[HN Gopher] The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge (1939) [pdf]
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       The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge (1939) [pdf]
        
       Author : activatedgeek
       Score  : 42 points
       Date   : 2021-08-09 19:34 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.ias.edu)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.ias.edu)
        
       | wydfre wrote:
       | One time I was reading Sherlock Holmes as a kid and ran upon this
       | passage:
       | 
       | "I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty
       | attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you
       | choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he
       | comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him
       | gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other
       | things so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it.
       | Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he
       | takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools
       | which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large
       | assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to
       | think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to
       | any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every
       | addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before.
       | It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless
       | facts elbowing out the useful ones."
       | 
       | I thought it was right. It was a horrible decision to make. There
       | are so many times I have looked down upon people who make silly
       | side-projects, going "It will never succeed" or "You could be
       | starting a business instead!" and it is subconscious and
       | terrible. I think that learning new things, and gaining a new
       | skillset, are important, and I wish I knew that earlier instead
       | of just wasting my life away trying to feel superior to people
       | toying on some problem with FPGA's or something. It's a horrible
       | mindset to culture.
        
         | reidjs wrote:
         | There's validity to both sides. I used to spend so, so much
         | time reading Wikipedia, watching documentaries, memorizing
         | trivia for school tests. just trying to absorb sheer amounts of
         | knowledge in a variety of subjects.
         | 
         | In hindsight, I would have been better off spending that time
         | experiencing real life and learning real, tangible, applicable
         | skills.
         | 
         | There's definitely a balance to it :)
        
           | iamgopal wrote:
           | In childhood, One of the worst advise given to me was,
           | "knowledge is power". Which is not only half truth, but a
           | time consuming advise. Experienced knowledge is the key.
        
       | laGrenouille wrote:
       | The opening of this essay is a beautifully written and
       | surprisingly timely reflection on the importance of not judging
       | the worth of time spent on certain pursuits purely on their
       | direct, material utility.
       | 
       | I was hoping the rest would build on the deeper importance of
       | fields such as art, music, and literature at the level of both
       | the individual and society as a whole. Unfortunately, the rest is
       | a bit underwhelming. It is mostly examples showing how particular
       | pursuits in mathematics and theoretical physics eventually
       | created more practical applications in future generations.
       | Interesting, of course, but still focused on raw 'utility', just
       | one step more removed.
        
       | kurthr wrote:
       | Usefulness is in the eye of the beholders. We know much more
       | trivia about the material properties of silicon, prime number
       | sieves, and lithium chemistry... only now it's not considered
       | trivia, it's valuable knowledge.
       | 
       | Many discoveries are random luck, many are hard focused work, and
       | some are both. Their value is rarely known at the time and is
       | likely reflexive (e.g. Silicon became the default because it was
       | better known, and similarly prime numbers rather than elliptic
       | curves). Neither would be all that relevant without the markets
       | for semiconductors or public key cryptography.
       | 
       | For that reason, I wouldn't discount those first
       | implementer/inventors that popularized solutions that became
       | profitable. Without them there would not have been the investment
       | in continued later focused development required to make those
       | solutions "win" and elevate trivia to relevance.
       | 
       | Now adtech on the other hand...
        
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