Coolest Things I Learned in 2018 • Hacker News Board

Re: Coolest Things I Learned in 2018

#101

Post by mcv » Tue, Jan 08, 2019, 6:35 PM UTC

jolmg wrote: post #62

mcv wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Same with history: years are meaningless. What's interesting is how historical events follow from earlier events and lead to later events. That's also how I learned what history I know. The trouble with that is not knowing how differently themed events are positioned relative to each other in time. For example, I don't know how events of political history linked to events of computer history.

You can always look up the relevant years. That's easier than the other way around.

Re: Coolest Things I Learned in 2018

#102

Post by yakshaving_jgt » Tue, Jan 08, 2019, 6:41 PM UTC

dwags wrote: post #88

stronglikedan wrote: post #23

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

what an odd question. Ping pong is the only sport I can think of off the top of my head that I wouldn't be absolutely terrified of a professional athlete blasting a ball/puck/thing at me and even then just because i'm not terrified, that ball would still hurt pretty good

About 16 years ago I was playing in a ping pong tournament, where the forfeit for losing would be you had to allow the winner to take three shots at your bare stomach.

I remember many of the guys who lost had rather large purple welts on their stomachs, akin to a paintball wound.

This wasn’t professional level either. This was a bunch of Australian teenagers having fun in the evenings.

Re: Coolest Things I Learned in 2018

#103

Post by francislavoie » Tue, Jan 08, 2019, 6:49 PM UTC

andyidsinga wrote: post #100

> Avoid boring people. Corollary: people aren't always as boring as they may seem - digging in a little, asking questions - I often find what people are doing outside of work (which seems to be the default "interesting or not" metric) can be rather interesting.

I think you missed the point of that section, the meaning is "don't be boring, try to be interesting". But I agree with you (when assuming the other meaning).

Re: Coolest Things I Learned in 2018

#104

Post by francislavoie » Tue, Jan 08, 2019, 6:51 PM UTC

rhlala wrote: post #69

Avoid borimg people. It is your fault if you cant find what it is interesting in others.

You missed the point of that section, the meaning is actually "try not to bore other people"

Re: Coolest Things I Learned in 2018

#105

Post by wenc » Tue, Jan 08, 2019, 6:51 PM UTC

msla wrote: post #74

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

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yes, Sonder is a word in German which means "special", as in the German term Sonderweg which is the German equivalent of "American Exceptionalism" ("German Exceptionalism", I suppose).

Sonder is also quite a pedestrian word in German, as in "sonderangebot" (special offer, or sale!)

Re: Coolest Things I Learned in 2018

#106

Post by screaminghawk » Tue, Jan 08, 2019, 6:56 PM UTC

andyidsinga wrote: post #100

> Avoid boring people. Corollary: people aren't always as boring as they may seem - digging in a little, asking questions - I often find what people are doing outside of work (which seems to be the default "interesting or not" metric) can be rather interesting.

This is absolutely true. A lot of the most interesting people I know only appear boring because they are well aware of the societal norms and won't speak out. Once you break through that trust barrier you can find that "boring" people are actually incredibly complex and interesting.

Your mileage my vary.

Re: Coolest Things I Learned in 2018

#107

Post by beat » Tue, Jan 08, 2019, 6:56 PM UTC

nickles wrote: post #94

beat wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you assuming I'm "suggesting it's preferable"? Put down the pitchfork for a moment! I'm not arguing that Chinese-style communism is a better system. I'm arguing that the belief that western values and economics are the only path to prosperity is incorrect. I'd rather live in the American system. I'm sure there are a lot of people who grew up in China and would rather live in the Chinese system. As for your la…

[flagged]

>Also, I'd request that you stop downvoting me simply because you disagree. However, I assume that your (self-described) "progressive politics" [1] are motivating your decision to downvote more than the content, so I'm not holding out much hope.

I'm not downvoting you. I can't downvote you, per how HN software works - you can't downvote replies to your own comments. Sorry, you'll just have to figure out why you're alienating people other than me.

Re: Coolest Things I Learned in 2018

#108

Post by wenc » Tue, Jan 08, 2019, 7:03 PM UTC

lopatin wrote: post #80

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 tend to take the understand-don't-memorize approach to stuff as well. It's served me well in general, but it's also why I nearly failed micro-biology in high school.

> understand-don't-memorize approach

I hear you. This is actually an oversimplification that is received wisdom among American students and educators (often used as an argument against the rote-learning tendencies of non-Western education systems, which are the other extreme), but in practice it is wrong in its basic articulation.

This was an article on HN awhile ago about using Anki to read the literature of an entire field or subfield [1], but it also touches on the role of memory in learning. Without memory, it's hard to see deep connections across vast areas of knowledge. You can't always "look things up" if you don't know if those things exist.

[1] http://augmentingcognition.com/ltm.html

Re: Coolest Things I Learned in 2018

#109

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jan 08, 2019, 7:07 PM UTC

beat wrote: post #107

nickles wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

>Also, I'd request that you stop downvoting me simply because you disagree. However, I assume that your (self-described) "progressive politics" [1] are motivating your decision to downvote more than the content, so I'm not holding out much hope. I'm not downvoting you. I can't downvote you, per how HN software works - you can't downvote replies to your own comments. Sorry, you'll just have to figure out why you're al…

[deleted]

Re: Coolest Things I Learned in 2018

#110

Post by beat » Tue, Jan 08, 2019, 7:07 PM UTC

nickles wrote: post #94

beat wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you assuming I'm "suggesting it's preferable"? Put down the pitchfork for a moment! I'm not arguing that Chinese-style communism is a better system. I'm arguing that the belief that western values and economics are the only path to prosperity is incorrect. I'd rather live in the American system. I'm sure there are a lot of people who grew up in China and would rather live in the Chinese system. As for your la…

[flagged]

As for the rest of your arguments...

>Here you engage in the logical fallacy of 'whataboutery'.

I'm not the one who started it. I simply brought up China's remarkable economic success, and you responded with a laundry list of "China Bad!" that mostly had nothing to do with economics.

>If, instead of relying solely on GDP per capita, we factored human costs into our assessments

Sauce for the goose. Rather than the abstract theoretical exercise you presented, you should offer a measurable scale, so we can compare China to western nations. Otherwise, it's meaningless. Otherwise, I'll see your human costs and raise you a slavery.

If you'd stop thinking about why China is more evil than the west for a bit and step back, you might see that economic acceleration from agrarian poverty to modern middle class is a widespread phenomenon that seems to happen to nations regardless of their history, language, culture, government, etc. A bad social structure eventually falls away and is replaced by a better one, and over the course of a couple of generations, the nation accelerates radically. It happened in China, in Iran, in Ireland, and many other seemingly unlikely places.

Read Factfulness. It'll change your life.