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Ask HN: How do I expand my worldview and meet smart people online?

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Re: Ask HN: How do I expand my worldview and meet smart people online?

#21

Post by lemonade5117 »

gardenfelder wrote: post #17

Interesting fact ~5 hours into this story: lemonade5117 has yet to enter the conversation. Seems to me that there really is not enough information to evaluate the query: would help to know more about his/her goals and interests.

Ah, sorry I'm probably in a different timezone. As for goals, I know having a specific goal when asking for advice is ideal, but I guess I don't really have one. I guess I'm kind of lost in life and want to expose myself to people who are smart and sort of have it figured out.

Re: Ask HN: How do I expand my worldview and meet smart people online?

#22

Post by lemonade5117 »

dredmorbius wrote: post #19

Find an area of interest or general framing question[1] and follow that. I've been online since the 1980s. I've come to feel that there's a general hierarchy of informational quality by medium. From highest to lowest: - Books. Particularly Great Books. The list at the end of Mortimer Adler's How to Read a Book is an excellent start.[2] Your library, Project Gutenberg, and the Internet Archive offer lawful access to a…

Thanks, that's very comprehensive! I'll have to try finding some good podcasts.

Re: Ask HN: How do I expand my worldview and meet smart people online?

#23

Post by lemonade5117 »

boboralice wrote: post #11

Real world meetups about subjects you're interested in will have better value than most online stuff. Read books about things that interest you, and use Goodreads as a source of inspiration for future reading material. Get off Facebook. Either learn to optimize Twitter as someone else suggested, or get off there too, because it's easy for it to become an echo chamber if you aren't smart about how you use it. I prefer…

That makes sense. Do you have any advice on finding local meetups?

Re: Ask HN: How do I expand my worldview and meet smart people online?

#24

Post by lemonade5117 »

tomjakubowski wrote: post #5

I can't tell if you're still a student at the big school, but if you are I would definitely prioritize building local friendships and maintaining them above meeting new people on the Internet. It sounds like the locals are pretty smart and would challenge you intellectually the way you'd like.

Yeah, makes sense. I'm gonna try that out. Thanks!

Re: Ask HN: How do I expand my worldview and meet smart people online?

#25

Post by cblockdude »

Until recently, this was very difficult to do. Only now with the mainstream emergence of blockchain, this has become easy. Blockchain is the smartest idea. Smart people are everyone now and accessible. You just need to sign a smart contract with them and start interacting. In no time, you will be smart too. And the good thing about blockchain is that your oppressive goverments cant control it, which means they can't stop you from becoming smart.

Re: Ask HN: How do I expand my worldview and meet smart people online?

#26

Post by cblockdude »

tony wrote: post #20

I've done this during COVID. Zoom groups. I want to share my experience: Participants in the zoom crowd are great folks. Occasionally, these zoom events could get amped up on internet banter - this could disappoint the original poster's goal of broadening their horizons. The zooms aren't a random sampling of a professional or academic field. I'll leave it at that. Also, if we're there, we're also part of that statist…

> Participants in the zoom crowd are great folks.

This dude is right. I did zooms. Many zooms. I had nothing else to do, no work, nothing. So I did zoom. Then many zooms. I am great folk. Such a great folk.

Re: Ask HN: How do I expand my worldview and meet smart people online?

#28

Post by jesterson »

Aromasin wrote: post #12
boboralice wrote: post #11

Real world meetups about subjects you're interested in will have better value than most online stuff. Read books about things that interest you, and use Goodreads as a source of inspiration for future reading material. Get off Facebook. Either learn to optimize Twitter as someone else suggested, or get off there too, because it's easy for it to become an echo chamber if you aren't smart about how you use it. I prefer…

To piggy back on the optimising twitter comment, does anyone know how to disable recommended content on Twitter? I keep getting people telling me that I'm missing out, and I've fine tuned my feed so it's a bunch of scientists and engineers who's work I'm interested in, but Twitter keeps giving me content from people they follow, or popular topics. It seems every third tweet is something I simply have zero interest in…

Last time I checked there was absolutely no way for it. They want to keep users stick to screen, no choice for it.

Re: Ask HN: How do I expand my worldview and meet smart people online?

#29

Post by jesterson »

dredmorbius wrote: post #19

Find an area of interest or general framing question[1] and follow that. I've been online since the 1980s. I've come to feel that there's a general hierarchy of informational quality by medium. From highest to lowest: - Books. Particularly Great Books. The list at the end of Mortimer Adler's How to Read a Book is an excellent start.[2] Your library, Project Gutenberg, and the Internet Archive offer lawful access to a…

Thank you! Was going to write something similar, but you have made it much better than I possibly could.

Given the incredible complexity of finding valuable information on Internet nowadays, having something like sharing resources you consume may be very useful for OP and also for everyone. This is just an idea, not sure if someone have already made it. If so, i am curious to know

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