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Ask HN: Slow thinkers, how do you compensate for your lack of quick-wittedness?

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Re: Ask HN: Slow thinkers, how do you compensate for your lack of quick-wittedness?

#231

Post by nostrademons »

dijit wrote: post #38

This is something that's easy to have an opinion on so you're going to get buried. I'll do my best to make a high-signal comment here, but it will be drowned by all the other replies, which also likely touch on these points. First, "slow-thinking" is really just a different way of expressing your thinking and you should begin by leaning into it rather than leaning away. Take time, allow yourself to pause to collect y…

> Second, as a person who is generally regarded as quick-witted and sharp, most of that sharpness comes from either having a few pre-known responses to ideas or anxiously revising situations in my head ahead of time. This is, generally, a bad thing because it means I have made decisions on how I will respond to things without all of the information (as some will come over during conversation).

I'd challenge that. I think that being both quick and sharp comes from having an accurate mental model of what kind of information is important for the decision. When new information comes in, you don't discount it, but you have an intuitive feel for how much it should affect your priors.

For example, say that your team works on a minor page of a major tech product, say something that only gets 0.1% of traffic. Your TL reports back that a change they made to an ads widget on the page drops conversions by 20%. The change was done in service of a visual design consistency effort across the company. Normally a drop in conversions by 20% would be an immediate no-go, but knowing that the page only gets 0.1% of traffic, you can run the math and figure this is a 0.02% decrease in revenue, almost imperceptible.

Now imagine that the news was that 3 other key products in the company are dropping the visual consistency effort. The right move here is probably to cancel the project, because if you go ahead with it but others don't, you actually make the consistency worse. You can't know that without knowing the context and reasoning behind the initial decision. Normally, when an unrelated product cancels a project, it doesn't matter to you.

Re: Ask HN: Slow thinkers, how do you compensate for your lack of quick-wittedness?

#232

Post by bigfont »

jrflowers wrote: post #223
bigfont wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like the diagnosis marked a point of positive transformation. Before the diagnosis, your daughter attributed her math challenges to global stupidity and laziness. After the diagnosis, she attributed it to a specific difficulty with math. That reframing does sound healthy and helpful. It also sounds like the diagnosis helped you accept the situation and adapt your teaching modality. Certainly, funding for tr…

> Quite the contrary, though, I meant to express that yes, diagnostic labels can bring positive results This makes sense. By saying: >Why bother? You were describing how helpful a diagnosis can be.

By saying why bother, I meant to discourage diagnosis, while acknowledging its benefits and costs.

Re: Ask HN: Slow thinkers, how do you compensate for your lack of quick-wittedness?

#233

Post by bluGill »

digging wrote: post #228
bluGill wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But then he shouldn't have granted an interview in the first place. He should also expect that because he isn't self promoting like that he is soon passed over for piano playing positions (despite how good he may otherwise be) and has to find a non-playing job (teaching is common). His current job requires him to be good at interviews. If he wants to keep this job he needs to get good at it fast - it may already be t…

> His current job requires him to be good at interviews I see. I had no idea that was a requirement of being a professional pianist. This all read as incredibly pointless with me thinking that interviews were a side thing for a pianist.

Many people fail to understand thair true job. the real job in cases like this is to promote the show. That means interviews or other activities. Talent playing is a requirement of course, but there is plenty of talent around.

Re: Ask HN: Slow thinkers, how do you compensate for your lack of quick-wittedness?

#234

Post by jrflowers »

bigfont wrote: post #232
jrflowers wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Quite the contrary, though, I meant to express that yes, diagnostic labels can bring positive results This makes sense. By saying: >Why bother? You were describing how helpful a diagnosis can be.

By saying why bother, I meant to discourage diagnosis, while acknowledging its benefits and costs.

Exactly. Diagnosis is a beneficial thing that shouldn’t happen, a straightforward and common sense position to take

Re: Ask HN: Slow thinkers, how do you compensate for your lack of quick-wittedness?

#235

Post by sudosysgen »

cromulent wrote: post #84
annie_muss wrote: post #22

I have taken a properly administered IQ test. I scored 135 in one area and 89 in another. My main issue is I have very poor working memory. Luckily, we have technology to compensate for our deficiencies. * I write everything down on calendars, to do lists, planners etc. * I have a smart speaker in every room so I can capture pieces of information as soon as I know about them. * I use many different kinds of timers to…

> I have taken a properly administered IQ test. I scored 135 in one area and 89 in another. My main issue is I have very poor working memory. This correlates with ADHD.

ADHD is also consistent with lower processing speed, perhaps even moreso than working memory. See for example : https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5610226/#:~:tex... and

Re: Ask HN: Slow thinkers, how do you compensate for your lack of quick-wittedness?

#236

Post by bigfont »

jrflowers wrote: post #234
bigfont wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By saying why bother, I meant to discourage diagnosis, while acknowledging its benefits and costs.

Exactly. Diagnosis is a beneficial thing that shouldn’t happen, a straightforward and common sense position to take

I agree it isn't straightforward.

Some things can lead to benefits, without themselves being beneficial.

In psychology, diagnosis is sometimes like that. It can lead to treatment, accommodation, and funding, but the diagnosis on its own may not be beneficial, may cause harm through stigma, and may not be necessary to access the benefits.

The alternative: when possible, provide the benefits without labeling the person as disordered.

Re: Ask HN: Slow thinkers, how do you compensate for your lack of quick-wittedness?

#237

Post by mncharity »

For the quick-witted, perhaps learn these skills as well? Not just to be able to coach others, but to degrade more gracefully, be it short-term not-at-your-bestness, or long-term age-related decline. I've been struck by elderly with accumulated rich tooling to fall back on (eg, written systems to supplement declining memory) and degrading gracefully, versus not, and not.

Re: Ask HN: Slow thinkers, how do you compensate for your lack of quick-wittedness?

#238

Post by Leftium »

Xcelerate wrote: post #54

As other commenters have mentioned, I’ve noticed that people generally tend to fall into one of two groups: those who think out loud and those who process internally. (And I don’t know if it’s a coincidence or not, but almost all of the managers I have had in my career have been the former.) I tend to think internally, and while I usually have a clear vision in my head of how a system works, if I try to translate tha…

> my brain defaults to looking for flaws in arguments rather than reasons to support them

May be due to how reasoning is a social activity humans evolved to save time and cognitive load via division of labor.

1. An individual's reasoning workload is reduced by forming a bias. The gaps left by this bias can be filled with others' reasoning. For example if Gail focuses on why a business idea is good and Bob focuses on why that same idea is bad, they reduced the total amount of reasoning required by 50%. 2. If strong reasons are always prepared for everything, effort is wasted when others are easy to convince. So people start with minimal effort, producing weak reasons (why the business idea is good or bad). Gail and Bob keep responding to each other's reasons with stronger reasons only until necessary. After reaching consensus further reasoning is not required.

Source: https://youtu.be/_ArVh3Cj9rw?t=969

Re: Ask HN: Slow thinkers, how do you compensate for your lack of quick-wittedness?

#239

Post by datavirtue »

Focus on hearing and understanding others and communicating to them that you hear and understand them. This will make you appear intelligent and it will make you intelligent, and people will listen intently to you when you finally come around with your well thought ideas and perspective. You will be highly respected.

Quit worrying about being quick-witted. Revenge is a dish best served cold.

Re: Ask HN: Slow thinkers, how do you compensate for your lack of quick-wittedness?

#240

Post by wruza »

lqet wrote: post #82
paulsutter wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I’m a disappointing person to try to debate or attack. I just have nothing to say in the moment, except maybe, 'Good point.' Then a few days later, after thinking about it a lot, I have a response" - Derek Sivers ( https://sive.rs/slow ) This sounds very admirable to me

Just this morning I listened to a radio interview with pianist Igor Levit. It was excruciating. He had to think for seconds before every third word in a sentence, creating awkward pauses, and when he had finally finished an answer, he had only transmitted trivial content. I am sure that if they had sent him the questions a few days earlier, he could have prepared much more interesting and eloquent answers. I felt ver…

The key thing here is reflection. You can look at your speech again and ask: am I more anxious about saying something I don’t like, or about this? I also was a slow-speaker, which in my case was actually anxious-speaker. But at some point I said “f… it” cause no one really cares deeply about the perfect form of a fine structure of your message. Literally anything is better than your awkward stumbling.

Be wrong and say stupid things. You will be corrected or correct yourself. Accept the correction and move on. If you feel very wrong, turn it into a question? Instead of feeding back to anxiety you’ll feed back to speech.

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