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The silent majority of experts (2012)

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Re: The silent majority of experts (2012)

#161

Post by dirkt »

amself wrote: post #119
fleddr wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Horrified is a bit strong, but you have a point. There's a few themes that are strongly popular or unpopular by some type of community consensus. In those cases, it doesn't seem to matter what you have to say as minds are already made up. Another interesting effect I experienced is regarding expert credibility. When I found this place, I was impressed. I figured the world's top engineers are posting. I see them writi…

What motivates people to make up nonsense?

They don't realise they don't understand it, and firmly believe in the nonsense they make up.

Re: The silent majority of experts (2012)

#162

Post by kettleballroll »

random-human wrote: post #104
peterangular wrote: post #22

Earlier 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…

>> As I grow older, I see a huge divide between those who have/had parental support vs those who don't/didn't. This really gets lost in the traditional nuclear family argument. From personal experience, having both biological parents in the same house doesn't mean a healthy family environment, and no amount of moralizing is going to wish it into being. Also overlooked is the impact one can have through simple acts of…

> Didn't know it then, and doubt that teacher has any idea, but it changed the course of my life.

Reach out to him and let him know. It's these kinds of feedback that can really, really make a person's day, and it's what every engaged teacher dreams of/works for.

Re: The silent majority of experts (2012)

#163

Post by eru »

peterangular wrote: post #22
insightcheck wrote: post #6

Yep. 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…

> 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…

Btw, your observations are perfectly compatible with parental support not actually doing anything for you, and everything being genetic.

The kind of parents who are organised enough to give you support, or probably also the kind of people who give their kids the genes to be organised and productive.

It's still a lottery in either case.

Re: The silent majority of experts (2012)

#164

Post by friendzis »

maxk42 wrote: post #25

I 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…

I do sincerely miss the Webshit Weekly. Yes, their comments were snarky and contrarian in nature, but really helped bring some balance to the herd consensus

Re: The silent majority of experts (2012)

#165

Post by watwut »

jollybean wrote: post #156
carbonguy wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I will be[t] $1000 immediately that kid will do well without knowing a single other thing about that family or situation. I'd take the other side of that bet; in my experience, a parent who still feels the need to take on their adult child's domestic labor likely hasn't prepared them well for independence in other respects, such as managing their own education well enough to get good grades in university classes.

Helping a kid through exams is not 'doing their domestic labour' for god sakes.

It actually very practically is. Also, doing your laundry is not the kind of work nor time investment that will make you fail exams.

Re: The silent majority of experts (2012)

#166

Post by _blu »

eru wrote: post #163
peterangular wrote: post #22

Earlier 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…

Btw, your observations are perfectly compatible with parental support not actually doing anything for you, and everything being genetic. The kind of parents who are organised enough to give you support, or probably also the kind of people who give their kids the genes to be organised and productive. It's still a lottery in either case.

That's not actually true. If you look at personality tests based on Big 5/Neo-Pi, which are the most accepted in psychology, scores on conscientiousness and the underlying factors like "order" can be completely opposite to the parents

Re: The silent majority of experts (2012)

#167

Post by annyeonghada »

jollybean wrote: post #156
carbonguy wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I will be[t] $1000 immediately that kid will do well without knowing a single other thing about that family or situation. I'd take the other side of that bet; in my experience, a parent who still feels the need to take on their adult child's domestic labor likely hasn't prepared them well for independence in other respects, such as managing their own education well enough to get good grades in university classes.

Helping a kid through exams is not 'doing their domestic labour' for god sakes.

The Hacker News ethos is "independence for independence sake" and receiving any kind of help (helping with laundry during exam = domestic "labour", lol) is a sign of moral failing.

Re: The silent majority of experts (2012)

#168

Post by annyeonghada »

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #155
LAC-Tech wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. I think it's definitely a starting handicap, no doubt about it. But I'd be very wary in telling those people - if any are reading this - that they're just not going to be successful. Without getting too touchy…

> But I'd be very wary in telling those people - if any are reading this - that they're just not going to be successful. If they're reading this, they're already the type of person trying to find success. It's important to remember that a lot of these results about families and finances are _statistical_. There are a myriad of other factors, whether known or not, that lead to success and anyone reading this who think…

>by being excited and interested in trying to get out of my circumstances.

There are a lot of people who are "excited and interested" and never amount to anything because of the above mentioned "circumstances" that you were able to overcome, given a series of factors: natural predisposition, hard work, luck, gravity of the initial conditions and so on. Textbook survivorship bias.

Re: The silent majority of experts (2012)

#169

Post by annyeonghada »

_blu wrote: post #166
eru wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Btw, your observations are perfectly compatible with parental support not actually doing anything for you, and everything being genetic. The kind of parents who are organised enough to give you support, or probably also the kind of people who give their kids the genes to be organised and productive. It's still a lottery in either case.

That's not actually true. If you look at personality tests based on Big 5/Neo-Pi, which are the most accepted in psychology, scores on conscientiousness and the underlying factors like "order" can be completely opposite to the parents

>can be

Yes, "can". Because we are not clones of our parents. It doesn't mean that conscientiousness hasn't something like 60-80%of hereditability.

Re: The silent majority of experts (2012)

#170

Post by Beltalowda »

maxk42 wrote: post #25

I 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…

> I think about this constantly while reading Hacker News. So many articles and comments by people whose level of enthusiasm doesn't match their experience.

Years ago I attended a small code conference in my city; just a general "programmers hang out and give talks type of thing".

Someone gave a presentation about Scala (I think it was Scala anyway); it was a general introduction explaining the semantics, ideas, syntax, etc. At the end someone asked a question: "In our experience [some practical problem they encountered, I forgot what exactly], how do you deal with this"?

"Oh, we haven't really used Scala in production, I just learned it; I don't really know".

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