Fashionable Problems
19 hours ago
- Many fields have only a small fraction of possibilities explored, despite extensive work.
- Even the smartest people tend to work on fashionable problems, being conservative in their choices.
- Unfashionable problems can be found in fields thought to be fully explored, like essays, Lisp, or venture funding.
- Discovering a new approach in a big but played-out field multiplies the value of the discovery.
- Genuinely loving what you do is the best protection against working on the same things as everyone else.