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10:30am Wakeup and lie awake in Bed 10:31 Realize that you went to grad school because you're intellectually curious, not because you want to incrementally

by tsally 18y ago

10:30am Wakeup and lie awake in Bed 10:31 Realize that you went to grad school because you're intellectually curious, not because you want to incrementally increase Man's knowledge. 10:35 Web drop yourself from all your courses and buy a plane ticket to the Valley to start a startup.

asciilifeform 18y ago
Intellectual curiosity and startups? Derisive laughter.
- tsally 18y ago
  My implication was going to grad school for the wrong reasons. It wasn't about intellectual curiosity having anything to do with startups. But as long as we're on the subject, your understanding of intellectual curiosity as it relates to startups is flawed. It's a better essential element of a great hacker, and great hackers are essential elements of successful startups.
ao 18y ago
tsally, I'm don't see how 10:31 and 10:35 correlate. Starting a business has very little to do with being intellectually curious. Relevance, added value, business savvy, determination, good idea plus excellent execution, etc... all apply to starting a business. Intellectual curiosity in a startup, hm... certainly makes for a better office environment, but necessary for success? You can live an intellectually curious life anywhere with a decent library and enough time to pursue it. It helps, but isn't necessary, to have others around who are pursuing it too. It's why almost all the early scientists were from families of rich people. They had the free time to pursue their curiosity. If a grad school is willing to pay you to have the free time to do that, it's a good place for it. It's what you make of it (as others have said). Now, on Vally startups. Very little software today will change the world; in fact, most is just incremental improvements, and all will fall by the wayside. We have no idea what the internet/computers will be like in the future, but I guarantee you it won't have a trace of web 2.0 left (except for the designers who then decide to go "web 2.0 retro"). The great thing about being intellectually curious is being able to look toward the future and bring something from there to the present. My prediction? HTML, CSS, Django etc... are temporary placeholders for what the web will be. Things like neural computation, quantum computing, etc... will be game changers. Such things will first find a niche application, but then someone will bring them to the broader world and it will change.
deleted 18y ago
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by tsally 18y ago

asciilifeform 18y ago

Intellectual curiosity and startups? Derisive laughter.

tsally 18y ago
My implication was going to grad school for the wrong reasons. It wasn't about intellectual curiosity having anything to do with startups. But as long as we're on the subject, your understanding of intellectual curiosity as it relates to startups is flawed. It's a better essential element of a great hacker, and great hackers are essential elements of successful startups.

ao 18y ago

tsally, I'm don't see how 10:31 and 10:35 correlate. Starting a business has very little to do with being intellectually curious. Relevance, added value, business savvy, determination, good idea plus excellent execution, etc... all apply to starting a business. Intellectual curiosity in a startup, hm... certainly makes for a better office environment, but necessary for success? You can live an intellectually curious life anywhere with a decent library and enough time to pursue it. It helps, but isn't necessary, to have others around who are pursuing it too. It's why almost all the early scientists were from families of rich people. They had the free time to pursue their curiosity. If a grad school is willing to pay you to have the free time to do that, it's a good place for it. It's what you make of it (as others have said). Now, on Vally startups. Very little software today will change the world; in fact, most is just incremental improvements, and all will fall by the wayside. We have no idea what the internet/computers will be like in the future, but I guarantee you it won't have a trace of web 2.0 left (except for the designers who then decide to go "web 2.0 retro"). The great thing about being intellectually curious is being able to look toward the future and bring something from there to the present. My prediction? HTML, CSS, Django etc... are temporary placeholders for what the web will be. Things like neural computation, quantum computing, etc... will be game changers. Such things will first find a niche application, but then someone will bring them to the broader world and it will change.

deleted 18y ago

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