Eliezer Yudkowsky

There's a phrase I once heard, can't remember where, just another Jewish genius, some poet or author or philosopher or other, brilliant at a young age doing something not tremendously important in the grand scheme of things, not all that influential, who ended up being dismissed as just another Jewish genius.

If Einstein had chosen the wrong angle of attack on his problems,

if he hadn't chosen a sufficiently important problem to work on, if he hadn't persisted for years, if he'd taken any number of wrong turns, or if someone else had solved the problem first, then dear Albert would have ended up as just another Jewish genius.

Geniuses are rare, but not all that rare.

It is not all that implausible to lay claim to the kind of intellect that can get you dismissed as just another Jewish genius or just another brilliant mind who never did anything interesting with their life.

The associated social status here is not high enough to be sacred, so it should seem like an ordinarily evaluable claim.

But what separates people like this from becoming Einstein, I suspect, is no innate defect of brilliance.

It's things like lack of an interesting problem or, to put the blame where it belongs, failing to choose an important problem.

It is very easy to fail at this because of the cashed thought problem.

Tell people to choose an important problem and they will choose the first cash hit for important problem that pops into their heads like global warming or string theory.

The truly important problems are often the ones you're not even considering because they appear to be impossible or actually difficult.

or worst of all, not clear how to solve?

If you worked on them for years, they might not seem so impossible, but this is an extra and unusual insight.

Naive realism will tell you that solvable problems look solvable, and impossible looking problems are impossible.

Then you have to come up with a new and worthwhile angle of attack.

Most people who are not allergic to novelty will go too far in the other direction and fall into an affective death spiral.

And then you've got to bang your head on the problem for years without being distracted by the temptations of easier living.

Life is what happens while we are making other plans, as the saying goes.

And if you want to fulfill your other plans, you've often got to be ready to turn down life.

Society is not set up to support you while you work either.