[chrisbigelow]

> Buterin comes from a long tradition of Silicon Valley special smart boys, who have had it hammered into them that domain expertise — i.e., actually knowing stuff — pales into insignificance compared to pulling ideas out of your backside by virtue of your superior intelligence and upbringing and social position.

I detest this worldview. New knowledge is formed through creative conjecture and criticism. The creation of new ideas being restricted to only experts, those who "actually know stuff" shrinks the pool of creators of new knowledge. What we should strive for is better explanations of reality, not a restriction on who can make those explanations.

[voxl]

Except the point being made is that only the rich and affluent get to make creative decisions. Though the experts who get any traction also belong to this group in my experience. A CMU Professor just draws more eyes than one from The University of Minnesota.

[dmix]

The "boy genius" cliche in Silicon Valley journalism is flawed and sometimes unhelpful, but it's not because it's strictly limited to "the rich and affluent"? Not sure where you're (or the author) is getting that.

Vitalik wasn't some rich kid who went to Harvard and was groomed by VCs. He was gambled on because he had some interesting ideas.

The fact the media loves Mozart types also doesn't mean that their cliches are true or representative of the culture either. It just shows what the readers of Wired and pop-science want to hear.

[balsam]

Gerard used the subtle term “social position”. People might take that to be “affluence” but it isnt necessary so. For example, a technically promising white child from any californian public school would be in a vastly better social position (from SV media’s POV) than a rank and file googler.

[skybrian]

It seems like lots of funders are looking for creative ideas to fund? Y Combinator is an obvious example but there are many others.

But it's true that it's competitive and you need a certain amount of education to even know you can apply and come up with a decent proposal. (And if you already have money, you don't need to look for more.)

[otde]

> The creation of new ideas being restricted to only experts, those who "actually know stuff" shrinks the pool of creators of new knowledge.

Abstractly, I agree with what you've said here, but I don't think the part of Gerard's post that you quoted is making the point that you're countering.

Broadly speaking, a lot of discovery work comes from domain experts precisely because of the work it takes to become such an expert. My read on the phrase "actually knowing stuff" is that it refers not just to a solid understanding of the nuts-and-bolts of your field, but also a more general grasp of the field's history. This kind of contextual knowledge is extremely helpful when attempting new or experimental research because it gives you an idea of which areas of knowledge might contain some novel insight while also cluing you in to which approaches might help you arrive at that insight. I interpreted Gerard's critique of Buterin here not as one of insufficient academic clout, but of arrogance, a reification of great man theory [1] through a techno-libertarian lens that positions himself among a host of other so-called "great men" and frames every societal problem as solvable through whatever lens the Great Man might think is particularly interesting.

Gerard's critique of Buterin's approach to sharding (which goes into further detail here [2]) seems to back this interpretation up:

> Buterin blogs extensive essays full of great thoughts on how to reorganise the world, and how Ethereum will be the basis for this once they add amazing new functionalities that will only require solving P=NP.

> Remember that Buterin spent years working on a sharding plan for Ethereum that, had he done Intro to Theory of Computation, he might have realised was probably impossible.

Seems less like "Buterin is a fool for not Being An Academic" and more like "Buterin is arrogant enough to assume he can solve a really difficult problem without understanding why nobody's solved it yet."

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_man_theory [2] https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2022/04/04/if-you-want-...

[PretzelPirate]

> Seems less like "Buterin is a fool for not Being An Academic" and more like "Buterin is arrogant enough to assume he can solve a really difficult problem without understanding why nobody's solved it yet."

Whether or not Buterin knew that the problem was unsolved shouldn't influence his decision to attempt to solve it within the constraints of his research area. Vitalik is very smart and works for a research foundation who spends time on complex things that might pan out if they work on them.

[otde]

Very smart people usually take the time to understand the historical context behind the problems they're attempting to solve, IMO. (Especially if solving that problem requires proof that P=NP.) ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[davidgerard]

pretty much, yes. And that it's not just Buterin, it's a type, and he learned this error from this type.