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Maybe the default settings are too high

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Re: Maybe the default settings are too high

#191

Post by toyg »

loloquwowndueo wrote: post #27
chilmers wrote: post #2

If you’re a fan of LOTR but don’t fancy reading it aloud yourself, I’d really recommend the new audio versions read by Andy Serkis. While I don’t vibe with every facet of his performance, overall it’s a tour-de-force, and really makes the prose come to life. Especially in those descriptive sections that it’s possible to glaze over when reading the text. Having an actor of the calibre of Serkis reading them to you bri…

Noooo. Audio books feed you the content at someone else’s pace, not at your (slow) pace, which is exactly what TFA advocates. Or, what are you going to do? Hit Pause after each sentence so you can fully digest and savor it?

Listening to someone talking is how humanity transmitted culture and stories for tens of thousands of years. The fact that "we" cannot tolerate it anymore, is a sign of how badly our brains are being reshaped (or maybe damaged) by screens.

Re: Maybe the default settings are too high

#192

Post by michaelt »

jibal wrote: post #117
teekert wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess this person sees the same mental image as me: Tents with wet floor, moisture sucked into everything inside. A tent that’s been in a lake sounds like a throwaway to me. But maybe what you see as a tent is different from what I see. For me the story was also a bit weird. “Just take the tents out of the water”. Ok…

Even if that were true (and it obviously isn't), what then would be the point of expending tremendous time and energy to "dam it off and keep it dry"? These are alternative ways to keep the tents dry ... which entails that they were never soaked in the first place. > A tent that’s been in a lake The tents were never in the lake. A few inches of the campsite was in the lake at high water. > sounds like a throwaway to…

> The tents were never in the lake. A few inches of the campsite was in the lake at high water. [...] Those words don't appear anywhere. Try looking at the actual words and not just your mental images.

I think some people are interpreting “campsite” as the literal space occupied by the tent’s ground sheet while you are interpreting it as the broader area - which in an organised institutional arrangement might be called the “campground”

To use an analogy, think of being in a partly flooded parking space vs parking lot

It makes sense that someone with the former interpretation - the tent ground sheet submerged by a few inches of water - would understand that the tent got soaked.

Re: Maybe the default settings are too high

#193

Post by copirate »

> When you slow down your eating speed, say to half or a third your default speed, you get much more enjoyment out of a smaller amount of food.

That's not always the case. With certain types of food, it's much more enjoyable to have your mouth full than to eat a small amount, for example. It's a trade-off.

It's the same with a story. Taking too long can make it boring, for example.

That doesn't mean we always choose the optimal balance, though.

Re: Maybe the default settings are too high

#194

Post by [deleted] »

lugoues wrote: post #172
fluoridation wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

We can get stuck in our minds and lean too much on prior skills instead of fully assessing the problem at hand. More likely than not, given he was a contractor, building a trench and walls seemed like a simple solution to something he has probably dealt with many time and didn't think twice about it.

[deleted]

Re: Maybe the default settings are too high

#195

Post by zelphirkalt »

jimmaswell wrote: post #97
godelski wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> he might shrug and say "I don't know" I have far more trust for people willing to say this. > I would start blurting out half-baked ideas to fill the silence I find that I'm more likely to do this but try to make an effort to stop. There's times to spitball but we should also spend time thinking. And let's be real 30-60s is not that long > This manager also typed with one or two fingers, and pretty slowly too. But…

> typing isn't the bottleneck. Not even close. I find it absolutely is much of the time - I'll determine the architecture/overall solution, know exactly what needs to go in a multitude of files, and now actualizing all that isn't really thinking anymore, just donkey work. Getting AI to do this has been incredible now that it's finally good enough. I've had Copilot make flawless 500+LOC C++ classes in the first pass,…

I find however, that while typing it all out, my mind often continues analyzing and thinking, and that I often find a new idea, or new structure, that might be even better. Typing it out and seeing it appear in front of me. It also gives me a feeling for how tedious, brittle, or annoying the solution is.

Granted, sometimes it's really not that interesting to type the stuff. It depends what one is working on.

Re: Maybe the default settings are too high

#196

Post by elxr »

chrisfosterelli wrote: post #68
nabbed wrote: post #50

This can work with the way you think as well. Many years ago, I had a technical manager who never felt any pressure to be the first to come up with the answer to a question or the solution to some problem. If I was having a technical conversation with him, and we arrived at a particularly subtle or complex issue, he could go completely silent, just staring straight ahead with his fingers to his lips. I would find it…

I often do this in meetings and have gotten into the habit of saying "I'm thinking". It's not much but it gives both of us time to think and explicitly makes it clear I don't expect the person to say something. I think that helps.

"Give me a second" is something I say when someone just has to break the silence with some unproductive comment. Having 20-30 seconds to think silently should be a completely normal thing.

Re: Maybe the default settings are too high

#197

Post by elxr »

typewithrhythm wrote: post #150
jimmaswell wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> typing isn't the bottleneck. Not even close. I find it absolutely is much of the time - I'll determine the architecture/overall solution, know exactly what needs to go in a multitude of files, and now actualizing all that isn't really thinking anymore, just donkey work. Getting AI to do this has been incredible now that it's finally good enough. I've had Copilot make flawless 500+LOC C++ classes in the first pass,…

How often are you actually doing this though? I think I probably work in something greenfield about once a decade. The hard part is always going down a rabbit hole in established code bases. I can do the boilerplate in a few days. It saves time, but not really even one hairy issue a year.

Nowadays? 4+ times a week. I want to learn as much as I can now that I essentially have 24/7 mentors that can remember everything I've told them.

Sure, I could write it all by hand; but even as a decent typer, I'll never match a tenth speed of claude code or opencode just GOING. Maybe there's a better way to learn, but whatever it is, it's not obvious to me.

Re: Maybe the default settings are too high

#198

Post by notahacker »

delis-thumbs-7e wrote: post #180
gste wrote: post #175

By coincidence I also finished The Fellowship of the Ring about two weeks ago. I have always had the intuition about reading speed that it is very easy to be a speed reader if you skim over things. I've always questioned how much of speed reading is just skipping stuff and filtering for the most important word tokens. You could skip all of Tolkien's scenery descriptions, you could skip Tom Bombadil and Lothlorien and…

Although people think LoTR as a novel meant for younger people, it certainly is not an Tolkien never meant it that way and it certainly is not an easy text. It is far more complex than any fantasy I have ever come across. Tolkien was a top language scholar who spoke several even dead languages, so there’s a lot more going on than just the surface plot of Frodo “returning” Bilbo’s ring. One would be mad to simply skim…

> Tolkien was a top language scholar who spoke several even dead languages, so there’s a lot more going on than just the surface plot of Frodo “returning” Bilbo’s ring.

If you want to see it then way Tolkien saw it, probably the best way is to get through all that unimportant stuff involving rings and battles as quickly as possible to get to the appendices where Tolkein spent his time thinking about the history and etymology and even neat little details like how the calendar worked in the Shire...

(I'm only half joking)

Re: Maybe the default settings are too high

#199

Post by jahnu »

delis-thumbs-7e wrote: post #180
gste wrote: post #175

By coincidence I also finished The Fellowship of the Ring about two weeks ago. I have always had the intuition about reading speed that it is very easy to be a speed reader if you skim over things. I've always questioned how much of speed reading is just skipping stuff and filtering for the most important word tokens. You could skip all of Tolkien's scenery descriptions, you could skip Tom Bombadil and Lothlorien and…

Although people think LoTR as a novel meant for younger people, it certainly is not an Tolkien never meant it that way and it certainly is not an easy text. It is far more complex than any fantasy I have ever come across. Tolkien was a top language scholar who spoke several even dead languages, so there’s a lot more going on than just the surface plot of Frodo “returning” Bilbo’s ring. One would be mad to simply skim…

> One would be mad to simply skim it through.

Reminds me of an ah-ha! moment I had as a kid playing a text adventure game on my C64. I was stuck for a while and tried to find alternative ways forwards. I typed in "cheat" and it replied "OK, you win!" and ended the game.

Re: Maybe the default settings are too high

#200

Post by fluoridation »

lugoues wrote: post #172
fluoridation wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

We can get stuck in our minds and lean too much on prior skills instead of fully assessing the problem at hand. More likely than not, given he was a contractor, building a trench and walls seemed like a simple solution to something he has probably dealt with many time and didn't think twice about it.

I just don't understand how it could occur to no one in a group of three or four people for a whole hour. Like, even if the barrier had been fully built and worked perfectly even after considering the tide, they would have been making camp on fully soaked ground. Just what everyone wants first thing in the morning: to trudge through mud.
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