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Comment by drongoking | Hacker News Reader

Two reactions to this. I almost believe these:

1. The difference between collecting bus tickets, working on mathematics, and figuring the crystallization patterns of snowflakes is virtually nothing. To the people obsessed with it, it is all-important; to outsiders, all three look indistinguishably pointless. Only in retrospect can anyone say whether the activity led to something society considers important. The truly obsessed don't care.

2. Genius is overrated. We like stories of great individuals changing the world with their genius because we like stories and we dislike chance. But for nearly every invention and idea, history shows that multiple people were working on it at the same time. Civilization's progress is more a sequence of ideas whose time had come, but we prefer stories of great unique geniuses.

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A fantastic book by Vernon Vinge called “A Deepness in the Sky” toys around with this idea a lot actually.

There is a virus that can release neurotoxins and it is flipped in very specific parts of the brain with a MRI-like device. This can elicit a state of “Focus” where the person (victim more like) becomes totally obsessed with a particular idea or subject. They devote all energy towards this subject and can make stunning breakthroughs on difficult topics because they are utterly and completely _obssessed_ with whatever topic they are supposed to be.

They are held captives by their own fascination and work as slaves.

I know this is taking the idea a bit far from the point, but it’s an interesting extension of the idea.

Thank you so much. I read this book when it came out 20 years ago and have been trying to remember what it was called at odd times, On and Off, for roughly the last decade, specifically because of the plot point of the “Focus” virus.

Being obsessed with something is indeed a lot like slavery, or indentured servitude. But the difference is it was my idea.

> But for nearly every invention and idea, history shows that multiple people were working on it at the same time.

Agree and not to mention we don't have any data on people who loved and were obsessive and that did not lead to anything. I am actually surprised in how simplistic PG is when he writes some of what he does. For example he states that Darwin was obsessed (as he was) but ignores that just like the bus ticket collector he most likely did that simply because he was interested or curious for some reason. A hobby or a like is no better than anyone else's. Who is to say watching football matters (it doesn't) or collecting stamps matters (it doesn't) or by the same token if you obsess over mathematics (and it matters and leads to something) that that is why you even did it in the first place?

I would even say that often people are obsessive about what they do not even thinking it will lead to anything. I was an obsessive commenter on a site and most would say I was wasting my time. But that activity has led to over 7 figures of income. But I did it because I enjoyed it (and did it every day). Likewise the same happens here on HN. In one sense you might be wasting your time but if you enjoy it and it leads to something is not genuine to say you did it for another reason.

> I was an obsessive commenter on a site and most would say I was wasting my time. But that activity has led to over 7 figures of income.

That's amazing! Can you tell us more?

From time to time mathematicians discover something interesting, like the theoretical bases for elliptic-curve cryptography. I also remember some interesting work with applications to tomography, but it's mostly like a black box so it's more difficult to be sure how aplicable it was.

> 2. Genius is overrated.

What?

> But for nearly every invention and idea, history shows that multiple people were working on it at the same time.

Not just "people" - "geniuses". History shows multiple geniuses were working on it at the same time.

I do agree that we give too much credit to a single genius. Had Isaac Newton not lived, we'd still have calculus, physics, etc in some form or another. The same thing with Einstein, Turing, etc. But that doesn't mean genius is overrated. What's overrated is the hero worshiping narrative we build around a single genius due to racial or nationalistic reasons.

But I think we should have as many geniuses working on problems as possible rather than saying that genius is overrated.

Were all great discoveries and works made by “geniuses”? Or do we assign them the title in retrospect?

For a long time, the Great Man theory dominated a lot of thinkers. Now there's a lot of pushback on the Great Man theory. I think I like both the theory and the pushback both. Reality's complicated.

You’re completely deluded into believing that genius is overrated. While it is never in isolation, and its fruits are the product of historical necessity, it takes a rare breed of sacrifice, which PG here is saying as obsession, to hit the targets no one else sees (paraphrasing Arthur Schopenhauer); and is constitutionally the personal, moral input of an individual on choosing how to cause themselves to be, unconcerned with the mediocre concerns of their contemporary society.

Shame on you and your ilk for suggesting Descartes, Newton, Kant etc. were just there picking low hanging fruit. They were doing work no one had the courage to do.

> You’re completely deluded into believing that genius is overrated.

...

> Shame on you and your ilk for suggesting Descartes, Newton, Kant etc. were just there picking low hanging fruit. They were doing work no one had the courage to do.

There's a lot of passion in your comment, but it's also really antagonistic. The person you replied to was very respectful and cogent in expressing their point of view; you abandoned that civility quite quickly - and for what?

If you're as well read as your references imply, surely you can appreciate an argument which casts aspersion on the "lone hero" ideation of historical progress.

I see the reasonings of both of your points. To me it seems in the old days, there was a lot of hindrance in reaching your potential therefore for those few to become geniuses, you truly had to be exceptional and since there was so few, your impact would be tremendous.

Now compare that to the modern day, where I'd say a lot higher percentage of people are hitting their potential as a genius. Therefore, a lot more people are coming up with new novel things, but since a lot of the easy major milestones in sciences have been attained, the impact of those single individual geniuses is much smaller.

Modern age Newton could be just a very good AI researcher from England. It's just impossible for humans to have devolved so much that the genius of the previous generations would be so much different than we have today.

> You’re completely deluded [...] Shame on you and your ilk

Crossing into personal attack isn't allowed, and we ban accounts the keep doing it, so can you please not do it here? If you'd take a look at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html you'll see how the intended spirit of this site points in the opposite direction. Note that it doesn't depend on how right you are.

I was personally offended, I apologize for my rhetoric.

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