Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Willingness to look stupid

sharif.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 273 posts

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#181

Post by embedding-shape »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #179
embedding-shape wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Plot twist: anything original will look stupid Clearly not true, lots of original things that instead looks like "Ah yeah, obviously, duh!" once they're public, rather than looking stupid. Browsers/WWW, the iPhone and putting wheels on suitcases are things that come into mind that the amount of people thought "looked stupid" was very low, and they became very popular relatively quickly.

Those things are all incremental improvements based on existing patterns that people were familiar with. Also, Apple is the king of "no clothes". People shill Apple products even when they suck.

> Those things are all incremental improvements based on existing patterns that people were familiar with

So what in your mind has ever been "truly original" then that someone couldn't argue is just "incremental improvements" instead?

> People shill Apple products even when they suck.

I agree, but don't think I'm doing so myself here.

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#182

Post by otras »

socalgal2 wrote: post #76

I'm not sure this is the same thing but I waffle between wanting to not look stupid and also not wanting others to think I'm not trying hard enough. Let's say there is something I need to do at work. I could read docs in the company internal site. I could read the code. Maybe the thing I need to do is figure out why a test is failing. It's possible it's failing because there's a bug in the code. It's possible it's fa…

As a mentor, I like to set explicit expectations for how much time someone should spend digging before asking for help, and I encourage others to do the same.

For an intern or new grad whose information gathering skills likely have gaps they don't even know about, I'll tell them to come check with me if they're completely blocked and haven't made progress for an hour, as it's frequently a small pointer or hint from me that can get them back on track. As they get more more knowledge about the systems and experience unblocking themselves, this grows to half a day, a day, and more from there.

The same applies even for experienced engineers who are new to the team, though the timeboxes grow much faster. There will always be little things to learn, and there's no point burning a day of chasing threads if it's some quirk in the system you just happen to not be aware of.

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#183

Post by CuriouslyC »

embedding-shape wrote: post #181
CuriouslyC wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those things are all incremental improvements based on existing patterns that people were familiar with. Also, Apple is the king of "no clothes". People shill Apple products even when they suck.

> Those things are all incremental improvements based on existing patterns that people were familiar with So what in your mind has ever been "truly original" then that someone couldn't argue is just "incremental improvements" instead? > People shill Apple products even when they suck. I agree, but don't think I'm doing so myself here.

Look at Vincent Van Gogh's art. He didn't sell shit except to his own brother in life, people hated it. Fast forward to now and his art is among the most valuable in the world, and people consider him one of the greatest geniuses of all time.

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#186

Post by jgwil2 »

r_lee wrote: post #178
CuriouslyC wrote: post #170

Plot twist: anything original will look stupid, until some cultural event makes the original thing the new "way," then all the small minds will act like that was the only way the thing should have been done all along. "The emperor has no clothes" is a much deeper story about society and human nature than people realize.

I think the best example for this are the Airpods like, it was such a joke at first but then it just became the "new normal"

I remember thinking that wheeled suitcases were funny the first time I saw them. How silly I was...

Re: Willingness to look stupid

#190

Post by saimiam »

The trouble is that no one has a cogent definition of creativity. Without that, how would you even know whether you are being creative or not?

Or is it like "I'll know it when it see it" smut?

Post reply on HN