121–130 of 304 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you expand on that - I'm failing to see how the sex of the student is relevant?
2 separate points. The student was female (OP said "he"), and also that passage was notable (but not because she was female).
Something I've noticed now that we're all communicating online in written form: a lack of people saying "I don't know" It seems that everybody knows everything. Whatever the issue, a little bit of Googling and suddenly you know all there is to know. Even more wondrous, no matter what position you take on anything, some more search engine Kung Fu and you can find a hundred people willing to support you with arguments,…
Why would I jump into a thread, on any site, just to say I don't know? There are thousands of threads just on HN that I just let scroll by without participating because I don't know enough to add to the discussion. Explicitly calling out my lack of knowledge on every thread would serve no purpose to anybody. Online written communications will never follow the same patterns as direct communication, and that is a good…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think we have two problems at the moment. 1. Being right doesn't mean being smart. I met many people in my life that were smart or dumb, but their success had nothing to do with this. You can do the right things by accident. 2. Being rich often removes the need of being smart to varying degrees. People want to help you getting richer if they get a piece of the pie.
Competent Elites - The World is Stratified by Genuine Competence https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16186279
There is an excellent example of this type of fiddly detail in Liz England's 2014 blog post about the problems of doors in video games [0]. She identifies about 20 questions you can ask about as a door (as a game designer) and then about 30 different roles (from sound designers [1] to monetization director[2]) who might be involved. Her post works really well because the example is so mundane but the questions are ve…
> Network Programmer: “Do all the players need to see the door open at the same time?” Brings me the question on wheter the "reality" is the same for everybody.
Something I've noticed now that we're all communicating online in written form: a lack of people saying "I don't know" It seems that everybody knows everything. Whatever the issue, a little bit of Googling and suddenly you know all there is to know. Even more wondrous, no matter what position you take on anything, some more search engine Kung Fu and you can find a hundred people willing to support you with arguments,…
I think there's something to this, but I want to present an alternative, which is that the more I know, the more I know what I don't know. And with regards to startups and business, the effect of this that I can observe is one of paralysis. I am scared to death of committing to any idea because I can see right away many of the unknowns, and I fear the unknown unknowns. After some education, I have enough history of thinking I know something and then discovering that I basically know nothing, that I am scared to ever say, well THIS is the idea that is going to work out, I'll put all my money and effort for the next 10 years into THIS because I am sure. Sadly, the more I know, the less sure I am about anything, and it makes me unwilling to take risks. Not just business -- even deciding what to study next, what jobs to apply to, or what side project to begin -- every time I start something that seems simple enough, it takes about 5 minutes to realize I have no idea what I'm doing and have to evaluate whether it's worth pouring more time into. Result: things don't get done. Because there is no done. I do learn a lot however. But for what? Personal growth I guess. But I have no idea what to do with it. I really envy those people who are able to decide they are going to solve a specific problem, that it's worth it to do so, and are able to see it through to the end, instead of learning everything they can about it, getting bored, and moving on, which seems to be my pattern. In the end, for me, it is the learning that is motivating, not the goal, and that has terrible consequences for what you describe. Perhaps "successful at startups" is not the only metric, but at least for that metric, it is maybe not good to take the "I'm going to learn everything about this before actually doing anything" approach.
A few years ago I co-founded a standing desk company without any experience in real world products in general. The plan was to source desks and sell them to companies. How complicated could it be? Well, the freight company requires a lot of information about the destination building. The destination building require a lot of paperwork in a very specific format just to deliver something. The paperwork is always a litt…
This article points out exactly why even though I like to tinker with a lot of stuff my main hobby is always programming. Because programming is more akin to writing down maths than building a staircase. Algorithms don't warp because of humidity, algorithms don't have leakage current. Sure computers have their quirks (overflows, floating point issues, UB etc...) but it's still a finite amount of knowledge unlike the…
In fun, a contrary perspective: at least with woodworking tools, they don't become obsolete in 2-5 years just from laying dormant on the shelf! Seriously, though, couldn't agree more, I've said some variation on everything you mentioned for many years. Especially the mess part. I would add the risk of personal injury, too.
Over longer time spans, the tools sometimes become outdated in terms of one's productivity while using, assuming non-artistic motivation for use.
Old motorized tools are more prone to this than mechanical-type tools. Which maybe gives some insight as to the factors that contribute to obsolescence. There are exceptions, of course, but generally my grandfather's hand tools are still perfectly serviceable while his motorized tools often have more drawbacks than benefits to use. A 50-year circular saw is as heavy as a boat anchor and is a huge pain in the ass to adjust and use compared to newer options.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a person who basically made it through college without internet, I can tell you that I had just as much trouble admitting I was wrong when I didn't have access to the internet, perhaps more because I was younger and more hotheaded.
I've sometimes had the problem as well. Usually because my self esteem had been based heavily on believing that I'm really smart.