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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?

#551

Post by epivosism »

Invictus0 wrote: post #491
jdkoeck wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ll bet this does not replicate, the effect of stereotype threat is notoriously overvalued. Don’t fall for junk science.

Women that dedicate their careers to chess still dramatically underperform men at the professional level. There is even a different rating level and title system for women: women earning the "women grandmaster" title need 200 fewer ELO points than the grandmaster title for men. No woman has ever won the World Chess Championship, and there are far fewer female GMs than male GMs.

There's a very interesting point in the thread below which would resolve the question - we could use chess puzzles! If there is a mismatch between performance on puzzles with live results, it would be pretty solid proof that the effect is real. It doesn't have to be full on AI.

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

#552

Post by ROTMetro »

alphydan wrote: post #347
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,…

The better question to ask yourself (you the white guy), is would you join a group [insert som hobby like hiking] composed 100% of Cholitas. If yes, are you sure? if not, why not? *Not singling out Cholitas, but it's a group that may feel "other" to you.

Heck yes. But I'm weird that way. It took me until I was in my 40s to realize the majority of women I had dated would be defined as black in most people's eyes. I hadn't even thought about race or defining anyone. I'm super white with blue eyes but my dad has what my mom termed a 'Mediterranean complexion' and my grandma was even 'more Mediterranean' with 'kinky' hair (she wasn't being racist just trying to point something out to me that I failed to understand, even after her pointing them out). My poor mom. She tried to explain my grandparents didn't approve of my dad because he was different. I was like 'oh, because of his long hair'. My mom gave up at that point.

I feel bad for the woman who kept pointing out she was from Oakland and I kept just treating her like the Santa Cruz surf betties I had dated before not realizing what she was hinting at or that I might be taking her out of her comfort zone. I like to think the date we boogie boarded all day then ate pizza in the back of my truck while the porpoises swam by (learn their schedule Las Selva/Aptos peeps, 'running into' porpoises at the beach adds a little extra magic to a date for valleys not used to it) was good and not too uncomfortable.

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

#553

Post by chottocharaii »

whimsicalism wrote: post #550
geocrasher wrote: post #531

Narcissism. My grandmother was a terrible narcissist. I loved her dearly and she had a lot of wonderful qualities, but The quality that stood out the most, sadly, was narcissism. My mother was also a narcissist to a somewhat lesser degree. It didn't occur to me that I too was a narcissist until I was about 35 years old. It took waking up in the corner of the living room in my friends one bedroom apartment Early one m…

I find it interesting when people come from a long family line of narcissists (not uncommon) that they often attribute it to a cycle of being raised by a narcissist making you into a narcissist. it seems more likely that there is a genetic/biological basis for this personality trait

or it could be a biological disposition to developing it as a response to the trauma of being raised by a narcissist

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

#554

Post by satvikpendem »

opportune wrote: post #548
satvikpendem wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. When I was doing sales, I would follow up with people seven times before they replied. I used to feel bad until I realized that it worked, then I just automated that part and didn't think about it further, the leads once they replied were sent to my CRM where I could then set them up on a call or some other action.

This comment makes my LinkedIn make a lot more sense

Yes, I used to use some LinkedIn sales tools that had automated follow ups. Same with recruiter emails, if you think they're handcrafting each email, I have bad news for you. It's all templated, they use your first name and maybe put some effort into the intro using your specific company and experience, but generally, the rest of the intro email and the subsequent emails are all automated.

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

#555

Post by therealdrag0 »

satvikpendem wrote: post #398
machina_ex_deus wrote: post #220

Learning history / literature in school is important. I was a total STEM math nerd in school. I used to frequently complain how I don't get what's the point of it, or how it's a waste of time and I'm learning nothing. I still think the emphasis of school was off, but I get the point of it now. Stories are like code for humans. You can't tell someone what it means to be good or bad, or to give them a course in philoso…

Regarding literature, I'll give an opposite opinion. Being forced to read the classics in school led me to not caring about them at all because I just couldn't relate at all, I had not had the requisite life experience for them to make an impact on me. Now, being an adult and having the life experience, reading them again makes me think more deeply and I can actually relate. So I think in school, we actually shouldn'…

The vast majority of adults read almost 0 books. I think there’s some value in forcing classic cultural capital when we can even if it’s lost on some.

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

#556

Post by ipnon »

MichaelDickens wrote: post #471

What an algebra equation is. I could solve linear equations, quadratic equations, and systems of equations by adding/subtracting/multiplying/dividing both sides of the equation and by adding two equations together. But I didn't know why you were allowed to do any of those things, or what else might be allowed. Are you allowed to square both sides? Raise both sides to a power? It wasn't until maybe my third year of al…

It was long after I graduated and passed symbolic logic that I realized a proof is the “solution” of an equation using logical operators instead of algebraic ones. Proof writing then becomes following branches on the tree of textbook knowledge to new leaves. I envy those who grok this when they’re kids.

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

#557

Post by therealdrag0 »

lumb63 wrote: post #510
satvikpendem wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding literature, I'll give an opposite opinion. Being forced to read the classics in school led me to not caring about them at all because I just couldn't relate at all, I had not had the requisite life experience for them to make an impact on me. Now, being an adult and having the life experience, reading them again makes me think more deeply and I can actually relate. So I think in school, we actually shouldn'…

Not only this, but also the impact having to read something has on enjoyment. There are books like To Kill A Mockingbird that I didn’t care for in high school simply because I had to read it. When I revisited it years later of my own volition, I enjoyed it greatly.

So? Many others do enjoy reading even if for school. Should we stop teaching math cuz kids don’t like it in the hopes they’ll teach themselves as adults? School will never be all things to all kids.

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

#558

Post by pbhjpbhj »

PartiallyTyped wrote: post #432
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…

That reads like a very condescending and cynical response. People enjoy representation, imho, because it helps them see that they are not alone, that the deck isn’t stacked against them, and so on. It also helps in removing prejudice against certain groups of people.

>it helps them see that they are not alone //

Do they have to consider separation of humans by characteristics to be important in order to get you that position where they feel alone with other humans? Bluntly, if a male says I can't be inspired by females isn't that because they're sexist?

It seems extraordinarily damaging to society to say to people, as many seem to 'here are the people you're allowed to be inspired by: they're superficially similar to you', at opposed to saying 'Payne-Gaposhkin asked the same question as you, see you're alike as people' (despite maybe being of different sex, race, nationality, era, class, wealth, etc.).

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

#559

Post by ipnon »

rolenthedeep wrote: post #110

It took me an embarrassing amount of time to fully grok what object oriented programming really means. It's one thing to have someone tell you what an object is, but it's another thing entirely to build a fully object oriented system. I remember what made it click: I was designing an animation system, which had a bunch of different interdependent moving parts. Once I started treating each part like an object and lett…

An object is a function closed over its variable default arguments.

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

#560

Post by ipnon »

whalesalad wrote: post #418

We are all just children. As kids we always want to be adults but then we become adults and ultimately everyone around us is just a child who’s been on the earth longer.

I will die knowing a little about programming computers and not much else. Over time this has slowly become acceptable to me.
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