michael_nielsen

"talent flows toward problems that institutions are willing to pay to solve" Reminds me of Groucho's Law: you should never work on something for which you can get funding. Why? Bc it means it's not adventurous enough. Tonge-in-cheek, but worth pondering regularly, IMO.https://twitter.com/nayafia/status/1022565754925809664 …

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.

I like to think about it in 2 ways: (1) “OMG, why does no one realize this?! I must work on this" (2) If it’s popular, there are hopefully enough qualified-for-the-challenge people to sufficiently tackle the problem(*). Put your efforts to something that needs *your* help

(*) Of course, that’s prob where my point breaks down. (1) Depends on your definition of *qualified* (2) Depends on your definition of *enough*— if it’s space filling like education, then unsure what enough is...

There's a Kevin Kelly piece somewhere where he talks about pitching writers on particular stories. He said most stories either a writer eventually followed up, or he (Kelly) got tired of pitching. But for some he couldn't let it go, & that's how he knew the pieces he had to write