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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?

#751

Post by closeparen »

Izkata wrote: post #602
tra3 wrote: post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen tests like that ("has the mock been called")... and in general I've felt that they were kinda useless. Thinking about the original TDD approach -- red, green, repeat maybe it's not that bad? I prefer your approach, where you actually verify the state change. But in the absence of that, I wouldn't mind the "call the mock" approach. At least it does change some of the contract?

I would say it's worse than no test, because it discourages refactoring. Any alterations would make the test fail, even if it still does what it's supposed to do.

It’s better than no test because it makes the metric go up, and as we all know, virtuous and rational engineering practice is about recognizing that metrics are the objective truth about The Good and anything else is just your opinion. /s

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

#752

Post by PartiallyTyped »

jdkoeck wrote: post #442
PartiallyTyped wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are some interesting studies about girls and women playing chess. When blind, the two sexes perform on average about the same, but when they know the gender of their opponent, girls and women underperform. It is hypothesised that the reason behind this is because chess is a boys’ club, so to speak, and thus there is not a lot of representation. Absence of representation means that it may seem that you are the o…

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

This reads needlessly aggressive, and the accompanied downvotes seem unjustified.

In addition to the other studies published by Wiley, I have two more:

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0956797620924051

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0956797617736887

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

#753

Post by geocrasher »

aexer0e wrote: post #726
runald wrote: post #662

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting to read that you slowly shift the narrative from accepting your faults to making excuses to blame externalities, like inherited narcissism and ADHD. Look the word up, it's essentially an umbrella term that pretty much describes anything that can be considered negative, almost to the point that it's meaningless, except as a convenient tool to antagonize people. Selfishness and self-admiration is spect…

I don't think he was trying to justify or excuse his way out of his bad qualities in the second part; It felt more like he was pinpointing the reason. I'd say it's okay for people to give reasons for bad actions as long as they they still admit to wrongdoing and don't use that reason as an excuse for it being okay.

Indeed. It wasn't justification any more than Root Cause Analysis is making excuses for a systems failure.

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

#754

Post by geocrasher »

electrondood wrote: post #680
chottocharaii wrote: post #553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I've come to believe that a deep childhood wound (parental divorce, neglect, abuse, or being adopted, etc.) predisposes one to become a narcissist when combined with the message that you are special, different from others, etc. Steve Jobs, for example. He wasn't as malevolent as Donald Trump, but both have both factors: the childhood trauma + the message that they were special. I have several acquaintances who are na…

   I've come to believe that a deep childhood wound (parental divorce, neglect, abuse, or being adopted, etc.) predisposes one to become a narcissist when combined with the message that you are special, different from others, etc.
You just described my childhood.

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

#755

Post by PartiallyTyped »

bee_rider wrote: post #583
zeroonetwothree wrote: post #568

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely the burden of proof should be on the side making the claim?

I’ve in general grown somewhat averse to the “burden of proof points in some direction” line of thinking. They are both making claims. (And I think usually most people are making some sort of claim, unless they are just nitpicking). One is claiming that they remember a study — pretty vague, and easily proven (as far as we can tell at least) by just showing us any study. The other is claiming that that study doesn’t r…

I can offer [1-3] in support of my position.

[1] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/ejsp.440

[2] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0956797620924051

[3] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0956797617736887

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

#756

Post by rodamaral »

PUSH_AX wrote: post #711
lamontcg wrote: post #141

Big bang didn't happen in a single point in our space-time like a firecracker, it happened everywhere and was just a uniformly much hotter and denser universe that didn't really explode into anything, but space-time just expanded to make the universe less dense.

If “everywhere” is an infinitesimal point, is there much difference?

Everywhere was not an infinitesimal point, if the present Universe is infinite (as it seems to be). In this case, the Universe was already infinite at the very first meaningful instant of time.

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

#757

Post by dgwight »

alexmolas wrote: post #457

Social constructs aren't less real than other tangible concepts. For instance, I used to complain a lot about the non-sense that's to wear a tuxedo in weddings. I was the typical kid saying that I would like to go wearing my best sweatpants to weddings, and that probably my sweatpants are more expensive than some of the tuxedos there. Then, I matured and realized that what we wear have a meaning, wether we like it or…

What kind of sweatpants are more expensive than a tuxedo??

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

#758

Post by chrisco255 »

fortituded0002 wrote: post #613
chrisco255 wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For #2, I would alter this to say: connections matter. We are more likely to pursue careers or interests if we know someone (and are friends with them or related to them) that is interested in the same thing or has had experience in the same thing.

That doesn't ring true for me. I was already pursuing careers and interests that my friends were pursuing. That didn't change anything for me mostly because my friends came from a very different background than me. It also doesn't solve issues like my old boss who opted not to have children because she wanted to move up the corporate ladder at a FAANG company. She said that there was no mental model on how to navigat…

For me, I didn't become a software developer until my late 20s, because I was largely intimidated by it, despite being relatively geeky and tech oriented as a teen. There was no one in my small town I knew that went on to become a software dev. And I tended to place devs on a pedestal in my own head, about how smart they were or whatever. I definitely had the imposter syndrome in the first few years of my career. Working my way through community college then onto a top tier computer science university, and then participating in a startup where I got to live in Silicon Valley for a while, I learned that a lot of people in the industry aren't exceptional geniuses. Having access to that network of people in Silicon Valley though, especially at the time (less important nowadays I would argue), was crucial to so many people's success at getting good advice, using the right technologies and business tactics, getting positions and raising capital.

There's an old piece of advice I remember hearing once that for almost any intractable problem or area of concern in your life, the answer can usually be found by meeting more people. If you actively work towards meeting people that know the thing you want to know or have experience in the thing you want to learn or be better at, you'll eventually meet them and unlock that piece of wisdom or personal connection that can get you where you need to go.

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

#759

Post by _dain_ »

berniedurfee wrote: post #749

Leg drive when bench pressing. The idea that anything you could do with your legs could possibly help drive the bar upward was always ridiculous. Many, many years later, I finally found the right combination of articles and videos where it finally made total sense. Instant improvement and I wished I would have understood it sooner. The problem is really the name, which leads to a particular mental image, which is inc…

Do you have links to those articles/videos?

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

#760

Post by whynaut »

493579620678 wrote: post #734
DrewADesign wrote: post #654

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "talk about race less" (as a way to treat people more equally, and reduce discrimination) seems like a reasonable hypothesis to test. This was the status quo for a very long time. Mentioning people's race was like mentioning people's weight. It didn't work. > I'm also not convinced that what we're doing now is working better than what was done in the 90s and 00s. The 2005 study "Are Greg and Emily More Employable T…

What makes you think talking more about race works any better or should be considered to be "social progress" rather than the opposite? Would that study have better results if done today? I'm not American, but I don't see why you are so sure today's America is not closer to the Jim Crow Era than 2005 was. I'm a black person who grew up in Sweden in the 00s and early 10s, and I'm very glad race was never relevant or t…

You didn't grow up in America, you grew up in Sweden. I don't think any further explanation is required.
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