
Ask gwern: Who are you? - bmmayer1
We know so much about you, and yet, so little.  What's your day job?  Where do you find the time to do all this writing? Does your site make a significant amount of money? Why do you choose relative anonymity?
======
gwern
I was originally not going to answer this, but kiba posted his request
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5654008> and to my astonishment, it
worked: through Paypal I have currently received $293.01 in 7 donations,
through Bitcoin, 1.62btc ($189) in 4 donations.

I have replied to the Paypal donators (but not the Bitcoiners, since they're
unreachable) thanking them but I would also like to thank them publicly here:
I get very little feedback on my writing aside from little numbers ticking
upwards in Google Analytics, and am often plagued by doubts - are my writings
any good? Are they usually confined in a ghetto? Are people going away
laughing at my ignorance and amateurism? Will they contribute meaningfully to
anything at all or just represent an indulgent waste of time and intellectual
masturbation? So to see a few comments raise almost overnight ~$500 moves me.

> What's your day job?

Various things; as I say on <http://www.gwern.net/Links#personal> I sometimes
write for people.

> Does your site make a significant amount of money?

No. I sometimes get donations, but not very much; they are all recorded in
<http://www.gwern.net/About#popularity> if you're curious about specifics.

I recently added Google AdSense and Amazon affiliate linking because money was
tight. These don't make very much either. Specifically:

\- Google AdSense: $241 lifetime total (over 269k pageviews) - Amazon
Affiliate: $59 total or ~$0.8 a day:
[http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/85192141/2013-05-04-total...](http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/85192141/2013-05-04-totalamazon.txt)

> Why do you choose relative anonymity?

For the reasons I've said in the past. To which I can add personal safety: my
Silk Road page is a bit questionable legally, and we all know that there are
ways to exploit knowledge of one's True Name and address (even if, as far as I
know, I have no enemies willing to resort to, say, 'swatting' me) - one group
of stalkers called up a college they thought I worked at to see if they could
get me fired or otherwise ruin my day.

~~~
bmmayer1
gwern, thanks for the reply.

I admire your prolific output, even if I don't agree with a lot of your
conclusions (historical and political, that is, because your math/stat is too
complicated for me to understand). I have to say, you have sparked a lot of
discussion amongst me and my friends recently. The importance of argument from
argument instead of from authority is made even more clear when the writer, by
virtue of his (her?) anonymity, has no authority to fall back on, which makes
his arguments even more critical. But it doesn't matter: some of the most
accomplished people in history were amateurs. All that is required is a love
of the subject, and you seem to love your subjects. Keep up the good work. BTC
coming your way.

~~~
gwern
> I admire your prolific output, even if I don't agree with a lot of your
> conclusions (historical and political, that is, because your math/stat is
> too complicated for me to understand). I have to say, you have sparked a lot
> of discussion amongst me and my friends recently.

Hm, intriguing - I don't write about politics very much, I wonder what it
could be... My little thing about the American Revolution, perhaps.

> BTC coming your way.

Thanks.

------
obviouslygreen
If you find value in it, does this really matter? Knowing these things about a
person does little more than give you something to like/dislike,
approve/disapprove, etc. about them.

Why should we care what this person does? How much money they make from the
small parts of their life we see? Why they choose not to bare their souls to
us, the morbidly curious?

If this question were actually answered, in my opinion, this site would become
less interesting. Keep and enjoy a little bit of mystery and wonder, even if
it is just a very little bit.

~~~
kilowatt
+1. Why does it matter? It's totally his right to remain (pseudo-)anonymous.
Plus, it might be part of the fun.

I wrote about _why for this reason, too:
[http://kevinw.github.io/2013/04/30/why-did-why-the-lucky-
sti...](http://kevinw.github.io/2013/04/30/why-did-why-the-lucky-stiff-quit/)

~~~
gwern
That's a nice essay. I was especially moved by the parts about the
ephemerality of programs as compared to ordinary writing - indeed, what
program will still be read a century from now?

------
kiba
Unfortunately, he doesn't have a day job and he's really poor. If you like his
research, consider a donation in paypal dollars or bitcoin.

~~~
spitx
This is what consistently appalls me ( and yet astounds me at the same time )

That companies and organizations are full of utterly untalented and wholly
ill-suited & miserable folks who somehow lucked into lofty and well-paying
jobs.

And yet there are gifted people like gwern who cannot seem to catch a break no
matter how demonstrably prolific they are.

I think we should stop telling kids that life rewards the passionate and the
skilled. (By rewards I don't mean some inner solace coming from indulging in
what you love, but the conventional rewards of recognition and remuneration.)

Life is rigged in favor of the opportunists.

The schemers, hustlers, the witty-talkers and the seize-rs.

But certainly not the plainspoken and the adept.

No matter how you dice it, your conscience tells you that this is more than a
bit unfair and disenchanting.

~~~
nostrademons
"That companies and organizations are full of utterly untalented and wholly
ill-suited & miserable folks who somehow lucked into lofty and well-paying
jobs."

Why does it astound you that opportunities go to the opportunists?

I think that what you're seeing here is that gifted people _do_ eventually
catch a break and luck into a lofty and well-paying job. And then their
employer starts telling them what to work on (because, after all, people don't
pay you for being smart - they pay you to do things for them), and they don't
have time to work on the cool-but-relatively-useless public-domain stuff. From
the outside, it looks like they've suddenly become utterly untalented, ill-
suited, and miserable. But from the inside, they're just as smart as they ever
were, it's just that their talents have been redirected into invisible things
that people will actually pay for.

I used to do cool stuff like teach folks how to write Scheme interpreters in
Haskell or port Arc to Javascript or spend half a day re-implementing Tetris
on a webpage. Eventually enough people noticed that I got a nice job at
Google. I still work on cool stuff, but nobody notices anymore, partly because
everybody takes the fact that Google Search _just works_ for granted and
because I work with enough other talented people that I can't claim sole
credit for anything I do anymore.

If Gwern wants a job at Google, I'll be happy to refer him.

~~~
int3
> I still work on cool stuff, but nobody notices anymore, partly because
> everybody takes the fact that Google Search just works for granted and
> because I work with enough other talented people that I can't claim sole
> credit for anything I do anymore.

Just curious: Are you equally satisfied with the not-so-public work you're
doing now?

~~~
nostrademons
Tough question. The work I'm doing is challenging and I'm paid well for it, so
yes, on that end I'm satisfied with it. I'd be lying if I said there weren't
moments where I wish more of it were public, though, or that I could do
something impressive in its own right rather than part of a major software
system (and hence constrained by the other design choices made for that
system), or that it doesn't sting when the project you're working on, which is
doing some very cool technical things, gets canceled because it doesn't fit
into the direction that your group is going.

I'd say that on balance, yes, I'm equally satisfied. But that probably means
that I'll end up switching between the two a few times during my career.

------
Skoofoo
A comment gwern left in reply to something like this 2 years ago:
<http://www.gwern.net/About#comment-257772944>

------
mapt
"I'm kinda hoping that if I do enough statistics because I find it
interesting, I'll stumble into a real job" - gwern

One of the more resourceful and consistently interesting people I have had the
pleasure of knowing.

------
joshguthrie
I reply with a question, in what way is gwern so famous that "we" need to know
about him, his day job, his schedule, his site revenue,...?

I heard about gwern (and his site) this week when I stumbled on
<http://www.gwern.net/otaku> from a NGE website (3.33 just got out...) and
didn't search the website further. Now I've seen the same website appear for
its article on the death of Google Products.

So now I've gotten a glance, seen some articles I already read,... But what is
this all about? Maybe it's because we are used to popular bloggers always
writing under their full name, with their blogs always being related to their
work-personas,... What makes you want (or think we deserve) to know so much
more about him?

------
dfc
This is the most bizarre submission I have ever seen on the front page of HN.

~~~
skrebbel
Why? I think it's lovely. Is there any way to interpret this other than a
tribute to Gwern and his work?

------
klint
I think he is, or was, a researcher for the Singularity Institute [1] (now
known as the Machine Intelligence Research Institute).

[1]
[http://lesswrong.com/lw/9t8/the_singularity_institute_needs_...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/9t8/the_singularity_institute_needs_remote/)

------
codezero
Pretty easy to find out with some Google-fu, but certainly there is no reason
to make a big deal out of it.

------
bmmayer1
gwern answers here: <https://pastee.org/bebat>

