I love that FORTH is the cited example :P
The silent majority of experts (2012)
51–60 of 206 posts
Re: The silent majority of experts (2012)
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
If i was a surgeon and "held it wrong" I'd probably get sued or fired. If i was a welder and "held it wrong" I'd get a written warning, which later might end up in a termination. If i use ssh-keygen wrong in production because i did not read the documentation... then its the tools fault for not having sane defaults?
If you were a pilot and "held it wrong" you'd probably be dead, and Boeing would get away scott-free ... the first time. Somewhere between "everything is a death-trap, learn how to use it" and "this device is perfectly safe, because it cannot do anything" lies the mean we need to hit.
Not reading the available documentation for your tools is neglience either way.
Re: The silent majority of experts (2012)
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
Almost certainly if you're good at blogging, speaking, self-promotion you're not the most expert in some other field. The cases where there's a cross-over are perhaps not surprisingly rare (Raymond Chen is a good one, John Carmack) or are indirect (Linus doesn't "blog" per se but some of the mailing list emails are as good as one). And if there's not something to "verify" the writer/performer, it can get wildly out o…
Here's a comment I made a few days ago here on HN about a blog post, it may be relevant: ————— The author is relating second-hand information. That’s useful, it’s good to have people who have a skill of curating business advice and pointing us in good directions. But my first-hand advice is to recognize the difference between: Alice: “I’m making five figures a month for five hours a week reselling five products.” And…
The other huge hidden danger is the Bobs of the world can generalize, intentionally or accidentally, a situation and make it seem that anyone can be an Alice; but it may be (and Alice may openly admit if you ask) that there's only room for one Alice, and her mechanism simply will not work for anyone else.
The biggest example of this is in things that involve large amounts of luck (or are even totally luck-driven); think gambling or stock market picks or startups - the "winners" have a hard time distinguishing what they did from the luck involved, and often give too little to luck.
If the Bobs are not drawing out the luck side of things but instead amplifying the apparent skills, it can be a huge disservice, but, hey, it's usually more popular than saying "it's luck".
Re: The silent majority of experts (2012)
#54Yep. On a related note, when I was younger, I searched for advice from experts for how to develop expertise in studying and productivity on Reddit. It led to lots of highly-upvoted advice (including stuff like supplements, largely with few real benefits besides placebo), popular blogs by influencers (like Scott Young), and popular self-help books. However, the actual experts I knew in high school who later went on to…
This largely tracks with my own opinions on certain things. Mostly why moderation eventually fails and how social interaction doesn't scale well.
People doing shit don't have time for bullshit.
If you have hours to dedicate defending your pet fan theory online, you clearly aren't using those hours to do anything meaningful. And I'm not talking side-hustle-gotta-make-that-bread kind of stuff, I'm talking about just more fulfilling pursuits in general. Learning an instrument, tinkering with projects with no other goal but messing around, reading, etc.
So while you think you may have "won" the argument about whether or not Superman can beat Wolverine, the truth is the other person left because you and the discussion in general wasn't worth their time. And they don't need your validation. They find fulfillment in the stuff they do outside of the internet.
Re: The silent majority of experts (2012)
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have to wonder whether the average IQ on reddit is higher or lower than the general population average, because based on my experience there, I could see arguments for either direction.
With 50M DAU its going to be the population average, no?
There’s surely still some selection effects, eg younger (average iq scores have gone up over time), college-educated, more literate (ok this one is questionable for Reddit), and so on.
Re: The silent majority of experts (2012)
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Less in one's control, their parents were financially successful or were in competitive positions (e.g. were professors or physicians), so they may have learned these strategies from them, versus inventing them independently. As I grow older, I see a huge divide between those who have/had parental support vs those who don't/didn't. It doesn't even take financially or professionally successful parents. Many of my pe…
> Many of my peers had middle-class parents working normal jobs who just loved unconditionally + put effort forward... the difference between them and those who had less than ideal upbringings is typically vast. Do you mean their career success, or their personalities in general?
Both.
Positive upbringings helped those folks navigate everything in life better from simple chores like laundry, to relationships, to school, to careers... etc.
People are more healthy when they're in an environment that promotes emotional/educational growth vs. when they're forced into a survival mentality. Those who had the opportunity to grow in safety have an easier time socially vs. those who had to navigate turbulent childhoods.
Much of it is just trust
Re: The silent majority of experts (2012)
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Less in one's control, their parents were financially successful or were in competitive positions (e.g. were professors or physicians), so they may have learned these strategies from them, versus inventing them independently. As I grow older, I see a huge divide between those who have/had parental support vs those who don't/didn't. It doesn't even take financially or professionally successful parents. Many of my pe…
> Many of my peers had middle-class parents working normal jobs who just loved unconditionally + put effort forward... the difference between them and those who had less than ideal upbringings is typically vast. Do you mean their career success, or their personalities in general?
Not OP, and just opinion, but I've seen markedly different career and personality/friend/family success. They seem like talented happy people able to take on a wide variety of challenges and do well.
The friends with troubled upbringing often do find success in one area of life, but they seem unstable overall and often crash or stall in multiple other areas.
Re: The silent majority of experts (2012)
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
>didn't browse the internet very much I see it other way Internet allows you to discuss everything you want with various people from your industry I think it allows you to become better not only faster, but also makes you more aware of different perspectives Why wouldn't you want to do so?
The point of the article is that experts don't always hang out on the internet. There's a small cross-section of people who are truly experts at something, and also blog or discuss it in online forums. So yeah, you can talk to people from the industry online, but how do you know if their advice is worth anything?
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Re: The silent majority of experts (2012)
#59I think about this constantly while reading Hacker News. So many articles and comments by people whose level of enthusiasm doesn't match their experience. Try to voice a comment that goes against the flow of that enthusiasm and you'll be downvoted to oblivion, even if you speak with more experience and context than the masses. I'm horrified by some of the stuff I see here and feel like it's often useless to speak out…
Care to share some of the stuff you've been horrified by on here? I'd love to read more.
Re: The silent majority of experts (2012)
#60In my field (search) there is a strong strong bias towards cutting edge, machine learning, etc etc in conference talks and blogs (including my own). It's exciting to peer into the future and push the boundaries of what's possible.
Not many people are blogging about the standard, block and tackle techniques that feel 'obvious' (yet aren't quite obvious to non-experts)