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Compounding Knowledge

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Re: Compounding Knowledge

#141

Post by quickthrower2 »

dugluak wrote: post #75

In today's world things like "2 week sprints" or "move fast and break things" are considered cool. Not many people get the luxury of spending too much time on a topic unless of course you are Warren Buffet. The world around you pushes you or steals yours attention all the time.

It doesn't have to be like that for anyone though. Maybe in the short term, but you can get out of those situations if you need. Also 2 week sprints doesn't mean not focusing on one thing. It can mean breaking it down into chunks. Whatever Warren Buffet does, it comes down to stuff he does in 2 weeks every 2 weeks anyway.

Re: Compounding Knowledge

#142

Post by stcredzero »

A lot of us are on the treadmill of consuming expiring information. Not Buffett. He filled his mental filing cabinet with information that had a long half-life.

I remember being in grad school, encountering fellow students who would say, "I want to learn X-Windows, so I can get a job doing that." Not such a huge market for that now. This is why you want to have a working knowledge about the whole stack. You won't necessarily build a compiler or write a low level library in your job, but if you actually needed something like that, you'd know enough to shop around for the right one or hire someone to build it for you.

I all you're learning is how to jockey around one opinionated framework, or just barely learning how to glue libraries together, you're not learning information with a long shelf life.

Re: Compounding Knowledge

#143

Post by personlurking »

noahmoss wrote: post #94
personlurking wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The new way to "google" something might become the next gig market. "The next gig economy will be on-demand knowledge" (2019) https://qz.com/work/1527544/the-next-gig-economy-will-be-on-...

This seems to be written by the CEO of a company that provides the exact service the article describes. That doesn't necessarily invalidate it, but I'd read it more as a business pitch than an honest, unbiased opinion.

Google itself tried to validate the idea but ended up shutting it down in 2015. Google Helpouts used Google Hangouts to connect people with experts. If someone could make it a two-way street, and use credits instead of cash, it could become a time bank, which is what I'd really like to see proliferate.

Re: Compounding Knowledge

#144

Post by dennis_jeeves »

RickJWagner wrote: post #8

One of the greatest things about Warren Buffet is that he wants to share with everybody the techniques for accumulating wealth. YouTube is loaded with videos in which Buffet explains clearly how to get rich slowly but surely. He's even got a cartoon series for kids, the Secret Millionaire's Club. ( http://www.smckids.com/ ) Buffet has figured out how to reliably win the game, he wants everybody to have that ability.…

>YouTube is loaded with videos in which Buffet explains clearly how to get rich slowly but surely.

I need to see one good video. Yes there are lot of videos of him but I want to see a video of him that explains to a common Joe, with common means on how to achieve modest financial success.

Re: Compounding Knowledge

#145

Post by dwighttk »

T-hawk wrote: post #124
dwighttk wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not over the time period he has been successful. Or at least the longer he lasts as a successful person doing what he does the less likely he's just acting at random. It's possible to get 1000000 heads in a row flipping a fair coin, but around 20 I'm going to be suspicious. edit: With Buffet, he's not actually getting everything right, so I guess a better metaphor would be like 70% heads over 1000000 flips... more li…

> but around 20 I'm going to be suspicious. There's a multiple-endpoints effect here. If there are 2^20 participants all doing that, one of them is going to flip 20 heads in a row. You only notice the one who did after the fact. Some participant has to be the most outlying result and that's the only one you notice. (Not that that's necessarily the case for Buffett, but that's a general fallacy to be aware of.)

Yeah, I'd be less suspicious of 20 in a row out of a group of 1000000 flippers. But if any of them got 70% of 1000000 flips I'd be suspicious.

Re: Compounding Knowledge

#146

Post by pathseeker »

aabeshou wrote: post #105
foobiekr wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How basic is required to qualify as self-made in a meaningful sense? I’m not talking about “Should he have grounded up sand and made his own chips and boards?” stuff, I mean lots of people have similar circumstances to Gates and made nothing of themselves. As it happens the high school I went to, as a kid from a mostly lower middle class family with severe issues being able to pay attention in school in the eighties,…

I would agree that wealth shouldn't negate his accomplishments. I think a lot of people who point out Gates' family wealth are reacting to the current political/ideological climate which would say "look, Bill Gates is self-made, so anyone can be!" neglecting the ridiculous enabling impact that enormous family wealth has, and shaming poor people for not being able to pull themselves up by their bootstraps.

>are reacting to the current political/ideological climate

Which climate are you referring to? The current climate in the US on the left is being dominated by the narrative that rich people are only successful because of their environment so they don't have the claim to their money that they think they do.

"Every billionaire is a policy failure" https://www.mediaite.com/uncategorized/alexandria-ocasio-cor...

This view is not a reaction to balance anything out, it's a policy position that billionaires should not exist because they do not deserve that much money.

Re: Compounding Knowledge

#147

Post by pathseeker »

jodrellblank wrote: post #134
foobiekr wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How basic is required to qualify as self-made in a meaningful sense? I’m not talking about “Should he have grounded up sand and made his own chips and boards?” stuff, I mean lots of people have similar circumstances to Gates and made nothing of themselves. As it happens the high school I went to, as a kid from a mostly lower middle class family with severe issues being able to pay attention in school in the eighties,…

You're claiming that 100 people in his position, would not do as well. Therefore he was different. If it was simply a matter of self-made difference, all his peers could do that too. Which means whatever it is, is something he was born with. Why does he get credit for being born different? Does he get credit for being male as well? Either it's something any of his peers could do, and he's not special, so why praise h…

Are you asking why he gets credit for making good choices with the opportunities he was given?

Re: Compounding Knowledge

#148

Post by pathseeker »

Bucephalus355 wrote: post #45

“Hard to become an expert. Easy to be an expert.” I spent many years learning how to do cloud architecture. Now I can briefly look at AWS documentation for new services out of the corner of my eye and know all I need to for the next 6 months. Yet the other day I opened a book on Java, which I haven’t studied since college, and literally had no idea what in the world I was reading.

>I spent many years learning how to do cloud architecture.

What does that even mean? Serverless? Or just becoming an expert of AWS services?

Re: Compounding Knowledge

#149

Post by jodrellblank »

pathseeker wrote: post #147
jodrellblank wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're claiming that 100 people in his position, would not do as well. Therefore he was different. If it was simply a matter of self-made difference, all his peers could do that too. Which means whatever it is, is something he was born with. Why does he get credit for being born different? Does he get credit for being male as well? Either it's something any of his peers could do, and he's not special, so why praise h…

Are you asking why he gets credit for making good choices with the opportunities he was given?

Yes.

Where do you think his ability and desire to "make good choices" comes from? Was he born with it - then why praise him? Or did he learn it - then why praise him instead of his childhood environment?

Why say that special results come from a special person, instead of saying that a special person comes from a special environment?

Why confuse "making money" with "good choices" just because you'd like to have a lot of money, even though lots of people were harmed along the way?

Re: Compounding Knowledge

#150

Post by albertgoeswoof »

saberience wrote: post #135
Bucephalus355 wrote: post #45

“Hard to become an expert. Easy to be an expert.” I spent many years learning how to do cloud architecture. Now I can briefly look at AWS documentation for new services out of the corner of my eye and know all I need to for the next 6 months. Yet the other day I opened a book on Java, which I haven’t studied since college, and literally had no idea what in the world I was reading.

I’m curious as to how/why you could have spent years learning cloud architecture, it’s not that complicated surely. My company is recently transitioning to GCP and I’m architecting big data solutions. I started doing this in November or so and well, it’s not rocket science, in fact, it’s considerably easier than building systems ten years ago was. I’d hazard a guess that you’re not learning particularly efficiently i…

There are like 50+ services from AWS alone, I doubt you have deep experience across those from a few hours a week of study, let alone learning about Azure, GCP and all the other cross platform offerings out there. And that’s not even touching the custom architecture required when you hit real scale.

Yes it’s easy to get going in the cloud, but becoming an expert, like anything, is hard and take time + experience.

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