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Ask HN: Concepts that clicked only years after you first encountered them?

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Re: Ask HN: Concepts that clicked only years after you first encountered them?

#351

Post by yieldcrv »

idiotsecant wrote: post #344
yieldcrv wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similarly this gives me pause about Ivy League MBA programs. Although a small sample size, despite their ambitions the BIPOC people I know haven’t been able to reap any professional benefits from it. Whether from access to executive roles, getting taken seriously by venture capital firms, or in their attempts to join venture capital firms. There is a level of discretion in these team forming situations that is not ex…

I am not an ivy league MBA person but my understanding of these sorts of things is that it's not the credential itself that's useful, but the connections you make in the process.

yes, all participants were aware of this, and yet the connections resulted in no improved professional access or ability to exchange time for food and shelter.

Re: Ask HN: Concepts that clicked only years after you first encountered them?

#352

Post by ryanschneider »

Calculus, even the basics like derivatives, 2nd derivatives and integration didn’t really click with me until I did some scientific computing/signal processing with SciPy and Pandas a couple years ago. Graphing the discrete versions on time series data, e.g. graphing the difference between consecutive values and seeing the derivative pop out, or a rolling sum for integration, etc finally made it all click.

Re: Ask HN: Concepts that clicked only years after you first encountered them?

#353

Post by yieldcrv »

rajin444 wrote: post #325
yieldcrv wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

most of us here have our own drive, but I’ve come to appreciate that other people are inspired by seemingly superficial things It clicked for me when I let my publicist go wild and she got me on listicles of BIPOC founders, before, we just had lots of quotes and interviews. Only people already interested in the project on its own merits were following along. After, there were lots of people that are interested in the…

> inspired by seemingly superficial things This seems similar to adding an addictive drug to food. It will certainly appeal to a lot of people, but does it add value? Getting more consumers of your product should not be the end goal if we want a healthy, high trust society. Developing a good product should be. > Only people already interested in the project on its own merits were following along Isn't this what we wa…

save these goals for your non-profit

the rest of us want revenue. there is no build it and they will come, its appealing to people's sentiments, and the people have to know its there at all.

Re: Ask HN: Concepts that clicked only years after you first encountered them?

#355

Post by quickthrower2 »

fortituded0002 wrote: post #196

1. Everyone is the main character in their own story. This manifest in all sorts of ways - from people not being there when you need them the most, from friends dying off as soon as proximity changes, to how and why get people get promoted in jobs. This isn't necessarily bad, but if you don't know how to navigate this it can be quite painful and confusing. 2. Representation matters. I knew this for a long time, but i…

What does representation mean in this context?

Re: Ask HN: Concepts that clicked only years after you first encountered them?

#356

Post by ShredKazoo »

human_person wrote: post #333
ShredKazoo wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a white guy, I'd certainly encourage you not to worry about this -- if we're talking about an upper middle class, professional-ish activity, you can be fairly sure that all those white people feel self-conscious about their group being so white and would welcome you to join them. Anyway, I'd be interested to hear more about the psychology of this. I remember when I was growing up in the 90s and 00s in California,…

I’m not sure > As a white guy, I'd certainly encourage you not to worry about this -- if we're talking about an upper middle class, professional-ish activity, you can be fairly sure that all those white people feel self-conscious about their group being so white and would welcome you to join them. Is as helpful as you may have intended. The comment was about not wanting to be the first, even if the group is welcoming…

I certainly didn't mean to invalidate their discomfort -- as I mentioned at the end, I feel the same way sometimes. I apologize if people found it invalidating.

I actually wrote the initial draft of my comment with welcomingness as sort of a background assumption in my mind, and then I thought "wait a minute, even if I'm assuming that people would be welcoming, the person reading my comment might not. and given how hostile online discussions can get, it seems safer to err on the side of emphasizing welcomingness." That still seems roughly correct to me -- I think some topics have so much hostility associated with them that whatever you're going to say about the topic, it probably makes sense to also add in a bunch of welcomingness too, just so the discussion goes well.

Re: Ask HN: Concepts that clicked only years after you first encountered them?

#357

Post by adamnemecek »

The fact that essentially all concepts in math, programming, physics etc. are just applications of fixed points which is predicated on the idea of nilpotence. Fixed points go by many names like invariance, spectra, diagonalization, embedding, braids etc.

By fixed point I mean something like the "Lawvere's fixed point theorem". https://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/Lawvere%27s+fixed+point+theore...

I have a braindump on this https://github.com/adamnemecek/adjoint

I also have a discord https://discord.gg/mr9TAhpyBW

Re: Ask HN: Concepts that clicked only years after you first encountered them?

#358

Post by tevon »

Anyone who is excels is out of their depth.

By definition if you continue to progress (in career or life), you will be doing something you have never done before. This means everyone that we look up to who appears to be on a upward trajectory is making it up as they go.

Re: Ask HN: Concepts that clicked only years after you first encountered them?

#360

Post by _huayra_ »

tezza wrote: post #208

1/2) Trusting Institutions Institutions such as Police, Universities, NHS, Scouts, MsF, Religions, Churches, YCombinator et alia have a hierarchy of internal loyalties in strict precedence: * The Staff Member * The Staff Member’s Family * The Friends of the Staff Member * The Colleagues of the Staff Member * The Group within the Institution the Staff Member belongs to * Wider Groups in the Institution * The actual po…

> How mortgage repayments change over time as you pay off some of it (YMMV)

This is a big one people buying houses recently due to FOMO don't understand: you're really not building equity the first few years because almost all of your monthly payment is going to interest. The "irrecoverable cost" of owning a home can often be higher than renting in some HCOL areas now, although I understand that people buy for more emotional reasons (e.g. not wanting to yank their family around to a new place each year to avoid being at the mercy of a bad landlord on each lease renewal).

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