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His advice isn’t for how to get rich in crypto, it’s for how to succeed in academic mathematics. I can’t imagine that anyone has ever “lucked” their way into th

His advice isn’t for how to get rich in crypto, it’s for how to succeed in academic mathematics. I can’t imagine that anyone has ever “lucked” their way into that.

giantg2 5y ago
It's not luck alone. You can still work hard in math and fail. Didn't get the grant you needed - tough luck. Want tenure? Better be ready to play politics. Etc
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
paulpauper 5y ago
same principle applies. a lot of people vying for something in which few can succeed
sdenton4 5y ago
Hard work is necessary but not sufficient. Picking the right problems to work on is also necessary, and difficult to get right. Worming in on a hard unsolved problem that is eventually incredibly important is the scientific equivalent of winning the lottery, and we know lots of examples of this. Recently, mRNA vaccines, neural networks, and the twin primes conjecture come to mind. But there are doubtless many, many other examples of people working on a possibly-fundamental problem which never actually break through, and we never hear about it. But I would argue it's still worth making a concerted effort to identify good problems to solve, and specifically thinking about what makes a good 'hard problem.' It's much easier to make progress in an under-studied area, simply because the low hanging fruit haven't been eaten yet. The danger, of course, is that understudied things may be understudied for a reason: they're not actually relevant to anything else, or there's some secret impediment and many others have already failed. By contrast, cracking away at ridiculous subproblems from the last generation of academics is almost always a dead end, imo; you're competing with people who already know the field extremely well, the low hanging fruit has been picked, and the obvious roads to relevance have probably already been well-explored. Unsolved problems in a long-standing discipline are often unsolved because the right tools are missing or it's impossible within the existing paradigm... Or the problem is just irrelevant, relative to the amount of effort needed to solve it. ramble ramble ramble
didibus 5y ago
Nowadays people extend luck to include: - Your genetics - Your intrinsic abilities - Your intrinsic tastes - Your parents - The teachers you had - The time you were born in - The environment you were born in - Etc. So for example for mathematics you'd assume you need some predisposed genetics, you need some good education towards it, access to books and material, you need to be someone who loves doing math, you need to be in a position to have the time to dedicate to math (so access to food, shelter, etc.) Since all these things are out of your control, the question becomes, what if you bad lucked in all of them, can you still, through sheer hard work, make a valuable contributions to the field of mathematics (and not by luck of hitting your head, or stumbling randomly on a key fact), but simply from your constant effort towards it? But I'd say I think the author presupposes you've been mostly lucky already, and is talking about how to go beyond that luck, and achieve even more gains with what you do have control over.
- spoonjim 5y ago
  Well if you take that all as “luck” then certainly your predisposition to hard work is also “luck,” at which point you’ve denied free will, which might actually be true but isn’t very actionable.
  - didibus 5y ago
    What if looking for actionable things related to working harder is a useless waste of time? It might be better then to look into medical, genetic and environmental aspects, and focus on that instead of trying to find tricks to work harder. For example, trying to change your environment might help more than busting your a$$. Can you move to a place with better access to education, books, or people with expertise? Can you find places that support some of your needs that enable you to focus on taking a course or other? Can you find programs that can fast track you into a new discipline that's paid for? Etc. Another example is that if genetics plays a big role, than working hard is counterproductive, instead you'd want to find something that plays to your genetic, whatever that is. Find something that is easy to you, and focus on doing that. Don't waste time trying something you find really hard that you don't have the genetics for. Now the medical aspects I would say is more in terms of where we invest, instead of paying for self-help pseudo science books and talks. Should we invest in ways to medically address deficiencies in motivation, intelligence, judgement, perception, sleep, etc. This might be a long shot, but I think better understanding the role of genetic, the brain, and all that with regards to accomplishment will help us find actual mechanism that might really work, unlike "hard work". Personally, I tell people to focus on "easy work". Forget hard work, your goal is to make it so the work you do is as easy as possible. You can achieve that by finding something you have a natural aptitude for, or for which you have the right environment to succeed at. Focus on choosing the right people and place to surround yourself in for whatever the work is you are trying to do. Focus on something that motivates you, and feeds into your reward mechanisms. Finally, don't consider yourself a failure if you fail, because if you think hard work has nothing to do with it, its just bad luck, so don't be too hard on yourself ;)

His advice isn’t for how to get rich in crypto, it’s for how to succeed in academic mathematics. I can’t imagine that anyone has ever “lucked” their way into that.

giantg2 5y ago

It's not luck alone. You can still work hard in math and fail. Didn't get the grant you needed - tough luck. Want tenure? Better be ready to play politics. Etc

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

paulpauper 5y ago

same principle applies. a lot of people vying for something in which few can succeed

sdenton4 5y ago

Hard work is necessary but not sufficient. Picking the right problems to work on is also necessary, and difficult to get right. Worming in on a hard unsolved problem that is eventually incredibly important is the scientific equivalent of winning the lottery, and we know lots of examples of this. Recently, mRNA vaccines, neural networks, and the twin primes conjecture come to mind. But there are doubtless many, many other examples of people working on a possibly-fundamental problem which never actually break through, and we never hear about it. But I would argue it's still worth making a concerted effort to identify good problems to solve, and specifically thinking about what makes a good 'hard problem.' It's much easier to make progress in an under-studied area, simply because the low hanging fruit haven't been eaten yet. The danger, of course, is that understudied things may be understudied for a reason: they're not actually relevant to anything else, or there's some secret impediment and many others have already failed. By contrast, cracking away at ridiculous subproblems from the last generation of academics is almost always a dead end, imo; you're competing with people who already know the field extremely well, the low hanging fruit has been picked, and the obvious roads to relevance have probably already been well-explored. Unsolved problems in a long-standing discipline are often unsolved because the right tools are missing or it's impossible within the existing paradigm... Or the problem is just irrelevant, relative to the amount of effort needed to solve it. ramble ramble ramble

didibus 5y ago

Nowadays people extend luck to include: - Your genetics - Your intrinsic abilities - Your intrinsic tastes - Your parents - The teachers you had - The time you were born in - The environment you were born in - Etc. So for example for mathematics you'd assume you need some predisposed genetics, you need some good education towards it, access to books and material, you need to be someone who loves doing math, you need to be in a position to have the time to dedicate to math (so access to food, shelter, etc.) Since all these things are out of your control, the question becomes, what if you bad lucked in all of them, can you still, through sheer hard work, make a valuable contributions to the field of mathematics (and not by luck of hitting your head, or stumbling randomly on a key fact), but simply from your constant effort towards it? But I'd say I think the author presupposes you've been mostly lucky already, and is talking about how to go beyond that luck, and achieve even more gains with what you do have control over.

spoonjim 5y ago
Well if you take that all as “luck” then certainly your predisposition to hard work is also “luck,” at which point you’ve denied free will, which might actually be true but isn’t very actionable.
- didibus 5y ago
  What if looking for actionable things related to working harder is a useless waste of time? It might be better then to look into medical, genetic and environmental aspects, and focus on that instead of trying to find tricks to work harder. For example, trying to change your environment might help more than busting your a$$. Can you move to a place with better access to education, books, or people with expertise? Can you find places that support some of your needs that enable you to focus on taking a course or other? Can you find programs that can fast track you into a new discipline that's paid for? Etc. Another example is that if genetics plays a big role, than working hard is counterproductive, instead you'd want to find something that plays to your genetic, whatever that is. Find something that is easy to you, and focus on doing that. Don't waste time trying something you find really hard that you don't have the genetics for. Now the medical aspects I would say is more in terms of where we invest, instead of paying for self-help pseudo science books and talks. Should we invest in ways to medically address deficiencies in motivation, intelligence, judgement, perception, sleep, etc. This might be a long shot, but I think better understanding the role of genetic, the brain, and all that with regards to accomplishment will help us find actual mechanism that might really work, unlike "hard work". Personally, I tell people to focus on "easy work". Forget hard work, your goal is to make it so the work you do is as easy as possible. You can achieve that by finding something you have a natural aptitude for, or for which you have the right environment to succeed at. Focus on choosing the right people and place to surround yourself in for whatever the work is you are trying to do. Focus on something that motivates you, and feeds into your reward mechanisms. Finally, don't consider yourself a failure if you fail, because if you think hard work has nothing to do with it, its just bad luck, so don't be too hard on yourself ;)