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

The strange path of accepting how your brain works

alexanderell.is

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 39 posts

Re: The strange path of accepting how your brain works

#21

Post by beckman466 »

waynesonfire wrote: post #11
danbmil99 wrote: post #7

Great article. From the perspective of someone who's getting older, you have to come to grips with the fact that your mind and brain change in ability just like your body does. At first it can be frustrating, and you see it only as a negative. But strangely, having your brain change a bit in terms of its speed or its ability to memorize and recall things can actually give you a new perspective on solving problems and…

well, you have no choice but to accept it. whats the alternative? depression? meth? some tips i'm thinking for myself are: rely on the wisdom crutch--solve the right problems. stop investing mental energy in chasing the next persons fad / weekend project. take advantaged of mastered knowledge, have it finally pay it's dividends. the older i get, the more i appreciate technology that isn't rewritten every release cand…

> some tips i'm thinking for myself are:

straight to the solutions. are you close to being ‘older’?

Re: The strange path of accepting how your brain works

#23

Post by waynesonfire »

beckman466 wrote: post #21
waynesonfire wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well, you have no choice but to accept it. whats the alternative? depression? meth? some tips i'm thinking for myself are: rely on the wisdom crutch--solve the right problems. stop investing mental energy in chasing the next persons fad / weekend project. take advantaged of mastered knowledge, have it finally pay it's dividends. the older i get, the more i appreciate technology that isn't rewritten every release cand…

> some tips i'm thinking for myself are: straight to the solutions. are you close to being ‘older’?

every day, you?

Re: The strange path of accepting how your brain works

#25

Post by firecall »

dolni wrote: post #18
danbmil99 wrote: post #7

Great article. From the perspective of someone who's getting older, you have to come to grips with the fact that your mind and brain change in ability just like your body does. At first it can be frustrating, and you see it only as a negative. But strangely, having your brain change a bit in terms of its speed or its ability to memorize and recall things can actually give you a new perspective on solving problems and…

When did you start noticing that change? I am going through it right now, and I am barely in my mid 30s. It's not awful. I am still sharper than most, I find. But damn if it isn't depressing.

Mid to late 40s for me :-)

Which is where I am now.

Two mitigation strategies I employ:

1. More Sleep 2. No Alcohol

Re: The strange path of accepting how your brain works

#26

Post by catlikesshrimp »

netizen-936824 wrote: post #13
martindbp wrote: post #4

I also struggle a lot with the limitations I have, frustrated at being so slow and stupid. I've also relied on flashcards as an augmentation, but I've started to question its value. For language we're already wired to pick up on it without tools like flashcards. As I think back, like most people (I assume) I learned English through watching TV without subtitles, and reading online. I didn't speak much (if at all) unt…

I'm a bit confused. Did you not speak at all, to any human, until your 20s? Or is English a second language? Because the way this is phrased, I imagine you, somehow, growing up isolated in a cabin in the woods with internet. How does a baby feed itself?

You are right about the wording. So I asumed English is not his first language.

Another post by him supports this idea:

"I live in arguably one of the best countries for raising kids, with 18 months parental leave, free preschool, higher education, retirement homes for aging parents, health care, and just a child-friendly work environment overall (even dads are expected to be gone for at least a few months), and it's STILL super hard to raise a child"

He learned English by watching TV, which is something I couldn't have done. To GP: you are not stupid!

Re: The strange path of accepting how your brain works

#27

Post by catlikesshrimp »

danbmil99 wrote: post #7

Great article. From the perspective of someone who's getting older, you have to come to grips with the fact that your mind and brain change in ability just like your body does. At first it can be frustrating, and you see it only as a negative. But strangely, having your brain change a bit in terms of its speed or its ability to memorize and recall things can actually give you a new perspective on solving problems and…

"There's also the fact that as you get older you simply know more, you've seen more patterns and data. You're like a machine learning algorithm that's been trained on a larger corpus."

I want to add that the professionals (MDs) I have asked think that a better education does not protect people from dementia. It only hides the creeping advance of dementia on us as we grow old.

Getting as much education and experience, IMO, is desirable because, IMO, it enriches life. But as of yet, expecting diminishing capacities is something we must accept, and plan for.

Re: The strange path of accepting how your brain works

#29

Post by tharkun__ »

waynesonfire wrote: post #11
danbmil99 wrote: post #7

Great article. From the perspective of someone who's getting older, you have to come to grips with the fact that your mind and brain change in ability just like your body does. At first it can be frustrating, and you see it only as a negative. But strangely, having your brain change a bit in terms of its speed or its ability to memorize and recall things can actually give you a new perspective on solving problems and…

well, you have no choice but to accept it. whats the alternative? depression? meth? some tips i'm thinking for myself are: rely on the wisdom crutch--solve the right problems. stop investing mental energy in chasing the next persons fad / weekend project. take advantaged of mastered knowledge, have it finally pay it's dividends. the older i get, the more i appreciate technology that isn't rewritten every release cand…

     a tip for the fifteen year old self, don't take this advice just be aware of it so you know what technology to invest in
This one is awesome advice! I remember the discussions with my dad. I told him there's no other way than to compile your own operating system from scratch. How could you ever not do that? I was trying out LFS and gentoo at the time and loved it! He worked on business critical software on IBM mainframes.

I wouldn't be where I am today and wouldn't know what I know today if I hadn't done what I did at the time. Installing an LFS system teaches you a tremendous amount about how your operating system actually works (if you don't just blindly copy and paste stuff and give up if something fails). I created `ebuilds` for my favourite software at the time that wasn't part of gentoo yet. I learned a lot from compiling software with my own optimization combinations, including some things that recently went by here on HN (-O2 and -O3 are way different and while one may make things faster it can also horribly break software). I'm not a C developer and I no longer do sys/network admin work but I do like to think that it gave me a great foundation and it definitely has helped me in more than one job to be the "bridge" between the devs and the sys admins. I spoke both languages. When other devs just complained about the "unreasonable requests" the admins had for them I understood why they made those requests. I also understood the dev side though. I could translate between the two.

Nowadays? I cringe at recompiling my operating system. I just want to `apt-get install` and be done with it already from one LTS release to the next because nothing is worse than having the "TV" out of commission for longer than the couple hours it takes to download and do all the upgrades. I don't have time for this (as you can guess, my TV is a Linux box hooked up to the biggest monitor I could find for the kind of money I wanted to spend. There's not ever gonna be a "Smart TV" in my house, not over my dead body). I have kids that need their Netflix running!

Re: The strange path of accepting how your brain works

#30

Post by tharkun__ »

ivraatiems wrote: post #14

I think there is actually a lot of benefit in being "smart enough" but not a genius in some areas. When I was growing up, if you were too smart as a young kid, you'd be singled out as "gifted and talented" and then put in special classes, asked to do more schoolwork, etc. This separation had both positive and negative effects - on the one hand, it was a lot less boring to work on accelerated material. On the other ha…

I hear you brother! It's both a blessing and a curse to be good at something. You ace things others don't and you don't even understand why others don't understand instantly! Math was always easy for me at school. No need to study, instant A or B. Good enough. Language? Easy too! Just grammar, pronunciation and spelling. Easy peasey! Interpreting what that author meant? What do you mean there's hidden meaning? Why would anyone do that? Makes no sense to me!

This only changes once university came around. Finally I got rid of the interpreting Shakespeare parts and there were problems in math and computer science that I actually had to spend brain cycles on to stay on As and Bs! Definitely a "learning curve". One of the first classes at university I got F (by 1 point). I had to redo the test. I actually went and studied that time around. Got an A.

Do I need any of that stuff now? Well I can't remember the last time I really needed a bin packing algorithm to be honest. But I do agree it's valuable to know that thing exists. I was in a study group with a bunch of really smart guys that aced those things like I did high school. They work at the Teslas, Googles and Facebooks (actually all three of those for real, lol) of this world now and I work somewhere else. That's totally OK. They still ace Tesla. I ace my job.

Post reply on HN