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

http://www.mccurley.org/advice/hamming_advice.html

by Tomte • 9 years ago

175 40 9 years ago

mccurley.org

dang2• 9 years ago

Can anybody find the year for this?

sarabande• 9 years ago

According to the PostScript file here: https://people.math.osu.edu/gerlach.1/laser/you_and_your_res..., October 1993.

dang2• 9 years ago

OK let's use that.

It looks like a shorter variation of the much-posted https://hn.algolia.com/?query=you%20and%20your%20research&so..., but different enough to deserve some time in its own right.

pm215• 9 years ago

I couldn't find the year for this one in particular, but it looks as if Hamming had a talk in this vein that he gave fairly frequently. For instance this http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html is a 1986 talk transcript that hits a lot of the same notes (it includes the anecdote about the lunch table which segues into the colleague who thought all summer about Hamming's question and went onto success; it has the bit about working with your door open; it talks about great scientists keeping a list of 10 or 20 important problems; it talks about selling your work; and so on). And https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1zDuOPkMSw is a 1995 video where Hamming says he's given a talk with that title many times.

riwsky2• 9 years ago

it's also included in Hamming's book, the Art of Doing Science and Engineering, from '97

riwsky2• 9 years ago

There's a typo in this reproduction: the "3n" in the drunken sailor part should be a square root of n; I assume it was a square root symbol in the text that just tripped up some OCR.

rrggrr• 9 years ago

When attacked [In Chess] he seldom, if ever, defended his position, rather he attacked back. Such a method of playing soon produces a very interrelated board.

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.

lumberjack• 9 years ago

Your friend is a positional player. In general chess people refer to styles of chess as either highly tactical or positional.

https://youtu.be/dr0t_2nqwE0?t=765

hkmurakami• 9 years ago

Jack Nicklaus, the greatest professional golfer in history, has famously written in many occasions that an overwhelming fear of failure is what drove him to greatness.

addicted• 9 years ago

I'd imagine sports are a field where a fear of failure can definitely help, because fear narrows your focus considerably, and allows you to concentrate on the pretty narrow aspects that lead to success in sports.

I benefited from something very similar in college where a fear of doing poorly helped me focus right before exams, allowing me to do really well in most classes (especially the ones where the grades were heavily weighted towards assignments and exams).

OTOH, this left me completely unprepared for work life after college, where a lot of my work is dependent on collaborating with others, and in general requires a much broader way of engaging my tasks (sometimes the best way to solve a problem is to solve the "real" problem without ever having to tackle the problem you were supposed to be working on at all). And fear certainly doesn't help with that.

I think a combination of working for positive reasons (especially when considering the longer term) and working because of negative reasons (more beneficial on specific tasks in the short term) is probably what works best in most endeavors.

leoc• 9 years ago

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.

Robert Peston's "The Entrepreneur's Wound" is relevant:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00nh06m http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/6375518/Ghastl...

AndrewKemendo7• 9 years ago

Under these circumstances it seems better to live a life in which you do important things (important in your eyes, of course) than to merely live out your life. No sense frittering away your life on things that will not even appear in the footnotes.

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.

grok2• 9 years ago

Maybe it's because the thing that they could strive for greatness in is not something that really interests them except in passing and do it because it helps them maintain a reasonable quality of life with their other needs met elsewhere?

AndrewKemendo7• 9 years ago

Maybe it's because the thing that they could strive for greatness in is not something that really interests them except in passing

That's an interesting take. Basically saying that hopelessness for being great (because they are bounding themselves to being great where their desires link up with capability) keeps them from trying. I think that's a compelling argument.

Sad though, really. A lot of people would be great at things they don't necessarily like doing.

da02• 9 years ago

Which heads of state impressed you?

AndrewKemendo7• 9 years ago

I'd say I was surprised by how impressed I was with George W. Bush. Very smart, seemed to listen more than talk.

Probably most impressed with Jalal Talabani. First Non-Arab president of Iraq, Transitioned Iraq to a new constitution, was a Kurdish diplomat which is just mind boggling if you understand the region. Amazing given all they he has been subject to.

jtraffic• 9 years ago

I dislike this. I almost hate it, but it at least raises interesting questions.

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.

antisocial• 9 years ago

Happy to see Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi mentioned here. IMO, he and his work are underrated. I haven't read the original post by Hamming, but I have read one and a half books by Csikszentmihalyi and I am a better person for doing so.

AndrewKemendo7• 9 years ago

I dislike this. I almost hate it...

Why? Because you think it's poorly argued or because it challenges the idea that the family is not the ultimate reward?

marmaduke• 9 years ago

You seem to reading yourself into the parents post: they say adhoc reasoning and hand waving are the reasons, and don't suggest family significantly.

chplushsieh• 9 years ago

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.

Strictly speaking, these two claims don't contradict each other. Talking to a book writer/researcher in an interview doesn't count as talking privately.

dunkelheit• 9 years ago

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.

If this proves anything, it is that self-reporting is dangerously misleading and the answers depend very much on who is asking.

Nomentatus• 9 years ago

Not a contradiction "best high" and "greatest achievement" are rarely the same thing.

segmondy2• 9 years ago

Read it again till it sinks in, also find "You and your research" and read.

BTW, don't forget this

"There is another trait that took me many years to notice, and that is the ability to tolerate ambiguity. Most people want to believe what they learn is the truth: there are a few people who doubt everything. 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. "

I suspect you are suffering from this. The only place I look for absolute truth is mathematics. When people write, you must pull out and find your own truth. Don't be upset about it if it doesn't fit your thinking. It's entirely possible to disagree with all of it and yet find it incredible useful.

amelius2• 9 years ago

Under these circumstances it seems better to live a life in which you do important things (important in your eyes, of course) than to merely live out your life. No sense frittering away your life on things that will not even appear in the footnotes.

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?

Danihan2• 9 years ago

The reality is that none of us know whether what we're doing will be important, or to what extent.

amelius2• 9 years ago

Yes, but we can make some educated guesses.

For instance, what "good" has Facebook brought us so far? After we have determined this, is it not reasonable to extrapolate a little into the future? Also, entertainment is not unimportant, but everyone would agree it certainly does not belong anywhere near the top of the list, yet I see a lot of effort going in that direction lately, also on HN. It seems out of balance if you ask me.

segmondy2• 9 years ago

Speak for yourself. I'm certain there are people working on hard problems on HN.

AndrewKemendo7• 9 years ago

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

Well I'm n=1 but for me important is making concrete steps toward creating AGI.

Anonymous97612• 9 years ago

I think that "important things" are anything that helps ensure the survival of humanity. This doesn't really help narrow the field, as it is so all encompassing. At the moment, I feel that the most important thing is colonization of other planets, and preferably other star systems. My hope is that by 2250 there will be interstellar colony ships en-route.

jayliew• 9 years ago

This is an amazing piece. There are so many parallels lessons to software engineers trying to bootstrap a tech startup.

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.

Gatsky• 9 years ago

This is a thought provoking essay. However, all these lessons came out of Bell Labs, which was an incredible outlier in terms of successful innovation funded by a telecommunications monopoly in the era spanning WWII.

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.

yters• 9 years ago

It is good advice to focus on what is important, but raising children well is arguably more important. Without a functioning society brilliant ideas don't matter.

dieterrams• 9 years ago

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.

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.

tminima• 9 years ago

May be the great achievements the author talks about will feel different. Taking the example of Einstein, till his death he must be seeing the impact of his theory. I think that wont be as inconsequential as it seems.

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

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