Some Heroes | Hacker News Reader

Some Heroes

paulgraham.com

116 pointsmqt91 comments

My favorite Jack Lambert story:

1977 Pro Bowl. AFC defense - 8 Pittsburgh Steelers and 3 players from other teams on the field at the same time. Jack Lambert, the middle linebacker and captain, was calling out defensive signals using the Steelers' proprietary lingo. One of the other players asked, "What should we do?" Lambert replied, "Stay out of our way."

Second favorite Jack Lambert story:

When accused by a referee of biting another player in the finger, Lambert said, "I didn't bite his finger and I can prove it." "How?" the referee asked. "He's still got it, doesn't he?"

One of the best teams ever with one of the best players ever. And no one "danced" after making a great play. They just did a great job and acted as if they had done that job before and intended to do it again. Man, how I miss that. Thanks for the memories, pg.

yeah, I thought it was a cool to find a football player on that list, and a Steeler as well

Fun to read.

I recently found this quote from a contemporary author:

  “Jane Austen writes about people with desperately restricted
   lives codified by iron rules.  The first thing she does is to
   choose a genre, the romantic novel, which is exactly the kind
   of book those women would read if they were reading books.”

That illustrates to me a unique approach, where even the genre of the work itself serves the overall message and theme of the work.

And let me put in a word for Walt Disney, who I totally dismissed until I read about him. The parallels between his personality and that of Steve Jobs are fascinating.

"I used to read a lot of novels when I was younger. I can't read most anymore, because they don't have enough information in them."

This is a good one to add to the list of things not to say on a first date. And if it does somehow come up, at least have enough sense not to follow it with "I also don't read biographies/memoirs because I consider them fiction."

/Don't ask

Here's a tip: Read one novel by Tom Robbins, and then if a female asks, always say that you just read it last week.

You think? Sounds pretty good to me - provided you're able to listen to your date explaining why s/he _does_ like novels, and to convey something of the joy you get from reading non-fiction.

But then I have a fairly naive concept of a date as a (potential) meeting of minds, rather than a PR exercise.

This was the only part of the essay that irked me. Bad writing in general has a low information density; the problem is not exclusive to fiction.

It doesn't help that information is embedded structurally in a novel, which makes it harder to tease out. But good fiction (say, Ulysses or Crime and Punishment or Nine Stories) is as rich as any essay or monograph.

It's also not clear that density, in the strict sense, is what I'm after when I read. If so I'd be buried in technical papers, when what I really want is something to tickle my brain; to that end, I wouldn't want to lose any one of arXiv, the Engineering library, or the literature section at Borders.

Actually I also rejected fiction after university, I find I don't have that much time to sit and read so why bother with fiction. I was a ridiculously avid reader of fiction and I wish that I had of read science books instead of re-reading the Hardy Boys (original series and some of the casefiles).

I do read some biographies/memoirs though :P

I'm asking ;D

> To do really great things, you have to seek out questions people didn't even realize were questions. ... You only get one life. Why not do something huge?

This one really got me thinking. While tackling big questions is certainly admirable, it implies that greatness ought to be a goal one has in life. As I get older (I'm now married with 2 kids), I've become more and more convinced that it's more important in life to strive to be a good person than to strive to be a great person.

That's why my list would include people like Lao Tze, who would probably be happy that people found his writings useful, but would likely find the fact that he's still revered thousands of years after his death of far less importance than how he spent some particular day of his life.

From what I hear, most modern asian religions scholars believe the Tao was a satire.

Where do you hear that? Got a link?

My asian religions prof. spent a bunch of years of her life studying the text and she was telling us this. Apparently some people still think it's an esoteric text, but they are in the minority.

Unfortunately I don't have any references to back it up, and none of the translations I have sitting in front of me mention it in the forward. And of course it's impossible to find anything via Google only because there are so many parodies of the Tao Te Ching itself.

There must be academic journals on the study of taoism, but I am having trouble finding any just searching online. I can try emailing her and asking for a cite if you'd like though.

If it isn't too much trouble, I'd be very interested to hear more about that. I'm no scholar, but I find Taoism and the Tao Te Ching fascinating. I would understand it being partly satirical of prevailing thought, whilst being esoteric, but it being a simple satire would be quite amazing to me. Perhaps the esoterism is an artifact of translation/interpolation ;)

http://74.125.95.104/search?q=cache:Hgq_0fuBJMkJ:https://sch... mentions that "others claim" that it was a political satire

Thanks for that, but my understanding of the passage you refer to is that it is discussing T'ao Yuan-ming's poem "Peach Blossom Spring", not the Tao Te Ching.

I've recently been reading Ellen Chen's new translation and commentaries [http://www.amazon.com/Tao-Te-Ching-Translation-Commentary/dp...]. It includes an interesting discussion of academic attitudes to the history and origins of the Tao Te Ching, and as I recall the notion of it being satire is not mentioned.

I sent her an email, I'll let you know if I get a reply. Failing that this might involve, god forbid, going to a library.

Cool, thanks for taking the time. Please also convey my thanks to her if you get a reply.

Which would only make me like it more...

> Reading The Nude is like a ride in a Ferrari. Just as you're getting settled, you're slammed back in your seat by the acceleration. Before you can adjust, you're thrown sideways as the car screeches into the first turn. His brain throws off ideas almost too fast to grasp them.

Apparently it reads just like Snow Crash. ;-)

That's just what I was thinking.

One of the greatest that often get overlooked is Doug Engelbart. Everyone connects him with inventing the mouse.

What he did in the 60 aka punchcard times in one demo revolutionizing the computer: http://sloan.stanford.edu/mousesite/1968Demo.html

For the first time real time connection to a computer using a monitor. Introducing the concept of files, documents, ... Primitive graphical UI. Video conferencing between Menlo Park and Fort Mason in San Francisco. That was done wirelessly by parking transmitter trucks on skyline ...

When he was young he set the principle for his life:

    Let me design a professional goal which will maximize the contribution my career can have to mankind!

Weeks later his lifetime goal emerged:

    As much as possible, to boost mankind's collective capability for coping with complex, urgent problems.

He is in his 90s and still at it: http://www.futuresalon.org/2004/11/future_salon_do.html

Truly amazing, Mark.

One of my heroes: O Sensei, Morihei Ueshiba. He definitely cared excessively about his "work", and was absolutely honest. He invented aikido, the "art of peace", whose broad purpose is to "make human beings one family."

Here's a decent video of him: http://youtube.com/watch?v=0XTlWDOQBno&feature=related

Watch the attack at 3:53. It is pretty easy being a martial legend if your students attack like that.

What was the point of this comment? I was saying that he's one of my heroes and pointed out that, incidentally, he fit some of pg's criteria as well. I also pointed out one of his major accomplishments. I didn't mention anything about him being a "martial legend." If you could explain how your comment relates to anything I mentioned or to the subject of "personal heroes" I'd greatly appreciate it.

To address the actual content of your comment, though - no, it takes more than "the attack at 3:53" to be a martial legend. As it happens, he spent virtually his entire life practicing martial arts, and a number of other prominent Japanese martial artists attested to his ability during his lifetime. I encourage you to learn more about him and about aikido. You might still come away thinking "Yeah whatever, the only reason anyone thought anything of him was because he had cowering tools for students", but at least you'll have more evidence for it then a short portion of some youtube video.

I never comment on Paul Graham essays, but I'll make an exception and say that I really liked this one. It felt like it came from the heart.

I also usually don't comment because the other comments are often so biting. I really enjoy reading about what influences people and their histories. Opinions about subjects without clear answers can be interesting to read, but always leave one feeling slightly at odds with the writer. Its almost that if written correctly, opinion pieces should have at least something that you don't agree with. In good situations, this initiates a discourse around that point, but often online this just leads to trolling by commenters - which never leads to good things.

Hey PG, You talk about Isaac Newton, here's something that might interest you:

Newton was a “glandeur”; In Dijksterhuis 2004:

George Spencer Brown has famously said about Sir Isaac Newton that “to arrive at the simplest truth, as Newton knew and practiced, requires years of contemplation. Not activity. Not reasoning. Not calculating. Not busy behavior of any kind. Not reading. Not talking. Not making an effort. Not thinking. Simply bearing in mind what it is that one needs to know.”

Written by Nassim Nicholas Taleb: "Glander best describes the notion of lifting all inhibitions to “tinker intellectually in an undirected stochastic process aiming at capturing some idea that will enrich your corpus”. “Researching” or “thinking” smack of a top-down activity."

More on Glander by Taleb: "It is an irony that the academy does not have a word for the process by which discovery works best –but slang does. I was trying to describe in a letter what I am currently doing: French would not let me. But argot lends itself very well... I am involved in an activity called “Glander”, more precisely “glandouiller”. It means “to idle”, though not “to be in a state of idleness” (it is an active verb). Gandouiller denotes enjoyment. The formal French word is “ne rien faire” (to do nothing), which misses on the active part –so do words that have a languishing connotation. Glander is what children without soccer moms do when they are out of school. It resembles flâner which has this perambulation part; though Glander does not have any strings attached. The Italians have farniente but it is really doing nothing. Even the Arabs do not have a verb for Glander: the construction takaslana from the Semitic root ksl denotes laziness (other words imply some inertia)."

[Taken from http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/notebook.htm]

Kevin Garnett plays exactly the same way that you describe Jack Lambert. He goes only one speed: full blast. Whenever I need motiviation, I find myself asking myself, wwkgd?

"Robert Morris has a very unusual quality: he's never wrong."

I was only ever wrong once. I thought that I had been mistaken about something 5 years earlier, but it turned out I hadn't. I was wrong about having been wrong.

I'm never wrong too, but that's just because I either make trivial, all encompassing, or unfalsifiable claims. It sounds good though:)

Really a personal list like this is impacted by a number of factors especically your childhood experiences.

So from my perspective, Jane Austen brings me nothing but disgust. Her novels were piss poor from my perspective. However, this was me at 15 working at a library and skimming books as I put them away. Austen books were a slap in the face to me at that age dealing with my parents divorcing during the same time.

I really enjoy this article though, but my list would be substantially different. I should write it up.

Another list: Gary Gordon, Randy Shughart, the Finnish anti-armor teams in the mostly-forgotten Winter War against the Soviets (> 80% casualties), and the 300 Spartans who held off the Persians at Thermopylae.

I was hoping to see Feynman on this list (especially after reading the two qualities that these people had in common). Good read, though.

I almost included him. But I don't understand his work in physics, and it seemed lame to like him for peripheral stuff like his autobiography.

Why lame? Physics aside, he seemed to be an extraordinary individual based on accounts of him by other people, not just his auto-biographies.

I don't think that you have to understand all his work in detail to claim him as a hero. He was more than just his work.

I wonder about John von Neumann. I thought maybe he'd be on there too.

Uh, Paul, I assume that you mean Robert Morris the younger? Or his dad?

If the younger, I'd think you're well equipped with at least one example where he was less that perfectly right about something.

I mean the younger. And of course his sw has bugs, like anyone's might (though fewer, actually). I'm talking about statements, not choices.

From my limited understanding of art interpretation, in earlier times art was seen somewhat as an attempt to understand or mimic the world around them in order to understand it better. Now we tend to value creativity as a more important quality, but in doing so we sacrifice a degree of sincerity or even nobility that curiosity and mimicry have. All of these heroes share a creative quality, but in a more classical sense. They are true to themselves and their art, but they probably intuited that their art is as much or more about discovery than anything else. Maybe that's the key to making the leap from artistic commoner to greatness...

I've totally been looking for a good intro to art history recently (my friend's textbook just doesn't look that appealing...), so thanks for the recommendation! Anyone recommend a good starting point for diving into Wodehouse too? :)

I've read about a dozen Wodehouse novels, and have yet to be disappointed by any of them. Some characters and some jokes are better than others, but I think you can pick one off the shelf at random and you'll be happy you did.

The one that comes to mind is "Leave it to Psmith," but not because it was necessarily such a standout book, but because of one line (concerning the name Psmith) that I still laugh about every time I think of it, years later.

Sweet, thanks! I ended up with "The Most of PG Wodehouse" just 'cause it seemed a good place to start. Sounds like I'll be happy with it either way!

From the sound of it, this'll be quite the welcome contrast to the last book I read: Journey to the End of the Night by Celine. Great book, but not a happy read at all...

I've heard it argued pretty convincingly that the birth of photography is the root cause of the death of mimesis in art.

In what way? Was mimesis about modeling physical appearance or understanding the underlying principles? I can see how photography is a shortcut for the former, but it seems worse for the latter.

Also worth noting that a Calder sculpture is on the cover of a common Algorithms book: http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41WDWECWVCL._SS500_.jp...

Most of the mobiles are literally recursive. I spent a couple days trying to reproduce them once, and one thing you learn when you do that is that each subelement is a complete mobile in itself. In fact I suspect he must often have incorporated "finished" mobiles into larger ones later.

Yes! I remember learning infinite series in college and thinking about Calder. His work is similar to measuring the area under an infinite curve that approaches zero. Infinite line, finite area area. Calder has the recursive mobile(s) and a counter weight. Literally Counter Weight == recursive mobile(s). Something seemingly infinite equated with something finite.

His big one in the East Wing of the National Gallery is outstanding. They blow the HVAC on it to make it move. IM Pei requested that it be the centerpiece of his great building. IM Pei, another possible hero. Fun essay.

I like P.G. Wodehouse's stories; I'm quite a bit less impressed with his activities during World War 2.

Wodehouse was in France when the Germans invaded in 1940. He was interned as an enemy alien by the Nazis for a year. The Germans were able to persuade him to make some light-hearted radio broadcasts intended for American (but not British) consumption, in exchange for his release from internment. Many Britons (including A.A. Milne) never forgave him for this, though Evelyn Waugh and George Orwell defended him.

After the War, Wodehouse found that he could not live in England and moved to the U.S., where he became a citizen in 1955.

You should just link directly to the Wikipedia article you paraphrased:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P._G._Wodehouse

Though you do seem to have invented one part: that the broadcasts were in exchange for his release.

As usual, Wikipedia is not the last word in accuracy in such matters. Most of the British literary world seems to have been on his side. The leader of the opposition was not A. A. Milne, but a now-forgotten journalist (I've literally forgotten his name) who made a crusade of it as a form of proto-linkbait. And Wodehouse hadn't lived in England before the war, either. He moved to the US in his twenties.

Do you mean he made Nazi propaganda?

No, that would have been Lord Haw Haw and Ezra Pound who made propaganda broadcasts for the fascists.

It wasn't as though Wodehouse had shaken hands with Hitler. He merely talked about what his internment was like, and he only made about five broadcasts. Even so, I think he was incredibly naïve of him to do this, given that by 1940, the Germans hadn't simply crossed the line into uncivilized conduct, they had gleefully flown over it with flags raised and fireworks shooting.

Ah, you're saying he's a Hanoi Jane.

I did not realize that about Ezra Pound. Now I see why people like GK Chesterton and CS Lewis disliked TS Elliot (protege of Pound) so much.

No, I didn't say that at all.

I thought you meant he was hated by the Brits because he misrepresented the Nazis and how they treated their POWs, like Jane Fonda did with the American POWs.

However, I just read pg's link and now understand what you were saying.

No question that PGW was the greatest prose stylist of the 20th century.

Makes sense, from his biography: every morning, 6 days a week, year after year for decades, he would sit down and churn out some 10-20-30 pages of new or edited prose, without fail. Much of it ineffable lightness, some of it a bit clunky, but on the whole an incredible body of work.

Here, in a somewhat explaining-the-joke kind of criticism, is still some pretty rummy stuff about Plum:

http://www.uni-tuebingen.de/uni/nec/leimberg1312.htm

He had a rather sad life, but he was a great artist.

No Alan Turing? I am surprised. I always thought the cover of ANSI Common Lisp was a nod towards his life (and death).

For those of you who do not know much about the Alan Turing man, I suggest that you check out one of the excellent biographies that have been written about him. He was a really amazing and interesting guy. And the persecution that lead to his suicide provides a valuable (and tragic) lesson on the evils of homophobia.

Hamming ?

"Richard Hamming’s three questions for new hires at Bell Labs: 1- What are you working on? 2- What’s the most important open problem in your area? 3- Why aren’t they the same? "

http://www.chris-lott.org/misc/kaiser.html

Igor. http://nuit-blanche.blogspot.com

Thanks for mentioning so many English heroes: Newton, Austen, the Spitfire, Wodehouse. I love em all too. As an Englishman, I'd like to nominate some American heroes: Paul Feynmann, Jimi Hendrix, Willard Van Orman Quine, Jackson Pollack & Hunter S Thompson. Where would the English speaking world be without them ?

Thanks, Paul. It was a heartfelt essay and fun to read.

Winston Churchill would top my list. Definitely passes the PG criteria.

Post WWII: Churchill's Grandson (after running into his office without knocking): "Grand papa, is it true that you're the greatest man in the world?"

Churchill: "Yes, now bugger off."

Have you read The Nature of Order by Christopher Alexander? I'd very much like to hear your opinions and comments on the book series. And also see, whether he would appear on your next list of heroes.

He is definitely on mine.

I read (parts of) A Pattern Language. That seemed like it had a lot of good ideas in it.

Paul, call me weird, but I searched Larry Mihalko after you had written about him, and I came across this:

http://www.post-gazette.com/regionstate/19991031newabuse1.as...

Was he a teacher at Gateway? If so, then it says that he was being charged with sexual assault or something strange like that. I wanted to let you have the last word on it, because charges don't necessarily mean that much. Anyways, I would rather take your word that he was a genuinely good teacher (which your post indicates)

You'r not weird. I did a search on Mr.Mihaldo as well. Please check out: www.thepittsburghchannel.com/news/489065/detail.html

Apologies. Mr. Mihalko

Where in Pittsburgh did you grow up, PG?

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q...

Only a Steeler fan would include a Steeler player in their list of heroes. My dad is from Upper St. Clair... Steeler fans are nuts... Go Cowboys :)

Yes. Yes we are. :D

Ah, cool. I went to elementary school about 10 zip codes away. :)

Ugh. Monroeville. Come for the Sam's Club. Stay for the Popeye's.

Yeah, the place was a kind of worst-case scenario for strip development. In my time the big draw was Monroeville Mall, the biggest in the country at the time of its construction (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monroeville_Mall).

The one good part, for a kid, was that a lot of the land was too hilly to build on, and was left as forest.

Things haven't changed much. I grew up in Trafford (it's not often I can expect someone to know where that is) and inevitably find myself at Monroeville Mall every year during the holidays.

I enjoy reading your essays. I think the concept of heroes is a worthwhile one and I might compile my own list. Einstein would be there for me but probably as much because my mom put a poster of him in my room when I was six (which remains there today) as anything. I'm also from the 'burgh :) and as I grew up in the next generation of Steelers football, Hines Ward would be my Jack Lambert. His love for his work is truly inspirational and infectious.

if what you want in novels is more info, you might give Stephenson's Baroque Cycle a try.

Regarding the Spitfire, have you ever watched the 1942 movie 'The First of thew Few'?

In regards to the Newton comment, I need to find a solution to the 2nd law of thermodynamics, otherwise there is no such thing as a significant answer!

"I've never cried like I cried at his funeral."

My favourite sentence in the essay. Made me aware of a dimension I didn't associate pg with.

The brevity does make him seem a bit stoic.

"Everyone on the list had two qualities: they cared almost excessively about their work, and they were absolutely honest."

Honesty is a quality I really admire in you myself, PG. Be careful not to work too hard though! Thanks for another good read!

In "The Scientists" by John Gribbin, Newton is painted as a 1st-class a-hole: taking credit for another's work; sitting on results until an opponent passed away; and others. (It's a good read; I recommend it.)

"There have probably been other people who did this as well as Newton, for their time"

Einstein.

Maxwell!

"For example, it returned false for Montaigne, who was arguably the inventor of the essay." The essay was invented by the Stoic philosopher Seneca.

i don't know what to say but one thing i know i dont know most them...honestly, you, as an essayist is one of my favorite..please don't stop write

thank you!

This is what I was looking for.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=152805

I would put Paul Graham on my list. :)

I am with all those, who would put you, Paul, on the list of heroes. You do great things.

Implemented "Some Heroes" as a facebook app. Consider adding your heroes..

"roger verbal kint" my hero number 3.

Great read! For the same reason as Paul (i.e. it's fun) I'll put my own list here. Apart from the interesting fact that Paul is actually on - my - list (since long before I read this essay, really), so are some of his heroes so I guess that makes 'heroic devotion' transitive or heritable or whatever. In descending order of admiration:

Isaac Newton - apart from more or less inventing modern physics (he's up there with Maxwell and Einstein in my physics heroes top 3), he found he couldn't solve the fundamental equations he discovered, so he kinda invented modern maths to help with that. Sweet. As for my maths heroes top 3, that's completed with Gauss and Laplace because they did similar things but in a less earth-shattering way. After all it can happen only once to discover mechanics, gravity, the most powerful series around or differential calculus (but who'd have thought it'd be the same guy!).

Noel Gallagher, Paul McCartney - they are realllly smart and creative guys, and instead of caring too much about politics and the likes they just wrote a big pile of Shockingly Good Songs. They had a direct influence in me getting into music (songwriting), and not a month goes by without me fantasizing about becoming famous enough to meet Noel somewhere backstage and chat with him over a beer. In fact, more chance of meeting Noel - together with "playing at nicer venues" - is a big part of why fame in music attracts me. The top 3 is completed by Steve Jobs (really) for similar reasons. Another big reason of why fame attracts me stems from my next hero...

Bill Gates - he did not only cofound, ran and drove the software company that makes/made the best products in the world or that understands 'software' orders of magnitude better than anybody else ("it's usability, stupid"), he also now spends his days using his fortune, fame and brains to really try to make this world a better place. I cannot express in words how much I admire both facets of his life and if there's one answer to "if you could choose, where would you want to be in 20 years?" for me the answer is to be like Bill Gates, having made it big and using that to try and make the world a better place. I admire Bono, Warren Buffet and John Lennon for the same reason and very often find myself passionately defending all of these guys to others who slack them for sheer fame (at least that's why I think it is).

Joel & Paul - not only did they do A Really Good Job in software business themselves, they also are an ongoing source of inspiration for me and others because they write so well about it. Hacking by itself is not my passion, but somehow every other facet about software development/business is, and that's in large part because of the writings of these guys. Again, there's really a top 3 and it's completed by "all the others" (Stevey, Guy Kawasaki, the Rands, etc...).

By the way: I am a music-playing phycisist/mathematician working on software most of the time, as one might have guessed :-)

excellent

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