Donald Knuth: Do what you really think is important
00:00:00.000 | Don't just believe that it's because something is trendy that it's good.
00:00:04.000 | I probably go the other extreme where if I find too many people
00:00:09.000 | adopting a certain idea, I probably think it's wrong.
00:00:13.000 | Or if my work had become too popular, I probably would think I had to change.
00:00:18.000 | This is, of course, ridiculous, but I see the other side of it too often
00:00:24.000 | where people will do something against their own gut instincts
00:00:30.000 | because they think the community wants them to do it that way.
00:00:33.000 | So people will work on a certain subject even though they aren't terribly interested in it
00:00:38.000 | because they think that they'll get more prestige by working on it.
00:00:41.000 | I think you get more prestige by doing good science than by doing popular science
00:00:46.000 | because if you go with what you really think is important,
00:00:52.000 | then there's a higher chance that it really is important in the long run.
00:00:56.000 | And it's the long run which has the most benefit to the world.