The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

But I was learning that succeeding at a research institution like Penn required skills that had little to do with science. You needed the ability to sell yourself and your work. You needed to attract funding. You needed the kind of interpersonal savvy that got you invited to speak at conferences and made people eager to mentor and support you. You ... See more

The combo of intellectual grandiosity and intense competitiveness was a perfect fit for me. It’s still hard to find today, in fact - many people have copied the ‘hardcore’ working culture and the ‘this is the Marines’ vibe, but few have the intellectual atmosphere, the sense of being involved in a rich set of ideas . This is hard to LARP - your fou... See more

Many concepts that sound good on paper are infeasible to implement, or simply don’t produce the expected results. It’s frustrating when that happens, of course, but the pace of experimentation and learning at a startup is unparalleled. I think this is an especially important form of rigor for theorycels like me. Building product forces a different ... See more

So a realistic lifetime of trying to adapt yourself to a broken civilization looks like: 0-2 lifetime instances of answering “Yes” to “Can I substantially improve on my civilization’s current knowledge if I put years into the attempt?” A few people, but not many, will answer “Yes” to enough instances of this question to count on the fingers of both

... See more

Can you have a boring life and be a first-rate social scientist? To some extent, probably yes. You can be very smart and figure our how people behave under conditions that you have never yourself experienced—nor anyone you know. I cannot say it is impossible. But I think it is unlikely: because it in human nature, however smart we may be, to under

... See more

That day, in the lecture hall, none of us were serious. We were all doing a little pantomime on the theme of science. The speaker pretended to show us some results and the we pretended to think about them. As long as we all hit our marks and said our lines, the content didn’t matter—one week you’re doing “Guys and Dolls” and the next week you’re do... See more

Still, starting from these specialized roots and then moving on to write for more general audiences, I’ve come to believe that these narrow extremes still somehow embody broad truths. Too many of us undervalue concentration, and substitute busyness for real productivity, and are quick to embrace whatever new techno-bauble shines brightest. You don’

... See more