
A Stroke of Genius: Striving for Greatness in All You Do (1993) - Tomte
http://www.mccurley.org/advice/hamming_advice.html
======
rrggrr
> 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.

~~~
hkmurakami
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
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.

------
AndrewKemendo
_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
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?

~~~
AndrewKemendo
_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.

~~~
Nition
Some also just see a fulfilling life differently. Some people's goal in life
is to have enough money to get by, with a wife and kids to spend time with, or
some time to potter around on hobby projects. Some people's goal in life is to
have a _break_ from always working, from always striving to be great.

Alternatively, some things you can be great at without anyone noticing. How
many of those people you worked with that seemed to be just going though the
motions _at work_ , were really great parents to their kids at home, or threw
really great parties, or had a really project at home that they never talked
about?

~~~
AndrewKemendo
See though, that's a muddying of the idea of greatness that the author
proposes. Being a "Great parent" isn't a tangible measurable thing.

------
riwsky
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.

------
dieterrams
> 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
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.

------
amelius
> 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?

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

~~~
amelius
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.

~~~
Danihan
I am not a Facebook fan, but it was successful at connecting communications
around the world and increasing overall adoption of the the internet.

I truly mean it, it's an unanswerable question, educated guesses or not. Too
subjective.

For instance... is it better for Earth to have 1 Billion people on it, or is
it better to have 25 Billion? If a "tragic" disaster drastically reduced the
population levels for 100 years, but also allowed our species to evolve at a
more sustainable pace in the long-term, was the disaster good or bad?

~~~
Anonymous9761
The disaster would be good for the species, but bad for individuals. The
species is more important than any number of individuals, so such a disaster
would be of net benefit.

------
yters
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.

------
Gatsky
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.

------
jtraffic
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-...](https://www.amazon.com/Creativity-Flow-Psychology-Discovery-
Invention/dp/0062283251)

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.

~~~
AndrewKemendo
_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
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.

~~~
AndrewKemendo
Hmm, well they did say at the end...

 _Nearly everyone he talked to (many Nobel Laureates among them) said their
greatest achievement was raising a family or something in personal life._

So I think it's a relevant question if truncated in spirit for brevity.

------
jayliew
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.

------
dang
Can anybody find the year for this?

~~~
sarabande
According to the PostScript file here:
[https://people.math.osu.edu/gerlach.1/laser/you_and_your_res...](https://people.math.osu.edu/gerlach.1/laser/you_and_your_research.ps),
October 1993.

~~~
dang
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...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=you%20and%20your%20research&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0),
but different enough to deserve some time in its own right.

