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Comment by chegra | Hacker News Reader

I'm very much against this type of thinking. My garbage man does stuff, but I don't see him famous. A lot of people do stuff. Doing stuff is maybe a prerequisite of being famous but it is not sufficient(or maybe it is not, you can be born into it :D). What I see central to all these guys is a capacity for taking risks with the potential for high payoff.

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When she says "does stuff", she means, when you have an idea that you want to see realized, and then you follow through and take it to its logical conclusion to have an impact on others. Then repeat.

Many, many smart people have ideas, but can never finish anything. Or for that matter, never start anything.

You hear "does stuff", and take it out of context into its broad definition, which includes your garbage man. Then of course it doesn't make sense.

I think this could be broken down further to mean:

People that create, rather than perform.

Zuckerberg made something brand new. The garbage man just does what he's told. There is a big difference.

So stuff means only startups and hacking here right? My dad took an exam in which people well above his age fail, but he passed and got selected in a prestigious government position. He then went on to work in a lot of departments of Indian government. In short he has done a lot of "stuff" stuff. But I don't see him being famous.

No. It's not a hard and fast rule of the world and the way it works. It's a good first-order approximation, and a necessary, but not sufficient condition.

Your dad may be famous amongst his peers.

There are many factors to success. And many ways to measure success.

she is talking about executing your idea. your garbage man is not executing his idea, he is performing a task anyone else can do and does not require any knowledge, risk or strategy. sticking to your idea, doing it is actually taking risk for high payoff.

Another way to look at this would be 'doing stuff that matters' or 'doing what only I can do' or maybe 'doing stuff no one told me to do'

I think the biggest difference is that the garbage man is doing what he is told to do whereas the famous people are doing the stuff no one told them to do. They broke out of the mold and got famous.

I accidentally down voted you on my iPad because the little buttons are too close, but I agree entirely with what you said and Lisa sounds extremely naive. Fame is a function of much more than just doing stuff. The media, for example, play an important and often highly selective role. Some have become famous by sleeping with the right producers, some have cured polio. Some have very obscure fame, Knuth, for example, is known pretty much to, and only to, every CS major. Youthful enthusiasm often neglects how critical luck is in life. Even if you achieve something highly beneficial to mankind doesn't guarantee fame, think of all the obscure inventors whose names we don't remember. It is also easy to loose a sense of perspective, while I'm sure facebook is fun for a lot of people but I think 'Zuck' is more famous for being the subject of a movie than for running an ad business.

What she says is a good first approximation. When you're learning about anything, you don't dive into the nitty gritty and all its nuances first.

+1 to this. It's a case of necessary and sufficient conditions. You have to "do stuff" to be famous, but that's not enough, not by a long shot. Most famous people are famous because they work hard at being famous.

Here's the formula for getting famous:

1) Do stuff

2) Relentlessly promote what you did in step 1

3) Repeat step 2

A more coherent response: http://peachshake.com/2010/12/26/acquiring-fame/

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