Paul Graham - What to Do

Thoughts about When To Do by Paul Graham.

Thoughts along the way

What should one do? That may seem a strange question, but it’s not meaningless or unanswerable. It’s the sort of question kids ask before they learn not to ask big questions.

This statement about kids kind of took me off guard - I do see it happen (at least in myself). Why though? Does it see in his children and the kids that he encounters? What does he consider “kids” in this context - elemetary school, high school, college? I see this explained in the hierarchy of societies. Most definitely in military.

I only came across it myself in the process of investigating something else. But once I did, I thought I should at least try to answer it.

Oh, I haven’t explained why I was caught off guard. Because I haven’t thought about this in a long time. And I don’t have an answer yet.

So what should one do? One should help people, and take care of the world. Those two are obvious.

This are how kids would answer.

But is there anything else? When I ask that, the answer that pops up is Make good new things.

What good things? How do you know that they are good? Or new?

The most impressive thing humans can do is to think. It may be the most impressive thing that can be done. And the best kind of thinking, or more precisely the best proof that one has thought well, is to make good new things.

I believe in this and he has state it out well with very concise sentences. I like it.

Newton’s physics was a good new thing.

Suprised by an example. The concept may be very abstract without a general example (here, where everyone knows about this discovery).

I’m going to guess that this discovery allowed people to develop technology (ships, safety, etc)?

Indeed, the first version of this principle was to have good new ideas. But that didn’t seem general enough: it didn’t include making art or music, for example, except insofar as they embody new ideas. And while they may embody new ideas, that’s not all they embody, unless you stretch the word “idea” so uselessly thin that it includes everything that goes through your nervous system.

I don’t understand this very well; I think he’s trying to explain how general a new idea can be - I don’t think it has to be. It’s very very very very very very very difficult to make a general good new idea. I believe that it’s built upon the ideas of many people, hundreds, thousands, millions, etc… to get to a general good new idea. I see this repeated.

To make discoveries, for example, or to understand something more deeply than others have. But how well do you understand something if you can’t make a model of it, or write about it? Indeed, trying to express what you understand is not just a way to prove that you understand it, but a way to understand it better.

Each time I do this, the more I believe in it.

I think I’ve applied it to a teeny bit of my life. And I hope that the same rule will apply in other aspects of life/experiences.

Another reason I like this phrasing is that it biases us toward creation. It causes us to prefer the kind of ideas that are naturally seen as making things rather than, say, making critical observations about things other people have made. Those are ideas too, and sometimes valuable ones, but it’s easy to trick oneself into believing they’re more valuable than they are.

Two parts to this.

I don’t agree with phrasing it biasing towards creation. Seems forced - I didn’t see it that originally. Discoveries (albeit repeated among different individuals), can fall under this term. I believe that it’s more about thinking and learning.

Yes, I agree with what Paul states about the observations. Even an intellectual person that you look up to may make a wrong guess. For example, the godfather of operating systems lost in a debate against Linus that Linux would succeed as a monolothic kernel. Imagine that, a random ass college kid (Linus was 23 at the time) tells the most well known/accomplished professor in operating system at that time that his hobby operating system would win. If I were to be a random person in this flame war, I would have definitely not chose Linus’ arguments.

And I see this often in my life as well. People make observations all the time, but when some X action happens, they’re wrong sometimes. Should you believe their observations? Sometimes.

Criticism seems sophisticated, and making new things often seems awkward, especially at first; and yet it’s precisely those first steps that are most rare and valuable.

This next statement came out a bit off from the previous sentences. And I do think it’s necessary to have this statement. I think that the observations may seem most rare/valuable, but I believe that it’s a series of observations generally, and it takes a bit to form thoughts about different/unusual observations.

Is newness essential? I think so. Obviously it’s essential in science. If you copied a paper of someone else’s and published it as your own, it would seem not merely unimpressive but dishonest.

Interesting statement about papers.

Which in turn implies it’s not impressive to make the same thing over and over, however well; you’re just copying yourself.

The problem here is that there’s not much learning (which is going through the problems and pain of steps to get to the end) - which I think Paul is stating here.

Historically most rules about how to live have been a mix of both kinds of should, though usually with more of the former than the latter.

Nice observation

Archimedes knew that he was the first to prove that a sphere has 2/3 the volume of the smallest enclosing cylinder and was very pleased about it. But you don’t find ancient writers urging their readers to emulate him. They regarded him more as a prodigy than a model.

Very interesting observation. Why not emulate him?

Now many more of us can follow Archimedes’s example and devote most of our attention to one kind of work.

Oh.

What kinds of new things count? I’d rather leave that question to the makers of them.

He didn’t answer the question… :(, but this is the answer to give.

It would be a risky business to try to define any kind of threshold, because new kinds of work are often despised at first. Raymond Chandler was writing literal pulp fiction, and he’s now recognized as one of the best writers of the twentieth century. Indeed this pattern is so common that you can use it as a recipe: if you’re excited about some kind of work that’s not considered prestigious and you can explain what everyone else is overlooking about it, then this is not merely a kind of work that’s ok to do, but one to seek out.

What a good statement next. I’m focusing on the “hey it’s not good at first” part. I’ve seen this a couple of times already. But I think Paul doesn’t mention the other factors: time taken, mental stress, comfort, physical taxation, … are minor or major hurdles of going down such a route. It is sometimes brutal to go down such a path.

The kind of people who make good new things don’t need rules to keep them honest.

True, but again, hurdles and this includes other people this time around.

But even if you’re one of those, you should at least make sure that the new things you make don’t net harm people or the world.

Very hard to see sometimes.

On the other hand, if you make something amazing, you’ll often be helping people or the world even if you didn’t mean to. Newton was driven by curiosity and ambition, not by any practical effect his work might have, and yet the practical effect of his work has been enormous. And this seems the rule rather than the exception. So if you think you can make something amazing, you should probably just go ahead and do it.

Great ending. “Just do it” - easier said than done. That’s for sure. Another thing that Paul doesn’t mention. It’s like the gym. It takes reps to build muscle. It takes reps to make something amazing. “Just do it” - yes, but make sure you see your goals clearly in the moment and can learn to/be able to identify plateaus. Not every person in the olympics just randomly just went at it and did one thing and became good at their sport.

Final thoughts

To answer this generically - I can’t. But for doing stuff that you’re interested in and try to create something: talking to people, reading/watching the literature, doing something and then thinking, or guessing, doing something and then thinking are some ways one can get to a point of creating something or at the point of creating something. However, going through it may not be fun at times, may be actually uninteresting at times, or even depressing/cause someone to re-evaluate a lot (lost). I think that as long one hold the belief at one’s core, one will make progress. Ask anyone that one thinks is successful what they failed at/when they felt lost, they should answer with an event that sticks out or a couple or even mention that they wanted to give up.