A Stroke of Genius: Striving for Greatness in All You Do (1993)

A truly brilliant former close acquaintance of mine plays an usual game of chess. He never directly attacks. He defends when he must. Most often his moves appear innocuous, even from a two or three move forward perspective. Interestingly this person reportedly grew up in a physically abusive home, brilliant but incapable of defending himself physically from his father. I'm told this brilliant but socially awkward boy was beaten severely as he grew up.

As you play chess against him, as I have many times, you notice you are even or perhaps slightly ahead in pieces, but that your options are increasingly and alarmingly narrowing. It is only a few moves later you see the only moves available involve costly sacrifices and eventual loss. Today this man is among the most brilliant and successful businesspeople I know. He's philanthropic and active in local politics. I used to marvel and feel concern about the letters of complaint he received, the low opinion many had of him, and the many disputes he found himself a part of. But I never saw nor hear of him losing a business dispute, or suffering injury to his brand.

When checkmate finally arrives in Chess with this man, it comes as a relief. The discomfort of being toyed with, even in a game, and being so hopelessly outclassed I find anxiety provoking. Having beaten him twice. Once ever in Chess, and once in a business dispute, I can tell you only that there was no joy in it, just an empty sort of feeling.

>Deep emotional commitment seems to be necessary for success.

It is immensely interesting to me the impact of negative emotions on brilliance and success. People driven to greatness by their fears or urge to overcome powerlessness. In particular I wonder how it impacts Hamming's most concerning claim:

>Finally, I must at least address the question of whether greatness is worth the large effort it requires. Those who have done really great things generally report, privately, that it is better than wine, the opposite sex, and song put together. The realization that you have done it is overwhelming.

It may be for the best that not all brilliant people achieve greatness, and that not most of us are not brilliant.

I will never stop being amazed at how few people who are able to be great, actually strive for it though!

Over the years I've been privileged to be on or work with, some of the most high performing, greatness achieving teams I've ever seen. Special operations teams in Iraq, FBI counterterrorism teams, Heads of State, F50 CEOs, Samsung and Google research, machine learning faculty across the U.S. and Canada, etc... Even though it's a higher percentage of strivers, within those groups there is a more significant portion than I would have expected decades ago, who are just going through the motions.

From my interactions elsewhere and talking with friends and family and acquaintances, all who have the brains and work ethic to be great, almost none strive for it.

I empathize with the above quote, and it completely boggles my mind why others don't.

Is this just a momentary high, or does it result in a lasting effect on one's mood/disposition?

Reflecting on my personal (not "great") achievements, I'll feel a momentary sense of pride, which is a good thing to be able to feel from time to time, but largely inconsequential to my day-to-day.

I'm curious what people on HN would consider "important things".

Is it writing the next generation of social media tools? Is it making nuclear fusion practical? Is it finding a smart business model and making a lot of money from it?

The advice therefore is of the 'All other things being equal variety'. Outside of very well funded enclaves of successful researchers with access to cutting edge tools and analytical expertise, I am not sure how useful it is.

The reasoning is almost entirely post-hoc. He observes many successful people and their similarities and then claims "I have now told you how to succeed." p(success | trait) != p(trait | success). Hindsight bias is at play.

He makes other weird statements: "you are automatically condemned to waste the rest of your life (see Einstein above)." Mr. Hamming is a difficult guy to please.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi studied many successful individuals in a systematic way and acknowledged the inherent problems with this approach. Read his book instead of this: https://www.amazon.com/Creativity-Flow-Psychology-Discovery-...

Finally: "Those who have done really great things generally report, privately, that it is better than wine, the opposite sex, and song put together."

This is strongly contradicted by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's evidence. Nearly everyone he talked to (many Nobel Laureates among them) said their greatest achievement was raising a family or something in personal life. I can't claim this generalizes, but I can provide it as a stark counterexample to Hamming's claim.

E.g.

- "Note that importance of the results of a solution does not make the problem important."

Parallel: a good product for an unimportant or small market, does not make the market important or big.

- "Thus working on the problem at the right time is essential. Einstein tried to find a unified theory, spent most of his later life on it, and died in a hospital still working on it with no significant results. Apparently, he attacked the problem too early, or perhaps it was the wrong problem."

Parallel: The importance of timing and the market conditions. Too many startups have tried an idea and didn't work at some point in time, but totally worked in a different time period. E.g. Webvan vs Instacart, Uber Eats, et al.

- This is true whether one is searching for a scientific breakthrough or searching for product-market fit: "There are a pair of errors that are often made when working on what you think is the right problem at the right time. One is to give up too soon, and the other is to persist and never get any results. The second is quite common. Obviously, if you start on a wrong problem and refuse to give up, you are automatically condemned to waste the rest of your life (see Einstein above). Knowing when you persist is not easy -- if you are wrong then you are stubborn; but if you turn out to be right, then you are strong willed."

- Increasing the odds of exposure to a positive black swan is similar whether one is searching for a scientific breakthrough or searching for a large new product-market fit: "Many times a discussion with a person who has just done something important will produce a description of how they were led, almost step by step, to the result. It is usually based on things they had done, or intensely thought about, years ago. You succeed because you have prepared yourself with the necessary background long ago, without, of course, knowing then that it would prove to be a necessary step to success."

- Walking the thin line of hubris vs. confidence: "Without courage you are unlikely to attack important problems with any persistence, and hence not likely to do important things. Courage brings self-confidence, an essential feature of doing difficult things. However, it can border on over-confidence at time which is more of a hindrance than a help."

- "If you believe too much then you are not likely to find the essentially new view that transforms a field, and if you doubt too much you will not be able to do much at all. It is a fine balance between believing what you learn and at the same time doubting things. Great steps forward usually involve a change of viewpoint to outside the standard ones in the field."

Parallel: Sometimes industry outsiders are the one who finds a market opportunity and transform it in ways that insiders never thought of.

- The importance of having a vision: "You need a vision of who you are and where your field is going. A suitable parable is that of the drunken sailor. He staggers one way and then the other with independent, random steps. In n steps he will be, on the average, about 3n steps away from where he started. but if there is a pretty girl in one direction he will get a distance proportional to n. The difference, over a life time of choices, between 3n and n is very large and represents the difference between having no vision and having a vision. The particular vision you have is less important than just having one - there are many paths to success. Therefore, it is wise to have a vision of what you may become, of where you want to go, as well as how to get there. No vision, not much chance of doing great work; with a vision you have a good chance."

- "I must now take up the unpleasant topic of selling your ideas. Too many scientists think that this is beneath them, that the world is waiting for their great results. "

Parallel: Great software engineers think that all they have to do is build a pretty product and customers will line up and be banging down the engineer's door. If you're looking to start a business, you have to think about sales / user acquisition.