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Comment by j_m_b | Hacker News Reader

I went to grad school and published several peer-reviewed articles. Even after I die, people will be able to search my name and retrieve work that I did. To me, that is priceless.

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I feel almost exactly the opposite about the work I published- I don't want anyone to look it up and ask me about it, ever, because I'll be forced to admit that I was writing about things I had no knowledge of by a guy who wanted to be able to list as many publications as possible on his academic website. The work I did had basically no relation to the industry it was for, which is the industry I now work in.

I got the job I'm in because of the work I did, but mostly because the people I work for now are even less technical than my academic adviser was, and were impressed by the people he knew and how long his list of publications was.

Apply this 10x for the patents my name is on.

For clarification, I quit two years into a PhD program and have been working in the industry for the last four years.

...which is exactly his point. People will do things that are objectively not in their best interest (become scientists, poets, or French poetry critics) because we've been strongly inculcated in that whole "do what you love" "everything is worth it as long as [you touch someone with your art] [your science is remembered after you die] [insert reason here]" philosophy. Which means those fields get a free pass to treat their members horribly, and people will still gravitate towards them in huge numbers, because "do what you love" is so strongly ingrained in us.

A perfect example is that game dev crunch article that was going around a few days ago: if you're complaining about 80 hour work weeks you don't really love what you're doing!

That's only about a third of the point, it's also criticizing not being aware of the flip side "But that too is our culture: everyone else’s dream is a delusion. Mine is a tale of noble perseverance. Everybody else should be practical." And then the author goes on to mention how extending the same generosity we give ourself with regards to pursuing higher purposes would probably be helpful in the long run.

How are you defining "objective" in relation to someone's inherently subjective utility function? That makes no sense.

I understand the rest of your point, but the underlying assumption is very wrong.

I agree it's an unfortunate word choice, but I couldn't think of a better way to word it without making the post significantly longer and I assumed most people would understand what I meant. If you have a better way to phrase it, I'd love to hear it- I don't say that sarcastically.

The alternative being to do something you don't love?

Well yes, and get treated decently for it.

A little slice of intellectual immortality? People have fought and died for less.

>>>> To me, that is priceless.

Honest request: Could you elaborate this idea a bit ? I find it very intriguing; investing so much time of your limited time on earth so that random people will be able to find your name and read your work.

I have restricted the impact I want to leave to my very close circle (especially my kids), and not in tangible things, but in how they behave, think and act.

It might be not very true for papers that almost nobody is going to cite ever again, but the idea in general is to have "some kind of impact" that outlives you.

Having kids fulfills the same, but does not "scale" very well (for lack of a better word), since you can only have so many, parenting is hard and you might screw it up irreversibly. Creating something novel and useful (even if only marginally so) has the potential to touch countless lives, even after yours is over.

It could be art, or software, or an algorithm, or a formula...

>Having kids fulfills the same, but does not "scale" very well (for lack of a better word), since you can only have so many.

Unless you are Geghis Khan. ;)

And yet, that is not what he is remembered for, which is my point.

It's the nearest thing to immortality that a human will achieve. It's the moral of one of the oldest written stories (Gilgamesh). Immortality (true immortality) is impossible to achieve. Better to achieve great things and be remembered for them, immortal in the minds of the many generations that follow.

>>> Gilgamesh

Great pointer. thanks.

Nothing wrong with what you said, value is subjective after all.

However, couldn't you say this about about a plethora of things?

I got kids/built a commerical building/wrote a book/made a youtube clip/participated in official sport (records lasts forever whohoo!). All of these things will keep existing to some capacity when you die.

Seems pretty trivial for it's own sake.

Fair enuf - everyone has their own way towards keeping some footprint once they are gone.

I personally realized half-way through undergrad that programming would help me achieve that goal - or even contributing to open source vs writing papers and trying to get published.

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