michael_nielsen

Huh—I'd never heard of that law, but have been citing ~ the concept a lot when describing my journey. More as a curse then anything else though. I'm always drawn toward things that I feel are deeply important that no else is doing...which can make it hard to get paid!

It's my terminology, after Groucho Marx's "I wouldn't want to belong to any club that would have me as a member". I know exactly what you mean.

On the other hand only a very few people (near 0 per million) can work at the same intensity for as long a time that the markets demand in an orthogonal venture alone. You work harder when you’re in the vicinity of others working hard.

That may or may not be true, but you also end up making something that would have existed anyway. Which seems rather dispiriting to me.

Hmm...this may be true for benefiting one's reputation, but not net social benefit. I wouldn't discount the ability of funding + urgency to accelerate discovery. Collaboration is so important! (When I wrote that tweet, I was thinking of the Space Race.)