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Comment by omegant | Hacker News Reader

I think it works for everybody but you need to be brave or crazy enough to apply it.

If you pay attention to what the others are doing, you are working inside what is socially acceptable in your group and usually you are not going to go against the stablished truth. Hence you will not be able to add any breakthrough to your area of expertise.

Feynman as the post says, experienced this social anxiety once he had the fame. He was able to recognice that you can not truly advance in new topics if you don't ignore social preasure, even if it's self inflicted.

Of course that means that you risk being called a crank, or not getting tenure, or grants for your proyects.

There is huge value in incremental knowledge, but to be Einstein, Watson or Feynman you first need to publish something new that most people will not recognice as valuable at first, if ever...

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It depends on your social status and general situation a lot - some people get punished hard when they disregard others and are in no position to do it. Others can get away with that mostly. A lot depends on whether at least portion of people is willing to give you benefit of the doubt or whether someone criticizing you as always taken at a face value.

Most people is going to be criticized if they step out of the beaten path. Powerful people in any field is not keen to radical change that could make them superfluous rather fast. Then there all those who want to be seen as worthy by the powerful that will parrot their opinions.

I don't think I would dare to introduce radically new stuf (I'm no scientist so it's easy for me to make this statement), at least in the area that puts food on the table, and this is what most people do. It's natural.

You need to be antisocial or obsessed or have no need to public suport due to a special situation(rich, political suport, personal inconditional suport from the boss, being an outsider).

Most of them will be wrong just the same and considered cranks, made fun off and forgotten.

We still need this kind of people even if we wont be like them.

I agree with things you are talking about, but there is still more to that.

The exactly same suggestion from "our friend" is treated differently then suggestion from "that suspicious dude/girl". It may be difference between mild criticism and "it is ultimate proof he is dumbo". It makes big difference in practical results. It may be difference between "jesus, did you had to say that" and "you are not gonna get responsible position ever again or at least you are not gonna go to that meeting again".

When someone like Stephen Hawking says automation will, given current trends, lead to more inequality, that rightfully doesn't get disputed. When I ask questions on HN that would lead to similar conclusions, I don't even get answers. In person it's the opposite, me being slightly attractive (and actually liking people more than you'd know from my posts) means I can basically say just about anything to anyone. It may not get accepted, but I get away with it. But I often think, if an ugly person stuttered the same statement, they'd get an entirely different reaction. Then I think further of how my impressions of people might distort my interpretation of their words, and I'm completely blind to that by definition. In short, it's all kind of unfair and sucky. I don't think I even added anything to your comment, you put it better. But it's something that's on my mind a lot. We pay too much attention to our impressions of messengers.

> I think it works for everybody but you need to be brave or crazy enough to apply it.

Depends on what you think 'works' means. You get stuff done but chances are (and these chances are quite significant) no-one will care. If you are a genius (even if you don't recognize that yourself) this works because what you do will be recognized by others. Like writers doing their thing despite what others (including publishers) say; the talents become famous, the much larger group that are not so talented (or, unfortunately, for other reasons) are never read.

I think that's why evolution selects for a small proportion of insanity in humans - so that some of our geniuses are insane enough to ignore social pressure and make breakthroughs that would be recognised.

Evolution doesn't concern itself with survival or optimization of the species as a whole.

It does for individual societies like ant colonies.

Since most ants are unable to reproduce, I like to think of the entire colony as the organism.

If you're interested in how evolution works, check out The Selfish Gene.

My point is insane geniuses become famous and have a good chance of passing down their genes, and their insanity and genius maybe separate genes, so some descendants may receive only the insane ones. Apologies for not expressing myself in proper academic nonmenclature.

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