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ata comments on Rationality Quotes: May 2011 - Less Wrong Discussion

3 Post author: CronoDAS 02 May 2011 02:33AM

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Comment author: ata 09 May 2011 04:04:43AM 6 points [-]

You don't become great by trying to be great. You become great by wanting to do something, and then doing it so hard that you become great in the process.

— Randall Munroe in today's xkcd, Marie Curie.

Comment author: sark 10 May 2011 08:27:13PM 5 points [-]

You won't be great just by sitting there of course, but I suspect great people wouldn't be as great if they weren't driven by an urge to achieve greatness to some extent for its own sake.

Great people also like to countersignal how their greatness was never something they had in mind, and that they are just truly dedicated to their art.

Comment author: arundelo 11 May 2011 03:53:33AM 3 points [-]

I liked this half-hour talk by Ransom Stephens on the life of Emmy Noether (with a nontechnical explanation of Noether's theorem).

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 09 May 2011 10:38:51AM 2 points [-]

Which relates to this heuristic.

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