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The Lesson to Unlearn

paulgraham.com

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Re: The Lesson to Unlearn

#551

Post by chadcmulligan »

chadcmulligan wrote: post #29
esotericn wrote: post #8

Not sure I agree with this. The real world is very much about optimizing for and beating tests. It might be producing a specific CV or preparing for an interview whiteboard session to land a job. It might be socializing and networking in a specific way in order to land funding. The real world does not commonly reward just being really good at arbitrary things. It's almost always focused on meeting a need that someone…

> The real world It's not the real world - its the human world. The real world is very different, and getting more so imho. Skills to survive the human world are usually useless in the real physical world. It's a distinction I read recently from a philosopher that I lost track of, maybe someone here knows. Her point was (I think) that when someone says the real world, with relation to education, it's not really - it'…

Found the article in case anyone is still browsing here http://www.theabsolute.net/minefield/humevas.html its interesting

Re: The Lesson to Unlearn

#552

Post by taeric »

SirLuxuryYacht wrote: post #550
taeric wrote: post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just disagreement over magnitude. And what it means to hit higher acceleration. Take my statements to be, it won't hit a meaningful higher acceleration. Not that it won't necessarily accelerate for longer. In general, you will accelerate down the hill at 9.8 m/s^2 modified by the incline. No matter how heavy the bike is. (Within the realm of realistic weights.). Yes, the points you are raising are true. But w…

The velocity of the bike+rider is proportional to their mass. Realistically this can range over two orders of magnitude, which can be particularly relevant in a racing context.

I'm intrigued. What are you saying here?

Re: The Lesson to Unlearn

#553

Post by jstanley »

taeric wrote: post #552
SirLuxuryYacht wrote: post #550

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The velocity of the bike+rider is proportional to their mass. Realistically this can range over two orders of magnitude, which can be particularly relevant in a racing context.

I'm intrigued. What are you saying here?

It sounds like there could be a 100x difference between a light guy on a light bike and a heavy guy on a heavy bike. Sounds hard to believe, so I'm intrigued too :).

Re: The Lesson to Unlearn

#554

Post by falcor84 »

ken wrote: post #352
knzhou wrote: post #264

As somebody who has designed some of the tests Paul Graham is complaining about, it really is hard from the other side! For example, it's long been known in the physics education research community that students come away from introductory courses with very little physical understanding, even if they can do the plug and chug problems on typical tests just fine. Students can all recite Newton's third law, but immediat…

Science education is hard. I was constantly frustrated in science classes, especially physics, because every 2 minutes I wanted to say "but then why ___?" Every new thing you learn seems to contradict either common sense (this rock clearly falls faster than this paper!), or something else you've been taught (you mean F=ma was never actually true? and which other equations might turn out to need correcting?). I recogn…

> The problem is indeed scale

Hear, hear! When people say that with better technology we could automate away teachers, I say that with better technology we could automate most everything else and spend the time mentoring one another.

Re: The Lesson to Unlearn

#555

Post by woodandsteel »

knzhou wrote: post #264

As somebody who has designed some of the tests Paul Graham is complaining about, it really is hard from the other side! For example, it's long been known in the physics education research community that students come away from introductory courses with very little physical understanding, even if they can do the plug and chug problems on typical tests just fine. Students can all recite Newton's third law, but immediat…

The problem is that so much of physics is quite counter-intuitive (that is one reason it took so long to discover).

The basic principle of education is to start where the student is and then lead them step-by-step to what you want them to understand. That being the case, I would say physics should start with student's intuitive understanding and then explain, like through examples they can understand, why some of their intuitions are mistaken. Maybe this could even be turned into Socratic questioning.

Re: The Lesson to Unlearn

#557

Post by zamfi »

tr33house wrote: post #464
zamfi wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm waiting for the entrepreneur who will say he doesn't care how much money he makes or how many customers he has, only that it's worthwhile and needed doing. Closest to this today might be Elon Musk, maybe...but there are other complexities there?

This guy is literally overworking all his employees. I find it hard to look up to his ways

A controversial figure to be sure, but at least no one is really forced to work for him -- they know what they're getting into, no?

Re: The Lesson to Unlearn

#558

Post by susijdjdjxa »

OnlineGladiator wrote: post #274
burlesona wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being a hiring manager at a big company, I can tell you this is just as frustrating for me as it is for candidates. I hate “leet code” and frankly find algorithmic interviews to be very low signal compared to more practical, open-ended, domain-specific problems. I will say though, the problem is one of “standardization” across an organization where it’s too big for everyone to fit in a room. Suppose you give each tea…

> But as you grow, that ten percent of underperforming people becomes large in absolute numbers, and is very painful to deal with. I think you could reduce the 10% to 1% simply by actively firing bad employees, and the easiest way to do that is with a probationary hiring period (let's say 6 months, maybe a year). I am fully aware of how systemic rot can be, and how hard it can be to remove. The real problem is when y…

I’m a pretty good engineer, and I’m never going to join any job with a probationary period. It could turn out to be a bad manager or something and I would end up with a messed up resume. Why would I accept some kind of second-class status when Google etc. are willing to hire me with normal employment terms? I think you’d have a serious adverse selection problem if you only hire people who are willing to take such a job.

Re: The Lesson to Unlearn

#559

Post by closeparen »

OnlineGladiator wrote: post #274
burlesona wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being a hiring manager at a big company, I can tell you this is just as frustrating for me as it is for candidates. I hate “leet code” and frankly find algorithmic interviews to be very low signal compared to more practical, open-ended, domain-specific problems. I will say though, the problem is one of “standardization” across an organization where it’s too big for everyone to fit in a room. Suppose you give each tea…

> But as you grow, that ten percent of underperforming people becomes large in absolute numbers, and is very painful to deal with. I think you could reduce the 10% to 1% simply by actively firing bad employees, and the easiest way to do that is with a probationary hiring period (let's say 6 months, maybe a year). I am fully aware of how systemic rot can be, and how hard it can be to remove. The real problem is when y…

Those "bad" managers are correctly following their incentives:

- More headcount is always better for the manager's prestige and career prospects, as long as those people contribute to project success at least a little bit (and most low performers do, just less than you'd hope). Managing infinitely many people each producing epsilon above breakeven is much better than having 1 rockstar.

- Headcount availability ebbs and flows with the business cycle. It's important to take everything you can while the money is flowing in case you might need it during a contraction. It's important to have nonessential staff on hand during a contraction so you can satisfy your X% cut requirement without compromising effectiveness too badly.

- As a manager of a high-performing division at a growing company, you will be given an integer multiple of your current headcount, and expected to deliver proportional results with it. If your strategy was "employ only high performers" you will fail, someone will be brought in immediately above or immediately below you to "help out," and within six months you'll be "spending more time with your family."

- The hiring process is hard to mess with. Recruiters put your ICs onto the panels directly; systematically leaning on them to change their votes will probably get the ethics hotline involved. But the decision to retain year over year is entirely yours.

Re: The Lesson to Unlearn

#560

Post by johnm »

OnlineGladiator wrote: post #538
johnm wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I mentioned in a sibling comment, the toxic (and incompetent) manager problem is fundamentally a leadership problem. The single biggest responsibility of the founders is the culture of the organization -- everything stems from that, one way or another. Leadership, from the top down, is absolutely responsible for the mentoring, training, and environment created by the management. None of the systemic problems with…

Just out of curiosity, why do you make multiple replies instead of one larger reply?

Because you made a variety of specific points and it's easier to address them specifically.
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