This was validating for me, in that I've always felt that way about undertakings, or learning something, though I usually have a different extreme, as far as justifications: where Hamming feels it's cowardly, I feel like it's the only way to actually accomplish anything worth accomplishing.
Okay so imagine there are two rather long treadmills: one with the accomplished goal at the end of it, one with greatness at the end of it. The treadmill with the accomplished goal is illusory, it's a modern stick and carrot. The goal is attached to the controls, not the track. The treadmill with greatness on the other hand, happens to have the "real" accomplished goal on it, it's just attached to the bottom, and in the journey to get to greatness, your goal will pop up, and in time, you'll reach it, at which point you will pick it up, and realize that greatness is inside it.
At first this seems obvious, a cliché, but in terms of the modern day information ecosystem (I believe Daniel Shmactenberger calls it, though I tend to lean more towards information economy, because we traffic in it.), it's rather insidious. This is arguably the fundamental issue of our time.
TOO MUCH CLUE. At a certain point clues become detrimental because they increase the informational potency of a number of options. You can give someone a clue that you know is an argument against an option, but the recipient of the clue is going to file it away as neutral, because they don't know where it fits among the rest of the clues. At first, clues increase the potency of a single choice, or small number of choices, and drain potency from the other choicesbut over time, one clue alters the perception of several options, and another clue alters the perception of several other options, and before long your mental puzzle solving algorithm- (sorting, comparison, and selection) is forced near, or into the realm of factorials- you're into the realm of sets of sets of clue based option potency distributions, so you're at least dealing with exponentials. This no computers land, let alone a place for brains.
Information Traffickers- if I can do it without it being in bad taste, without seeming to be making a pun on human traffickers, this would be an interesting concept to expound upon.
This sounds like a very generalized version of "Real programmers ship"- I appreciate the ethos but, and perhaps it's nitpicky (I'm really mulling over the meaning of great), it is not necessarily true. I'd say Great people attempt to do what the rest won't.
This seems subtly, very personal, a very short tale of a man and the battle between his ambitions and limitations, harsh interactions with reality that pull him back down from loftier, idealistic goals
"The continuous production of micro-Nobel Prizes.." I have never heard such a gallant frame for putting in the work, that's honestly genius. That's so good. Of course I'm showing up if I'm getting micro-Nobel Prizes. No word on how many mNP = NP. There's a few P = NP puns here, but I can't decide which one to make.
This is why Bad conditions are no excuse for bad work. He believes great work (necessarily a function of greatness) can be made habitual.
I'm on the fence solely because I think some of the people that he will select as greats, are known outliers in a particular dimension, and again, I'm, well not nitpicking but splitting hairs, about the meaning of greatness.
I think this is a very very true fact, and I think it stands in stark contrast to the modern view of greatness. Everyone wants to found a unicorn.
When you think about the idea that we all die two deaths, the second taking place the last time anyone ever says your name: the people who have staved off sudden death for the longest have all been people who contributed great knowledge to humanity. Plato, Sun Tzu, Francis Bacon, (all who yet again, though certainly not just from this mention, just escaped second death for another time on June 12th, 2020) etc.
The philosophers.
Religious prophets.
Sun Tzu (A General, interesting- he'll last as long as war does.)
The Buddha
Jesus
Francis Bacon
Ghandi
But minds are learning by downloading things on phones now. Pdf's count.