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Joy in Discovery - LessWrong

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"Newton was the greatest genius who ever lived, and the most fortunate; for we cannot find more than once a system of the world to establish." —Lagrange I have more fun discovering things for myself than reading about them in textbooks. This is right and proper, and only to be expected. But discovering something that no one else knows—being the first to unravel the secret— There is a story that one of the first men to realize that stars were burning by fusion—plausible attributions I've seen are to Fritz Houtermans and Hans Bethe —was walking out with his girlfriend of a night, and she made a comment on how beautiful the stars were, and he replied: "Yes, and right now, I'm the only man in the world who knows why they shine." It is attested by numerous sources that this experience, being the first person to solve a major mystery, is a tremendous high. It's probably the closest experience you can get to taking drugs, without taking drugs—though I wouldn't know. That can't be healthy. Not that I'm objecting to the euphoria. It's the exclusivity clause that bothers me. Why should a discovery be worth less, just because someone else already knows the answer? The most charitable interpretation I can put on the psychology, is that you don't struggle with a single problem for months or years if it's something you can just look up in the library. And that the tremendous high comes from having hit the problem from every angle you can manage, and having bounced; and then having analyzed the problem again, using every idea you can think of, and all the data you can get your hands on—making progress a little at a time—so that when, finally, you crack through the problem, all the dangling pieces and unresolved questions fall into place at once, like solving a dozen locked-room murder mysteries with a single clue. And more, the understanding you get is real understanding—understanding that embraces all the clues you studied to solve the problem, when you didn't yet know

x Joy in Discovery — LessWrong Joy in the Merely Real Emotions Motivations Social Status Personal Blog 87 Joy in Discovery by Eliezer Yudkowsky 21st Mar 2008 5 min read 48 87 "Newton was the greatest genius who ever lived, and the most fortunate; for we cannot find more than once a system of the world to establish." —Lagrange I have more fun discovering things for myself than reading about them in textbooks. This is right and proper, and only to be expected. But discovering something that no one else knows —being the first to unravel the secret— There is a story that one of the first men to re

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