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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?

#821

Post by sn9 »

wellthisisgreat wrote: post #214
samhuk wrote: post #205

Computer networks. For years I was dumbfounded how IP addresses, VPN, ports, etc, all worked and tied together. Then, when I was interning as a software developer a fair while ago, a colleague drew the analogy of "IP address" = house on street, "port" = something you ask for when you knock on the door of a house. Then it all just clicked. I still remember that day all these years later. Other notable mentions, in no…

> Then, when I was interning as a software developer a fair while ago, a colleague drew the analogy of "IP address" = house on street, "port" = something you ask for when you knock on the door of a house. Hey thanks for sharing! Can you maybe expand on this in any form? I'd love to get that kind of analogy. Maybe you have a blog post about it? That'd be amazing!

One of the canonical computer networking texts, Kurose and Ross's Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach, is chock-full of these sorts of analogies and metaphors.

It's very readable.

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

#822

Post by shrimpx »

dehrmann wrote: post #425
shrimpx wrote: post #342

I studied functional programming and I took terms like "expression", "evaluation", and "value" for granted until it clicked that these terms have intuitive meaning when interpreted in colloquial/human terms. - Expression as in someone expressing themselves, a tentative gesture. - Evaluation as in scrutinizing something to learn what it's really about. - Value as in "valuable". We don't know if an expression is valuab…

Have you ever studied compilers? You'll gets a good idea of these concepts from a toy compiler for an imperative language.

Yeah I've built a compiler and several interpreters in an academic context. I'd appreciate any concrete suggestions for further playing/learning.

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

#823

Post by ianai »

itsmemattchung wrote: post #813
ianai wrote: post #730

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve straight up had to write essays in Excel before to break writers block. Absolute writing by outline.

I'd be interested in seeing an example of your writing process, using Excel as a way to break writer's block.

This was decades ago. But basically take which ever paragraph format intended and break it out into individual cells. So label one cell “thesis” then “point 1” etc. Then string them together in output. It was probably after being up all day and night to help explain the need for that. It did help identify points that needed reinforcement though, “I think.”

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

#824

Post by garfieldnate »

BuckRogers wrote: post #658
ShredKazoo wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the colorblindness part, I think my core objection to the cultural changes which have occurred since I was a kid is not to increased awareness of biases per se, but rather this phenomenon: https://ncase.itch.io/wbwwb My feeling is that the best way to reduce subconscious bias is to have good race relations. And the best way to have good race relations is to have more positive interactions than negative interactio…

Irony is heavy there, unintentional double entendre of sorts. Mexicans barely recognize or care about the 5th of May. That’s an American Chicano celebration for the most part. Mexicans kind of laugh about its importance in the US. I say this from Mexico, sitting next to my Mexican wife and her mother.

To loop this back to OP, "US Mexicans" are different from "Mexico Mexicans" is something I didn't realize until my adult life. They have their own way of speaking, their own foods, and a more recent immigrant background as a minority, which has a huge affect sociologically. That doesn't make their particular cultural enclave less important, but it is an interesting observation. American Italians are another great example of this, though their immigration ended much longer ago.

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

#825

Post by pstuart »

flippinburgers wrote: post #693
pstuart wrote: post #669

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be clear, are you saying that white people are supposed to feel bad for being white because of "bad things" done by white people?

That is the underlying tone that comes across to me whenever these subjects come up. Effectively pushing against the idea makes one a "racist" or a "white supremacist" as far as I can tell. I don't know how to respond to that kind of labeling because I don't find myself disliking people because of something as superficial as their skin color.

> Effectively pushing against the idea makes one a "racist" or a "white supremacist" as far as I can tell.

Your wording is a wee bit vague. There's nothing wrong about pushing back on the notion that if one is white than one is guilty of crimes committed in the name of white superiority (because that's actually racist too).

But it also doesn't discount the fact that racism is still very much a problem.

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

#826

Post by dinkumthinkum »

dang wrote: post #797
dinkumthinkum wrote: post #519

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t really care about this one or the other but you’re taking about this thing exactly the way cultists do. It doesn’t lend it any credence. Why would the “evil scientists” be so against your ideology, specifically? Academics publish papers on all kinds of things. This is the same type of stuff of Gene Ray or flat-Earthers etc.

Please don't cross into personal attack or name-calling. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

What name-calling did I do? I said it is how cultists behave.

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

#827

Post by fortituded0002 »

nine_k wrote: post #665
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…

> because I just didn't see anyone like me there To me, that would be the other way around: a chance to stand out and be one of a kind, act in a way nobody else had acted before, and reap the benefits of being unique, or the first at least. (Seeing this as exciting or frightening probably depends on your level of sociopathy.)

> To me, that would be the other way around: a chance to stand out and be one of a kind, act in a way nobody else had acted before, and reap the benefits of being unique, or the first at least

This is a great attitude to have. I know that not everyone has this ability (yet) to function this way, but it really should be the goal of how to operate.

For me, it took me years to get there. Variety of reasons, but I realized much later in life that I was still carrying around traumas of being targeted in public by random strangers at a young age just by being out in public (yes, just walking down the street). That sort of stuff can erode psychological safety that we bring with us and unknown situations can cause us to react rather than respond. This is one of the reasons I think representation matters. Not just that it creates a mental model of what's possible, but proof (hopefully) that it's also safe and allowed.

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

#828

Post by dinkumthinkum »

bennysonething wrote: post #707
dinkumthinkum wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know this just your example but I think it demonstrates the larger issue with victim culture. Cinco de Mayo is not actually a very important holiday in Mexico. I agree that it’s not good to turn everything into a negative interaction but it’s not clear to me that having “cultural appropriation” as a top of mind issue is a very healthy thing either.

Cultural appropriation is nonsense. Probably most of what we are is a result of cross-pollination of cultures. Who gets to decide who belongs to one group or another?

I think they are called Progressives.

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

#829

Post by mikrl »

btown wrote: post #671
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…

> Everyone is the main character in their own story For those with anxiety, one of the best pieces of advice I ever received (that also took me years to internalize!) was the corollary to this: nobody is thinking about you in a critical way, at the level that you are criticizing yourself, because they are their own main character. Which is incredibly freeing, because the anxious person’s assumption that one embarrass…

>nobody is thinking about you in a critical way, at the level that you are criticizing yourself

I think there are shades of this, which is to say the level of judgement can vary.

I feel that in a smaller city my social anxiety is not as strong as when I’m in a larger city.

In larger cities, I feel much more evaluated and judged ie eyes on me looking at my clothes, checking me out, etc despite being a much more detached and impersonal environment than smaller cities where I just feel ignored. Maybe it’s just more people around putting me more on edge.

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

#830

Post by lamontcg »

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…

> 3. Rules in life are just constructs that we as humans have created.

Corollary to this is that human rules aren't like programming rules and that the words that make up the rules get interpreted by a human.

One thing that this means is that you can't "hack" a human rule by picking the semantic meaning of a word which works best for you. You have to actually convince the arbiter of that rule that they agree with your meaning. If they don't, and they have a hundred years of legal ruling behind them that they've read and you haven't, then you're screwed.

And good human rules usually do have exceptions to them ("yelling fire in a crowded theater" being the most well understood). This is also why "the exception that proves the rule" is not a stupid saying.

And this is a feature and not a bug. The worst rules we generate are usually the ones that require the human arbiter to be rigid and mechanical. That tends to produce injustices like "three strikes you're out" and "mandatory minimum sentencing" (or any attempt to make the handball rule in soccer/football be objective and just winds up making it worse).

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