assemblyman

A few people mentioned Meta burning through people like LeCun, Carmack and Luckey. We give a lot of credit to individuals in our society. At the same time, there's a frequent pattern of very successful people changing fields, organizations or general environments and suddenly looking very ordinary. In a way, this is a very strong argument to let people settle into a place they can be happiest in. A few examples:

* This is seen very often in Formula One. Schumacher when he went from Ferrari to Mercedes (after a short sabbatical), Vettel from Red Bull to Ferrari, Raikkonen from Lotus to Ferrari (his second stint), Hamilton from Mercedes to Ferrari, Perez at McLaren. There's a lot of Ferrari here so maybe that's the confounding factor.

* This also happens when physicists changed fields. They generally can't replicate their earlier success. Dirac, Feynman, Schwinger, Einstein all went through a transition like this. One explanation is that their early success was precisely so unusual (for anyone) that it would be hard to replicate in general.

* In my experience, this happens at companies too. Whenever we hired a "rockstar" from another company, they would generally struggle (across multiple companies I have been at). This could partly be a result of sabotage from a few vested interests at the new company. But often, it's hard to adjust to a new environment in a short amount of time.

The converse also happens. Sometimes a person considered ordinary goes to a different environment and flourishes. Palmer Luckey has been very successful at Anduril. Stephen Smale was almost failing out of his math PhD program but suddenly started flourishing in his third year IIRC and eventually got a fields medal. Ed Witten experimented with economics, history, linguistics, applied math before switching to physics in his second year and suddenly started making rapid progress.

This is not a very rigorous observation and I am missing many confounding factors.

I see a lot of criticism of LeCun and his views on LLMs as well as his inability to "deliver" products. I don't think that's what he cares about at all. His prominence led to him being picked by Meta. It was a chance to get massive resources that he couldn't get at NYU and the chance to work with smart people outside academia. The pay probably didn't hurt either. In return, Meta became a magnet for smart ML researchers and engineers. If I permit myself to speculate about his thoughts when he took the job, he had no intention of committing to product timelines and generating revenue. Now that Zuckerberg has clearly committed to something he like i.e. building a new product line and expanding the business, it was only a matter of time before LeCun would feel left out and under-resourced.

Interestingly, Yoshua Bengio is the only one who hasn't given into industry even though he could easily raise a lot of money.

Ah no, I meant these ones by Graham:

https://www.amazon.com/Intelligent-Investor-3rd-Ed/dp/006335...

https://www.amazon.com/Security-Analysis-Seventh-Principles-...

I'll paste a couple more readable ones too :)

https://www.amazon.com/Concentrated-Investing-Strategies-Gre...

https://www.amazon.com/Value-Investing-Graham-Buffett-Financ...

Like I said to someone else above, I myself put almost all my savings in index funds and slowly read/study these just for curiosity. Eventually, I hope to actually spend some time looking at real data but even if I don't find any interesting stocks or lose my modest starter funds for this activity, I would be okay with it.

I think a lot of this depends on where you started. I don't disagree that the details of the methods don't apply especially to technology stocks. On the other hand, one learns a principled way of looking at companies. It's easy, if one hasn't paid attention to anything in the financial world, to think of stocks as abstract numbers that "will go up" or "go down" or "has good prospects because everyone is talking about it". Any of these books are a good antidote to that because they teach a framework to reason about companies.

I also do find it strange that this idea gets so much push back. For people who don't want to think about investing, just put your savings in index funds (and/or cash equivalents depending on your plans). For people who are curious about these aspects, read some of the books and invest with small amounts and learn. Maybe you won't consistently beat SP500 and maybe you will. After all, it's not like all active investors shut their hedge funds down and started investing in SP500. The usual argument is that the funds have much more resources but it's actually easier to invest with smaller amounts than millions or billions of dollars.

zipy214 below has given much more eloquent explanations about the non-applicability of the EMH than I can. For me, the vast majority of my personal savings are in index funds. The reading list above, even if the methods are outdated (the broad details still apply even though many ways of analyses no longer apply especially to tech stocks), are mainly to get the curious started on one principled path to investing with the caveat that, if they do experiment, they should do so with amounts they are willing to lose.

Just one more comment to what you said below:

"If you personally believe markets are not efficient, and prices are not accurate, then perhaps you should take up day trading."

Value investors famously oppose any kind of day trading or "in and out" trading. People like Phil Fisher used to advocate never selling unless the fundamentals change drastically (change of management, new technological developments that make a company's products obsolete etc.). Of course, one doesn't have to be that extreme but equating value investing with day trading is misleading.

I don't think feeding pigeons is objectively a bad thing. While I live in a highly urban area and don't doubt they get food, a couple of additional sessions of seeds per week is not going to make them dependent or obese. I generally confirm I am doing something reasonably appropriate by asking my local bird sanctuary.

I don't follow social media at all so not sure if there's a trend going on about feeding birds. A few times someone has shown me clearly fake (i.e. spliced together) videos of animals being "rescued" and living with families. They do make me angry because they are clearly made for views.

If one has time, a few books I would highly recommend:

The Intelligent Investor by Ben Graham

Security Analysis by Graham and Dodd

Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits and Other Writings by Philip Fisher

The Little Book That Still Beats the Market by Greenblatt

Warren Buffett's annual letters

Actually, anything by Ben Graham or Joel Greenblatt is worth reading if one is interested in the investing world. I don't know if I'll ever invest enough time doing fundamental analysis and actively (value) investing but I am making my way through these just to understand value investing properly.

As an aside, pigeons are deeply misunderstood. Here's a very nice article about it: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240620-why-do-people-pe...

From the article: "One study found that, between 1941 and 2004, there were just 207 reports of pathogens transmitted from pigeons to humans – anywhere in the world. In all, there were 13 recorded deaths. The true number may be higher, but it would have to be off by several orders of magnitude to compete with the scale of infections from other domesticated animals – particularly some of those with more favourable reputations."

I occasionally (2x per week per location) feed a group of pigeons both in my apartment building's garage as well as my grocery store's open parking lot. They love sunflower seed kernels (unsalted since salt can be really bad for them) which has led to me hoarding sunflower seeds every time I go food shopping. They now recognize my car and swoop in as soon as I drive up to a parking spot (which is not consistent at the grocery store). Hopefully, one day I'll convince myself to stop/slow working and dedicate my free time to studying animal communication and behavior with some ML involved.

It's a back-of-the-envelope calculation not a precise one. It doesn't take foresight to invest in SP500. DCAing (dollar-cost averaging) into an index fund is actually the recommended savings strategy with a short-term cash balance of 6 months-2 years of cash savings depending on your plans (sabbatical etc.), especially when one is decades away from retirement age.

I only included meta because he works/worked at meta and it's not unusual for people to just leave their rsus in their accounts after they vested. I agree though that one shouldn't pick stocks that happened to explode (e.g. nvda).

There are several unrealistic assumptions I did make:

* Presumably when someone starts, they earn less than in recent years. He probably wasn't making huge amounts his first few years. Amounts invested in earlier years are smaller but have more time to compound and amounts invested in recent years are larger but have had less time to compound.

* Returns aren't constant.

* I pulled the $2 million/yr out of thin air. It could be $1 million/yr or even $10 million/yr. I have no idea what the overall head of a project like PyTorch would make.

* Everyone's expenses are different. In and around NYC, one can live on $80k/year, $120-150k/year as well as as on $1 million/yr. I assumed zero since I wanted a nice even $1 million/yr savings. Maybe it was $500k/yr of savings in which case all the numbers should be halved.

In any case, I can't see how one wouldn't end up with at least $10 million in a position like this with 10 years at meta. Unless one buys a $5 million unit in Manhattan and is burdened by a high mortgage.

On the other hand, while I know nothing about Soumith, he clearly has enough financial runway (see my calc below) to not have to work again.

As far as I know, we all get one life. If one can help it (modulo other constraints), one should not get trapped by prestige, achievement, short-term admiration by others, impact and external facing factors. To see an alternate reality, it helps to escape the bubble, for example, by spending time in a completely different culture or environment where no one knows or cares about what one did.

I admire people taking such decisions. It's easy to be on autopilot in life. But, people who wear their success lightly are rare but more philosophically aware, in my opinion at least. I wish him good luck!

If someone made $2 million/year over 10 years, after taxes, it would be $1 million (NYC has local taxes too). Let's say all of it was saved and invested in SP500 or Meta.

SP500: tripled over 10 years i.e. ~12% a year. Reinvesting dividends gives ~14% a year

Meta: 8x over 10 years i.e. ~23% a year.

If growth was uniform over 10 years and compensation/savings was uniform over 10 years, total portfolio would be:

((1+r)^11-1)/r (geometric series since each year's contributions grow for different amount of times)

1 (this year) + (1+r) (previous year) + (1+r)^2 (previous-to-previous year) and so on

SP500: 14% -> $23M Meta: 23% -> $38M

Now, it's entirely possible, the compensation for a position like this runs into $10s of millions and one can easily account for non-uniform compensation.

Even in NYC, actually even in Manhattan, $10M is more than comfortable for retirement. It lets you draw $300-$400K (3-4% per year adjusted for inflation annually). If one is taking a short sabbatical, then it's a no-brainer.

A lot of people have already mentioned cases where this is neither true nor desirable e.g. high-energy and condensed matter physics, astrophysics, any branch of pure mathematics etc.

But, more importantly, who dictates what needs to happen. If you so desire, you should absolutely sing a tune in the shower, write a poem for yourself, calculate an effect and throw the piece of paper away, write code and delete it. The satisfaction is in exercising your creative urges, learning a new skill, exploring your curiosity even if no one else sees it or uses it.

I have had the privilege of working with some of the best physicists on the planet. Every single one of them has exposed only part of their work to the world. The rest might not be remarkable in terms of novelty but was crucial to them. They had to do it irrespective of "impact" or "importance". The dead-ends weren't dead to them.

Philosophically, as far as I know, we all get one shot at living. If I can help it, I am going to only spend a fraction of my time choosing to be "part of the pipeline of demand and supply". The rest will be wanderings.

There are quite a few flaws with this way of thinking:

1. Flaws with actually measuring IQs in a population: While nutrition and education affect IQ distributions, there's also a question of language. Are there IQ tests in Kannada (since the author seems to make a point to contrast with India)? In Bengali? Is the sampled distributions biased in any way?

2. Even if IQs are measured correctly, as others pointed out, are high IQ people actually more intelligent? More creative? Do Mensa members win Nobel prizes and produce great breakthroughs? I never heard physicists and mathematicians discuss IQs when they discussed brilliant people. It was not even a factor and was considered cringe-worthy.

3. An addendum to my previous point, and a point the author mentions in passing, environment plays a big role in nurturing a creative mind. The great thing about America (and the West) is that young people actually do want to pursue something they like. This is often ridiculed in America but, as an Asian myself, it creates a far richer society than one obsessed with money, status, and a few professions e.g. law, medicine, engineering.

4. Industry has a unique way of killing "genius". Academia has traditional been the place where genius is nurtured or at least, left alone. Even the overhead of writing grants doesn't make it as painful as quarterly goals and achievements. If by "genius", one means high-earning individuals, that's not a genius in my book. Genius is something more - they might be high earning but they create breakthroughs that would not happen or take much longer if they weren't to do it. Einstein and Grothendieck come to mind.

5. I don't know the author but these types of articles reek of racial and ethnic superiority. This is a notion that has been debunked by both science and by the trash can of civilizations. These arguments seem to want to make the case that one group is destined to win/rule/succeed because of who they are.

6. My previous point leads to an interesting curiosity about many people. They take great pride in their group. This could be racial, ethnic, regional, national membership or even being a human being. After all, "look at what Einstein did and he was a person just like me." Eventually, your character and your actions matter. Greatness (or any other attribute except for physical ones) don't transmit by group membership.

7. There are some things different groups are good at. For example, someone noted that 20% of the Nobel prize winners are Jewish. Russians were (maybe still are) great at gymnastics and ballet. Romanians are great at math olympiads. Indians are great at chess and many Indian mathematicians seem to graviate towards number theory. The seed for these achievements is sometimes cultural and sometimes, a shared purpose arises out of the success of one member of the group at the activity. These are not signs of in-born genius for the activity.

I should have done a better job of making my case but discussions about IQ and race/ethnicity/gender/pickyourchoice just generates very weird (and not factual) conversations.

Lastly, while it would be great to get all the geniuses to America, the country will be fine either way.