Ask HN: How to Become Smarter? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: How to Become Smarter?

#11

Post by mikewarot » Fri, Jul 21, 2023, 9:09 PM UTC

Do you know the feeling you get in the pit of your stomach when you're wrong?

That's not what it feels like.... that's what it feels like after you learn you were wrong. There's no difference in feeling between being right or wrong. So, if you want to be right more often (a proxy for being "smarter), I suggest the following.

Write down predictions somewhere, along with your view of the world, things you're worried about, etc. Keep it private, but be as descriptive as you can to yourself, as time goes on, you can then retrospectively see where your biases and fears have distorted your thinking, and find clues to the things you were right about, but too afraid to follow up on. Over time, you should gain both perspective and wisdom, and perhaps a bit of "smarter" as well.

Re: Ask HN: How to Become Smarter?

#12

Post by deltasquare4 » Sun, Jul 23, 2023, 1:55 AM UTC

theGeatZhopa wrote: post #4

Knowledge is all you need. With having knowledge in different domains, one should learn to interconnect Domains in a chain-of-thought. This isn't easy. But can be trained. Just like with different languages. You may be able to speak several languages fluently. But to speak with the grammer of the first, using the words of the second and "thinking" in third - fluently - isn't as easy, if the third isn't your mother la…

I'd say knowledge is not the only thing you need. It's one thing to know, and entirely another thing to be able to recall and apply that knowledge when it matters.

The application of knowledge gets trickier because there is almost always no "right answer". Everything is a decision, a choice. There may even be conflicting but contextually correct ways to process the same decision - i.e. Early bird gets the worm vs second mouse gets the cheese.

Re: Ask HN: How to Become Smarter?

#13

Post by deltasquare4 » Sun, Jul 23, 2023, 2:04 AM UTC

deltasquare4 wrote: post #12

theGeatZhopa wrote: post #4

Knowledge is all you need. With having knowledge in different domains, one should learn to interconnect Domains in a chain-of-thought. This isn't easy. But can be trained. Just like with different languages. You may be able to speak several languages fluently. But to speak with the grammer of the first, using the words of the second and "thinking" in third - fluently - isn't as easy, if the third isn't your mother la…

I'd say knowledge is not the only thing you need. It's one thing to know, and entirely another thing to be able to recall and apply that knowledge when it matters. The application of knowledge gets trickier because there is almost always no "right answer". Everything is a decision, a choice. There may even be conflicting but contextually correct ways to process the same decision - i.e. Early bird gets the worm vs sec…

In HN context, a more suitable example is "fail fast" vs "persevere". Both are sound advices in the right context.

Re: Ask HN: How to Become Smarter?

#14

Post by xjapeonappy332 » Sun, Jul 23, 2023, 4:36 AM UTC

The people you think are very intelligent are usually not outside the standard deviation, and if they are then not by much.

What the top performers in all fields have in common is that they made a decision at some point in their lives to truly go all in on being the best at a particular thing, and that takes sacrifices that you probably don't want to make, and there's nothing wrong with that. There is no shame in not being a high performer and just being generally okay at everything.

This is mostly ignoring the true outliers with very high IQs, but that is such a huge anomaly statistically that there is no use even discussing it. It is not the norm among even the most successful entrepreneurs or fortune 500 CEOs or endowed chairs of Computer Science.

Re: Ask HN: How to Become Smarter?

#15

Post by theGeatZhopa » Sun, Jul 23, 2023, 12:46 PM UTC

deltasquare4 wrote: post #12

theGeatZhopa wrote: post #4

Knowledge is all you need. With having knowledge in different domains, one should learn to interconnect Domains in a chain-of-thought. This isn't easy. But can be trained. Just like with different languages. You may be able to speak several languages fluently. But to speak with the grammer of the first, using the words of the second and "thinking" in third - fluently - isn't as easy, if the third isn't your mother la…

I'd say knowledge is not the only thing you need. It's one thing to know, and entirely another thing to be able to recall and apply that knowledge when it matters. The application of knowledge gets trickier because there is almost always no "right answer". Everything is a decision, a choice. There may even be conflicting but contextually correct ways to process the same decision - i.e. Early bird gets the worm vs sec…

Yes, absolutely. That's what I wanted to imply with training.

One thing is knowledge. Other thing is to get that knowledge transferred into, f.e. movement for use of a machine.

Like a real example, the Chinese. They're developing such a phenomenal ability to visually memorize things since their childhood on. As students, whole books are memorized. But ask them to utilize that knowledge, they just can't. They haven't learned how to utilize knowledge practically, in contrast to the western worlds approach to school. But we here have a bad visual memorization.

So you take a Chinese Teen, who finished the college purely the Chinese way and put him in one of western world's universities. You'll get an absolute killer.

Gaining knowledge the western way, memorize in Chinese visual way.

The decision you talking about needs to be done in every situation of a daily life. The quality of decision depends on the knowledge. The knowledge by itself needs to be broad. You need to be able to access each part of the broad knowledge individually and bring everything in relation. That's only can be done with training. And the use case defines the knowledge needed

"Do I buy a desktop PC or a very expensive laptop?" vs. "Should I buy Rheinmetall stock for profit or real estate" vs. "The law passed last week is damaging my core business. Pivot? Where to?"