I have a similar story. I dropped out of school at 16, and spent 14+ hours a day playing Stepmania Online, which was Dance Dance Revolution for your fingers. I was one of the best in the world! Then everyone stopped playing and nothing came of it. So for every DOTA millionaire or whatnot there’s likely thousands of people who are obsessed with something equally niche who haven’t realized any financial gains because of it.

Now I’m a software engineer, it’s working out way better than playing video games all day.

Do you still crack open Stepmania every so often for old times sake? I have no idea if any kind of a community still exists around it.

It also gave me a lesson in hierarchies of competence. Even though I was maybe one of the 20 best people ranked in Stepmania Online, there were people who despite the amount of time I’d put in were significantly better at the game. (The name Nima comes to mind, I think he was a concert pianist whose skills translated into perfect accuracy on Stepmania). Despite being really good, I felt like I’d never be the best.

It was also around that time that I met Day9, the pro Starcraft now relatively famous Twitch streamer at a LAN party and he introduced me to Beatmania, which was like Stepmania only more keys. He was so good at it (and arrogant, hah but isn’t any sixteen year old that can be?) that I sort of gave up on Stepmania because it felt like peanuts in comparison.

Anything competitive is emphatically not a good example of this. If you're in a competition, then by definition you're doing the exact same thing as everyone else. That's a guaranteed recipe for not accomplishing anything meaningful in life.

Competition can be great for cultivating positive character traits and developing certain skills, but at some point you need to move beyond it.

Because you're not pursuing personal advantage, this kind of obsession is incompatible with competition. You're obsessively interested in collecting old bus tickets not because you want to get paid, not because you want to be famous, not because you want to change the world, and not because you want to win.

So it's a bit weird for pg to identify "heuristics you can use to guess whether an obsession might be one that matters". If you care about whether a thing matters, instead about the thing itself, then you're not really disinterested.

As soon as your obsession becomes influenced by thoughts of personal advantage, then it's about garden variety ambition and determination, not the magical property of disinterest that pg describes.

Disinterested obsession may be a powerful source of innovation and progress, but the instant you intentionally try to harness this power in pursuit of progress, you destroy the magic of disinterest.

It's interest in the sense of "conflict of interest", not in the sense of finding something fascinating.

"Disinterest" doesn't work at all in any sense of the term. In the absence of overt mental illness, the bus-ticket collector must see it as being in his best interest to spend his time collecting bus tickets, or he'd do something else instead. ("You are your calendar.") The search for gratification, however externally meaningless, is certainly a valid expression of self-interest.

Put another way, if you would object if you were forcibly stopped from pursuing a goal, then you cannot be described as "disinterested."

"Intrinsic motivation", perhaps?

Maybe "impersonal"? Still weirdly contradictory but closer to the meaning maybe.

"detached" or "impartial"?

The limitations of English are weird.

[2] I worried a little about using the word "disinterested," since some people mistakenly believe it means not interested. But anyone who expects to be a genius will have to know the meaning of such a basic word, so I figure they may as well start now.

From dictionary.com, the second definition of disinterested is "having no interest in something," but the first is, "not influenced by considerations of personal advantage."

I guess the rebuttal might go something like: Business is inherently competitive. Creating startups, you are usually competing not only with old line businesses but with other startups.

I guess the rebuttal to the rebuttal might sound something like Thiel's startup lectures: Startups should try to be anticompetitive, ideally carving out new niches. You don't want to engage in head-to-head competition.

The 3rd degree rebuttal might be something like: There are plenty of examples of successful startups that began as clones of other businesses (Facebook seems the canonical example).

But then as you say, they moved beyond being a clone of Friendster/Myspace/Tribe/etc... but isn't that the competitive process?

Even if you create or exploit something wildly new that is completely beyond reach for anyone else at that moment – let's say you made time travel viable tomorrow – as soon as you did and started commercialising it, competition would start forming later that day.

For everything else, you will right off the gate be competing with someone over something (at the very least time and money). Airbnb is competing with Hotels/Motels, Uber with Taxis, Facebook with MySpace. MySpace with more specialised communities and GeoCities. The internet was competing with telephones, mail, fax and the yellow pages.

Can you elaborate?

What the above comment is about applies to so much in life, from education to careers because at their core, they are competitions.

> If you're in a competition, the. By definition you're doing the exact same thing as everyone else.

Not true.

There are people who play competitive, ranked, games 3 hrs a week and are happy with being in the top 50% of players

And there are people who spend 30hrs a week in a game and are profoundly unhappy they're only in the top 5% of players.

Those wind up being two very different paths, and it applies to way more than just gaming, like education, which I can speak from experience to that

From a young age I would spend hours upon hours on computers working on my games and random ideas. Even in school I would skip classes to work on my own projects in a computer lab.

My parents felt it was a complete waste of time (especially since it became a huge drain on my performance at school). I didn't have nearly as many close friends as I should have, didn't form a lot of the bonds people growing up do, it ruined my relationship with my parents.

At the end of the day through luck or something I scraped through high school with a .1 above failing GPA, dropped out of community college after failing 2 semesters and started a career in tech by freelancing.

Now 5 years later and the positions I've taken are consistently higher seniority than my friends who did CS in college, so it worked out, but at what cost?

Those years I lost, not even talking to one of my parents for over a year despite living in the same house, wasn't really worth it.

But it was an obsession, I didn't obsess over programming because I wanted to have a great career one day, it was because I couldn't help it. It was almost like an addiction that I got lucky enough to have double as a marketable skill.

It's crazy how much article really resonates with my experience, almost annoyingly so since I feel like a bus ticket collector sometimes, sure tech is a marketable skill, but you sure build a lot of unimportant stuff

The examples given in the post are not competitions.

The bus ticket collector is interested in old bus tickets, and is not competing with anybody.

Ramanujan obsessed over series, and was not competing with anybody.

But actually I disagree with saying Ramanujan wasn't competing with anyone, he just wasn't trying to compete

Plenty of people would consider any academic field a competition, even if not everyone in the field is there to compete

The competitive nature of the mathematics field easily have to do with why Ramanujan was not taken as seriously as he should have been at first. A "competitor" was coming with claims to grand contributions and that already created friction, which when combined with other factors about his non-traditional presentation became roadblocks.

That's a mistaken conclusion because you didn't follow it properly to the narrowed end: if you're in a large field of competition at a thing and you're among the best in the world at it, then the exact opposite is more likely to be true (you will likely do something meaningful and have extreme success) and your supposed guaranteed recipe collapses.

This premise holds true in eg: business, acting, music, science, traditional sports, games like chess, and numerous other fields.

Right now, around the world, dozens (or hundreds) of scientists are competing to reach the same breakthrough. They may not know who all the competitors are and may not know they're all chasing the same thing, but they are. One or a small group of them will get there before the rest. It is competition and it doesn't exclude you from doing something meaningful: you need to win the competition.

See: Tom Hanks, Meryl Streep, Michael Jordan, Serena Williams, Kurt Cobain, Whitney Houston, Craig Venter, Garry Kasparov, John Carmack, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos

All had to rise to the top of highly competitive fields with a large supply of competitors. How many other grunge bands were there next to Nirvana? How many other singers did Whitney Houston have to stand apart from? How many other women (frequently younger, a big deal in tennis) has Serena Williams had to competitively outlast over ~20 years to spend so much time on top of her sport and put together one of the greatest sports careers of all-time? It's a never ending supply of younger, highly talented competitors, and yet Williams did what she did.

This is absolutely false and a terrible thing to perpetuate. Work ethic has the highest controllable coefficient to success as an output. Luck exists and the universe is probabilistic, yes, but it is not non-deterministic.

This self-lashing of our community and amongst the populist movement that is growing in popularity in the EU and US is ridiculous, reducing the sum total of human achievement into lucky chance rather than actually understanding the probabilistic universe and knowing that while our actions do not wholly determine our fate, they play the single largest role we have control over, and as such, it would be better to believe the myth that we have full control over our destiny rather than this ridiculous concept that luck controls ~100% of circumstance.

Probability theory needs to be taught in primary school, apparently, because for members of even this community, the fallacy of determinism and binary outcomes run rampant.

Why think in black and white ?

We have a lot impact on our lives, but there's also some luck involved, especially if we want to achieve extreme things.

Not the sum total of achievement, just a single individual's achievement. An individual's achievement can indeed be attributed ~100% to luck. For every Einstein there are hundreds of equally brilliant geniuses who died picking cotton in a field.

The economy of today is so efficient and supply chains are so effective at moving things to people who need them, that it seems incredibly stupid to not use it to provide some kind of basic necessities to every human being, no questions asked.

If the US were to do this today, there would be more innovation, less misery, a supercharged economy as you've increased the purchasing power of millions of people overnight...It a fucking no brainer. And cutting taxes rather than providing more benefits seems like the most stupid way to run a country I've ever seen in my life.

While your friend, who did nothing for 5 years, maintains the same standard of living that you do.

I guess this could work, but to me, the level of "disinterest" required to be okay with this result is even more rare than genius.

No rational person that isn't already well off would take a 1% shot at 1 billion over a 10% shot at 100 million.

Progressive taxation and social safety don't stifle economies, they make them thrive. They act as a negative tax on risk, and create a framework where actors are free to pursue higher EV bets without worrying as much about utility value. Literally the entire point is to create more pie for everyone.

Bludgers getting "free money" is just a side effect. You're not paying for them with your taxes, you're paying into an insurance fund with all the other innovators. Except this fund is +EV, subsidized by all the other countries in the global economy that aren't taking the same gains. You're the one getting the free money, and the leaners are taxing some percentage of that.

The only reason every successful country in the world isn't already doing it is because of this unintuitive "common sense" optic that you (and about a billion others, literally) are propagating: that somehow it breaks the rules of "fairness". The reality is it's got absolutely nothing to do with fairness, it's about maximizing the bottom line, just like in business. Governments don't give a shit about individual people, nor should they (at least not at the expense of society).

Also, I'd guess most first world countries could easily (and do) provide a world class social safety net without going over 50% taxation in any bracket, not even billionaires. Your example only applies if you're talking about taxation in the 70-100% range.

Honestly, is this such a bad thing? Why do we incentivize innovation by promising people a basic standard of living? We reward people who take risks with something better than that anyways, so I see no problem with giving people not willing to take those risks something lesser than that “for free”.

For every "Ronaldo" there are a small amount of moderately successful players playing soccer for a good living.

The myriad is the group of people that are coasting their way through life trying to put in as little effort as possible and naturally they don't succeed.

Ok, you've heard of Cristiano Ronaldo. Yet, have you heard of Dani?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dani_(footballer,_born_1976)

Like Ronaldo he was launched int Sporting Clube de Portugal's first team when he played for the club's U17 team. Unlike Ronaldo, Dani didn't had a heart condition. Unlike Ronaldo, Dani had more appearances in his first year in the first team, and was quickly picked by WestHam and Ajax.

Unlike Ronaldo, Dani had a notoriously poor work ethics. Unlike Ronaldo, Dani's impressive start was squandered and he went nowhere, he achieved nothing and has since been forgotten.

Work ethics is the deciding factor. You may have won the genetic lottery and be a bonafide ubermensch but if your work ethics suck then you'll quickly be surpassed by those lesser talented but more hard working than you.

If the definition of success is wealth or notoriety, there are certainly people who achieve it without those traits.

Have you given thought to whether these are the absolute baseline...or actually the consequences of practices more fundamental?

However, just being "a hard worker" in itself is considered a virtue by many people.

I hesitate to call it the Protestant Work Ethic or the Puritan Work Ethic, as it's far from limited to Protestants or Puritans, but that's really what it is. The harder you work, the more virtuous you are considered to be, and working less is considered sinful or lazy (in other words, unvirtuous and blame-worthy).

And sometimes no matter how hard you work, you're one of those people under the rungs.

Tarn and Zach Adams are also bus ticketers.

I disagree of how you define rationality here. If someone feels it serves them fine to play 14 hours of a game, it seems perfectly rational for me. Especially in the case that you mentioned, where they were playing before any big money was on the table. It means they liked, despite a lot of people judging them with an air of superiority.

edit: I re-read my previous comment and I am not sure I could make it more clear.

if a game does not gives money prizes at all, the ones who are playing it are not playing for the money.

They played the game they loved and they loved to win at it

When money arrived into e-games they were most prepared

I don’t like competitive gaming so even if you tell me there are millions to be made I still won’t do it, it seems something so unattainable

Where do you see that message? No luck was involved in your example, just hard work on behalf of the good players and of the Dota developers, and pursuing a hobby with passion is perfectly rational.

To a point, yes. Though we may disagree on the threshold where it crosses over from rational to unhealthy obsession. And there is certainly luck involved when there are tens who found fortune out of millions participating.

Frankly, back 20 years ago I would have never thought that watching someone play a game would become a form of entertainment.

Then what the hell are NFL, NBA, etc? People have been watching others play a game as a form of entertainment for as long as society can remember:

Even after popular chess matches on TV in the 80's, 90's?

So, did they play these games in the hope to make millions, or because they liked them?

Not everything is about ROI, I'm also not saying playing Dota for your entire life is going to be particularly fulfilling in many other ways thought - after all they are playing out their lives within the very finite confines of someone else's creation.

The author does point this out as a suggested heuristic, if you are obsessed with someone elses creation, it's probably not going to be very fruitful (whether fruitful means money, scientific discovery, or fulfillment ones curiosity etc).

If you told these guys to be a competitive gamer for the millions, they probably would have stuck to competitive fishing or whatever they were doing anyway. Taking a message or leadership from it is kind of the antithesis of the point. The point is that some social pursuits are the birthplace of the next big thing and some people who are focused on socializing need to make the choice on pursuits that have a potential and pursuits that don't like. Dance class is pretty dead as a career, but we're going to need people who can sort quality from quantity in a few years, the people focused on a qualitative pursuit socially need to pick a field where it's obvious that's needed like journalism or the swath of video games sure to flood the market.

It doesn't have much to do with rational decision making in detail and is instead a generalized story about the different directions in life you can choose.

>> it's more promising if you're creating something, rather than just consuming something someone else creates

Gaming consumes the creative efforts of others. It's fun, invigorating and a healthy pass-time. But it's not good ground for growing genius.

You have to weigh your current abilities and their earning potential vs. the costs of venturing into a new field.

Being at the top of Dota is easier than being at the top of Math or Chess or Go, since Dota is a newer field. They aren't really comparable, but you still compare them if you are trying to figure out what you want to put your time into.

Some people just get lucky and find the thing they are good at on the first try. Then they can maximize their hours available for that thing.

Other people (probably the majority) have to try different fields and start later, and ultimately have less time overall to spend.

So it actually seems rational (if maximizing hours-spent is your goal) to go all-in on the first thing that grabs your interest, which could be Dota.

I slightly disagree - neither Chess nor Go have nearly the millions of new players playing it obsessively as they come of age. Math is a bit different, but often times “good at math” isn’t very rewarding except as it pertains to an ancillary job, or if you’re one of the relative few who become a math major.

There’s also a major drop off over time with MOBA players - the average age is 22 or something for professionals. Eventually the reflexes get worse.

As a result, more and more areas of science and technology get stuck near local maxima. The same happened in all ancient civilisations.

I think you are confusing financial success with contributing to artistic/scientific/intellectual progress.

Contrary to popular belief, you don't have to be a genius to work in FAANG. It's a lot of luck. You just have to give yourself as many good chances in the interview pipeline as possible.

Nah, millions are delivered to those who already have millions, everything else is noise that is overemphasized to distract the bottom 80+%.