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

Proof you can do hard things

blog.nateliason.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 330 posts

Re: Proof you can do hard things

#21

Post by Medh_Suk »

ethanbond wrote: post #11

Self-image really is important, especially on the dimension of self-efficacy. There are compounding effects in both the positive and negative direction though. I’ve used this same idea to dig myself out of ruts. When things are fucked up I’ll start paying attention to small things and deliberately “defer” progress on a few bigger things that are harder to do and more costly to fail. Each small win helps build momentu…

"It costs you nothing to believe in yourself.

But it will cost you everything if you don't."

Discipline is a muscle. Go Build it. Key is to understand different activities require different muscles.

Be mindful of picking your activities, but dont keep on waiting.

Re: Proof you can do hard things

#22

Post by hgl »

> ... teenager asks why they need to learn calculus

> But if we avoid hard things

I don't see how you can justify the former by arguing the latter. These two are orthogonal. If I were that teenager, I think what I really would want to ask is that why it has to be calculus instead of some other things that is also hard but with obvious real world application like writing a small 3D game engine.

And my answer to that question is you probably shouldn't if your were in an ideal education system. You would be taught what interesting interactions you could have with the physical world, and be induced to discover calculus or some other math tools that helps you understand how the interactions really work and demonstrates you really need such tools. You're more likely to grasp them when you're driven by curiosity.

Re: Proof you can do hard things

#23

Post by yawnxyz »

I like the idea that "If you can master these topics, imagine what other topics you could master if you put your mind to it" — again, for the empowerment.

It's not about a thing being hard. Walking is hard to a paraplegic. It's about overcoming a thing and feeling good about it (instead of external rewards, like a piece of candy or good grades).

The real problem with school is that it replaces empowerment with gamification externalized rewards. You're not learning calc for the sake of understanding the world, you're doing it for a line item on a checklist. That doesn't come with empowerment.

With the mere framing of "you can do [hard thing] to prove you can do hard things" is a bad framing because it could be anything — from doing calc, to bungee jumping, to drinking a gallon of milk (please don't). This framing doesn't actually lead to empowerment (and then self-improvement).

Re: Proof you can do hard things

#24

Post by Barrin92 »

To me what's more important than Calculus being hard, and I think that's especially true for maths more broadly is that it's beautiful and one of the fundamental ways how we can make sense of the world. Everyone benefits from doing some maths.

I studied maths in uni and while I've not used it much, even as a programmer, I still enjoy doing it. My dad never had much schooling but now that he's retired he actually picked up a few of my books and slowly worked through high school to now undergraduate courses. He's having a lot of fun with it.

Re: Proof you can do hard things

#25

Post by esafak »

Don't do hard things that are unrelated to your actual goal; they're in unlimited supply, and you could be doing hard things that are relevant instead.

This essay wouldn't have impressed me in middle school; I don't know why it's on our front page.

Re: Proof you can do hard things

#27

Post by ethanbond »

Medh_Suk wrote: post #21
ethanbond wrote: post #11

Self-image really is important, especially on the dimension of self-efficacy. There are compounding effects in both the positive and negative direction though. I’ve used this same idea to dig myself out of ruts. When things are fucked up I’ll start paying attention to small things and deliberately “defer” progress on a few bigger things that are harder to do and more costly to fail. Each small win helps build momentu…

"It costs you nothing to believe in yourself. But it will cost you everything if you don't." Discipline is a muscle. Go Build it. Key is to understand different activities require different muscles. Be mindful of picking your activities, but dont keep on waiting.

I am discussing a way to be disciplined, which is with decent flexion deliberately built into your self-image.

E.g. I know many people who go through bouts of intense fitness or diet fixations, take a lot of well-deserved pride in their discipline, and then hit a major event that temporarily precludes the fixation. They really struggle to get back on the train.

One major factor, IMO, is that they’re daunted by the intensity of what they achieved before. Obviously in fitness there’s a physical component to this, but there’s a significant mental component as well — especially outside of fitness.

Basically all I’m saying is you can (and should) gradually and deliberately dial up your sense of self-efficacy when it inevitably crosses some local minimum due to events outside of your control. You ought to build a self-image that’s robust to occasional and sometimes significant failures.

Re: Proof you can do hard things

#28

Post by wrs »

Not to distract everyone from complaining about calculus, but this reminded me of something I heard from a person with a Ph.D. in astrophysics from Caltech. They were not working in astrophysics, but they said the degree was still quite valuable to them. Whenever they had trouble learning something, rather than feel stupid, they reminded themselves: “I have a Ph.D. in astrophysics from Caltech, so I am definitely not stupid. This is just hard.”

Re: Proof you can do hard things

#29

Post by quickthrower2 »

fortenforge wrote: post #15

I don't want to be overly rude, but this is nonsense. The reason to learn calculus is that it's incredibly useful in several domains and never learning it prevents you from become a skilled practitioner in those domains which in turn reduces your future earning potential. Basically: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/why-i-couldn39t-be-a-math-...

That is a good comic. But I am not sure "reduces your future earning potential" is really right. If you are going for future earning potential, then there are other things. Probably along the lines of - learn to code - find a way to migrate to the US - live in SF/NYC - learn algorithms and data structures - learn leet code - emotional control/resilience for putting up with those kinda jobs ... etc

I reckon there are plenty of PhDs earning less than $100k around the world, who know calculus and matrix algebra like their ABCs.

Re: Proof you can do hard things

#30

Post by javajosh »

Medh_Suk wrote: post #21
ethanbond wrote: post #11

Self-image really is important, especially on the dimension of self-efficacy. There are compounding effects in both the positive and negative direction though. I’ve used this same idea to dig myself out of ruts. When things are fucked up I’ll start paying attention to small things and deliberately “defer” progress on a few bigger things that are harder to do and more costly to fail. Each small win helps build momentu…

"It costs you nothing to believe in yourself. But it will cost you everything if you don't." Discipline is a muscle. Go Build it. Key is to understand different activities require different muscles. Be mindful of picking your activities, but dont keep on waiting.

And yet the Art of War tells you to attack when you are ready and your opponent is not. There are some problems that really need to "stew". Others require immediate action even when you aren't ready. It's very hard to tell the difference, but it's wrong to assert that all problems require immediate action (although I agree that if you're going to err, do so on the side of action, in general)
Post reply on HN