I'd probably agree that research math also doesn't come from a goal of "self growth", but maybe it should be something like "follow your curiosity".
I used to sell cars and was top 0.1% in the country at it.
Yet others would say I was a parasite costing them money for nothing. But they were ignoring I was providing value for the dealership and its collection of employees even beyond the owners. I worked for a public corporation. Tons of stake holders profited via stock value while I was there.
On a tangent, people always say they'd rather just buy cars online. Great you can do that for one. Second, if all manufacturers did that, month 1 results would be whatever they were. On day 1 of month 2, some MBA would say "hey, if we had a human these people could call, chat with, or even visit with for a test drive, wouldn't sales go up? Let's try it!" And within a month you'd have salespeople interacting with customers again.
If that were true, it wouldn't be necessary to outlaw direct-to-consumer sales.
https://www.justice.gov/atr/economic-effects-state-bans-dire...
Don't dealerships (and the salesperson) only make hundreds on a $30k car? It's almost a loss leader for the service department.
One may cite Grothendieck as counterexamples, but maybe they still only had themselves in their adjacent subfields (at the time they made their most impactful discoveries, anyway)
I don't think it's ironic at all. The vast majority of math graduates don't do pure math research after graduation. And modern pure mathematicians dramatically undercut how much of their research was, in relatively recent history, driven mainly by practical value.
I do believe that the results of math research (even the pure one) create an insane value for other people, but that we live in a world full of ignorant people who don't see this insane value (yet). Thus, the modern math research may not be motivated by this criterion, but in most cases nearly tautologically creates a lot of value for other people.
You can create value but not capture it (or don't have the ability to capture it). But somebody tends to capture the value, and if it's not you, it's probably going to be your boss (or their boss, etc).
This world has major problems in grasping different perspectives of others than the ones we're born with. When I do speeches for younger audiences, I always remind them to consider perspectives other than the ones they were raised in. It's baffling how many people walk around thinking that their perspective is fair to impose on everyone.
I think a lot of our current problems, especially wealth inequality, racism, and wars are driven by dreamers that only see their own personal vision, while also being driven by total blindness to the other perspectives affected around them.
I personally learned over many years and setbacks to live like a fisherman, not investing fully into any one category, just casting my reel in different spots and seeing if anything "bites"... If success bites, I fish in that area more, hoping that I will find enough success.
So far, I've mostly found success in embracing all the things I don't enjoy doing in order to fund the things I do enjoy... From my experience, most people (those not born into wealth & priviledge) don't earn great money unless they dive into doing things they don't enjoy...
I think it's important to be practical about it all.
How are "dreamers" who see their own vision driving racism? We're talking about jobs and entrepreneurship here. In that context how has someone's vision been the driver of racism?
the problem is that our dreams and visions are not created on a blank sheet, but they are the outcome of our upbringing and our influences. which is why some people don't develop any dreams at all when they grow up.
racism connects to visions by these people growing up in a racist environment and developing their life vision based on that.
this again brings me back to daryl davis https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40347671 who was essentially able to change the vision of people because that vision wasn't built on a strong foundation to begin with. as is true for most peoples visions and dreams.
visions and dreams are developed within the context of the communities that we join. at least all mine were. but none of those visions were work related. and how could they be? for a work related vision i needed to be in a work environment. only when i started working, i began to develop visions on how my career could develop. every work vision before that was a fantasy with little grounding in reality. it was only later that i was able to develop specific goals for my life. and even those were not defining. i had a very general vision for my life, but the things i do now didn't appear in any of my visions because until i was able to do them i had no idea that this was possible. on the other hand, some of the things that were in my original vision did become a reality. (but this may be survivorship bias, i probably forgot about the things i envisioned but was not able to do)
the more i think about it, the more i believe that we should not get attached to our dreams, because they are built on a very limited experience
and i also believe that the way to change our society including the elimination of racism and prejudices is to help each individual to develop a better life vision.
The idea of letting white people flourish based on their own merits (and they have the keys to the castle, the government, economy behind it) was the centerpiece of modern discrimination.
Unequal separation to benefit whites was certain people's personal visions. Although, what's being lost here is it's more a class of people in their vision for the group.
Ironically things like love and bonding might be related... but that's a conversation for another day.
Our dreams often include the participation of others, the may account for diversity, but often do not. As Elon pushes an anti-DEI narrative on his "dream" ventures (Like Twitter and Tesla) a lot, it's just one example of how racism (consciously or not) manifests in harmful ways, and can affect the lives of others negatively.
As soon as you leave self it gets tricky, and only harder the more different and detached. It is shocking to see in light of modern morals. In fairness the idea of empathizing with differing peoples is a relatively new virtue; at least to place a high value on this is new.
Honestly, these types of things cause me existential dread. It's just so disheartening to see smart and caring people constantly turn into psychopaths over the slightest difference.
Every time you think they've figured it out, only to be let down later. It's one thing not to SEE it, but they never understand, even after explanation. You practically have to get them to take a college course before they "get it" (poorly, but they sorta understand now).
we did two internships, one in 9th grade and one in 10th. we had to find those internships ourselves, go to the companies, ask and apply. (as a practice how to apply for jobs)
i had no idea what i wanted to do. the first internship i did at a bike shop because i had built my own bike before so i casually asked, and then they accepted me before i was even sure that this is what i wanted to do myself. i was to unsure of myself to tell them that i had not even decided myself. it was a wasted opportunity because i already knew a lot about bikes, so i barely learned anything new. at best i learned about dealing with bosses and managers, but even that hardly registered. the second internship was better, at a company designing ship propulsion systems. i got introduced to CAD on paper and on the computer and to work in a machine shop to create machine parts. not something i wanted to do, but it gave me insights into that industry that i still find valuable today.
long story short, the problem was that i had no idea what i wanted to do. the one dream job (ships captain) was kind of out of reach because the training on the ship would have meant to stop wearing my braces which required monthly dentist visits. or at least so i thought. because the real problem was that there was noone to talk to about these concerns.
so i just stumbled into IT.
i mean, sure, i was the kid who spent their afternoons after class alone in the computerlab in school. (even got locked in once because the cleaners didn't realize i was in there) but then i did an internship at a friends software company and decided that working in an office all day was not for me.
but i went on to study computer science anyways. again, because i lacked inspiration to study anything else. i was always picking stuff i was already familiar with.
i was traveling a lot by myself in the school holidays, but i never even considered what kind of jobs might be available in that space.
so yeah, i was one of those kids without a dream or with a dream that i believed was out of reach. and my career development was a sequence of coincidences. i eventually realized that programming was fun, thanks to roxen and pike, despite that office internship experience. and the relative higher pay afforded me some freedoms and the ability to take risks i would not have been able to otherwise. my affinity for travel opened up jobs all across the world, and so in the end despite struggling to find work now, i am pretty happy with where i ended up.
it is difficult to say what would have helped to develop more ideas for potential work i could be doing. more internships would probably have been good as well as other opportunities to get an insight into various jobs and industries. individual career counseling that really tries to work out potential interests. are there books or movies that could be inspiring?
It seemed to work with Elon Musk and mars/climate change/EVs/brain interfaces...
this sounds like a vast oversimplification.
I'm generally on the other end of the spectrum (playing it safe instead of following my dreams), but somehow this motivated me to go a bit further into trying something new.
It seems like the concept that there probably shouldn't be any single goal or purpose in life that needs to be maxed, and that life is a basket is foreign to most.
