I wouldn't say years, but it took quite a few weeks, maybe even months: The idea that the expansion universe is akin to the surface of a balloon expanding (albeit in 4D). I don't know why. It is so absurdly simple in my mind now. But when I was first told this (after naively asking where would the center of the expanding universe be), I just couldn't put my head around it, it seemed absolutely gibberish to me at that…
Ask HN: Concepts that clicked only years after you first encountered them?
901–910 of 946 posts
Re: Ask HN: Concepts that clicked only years after you first encountered them?
#902Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know exactly from what angle you're looking at this, so let me explain through trigonometry. We know that triangles may be displaced, rotated, flipped and scaled while still looking the same. We have a word for this: we say two triangles are congruent when they are the same up to these operations. This means that there is something intrinsically invariant about triangles. Can we find it? Actually yes! If the…
That's kind of what I mean. It's just a mechanical equation and that's how I understand it. They are all ratios, but is that all it is? what insight can I get from that and why do I care about its application in the workforce? when would I ever need such functions? etc...
Precomputed values in a book made things an order of magnitude easier at the job site or battlefield before computers.
Depends what you do for a living. Artists won’t. Civil engineers and artillery software programmers will every day.
Re: Ask HN: Concepts that clicked only years after you first encountered them?
#903Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sadly many professors fall victim to the Curse of Knowledge. It doesn't help they need to follow a tight schedule and intuition isn't something you can develop in a single lecture. I suppose self-study and repetition is the most likely solution. >The best math textbook (Theory of Algebra) I ever read had little sections about the person who revealed a particular subject, why they were studying it, and how the subject…
Exactly, understanding the intentions and history behind a concept is key to achieving comprehension. I've had to teach myself nearly all of the more advanced mathematical concepts I know, and I'm finally starting to reach a point where I feel I have a nice approach toward achieving an understanding: - Learn the definition - Learn the motivations and history - Peruse a few examples - Try to map the above to a brief s…
>There's pretty much no better way to ensure you'll produce students that dislike and suck at math for the rest of their lives than proceeding by mind-numbing rote memorization.
I couldn't agree more.
Re: Ask HN: Concepts that clicked only years after you first encountered them?
#904Earlier quoted context omitted.
How "upset" I got?
Here's a user telling me I'm "desperate to assuage and protect racist beliefs" because (a) I said we should avoid methods that backfire, and (b) I suggested a practical idea for reduction of racial discrimination in hiring: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34226817
Re: Ask HN: Concepts that clicked only years after you first encountered them?
#905Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You've skipped pretty much most of my argument, Well, it wasn't very good... Frankly, comparing NLP to Scientology or homeopathy is silly. > but I'll humour you nonetheless. I appreciate it. This isn't my first rodeo talking to scientific skeptics about NLP. Like I said, usually the best I can hope for it that the person I'm talking to is willing to admit they don't have any first-person experience with NLP. (They…
I just found the paper: https://doi.org/10.2478/V10059-010-0008-0 "Thirty-Five Years of Research on Neuro-Linguistic Programming. NLP Research Data Base. State of the Art or Pseudoscientific Decoration?" Polish Psychological Bulletin, 2010, vol 41 (2), 58-66 Oh, but I saw that on the paper itself the author's name has an asterix: Tomasz Witkowski* This leads to a footnote at the bottom of the first page that says: *K…
It is also worth noting that Richard Bandler's claims to hold a PhD are highly dubious. There's no record for a dissertation submitted to University of San Francisco under his name (see link below). It should go without saying, but my scepticism of someone who's PhD can't be verified to even exist, is immense. Again, being called "Doctor" without credentials is common in the S.C.A.Ms world.
https://dissexpress.proquest.com/dxweb/results.html?QryTxt=S...
Re: Ask HN: Concepts that clicked only years after you first encountered them?
#906Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ah, questioning the morality of exploiting human nature is for non profits. Got it. There is a right way and a wrong way to achieve success. Profit is not the only thing that matters in life.
how did you get that interpretation from any of this? regardless, a for-profit company should not use its runway on ideals as it won't last very long, it has to build and find ways to be known about beyond its small community. that's what this is about.
If the business suffers in the short term, so be it.
I do understand this is not a popular view in todays business world however, and it shows.
Re: Ask HN: Concepts that clicked only years after you first encountered them?
#907Earlier quoted context omitted.
I just found the paper: https://doi.org/10.2478/V10059-010-0008-0 "Thirty-Five Years of Research on Neuro-Linguistic Programming. NLP Research Data Base. State of the Art or Pseudoscientific Decoration?" Polish Psychological Bulletin, 2010, vol 41 (2), 58-66 Oh, but I saw that on the paper itself the author's name has an asterix: Tomasz Witkowski* This leads to a footnote at the bottom of the first page that says: *K…
When someone presented with overwhelming evidence to the contrary further entrenches themselves in a belief, we're no longer dealing with a matter of knowledge, but of belief. Reading your response, you're just trying to debunk overwhelming evidence, and rejecting most of it out of hand. Or rejecting it in a way that indicates you don't understand how to interpret it. There's no real point in carrying on. It is also…
(Look, from Shannon's Information Theory we have the result that the unpredictability of a message is a measure of its information content. Knowing only one piece of information about that paper: that the author is a Skeptic, I can already predict that that paper will have a negative result. There's really no information there, eh?)
Like I said, if you're willing to pick some actual scientific studies I'm willing to read them with an open mind. I'd like to get to the bottom of this little mystery. In fact, I'm going to read a bunch of these (studies that are referenced from the paper you gave, and others I can find) anyway.
Re: Ask HN: Concepts that clicked only years after you first encountered them?
#908Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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 inspire…
> Bluntly, if a male says I can't be inspired by females isn't that because they're sexist? Not necessarily. It could be, but I wouldn't attribute it to malice as much as I'd attribute it to difficulty in relating to the person. > 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? Your error in this is that you as…
I'm thinking
Re: Ask HN: Concepts that clicked only years after you first encountered them?
#909Earlier quoted context omitted.
When someone presented with overwhelming evidence to the contrary further entrenches themselves in a belief, we're no longer dealing with a matter of knowledge, but of belief. Reading your response, you're just trying to debunk overwhelming evidence, and rejecting most of it out of hand. Or rejecting it in a way that indicates you don't understand how to interpret it. There's no real point in carrying on. It is also…
But you haven't presented "overwhelming evidence". You cited a meta-study paper that was prepared by a member of a Skeptics club. It's like you're not even trying. (Look, from Shannon's Information Theory we have the result that the unpredictability of a message is a measure of its information content. Knowing only one piece of information about that paper: that the author is a Skeptic, I can already predict that tha…
And I have. Meta-reviews are considered important, effective, and valuable ways of probing the state of the literature. Dismissing it out of hand because you dislike who prepared it is fallacious.
Re: Ask HN: Concepts that clicked only years after you first encountered them?
#910Earlier quoted context omitted.
But you haven't presented "overwhelming evidence". You cited a meta-study paper that was prepared by a member of a Skeptics club. It's like you're not even trying. (Look, from Shannon's Information Theory we have the result that the unpredictability of a message is a measure of its information content. Knowing only one piece of information about that paper: that the author is a Skeptic, I can already predict that tha…
> if you're willing to pick some actual scientific studies And I have. Meta-reviews are considered important, effective, and valuable ways of probing the state of the literature. Dismissing it out of hand because you dislike who prepared it is fallacious.
Please, it's like you cited a paper called "Do Ghosts Exist?" prepared by a member of the There's No Such Thing as Ghosts club. You don't feel at least a little bit silly?
- - - -
Anyway, I'm reading the paper now.
He starts out well, with a DB of 315 articles, but then discards all but 63 of them "based on the criterion of whether the journal in which the given articles were publisher was recorded on on the Master Journal List of the Institute for Scientific Information in Philadelphia. This operation does not require justification in more detail."
Okay...
That's about 20%. Didn't you just say that "18% is statistically insignificant"?
But for the sake of discussion, let it pass: we will assume that these 63 papers are a good sample of the available information.
He goes on to select "Thirty-three empirical articles, which tested the tenets of the concept and/or the tenets-derived hypotheses."
He breaks them down into three subcategories:
> 1. Nine works supporting the NLP tenets and the tenets-derived hypotheses (27.3%).
> 2. Eighteen works non-supportive of the NLP tenets and the tenets-derived hypotheses (54.5%).
> 3. Six works with uncertain outcomes (18.2%).
Note that in the abstract the numbers for "supporting" and "uncertain" have been exchanged:
> Out of 33 studies, 18.2% show results supporting the tenets of NLP, 54.5% - results non-supportive of the NLP tenets and 27.3% brings uncertain results.
Is 27.3% statistically insignificant?
Anyway, I'll dig through these papers but I doubt I'm going to find a "smoking gun" that invalidates NLP.
As for this meta-study, it's really just Skeptic propaganda:
> My analysis leads undeniably to the statement that NLP represents pseudoscientific rubbish, which should be mothballed forever.
That doesn't really sound like an objective scientific statement does it?
What I find extremely weird and a bit concerning is where he writes:
> Here I would like to refer to the statement expressed by O’Donohue and Ferguson (2006), who propose that each type of therapy that does not have empirical supportive evidence of its effectiveness should be called experimental. They also put forward a suggestion that each case of performing such therapies without informing the clients about its experimental status should be referred to and treated as criminal activity. I fully agree with this view.
I mean, talk about gatekeeping, eh?
He wants people to be charged with a crime for not prefacing their work with his disclaimer.
He believes that NLP is nothing, yet it's somehow so dangerous that it needs a warning label? That seems irrational.
Anyway, I'm going to look through the referenced papers and see if I can figure out what's going wrong...
Cheers!