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Grant Pitt's avatar

I appreciate this idea of territory-expanding research.

While I agree we should be aiming higher and for, say, deep novelty, I'm not convinced higher ambition is positively correlated with failure. The opposite seems true! I see in the screenshot that Ilya authored a winning test-of-time paper *every single year* of the modern era. Einstein published 4 absolutely seminal papers in *7 months* during his famous "miracle year" of 1905 (all of which expanded huge territory in quite different directions). This phenomenon of repeat success has also been noted in other domains[1].

1. https://blakemasters.tumblr.com/post/23435743973/peter-thiels-cs183-startup-class-13-notes

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Daniel Dantas's avatar

This reminds me of Fei-Fei Li's autobiography, "The Worlds I See":

"'Well, Fei-Fei…' he began, choosing his words carefully. 'Everyone agrees that data has a role to play, of course, but…' He paused for a moment, then continued. 'Frankly, I think you’ve taken this idea way too far.' I took a shallow breath. 'The trick to science is to grow with your field. Not to leap so far ahead of it.'... A frightening idea was beginning to sink in: that I’d taken a bigger risk than I realized, and it was too late to turn back."

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