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Blogging can just be stating the obvious
101–110 of 138 posts
Re: Blogging can just be stating the obvious
#102Obviously I decided to not read this blog post.
Re: Blogging can just be stating the obvious
#103> So it must be that a key ingredient to blogging is simple: have a willingness to state something that seems obvious to you but nobody else is saying it. Or if someone else is saying it, just link to them and say, “Yes!!! This!!!” As a young mathematician in grade school, I had boundless enthusiasm to prove and present basic theorems in number theory and geometry. Now, as a PhD mathematician who has since pivoted in…
Most relevant xkcd I thing: https://xkcd.com/2501/
There's an xkcd for everything, I wonder if there's an xkcd for that?
Re: Blogging can just be stating the obvious
#104A couple other versions of this that have always stood out to me: 1) There's always a new cohort of people that don't know the things you know. You assume since you know it, everyone does. But kids coming up, or whoever, aren't you. They don't know this stuff yet. You can easily be the first time they've heard "make something people want" and where that comes from. The Curse of Knowledge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki…
Reminds me of this tweet thread from Emmett Shear (cofounder of Twitch): "I used to struggle w needing to be “creative” or “original” in my work. At some point I had a breakthrough that really helped me: I cannot repeat an idea, no matter how basic or common, without imparting some of my worldview into it. Even by choosing which basic ideas to amplify, I impart some small amount of myself into each output. It’s liter…
That makes a lot of sense! I recently interviewed several great creators on this exact topic and they all echoed similar ideas - although it's easy to fear that someone else has done it better, oftentimes they really haven't, and they'll never have your own unique perspective.
One challenge is that it takes repetitions to get good enough that you can even bring your ideas to life, and many people don't push through this (Ira Glass "taste gap").
Full interviews here: https://digitalseams.com/blog/making-things-interview-series
Re: Blogging can just be stating the obvious
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think this is some sort of modern academia bias. What you say it is true in academia, most things have already been thought and studied and that's why any academic book or paper has a citation in every sentence. I understand why this rigor is important in academia, but is it in the rest of the world? If I have an interesting thought about a topic and I share it with an audience that is not PhDs, to them it might be…
> Sharing ideas gets people thinking and the fact that someone else already extensively thought about something doesn't make my thoughts less relevant. If anything, by sharing it I could get a comment pointing me to a book or paper that would help me understand better the topic or expand my ideas further. "Relevant" needs disambiguation. It does not make your thoughts less valid in any moral sense that you should fee…
I don't agree with this view of an "attention marketplace". Besides the HN small (and arguably irrelevant) bubble, most of the world attention is swayed by pop-stars, actors, musicians and influencers talking about what they had for breakfast and the gossip surrounding them. That on top of politically-controlled content/slop factories. A non-researched piece of content presenting an idea that was somewhere already talked about in a book or a paper can't do that much damage imho. If it reaches anyone and makes them think about something it can only be a net positive.
> Most (continental) philosophy is closer to art in my opinion than scientific inquiry. If you accept it as art, then you at least open the door to there being many valuably different ways of saying "love is good" or "reality is complicated" or what have you. And if you consider it as something beyond art, well, then it has some very pointed questions to answer.
I would invite you to read more philosophy if that's your idea of what philosophy is, because it feels very far from what has been discussed over the centuries by many authors way smarter than me and you.
Re: Blogging can just be stating the obvious
#106Re: Blogging can just be stating the obvious
#107Another good idea for posts, is instead of arguing* on the internet you can post your opinion as post. This will help you to structure your opinion, validate it, and may come handy if you will have argument again:) Also arguments usually happen on popular topics, which can bring attention to your blog.
* Of course I mean professional arguments, not political opinions or other 4chan stuff
Re: Blogging can just be stating the obvious
#108> If you visit a website you should ... see the website. See its content. Be able to read the article whose page you are attempting to visit. Showing a “subscribe to our newsletter” or “accept our fucking cookies” dickover to someone trying to read an article on the web makes no more sense than sending out an email newsletter that only contains a link to read the newsletter on a webpage. A webpage should show the web…
Kagi downranks ads/trackers, which I would think correlate
Re: Blogging can just be stating the obvious
#109A couple other versions of this that have always stood out to me: 1) There's always a new cohort of people that don't know the things you know. You assume since you know it, everyone does. But kids coming up, or whoever, aren't you. They don't know this stuff yet. You can easily be the first time they've heard "make something people want" and where that comes from. The Curse of Knowledge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki…
Somebody already linked 1053, but https://xkcd.com/2501/ also applies. When you're wrapped in an information bubble, it's easy to forget that this could be new, exciting/important information to people outside the bubble.
Re: Blogging can just be stating the obvious
#110Publishing the obvious has tremendous value for historians, it allows them to figure out how things are done. I try to write content that seems so "normal" it doesn't need to be described ever! It can give fun reflective insights also.
I want to dig more into archival of the sources I use. I think it is important when linking to an other resources to at least describe what was found there or just mirror the source. I have read enough forum posts with link-rotted images to know how a useful comment can become a puzzle when a few links, images or referenced source dissapears.
Now I wonder how well the web will be archived in the long run, but that's another matter. Seems it is an ever sliding window where knowledge of the past is build upon but not kept.