Here "risk" is opportunity cost. You can spend all you life in theology and die unknown. Newton is famous only because of physics, the other fields were waste of his time. There are countless people who spend their life perusing projects that do not produce anything valuable. And then there are few that win Nobel.
>You can spend all you life in theology and die unknown.
You can do that in physics and natural philosophy too. What's your point? There are plenty of theologians. This idea that the only noble pursuit is scientific, which PG seems to be saying in this essay from my reading, and in fact other commenters, is borderline scientism.
Why would theology have been a bad thing to pursue, other than some sense of satisfaction you don't even get from people remembering you after you are dead?
Sure, but I'm not sure it's clear that working in e.g. theology didn't help him in his more technical work.
Have a broad and well-rounded view tends to help. I don't know a good mathematician who doesn't read, write, play music, explore other fields with passion and vigor. You get fresh ideas and it keeps your mind limber and flexible.
I'm not sure you could say a Newton who knew nothing but physics and physics only would have made the same breakthroughs.
>There are countless people who spend their life perusing projects that do not produce anything valuable.
It can't be understated how painful that has to be from their perspective.
I suppose a similar story is where they do produce something of value, but it's incremental in nature. Incremental advancements usually don't receive much recognition.
> It can't be understated how painful that has to be from their perspective.
Why? Somebody can play videogames all day, because it's fun, and then die all of sudden. They didn't produce anything valuable, and yet, they didn't feel bad about it.
It's only painful if you rethink it, and basically say, I should have spent my time doing something else. Which is a paradox of choice.
This is one of the main motivators in science. People do science trying to discover something no one knows and be recognized for that. Very few would be still motivated if you leave just discovery part and drop recognition.
> AI is an increasingly competitive field, and Apple's past reluctance to contribute to scientific knowledge may have scared away potential hires who wanted their discoveries recognized. If papers like these become relatively commonplace, Apple might have an easier time attracting the talent it needs for self-driving car platforms, Siri and other AI-based projects.
