201–210 of 421 posts
Summary of the college experience even today. You have to go outside the classroom to learn and do the most interesting things. But because those interesting things happen in proximity to a university campus, college is still pretty valuable.
Also relevant: “In other words, like many a grad student, I was working energetically on multiple projects that were not my thesis”
So a weird thing is happening today. When I was a kid, like Paul, I had to beg my parents to get me a computer ie. spend money on it. Once I got it, I couldn't stop using it and hacking and figuring things out. Kids these days... :) have everything, I made sure my kids have all good equipment, they have good instruction but they are kind of not interested it all. If they do something, this is more to please me, as th…
Nowadays I let my 2yo play with my some old laptop that is 100,000x more powerful than the first machine I had.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Funny because I do have the same feeling these days: that ML is a hoax. Even funnier: I do have a master's degree in ML.
Have you used speech recognition (or speech synthesis) lately? It's incredible, leaps and bounds ahead of where it was a decade ago. Not everything in ML is as rosy as the papers make it out to be, but to call it a "hoax" is going way too far.
> "How should I choose what to do? Well, how had I chosen what to work on in the past? I wrote an essay for myself to answer that question, and I was surprised how long and messy the answer turned out to be. If this surprised me, who'd lived it, then I thought perhaps it would be interesting to other people, and encouraging to those with similarly messy lives. So I wrote a more detailed version for others to read, an…
This is hilarious writing!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The world is non linear, with discrete inflection points. Some of those points are outside of your control, but some are points where you made an important decision that correctly anticipated a non linear outcome. All positive non linear outcomes take time to compound, however, hence why you can’t connect the positive dots until enough time has passed to look back.
What do you mean by non linear there?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The world is non linear, with discrete inflection points. Some of those points are outside of your control, but some are points where you made an important decision that correctly anticipated a non linear outcome. All positive non linear outcomes take time to compound, however, hence why you can’t connect the positive dots until enough time has passed to look back.
What do you mean by non linear there?
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+------------------------------------+This is a well-written essay even if it's a bit long and somewhat navel-gazing (it is, after all, written for pg himself). However, I was continuously struck by just how ridiculously privileged and serendipitous pg's early life was to the point where I just can't even relate to it. He basically meandered his way from an expensive (today) college to an even more expensive (today) grad school, then to art school becaus…
I can't help but think that PG's life story draws to it a clique of people who are convinced there's a clear-cut recipe to success and that reading PG's articles will give them that recipe.
Now let's be clear: there is such a thing as "have enough brains to utilize opportunity when it lands on your shoulder". There absolutely is! And people have been failing at life for missing them. So I am not disputing THAT part of PG's skill-set. He obviously made a very good use of his luck.
Some people have pointed at Eminem's success story as a better example. But I still disagree; Eminem was (likely still is) a genius at what he does but his success also came from influential people being present at a very niche and unknown event in a shady part of the town.
So, again, luck. His iconic song "Lose Yourself" is IMO a good illustration of the concept.
I think motivational stories about success will be much better if the successful people:
1. Make it crystal clear what background they came from;
2. Analyze how they made use of the plentiful opportunity that was thrown their way;
3. Coach people on how to maximally utilize an opportunity when it comes to you.
Especially #3 is something that I think our hustle culture could use much more material on.
So a weird thing is happening today. When I was a kid, like Paul, I had to beg my parents to get me a computer ie. spend money on it. Once I got it, I couldn't stop using it and hacking and figuring things out. Kids these days... :) have everything, I made sure my kids have all good equipment, they have good instruction but they are kind of not interested it all. If they do something, this is more to please me, as th…
I know it's a truism but I think it's worth appreciating how rebellious kids can be. At least that's how I was. Tell me I can't do something, I will be obsessed with doing it. Tell me I have to do something or I should do something, I lose all interest in it.
Or they're simply not interested in computers.
Or you can try inspiring wonder and fascination and fun around computers.
> during the first year of grad school I realized that AI, as practiced at the time, was a hoax. I had a similar realization during grad school about a lot of the popular topics at the time (early 2000s). I even used to call them "the hoaxes of computer science". Things like grid computing or formal methods of software engineering had a lot of resources behind them, but nobody was able to use the results. Instead, ve…
This happens with jobs too.. especially software jobs. Nobody wants to do software QA, want to know how to get a software engineering job when the market is tight or otherwise inaccessible... software QA.