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The Dead Planet Theory

arealsociety.substack.com

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Re: The Dead Planet Theory

#51

Post by serviceberry »

Tainnor wrote: post #47
serviceberry wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you read a few books on mathematics you think you're easily going to become one of the top mathematicians? No, but so what? The guy behind 3Blue1Brown probably isn't one of the top mathematicians of his era. But he's having quite an impact. He turned explaining fairly basic math concepts in mathematics into a lucrative job. And who wrote the textbooks you're referring to? Probably not any of the top 10 living ma…

All those people you mention have studied mathematics for a long time, Grant Sanderson has probably studied it the "least" but that still means a BSc in his case which is not something you accomplish in a weekend. All the textbook authors are usually professors.

The parent's quip was that you can't rise to the top of the field. My point is that it's irrelevant.

Textbooks used in college coursework are usually written by academics, for obvious reasons. Plenty of independent learning / pop textbooks are written by "normal people" who aren't tenured professors.

Re: The Dead Planet Theory

#52

Post by Earw0rm »

serviceberry wrote: post #38
vitehozonage wrote: post #33

I think I disagree with the article. I think it is true that if you choose to expend time and energy on something that few people spend effort on , then you can become better than most people at that one thing. However, it seems that the article is trying to say that is true for everything and for everyone, and i disagree with that. The missing key factor is that you have to find something unpopular and easy which wi…

> If you read a few books on mathematics you think you're easily going to become one of the top mathematicians? No, but so what? The guy behind 3Blue1Brown probably isn't one of the top mathematicians of his era. But he's having quite an impact. He turned explaining fairly basic math concepts in mathematics into a lucrative job. And who wrote the textbooks you're referring to? Probably not any of the top 10 living ma…

It's about combinations of skills.

0.01%ers in one field tend towards monomaniacal obsession.

Sometimes that's useful. But having mostly depth, and enough breadth to balance it out, is better in most cases than depth only.

People who are all breadth, no depth are worse. Those traits give you MBAs and politicians. That doesn't mean breadth is inherently bad, it's about balance.

The sweet-spot is typically to get inside the top 1% and get 75th or 90th percentile people skills or communication skills. Those can take a lot of different forms, good writers / managers / youtubers / teachers are all in that class but there's not necessarily that much overlap.

Re: The Dead Planet Theory

#54

Post by asdf6969 »

> What are some things with easy entry-level learning curves?

Last year I realized I could memorize every country on a world map and it would only take a few hours over the weekend. Connected it with some wikipedia searches about countries I don't really know over the next few weeks and suddenly I feel so much more knowledgeable about the world and have a new hobby. There's a lot of stuff that everyone has heard of but doesn't know anything about and it doesn't take much time to fix that.

Re: The Dead Planet Theory

#55

Post by ThrowawayTestr »

ForOldHack wrote: post #31
ThrowawayTestr wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your karma is in the top right. You need around 300 to downvote, 800 to flag. Your downvote by clicking the down arrow beside every comment and submission.

I just logged in, saw my Karma, and just got the double arrows... I did not have that before... I have downvote for posts, but not for comments. ( hence, I cannot downvote your comment. ) Down vote comment. Nope, only 1 arrow for up, and I am good with that. Just refreshed, and now I can down vote some comments... Refresh again... I cannot down vote posts, but can down vote even less comments... someone is watching,…

The thresholds were a guess tbh. Glad you got your downvote powers :)

You can't downvote replies to your comments and in other circumstances I think.

Re: The Dead Planet Theory

#56

Post by gonzobonzo »

jauntywundrkind wrote: post #2

One of my strongest recommendations to people on social networks is to engage down-thread. Talk to other people, not just the top post. Get beyond your glancing para-social relationship, and expand your Metcalfe-factor by commenting and liking other people's engagement. Especially for new or young networks, a lot of people are truly starved for engagement & don't see the pattern of being engaged with . Engagement has…

I guess it depends on the network? From what I've seen, most people are there for the 0.3% getting 99% of the engagement. Whether that 0.3% is the big accounts on Twitter, or whatever is on the main page on Hacker News. Try making a comment on a HN article a couple of hours after it falls off the front page - you're extremely likely to get anyone to notice you. A few days? You may as well be yelling into a void.

There are a handful of exceptions - some small Reddit subs, some old forums. But for the most part, people on social media aren't really interested in something that's not already popular.

Re: The Dead Planet Theory

#57

Post by marc_abonce »

ThrowawayTestr wrote: post #25
ForOldHack wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I comment a lot, mostly to acknowledge the lofty brilliance of some people. ( Like you ), but I do not know what my karma is or how to downvote, but no matter. I have no idea what percentile I am in... I am absolutely sure someone is tracking/ranking it, because if I were actually training and AI, I would absolutely start at this large collection of bainiacs - but first I would ask permission, which I would guess wou…

Your karma is in the top right. You need around 300 to downvote, 800 to flag. Your downvote by clicking the down arrow beside every comment and submission.

Apparently the minimum karma to downvote is 501: https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented?tab=re...

I recently got to 300 and I saw no change in the UI.

Re: The Dead Planet Theory

#58

Post by asdf6969 »

paulpauper wrote: post #11

This may work for low-ROI things or things that are not that intellectually demanding, like watching a movie, but otherwise you will have to put the hours/effort to have any hope of seeing a payoff, and even then, hardly any assurance of success. Or just raw luck, but this only applies to tiny percentage of people. yes, most people do little, but you're not competing against those people; you are competing for one of…

The advice in the article is great for things that don't really matter. Fill in your knowledge gaps about the world or learn some random new skills. For things that actually matter, I agree.

Re: The Dead Planet Theory

#59

Post by vacuumcl »

Reading this gives me some slight existential dread, since most of my time here I just read other people’s comments.

In any case, I think a big barrier to starting things can often also just be the fear of failure or of wasting time. I spent a lot of time making electronic music as a hobby, and am probably better than most people at understanding and playing music, but for music to play a meaningful impact in my life I would need to put in a lot more work still.

On the other hand, I studied physics and mathematics far beyond the average person (getting a PhD and publishing multiple papers), but I had the support of the university and the academic environment to give me that extra push to do it.

There are so many things I would like to pursue in my free time. Building a small startup, writing a book, making YouTube videos, etc. I know that the most important thing is to just start, but the decision paralysis, and uncertainty about whether it will work out in the end can definitely be a barrier, since I can also just go out with friends and enjoy my life instead of spending time solitary.

Re: The Dead Planet Theory

#60

Post by TeMPOraL »

vitehozonage wrote: post #33

I think I disagree with the article. I think it is true that if you choose to expend time and energy on something that few people spend effort on , then you can become better than most people at that one thing. However, it seems that the article is trying to say that is true for everything and for everyone, and i disagree with that. The missing key factor is that you have to find something unpopular and easy which wi…

> The missing key factor is that you have to find something unpopular and easy which will actually have a payoff

Why?

I found the article refreshing precisely because it didn't assume you're doing it for the money, or otherwise insisting that a hobby only makes sense if you make a business out of it.

I take this article as a reminder of how little time and effort it takes to achieve basic proficiency in just about anything.

I'm fond of the view that the 80/20 rule applies recursively: you can get 64% of value in 4% of effort, or 51% of value in 0.8% of the effort. Applied to "deliberate practice" meme, that gives you 51% of value for 80 hours of deliberate practice. Sounds absurd, but then most people never done 80 hours of deliberate practice in anything at all.

Personally, I round this up and call it a "10-100-10k framework": 10 hours of deliberate-ish practice is not that big of a sacrifice to pick up some random, specific skill, but you can go surprisingly far doing that. 100 hours should give you competence - good investment for few things that matter for you daily. 10k is for stuff you want to be world-class expert in.

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