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Or as my grandmother always said, "if you want to forget something, just write it down."
I've often wondered whether McArthur Wheeler - the lemon juice disguised bank robber discussed in this article - actually had some mental challenges rather than lacked common sense. It seems a whole branch of academia has grown off his unfortunate back...
Is this real? It is unbelievable.
I see this sort of thing on Hacker News all the time. Programmers that are, I'm sure, the top of their field comment in threads about biology or something out of their field with the most silly and wrong answers. A thread about nutrition or something out of their realm of expertise on here is about as useful as reading a Facebook or YouTube comment chain. That doesn't stop them from speaking authoritatively about it.…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think a variation on this is a key factor of life and culture in engineering - at some point, either what you made works, or it doesn't. You can argue, debate, philosophize and talk, but at the end of the day - there's either a working thing someone else can look at, or there's not. (I imagine this is true in other places - sales, business, design - it just gets increasingly hard to tell "if it worked")
You're right, but sales, business and design have too many variables involved in the apparent success of what you make, so you're not able to safely verify what "worked". Even in engineering, two people can make something that "works", but which one is better? Maybe the worst product had the better marketing, so it sold more and in the end there are more people praising it, then you'll think it is better.
Difference in skills is clearest in games. When you can see someone winning and someone losing you can know who's better, despite perhaps not understanding why the winner won.
I see this sort of thing on Hacker News all the time. Programmers that are, I'm sure, the top of their field comment in threads about biology or something out of their field with the most silly and wrong answers. A thread about nutrition or something out of their realm of expertise on here is about as useful as reading a Facebook or YouTube comment chain. That doesn't stop them from speaking authoritatively about it.…
Luckily most of the people here, if they wanted, could easily get an entry-level education in any field, because they know how to study from books, can get access to the material, etc.
"The fundamental cause of the trouble in the modern world today is that the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.” — Bertrand Russell
I see this sort of thing on Hacker News all the time. Programmers that are, I'm sure, the top of their field comment in threads about biology or something out of their field with the most silly and wrong answers. A thread about nutrition or something out of their realm of expertise on here is about as useful as reading a Facebook or YouTube comment chain. That doesn't stop them from speaking authoritatively about it.…
Do you remember the "super fast hash algorithm" from a few weeks ago that turned out to be rubbish? What about the "high performance TCP proxy" on the front page right now that's not proxying correctly or with unusual speed?
People seem to upvote on title alone
I've often wondered whether McArthur Wheeler - the lemon juice disguised bank robber discussed in this article - actually had some mental challenges rather than lacked common sense. It seems a whole branch of academia has grown off his unfortunate back...
Is this real? It is unbelievable.
I see this sort of thing on Hacker News all the time. Programmers that are, I'm sure, the top of their field comment in threads about biology or something out of their field with the most silly and wrong answers. A thread about nutrition or something out of their realm of expertise on here is about as useful as reading a Facebook or YouTube comment chain. That doesn't stop them from speaking authoritatively about it.…