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

The silent majority of experts (2012)

prog21.dadgum.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 206 posts

Re: The silent majority of experts (2012)

#131

Post by smolder »

amself wrote: post #119
fleddr wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Horrified is a bit strong, but you have a point. There's a few themes that are strongly popular or unpopular by some type of community consensus. In those cases, it doesn't seem to matter what you have to say as minds are already made up. Another interesting effect I experienced is regarding expert credibility. When I found this place, I was impressed. I figured the world's top engineers are posting. I see them writi…

What motivates people to make up nonsense?

For status. You can make up nonsense if you're a little bit clever without much effort and be a sort of Pied Piper for fools. Having status among fools is a kind of power as then you're able to manipulate them in other ways.

Re: The silent majority of experts (2012)

#132

Post by jollybean »

insightcheck wrote: post #6

Yep. On a related note, when I was younger, I searched for advice from experts for how to develop expertise in studying and productivity on Reddit. It led to lots of highly-upvoted advice (including stuff like supplements, largely with few real benefits besides placebo), popular blogs by influencers (like Scott Young), and popular self-help books. However, the actual experts I knew in high school who later went on to…

" Less in one's control, their parents were financially successful or were in competitive positions"

Yeah that's 50% right there and 'learning strategies' is only a part of it.

The other 'strategy' is 'being rich' or 'connected' or knowing a few arcane insights that do not amount to 'competitive strategies' so much as 'inside knowledge'.

"Long story short: there is absolutely a culture of improvement that is primarily offline and less visible"

Let's not conflate 'climbing the social ladder' with 'improvement'.

Re: The silent majority of experts (2012)

#133

Post by jollybean »

random-human wrote: post #104
peterangular wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Less in one's control, their parents were financially successful or were in competitive positions (e.g. were professors or physicians), so they may have learned these strategies from them, versus inventing them independently. As I grow older, I see a huge divide between those who have/had parental support vs those who don't/didn't. It doesn't even take financially or professionally successful parents. Many of my pe…

>> As I grow older, I see a huge divide between those who have/had parental support vs those who don't/didn't. This really gets lost in the traditional nuclear family argument. From personal experience, having both biological parents in the same house doesn't mean a healthy family environment, and no amount of moralizing is going to wish it into being. Also overlooked is the impact one can have through simple acts of…

The data is conclusive on Single Parent vs. Two Parent and it's not even close.

The 'moralizing' is from those who want to equivocate.

This is also from deep life experience myself, with close family and colleagues.

In everything but the best scenarios: 'Everything Is Hard' in a single family household, whereas things 'Can Be Hard' in regular family scenarios.

I think a 'single mentor' can make a big difference, but nowhere near most of the other things put together.

And FYI I don't think parents provide very good 'professional mentorship' for the most part. They're there for other reasons.

i.e. if I found out that a mom was coming to pick up her kids laundry and leave some meals because 'Uni Exams' ... I will be $1000 immediately that kid will do well without knowing a single other thing about that family or situation. Not a guarantee of anything, but an easy bet.

Re: The silent majority of experts (2012)

#134

Post by fleddr »

amself wrote: post #119
fleddr wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Horrified is a bit strong, but you have a point. There's a few themes that are strongly popular or unpopular by some type of community consensus. In those cases, it doesn't seem to matter what you have to say as minds are already made up. Another interesting effect I experienced is regarding expert credibility. When I found this place, I was impressed. I figured the world's top engineers are posting. I see them writi…

What motivates people to make up nonsense?

My best guess is receiving positive attention to compensate for a lack of it elsewhere.

I you want to see this escalated to an Olympic level, watch Meta Stack Exchange over time. It has quite a few characters that are writing lecture-length posts on a daily basis. About...nothing of any remote importance or relevance. Usually concerning some petty complaint or idea about the site, none of which any actual user will ever know about.

In a way, they are 5 star trolls. The most difficult ones to recognize as they seem to well-worded.

Re: The silent majority of experts (2012)

#135

Post by jollybean »

pvarangot wrote: post #65
peterangular wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Less in one's control, their parents were financially successful or were in competitive positions (e.g. were professors or physicians), so they may have learned these strategies from them, versus inventing them independently. As I grow older, I see a huge divide between those who have/had parental support vs those who don't/didn't. It doesn't even take financially or professionally successful parents. Many of my pe…

I tell myself it's the difference between starting adulthood at 14 or whenever your family fails you, and starting it at 24 or 26 after college. The extra years of "streetwise" usually come at an expense of early onset of burnout, for various reasons. Leaving your shell with the energy to take over the world at 26 usually results in more productive endeavors than when you are a teenager.

I see what you mean, but let's not confuse 'productive' with 'lucrative'.

Even a lot of people with seemingly 'good jobs', I would argue, are not necessarily providing a ton of material value.

For example, I'm coming to the point where I believe the vast majority of 'Data Science' is 'Business Academia' and a giant pile of over-optimization and busy work.

The surpluses are concentrated in groups that have power, but those dollars are not necessarily used to maintain or support those systems directly, rather, they become applied R&D shops.

Re: The silent majority of experts (2012)

#136

Post by a9h74j »

peterangular wrote: post #56
plonk wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Many of my peers had middle-class parents working normal jobs who just loved unconditionally + put effort forward... the difference between them and those who had less than ideal upbringings is typically vast. Do you mean their career success, or their personalities in general?

Both. Positive upbringings helped those folks navigate everything in life better from simple chores like laundry, to relationships, to school, to careers... etc. People are more healthy when they're in an environment that promotes emotional/educational growth vs. when they're forced into a survival mentality. Those who had the opportunity to grow in safety have an easier time socially vs. those who had to navigate tu…

> navigate everything in life better

Presumably there are many factors. One worth considering could be "frustration tolerance" as a construct or capability.

Re: The silent majority of experts (2012)

#137

Post by magic_hamster »

People who write blogs and post frequently sometimes think that everybody else is doing something similar. However, the more years I spend as a software engineer, the more obvious it becomes that the visible online presence is not even 1% of engineers (and not necessarily the best ones).

Some people work very hard on their online presence, which is fine, but sometimes it seems like they're compensating for something. The really truly great engineers know that they are good, or at least above average, so they will always be in demand - they have no need to maintain ultra visible personas. Their CVs will probably get them wherever they want to go.

Also, the best resource for expert advice is probably senior mentoring rather than blogs. Blogs are ok for exploratory reading but when you're in a pinch and you need an expert that understands your problem, the solution space and the stack you're on, you will be looking for a senior.

Re: The silent majority of experts (2012)

#138

Post by hinkley »

insightcheck wrote: post #6

Yep. On a related note, when I was younger, I searched for advice from experts for how to develop expertise in studying and productivity on Reddit. It led to lots of highly-upvoted advice (including stuff like supplements, largely with few real benefits besides placebo), popular blogs by influencers (like Scott Young), and popular self-help books. However, the actual experts I knew in high school who later went on to…

It's practically a game for me at this point to just 'roll with it' when I have a raft of mutually consistent ideas, and 3 of them get upvoted, and the last one gets ignored completely, or once in a while downvoted to oblivion.

The most important lessons are the counterintuitive ones - if they were all intuitive, you wouldn't need to be taught them, and the pain and loss of figuring them out organically might be extreme. If someone is earnestly asking, you should hit them with some knowledge, not drop populist nonsense they can find on the front page of Google. But it can often be a case of subtlety - planting enough of an idea that they can chew on it and accept this new reality at their own pace, rather than blurting out the 'answer' that nobody likes to look at. Not unlike how explaining some great movies to people makes them sound unpalatable. Just watch it, you'll like it.

Re: The silent majority of experts (2012)

#139

Post by hinkley »

planarhobbit wrote: post #2

> Yes, there are many people who blog and otherwise publicly discuss development methodologies and what they're working on, but there are even more people who don't. Blogging takes time, for example, and not everyone enjoys it. Other people are working on commercial products and can't divulge the inner workings of their code. There’s a subset of this silent majority who tried to contribute to discussion platforms but…

I still recall the first time I worked on a successful project where the manager started talking about writing articles or a book about it. How important it is that we do X.

Yes, X is important, but what's really saving our bacon is all of the people doing Y. The more you focus on X, the more the Y-focussed people are going to start wonder why they're here, since you don't appreciate their efforts. I mean you didn't even mention it in any of your articles... Let's see what happens when nobody does Y anymore, smart guy.

Re: The silent majority of experts (2012)

#140

Post by magic_hamster »

insightcheck wrote: post #6

Yep. On a related note, when I was younger, I searched for advice from experts for how to develop expertise in studying and productivity on Reddit. It led to lots of highly-upvoted advice (including stuff like supplements, largely with few real benefits besides placebo), popular blogs by influencers (like Scott Young), and popular self-help books. However, the actual experts I knew in high school who later went on to…

Sad as it may sound, your upbringing is the key to most things, while the opportunities given to you (mostly by your parents' financial ability) complete this picture.

When I took EE in University, everybody's parents were engineers or another form of STEM. Which also means they are not doing too bad in money and assets.

The best, most accomplished researchers I know all had a parent coming from a similar background, giving them extra lessons from a young age, so they were always a couple of years ahead of their class.

This stuff doesn't come from nowhere. Today I firmly believe that even a mildly talented person would go much further ahead with the right upbringing and opportunity than a potentially much more talented person who had to learn everything the hard way.

Post reply on HN