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Things I Should Have Known at 20

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Re: Things I Should Have Known at 20

#131

Post by jwwest »

orangecat wrote: post #57
rauljara wrote: post #18

The list is all phrased as commands. I can't stand that. There is no one way through life, and I wish people didn't act like just because it worked for them it will work for everyone. Find people that are cooler than you and try to be even cooler than them seems like a particularly terrible command to give in general. So many of the people I admire the most just don't care so much about image. And I've met too many p…

Agreed. I find myself increasingly annoyed by the tone of people who have discovered that the Great Secret of Life is having kids/getting up at 5AM/exercising for hours every day/eating nothing but meat and vegetables, and if you don't do that you're a pathetic specimen who will never amount to anything.

I'm curious to know if anyone who doesn't feel like they might be successful doing something someone else points out as a good practice has actually TRIED doing it.

If you've tried something and it didn't work out, write up a rebuttal and post it! Personally I'm a little dismayed at the negativity surrounding these posts when it's obvious that everyone is armchair quarterbacking here.

Re: Things I Should Have Known at 20

#132

Post by neilkelty »

raldi wrote: post #126
revorad wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was one of the things I always thought was weird about me. All my friends always showed off how quickly they read books. And it took me ages - I would keep re-reading lines and paragraphs that I liked. Now, I can just say, "Did you know PG does that too?".

There are dozens of us! (We need a name for it.)

Normal?

Re: Things I Should Have Known at 20

#134

Post by eli_gottlieb »

orangecat wrote: post #57
rauljara wrote: post #18

The list is all phrased as commands. I can't stand that. There is no one way through life, and I wish people didn't act like just because it worked for them it will work for everyone. Find people that are cooler than you and try to be even cooler than them seems like a particularly terrible command to give in general. So many of the people I admire the most just don't care so much about image. And I've met too many p…

Agreed. I find myself increasingly annoyed by the tone of people who have discovered that the Great Secret of Life is having kids/getting up at 5AM/exercising for hours every day/eating nothing but meat and vegetables, and if you don't do that you're a pathetic specimen who will never amount to anything.

Just give it a couple of decades. You'll get used to everyone around you spouting off about a Meaning Of Life that you think is total bullshit... eventually.

Re: Things I Should Have Known at 20

#135

Post by eli_gottlieb »

tensor wrote: post #68

Number two is flat out wrong. The majority of knowledge that you need to know is not bleeding edge and does not become outdated by the time a curriculum is formed. In fact, you can't even understand the bleeding edge research without first understanding what came before it. If by institutions, we are talking about universities, then they are one of the best places to access vast amounts of information and experts on…

The only part of point two I like is to not have faith. Never have faith in anything. Always observe, reason, and experiment.

That seems wrong. Without believing in both yourself and in something beyond yourself (it doesn't necessarily have to be physically real), there's little point in observing, reasoning, or experimenting.

Expertise in epistemology doesn't help much if you've got no normative philosophies for applying it.

Re: Things I Should Have Known at 20

#136

Post by jcfrei »

I upvoted this post. however the author would do well in further explaining or expanding his pieces of advice. a lot of them are true in a specific setting, or for special occasions - they are to my understanding - not generalizable directions for your life.

> eg. in my opinion: Read as much as you can and The world is trying to keep you stupid really go together. Read as much as necessary to overcome common misconceptions and educate yourself. don't spend weeks speed reading thru the twilight series.

> Find people that are cooler than you is a poorly worded advice / way to become less socially inept. Eg if you want to stop wasting [your] time being shy, you need to learn from people who are more comfortable in all the social interactions you go thru every day.

Re: Things I Should Have Known at 20

#137

Post by r7000 »

timclark wrote: post #104
pg wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are several different types of reading slowly. Math is slow because you have to work things out as you read it. Books written very long ago are slow because I read them like a detective, looking not just at what the author means to say, but also at what he's saying implicitly about how things were at the time. Other books I read slowly because they're so good I don't want them to end. I used to have to make a c…

They keep going with the same level of quality until the very end. Even the three draft chapters of the unfinished 21st volume left me wanting more.

Agreed. I read them as slowly as I could manage over the course of about five years. Even 21 was a great read. I was blown away that I was still maintaining the same enjoyment 15, 16 books in. I just assumed the quality would have had to deteriorate. Although O'Brian does get a lot of reuse out of Stephen's joke about the dog watch being cur-tailed.

I wish I still had eight and a half more to go!

Re: Things I Should Have Known at 20

#138

Post by rudiger »

adventureful wrote: post #74

Point 20 is wrong. You'll find that everybody is 'broken' in their own special ways. There really isn't any such thing as someone that isn't broken (unless you're talking about serious mental trauma as the definition of "broken"). We all accumulate baggage over a lifetime, and from each relationship; we all have weird quirks and strange behaviors and eccentricities of varying degrees, and weird reactions to things we…

Point 20 isn't totally wrong. You shouldn't try to “fix” anyone.

Re: Things I Should Have Known at 20

#139

Post by TimPC »

Dirlewanger wrote: post #125
rimantas wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1. The world is trying to keep you stupid. No it doesn't. Quite the opposite. While the idea that less educated are easier to manipulate is true the item on the list says expresses a different idea. > 2. Do not have faith in institutions to educate you. You can only educate yourself. However institutions can help a lot. As for outdated curriculum: guess how old Newtonian physics and calculus is. Now think how many…

Concerning your conservative remark: hands down the best high school class I took was my US government class. It taught one all the shit about the political process...practical stuff (as opposed to the literary significance of Hamlet) every adult should know in order to make informed voting decisions. Stuff that one most likely will not learn anywhere else unless they put effort into doing so (and we all know how mot…

Conservative is an overloaded word. If you read the blurb following conservative it seems like he's using it in the sense of risk-aversion not in the sense of political spectrum. Both tend to be true facts of life, but the idea of trying to accomplish big things when you can take more risks is the more important one.

Re: Things I Should Have Known at 20

#140

Post by adventureful »

rudiger wrote: post #138
adventureful wrote: post #74

Point 20 is wrong. You'll find that everybody is 'broken' in their own special ways. There really isn't any such thing as someone that isn't broken (unless you're talking about serious mental trauma as the definition of "broken"). We all accumulate baggage over a lifetime, and from each relationship; we all have weird quirks and strange behaviors and eccentricities of varying degrees, and weird reactions to things we…

Point 20 isn't totally wrong. You shouldn't try to “fix” anyone.

That's definitely true.
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