
The String Theory (2008) - creolabs
https://www.esquire.com/sports/a5151/the-string-theory-david-foster-wallace/
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ggambetta
_The idea that there can be wholly distinct levels to competitive
tennis–levels so distinct that what 's being played is in essence a whole
different game–might seem to you weird and hyperbolic. [...] I have played
against men who were on a whole different, higher plateau than I, and I have
understood on the deepest and most humbling level the impossibility of beating
them, of "solving their game." [...] I feel like I could get on a tennis court
with Julian Knowle. He would beat me, perhaps handily, but I don't feel like
it would be absurd for me to occupy the same seventy-eight-by-twenty-seventy-
foot rectangle as he. The idea of me playing Joyce–or even hitting around with
him, which was one of the ideas I was entertaining on the flight to
Montreal–is now revealed to me to be in a certain way obscene_

I can relate to this, in the software engineering realm. Most people I've
worked with, I feel like we're on the same "league". Some are better than me
at certain things, I'm better than them at certain other things, but I
generally feel like given enough time and interest, I could do what they do.

But there has been a small handful of people I've had the pleasure of working
with that I could tell operate on a different level. Their brains work
differently. It's hard to explain if you haven't felt it. They're
qualitatively different, not just quantitatively. It's wonderful and humbling
to see them in action. They also tend to be among the humblest, nicest, most
hilarious people I know (I'm looking at you, Matt, STU, ejbs).

Incidentally, this is one reason to reject "brilliant jerks". The most
brilliant people I know aren't jerks, so "brilliant lovely people" are rare,
but they exist. Do not put up with jerks.

~~~
Ididntdothis
I saw them the same in boxing. From time to time a newbie would show up at the
gym who just seemed to understand the sport on a deeper level from the start.
It seemed they were born for it. Interestingly a lot of them didn’t enjoy the
sport so they didn’t pursue it further. If you have somebody with this level
of talent, who enjoys the sport and has the right work ethic you have a
champion.

I wonder how many potential top programmers just into another area because
they weren’t interested in programming. I remember one physicist I worked with
who had no interest in programming but probably was one of the best
programmers I have met. For him it was just a tool to accomplish his goals in
developing cell phone technology.

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hprotagonist
_For a while, I thought that Joyce 's rather bland candor was a function of
his not being very bright. This judgment was partly informed by the fact that
Joyce didn't go to college and was only marginally involved in his high school
academics (stuff I know because he told me right away) [18]. What I discovered
as the tournament wore on was that I can be kind of a snob and an asshole and
that Michael Joyce's affectless openness is not a sign of stupidity but of
something else._

