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Ask HN: What simple facts have you learned surprisingly late in life?

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Re: Ask HN: What simple facts have you learned surprisingly late in life?

#41

Post by rramadass »

ggm wrote: post #3

It's surprisingly hard to change other people's minds, and probably easier to have your own certainties confronted and rebutted. Basically, belief in a given world view, religion, or even something apparently (mis)fact based like a belief against AGW is not grounded in facts but is something else: you venture into rocky waters thinking logic and proof will change that belief. People hang onto their beliefs remarkably…

You cannot change other people's minds since it will always be perceived as a direct blow to their self-ascribed Identity/Ego; Their Beliefs are Who they are.

The best one can do is to give them the information/advice, appeal to authority, bombard them with data and leave them be. They will change themselves once they start thinking on their own in their own time frame and/or circumstances force them to realize the folly of their beliefs (both are optional).

Re: Ask HN: What simple facts have you learned surprisingly late in life?

#42

Post by SamvitJ »

antman wrote: post #35

Life is fair, you need to consider whether your actions failed because you were trying to improve yourself within a failing system. Change your env not only yourself. Don't hear what they say, hear what they do. Health first, including mental. Those that achieved too much are outliers of those that made crazy plans. A bad strategy for the general population, many thousands have failed so that you get to see the celeb…

Most of these are great. Disagree on "read the news" though.

Re: Ask HN: What simple facts have you learned surprisingly late in life?

#43

Post by adastra22 »

SamvitJ wrote: post #42
antman wrote: post #35

Life is fair, you need to consider whether your actions failed because you were trying to improve yourself within a failing system. Change your env not only yourself. Don't hear what they say, hear what they do. Health first, including mental. Those that achieved too much are outliers of those that made crazy plans. A bad strategy for the general population, many thousands have failed so that you get to see the celeb…

Most of these are great. Disagree on "read the news" though.

I've been news-free for about 5 years now. Not once have I ever regretted it.

Re: Ask HN: What simple facts have you learned surprisingly late in life?

#44

Post by adastra22 »

themodelplumber wrote: post #4

Opossums can grunt like pigs. I thought I had a pig living in my yard, because I heard grunts and squeaks (babies) passing by under my window one summer morning. Got a trailcam and it's a possum. If you collect knives you will cut yourself more often, even if you are good at handling knives. The big-picture reason "more knives, more cuts" makes sense. But how does that work out in the little picture? This is due to s…

> You can lose tons of weight while eating boxes of candy bars.

...how?

Re: Ask HN: What simple facts have you learned surprisingly late in life?

#45

Post by gnad_sucks »

suzzer99 wrote: post #8

I just learned from Wikipedia (via HackerNews) that flossing isn't really proven to be that beneficial. Blew my mind. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dental_floss

I think this is one of those things that "isn't really proven" because it's obvious to the ones who do it, and the ones who don't feel better pushing the idea it's not proven.

I'm a very scientifically minded person, but I'm old enough to be able to confidently make my own decisions in some situations where "it isn't really proven".

Tell you what, stop flossing. When you get a really bad breath floss, and smell the bits that you find between your teeth. That's what rotting food smells like. Now, if I don't want rotting food in my living room, I certainly don't want it inside my mouth. I don't really need a scientist to make the call for me here.

Re: Ask HN: What simple facts have you learned surprisingly late in life?

#46

Post by rramadass »

antman wrote: post #35

Life is fair, you need to consider whether your actions failed because you were trying to improve yourself within a failing system. Change your env not only yourself. Don't hear what they say, hear what they do. Health first, including mental. Those that achieved too much are outliers of those that made crazy plans. A bad strategy for the general population, many thousands have failed so that you get to see the celeb…

>Life is fair

No. That said, you do have some control over your "local maxima/minima" and hence the need for "continuous Self-Effort".

>give them non individualistic principles

Bad idea. They should be built up as "Individuals" within a "Larger Group" which they choose to belong to. This is the only way to teach them to think for themselves and not be a "groupie".

Re: Ask HN: What simple facts have you learned surprisingly late in life?

#48

Post by gnad_sucks »

vmilner wrote: post #25
suzzer99 wrote: post #11

That there was basically no spicy food in the Old World before Columbus. All the heat in South Asian and Southeast Asian cooking comes from chili peppers imported from the New World. The spiciest thing the Old World had to offer was something called long pepper which is like black pepper with a little more kick.

Horseradish may be a counterexample.

Horseradish is spicy in the same sense as garlic is spicy, which is very unlike peppers.

Re: Ask HN: What simple facts have you learned surprisingly late in life?

#49

Post by gnad_sucks »

LadyCailin wrote: post #40
klohto wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is more than one language out there

“Type safe dictionary” is just another way of saying “object”

No it's not. Dictionaries are accessed by key whereas objects are accessed by field (which is a high level way of representing an offset in memory). So one of those two is at least 10x faster than the other.
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