On working hard on the same thing for 10 years straight

[posic]

Scott D. Clary writes in Facebook -- https://www.facebook.com/scottdclarypage/posts/pfbid0p8JTR6xN9W4F3NqWz6ZfPudyErM9i75bz38anrEhnxkzBne7bbj7LrrZTaZFXvy6l :

"Everybody works hard. Very few people work hard on the same thing for 10 years straight."

and posts a picture with the text saying:

"Hard work isn't the differentiator. Everybody works hard. The differentiator is working hard on the right thing long enough to look lucky."

***

I have worked hard on the same thing for almost 20 years straight now, and I do not think that I look lucky. I am yet to encounter a single person who would be interested in following in my footsteps, or in traveling along a path in any way similar to mine, even if most of my difficulties and troubles are somehow cut away from the trajectory. No one seems to want to write 5000 pages of highly original, nontrivial math. research and have almost nothing to show for it in the end. The hoping is that I will look lucky 50 years from now (that is, long after I am dead).

Comments

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

I've been working on writing for over 40 years, and gardening even longer. It certainly isn't about luck. While working a long time in the same field is useful, it isn't wholly about that either. It's about constantly learning new things, and viewing failure as information rather than a disaster. That adds up.

This year I bought a seed-starting kit to try that again, which I hadn't done in decades. I got a good sprouting rate on some, but then a lot of them died. I also saw the same failure most as in the past, where many seedlings became spindly instead of robust. Others didn't sprout well. While I wouldn't really call it a success, it was interesting to watch what happened. The squash seedlings would probably have worked better if I started them only 4 weeks early.

Re: Thoughts

[posic]

I have been studying and doing mathematics for over 40 years, too. I do not mean as a hobby. For the last 20 years (almost), I have been working really hard, and have written a lot.

As to failures, there are three kinds of them in mathematics. Being unable to prove a theorem, or making a mistake and coming up with an erroneous proof, is one thing. Reinventing the wheel, proving something that is already essentially known, is another thing. Being unable to have one's paper accepted at a prestigious journal is something else altogether. The first and second kind of failures I perceive as information about what I did wrong. The third ones, as information about how the peer review system is wrong.

I do not try to adopt my research to fit the preferences of the editors and reviewers of the prestigious journals. In this sense, I disregard the third kind of information altogether. I just bet on the time, or else the afterlife, proving that I was right.

Re: Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>>The first and second kind of failures I perceive as information about what I did wrong. The third ones, as information about how the peer review system is wrong.<<

I agree, unless the peer reviewers highlight errors.

>>I do not try to adopt my research to fit the preferences of the editors and reviewers of the prestigious journals. <<

Go you!

Re: Thoughts

[posic]

This is a nontrivial issue, actually. It is not about errors. Everyone agrees that papers with errors should not be published at all, certainly not before the errors are corrected.

The peer reviewers decide what is significant and what is not, what is important and what is not. What is worthy of publication in a first-rate journal, and what (even though correct) only deserves to be published in a third-rate one.

I disregard their opinion. I follow my own judgement of what is important and what is not.

Re: Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

I think people underestimate how much clique culture impacts the sciences. Some things are effectively not allowed to be studied or published at all. There's far less material about female biology than male biology, which undermines women's health care. And if you want to study earlier-than-accepted human evidence in the Americas, or later-than-accepted horses in the Americas, or how many American "weeds" are actually the escaped agricultural crops of ancient civilizations, you're pretty well screwed -- unless you want to work at and publish through a tribal college or other tribal context, which is where I've found some references to such things.

I'm glad that you're working on math that other people ignore as unimportant. Many advancements occur that way.

You're not the only one thinking in deep time either. I keep my yard as a refugium for wildlife. I don't know if it will save any species. I do know that refugia are what allow species to survive extinction events. It doesn't matter to me that I won't see the end results. It only matters that I'm doing my damn job as a thumb-bearing, big-brained member of Spaceship Earth.