> According to this elite view, the people are too unstable and ignorant for self-rule. “Commoners,” who are viewed as factors of production at work and as consumers at home, must adhere to their proper roles in order to maintain social stability.
However,
> Citizenship requires a commitment of time and attention, a commitment people cannot make if they are lost to themselves in an ever-accelerating cycle of work and consumption.
> We can break that cycle by turning off our machines when they have created enough of what we need.
> We can create a society where people have time to play together as well as work together, time to act politically in their common interests, and time even to argue over what those common interests might be. That fertile mix of human relationships is necessary for healthy human societies, which in turn are necessary for sustaining a healthy planet
> To succeed, you need to know how to be a conman. It is not sufficient to be pleasant. You need to know when to raise your voice and when to make someone cry. And above all, you must know how to be an asshole and still decide not to act like one. You have to choose to not to use people.
Woit seems to have the math person's idea of what physical intuition is, though. What I mean is, even though the basic ingredient of intuition for everyone is experience, because math is so fragmented most mathematicians have different intuition from other mathematicians (depending on the specific set of problems or examples they have personally encountered). Whereas..[the human concept called] physics can be travelled end-to-end in a couple of weeks (says Lenny Susskind)
The guy you're replying to is probably thinking about something more along the lines of the math guys' intuition, because in those days, how many chemists have even thought deeply about benzene..
Physicists are the weird ones here!
the busticket theory of genius tells us however that there won't be any purely theoretical physics geniuses any time soon (i.e. that weeks-wide room has been combed for curiosities already bro)
That said, I hope Lenny Susskind is wrong, e.g. there were commenters on that post that mentioned (in-passing, sadly) several mathematical curiosities that are considered uninteresting to a vast majority of physicists
Only half-serious (or half-jokingly, depending on how you like it served):
Payments is the Collison brothers' bus tickets?
(We know PG has always been catfishing for genius -- it might even be the main reason why HN is alive.. it might even be his own most irrational obsession..)
Compare https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34365048
That genius candidate has no strange obsessions (anything that needs work to be profitable could be thought of as niche but hardly strange.. payments are so obviously profitable that to spend time obsessing about the mechanics is, paradoxically, strange.)
However,
> Citizenship requires a commitment of time and attention, a commitment people cannot make if they are lost to themselves in an ever-accelerating cycle of work and consumption.
> We can break that cycle by turning off our machines when they have created enough of what we need.
> We can create a society where people have time to play together as well as work together, time to act politically in their common interests, and time even to argue over what those common interests might be. That fertile mix of human relationships is necessary for healthy human societies, which in turn are necessary for sustaining a healthy planet
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