I think it was on HN. It was a quote to the effect that the world changes by just a handful of great people, not by the small contributions of billions.
Ask HN: What interesting thought did you read on HN but couldn't find later?
111–120 of 232 posts
Re: Ask HN: What interesting thought did you read on HN but couldn't find later?
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are we learning a lot from our parents? I had highly educated parents (university professors) and what I learned from them was a tiny fraction of the total amount of things that I've learned so far (from written material, other people, and life experience). I think there's merit to what you said, but I don't think the crucial bit is the parents specifically. I think the crucial bit is that without language you can't…
You're kind of disproving your own point here, no? Or at least, both the fact that its parents die and that they have no language creates a vicious circle. Though you skipped over it, probably the most important skill you've learnt from your parents is language. The octopus' parents die before they can transfer that skill. Hence, they can (barely) communicate with others of the same species and elevate their collecti…
But you didn't have to learn language from parents specifically, you could've leart it from other members of the society.
I was making the distinction between learning from parents and learning from "others". The argument around the mistmatch between the life time of parents compared to the time of the offspring to maturity only makes sense with parents.
> The octopus' parents die before they can transfer that skill. Hence, they can (barely) communicate with others of the same species and elevate their collective knowledge.
Yeah, but that can't be an important factor. Elephant parents hang around for long and you still don't see talking elephants.
Re: Ask HN: What interesting thought did you read on HN but couldn't find later?
#113A service that converts PDF research papers into a clean readable webpage. Their example paper was a research paper with two columns and diagrams to show their service actually works well. I searched a couple of times but couldn't find them again...
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Re: Ask HN: What interesting thought did you read on HN but couldn't find later?
#114Something about someone smelling cake or a bakery in their neighborhood when there wasn't one, but it turned out to be chemicals leaching from the ground due to what was there years ago and buried.
Re: Ask HN: What interesting thought did you read on HN but couldn't find later?
#115An article about EV vs. ICE was posted, written from the perspective of an EV being the natural way of building things (few moving parts, little heat loss, etc) and that this ICE was an intricate machine of thousands of parts channeling the spirit of fine watchmaking or Jules Verne. I found the perspective refreshing but have never been able to find it since.
Perhaps this one:
Re: Ask HN: What interesting thought did you read on HN but couldn't find later?
#116I was looking for that startup that looks into research for your rare illness. Did they stop existing?
Re: Ask HN: What interesting thought did you read on HN but couldn't find later?
#117An article about some species of octopuses that have a relatively high IQ, but since the parents die before their offspring comes to life, every generation have to relearn everything from scratch. IIRC, the lack of inter-generational communication deprived this species from developing to the level its IQ permits. I wish I can find that piece again!
Not about IQ but I read somewhere about how the properties of octopus bodies (squishiness, bonelessness) form a very different understanding of the world compared to those of primates. Can't find where it was.
Re: Ask HN: What interesting thought did you read on HN but couldn't find later?
#118I was looking for that startup that looks into research for your rare illness. Did they stop existing?
Apparently https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MetaMed
Re: Ask HN: What interesting thought did you read on HN but couldn't find later?
#119Something about someone smelling cake or a bakery in their neighborhood when there wasn't one, but it turned out to be chemicals leaching from the ground due to what was there years ago and buried.
Re: Ask HN: What interesting thought did you read on HN but couldn't find later?
#120Dunno if this is management 101 but someone mentioned casually the relationship between responsibility and authority. A mismatch between those two creates tension (employee dissatisfaction). I have not found the comment or literature on the subject. Experiences at my day job tell me this is key to org/role design and management in general.
There are several good articles discussing ARA:
http://blog.jbrains.ca/permalink/the-importance-of-aligning-...
https://ssbg.co.nz/about/media/words-with-meaning-the-import...
https://www.nais.org/magazine/independent-school/fall-2016/d...
For HN comments specifically, you might have read one of these:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2810365
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7184472