5 ms·
Not being stupid
I read this quote at http://robotics.caltech.edu/~mason/quotes.html
'"I used to have a boss named Rock. Rock had earned a degree in astrophysics from Cal Tech [sic] and had never had a job where he used his knowledge of the heavens. Once I asked him if he regretted getting his degree. "My absurd degree in astrophysics has proved to be very valuable," he said, "Some things in this world are just hard. When I am struggling with something, I sometimes think 'Damn, this is hard. I wonder if I am stupid,' and then I remember that I have a degree in astrophysics from Cal Tech; I must not be stupid."'
I wish I'd heard that 10 years back!
- Hates_ 18y agoWhen I am struggling with something, I sometimes think 'Damn, this is hard. I wonder if I am stupid,' and then I remember that I don't have a degree in astrophysics from Cal Tech; I must be stupid.
- stcredzero 18y agoWhen I am struggling with something, I sometimes think 'Damn, this is hard. I wonder if I am stupid,' and then I remember that I have a counterfeit degree in astrophysics from Cal Tech; I might be stupid, but I can still fool others.
- hugh 18y agoWhen I am struggling with something, I sometimes think "Damn, this is hard. I wonder if I am stupid". And then I remember I have a PhD in solid-state theoretical physics, and I think "Man, I used to be smart -- how did I manage to become so stupid since then?"
- alaskamiller 18y agoWhen I am struggling with something, I just give up.
- compay 18y ago"If something's hard to do then it's not worth doing." - H. Simpson
- paraschopra 18y ago"And if something is not hard to do, why try at all." - Paras Chopra
- hhm 18y agoFrom the same page (unrelated comment): "Not long ago, we came up with an interesting set of facts: A billion hours ago, human life appeared on Earth. A billion minutes ago, Christianity emerged. A billion seconds ago, the Beatles changed music forever. A billion Coca-Colas ago was yesterday morning." Goizueta knew his marketing stuff (wasn't he one of the biggest Coca-Cola's presidents?).
- rw 18y agoCoca-Cola is also one of the finest examples of the "Be Evil, Don't Care" philosophy. And it could work for you, too, if you're willing to sell your conscience.
- ovi256 18y agoConscience? I don't think I ever had that. Damn, I could have sold it if I had though. (Spoken with a go-getter CEO voice)
- stcredzero 18y agoCan you have a mortgage for one?
- antiismist 18y agoCan you explain why Coca Cola is evil? They make things that people want (I know I do) at a very reasonable price.
- rw 18y agoAnti-union violence in Latin America.
- antiismist 18y agoIs it fair to say that you think coca cola is evil because they do business with corrupt latin america bottlers? That's cool if that is your belief, but where do you draw the line? Coca Cola is evil because they do business with evil people. Yahoo is evil because they accept advertising from Coca Cola. Companies that get acquired by Yahoo are evil because a part of the $$ they get is blood money?
- boucher 18y agoThe quote comes from Aaron Hillegass's book, "Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X", which is a great read for anyone wanting to learn Cocoa.
- deleted 18y ago[deleted]
- abcde 18y agoUm, spending a couple of years just to get self-confidence is a pretty stupid deal.
- iron_ball 18y agoA lot of people never get any their entire lives. Sure, there are other ways of doing it, maybe cheaper or easier ones -- but nearly any price is worth paying.
- stcredzero 18y agoHow about Tequila? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0rMkt3uB9c http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0rMkt3uB9c
- mhartl 18y agoA couple of years? You obviously know nothing about getting a Ph.D. It takes at least six years to gain that much self-confidence!
- weegee 18y agopeople who have degrees aren't stupid or smart, they are people who have degrees. a degree is a piece of paper. it means you did stuff and someone thought you did it well enough for them so they handed you the piece of paper. in the grand scheme of things, it's just a piece of paper. get over it, you're not smart or stupid because of the piece of paper, it's just a piece of paper! and so on.
- helveticaman 18y agoSlow down. Caltech has a lot of intellectual self-respect. Getting into Caltech is hard. Getting out of Caltech is also hard. You need brains. Lots of cc of brains. "It's just a piece of paper."? Uh-uh. Not from Caltech. It's as much a piece of paper as a cat-scan result that says your brain is big, or a check for a million dollars. In this case, the words on the piece of paper mean something.
- jcromartie 18y agoThe degree isn't the point. The point is that he accomplished something. You could substitute a lot of other things for your own personal version of the story.
- vecter 18y agoThere's a minimum bar for getting into Caltech, and an even higher minimum bar for graduating from there. We're talking about lower bounds here. Saying "a degree is a piece of paper" entirely misses the point.
- apstuff 18y agoIt's stupid not to work on hard problems. Worse, it's lazy.
- webandnet 18y agoI won a statewide competition in chemistry in high school, went to Caltech as an undergraduate, and it was hard. Transferred to another top-rated school, which wasn't nearly as hard. To get a Caltech degree does require being smart, and being dedicated.
- webandnet 18y agoAdditional-- even the worst Caltech undergrads were reasonably smart and dedicated. My recollection is Caltech had a 33% non-matriculation rate--extremely high for a top-select school
- whacked_new 18y agoHas anyone ever seen a truly smart person struggle? I for one have never. They must either hide it very well, or never really hit those roadblocks that make people think themselves, and not the roadblocks, are the problem. What is it?
- tjr 18y agoI once was put on a project with a very senior engineer. He had many more years of general experience than I, but we were both new to the project. I tended to sit around feeling stupid, making feeble attempts to be productive. He, on the other hand, knew how to ask the right questions of the right people and get the information he needed to proceed. He was just as clueless as me on the project, but the difference was he knew how to quickly and easily move from being clueless to being knowledgable.
- nostrademons 18y agoAbsolutely. Some have even asked me for help. The difference is in how they ask for help. Folks that are usually thought of as stupid either get flustered and say "I can't do this", or they don't ask for help at all and hope nobody will notice. While the ones we think of as "truly smart" have confidence that they'll get it eventually, they're just missing some crucial piece of information. I suspect this holds true of original research as well, but this is usually done in private, and so nobody sees the smart people struggle.
- whacked_new 18y agoI still find this quite hard to grasp. If it's declarative (book) knowledge, then it makes sense to ask immediately. Does that count as struggling? If it is insight though, for even those armed with all the crucial facts, they may still be unable to make certain connections and mental leaps. I guess this is the kind of struggle I'm talking about. Given the same data, two researchers can come up with interpretations of different strength and quality. Across all the brilliant people I have met before, whenever this happens I can only ask "how the hell?" And they would say something like, "oh, it's just this and that." "It is different with the magicians. Even after we understand what they have done it is completely dark." -- Kac on Feynman. Is there a similarity? I have to wonder what caused Rock to struggle...
- wallflower 18y agoIn certain aspects of life, intelligence can be a liability. Smart people can tend to focus on analyzing a problem and what can go wrong/what went wrong while less smart people have virtual blinders and just act rather than think about acting.
- qqq 18y agoIt's pretty stupid to think the accuracy rate of the degree is 100%. Or that the only way to get that degree is by being smart.
- mhartl 18y agoMan, I hear that. I also have a Ph.D. in astrophysics from Caltech (proof: http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechETD:etd-05222003-161626 http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechETD:etd-05222003-161626). I feel stupid all the time, but then, like Rock, I think "How stupid can I really be?" N.B. I meet retreaded physicists all the time in tech. Case in point: last week I met the CTO of Aptana, who wrote a particle physics thesis at Harvard with Shelly Glashow.