"People with a passion with nothing are the ones who are content to lead an ordinary life. They are the ones who can grow up, go to school, get married, get a good job, buy a house in the suburbs, raise children and grandchildren and die utterly content with their lives."

This isn't quite fair. This describes people who are passionate about their family, their wives, their children. Maybe passionate about home repair. Maybe about their local community. Or even spots. And that doesn't even cover the fact that most ordinary suburban folk have hobbies about which they are passionate.

The article overall just seems to be placing labels on people, but leaving me with a question to the author of, "So What?"

like most things in life that we try to place into distinct and separate categories... it really can't be broken down that easily, I believe it's more of a spectrum of passion types where someone can fall anywhere from 0 passion to infinite passion.

And if you think about it that way, isn't that basically the same thing as saying we're all a little bit different in personality? Replace passion with commitment, honesty, intelligence, curiosity and you could make the same argument for each.

Dilemma: 1) The people who have "passion for everything" do not know about this trait of theirs. 2) The people who have "passion for nothing" do not agree to it. 3) The people who have "passion for one thing" have fear of going berserk.

Those who understand all these points are the fourth category people.

It's also worth noting that people can move between 0, 1 and N passionate things during their lifetimes.

Interesting rhetorical device, but I think a lot of people would have a hard time fitting themselves tidily into one of those categories. I'm probably more of a 3, although it can vary depending on what state of mind I'm in!

I would rate myself as a 3, and one way I can tell is that I click on too many of the links at HN each day. Much time spent, not a lot done, other than... learning!

"There are only three numbers in Computer Science. Zero, One and N."

Anyone know who said this? Google only gives a few results... that's what his thesis reminds me of.

Starts slow, gets more interesting in the middle. The "people passionate about one thing", "people passionate about many things" is a bit cumbersome - I was mentally filling in "specialist" and "generalist" and "neither" for his points, which isn't quite precise but close enough. Still, interesting enough and short read, I'd recommend it's worth the read. Beginning is underwhelming, but some interesting observations in the middle.