"When you look at the lives of people who've done great work, you see a consistent pattern. They often begin with a bus ticket collector's obsessive interest in something that would have seemed pointless to most of their contemporaries." --@paulg
@paulg "One of the most striking features of Darwin's book about his voyage on the Beagle is the sheer depth of his interest in natural history. His curiosity seems infinite. Ditto for Ramanujan, sitting by the hour working out on his slate what happens to series."
@paulg "It's a mistake to think they were 'laying the groundwork' for the discoveries they made later. There's too much intention in that metaphor. Like bus ticket collectors, they were doing it because they liked it."
@paulg "If I had to put the recipe for genius into one sentence, that might be it: to have a disinterested obsession with something that matters."
@paulg "An obsessive interest will even bring you luck, to the extent anything can. Chance, as Pasteur said, favors the prepared mind, and if there's one thing an obsessed mind is, it's prepared."
@paulg "The paths that lead to new ideas tend to look unpromising. If they looked promising, other people would already have explored them."
@paulg "Darwin didn't pay closer attention to individual species than other people because he saw that this would lead to great discoveries, and they didn't. He was just really, really interested in such things.
Darwin couldn't turn it off. Neither could Ramanujan."
Darwin couldn't turn it off. Neither could Ramanujan."
