Great post! This has held me to clarify where I have tended to go astray in my studies. Around the age of 17 I made a conscious decision stay up at level 4, assuming that it was automatically more useful to do so. This led directly to math and philosophy, the more esoteric the better and damn practical skill building. In this regard, I can very much identify with the Paul Graham essay you cited.
I’ve only recently (as of, say, age 20) been able to come full circle and see the necessity of having some chains down to level 1 set in place to ground you and keep you from floating around aimlessly in Level 4-space. I think a key part of my revelation was in going through enough mathematical logic (model theory, alternative set theories etc.) that I found myself studying the theory of computation and finally I was comfortable engaging in skill-building by actively practicing programming having learned most of the relevant (along with plenty of irrelevant) theory behind it.
In retrospect, this approach was terribly backwards. I skipped over many level 1 and level 2 opportunities while I was lusting for higher and higher levels of abstraction, and in turn ended up with a much weaker foundation than I otherwise would have had.
Great post! This has held me to clarify where I have tended to go astray in my studies. Around the age of 17 I made a conscious decision stay up at level 4, assuming that it was automatically more useful to do so. This led directly to math and philosophy, the more esoteric the better and damn practical skill building. In this regard, I can very much identify with the Paul Graham essay you cited.
I’ve only recently (as of, say, age 20) been able to come full circle and see the necessity of having some chains down to level 1 set in place to ground you and keep you from floating around aimlessly in Level 4-space. I think a key part of my revelation was in going through enough mathematical logic (model theory, alternative set theories etc.) that I found myself studying the theory of computation and finally I was comfortable engaging in skill-building by actively practicing programming having learned most of the relevant (along with plenty of irrelevant) theory behind it.
In retrospect, this approach was terribly backwards. I skipped over many level 1 and level 2 opportunities while I was lusting for higher and higher levels of abstraction, and in turn ended up with a much weaker foundation than I otherwise would have had.