> In today’s world, we are surrounded by too many distractions, and it is often hard to focus on things.
I don't think that the example of Newton supports this contrast of times. He was an extreme outlier in his day. He ignored distractions like "social activities" and "recreational activities. Extremely few people did that then or do so now. But, I bet there are way more people going to those extreme lengths these days, both in quantity and fraction. For the workaholic outliers, how much our modern society supports specialization is a much greater force than online distractions.
Imagine being obsessed with quantum physics fundamental rules, or designing the proper type system for JavaScript, or wanting to bring personal computers to the masses.
Would you honestly be also interested in watching House or chatting with other people about the last Survivor TV show?
Come on !!!
1 nit: arguably Euler had similar levels of contribution to mathematics. But yeah otherwise Newton was some kind of crazy workaholic genius and deserves all our praise.
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 25.6 ms ] threadI don't think that the example of Newton supports this contrast of times. He was an extreme outlier in his day. He ignored distractions like "social activities" and "recreational activities. Extremely few people did that then or do so now. But, I bet there are way more people going to those extreme lengths these days, both in quantity and fraction. For the workaholic outliers, how much our modern society supports specialization is a much greater force than online distractions.