I wonder how many of us slow thinkers are of the same calibre as Darwin but never achieve anything because life doesn't afford them the leisure to doggedly pursue their thoughts. In my case I think I only share Darwin's disadvantages but perhaps there are others out there who could have the same impact as he did if only the circumstances were right.
>I wonder how many of us slow thinkers are of the same calibre as Darwin but never achieve anything because life doesn't afford them the leisure to doggedly pursue their thoughts.
Very very few. Aside from the fact that if one's determined, they can do it (life doesn't allow or disallow anything -- no one is required to have a nice car or a fancy house or whatever, lots of people make sacrifices for their work), there are also tons of leisurely rich people that are slow thinkers, that have nonetheless contributed remotely comparable of Darwin...
Life does give you the chance to doggedly pursue your thoughts; you just have to devote yourself to it. I personally live this way, freelancing about 3 months a year and spending the rest of it on whatever interests me.
I think you're underselling your talent if you think the capability to live off 3 months / year of work is generally available to people. Most people just aren't good enough at anything to work that little and get by, no matter how hard they try.
I’m not underselling my talent - that’s how i can afford it. But I also know that it isn’t that special, so I basically think other people are underselling themselves, or unwilling to take the risk.
After 10 years of working as an average programmer for average companies, lots of big clients or governments will consider you for "temporary" roles, which pay very well but give no security. Maybe it takes 100 applications and interacting with recruiters but the opportunity is there.
That's kind of what the 'dogged pursuit' is supposed to answer. Sheer persistence counts for more than talent, always has. Not being convenient doesn't make the option unavailable.
I strongly disagree with this based on personal experience. I regularly met people I was smarter than in medical school who _consistently_ out performed me. And the reason was simple: They were _extremely_ diligent, hard-working, motivated, and professional. Among other valuable lessons I learned that people vastly overestimate the role of intelligence in just about every aspect of life. It can give you sorts of advantages in life, but the majority of success is still chalked up to grit, persistence, motivation -- and the knowledge that results from it.
> You wouldn't want your heart,brain,etc operation to be in the hands of someone who isn't that talented but keeps on trying.
I dunno... I can't imagine any of the surgeons or doctors I've seen have been top of their class, at the #1 school in the country. Probably not even top 10. I've probably seen a lot of just average doctors, who probably did an average job at school, and now are pretty average as far as pure talent goes. But I'm still alive, so I guess it's not that bad.
I was arguing from the perspective of somebody trying to get something they want, the individual perspective, but it seems like you are considering the social utility one. While I can facially agree that there can be some arenas in which persistence can cause concern, I don't understand where your strong disagreement comes from.
And personally, I want my heart operated on by the guy that's done hundreds of heart operations, preferably my exact procedure. I want Dr. House to diagnose me, and Todd from Scrubs to actually do the operation. Dr. House's brilliant diagnosis doesn't actually affect my body, the potential problems that genius presents only guide what more sane, stable, dispassionate professional hands actually do to me. Stable dispassion is the realm of persistence.
I see your side more clearly now. You are correct that I was thinking more along the social unity side. Not sure I'd say I agree completely with you, but I see where I was mistaken before.
On the individual note, is it that persistence wins, or that the win is felt with the inevitable mental compromise taken in order to feel one has succeeded? I do see that it's better to try and fail than never try at all, just feel it's 'elitist' to think that persistence wins, as only the wealthy can really persevere. In my mind anyway.
When you look at how wealth is built, perseverance approaches (hard work) usually win out over attempts to avoid hustling. The idea is to build a vehicle, like a company, that can then continue to generate income without direct application of effort. This vehicle can only be built through hard and smart work. The startup community also likes to focus their efforts on ideas that can scale to more broadly socially-useful ideas.
What wealth buys you is the ability to employ someone else to do the grunt work. But to get there the grunt work needs to get done.
Most wealthy people worked their asses off to get there. Persistence wins again.
It's sad, but this is a fact that so many people discount. It's much easier to think in terms of "the rich asshole" who got all his money from Daddy and didn't have to lift a finger.
Very probable I think. Just keep in mind, the same was true back in his day I think. Most people were tied up in the drudgery of getting food on the table, quite literally.
Even if there's plenty of deep thinkers (which is what slow thinking is in my opinion) - there should always be some people with good fortune and circumstances to push at the peripheral. I honestly do not see that today in Silicon Valley - I see a lot of useless bullshit and superficial replacements, there's only a handful of people out there keeping it together.
However... poverty of Time is not likely to be the main constraint unless you live in the Middle Ages. Many intellectuals have taken jobs which enable them to kill two birds, merely being physically active and forced to be active by a job that requires it is a genuine cognitive advantage - not to mention the infinite distractions that can smear your available leisure time such that you produce nothing of value. Most aristocrats did not belong to the Royal Society.
No - the real problem is that we're too synchronized. We think alike - we have a 'frame problem' of our own.
Being here on HN or on the Internet in general is not an advantage. It at first appears to be valuable in the sense that you understand what exists and who is doing what, the context. That is I suspect the opposite of what we need for true innovation.
For true innovation you need to connect up with 'the network' once or twice a year - and the rest of the time fuck off and do something good (ideally with a small close knit group).
“[..]Although personally, I think cyberspace means the end of our species."
Yes? Why is that?"
Because it means the end of innovation," Malcolm said. "This idea that the whole world is wired together is mass death. Every biologist knows that small groups in isolation evolve fastest. You put a thousand birds on an ocean island and they'll evolve very fast. You put ten thousand on a big continent, and their evolution slows down. Now, for our own species, evolution occurs mostly through our behaviour. We innovate new behaviour to adapt. And everybody on earth knows that innovation only occurs in small groups. Put three people on a committee and they may get something done. Ten people, and it gets harder. Thirty people, and nothing happens. Thirty million, it becomes impossible. That's the effect of mass media - it keeps anything from happening. Mass media swamps diversity. It makes every place the same. Bangkok or Tokyo or London: there's a McDonald's on one corner, a Benetton on another, a Gap across the street. Regional differences vanish. All differences vanish. In a mass-media world, there's less of everything except the top ten books, records, movies, ideas. People worry about losing species diversity in the rain forest. But what about intellectual diversity - our most necessary resource? That's disappearing faster than trees. But we haven't figured that out, so now we're planning to put five billion people together in cyberspace. And it'll freeze the entire species. Everything will stop dead in its tracks. Everyone will think the same thing at the same time. Global uniformity. [..]”
― Michael Crichton, The Lost World
Silicon Valley is suffering by being too middle class - the hubris is coming out of the groupthink. I think it takes a peculiar mixture of working class and middle class thinking to do something really good. I don't think that's a new insight, it's in the plot of the 1927 Metropolis but sometimes a cliché is really true. The people I've met at HackerSpaces, the people who impressed me were always adept at dealing with a lot of information - a middle class trait, but had a deep blue streak in their character that is completely absent from the people I went to University with. Matthias Wandel and Bill Gray are examples I think.
