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You and your research

Richard Hamming’s “You and Your Research” speech: his introduction grabs your attention, doesn’t it? It grabbed mine.

I went searching for the little story I remembered about “what is the most important problem and why aren’t you working on it?” and eventually found this speech. For some reason I had misremembered this as a Shockley anecdote but soon enough Hamming’s name popped up and I found the anecdote.

This grabbed me though—his introduction. Emphasis added by me.

It’s a pleasure to be here. The title of my talk is, “You and Your Research.” It is not about managing research, it is about how you individually do your research. I could give a talk on the other subject – but it’s not, it’s about you. I’m not talking about ordinary run-of-the-mill research; I’m talking about great research. And for the sake of describing great research I’ll occasionally say Nobel-Prize type of work. It doesn’t have to gain the Nobel Prize, but I mean those kinds of things which we perceive are significant things. Relativity, if you want, Shannon’s information theory, any number of outstanding theories – that’s the kind of thing I’m talking about.

Now, how did I come to do this study? At Los Alamos I was brought in to run the computing machines which other people had got going, so those scientists and physicists could get back to business. I saw I was a stooge. I saw that although physically I was the same, they were different. And to put the thing bluntly, I was envious. I wanted to know why they were so different from me. I saw Feynman up close. I saw Fermi and Teller. I saw Oppenheimer. I saw Hans Bethe: he was my boss. I saw quite a few very capable people. I became very interested in the difference between those who do and those who might have done.

When I came to Bell Labs, I came into a very productive department. Bode was the department head at the time; Shannon was there, and there were other people. I continued examining the questions, “Why?” and “What is the difference?” I continued subsequently by reading biographies, autobiographies, asking people questions such as: “How did you come to do this?” I tried to find out what are the differences. And that’s what this talk is about.

You can find the speech transcript everywhere. I used this source.

Read the Q and A at the end about the genesis of UNIX. Fascinating.

The new, focusing insight for me is also in the Q and A about the relative importance of papers, talks, and books. This has direct impact on my life and work. I will say no more since this is an anonymous blog.

Edit, a few days later. If I have a thought I should write it down. I have no idea what secret thoughts, ever so precious, I was thinking when I stopped myself in that last paragraph.

Ephemeral. That is my name. Such is my existence. So too are my thoughts. So too is my own memory, and others’ memories of me.

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First, get all of your bad ideas out of the way

I spent 5 1/2 hours yesterday building an elaborate and intricate financial model in Excel. Buggy. Incomplete. But elegantly conceived and I was proud of myself and my brilliance.

I probably have another full day needed to make it workable and presentable.

Today on paper I came up with a simpler way to solve the same problem. Two orders of magnitude easier to understand, and two orders of magnitude easier for Management to implement.

(Complex system of dividing up a lot of money amongst a lot of heirs. “Fairly.”)

The point of this note is to show that first I had to get rid of my overly-complicated ideas to see the simple solution.

And the simple solution is better. It is better for the person whose trust will contain these allocation and distribution rules—he will understand and fine-tune his choices because the trade-offs are visible, not hidden in complexity. The trustee will know what to do When The Time Comes because the marching orders are simple and easily executed.

Those 5.5 hours spent in building a model that I have thrown away were not in vain.

Simple solutions are expensive to discover. You have to live through the suck to get them.

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Are my dreams my own

I had a dream, seeing my father as a young man—before I was born. He was standing, smiling. I went to him, hugged him, weeping, knowing it was a dream as it happened.

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How to become Competent

Spend an unreasonable amount of effort and time focused entirely on a niche question.

Don’t worry. Over time your competence will not be niche.—it will broaden impressively.

But if you are lost and feeling useless, start with a tiny question and dominate it thoroughly.

Questions and derision from others tell you everything you need to know about them. Shun them. You know why you are there.

I am doing this right now. My brain is telling me that I picked the wrong topic to get Deep Into. Fuck you, brain. We are doubling down and getting even more granular.

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Cheerful, energetic optimism

Display it.