[HN Gopher] A Caltech Nobel laureate celebrates his 100th birthd...
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A Caltech Nobel laureate celebrates his 100th birthday, then gets
back to work
Author : pseudolus
Score : 187 points
Date : 2023-07-22 19:00 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.latimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.latimes.com)
| ArcMex wrote:
| I particularly enjoyed this quote
|
| >"The main thing is finding something that you enjoy doing, that
| preferably doesn't harm others, and that tests whatever aptitude
| one has, that tests one's ingenuity,"
| alpineidyll3 wrote:
| If today's scientific community were as functional as Rudy
| Marcus' we'd still be progressing. The key moment of his career
| was prediction of an inverted trend in an unexplored experimental
| regime. In today's academia, he would have hopped to a startup
| rather than struggle for tenure with foreign ideas that don't
| support anyone else's old stack of fluffy papers.
| JumpinJack_Cash wrote:
| Progress is brought forward by people who are 'out there' and
| are 'out there' enough to let the whole world to know that they
| are.
|
| But you cannot confine it to science and academia, rather it's
| the general background 'out there-ness' of the whole planet
| which then finds its way in various sectors.
|
| In other words you don't get the Einsteins without the Hitlers
| and you don't get the Richard Feynmans without the Charlie
| Mansons
| mgaunard wrote:
| How is this legal?
| csomar wrote:
| So we should make it illegal to work now?
| mgaunard wrote:
| Well it's unlikely he's as productive as he was in his prime.
| melling wrote:
| He's likely more productive than most of us.
| saulpw wrote:
| Yeah, so? It's a lot more productive than a low-effort
| comment on HN.
| DocSavage wrote:
| He's a professor at Caltech and did Nobel laureate-level
| work. He might be less productive than his prime and still
| be competitive with other professors, particularly since he
| brings deep understanding of the history of approaches in
| his field.
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| There is an 80-year old astrophysicist at the local
| government research observatory here. The government
| doesn't pay him anymore, but he has his own grants. He is
| almost certainly the most productive person at the
| facility, running circles around people half his age.
|
| And he does everything. Is a leader, guide and mentor for
| all the young scientists. He does serious intellectual
| work. Sometimes spends all day out in the sun,
| improving/fixing/maintaining telescopes. They held a
| conference in his honor last month.
|
| The lesson is not to judge people's productivity using just
| their age as the gauge.
| Frummy wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSt1m4NFUl8
| mgaunard wrote:
| Arthritis during surgery, nice.
| Frummy wrote:
| That's the joke
| Alex3917 wrote:
| Apropos of Oppenheimer coming out, the guy who invented the
| H-bomb currently works as a covid researcher. (Or at least an
| amateur one, not sure what he's actually doing.)
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| Not sure who you are referring to since Teller and Ulam both
| died a while ago.
| Alex3917 wrote:
| Dick Garwin: https://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/24/science/who-
| built-the-h-b...
|
| https://rlg.fas.org/2020.htm
| dctoedt wrote:
| Wikipedia: "[Dick] Garwin received his bachelor's degree from
| the Case Institute of Technology in 1947, and two years later
| his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago under the supervision
| of Enrico Fermi at the age of 21."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Garwin
| pdonis wrote:
| "Invented" is an overstatement. He authored the first detailed
| H-bomb design, but he didn't invent the design concept that it
| embodied: Teller and Ulam did. Teller instructed Garwin to
| produce a detailed bomb design based on the Teller-Ulam
| concept.
| samyok wrote:
| https://archive.ph/aJBCr
| [deleted]
| shafiemukhre wrote:
| This is the way, I aspire for this. One of my goal in life is to
| have a long fulfilling healthy life doing the things that I love
| to do, and hopefully see the 22nd century. written human history
| has only been for 5,000 years and the progress of engineering and
| technologies has been exploding for the past 100 years. I wonder
| how it will be in the 22nd century , it must be unimaginable to
| us right now. And I hope I will live long enough and have the
| luxury of a healthy brain to comprehend the beauty of
| technologies in the 22nd century.
|
| I like the work of Blueprint by Bryan Johnson, though it's not
| replicable for most and felt a bit too much. For now, my
| lifestyle include eating clean, weightlifting, cardio, and good
| sleep. This is it or there's more to it? Appreciate any other
| resources/readings to pursue a long life
| elforce002 wrote:
| Well, my 88 year-old Grandpa is still working. He has lots of
| medical issues but we know if he stops working, he'll die.
| zw123456 wrote:
| Hi there, old person here. Tomorrow is my 65th birthday. I had
| vowed to myself that I would completely and totally retire,
| Finally, at 65. But then, this "thing" cropped up and the day
| after tomorrow, I am pitching my 3rd startup to investors. I
| wonder, am I crazy. But I feel passion for this project. So, I am
| throwing myself into the fray again, there is no logical reason
| to do so. So, Rudy, I understand.
| jacquesm wrote:
| > Tomorrow is my 65th birthday.
|
| Congrats!
|
| > the day after tomorrow, I am pitching my 3rd startup to
| investors.
|
| I'm still pretty active (58) but there is no way I'm going to
| do another run, I'm happy tinkering with stuff, spending time
| with kids and working on average 3 to 4 months per year. I
| always saw money as a means to an end, just another tool in the
| toolbox. I don't need more of it so that part of the drive is
| gone and I'd _much_ rather spend a day playing piano or fixing
| something than that I 'd want to be worried about metrics,
| investors, customer acquisition, payroll and the bi-annual
| whack over the head from the fourth dimension that throws all
| your carefully laid plans into disarray.
|
| But I _do_ very much wish for you to succeed at whatever
| endeavor you 've got lined up and I'm curious to hear about it.
| Much, much good luck with your plans.
| tough wrote:
| hey, not so old but feeling old to not have done much yet,
| thanks for reminding me that I can still be kicking 35 years
| from now.
|
| I'd say if you have the fire go for it fren
| iamflimflam1 wrote:
| If you've still got the energy, why not? I think the most
| important thing is are you enjoying it? Does it feel
| fulfilling?
|
| There's a lot of pressure to conform to what's expected of you
| and if you can ignore that you'll probably be much happier than
| most people.
| DocSavage wrote:
| 65 is the new 45 :) Sounds like there's a perfectly logical
| reason to do the 3rd startup: you're passionate about it. Best
| of luck!
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| I've been fortunate enough to know a few older people who really
| loved their work and were excellent at it. All of them had one
| thing in common: they didn't want to retire.
|
| Meanwhile all of my peer group is obsessed with FIRE and dream of
| retiring early. All of us are also involved in pretty meaningless
| work that has no measurable impact on the world (five lines of
| code to a million line codebase is hardly world changing).
| atrettel wrote:
| I would think that the "obsession" your peer group has with
| retiring early comes more from the realization that they can
| retire early (they have the ability to if they want) more than
| anything else. Your observations of your peer group may have
| some selection bias present. Cast a wider net and you may come
| to the opposite conclusion.
|
| I agree that many people do not find much meaning in their
| work, but most people also do not make as much money as
| software engineers do. Most people cannot fathom retiring
| early. It simply is impossible. A lot of software engineers are
| going to realize that, hey, if I save up and invest money
| aggressively for roughly 10 to 15 years, I will have enough to
| live comfortably for the rest of my life without having to do
| work that I do not like. However, most professions do not make
| nearly enough money to achieve the goal of retiring early, so
| they really have no reason to discuss or even ponder early
| retirement. It's never gonna come up.
| varjag wrote:
| Aye, this whole concept is a zero sum game hedging on you
| earning substantially more than median. Otherwise you
| wouldn't be able to live off your saved amount as the
| services rendered by other people would price you out. The
| returns on investments would have been very modest too with
| people extracting more value for their work.
| skepticATX wrote:
| Perhaps it is more about the structure of the corporate
| workplace and less about how meaningful the work is?
|
| I love writing code, I don't think I'll ever fully quit, but I
| also really want to retire early.
|
| The problem is that corporate America is riddled with politics
| and inefficiencies, and offers little to no long term security
| for all but the most senior employees.
|
| From what I've seen the people who never retire are in
| academia, medicine, own a business, or are just so accomplished
| that they effectively have corporate tenure.
| gumby wrote:
| I retired at 30 and it didn't stick. The real difference is
| that I only think about working on things I am interested in
| working on.
| gravypod wrote:
| > Meanwhile all of my peer group is obsessed with FIRE and
| dream of retiring early.
|
| I'm a SWE and I would love to FIRE one day but the goal of my
| retirement is very different from others. I want to buy some
| land with a house and a workshop, learn machining, chemistry,
| electrical engineering, etc and either contract for startups or
| start my own projects. Also, I'd like to bring some polish to
| the free software stack by rebuilding some foundational pieces
| of technology.
|
| It is very hard to have the energy to do a full day of work,
| come home, and do a full night of work. Unfortunately, the
| market is not set up in a way where creative people (who can
| transform various verticals) can get funded to do good work.
| egwor wrote:
| I've been asking myself why I'm not already doing this now.
| Why not spend a bit of time on reading about it now?
| ngai_aku wrote:
| Probably because most of us have feelings similar to what
| was expressed by the parent:
|
| > It is very hard to have the energy to do a full day of
| work, come home, and do a full night of work.
|
| I really enjoyed school, and I always thought I'd be the
| type to continue education via MOOCs, self-guided study,
| what have you. But it's hard to fit it in after a full day
| of work and family time!
| Zircom wrote:
| I don't know about you but I'm mentally exhausted at the
| end of most days once I'm off work. It's relatively
| uncommon for me to even have energy to invest in my normal
| hobbies, let alone self-improvement/ learning new skills.
| armchairhacker wrote:
| I like some form of "work" but I like to work on my own terms.
| The more money I have up to a certain amount, the less I have
| to worry about taking a job I don't want.
|
| I'm currently in academia, so I don't make that much money but
| fortunately do make enough. And I get to work on stuff which
| isn't quite what I'd like, but close enough; and the job isn't
| very demanding and I have free time, so I can also do the kind
| of work that I want. I do want more stability though, better
| income means I can save money and academia is opaque and
| uncertain
| losteric wrote:
| The older folks typically also benefited from getting into
| housing when it was less scarce, riding one or more waves of
| progress, at a time where healthcare ROI was much higher.
|
| My generation faces a different economic situation. I know
| people in academia that love what they do and dreamed of living
| a life like Rudy's. In practice, they're stuck - huge debts,
| dismally low post-grad wages, stuck renting, just hoping for a
| stable position (luck over merit). K-12 teachers, lifetime
| musicians, social services, even nurses in similar positions.
|
| Is meaning worth that kind of struggle?
|
| Not for me. I want to bake as a craft in an owned place of
| business, then go home to sleep in a bedroom I own. Big Tech is
| the means to that end. Wake up, Clock in, autopilot, clock out,
| live. Within ethical reason, I will take any boring meaningless
| job if it pays well enough.
|
| Locals complain about Big Tech killing the quirky unique
| culture my city used to have... and I agree! But what was the
| alternative? Pursuing the baking craft on debt and leases,
| paycheck to paycheck, barely treading water without any
| savings? _That_ sounds like living a dream, getting sucked dry
| by parasites. There are public policies that could bring back
| the vibrancy, but no one wants density or lower property values
| (a prerequisite for housing the people that seed a vibrant
| culture)...
| lostlogin wrote:
| Your housing comment is key - the grind of paying for rent or
| a mortgage with two incomes really stifles and ability people
| have to try something.
| lambdasquirrel wrote:
| All the folks in my peer group who followed their left-
| leaning parents mantra of doing something interesting,
| something that you love, got absolutely screwed. As much as I
| hate big tech, I cannot blame anyone for pursuing it.
| BMorearty wrote:
| I followed my left-leaning parents' advice to get paid for
| doing something I love. But luckily for me I love coding.
| kenjackson wrote:
| How did they get screwed? I feel like I kind of got screwed
| going into SW. I have friends who make 1/3 the money as
| athletic trainers, but just seem to love their life so much
| more. Maybe when we're 60 things will change, but seems
| like a bad tradeoff.
| vl wrote:
| There are happier because their work is finite. They do
| athletic sessions, they are done, their time then is
| their own. As software dev/lead/manager/pm you are never
| done, there is always next thing to do.
|
| This why some devs become SREs - your shift is over, you
| are done.
| bombolo wrote:
| being a hipster and being a socialist aren't the same.
| rxhernandez wrote:
| Kinda hard to be either without being left-leaning
| flangola7 wrote:
| Chud brohipsters are a very real thing.
| pixelatedindex wrote:
| Anecdotally speaking, I don't ever see myself being
| right-leaning because really, what do I have to conserve
| to be conservative?
|
| I don't have much wealth, I can't buy a house for the
| foreseeable future, I will be done paying off literally
| all my debt including student loan next year, I have a
| wife and no kids. So yeah... I just want to do what I
| like and screw making another person or company richer,
| they'll be fine.
| foobiekr wrote:
| Not everything is about housing, in particular someone
| choosing to work to 100+ doesn't really have anything to do
| with housing.
| pixelatedindex wrote:
| No, but it helps to own a house if you wish to work to 100+
| lisper wrote:
| It's not work that sucks. It's _having_ to work that sucks.
| [deleted]
| r3trohack3r wrote:
| Retirement !== never working.
|
| Personally, I'm pursuing FIRE for the freedom to choose my work
| regardless of how much (or even if) it pays. Decoupling my work
| from market incentives.
|
| I don't consider retirement to be sitting around doing nothing.
| It's waking up and choosing my own path. It's freedom.
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| I think having choices is better than not having choices.
| TheAceOfHearts wrote:
| Is it such a bad thing to dream of a life which values things
| outside of a workplace? To spend time with friends and family.
| The older generations cling to positions of power and refuse to
| make room for the newer generations, so it is upon them to find
| meaning and purpose through other avenues.
|
| Retiring seems important for allowing younger generations to
| take their place. But if all you have is your work and you've
| lived for nothing more then I guess it makes sense to cling
| onto it until the end.
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| Its not a value judgement on my peer group for wanting out of
| the workplace.
|
| Its more of a value judgement on the meaningless of so much
| of modern work.
|
| All the people I mentioned above are involved in work that's
| probably more gratifying than making giant corporations
| richer. One is a playwright, one is a professor, one is a top
| pulmonologist in the country.
|
| I don't know what their day to day entails, but I can't
| imagine it being as mind numbing as what I do.
| JamesAdir wrote:
| This. My friends' father is approaching 92. He worked in
| his auto repair shop until the age of 89. He was a pillar
| of the community, known everyone and their cars, and had
| generations of customer coming with cars to get them
| serviced.
|
| I don't think he became a rich man from this. He had a
| house, raised his family, and that's all. He just enjoyed
| fixing cars.
| Given_47 wrote:
| Yea I've been thinking about this a lot recently. I think
| us fixating so much on monetary richness can b harmful to
| society and too little is made of general "wealth"
| (drawing some inspiration from pg's _how to make wealth_
| ).
|
| There's a lot of folks that make more than ur buddy's
| dad, but I'm sure a lot of them are miserable in their
| jobs. In standard jobs u spend the majority of ur non
| sleeping hours in ur job. Are you rlly more "rich" if u
| can splurge on a few things on occasion but everything
| else is a chore compared to someone with an adequate
| amount to get by but enjoys the work?
|
| Idk I find framing it this way and thinking about the
| dichotomy between short bursts of gratification and more
| subdued but consistent well being is interesting
| RangerScience wrote:
| There's a big difference between having a purpose in your
| life, something you love doing, that happens to be done at a
| work place; and being an employee.
|
| IMHO it is absolutely a good thing to dream of a life which
| values things outside of employment.
|
| We just happen to use the same word - "work" - for both kinds
| of situations.
| RangerScience wrote:
| Related - My friend group is a bunch of (predictably)
| nerds, and describing the times I want to keep working on
| an interesting tech problem for my employer as "wizarding"
| has been fairly successful. It's specifically a D&D
| reference, since what I'm usually doing is figuring out a
| new pattern ("spell") to add to my repertoire ("spellbook")
| that I can then use in many other situations.
|
| It's... difficult, to convey to people what it's like
| having a job you like doing, working for people that treat
| you with respect, when they've pretty much only ever had
| jobs they didn't like and working for people that treated
| them poorly.
| Given_47 wrote:
| Yea it's pretty disheartening that these r common
| experiences. Admittedly, I don't kno a ton about UBI but
| I'd imagine the idea of giving people more security so
| they can pursue their interests in careers and not have
| to suffer thru a daily grind solely for a paycheck is a
| tenet of it
| RangerScience wrote:
| 100% yes. I usually think of / describe that aspect of
| UBI (theoretically) as "the job all other jobs have to
| compete with."
|
| Like - there's a floor on how shitty a job can be, if
| _no_ job is a valid alternative.
| themitigating wrote:
| If someone talks about how they love to work and don't want
| to retire it's not a judgement on any other choices.
| moonchrome wrote:
| > Is it such a bad thing to dream of a life which values
| things outside of a workplace? To spend time with friends and
| family.
|
| Friends and family are great reprieve between working hours
| and obligations. I wouldn't want that to be the only thing
| going on. Stay at home moms and retired people around me are
| not the image of fulfilment.
|
| The few retired people I've met that were happy and engaging
| are the kind that didn't stop working past retirement.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Gardening is a living death. So is traveling around looking at
| things.
| WalterBright wrote:
| And that's as it should be.
| robotnikman wrote:
| I feel like one of the secrets to living longer is to have a
| reason to get up every day, a purpose to fulfill in life. And
| this guy certainly has one.
| paulcole wrote:
| I mean it's not that interesting to write about the 100 year
| olds who have no purpose and just putter around. Might be
| skewing your conclusions a bit.
| lordnacho wrote:
| Someone mentioned a paper a while ago examining whether
| retirement was actually what caused death, rather than
| retirement being caused by ill health. Perhaps someone here
| can link it.
| sigmoid10 wrote:
| This study [1] seems to suggest that there are quite a few
| negative effects that can be associated with retirement
| itself rather than age alone. But the effects are rather
| small and it also seems like they can be offset by
| maintaining a social life and physical exercise after
| retirement. So yeah, being alone on the couch all day is
| bad for physical and mental health. But that holds for any
| age, retirement only exacerbates it for some people.
|
| [1] https://www.jstor.org/stable/27751397
| lionsdan wrote:
| Maybe "The Mortality Effects of Retirement" ?
| https://www.nber.org/bah/2018no1/mortality-effects-
| retiremen...
|
| There are a couple other versions of this full paper
|
| https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w24127/w24
| 1...
|
| https://crr.bc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/wp_2016-7.pdf
| mrtksn wrote:
| Wow, such a winner: Long, healthy life full of accomplishments
| within a community where he is liked and he likes them back.
|
| I wonder what people like Peter Thiel have to say about it, would
| he consider Rudy Marcus a "winner", maybe bigger one than
| himself? I recall something about Thiel looking down on the life
| choices and motivations of scientists.
| dctoedt wrote:
| > _Peter Tail_
|
| Friendly amendment: You mean Peter _Thiel_ , presumably?
| mrtksn wrote:
| Right, Autocorrect keeps correcting it wrongly. It's the SV
| billionaire from the PayPal mafia.
| Kamq wrote:
| > I wonder what people like Peter Thiel have to say about it
|
| The people I know who look down on modern academics, tend to
| dislike a set of changes that started happening in the mid-late
| sixties and ramped up through at least the 2010s.
|
| I'm not sure that's applicable to someone who got their PhD in
| 1946.
| mrtksn wrote:
| I am a bit too lazy to go back into Thiel talks and find the
| relevant quotes, however, if I recall correctly He talks
| about Einstein and similar physicists on how they were not
| compensated correctly and not being billionaires despite
| their huge contributions to the society and how they made
| wrong life choices.
| Kamq wrote:
| Fair enough. Einstein definitely pre-dates what I'm talking
| about, so if he's included, then this guy definitely is.
| mrtksn wrote:
| To be fair, I recall him criticising the capitalist
| system too for not rewarding the scientists properly. He
| is not a simple person.
| Kamq wrote:
| > He is not a simple person.
|
| I'm gonna be honest here. I don't think anyone is.
| mrtksn wrote:
| Sure, just emphasising on it because the initial comment
| looks like a bit of mischaracterisation.
| JumpinJack_Cash wrote:
| > > I wonder what people like Peter Thiel have to say about it
|
| Who gives a fuck? He's just a guy, much like this guy is just a
| guy.
|
| Don't waste space and give me your take as opposed to
| mentioning other people, because they are not here and they
| cannot debate, while you are and can.
| mrtksn wrote:
| Sure, here is for you can fill for your demands:
| https://form.jotform.com/232027549131046
| selimthegrim wrote:
| I salute Rudy, but I'm not sure how well his graduate students
| have made out in the last few years.
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