The author of this post is Colin Percival, who has some minor fame/recognition on Hacker News, so the post probably doesn't include as much context as it should for a wider audience. A good quick...
The author of this post is Colin Percival, who has some minor fame/recognition on Hacker News, so the post probably doesn't include as much context as it should for a wider audience.
A good quick summary of why someone would ask about him specifically comes from this comment he wrote on HN 5 years ago (highly recommend reading the whole linked comment—it's very good, but I'm just pulling out the relevant sentence to stay on-topic here):
I started university when I was 13, won the Putnam competition when I was 18, went on to a doctorate in computing from Oxford University, and single-handedly bootstrapped a successful startup.
He's somewhat well-known on the site as a prodigy, which is why someone was questioning whether he's wasted his potential on unimportant work.
The post has a fair amount of technical terms/details in it, but don't worry if you don't understand them. It has some interesting thoughts on life, work, and academia regardless.
I don't understand the premise? Waste... for whom? This Percival dude isn't a wizard, whatever happens there is zero guarantee that his life will somehow bring something more to humanity as a...
I don't understand the premise? Waste... for whom? This Percival dude isn't a wizard, whatever happens there is zero guarantee that his life will somehow bring something more to humanity as a whole than anyone else, no matter how early he started Uni. Or that one path does fekk all for humanity, or the other does it.
He seems to be doing great, and even if his life isn't anything I would enjoy - good on him! We should all be so lucky to find ourselves somewhere good in life!
Arguably one of the most influential people on the fate of the human race in modern time was Stanislav Petrov. Nothing was written in the stars about him and what he would do. All of us are capable and if anything else the fact that HN thinks this dude is the messiah or something scares me way more than anything. Also the fact that someone on HN thinks there is like "wasteful" and "non-wasteful" lives. OR that some should be more one than the other... Thats terrifying.
EDIT: That last bit really has me freaked out. Do people still think like this? That some are preordained or supposed to, and that the benefit of man is somehow easily counted out and checked against that first value to make a convenient tally?
I think how you view work and its value depends on your framework for normative ethics. If you subscribe to utilitarianism, then surely, some work (or work product) is better than other. I wonder...
All of us are capable and if anything else the fact that HN thinks this dude is the messiah or something scares me way more than anything. Also the fact that someone on HN thinks there is like "wasteful" and "non-wasteful" lives. OR that some should be more one than the other... Thats terrifying.
I think how you view work and its value depends on your framework for normative ethics. If you subscribe to utilitarianism, then surely, some work (or work product) is better than other. I wonder about this myself under the lens of capitalism. I think utilitarianism and capitalism are fundamentally at odds with one another, because the people who get to decide what work gets done are usually not the people who could make the best decisions under a utilitarian imperative. That is to say, middle and upper management (or the fellowship committee at Canada's National Sciences and Engineering Research Council, or cryptology/computer hardware journal reviewers, in Percival’s case in the OP), are unlikely to be able to manage everyone into an optimal work stream. Personally, I have found more fulfillment in some of my side projects that were self-directed than those that I was instructed to work on. But, I don’t know how to compare them by any extrinsic measure—only my personal satisfaction.
Now, that’s not to say there is no value in management—I know there are a lot of people who, lacking self direction, under a strictly utilitarian imperative, would not self-direct into successful modes of work. But, I’m equally certain that those who manage are not managing optimally.
This is all to say, I think someone like Percival who is capable of self-directed work, and has been lucky enough to be able to pursue such self-direction without managing to hit any catastrophic failure modes, has allowed him a certain kind of success that utilitarian philosophy would place value on.
Is utilitarianism the only standard of measure? Of course not. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with arguing for other normative ethical theories that might place more value on someone, say spending their working life producing a personal music collection that they don’t share with anyone else. As long as they find that fulfilling and don’t hit some sort of failure mode in other aspects of their life that blow up their efforts, I could appreciate that sort of work. And there’s also the danger here of placing less value on the work/work product and more on the person who does the work (this is not compatible with my personal ethics).
The difference between the reclusive musicographer and the cryptographic entrepreneur, though, which I think you’re getting to, is that the latter’s contribution to the outside world is more easily extrinsically quantifiable (in fact, it is observable in the first place!), and as such the utilitarians on HN can grok the contribution and assign it relative value.
So its a discussion between utilitarians, this Colin Percival guy and the other person on HN, and the value of his work and the potential of the beginning of his life? I don't have anything to...
So its a discussion between utilitarians, this Colin Percival guy and the other person on HN, and the value of his work and the potential of the beginning of his life? I don't have anything to contribute there. Sorry :/
You can surely contribute your own beliefs about normative ethics. If you so viscerally object to utilitarianism, can you explain why? Or is it the tech-focused HN spin on utilitarianism that you...
You can surely contribute your own beliefs about normative ethics. If you so viscerally object to utilitarianism, can you explain why? Or is it the tech-focused HN spin on utilitarianism that you reject?
I don't object to it, its just not my thing and I think whatever I would add would clutter the subject and the inner details of utilitarianism isn't anything I am very interested in so its unfair...
I don't object to it, its just not my thing and I think whatever I would add would clutter the subject and the inner details of utilitarianism isn't anything I am very interested in so its unfair to those who are.
Fair enough. I just thought it infelicitous if you had an opinion which others might like to hear, but you were reticent to share because you were anxious it would be received as combative.
Fair enough. I just thought it infelicitous if you had an opinion which others might like to hear, but you were reticent to share because you were anxious it would be received as combative.
I think it's more a question of moral imperative rather than destiny, which makes a lot of sense from a utilitarian perspective (which seems to be fairly common in tech/tech adjacent communities).
I think it's more a question of moral imperative rather than destiny, which makes a lot of sense from a utilitarian perspective (which seems to be fairly common in tech/tech adjacent communities).
The author of this post is Colin Percival, who has some minor fame/recognition on Hacker News, so the post probably doesn't include as much context as it should for a wider audience.
A good quick summary of why someone would ask about him specifically comes from this comment he wrote on HN 5 years ago (highly recommend reading the whole linked comment—it's very good, but I'm just pulling out the relevant sentence to stay on-topic here):
He's somewhat well-known on the site as a prodigy, which is why someone was questioning whether he's wasted his potential on unimportant work.
The post has a fair amount of technical terms/details in it, but don't worry if you don't understand them. It has some interesting thoughts on life, work, and academia regardless.
I don't understand the premise? Waste... for whom? This Percival dude isn't a wizard, whatever happens there is zero guarantee that his life will somehow bring something more to humanity as a whole than anyone else, no matter how early he started Uni. Or that one path does fekk all for humanity, or the other does it.
He seems to be doing great, and even if his life isn't anything I would enjoy - good on him! We should all be so lucky to find ourselves somewhere good in life!
Arguably one of the most influential people on the fate of the human race in modern time was Stanislav Petrov. Nothing was written in the stars about him and what he would do. All of us are capable and if anything else the fact that HN thinks this dude is the messiah or something scares me way more than anything. Also the fact that someone on HN thinks there is like "wasteful" and "non-wasteful" lives. OR that some should be more one than the other... Thats terrifying.
EDIT: That last bit really has me freaked out. Do people still think like this? That some are preordained or supposed to, and that the benefit of man is somehow easily counted out and checked against that first value to make a convenient tally?
I think how you view work and its value depends on your framework for normative ethics. If you subscribe to utilitarianism, then surely, some work (or work product) is better than other. I wonder about this myself under the lens of capitalism. I think utilitarianism and capitalism are fundamentally at odds with one another, because the people who get to decide what work gets done are usually not the people who could make the best decisions under a utilitarian imperative. That is to say, middle and upper management (or the fellowship committee at Canada's National Sciences and Engineering Research Council, or cryptology/computer hardware journal reviewers, in Percival’s case in the OP), are unlikely to be able to manage everyone into an optimal work stream. Personally, I have found more fulfillment in some of my side projects that were self-directed than those that I was instructed to work on. But, I don’t know how to compare them by any extrinsic measure—only my personal satisfaction.
Now, that’s not to say there is no value in management—I know there are a lot of people who, lacking self direction, under a strictly utilitarian imperative, would not self-direct into successful modes of work. But, I’m equally certain that those who manage are not managing optimally.
This is all to say, I think someone like Percival who is capable of self-directed work, and has been lucky enough to be able to pursue such self-direction without managing to hit any catastrophic failure modes, has allowed him a certain kind of success that utilitarian philosophy would place value on.
Is utilitarianism the only standard of measure? Of course not. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with arguing for other normative ethical theories that might place more value on someone, say spending their working life producing a personal music collection that they don’t share with anyone else. As long as they find that fulfilling and don’t hit some sort of failure mode in other aspects of their life that blow up their efforts, I could appreciate that sort of work. And there’s also the danger here of placing less value on the work/work product and more on the person who does the work (this is not compatible with my personal ethics).
The difference between the reclusive musicographer and the cryptographic entrepreneur, though, which I think you’re getting to, is that the latter’s contribution to the outside world is more easily extrinsically quantifiable (in fact, it is observable in the first place!), and as such the utilitarians on HN can grok the contribution and assign it relative value.
So its a discussion between utilitarians, this Colin Percival guy and the other person on HN, and the value of his work and the potential of the beginning of his life? I don't have anything to contribute there. Sorry :/
You can surely contribute your own beliefs about normative ethics. If you so viscerally object to utilitarianism, can you explain why? Or is it the tech-focused HN spin on utilitarianism that you reject?
I don't object to it, its just not my thing and I think whatever I would add would clutter the subject and the inner details of utilitarianism isn't anything I am very interested in so its unfair to those who are.
Fair enough. I just thought it infelicitous if you had an opinion which others might like to hear, but you were reticent to share because you were anxious it would be received as combative.
I think it's more a question of moral imperative rather than destiny, which makes a lot of sense from a utilitarian perspective (which seems to be fairly common in tech/tech adjacent communities).
Ah ok. Thank you :)
I think I messed up commenting since its not my thing to argue then and all I can do is create noise. Sry Deimos.