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When the push button was new, people were freaked

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Re: When the push button was new, people were freaked

#161

Post by cercatrova »

serf wrote: post #153
SilasX wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any reason you couldn't have made the point explicit the first time? Were you worried that others' reading skills would atrophy if they only needed to read 100 words to get the point, and so you posted 400 words while still missing a critical block of 50?

>Were you worried that others' reading skills would atrophy if they only needed to read 100 words to get the point, and so you posted 400 words while still missing a critical block of 50? If you truly think that's why people write long-form prose then I totally understand your ire towards it -- but unfortunately that idea is so far away from reality that I'm afraid I don't understand at all. At the risk of being an i…

Indeed, I did not understand the aggressiveness either, in both their comment before I quoted the article as a reason, and in their comment afterwards. I too wanted to match it with sarcasm, but I stopped myself for the same reason as you did.

Re: When the push button was new, people were freaked

#162

Post by hilbert42 »

noobermin wrote: post #145
namrog84 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was born in 84. And in the 90s I knew this 1 kid who told me on his 11th birthday his dad would raise his bicycle seat. I was super confused as that an easy thing to do(loosen a bolt, adjust height and tighten the bolt). Turns out lots of parents don't allow their kids to touch their tools or tinker or do anything like that. I was very fortunate that my parents encouraged me to do such things. E.g. take apart thing…

Children today cannot even walk around their own neighborhood because they must be chauffeured by car since the urban environment is more and more suburban, and this makes them not even really understand the layout of even their immediate environment[0]. American children in particular are being robbed of a lot of experience with hands-on learning because of the parenting climate today. [0] https://youtu.be/RrsL2n9q6…

Your point is a little off-topic here but I understand how the thread developed (as it's loosely implied in my post). I've been vocal about this for years—not out of any deep understanding of childhood psychology but rather from my own experience as a child. Given the autonomy and freedom that I had as a kid I cannot imagine living the restrictive cloistered life as experienced by many of today's kids—it'd be just terrible. FYI, here's one of my more recent posts (I've written more to this effect in recent years): https://news.ycombinator.com/context?id=32681125

Re: When the push button was new, people were freaked

#163

Post by Falkon1313 »

buescher wrote: post #85

I haven't heard it in a long time - I think it was mostly confined to people born before 1930, and there aren't many of them around anymore, but "what if I press the wrong button?" used to be a major concern people had about new gadgets. A lot of it came from the shift from appliances like old time wringer washers, where every control has a visible mechanical function or other affordance, to more automated "pushbutto…

Also the change over from a solid visible control panel with a combination of switches, knobs and dials, buttons, LEDs, and maybe an LCD readout, all clearly labeled, to more modern stuff with just a few barely distinguishable unlabeled buttons so tiny you could very easily accidentally press one.

And now touch screens where who knows what will happen if you accidentally brush the screen and it interprets that as some secret hidden swipe gesture.

Re: When the push button was new, people were freaked

#164

Post by noobermin »

eru wrote: post #150
noobermin wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Children today cannot even walk around their own neighborhood because they must be chauffeured by car since the urban environment is more and more suburban, and this makes them not even really understand the layout of even their immediate environment[0]. American children in particular are being robbed of a lot of experience with hands-on learning because of the parenting climate today. [0] https://youtu.be/RrsL2n9q6…

> [...] they must be chauffeured by car since the urban environment is more and more suburban, [...] That is a contributor, but not the only one. Helicopter parenting by itself also shares some of the blame.

It's a reinforcing phenomenon, with helicopter parenting being one of the facets. The usual way it goes is

1. Parents say the street / road is too dangerous.

2. Parents drive their kids everywhere.

3. They induce more road usage, demand more road infrastructure. They move to suburbs which are more car centric, force more pedestrianized areas (downtowns) to become more car centric.

4. Places become less walkable, and more dangerous for people outside of a car.

5. Go to 1.

Some of helicopter parenting is mostly over imagined or exaggerated fears ("crime", being abducted by predators which is rather rare, etc), but fear of car death is in fact valid given it is a leading cause of child death (was number 1 until this year gun death became #1). The unfortunate reality is the very act parents in the US take to make it safe for their children perpetuates the issue the ecogecko video I talk about has.

Given at this point no one will let their children be the first to face danger, likely the issue will not ameliorate itself naturally, and government action (pedestrianization, change of streetscapes, change of landuse and zoning, etc) is required.

Anyway, rereading your post, cars aren't the only factor in childhood stunting in the US. I'm not sure because I haven't researched outside of the car centric bits (that is supported in research) but it does feel like a culture wide issue in the US.

Re: When the push button was new, people were freaked

#165

Post by stjohnswarts »

sarchertech wrote: post #109
rasz wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MIT graduates cannot power a light bulb with a battery. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIhk9eKOLzQ

I'm always skeptical of those man on the street interviews. How many students did they interview to find the handful who couldn't do it? And how many of those were just flustered by the situation.

"They" always do this, get 100 people and take the dumbest 5 and act like it's a representative sample.

Re: When the push button was new, people were freaked

#166

Post by pas »

blix wrote: post #152
pas wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. He mentioned instruction, but he fails to notice that reading and hearing can both happen, as they do happen without instruction. And the crux of the matter is not the mode of information transmission, it's the veracity of the content. And if someone has the time, attention, effort to speak to you they usually want something. How do you know your interests are aligned? Reciting things from memory doesn't…

> He mentioned instruction, but he fails to notice that reading and hearing can both happen, as they do happen without instruction. > ... they will read many things without instruction and will therefore seem to know many things, when they are for the most part ignorant By claiming he doesn't notice something that he clearly and explicitly mentions, I feel you are directly making his point.

I wasn't too clear apparently. More instructions needed :)

So, yes, he explicitly mentioned something, that's why I mentioned too.

What I think the problem is that he implies in that sentence that either reading is more instructionless than hearing/talking, or that somehow good instruction itself should just grow on trees, or that instruction is always good, or that ratio of instructioned knowledge vs "ignorance" matters.

What I try to point out is that what matters is applied knowledge, which is still very rare even today, yet the chance of picking up a book that helps with acquiring the skills to gather and apply knowledge has more chance than hearing it from someone.

Re: When the push button was new, people were freaked

#167

Post by lostgame »

SilasX wrote: post #86
cercatrova wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> people worried that the electric push button would make human skills atrophy. They wondered if such devices would seal off the wonders of technology into a black box: “effortless, opaque, and therefore unquestioned by consumers.”

Any reason you couldn't have made the point explicit the first time? Were you worried that others' reading skills would atrophy if they only needed to read 100 words to get the point, and so you posted 400 words while still missing a critical block of 50?

Let’s just cut ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ down to 40 minutes, because - why couldn’t Kubrick just compress all that slow motion classical music stuff down to the actual point of the movie?

‘Humanity makes first contact. They send out a spaceship to the source. The AI on the ship becomes sentient and murderous. One man escapes, and arrives at the source. He exits his 3 dimensional existence and enters a psychedelic-esque state whereupon he transcends humanity as we know it.’

Okay, now nobody needs to see ‘2001’ again - ever!

Symphonies - what the fuck?

Why couldn’t Mozart have just written a 3 1/2 minute long pop song instead of wasting all of our time?

What an asshole! Yet we celebrate this music as some of the greatest of all time? Shame on us.

Shakespeare? Ugh. They fall in love. Their love isn’t approved. They kill themselves. Get to the point!

You’re totally right. There’s absolutely no reason for us to do anything but compress all information into Tweet-level hyperchunks. :)

Re: When the push button was new, people were freaked

#168

Post by rasz »

stjohnswarts wrote: post #165
sarchertech wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm always skeptical of those man on the street interviews. How many students did they interview to find the handful who couldn't do it? And how many of those were just flustered by the situation.

"They" always do this, get 100 people and take the dumbest 5 and act like it's a representative sample.

The whole point of MIT is supposed to be concentrating 0.5% top smartest people from all over the country (~1mil /5000 MIT graduates every year). It doesnt look good if 5% of the 0.5% top smartest people are still idiots.

Re: When the push button was new, people were freaked

#169

Post by blix »

pas wrote: post #166
blix wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He mentioned instruction, but he fails to notice that reading and hearing can both happen, as they do happen without instruction. > ... they will read many things without instruction and will therefore seem to know many things, when they are for the most part ignorant By claiming he doesn't notice something that he clearly and explicitly mentions, I feel you are directly making his point.

I wasn't too clear apparently. More instructions needed :) So, yes, he explicitly mentioned something, that's why I mentioned too. What I think the problem is that he implies in that sentence that either reading is more instructionless than hearing/talking, or that somehow good instruction itself should just grow on trees, or that instruction is always good, or that ratio of instructioned knowledge vs "ignorance" mat…

Dialogue has several distinct advantages over reading when it comes to learning. I think we both agree that applied knowledge is best, but this can only be gained through application. Dialogue forces you synthesize ideas into new statements and respond to challenges to those statements which is intrinsically more applied than simply reading alone.

There's a good amount of research inicating that discussion and speaking lead to significantly more information retention than hearing or reading. The more individual the learning process is, the fewer opportunities there are for discussion. This is why I get into silly arguments on HN in the first place, gotta supplement that reading ;)

Reading makes knowledge acquisition easier, but it also decreases the fraction of knowledge that comes bundled with expert 1-on-1. This has both advantages and disadvantages.

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