Paul GrahamVerified account

If the bus ticket theory is right, then the best way to advance the society is not to impose broad, shallow education on kids, but to let them go deep early on. And we’ll see far more great work and asymmetric returns as a society. Akin to VC investing.

One question: "less likely to do great work after they have children." - is there any data to support this? Euler, Grothendiek, von Neumann, Ulam, Grace Hopper as counterexamples?

The more I think about it the more it smells like one of those things everybody repeats without checking if the data supports it?

I really liked this article - and by that I mean I already agreed with a lot of what you proposed. :) Two notes that I think are interesting:

1/2 Realizing that interest is a competitive advantage, I tried to *cultivate* interest in classes that seemed boring in school. I asked professors why they though their subject was interesting, and I tried to find ways that the subject positively impacted people's lives.