads right back to the foundational existential question: free of the perceived delusion of eternity, why do anything? Or why not do everything? Or why, just, why?

pasquinelli 6y ago
Gotta do something
pdimitar 6y ago
IMO only most of the things come to nothing. A good way to deal with existential crises in my life has been to ask myself this question: "If somebody were to objectively reduce my life to several deeds only and say that those were my most important actions, which ones would they be?" This question also helps me put my energy expenditures in perspective. Is what I'm doing really important to me? So yes, probably 99% of what we'll ever do will amount to nothing. Makes it all the more crucial to focus on that important 1%.