Just read the beginning but I feel like there are obvious counter examples. Basically lots of academic environments. I personally (and somewhat sadly) did my best work in grad school, thanks entirely to the environment. All of us in the lab I studied in benefitted from being around each other every day. From what Iāve seen, this is very common throughout history in academia.
Maybe itās pressure that kills ideas, or competition, or premature desire to commercialize, or just the kind of people that become founders; itās definitely not co-working in and of itself.
Should add I agree that solitary reflection is important, just not that being surrounded by like minded people is detrimental.
I thought Grothendieck's "example" was a good one. It's not that the academic environment stymied him, it's that he built up a practice of solitary creativity that helped him take inputs from his surroundings and fold them into his own framework. Both the solitary practice and the communication with fellow leading mathematicians was essential for his growth and output.
I think the point the post was trying to make was that; spend too long in an "academic" or "professional" environment and you become too contoured by the mores of the establishment to truly innovate. Spend too little time and you toil away in a cave, at best reinventing things that were invented already without your knowledge. I think in a heavily networked world like today, where there's also a lot of competitive pressure in these establishments, the solitude is probably worth thinking about more.
It's something I think a lot about in terms of capital allocation in academia and in tech, both in terms of monetary capital and the capital of time (which is limited by its very nature.) Investors and funds are heavily affected by the trends surrounding them but a minimum amount of funding and social buy-in is needed to really develop ideas. There's a lot more I have to say on the topic but it's perhaps a little too tangent to this article itself.
To academics, how often do you end up chasing an idea because it was popular in a conference? How often do you chase grants? Math might be one of the "easier" fields to be adventurous since mathematical innovation can be independently verified relatively simply compared to many other fields.
Other examples like Grothendieck: Wiles (Fermat), Perelman (Poincare), Newton (calculus), Ramanujan.
> Spend too little time and you toil away in a cave, at best reinventing things that were invented already without your knowledge.
Grothendieck disputes this point. He reinvented the wheel many times when he was 17-20 years old, but believes it was training for accessing the required cognitive spaces. He says:
A few years after I finally established contact with the world of mathematics at Paris, I learned, among other things, that the work Iād done in my little niche [. . . had] been long known to the whole world [. . .]. In the eyes of my mentors, to whom Iād described this work, and even showed them the manuscript, Iād simply āwasted my timeā, merely doing over again something that was āalready knownā. But I don't recall feeling any sense of disappointment. [. . .] Without recognizing it, Iād thereby familiarized myself with the conditions of solitude that are essential for the profession of mathematician, something that no-one can teach you. [. . .]And here I am thinking that I should simply give some more compliments to my colleagues because I want to spread genuine good vibes. Even if it already has been āinventedā by others, I am not hearing enough genuine compliments in the workplace.
Meaning that even if an idea already has been invented, that doesnāt mean thereās no room for your implementation of it. There still may be room.
I struggled with the same in academia. I found genuine beauty and value in improving something implemented. But I also felt a bit "stuck", as if I was just stuck in a groove unable to pedal up. I wasn't the only PhD that felt this way and spoke with others at the time about the feeling.
I think there's a point of diminishing returns where improving something isn't worth it. But I mean, if you're innovating at the level of a PhD, does anyone really know anything at all? You are, by definition, pushing the boundary of human knowledge.
One of the least innovative teams I've worked on involved engineers that would try to force group discussion on ideas early on. Nearly every project or initiative I tried to build there met significant friction.
The most innovative teams I've worked on implored, and maybe incentivized, periods of reflection and evolution of ideas. Often we built POCs along side that evolution. They'd often juggle many different new ideas. Each, often, had its own evolution. Whatever shook out is what won and we often had pivots in line if we needed them.
I think in general it's what Sam says it is: if you artificially force people to defend their ideas early on then you end up coming up with pretty mid ideas.
History of creativity, I reckon. There's always been places and times that are just fertile. 470BCE Athens, the Renaissance, 1900 Vienna, 1990s Bristol...
> what they are referring to as solitude is rather something like āa state of mind.ā They are putting themselves in a state where the opinions of others do not bother them and where they reach a heightened sensitivity for the larval ideas and vague questions that arise within them.
Reminds me of that Rick Rubin quote:
The confidence that I have in my taste and my ability to express what I feel has proven helpful for artists.
There are a few mathematicians that have analyzed and wrote about their process. A recent (IMO) good writing on the subject is David Bessis' "Mathematica" (I found this review https://siliconreckoner.substack.com/p/review-of-mathematica... which I haven't had a chance to fully read). It covers both a personal perspective as well as examples from Grothendieck, Descartes and others.
Having had the opportunity to have ideas and pursue them extensively as a corporate employee, startup founder, and independent researchers, all I can say is that there seems to be a violent agreement of how stuff actually happens and that it's almost never fully made possible in either industry or academia. It's like a living irony.
For a deeper treatment of the broader subject - one of the most cited books is the "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions"
> there seems to be a violent agreement of how stuff actually happens and that it's almost never fully made possible in either industry or academia.
what does this mean?
Owl in owl's way I in mine Can't get to sleep
Wind from the sea Butterflies in embankment weeds Never resting (1915) Taneda Santoka
I think solitude is great. The hard part is finding the right people to talk to. I'm not sure if this is a Silicon Valley thing, but I've met some people who use a lot of jargon in a way that feels partly about status. At first I thought they just had a lot of ideas. Then they started talking about things in my own field, and I realized they were getting some pretty basic concepts wrong.
My guess is that some of this comes from listening to too many podcasts. You can pick up a lot of jargon and big ideas pretty quickly, and some podcasts are better at giving you that "oh, now I get it" feeling than actually helping you understand the ideas.
> but I've met some people who use a lot of jargon in a way that feels partly about status.
You mean basically every HN commenter nowadays?
Big words. Big terms. Heavy phrasing. All to say a bunch of nothing. True knowledge lies in simplicity. True wisdom lies in humility. Both of which are sorely missing around here.
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I feel like this is relevant to the takes of "ai psychosis". I spent about 600 hours working alone with AI before I was ready to collaborate, re-discovering things in my own process that others may have already known sprinkled throughout twitter and youtube, etc. and really being open to the wonder of it all.
Probably not enough data on this yet since it's a new unlock, but I think it's perfectly possible to do great work today without interfacing with other humans directly. Some weird off-spectrum people (the kind this article is talking about) might even prefer to or work better this way.
It seems social dynamics exist all the same in technology, the internet, and AI. The evidence is obvious - all of these things were created by humans with social goals and conditioning. I'd say truly distancing is not a new unlock but something very old. It's so hard to get away.
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