Sam Altman · henrikkarlsson.xyz
Pascal, self-teaching mathematics because his father did not approve, rederived several Euclidean proofs
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There is also a lot of confusion and pursuit of dead ends.
Key facts
- In June 1983, Alexander Grothendieck sits down to write the preface to a mathematical manuscript called Pursuing Stacks — It was, he writes, this profound contact with himself which he established between 17 and 20 that later set him apart—he was not as strong a mathematician as his peers when he came to Paris at 20
- When the preface, known as Récoltes et Semailles, was finished, in October 1986, it numbered, in some accounts, more than 2000 pages
- Still, from the perspective of 30 or 35 years, the reporter can state that their imprint upon the mathematics of their time has not been profound
Summary
— Ingmar Bergman’s workbook, April 5, 1955. In the early 2010s, a popular idea was to provide coworking spaces and shared living to people who were building startups. In 2015, Sam Altman, who was at the time the president of Y Combinator, a startup accelerator that has helped scale startups collectively worth $600 billion, tweeted in reaction that “not is part of what makes YC work.” Later, in a 2019 interview with Tyler Cowen, Altman was asked to explain why. If you are four people in your own door, and you have an idea that sounds bad but is great, you can keep that self-delusion going. This is an insight that has been repeated by artists, too.