The only way to solve this problem is increased productivity and higher
wages.  What justification will the current working population have to
begrudge the older people they must support if the work they must
perform in support of themselves, their families, AND the old coots
is less than the old coots had to do to raise them and educate them
so they could use the new technology to reduce their work load
(even as they produce enough for all).

Thanks, that's where I got my Math BS, that's where
my son got his ME in Teaching English, that's where
my daughter is working on her CS PhD. We rather like
it.

If only it were. The sad thing is that around 1% of
Usenet is gullible enough to see merit in his mush.

Oh, I've been trading barbs with him for about 20
years, and watched his mental state deteriorate
severely over that time, not that it was healthy at
the beginning.  He's an acquired taste, let's admit
that. I like him for his voluntary punching bag
status.

The ringing guffaws in response to that one
irritated my TV-watching fiancee a _lot_!

I do try.

xanthian.

http://alumweb.mit.edu/classes/1974/MissingPersons.html
.
.
--

How much time have you spent thinking about it?

I spent the last 35 years reading, studying, observing, thinking,
discussing the subject, instead of giving up in high school,
like you and everybody else!  So, who put --YOU-- in charge?!?
.
.
--

I never proposed to solve all the world's problems!
I said we need to make the world economy sustainable,
in perpetuity!  Right now, it isn't!
.
.
--

Only if you're a small-minded quitter!

http://www.paulgraham.com/hamming.html

Richard Hamming: You and Your Research

Talk at Bellcore, 7 March 1986

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.

Now, why is this talk important? I think it is important because, as far
as I know, each of you has one life to live. Even if you believe in
reincarnation it doesn't do you any good from one life to the next! Why
shouldn't you do significant things in this one life, however you define
significant? I'm not going to define it - you know what I mean. I will
talk mainly about science because that is what I have studied. But so
far as I know, and I've been told by others, much of what I say applies
to many fields. Outstanding work is characterized very much the same way
in most fields, but I will confine myself to science.

In order to get at you individually, I must talk in the first person. I
have to get you to drop modesty and say to yourself, ``Yes, I would like
to do first-class work.'' Our society frowns on people who set out to do
really good work. You're not supposed to; luck is supposed to descend on
you and you do great things by chance. Well, that's a kind of dumb thing
to say. I say, why shouldn't you set out to do something significant.
You don't have to tell other people, but shouldn't you say to yourself,
``Yes, I would like to do something significant.''

In order to get to the second stage, I have to drop modesty and talk in
the first person about what I've seen, what I've done, and what I've
heard. I'm going to talk about people, some of whom you know, and I
trust that when we leave, you won't quote me as saying some of the
things I said.

Let me start not logically, but psychologically. I find that the major
objection is that people think great science is done by luck. It's all a
matter of luck. Well, consider Einstein. Note how many different things
he did that were good. Was it all luck? Wasn't it a little too
repetitive? Consider Shannon. He didn't do just information theory.
Several years before, he did some other good things and some which are
still locked up in the security of cryptography. He did many good
things.

You see again and again, that it is more than one thing from a good
person. Once in a while a person does only one thing in his whole life,
and we'll talk about that later, but a lot of times there is repetition.
I claim that luck will not cover everything. And I will cite Pasteur who
said, ``Luck favors the prepared mind.'' And I think that says it the
way I believe it. There is indeed an element of luck, and no, there
isn't. The prepared mind sooner or later finds something important and
does it. So yes, it is luck. The particular thing you do is luck, but
that you do something is not.

For example, when I came to Bell Labs, I shared an office for a while
with Shannon. At the same time he was doing information theory, I was
doing coding theory. It is suspicious that the two of us did it at the
same place and at the same time - it was in the atmosphere. And you can
say, ``Yes, it was luck.'' On the other hand you can say, ``But why of
all the people in Bell Labs then were those the two who did it?'' Yes,
it is partly luck, and partly it is the prepared mind; but `partly' is
the other thing I'm going to talk about. So, although I'll come back
several more times to luck, I want to dispose of this matter of luck as
being the sole criterion whether you do great work or not. I claim you
have some, but not total, control over it. And I will quote, finally,
Newton on the matter. Newton said, ``If others would think as hard as I
did, then they would get similar results.''

One of the characteristics you see, and many people have it including
great scientists, is that usually when they were young they had
independent thoughts and had the courage to pursue them. For example,
Einstein, somewhere around 12 or 14, asked himself the question, ``What
would a light wave look like if I went with the velocity of light to
look at it?'' Now he knew that electromagnetic theory says you cannot
have a stationary local maximum. But if he moved along with the velocity
of light, he would see a local maximum. He could see a contradiction at
the age of 12, 14, or somewhere around there, that everything was not
right and that the velocity of light had something peculiar. Is it luck
that he finally created special relativity? Early on, he had laid down
some of the pieces by thinking of the fragments. Now that's the
necessary but not sufficient condition. All of these items I will talk
about are both luck and not luck.

How about having lots of `brains?' It sounds good. Most of you in this
room probably have more than enough brains to do first-class work. But
great work is something else than mere brains. Brains are measured in
various ways. In mathematics, theoretical physics, astrophysics,
typically brains correlates to a great extent with the ability to
manipulate symbols. And so the typical IQ test is apt to score them
fairly high. On the other hand, in other fields it is something
different. For example, Bill Pfann, the fellow who did zone melting,
came into my office one day. He had this idea dimly in his mind about
what he wanted and he had some equations. It was pretty clear to me that
this man didn't know much mathematics and he wasn't really articulate.
His problem seemed interesting so I took it home and did a little work.
I finally showed him how to run computers so he could compute his own
answers. I gave him the power to compute. He went ahead, with negligible
recognition from his own department, but ultimately he has collected all
the prizes in the field. Once he got well started, his shyness, his
awkwardness, his inarticulateness, fell away and he became much more
productive in many other ways. Certainly he became much more articulate.

And I can cite another person in the same way. I trust he isn't in the
audience, i.e. a fellow named Clogston. I met him when I was working on
a problem with John Pierce's group and I didn't think he had much. I
asked my friends who had been with him at school, ``Was he like that in
graduate school?'' ``Yes,'' they replied. Well I would have fired the
fellow, but J. R. Pierce was smart and kept him on. Clogston finally did
the Clogston cable. After that there was a steady stream of good ideas.
One success brought him confidence and courage.

One of the characteristics of successful scientists is having courage.
Once you get your courage up and believe that you can do important
problems, then you can. If you think you can't, almost surely you are
not going to. Courage is one of the things that Shannon had supremely.
You have only to think of his major theorem. He wants to create a method
of coding, but he doesn't know what to do so he makes a random code.
Then he is stuck. And then he asks the impossible question, ``What would
the average random code do?'' He then proves that the average code is
arbitrarily good, and that therefore there must be at least one good
code. Who but a man of infinite courage could have dared to think those
thoughts? That is the characteristic of great scientists; they have
courage. They will go forward under incredible circumstances; they think
and continue to think.

Age is another factor which the physicists particularly worry about.
They always are saying that you have got to do it when you are young or
you will never do it. Einstein did things very early, and all the
quantum mechanic fellows were disgustingly young when they did their
best work. Most mathematicians, theoretical physicists, and
astrophysicists do what we consider their best work when they are young.
It is not that they don't do good work in their old age but what we
value most is often what they did early. On the other hand, in music,
politics and literature, often what we consider their best work was done
late. I don't know how whatever field you are in fits this scale, but
age has some effect.

But let me say why age seems to have the effect it does. In the first
place if you do some good work you will find yourself on all kinds of
committees and unable to do any more work. You may find yourself as I
saw Brattain when he got a Nobel Prize. The day the prize was announced
we all assembled in Arnold Auditorium; all three winners got up and made
speeches. The third one, Brattain, practically with tears in his eyes,
said, ``I know about this Nobel-Prize effect and I am not going to let
it affect me; I am going to remain good old Walter Brattain.'' Well I
said to myself, ``That is nice.'' But in a few week