Re:Lessons from a 45-year Study of Super-Smart Children
by criddell on Wednesday September 07, 2016 @01:28PM
(#12445324)
> That was an implied sub-goal.
Being influential and making something great aren't necessarily linked. In music, for example, lots of musicians I adore list Captain Beefheart as an influence. Captain Beefheart never really achieved much commercial success. I don't like his stuff at all.
Anyway, I sincerely hope that your work towards making something great is enjoyable or at least doesn't consume all of your time. Life is short and there's more things worth experiencing than we have time for.
That was an implied sub-goal. The verification criteria I gave was merely to illustrate what the concrete results of my endeavors might look like. If I said flatly "I want to make great games," then someone might reasonably respond "how do you know you're succeeding?"
>For goals like yours, politics and personality can matter as much as the work itself.
This is quite true. But Paul Graham has a great quote which I think might be applicable here: "Everyone in the sciences secretly believes that mathematicians are smarter than they are... And so there is a great temptation to work on problems you can treat formally, rather than problems that are, say, important."