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Ask HN: Name one idea that changed your life

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Re: Ask HN: Name one idea that changed your life

#201

Post by grecy »

teraflop wrote: post #170
endymi0n wrote: post #150

Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot o…

"Dude, sucking at something is the first step towards being sorta good at something." -- Jake the Dog

.. and the only thing that matters is you don't give up.

Re: Ask HN: Name one idea that changed your life

#202

Post by joyj2nd »

Dumblydorr wrote: post #140
JKCalhoun wrote: post #43

Language is thought. But like the chicken and egg paradox, how can one come before the other? I was incapable (I think) of formulating even the concept of "Gestalt" until I had heard the word for it, had it explained to me. Now I see the concept of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts everywhere.

Thought exists without language, does it not? How can dogs dream of sticks and walks and chasing squirrels? Can't cats see a high place and think about how to reach it, those aren't thoughts? The word Language comes from the word for tongue, language therefore is grounded in human ability to make complex thoughts borne out in simplistic squishy tongue air sounds. We could extend language beyond tongues though, if we…

"Thought exists without language, does it not?" This is a very interesting question.

The limits of my language are the limits of my mind. All I know is what I have words for.” Wittgenstein

"How can dogs dream of sticks and walks and chasing squirrels?" Do Androids dream of electric sheep? :-) You may want to read the books mentioned here. I found it so impressive, I bought a first issue. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicameralism_(psychology)

Re: Ask HN: Name one idea that changed your life

#203

Post by TACIXAT »

darkerside wrote: post #192

This might be super basic, but... assume positive intent. Your parent is not your enemy. Your teacher is not your enemy. Your boss is not your enemy. The other team at work is not your enemy. The corporation is not your enemy. The other political party is not your enemy. Or, more accurately, YOU are not THEIR enemy. At best, you're an NPC in their game. Many of them probably even want to help you, because you are ano…

I agree with this, it's much better to collaborate or collude when possible. The one exception is that corporations are absolutely my enemy.

Re: Ask HN: Name one idea that changed your life

#204

Post by dullroar »

One that knocked me upside the head once was, upon remarking "That's going to take a long time, like a year" to accomplish something, as if that made it not worth doing, being told, "That time is going to pass anyway." In other words, you can either start working towards it now, and be in a better place in a year, or let that length of time discourage you and then, when next year rolls around, still be discouraged. So just start.

Re: Ask HN: Name one idea that changed your life

#205

Post by avmich »

gridlockd wrote: post #186
endymi0n wrote: post #150

Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot o…

Worse yet, most people have bad taste and actually can't tell good and bad design work apart, so you're really spending all that effort to please a minority that you're unfortunate enough to be part of. https://xkcd.com/1015/

True, but here is - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gutenberg_bible_Old_Testa... - an example of old font. Do you think a lot of people would have problems with reading this?

Re: Ask HN: Name one idea that changed your life

#206

Post by michaelrpeskin »

Antifragility

Or more specifically, just getting the term for it. I spent years trying to articulate in my own mind many of the ideas in Taleb's book, and once I had a word for it I could see it everywhere and actually start to change my life to take advantage of the chaos in the world.

Basically: you can't control what happens to you, but you can set your life up so that the natural variability of the world can be used to your advantage.

I can't do it justice in an HN comment, but it's one book and one idea that has changed my life.

Re: Ask HN: Name one idea that changed your life

#207

Post by dnautics »

abetusk wrote: post #137

"Premature optimization is the root of all evil" More and more, I'm realizing this applies more broadly than just for code. Abstraction is a form of optimization and shouldn't be done before the space has been properly explored to know what abstractions should be built. Standardization is a form of optimization and shouldn't be proposed until there's a body of evidence to support what's being standardized. Failure to…

Yeah, I just wish the quote were "folly" instead of "evil".

Re: Ask HN: Name one idea that changed your life

#209

Post by avmich »

purerandomness wrote: post #142

The idea that your mind is not you . That "thinking", as a process, is just a tool of your body, just like eyesight, for example. Listening to meditation and mindfulness practitioners like Jon Kobat-Zinn and Eckhart Tolle, I found it absolutely groundbreaking, for myself, to realize that the mind is an instrument that needs training and tuning, and sometimes can lead you astray, and can't be trusted unconditionally.…

Do you think your premise is arguable? If yes, is it defendable?

Re: Ask HN: Name one idea that changed your life

#210

Post by kleer001 »

krapp wrote: post #114
kleer001 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a literal actor in time/space, for certain. That said I've come around to the usefulness of deification of ideals and the idea that not every moment should be lived in object-space, but also in drama-space.

>That said I've come around to the usefulness of deification of ideals and the idea that not every moment should be lived in object-space, but also in drama-space. I can agree with that. God as an idea is real in the abstract sense that all powerful ideas are real, and people believe in them, and treat them as real. But as someone who was raised in a (Christian, US Southern) religious background, I've come to believe…

> I've come to believe that everything wrong with religion comes from taking it literally

I don't disagree, but would only refine your point.

I think the pathology of religions come from several places: the inevitable divide between the environment in which they were written and the current world and not refreshing that original view quickly enough with enough wisdom, the projection of one's ethics on to other people, and, like you said, mistaking the metaphorical for the literal when it is not adaptive (which is difficult as sometimes feedback can take decades if not generations to hit).

IMHO religions are like Swiss army knives. They've got a huge number of blades and tools. Idiots use Swiss army knives like a hammer and bang away and their problems. People that have only seen it used as a hammer miss out on its finer wisdom. And if one gets stabbed with it they're less likely to look openly upon the tool or kindly upon the user.

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