ooooooh actual Hamming spent 10s of minutes asking people about the most important questions in their field and helping them clarify their own judgment, before asking why they weren’t working on this thing they clearly valued and spent time thinking about. That is pretty different from demanding strangers at parties justify why they’re not working on your pet cause.
“It’s not what I’m getting paid to do” is probably what most people outside of academia would answer. IIRC Hamming worked at Bell Labs which I think gave people much more freedom to work on whatever they chose than your typical corporate R&D department...
ooooooh actual Hamming spent 10s of minutes asking people about the most important questions in their field and helping them clarify their own judgment, before asking why they weren’t working on this thing they clearly valued and spent time thinking about. That is pretty different from demanding strangers at parties justify why they’re not working on your pet cause.
He also didn’t ask them both questions at the same day.
Somehow this seems like a very big diff.
What are typical answers to the question you get?
I don’t get answers to that question because I don’t accost strangers at parties demanding they justify their life choices to me
“It’s not what I’m getting paid to do” is probably what most people outside of academia would answer. IIRC Hamming worked at Bell Labs which I think gave people much more freedom to work on whatever they chose than your typical corporate R&D department...