When Paul Graham uses a phrase like "great work" I can't help but only consider it as being synonymous to "work that generates a big return for the investor" in his context of Y Combinator
I agree. Though the article mentions work from people like Einstein, Copernicus, Darwin, etc. A far cry from the kind of work Y Combinator funds. It gives the post a comedic air to it. Perhaps if had given some more grounded examples that feel more relevant to the work he's done himself then the article would land more for me.
Every invention is made of other inventions all the way back to big rock and sharp stick.
So yes Bayesian spam filtering was impressive for its time. I remember it being done locally in mail clients.
It’s also one of the early popular deployments of a form of “AI” but that was still during the hangover from the first AI bubble when you had to call it “machine learning.”
He wrote a lot about this. For example he built an e-commerce meta platform in Lisp that would allow anyone to build and customise their own shops that was far ahead of anything that existed at the time.
Per Graham's own definition, the founding to Y Combinator. Setting aside critiques, some of his influential essays ("Ramen profitable", "Do things that don't scale", "Founder mode", "Beating the averages", "Schelp blindness", etc) also fit the bill.
> At 7 it may seem excitingly ambitious to build huge things out of Lego, then at 14 to teach yourself calculus, till at 21 you're starting to explore unanswered questions in physics.
It's a nice post, with a lot of valuable insights. There is one that I disagree with though: "Never abandon the root node".
There are plenty of instances that show that in reality this is not what happens, and in fact this is often a necessary step of reinventing yourself if things really aren't working for you. The mid-life crisis is a famous example of this, or even the quarter-life crisis. In some specific psychological circles this is referred to as "disintegration". Sometimes carefully backtracking is simply not enough, and growth needs this kind large shock to the system.
If you let a manager, accountant, or politician decide what 'unnecessary', 'wrong', and 'bad' are. Then I would agree. But if you let an artist decide those things, then I think it would be fine.
this is one of the common conundrums of life. but for someone living in the grey, this stuff might push them over the edge to be great. that is the point of this article
It's not like I wanted to play it in the background. In this particular case, I rather watch the talk than reading the essay if it's available. It's just interesting to have this option now which wasn't possible before.
Actually try it, it's pretty good. Especially when the alternative doesn't exist. And mind you, I am not pro-AI at all, it might not come off that way under this thread. Despite that I did appreciate whoever made it. File it under personal preference.
I think all the parts were invented by other people, but he got the right mix to make it work.
It's also like the wheel. Before it was a huge problem and no one know how to solve it. Now it's invisible.
Note that all modern versions use enhanced variants with a lot or trick to make it better.
So yes Bayesian spam filtering was impressive for its time. I remember it being done locally in mail clients.
It’s also one of the early popular deployments of a form of “AI” but that was still during the hangover from the first AI bubble when you had to call it “machine learning.”
Is this supposed to be relatable?
- William James Sidis
There are plenty of instances that show that in reality this is not what happens, and in fact this is often a necessary step of reinventing yourself if things really aren't working for you. The mid-life crisis is a famous example of this, or even the quarter-life crisis. In some specific psychological circles this is referred to as "disintegration". Sometimes carefully backtracking is simply not enough, and growth needs this kind large shock to the system.
https://www.paulgraham.com/hamming.html
That's actually my own problem too - I often use AI to summarize / shorten my own texts. (Opposite of what most who seem to use it for generation?)
The people who would benefit from the advice (resourceful people full of free time that are doing nothing meaningful) will likely ignore it anyway.