Once, the YouTube "algorithm" led me to video featuring a bodybuilder that explained that being a professional bodybuilder = being a professional eater.

To bodybuilders (and I assume, also athletes), eating in a methodical and structured way is an important part of their job. The guy grew his own vegetables and spent a lot of time selecting food at markets, ate at very specific times, etc.

That, combined with supplements, experimenting with different training regimes, etc... it's a lot of experimentation and certainly there's a lot of cognitive work behind all of that.

I found this very interesting.

This is especially true in endurance sports. The level of competition is so high now that now one can succeed just based on talent and grit. In order to win you need to understand physiology, psychology, nutrition, aerodynamics, equipment maintenance, etc. Elites even run their own informal private scientific experiments with detailed data analytics to determine empirically which techniques deliver the best results.

One of the traits of top footballers in the modern game is that their teammates are pretty much - and keep in mind these are already some of the best players in the world by a long way - in disbelief of how hard and how efficiently they train. That's how Cristiano Ronaldo is as good as he is at an age when many have already retired.

Jordan is an incredible athlete and an incredible person. Not long ago a friend sent me a recording of Jordans last game against the Jazz, and man, I was seriously impressed at his tactical prowess. Two really amazing teams playing a game of human chess with some might and force of will mixed in was awe inspiring all over again. Watching Jordan rise to the occasion on top of that gave me goosebumps. I'm quite proud to have grown up watching his games.

Absolutely, why do you think the first jock called the first nerd a nerd for the first time? He was projecting!

By redefining anyone who has worked very hard and enjoyed success as a 'fierce nerd', you make the term meaningless, and the supposed payoff from being one into a tautology.

I think there’s a difference between the sort of subject-matter-preference driven obsessiveness that characterizes nerds and the one-of-the-few-visible-though-high-odds-of-failure-ways-out-of-a-miserable life that drives a lot of black kids to a focus lots of time and energy on basketball.

Very odd comment. Jordan and Kobe did not grow up miserably at all. Jordan grew up in a stable middle-class home and Kobe's dad was an NBA player-turned-coach.

I don't think they were talking about Jordan or Kobe specifically. There does seem to be a kind of seductive lie (not just in black communities) that sports or other long shots are a viable career path for the dedicated kid. Where I grew up, there were plenty of kids who believed they would be famous basketball players one day as a matter of fact, skaters who believed a fat sponsorship was in reach if they just got that kick flip down tight, even culinary artists who think they can join the ranks of the rich by catering their private dinners.

It's probably the same with startups -- most startups fail, mine included, but either we delude ourselves into thinking that it's just a matter of putting in enough effort, or we are in situations where we really can't see any other option to escape the gravity well of our situations. Not so far off from someone obsessively playing ball to try to get out, except for the broader applicability of the skills gained if the long shot doesn't pay off.