Paul Graham：The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius, Excerpt 4

Newton's case, at least, suggests that the risk/reward rule holds here. He's famous for one particular obsession of his that turned out to be unprecedentedly fruitful: using math to describe the world. But he had two other obsessions, alchemy and theology, that seem to have been complete wastes of time. He ended up net ahead. His bet on what we now call physics paid off so well that it more than compensated for the other two. But were the other two necessary, in the sense that he had to take big risks to make such big discoveries? I don't know. Here's an even more alarming idea: might one make all bad bets? It probably happens quite often. But we don't know how often, because these people don't become famous. It's not merely that the returns from following a path are hard to predict.

Source： https://paulgraham.com/genius.html
Locator：Essay, additional excerpt 4 · Verified：2026-10-19 · Verification：Short excerpt

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