I think the fundamental problem is that at Von Neumann’s level you don’t compare yourself against your peers, but against the vastness of the task at hand—which is the understanding of a part or possibly even the total of nature, logic, and reality itself. And so you can’t do anything but come up short, because well, a single human life even with the greatest intellect that ever lived is barely enough to put a microscopic dent in it.
Hmm. To me it always felt more natural to “compare myself to the task rather than to my peers”, no matter what task and what level, even when I’m a complete beginner at something. It just makes more sense. The only reason to look at peers is to steal their tricks :-)
Well, if one tries to assess their performance compared to their potential, observing your peers can be a way to guess that. It’s not necessarily a matter of competitiveness as much as “this is the reference class I’m in, so this is roughly the kind of thing I can reasonably aspire to”. But if you’re on a class of your own anyway then you can’t even appeal to that—only look at the task.
I think the fundamental problem is that at Von Neumann’s level you don’t compare yourself against your peers, but against the vastness of the task at hand—which is the understanding of a part or possibly even the total of nature, logic, and reality itself. And so you can’t do anything but come up short, because well, a single human life even with the greatest intellect that ever lived is barely enough to put a microscopic dent in it.
Hmm. To me it always felt more natural to “compare myself to the task rather than to my peers”, no matter what task and what level, even when I’m a complete beginner at something. It just makes more sense. The only reason to look at peers is to steal their tricks :-)
Well, if one tries to assess their performance compared to their potential, observing your peers can be a way to guess that. It’s not necessarily a matter of competitiveness as much as “this is the reference class I’m in, so this is roughly the kind of thing I can reasonably aspire to”. But if you’re on a class of your own anyway then you can’t even appeal to that—only look at the task.