
Freeman Dyson's Brain  - prakash
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/6.02/dyson_pr.html
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DaniFong
"One of the things I got from Infinite in All Directions - it was a delight to
me, and I've been quoting it ever since - is that you honor inventors as much
as scientists.

It's as great a part of the human adventure to invent things as to understand
them. John Randall wasn't a great scientist, but he was a great inventor.
There's been lots more like him, and it's a shame they don't get Nobel Prizes.

Is it the scientists who are putting them down?

Yes. There is this snobbism among scientists, especially the academic types.

Are there other kinds?

There are scientists in industry who are a bit more broad minded. The
academics look down on them, too.

Is that a weird British hangover?

It's even worse in Germany. Intellectual snobbery is a worldwide disease. It
certainly was very bad in China and probably held back development there by
2,000 years.

How would you stop this intellectual snobbery?

I would abolish the PhD system. The PhD system is the real root of the evil of
academic snobbery. People who have PhDs consider themselves a priesthood, and
inventors generally don't have PhDs."

~~~
michael_nielsen
I liked that bit, too, although I thought the stuff about PhDs a bit
overstated, maybe because Dyson doesn't have a PhD. But the snobbism about
invention seems oh-so-true, and to have dire consequences for academic
disciplines (e.g., CS) where invention is particularly important.

~~~
DaniFong
It might also be a function of where his interests are now. I was a bit
surprised too, since grad programs in physics are pretty honest. But I think
it's a little different in bioscience. On many occasions, after talking with a
biologist or biochemist, I get the impression that it must be incredibly hard
to stay focused on the interesting questions. There is so much pressure to
pick safe topics and just churn out papers.

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howardyeh
For ambitious, enterprising people here, here's what Dyson says about getting
ahead:

The general rule I tell people is: "While you're young, work on the
fashionable stuff - that's where you get ahead fast and make a reputation.
When you're older, do the unfashionable things that, in the end, may be more
important but that won't get you recognized right away."

Let's all go make facebook and twitter clones in Lisp, Erlang, and Scala!

~~~
michael_nielsen
This advice seems to be more true in academia than the startup world. I think
Dyson was talking about academia, which is where he's spent his career.

~~~
eru
And he does not like the market economy.

Besides: Does anybody know in which village his wife lived?

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michael_nielsen
I submitted this just a few days ago
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=203685>).

~~~
whacked_new
Unfortunately, the lack of responses is highly influenced by time of
submission, and you might have gotten unlucky.

Great read, thanks to you both. Dyson is awesome.

~~~
eru
Did anyone ever conduct an (informal) study on the best time to submit?

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whacked_new
[http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/new_study_shows_best_an...](http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/new_study_shows_best_and_worst.php)

Informal indeed.

