suggested reading, for a techie.

i must have mentioned it before, but i really enjoy reading paul graham's essays.

maybe it's because he flatters mathematicians and other techies, or maybe it's because i see in his work what i would have liked to have done, but wasn't brave or deft enough.

for example, his latest essay is "Is It Worth Being Wise?" and weighs wisdom vs. intelligence in a way which i couldn't scoff at. he's willing to approach issues in philosophy, but in a clean way; his reasoning reminds me of a mathematician's.

then, maybe i like him because admittedly, he writes things that i would like to believe. this is different from flattery, but a related matter.

for example, here's an excerpt.

To me it was a relief just to realize it might be ok to be discontented. The idea that a successful person should be happy has thousands of years of momentum behind it. If I was any good, why didn't I have the easy confidence winners are supposed to have? But that, I now believe, is like a runner asking "If I'm such a good athlete, why do I feel so tired?" Good runners still get tired; they just get tired at higher speeds.

People whose work is to invent or discover things are in the same position as the runner. There's no way for them to do the best they can, because there's no limit to what they could do. The closest you can come is to compare yourself to other people. But the better you do, the less this matters. An undergrad who gets something published feels like a star. But for someone at the top of the field, what's the test of doing well? Runners can at least compare themselves to others doing exactly the same thing; if you win an Olympic gold medal, you can be fairly content, even if you think you could have run a bit faster. But what is a novelist to do?

and here is another:

The path to intelligence seems to be through working on hard problems. You develop intelligence as you might develop muscles, through exercise. But there can't be too much compulsion here. No amount of discipline can replace genuine curiosity. So cultivating intelligence seems to be a matter of identifying some bias in one's character—some tendency to be interested in certain types of things—and nurturing it. Instead of obliterating your idiosyncrasies in an effort to make yourself a neutral vessel for the truth, you select one and try to grow it from a seedling into a tree.

graham inspires. he inspires me, at least; few people can do that anymore, and at this point of my life, i need all the inspiration i can muster.