521–530 of 839 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thank you for that Lincoln quote. I went to a very diverse University (Upstream, Red Team) and one of the hunches I've walked away with is that at the core of prejudice is a missing friend on the other side.
> Upstream, Red Team Forgive my ignorance, what does this mean in this context?
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…
If you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room. I am not one tenth as talented as the people I work with on a daily basis. That they give me the time of day I am grateful for. It's what keeps me coming back.
I’m actually really relieved when the smartest person in the room (their words) leaves. We can have fun, drink beer, and share war stories without feeling judged by peers who haven’t spent enough time in self reflection.
But for the sake of discussion, let's assume they actually are the smartest person in the room. Unfortunately having that disctinction sometimes means the same person is also the most arrogant person in the room. And that's very unfortunate.
I have had the good fortune to be employed at multiple companies where I worked with some very smart people. I almost all of those cases, the smart people I worked with were easy to talk to, generous with their time, and happy to help me pick up new things, and think about things I might not have otherwise.
If you're very smart, please be one of those kind of people. You'll be happier, you can help make others around you better, and the world will be a better place because of it.
Like in the rest of life, what matters most is what you do with what you've got.
- There's a certain fidelity to any memory which you just can't get beyond, and the vast majority of memories are nowhere near that.
- Our memories warp and decay with time.
- Even our most logical thought processes have a really hard time grasping provable things like the Monty Hall problem and exponential growth.
- Cognitive biases are everywhere.
A decade of success against steep odds later, I ran into the high school teacher who I idolized and who helped me actually achieve something. Most teachers tolerated me or insulated the rest of the classroom from me. But he put in the effort to get me engaged with something that got me to sit down and try. I was excited to show him what his work had helped me accomplish. He had two things to share with me: 1. He does…
"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…
I'm at a big slow non-tech corp and as much as I would prefer "move fast and break things," I can't see it working here. "Move fast" becomes "hurry up and wait" as you end up being dependent on another group's input (10-20 people total get involved, 3-10 meetings) to move forward on something. You end up trying to over-plan because it lets you schedule things to happen in parallel. Everything has to be a huge depth f…
“Move fast and break things.” wasn’t advice given to every individual at every company. It won’t work if you’re the only person doing it. It’s the mantra from the top down for the whole company.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Dude, sucking at something is the first step towards being sorta good at something." -- Jake the Dog
When I was learning to play the game Go, someone told me that there's some old advice about "losing your first 100 games as quickly as possible". That's stuck with me. Another one is (and I don't even know if it's 100% true, but I don't much care) that a common housefly will change its path if it runs into a window more than twice. I strive to be better than a common house fly.
Spaced repetition. It's a method of learning where you only get a reminder of material when you're about to forget it. I've found a way to use spaced repetition to self-learn maths without forgetting processes between obsessive cycles. I memorize names, birthdays, dates, locations, and anything else I want to remember much easier than before because of it. https://www.gwern.net/Spaced-repetition
Anki[0] is great for this, and it's free. [0]: https://apps.ankiweb.net/
The 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…
You could also say that geniuses are made, not born. There is a wonderful book/interview with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A1szl%C3%B3_Polg%C3%A1r that explores this.