The book "Do the Work" explained it well: "The amateur tweets. The pro works." People who fit into the Shell Silverstein "I'm so good I don't have to brag" bucket aren't as visible because they're working, not talking about working.
Something fairly consistent I've observed: the popular people you see tweeting and on every podcast are likely not very good at what they're popular for.
Sometimes there's overlap, but it's the exception, not the rule.
I still don't understand why I have such a strong reaction to the book. It feels like the message is "take care of your parents instead of just taking from them".
Now I'm not much for salespeople in general, but I do understand their purpose.
I doubt there would be good money in creating this, but certainly it would create a lot of value and benefit many just from the fact that if we channel limited resources to those more likely to create better things, then we all benefit. I'd imagine that even a poorly defined metric would be an improvement upon the current one: visibility. I'm sure any new metric will also be hacked but we're grossly misaligned right now and so even a poorly aligned system could be better. The bar is just really low.
which shouldn't be a goal onto itself, unless you really want to get completely detached and insane like every other billionaire.
I’d rather do the thing than talk about it. Or, frankly, watch/listen/read others.
Your heuristic is extremely bad.
Who got attention? People who spent 20% of their time making and 80% self-promoting.
There are people who are great at something not because they do novel work, but because they redo known work that's really hard.
Not everyone has the luxury of knowing where the frontier lies and working at it. Many, many people reinvent the wheel simply because they don't know that what they're trying has already been done. And they can redo the work in a great way.
Of course they'll never get credit for this.
if I'm understanding correctly the implications of Emily Noether's work, its an absolute travesty that she isn't famous in the same breath as Einstein and Feynman. Yet this video was the first time I had even heard of her.
I think a parallel would be if some random guy, outside of academia, completely and cleanly solved the dark energy/matter mystery in his spare time, with a revolutionary way of thinking, and it completely reshaped our understanding of not only the cosmos but of physics itself.
Becoming well known for advanced works in science requires a once in many centuries type level of achievement - which is what Einstein was. Feynman is a great example of this. He was undoubtedly one of the greatest physicists of all time and made many important contributions to science, yet he would probably be relatively unknown if not for his excessive public outreach and his exceptional ability to explain complex concepts in an extremely intuitive and clear fashion. A talent which he put to extensive use.
Where X is any vocation, skill, talent, etc…
I suspect that combinations like that, are, indeed, as rare as hen's teeth.
Many great talents probably couldn't be arsed to play the rat race game, and keep their domain humble, or they piss off other people so much, that they never get a break.
In my time, I've worked with some top-shelf folks, who had many -but not enough- of the combination, to be mildly successful.
Most of the best were extremely ... er ... confident. Some, it came across as rudeness, but others, would politely accept your counsel, and then instantly feed it to the shredder, without you ever knowing.
I preferred the rude ones.
Seeking social cues to describe greatness is exactly what the grift preys on.
the last anecdote is a true story. one of the original owners of Alinea (Chicago) did just that and the guy who developed the site is quite literally set for life if he doesn't do anything else but also has this incredible in within the fine dining world now.
The world is full of amazingly talented and hard working people. Almost all of them are not on social media.
it is a perfect example of what it does without any deference to other design languages. instead of po-mo symbolism, it really is just the sufficient metal and glass to do the thing. an essential truck is unsentimental working capital. its not a duck, its an undecorated shed.
i think the design will age very well because there's nothing to add to it.