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Ask HN: Name one idea that changed your life

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Re: Ask HN: Name one idea that changed your life

#661

Post by ensiferum »

aazaa wrote: post #193

Favor interrogative-led questions over leading questions. A leading question attempts to get the listener to agree or disagree with a premise you feed to them. An interrogative-led question often begins with the words: who; where; what; when; why. Imagine the responses to these two questions: - "Did you like the movie?" (Leading) - "What did you think about the movie?" (Interrogative-led) How do each of these questio…

"did you like the movie?" doesn't seem like a leading question to me. It's just a yes/no question so it's certainly not the best question to ask for an open ended discussion compared to the "what did you think about the movie".

A better example of a leading question in my opinion would be something like "how much did you like the movie?" where the question is loaded with the premise that the person actually did like the movie.

Yet there's no universal truth to which types of questions should you be asking. Sometimes a simple yes/no is in fact what you want.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leading_question

Re: Ask HN: Name one idea that changed your life

#663

Post by PaulRobinson »

abetusk wrote: post #137

"Premature optimization is the root of all evil" More and more, I'm realizing this applies more broadly than just for code. Abstraction is a form of optimization and shouldn't be done before the space has been properly explored to know what abstractions should be built. Standardization is a form of optimization and shouldn't be proposed until there's a body of evidence to support what's being standardized. Failure to…

You're right, but it's worth reading the rest of the paragraph:

"We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil. Yet we should not pass up our opportunities in that critical 3%." -- Knuth

Knuth was trying to say you shouldn't guess. If you think you will get a performance gain, but you're not sure where or how the performance is going to suffer, hold back. But if you know you're doing something that is normally bad and you can fix it, it's OK to get on with it.

Your final paragraph makes me think we're both on the same wavelength here, but I think it's worth remembering that Knuth was not saying "never optimize until you have to"

Re: Ask HN: Name one idea that changed your life

#664

Post by bluntfang »

endymi0n wrote: post #150

Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot o…

>It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap

I think this is key to building any skill. Find a way to get more reps in. Find a safety net to allow you to finish quickly and start over.

For example, when I learned how to juggle the important thing was to find a way to recover from failure and start over. I started juggling standing up. The balls would fly everywhere and I would spend 10seconds picking them up, bending over, etc. Very annoying. Then I found out that if I use cloths or juggled over my bed or on the ground, I could easily pick them up and start over within seconds. This got me reps. They weren't always quality reps, but I wasn't going for quality, I just wanted to get the skill down.

Re: Ask HN: Name one idea that changed your life

#665

Post by seanwilson »

mistermann wrote: post #369
seanwilson wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even more interestingly, these "beliefs" seem to be entrenched extremely deeply in the human psyche, and almost "protected" in some way, by some sort of process. My explanation for this is the brain has lots of mental shortcuts that help it make useful quick decisions when lacking complete information (like in survival situations), but these shortcuts break down in the modern world E.g. "everyone else is doing it s…

Sure, these are simply heuristics..."rules of thumb" approximations, there are brazillions of them. I doubt there are many people here who aren't fairly familiar with the abstract concept. What I mean by the "protected" part is that even when talking to someone who is familiar with the abstract concept, who will readily acknowledge the existence of heuristics and inherent fallibility, even within themselves (while di…

Hmm, so I'd say the vast majority of people are not familiar with cognitive biases or logical fallacies at all. Just look at advertising and politics, especially anything to do with medicine.

I learned long ago that pointing out falacies is not a winning approach to changing someone's mind so I agree with what you mean by agitated. It's also really interesting your point about people acknowledging the fault in general but can't apply it to themselves.

My point was it's probably such a protected/strong part of thought because long ago those rules were generally really useful for survival. Overriding them now is possible but takes a lot of work.

Re: Ask HN: Name one idea that changed your life

#667

Post by paganel »

darkerside wrote: post #192

This might be super basic, but... assume positive intent. Your parent is not your enemy. Your teacher is not your enemy. Your boss is not your enemy. The other team at work is not your enemy. The corporation is not your enemy. The other political party is not your enemy. Or, more accurately, YOU are not THEIR enemy. At best, you're an NPC in their game. Many of them probably even want to help you, because you are ano…

It's easier to believe that when the person saying that grew up in a system where there was no effective penury, where serious economists/experts used to say (and still do) "relax, not everything is a zero-sum game" (which it's how I imagine most of the Western economies/societies view themselves, i.e. as non-zero sum games).

But I for example grew up in a society (Eastern Europe before 1989) where my dad had to wake up early at 4.45 or 5AM in order to go the State-owned grocery store, hoping to catch one bottle of milk for child-me out of a limited supply of 100 or 200 bottles (or something like that). That was a hell of a "zero-sum game" (you wake up early and you're lucky, you get a bottle of milk for your kid out of a limited supply, you don't, your kid is out of milk). As such, it's very difficult for me (and close to impossible) not to view the other people as potential adversaries.

In other words, viewpoints like the one you suggest ("everyone else is not an adversary") most probably come from a position of privilege, i.e. of having grown up in a society which afforded itself the luxury of not having everything as a zero-sum game.

Re: Ask HN: Name one idea that changed your life

#668

Post by tim333 »

saltking112 wrote: post #519
LouisSayers wrote: post #512

My Grandmother once told me: "If you want to work at a company, dress like the people that work there. Because those are the people that the company hires." I've used this general philosophy in my life to pass courses at university, win competitions, and get through job interviews. I don't know if my grandmother meant this in a literal sense, or was hinting at the fact that (as Tony Robbins says) success leaves clues…

One would argue the ability to mold yourself, letting go of your ego in the process, is where the challenge lies for many.

You could think of it more as acting the part.

Re: Ask HN: Name one idea that changed your life

#669

Post by Aeolun »

ISL wrote: post #475
devin wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was learning to play the game Go, someone told me that there's some old advice about "losing your first 100 games as quickly as possible". That's stuck with me. Another one is (and I don't even know if it's 100% true, but I don't much care) that a common housefly will change its path if it runs into a window more than twice. I strive to be better than a common house fly.

There is a photography adage that your first ten-thousand photographs are your worst. I'm not sure I agree -- sometimes you get lucky or circumstance is favorable -- but I am certain that my second ten-thousand photographs were better, on average, than my first.

My iPhone photo’s are vastly better than anything I ever took with my DSLR, but I’m positive it’s mostly for that reason.

That said, the incredible digital processing helps a lot.

Re: Ask HN: Name one idea that changed your life

#670

Post by Aeolun »

jimmySixDOF wrote: post #616
pusiko wrote: post #564

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If at first you don't succeed, try two more times so that your failure is "statistically significant"

or: If at first you don't succeed, Sky Diving is not for you.

What part constitutes success? Jumping or safely arriving on the ground?
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