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Ask HN: I'm interested in so many disciplines, but what can I do with that?

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Re: Ask HN: I'm interested in so many disciplines, but what can I do with that?

#211

Post by dm03514 »

What does one do with an intellectual life other than swimming through intellectual content?

Apply what you're learning to impact your reality :)

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Maybe this is a bit abstract but I feel like one of the highest impact things you can do is incorporate the learnings into your day job, experiment, write about the impacts w.r.t your dayjob. I believe that this happens naturally and subconsciously as we learn but I try to make it explicit.

Build your psychology learnings into your interpersonal/team dynamics. Write about the results of what happens when you incorporate them.

Take your history passion and apply it to analyze the historical evolution of your dayjob, or incorporate the learnings of the past to influence your teams success in the future.

I feel like History, anthropology, psychology are ripe with examples, case studies, prior experiences that are directly applicable to day to day human interactions!

Re: Ask HN: I'm interested in so many disciplines, but what can I do with that?

#213

Post by teekert »

themacguffinman wrote: post #121
hansbo wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Divorce doesn't mean regret though. You can have a wonderful time with a partner and then decide the you want something else later, at a different point in life.

The website lists a breakdown of common reasons given for divorce: - Lack of commitment 73% - Argue too much 56% - Infidelity 55% - Married too young 46% - Unrealistic expectations 45% - Lack of equality in the relationship 44% - Lack of preparation for marriage 41% - Domestic Violence or Abuse 25% (Respondents often cited more that one reason, therefore the percentages add up to much more than 100 percent) All of th…

I feel like "Married too young" is not like the others, I mean, something else is under that reason, perhaps one of the others. Because what is too young? Who decides all of a sudden "You know what, this is all great but we married too young, I'm out."

Re: Ask HN: I'm interested in so many disciplines, but what can I do with that?

#214

Post by derevaunseraun »

You sound kinda like me tbh. You could be an author alongside the day job: it's not a bad job for someone who likes reading.

Imo if you have a bunch of different interests that are all equally interesting it doesn't hurt to choose one that pays well (e.g. software engineering)

Re: Ask HN: I'm interested in so many disciplines, but what can I do with that?

#215

Post by Himanshu0025 »

leobg wrote: post #164

Investing might be an area where you can profit from being the way you are. I am very similar, having read way over 1k books in the last ten years or so, on a perversely wide array of subjects. I’ve also done everything from tinkering with Arduinos all the way to marriage counseling. But I quickly get bored and move on to the next field. An early disciple of CG Jung, Marie Louise von Franz, wrote that the life of our…

Vow!!! those last lines. Been going through rough patch (mentally), and these lines influenced a bit of my thought process.

Can you provide some source or book to read on this deeply?

Lines I'm referring = "Just always keep in mind your three biggest enemies: The mimetic reflex of wanting to follow the herd and get approval from others. The seductive illusion of superiority or infallibility. And the general tendency of wanting to be right, and of fooling yourself."

Re: Ask HN: I'm interested in so many disciplines, but what can I do with that?

#217

Post by hatmatrix »

tropdrop wrote: post #188
agentcoops wrote: post #176

I'm very similar and would just give you two pieces of advice: (1) buy books compulsively and don't do your research predominantly online, and (2) make sure you write often, whether or not you publish your work or keep it to yourself. I think the latter is the most important advice for those trying to pursue an intellectual path outside of academia -- if you don't develop a habit of writing, you aren't really synthes…

Agree with all said here, but a small caveat with PhDs in the UK – from my understanding, admissions can be very difficult for those not living in the UK (purposefully biased towards UK citizens). However, getting into a one year Master's program in the UK or Netherlands seems pretty feasible, and might get you a taste of what getting a PhD is like without too much commitment.

I'm not so sure. A Masters program is often affiliated with the PhD program (both being part of the graduate school) in many STEM fields, and you do substantial research as part of the degree (unless you go for a course-based MEng).

Masters degrees in Europe tend to be affiliated with the Bachelors program - and they're often administered by the same people - as part of the Bologna system, and it's heavily course-based even while there might be some projects in it.

Re: Ask HN: I'm interested in so many disciplines, but what can I do with that?

#219

Post by quanto »

TheCowboy wrote: post #77
audiometry wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m interested in these as both a consumer and a contributor. However I haven’t found many interesting markets. Often are just markets on elections. Additionally many seem to have very small max bet size. What markets have more interesting breadth of coverage + have decent betting limits? I had the impression cftc or sec limit this to avoid become a regulated security.

If your goal is making money, then that's different. I personally don't encourage people to get into the betting aspect unless you don't mind paying my rent, know what I mean? It's one of those "if it was easy everyone would be doing it" things. The limits on bet sizes only matter once you can demonstrate long-term profitability, IMHO. Since prediction skills are still applicable to basically everything, you're not 1…

which prediction market platform(s) do you use in order to make a living? As noted previously, the breadth of the topics and bet size caps seem to limit potential payouts.

Re: Ask HN: I'm interested in so many disciplines, but what can I do with that?

#220

Post by samh748 »

ZephyrBlu wrote: post #37
elviejo wrote: post #3

Read a couple of books by Barbara sher: Refuse to choose [0] She calls people like us "Scanners" and claims that our diversity of interests is not a weakness, but a strength. Then goes on techniques to make this skill work for us. [0] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1594863032/

It's only a strength if you have a strong base and a way to tie things together. Being interested in a bunch of disparate fields is not in itself useful. In fact for most people it's probably completely useless, because you're going to suck at everything. Ex: OP wants to read "textbooks to learn basic concepts" and "swim in their ideas". That doesn't equal competence. However, if you have strong expertise in a partic…

I wrote a general comment in response to this here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30930012
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