Everything is a remix
Ask HN: Name one idea that changed your life
271–280 of 839 posts
Re: Ask HN: Name one idea that changed your life
#272Stoicism.
Re: Ask HN: Name one idea that changed your life
#273The Growth Mindset. To briefly sum up the findings: Individuals who believe their talents can be developed (through hard work, good strategies, and input from others) have a growth mindset. They tend to achieve more than those with a more fixed mindset (those who believe their talents are innate gifts). This is because they worry less about looking smart and they put more energy into learning. Along with this goes em…
Hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard. But if talent starts working hard, it's game over.
I think of it as more relevant to the inner game.
Re: Ask HN: Name one idea that changed your life
#274That free market capitalism is a good system that works. I grew up in a family that pretty much believed the opposite so I probably never would have become an entrepreneur otherwise. I mainly credit Milton Friedman's "Free to Choose" series for persuading me, as well as some of Paul Graham's essays.
What are your thoughts on the welfare state and its compatibility with your freedom? What do you think about homelessness?
HN is probably not the best medium to discuss this but the "Free to Choose" series I mentioned touches on those issues and is available for free on YouTube. It's still quite relevant today despite its age.
Re: Ask HN: Name one idea that changed your life
#275This 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…
Positive intent is a somewhat subjective term. I prefer the term good faith.
Assuming good faith does have two downsides. Firstly, handling in good faith isn't the same as handling in your best interests. Secondly not all people are handling in good faith, and some collectives are subject to selection bias.
Re: Ask HN: Name one idea that changed your life
#276You've only failed if you stop trying. In my case go homeless or die is what it means to fail. edit: granted I'm not trying to split an atom or something crazy like that, but yeah. The fear of failure is always in the back of my mind.(currently means lose job/debt or generally just making an ass of myself eg. in meetings/srum/professional convo)
>> You've only failed if you stop trying.
There are more details to the above, which I've explained in my blog: https://alokgovil.com/winners-quit-strategically/
Re: Ask HN: Name one idea that changed your life
#277That every dollar you spend directly translates into pushing your financial independence further into the future.
I hadn't really reflected on becoming financially independent as a real possibility, but now I'm mentally bookkeeping spending against being locked into needing to work longer. The real revelation was when I realized that this "save 20% of your income for retirement" advice that's thrown around is totally backwards. Your income is not the yardstick, your spending is. Rather than scaling your spending to your income, spend what you need and save the rest. If you have a tech salary, that likely means you'll be financially independent much, much, earlier than traditional retirement age.
Re: Ask HN: Name one idea that changed your life
#278We don't live in reality, or even "see" it directly. The reality that we live in is firstly based on perception of actual physical reality, and then also experienced/conceptualized via a proxy , which is a model of our perceived reality (and all the objects, people, and ideas within it), all implemented by a sophisticated biological neural network of sorts. An example of how you can test this theory is to observe con…
> Even more interestingly, these "beliefs" seem to be entrenched extremely deeply in the human psyche, and almost "protected" in some way, by some sort of process.
My explanation for this is the brain has lots of mental shortcuts that help it make useful quick decisions when lacking complete information (like in survival situations), but these shortcuts break down in the modern world
E.g. "everyone else is doing it so it must be good" is a decent rule of thumb when you don't have time to look into things but you have to resist this rule of thumb when seeking scientific knowledge, which isn't natural for many.
Re: Ask HN: Name one idea that changed your life
#279My opinions are not mine and they are holding me back. Give multiple and opposing views equal respect and disdain at the same time. Treating a thought as your own, as an opinion "you hold" greatly holds you back from a great deal of valuable perspective. Of course you surely hold some world-view and gauge things from that position but try to cultivate more of these positions as if you were someone else. Don't get you…
I think you may mean "My opinions are not me", or "I am not my opinions" gives you the space to separate your identity from your thoughts, giving you the freedom to change.
Re: Ask HN: Name one idea that changed your life
#280The Growth Mindset. To briefly sum up the findings: Individuals who believe their talents can be developed (through hard work, good strategies, and input from others) have a growth mindset. They tend to achieve more than those with a more fixed mindset (those who believe their talents are innate gifts). This is because they worry less about looking smart and they put more energy into learning. Along with this goes em…
On my Twitter bio, I labeled myself an infosec noob. I've been doing it for 4 years now, but I'm definitely still a noob.
And I will always be a noob. When I stop calling myself a noob, I stop learning.