

What You'll Wish You'd Known (2005) - tokenadult
http://paulgraham.com/hs.html

======
Raplh
In my first year of graduate school, I was wondering "HOW can I do something
creative?" It seemed an impossible problem. How do you come up with something
which would startle you with its newness if somebody else showed it to you as
something they came up with?

The solution I hit upon which moved me forward was this: research problems are
homework problems. You could give me a homework problem I had never solved
before, and I would work diligently on it. I was not deterred by the fact that
I had never answered this homework problem before because I knew SOMEBODY had
answered this homework problem before.

A Research Problem was just a Homework Problem asked for the first time.
BEFORE the first person to do it had ever done it. With this attitude, I was
able to work on a problem with the artificial belief that OF COURSE it could
be done, and so I should stick to it until I had done it. The belief was
artificial because, in the case of a research problem, it had NOT been done
before.

Once I got used to working on research problems it was totally better than
homework. No longer was I interested in homework, but only in these incredible
investigations that hadn't been done before.

I should add that I wouldn't have even vaguely understood the questions if I
wasn't on a daily basis exposed to great research.

~~~
tokenadult
_The solution I hit upon which moved me forward was this: research problems
are homework problems._

There is a famous story about this, which you can read in the book
Mathematical People. George Dantzig came late to class one day and saw two
problems on the blackboard. He worked them, not knowing that his professor had
posted them as examples of unsolved research problems, NOT homework. That
impressed his professor and helped launch his career.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Dantzig>

<http://www.snopes.com/college/homework/unsolvable.asp>

[http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Biographies/Dant...](http://www-
groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Biographies/Dantzig_George.html)

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danbmil99
Chevy Chase spoke at our HS graduation, and as best I can recall, he told us
that adults are jerks, it's fun to smoke pot (he said it euphemistically but
we all knew what he meant), and not to take things too seriously. I think he
was pretty stoned at the time.

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tokenadult
My favorite line in a speech with lots of favorite lines:

"I'm not saying there's no such thing as genius. But if you're trying to
choose between two theories and one gives you an excuse for being lazy, the
other one is probably right."

~~~
yummyfajitas
A nice application of this rule: try to explain a social or economic
event/trend.

Theory 1: event occurs as a result of emergent phenomenon.

Theory 2: powerful people that I dislike caused it.

~~~
njharman
How is this an application of that rule?

Both theories are excuses for being lazy.

It seems to be more of an application of rule "if I say something that's
appealing to the majority of people on YC I'll get upvoted."

~~~
divia
I imagine that explaining the emergent phenomenon is less lazy than blaming
someone, though simply labeling it as such may not be.

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tsally
Sorry if it's rude to ask, but why were you vetoed?

~~~
pg
I think because I wasn't from an organization that could serve as a guarantee
of good behavior. E.g. if I came from IBM and told the students to try heroin,
I'd be fired, but as a random individual there was no limit to how
irresponsible I could be. (This was before YC.)

It wasn't because of the content of the talk. The authorities didn't see that.
The only thing I've written that was turned down because it was too
controversial was:

<http://www.paulgraham.com/divergence.html>

~~~
YuriNiyazov
What would you say the limit on how irresponsible you can be is now that you
are part of YC?

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kirubakaran
This has been posted here before. I wonder how dupe-detection failed! I
couldn't find the earlier submission in SearchYC.com but I am _sure_ it was
posted before.

~~~
tokenadult
My wild guess, based on other examples, is that duplicate submission detection
lapses after a certain interval, so that there can be fresh discussion of
interesting topics. But I haven't checked the source code to see if that is
indeed how it works.

There is enough churn in membership here on HN that if the software lets a
submission post as a new thread, I'm willing to treat it as a new thread. I
try always to post canonical URLs when I submit links myself, the better to
activate the duplicate detector if necessary. /metadiscussion

~~~
kirubakaran
Not complaining... just surprised :-)

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jorgem
The background story seems interesting. Why was this speech not given?

In any case, I'm pretty sure that at 18, I wouldn't have "gotten" it.

~~~
helveticaman
I read it at 18...

~~~
quizbiz
Reading it now. :P

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quizbiz
I'm a bit confused on who the audience is. Students going into high school or
students going into college? After reading I'm noting to myself not to waste
any time in college.

~~~
tokenadult
Maybe the audience is more clear to readers who grew up in the United States.
The speech would be given to a group of students about to graduate from high
school (that is, just completing secondary schooling) and would assume that
many of the audience would be going on to college for higher education.

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someperson
Any possibility of hyper linking the footnotes on all of the old essays? I'd
rather click a link than search [1], [2] etc :P

