4 ms·
Lots of great ideas here -- but in keeping with all top-vintage Paul Graham essays, he takes his best points to about 130% of their validity. So I'd like to we
by GCA10 6y ago
Lots of great ideas here -- but in keeping with all top-vintage Paul Graham essays, he takes his best points to about 130% of their validity.
So I'd like to weigh in on this assertion: "To be a successful scientist, for example, it's not enough just to be right. You have to be right when everyone else is wrong."
Not so. To be a successful scientist, you need to be orderly, fast and well-connected in finding all the rest of the Next Rights, once a few of your peers (or you) have opened up a whole new river of truth by finding the first right. (See James Watson, Ernest Lawrence, etc.)
You can see this in the evolution of practically every exciting field, whether it's subatomic physics, molecular biology, paleontology, etc.
This dynamic requires a fifth state in Graham's admirably simple 2x2 grid. We need to recognize people that can be defiant non-conformists when the moment presents itself -- and then work within the system to make the most of their second and third-order insights as the world embraces their big idea.
The concept of the brilliant, isolated, irritable genius is a mainstay of a certain kind of movie or novel. But in real life, the most effective disrupters are just as good at forming large teams that lead the charge toward the next right (once they've found their breakthrough idea) as in coming up with that breathtakingly strange new idea in the first place.
- reginaldo 6y agoI also stopped on the assertion about the successful scientist, but instead of outright disagreeing, I took it to mean that the definition of successful scientists for pg includes mostly the starters of new paradigms, regardless of the ideas being accepted during their lifetimes or not.
- vikramkr 6y agoI'm unsure about your example of James Watson as a successful scientist. He was successful, yes, and was a scientist. But I don't think he was successful as a scientist. Rosalind Franklin made the key scientific insights crucial to figuring out DNA's structure. She wasn't even actually the person that took Photo 51, that was her student. She was, however, the one who presented her insights that the phosphate backbone is on the outside of the molecule, one of the most crucial insights to figuring out how DNA works since prior to that watson crick et al thought the backbone was on the inside. That goes beyond just "contributing" the photo, that's actually generating the scientific insights that unlocked the structure of the molecule before being derided as an assistant incapable of understanding her own data by watson and then dying without a nobel. In light of that, I don't see how watson can get credit as a successful scientist. Crick went on to make other contributions such as codifying the central dogma, watson not so much.
- logicslave 6y agoBy successful scientist he means someone who changes a scientific paradigm, creates a new field, or really pushes the field forwards. Incremental discoveries are not under this umbrella
- clairity 6y ago> "This dynamic requires a fifth state in Graham's admirably simple 2x2 grid. We need to recognize people that can be defiant non-conformists when the moment presents itself..." to be aggressively non-conformist, that's the critical mistake pg makes: we're dynamic, complicated creatures embedded in an infinitely complex system. who we are in a given moment is not who we are at another moment. to define ourselves as "being" one type or the other is a gross error of static categorization. we're each of them at different moments in our lives, frittering among them, and beyond them, constantly. put succinctly: fuck labels. that's not to say the conceptual framework isn't useful, but his static application of it is in error.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]