Coolest Things I Learned in 2018 • Hacker News Board

Re: Coolest Things I Learned in 2018

#31

Post by lasagnaphil » Tue, Jan 08, 2019, 3:53 PM UTC

adontz wrote: post #5

Whenever there is a market fad/phenomena with low or no barriers and a flood of entrants—the best strategy is often: Be the arms dealer. The lowest profile players in high-profile, low-barrier industries are almost always the most profitable. Don't sell wine, sell barrels. Don't make movies, create animation software. Don't own restaurants, build the restaurant supply company. I ALWAYS KNEW IT!

All those cryptocurrency exchanges, they're the true winners of the nonsensical Bitcoin craze...

And similarily, NVIDIA really profitted a lot from the deep learning boom by selling all those GPUs to datacenters at a high cost...

Re: Coolest Things I Learned in 2018

#32

Post by crimsonalucard » Tue, Jan 08, 2019, 3:53 PM UTC

twodave wrote: post #3

> Instead of arbitrarily memorizing things, look for the explanation that makes it obvious. This is a higher learning method that I’ve always found most natural. I don’t memorize stuff, I try to understand it instead. That said, there is still great value in the classical learning model—if you don’t know the terminology of the subject it’s difficult to reason about that subject.

Most of the things worth your time to understand are so complex you need to memorize and internalize multitudes of other concepts first before you can even hope to understand what you're learning.

I truly mean internalize. For example relativity. You cannot understand relativity just by following the logic from first principles all the way to enlightenment. You need to not only understand the earlier principles, you actually need to practice and internalize the earlier principles using techniques of memorization. Newtons laws of motion and vectors must become second nature to you through repeated practice and memorization before you can move forward.

Simply understanding one concept is not enough to move on to the next concept.

Re: Coolest Things I Learned in 2018

#33

Post by 076ae80a-3c97-4 » Tue, Jan 08, 2019, 3:54 PM UTC

pba wrote: post #29

This article (post?) is the 2019 version of chain mail. Weak insights, no academic substantiation. I had to stop reading at the 'words for emotions' part.. 'sonder' and the rest are not dictionary words; they were made up by some guy. Yet this ridiculousness continues its way around the internet..

'Sonder' is most certainly a word! https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/sonder

Re: Coolest Things I Learned in 2018

#34

Post by thieving_magpie » Tue, Jan 08, 2019, 3:56 PM UTC

076ae80a-3c97-4 wrote: post #33

pba wrote: post #29

This article (post?) is the 2019 version of chain mail. Weak insights, no academic substantiation. I had to stop reading at the 'words for emotions' part.. 'sonder' and the rest are not dictionary words; they were made up by some guy. Yet this ridiculousness continues its way around the internet..

'Sonder' is most certainly a word! https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/sonder

Let's just go ahead and kill this back and forth.

Yes, sonder is a word. The definition used in the article is debatable as to whether it's a word. It's a word invented in 2012 by a guy that wrote a book about inventing new words for emotions.

>Coined in 2012 by John Koenig, whose project, The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, aims to come up with new words for emotions that currently lack words.[1][2] Related to German sonder- (“special”) and French sonder (“to probe”).[3]

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sonder#Etymology

Re: Coolest Things I Learned in 2018

#35

Post by dggsgsdgsd » Tue, Jan 08, 2019, 3:56 PM UTC

twodave wrote: post #3

> Instead of arbitrarily memorizing things, look for the explanation that makes it obvious. This is a higher learning method that I’ve always found most natural. I don’t memorize stuff, I try to understand it instead. That said, there is still great value in the classical learning model—if you don’t know the terminology of the subject it’s difficult to reason about that subject.

lslslfmadsčl

Re: Coolest Things I Learned in 2018

#36

Post by aaachilless » Tue, Jan 08, 2019, 3:59 PM UTC

stronglikedan wrote: post #23

Is it normal for professional soccer players to be so blatantly afraid of the ball?

I assume you're referring to the gif of the German goal from the world cup. "Afraid" is a bit of a misinterpretation. When you're 5-10 feet from the other player and he's shooting on goal, especially if that other player is one of the best in the world, turning around is the only sane thing to do.

Re: Coolest Things I Learned in 2018

#37

Post by ergothus » Tue, Jan 08, 2019, 4:00 PM UTC

whatshisface wrote: post #22

ergothus wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time I switch to a new area I try this, and every time it causes me great frustration. Learning materials arent setup to this, (and possibly brains). You have to learn enough fundamentals (usually via rote) before you can get overarching themes. At my newest job I am trying to soak in the fundamentals as opposed to rote practicing them before putting any conscious effort at understanding them, but it is too soo…

Different people have different balance of skills. I like to use highschool chemistry as the litmus test. On the extremes there are people like me, stereotyped as successful physicists or engineers that love the math side but hated memorizing the tables of ions (poor ability to memorize, good ability to reason), and the people that are stereotyped as successful biologists that hated the math in their chemistry course…

It's not a matter of memorization, at least for me, it is exposure. You can understand the underlying rules without enough exposure to the subjects of those rules.

I suck at memorizing and dont use it as a study technique, but when picking up a new skill I cant say "what are the underlying principles?" because I lack the context.

(Well I can say that, and then I'll get frustrated when no one can express them for me, and the ones that try dont make sense)

Re: Coolest Things I Learned in 2018

#38

Post by scarejunba » Tue, Jan 08, 2019, 4:02 PM UTC

twodave wrote: post #3

> Instead of arbitrarily memorizing things, look for the explanation that makes it obvious. This is a higher learning method that I’ve always found most natural. I don’t memorize stuff, I try to understand it instead. That said, there is still great value in the classical learning model—if you don’t know the terminology of the subject it’s difficult to reason about that subject.

Hmm, perhaps we’re talking about different things but I don’t mind memorizing the alphabet of a language or (partly) its vocabulary but the pronunciation is best learned in terms of its fundamental components and to an extent, so is the vocabulary.

Fortunately, most things in modern life require no active memorization. You use and you remember.

But if I were to learn Hindi, I would memorize the basic glyphs of Devanagari. It’s the highest ROI operation for the task.

Re: Coolest Things I Learned in 2018

#39

Post by mcv » Tue, Jan 08, 2019, 4:02 PM UTC

twodave wrote: post #3

> Instead of arbitrarily memorizing things, look for the explanation that makes it obvious. This is a higher learning method that I’ve always found most natural. I don’t memorize stuff, I try to understand it instead. That said, there is still great value in the classical learning model—if you don’t know the terminology of the subject it’s difficult to reason about that subject.

I've had the same thing. It was impossible for me to remember complex mathematical equations in school until I figured out how to derive them myself. That didn't help me with integration, sadly.

Same with history: years are meaningless. What's interesting is how historical events follow from earlier events and lead to later events.

Re: Coolest Things I Learned in 2018

#40

Post by jimbokun » Tue, Jan 08, 2019, 4:05 PM UTC

stronglikedan wrote: post #23

Is it normal for professional soccer players to be so blatantly afraid of the ball?

I remember Olivier Giroud breaking his foot by blocking a powerful kick from very close range.

So I think the answer is, there is a certain healthy respect for a ball kicked at close range by another professional soccer player.

EDIT: Also, looking at it again, looked like the player was trying to get in front of it, and just couldn't make it in time.