[HN Gopher] What "Follow Your Dreams" Misses [video]
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       What "Follow Your Dreams" Misses [video]
        
       Author : gladuz
       Score  : 98 points
       Date   : 2024-05-20 01:43 UTC (21 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.youtube.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.youtube.com)
        
       | gnicholas wrote:
       | I happened to see someone wearing a 3Blue1Brown t-shirt today and
       | decided to buy one myself to (modestly) support the channel. In
       | addition to shirts, there are also socks and stuffed animals,
       | apparently: https://store.dftba.com/collections/3blue1brown
        
         | paradox242 wrote:
         | My son is 4 and saw me watching one of his videos with the
         | colorful Pi characters and was intrigued. After multiple
         | repeated requests to watch "Pi friends" we ended up getting him
         | one of the plush Pi creatures which he still loves.
        
         | smarm52 wrote:
         | I'm suspicious this is an ad.
        
           | refset wrote:
           | Whatever the motivations (and FWIW it does seem like a
           | channel very worthy of support), I can confirm it is at least
           | the official 'Store' linked to from the official website:
           | https://www.3blue1brown.com/
        
           | gnicholas wrote:
           | You're suspicious my comment is an ad, or the original post?
           | I have zero affiliation with the channel, have never emailed
           | with the creator or anyone on their team, and am not even
           | subscribed to the youtube channel. I just saw a guy wearing
           | one of the shirts at the Palo Alto farmer's market and was
           | intrigued. My first reaction was "is that the guy who runs
           | the channel?" and then I realized he probably had a shop and
           | probably didn't go around wearing his own swag.
        
             | smarm52 wrote:
             | Apologies, still finding my footing here at HN. I have a
             | lot "reddit reflexes" for lack of a better word, and this
             | was probably a product of that.
        
               | gnicholas wrote:
               | You might check someone's account age or history first.
               | Typically people won't accumulate many thousands of karma
               | points if they are shilling for brands.
        
       | one-punch wrote:
       | Reminds me of the "Chase your reality" commencement speech by
       | Christopher Nolan at Princeton in 2015.
       | 
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoWEhQlS9yY
        
       | fnordian_slip wrote:
       | He already had me at his mention of survivorship bias (something
       | that I feel is ignored a bit too often in this space), but the
       | whole speech was great!
       | 
       | I'm generally on the other end of the spectrum (playing it safe
       | instead of following my dreams), but somehow this motivated me to
       | go a bit further into trying something new.
        
       | yuy910616 wrote:
       | Refreshing take on "Follow your dreams"! It's quite surprising to
       | me that this tired genre can still deliver something new.
        
       | thomasahle wrote:
       | The ironical thing about the "Follow what creates value for other
       | people" advice - for math graduates in particular - is that most
       | of modern math doesn't seem to be motivated this.
       | 
       | I'd probably agree that research math also doesn't come from a
       | goal of "self growth", but maybe it should be something like
       | "follow your curiosity".
        
         | j2kun wrote:
         | > for math graduates in particular
         | 
         | I don't think it's ironic at all. The vast majority of math
         | graduates don't do pure math research after graduation. And
         | modern pure mathematicians dramatically undercut how much of
         | their research was, in relatively recent history, driven mainly
         | by practical value.
        
         | aleph_minus_one wrote:
         | > The ironical thing about the "Follow what creates value for
         | other people" advice - for math graduates in particular - is
         | that most of modern math doesn't seem to be motivated this.
         | 
         | I _do_ believe that the results of math research (even the pure
         | one) create an _insane_ value for other people, but that we
         | live in a world full of ignorant people who don 't see this
         | insane value (yet). Thus, the modern math research may not be
         | _motivated_ by this criterion, but in most cases nearly
         | tautologically creates a lot of value for other people.
        
           | mitthrowaway2 wrote:
           | I agree. You can still make a great living just by sifting
           | through the nuggets unearthed by people like Gauss, Euler,
           | and Laplace, which continue to pay dividends centuries later,
           | let alone inventing new math.
        
         | j7ake wrote:
         | "People" need to be better defined. In the case of pure math,
         | "people" are your fellow mathematicians in your specific
         | subfield or adjacent.
        
       | sabrina_ramonov wrote:
       | I find it more useful to "follow my curiosity" ... I feel the
       | concept of "dreams" has too much weight and seriousness attached
       | to it nowadays
        
       | mihaic wrote:
       | I find it very ironic that Americans seem to understand better as
       | a culture that they need to diversity their investment portfolio,
       | but at the same time seem to ignore that concept in their
       | personal life more than almost any European.
       | 
       | It seems like the concept that there probably shouldn't be any
       | single goal or purpose in life that needs to be maxed, and that
       | life is a basket is foreign to most.
        
       | tennisflyi wrote:
       | It's always had the subtext of "follow your (reasonable) dreams."
        
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       (page generated 2024-05-20 23:01 UTC)