What Is the Most Valuable Thing You Can Learn in One Hour? • Hacker News Board

Re: What Is the Most Valuable Thing You Can Learn in One Hour?

#241

Post by tunesmith » Tue, Dec 31, 2019, 6:40 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #237

tunesmith wrote: post #235

The difference between necessity and sufficiency, particularly in regard to causality. This series of questions: Assuming A actually causes B: Can A alone cause/explain B? (sufficiency) Can anything else also cause/explain B other than A? (necessity) There's a lot more than that, but those are the basics and they'll get you far with critical thinking. Pretty much any logical fallacy in those never-ending "lists of lo…

> Pretty much any logical fallacy in those never-ending "lists of logical fallacies" can be rephrased in terms of causality, necessity, and sufficiency. Most are unrelated to causality, because they are based on logical implication not causality. Sufficiency and necessity are relevant, but logical sufficiency and necessity, not causal sufficiency and necessity.

Yeah, that's why I edited and put cause/explain. For the purposes of the point, it's the same type of thinking whether you are analyzing causes of effects, or reasons why.

Re: What Is the Most Valuable Thing You Can Learn in One Hour?

#242

Post by slowhand09 » Tue, Dec 31, 2019, 6:43 PM UTC

froindt wrote: post #227

mathieutd wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree with this. You should pay your higher interest rate debt first.

I've looked at the difference with a few people. It depends on the balances and interest rates, but the difference is smaller than I would have guessed. With tens of thousands of dollars of debt, I've seen the difference be just a couple hundred dollars. Smallest to largest balance frees up cash flow faster, making it more likely the person won't go into additional debt (and hopefully won't get discouraged and quit t…

I tried the calculator. It doesn't seem to work correctly for me. (Chrome browser...)

Re: What Is the Most Valuable Thing You Can Learn in One Hour?

#243

Post by shantly » Tue, Dec 31, 2019, 6:44 PM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #240

shantly wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The total contribution limit is ~$56k/yr. $19k is the limit on what you , the employee (or LLC owner or partnership member) can contribute, which is exactly what I'm talking about—most of the money has to come from your employer if you want the maximum possible benefit. It's pretty rad if your "employer" is your (or your rich parents') C corp, or you're an owning member of an S corp that's rolling in money, though.

There are also costs and various rules associated with administering 401k plans. I'm not an accountant or financial advisor so I'm not sure how effective using these sort of arrangements would be. (Of course, lots of money opens up a wide range of tax minimization and savings strategies.)

My point is basically that at minimum 50% of the taxes foregone to support the 401k system[SEE EDIT] is going to people who definitely would have had an awesome—not just OK, not good, awesome—retirement no matter what. Not the poor or middle class. Functionally no-one in the middle class is getting five figures of contributed funds per year from their employer, let alone the ~$36k it'd take to max it out. Who are? Top-end professionals who can be self-employed in such a fashion that they own their "employer" (and again, LLC or partnership won't cut it, because reasons) and very well compensated corporate folks (chiefly management-tier). Plus family of rich people who're just (legally, but clearly via Some Real Bullshit) dodging taxes.

[EDIT] OK so 50% is not necessarily right, obvious, I realized as soon as I posted, but the benefits are very disproportionately in the favor of people who aren't exactly the ones one might hope a government-supported retirement system would be mainly designed to help, and the best possible benefits aren't practically available at all to middle-class people even if they do somehow manage to put the actual total contribution limit away for retirement (they'll lose out on probably at least half the max benefit of the system, since they can only put ~$19k or $20k in tax-free themselves and probably only get low-thousands contribution from their employer at best, so the rest is getting taxed before being invested, and IIRC you can't even stack an IRA on top of a maxed-out 401k contribution)

Re: What Is the Most Valuable Thing You Can Learn in One Hour?

#244

Post by ghaff » Tue, Dec 31, 2019, 6:49 PM UTC

BeetleB wrote: post #238

ghaff wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>you can't get anywhere near the contribution limit on your own, That really seems like an overstatement. 401k contribution limits (without catch-up) are about $20K/year. That's no doubt more than most people save in a year but it's not that far out on the fringes of what mid-career professionals are/should be saving for retirement. I don't completely disagree with your broader point. 401ks (especially with significa…

> 401k contribution limits (without catch-up) are about $20K/year. The GP may be referring to the $57K limit which is the total employee + employer contribution. The $20K/year limit is salary contributions. I think there's also a backdoor that lets the employee contribute more, but the real limit is $57K. > But they're actually less of a big deal for top execs etc. for whom the dollar amounts are relatively small. In…

>there's also a backdoor that lets the employee contribute more

I'm not sure about backdoors but there is a catchup contribution if you're 50 or over that lets you contribute about another $6K.

401Ks are really this weird little quirk in US tax law that, as I understand the history, came about almost by accident. And they're suboptimal in a lot of ways. Of course, they're now so entrenched as a middle class benefit that it would be political suicide to touch them.

Defined benefit plans would be better for a lot of people although they have their own issues--including underfunding and, at least historically, a very strong bias towards long-term employment at a single company.

Re: What Is the Most Valuable Thing You Can Learn in One Hour?

#245

Post by greggyb » Tue, Dec 31, 2019, 6:51 PM UTC

ethanbond wrote: post #14

Taking this also as a bit of an Ask HN: Easily the Tiny Habits habit formation regime created by Stanford researcher BJ Fogg. A lot of the addictive design patterns you see in apps like Snapchat, Instagram, etc. are built off his research. Quite nefarious use of psychology for advertising/“engagement”, but the plus side is you can use the same strategies to build habits you want to build. Step 1: Consider the habit y…

> I spent a month of the year just flossing 1 tooth each night (ridiculous, I know!), then 5 months just flossing 1 row (better!)

Not directly related to the habit formation part, but this reminded me of something my dad used to tell us as kids about flossing and brushing teeth when we'd complain about it:

Dad: You know, you don't have to floss and brush them all.

Us (amazedly): Really?

Dad: Nope, just the ones you want to keep.

Re: What Is the Most Valuable Thing You Can Learn in One Hour?

#246

Post by OGWhales » Tue, Dec 31, 2019, 6:54 PM UTC

el_cujo wrote: post #164

jakobegger wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> one hours is defiantly enough to get to know the main Vim bindings I'm going to do an experiment. I've been struggling with Vim for a long time. I need to leave in about one hour. Instead of wasting time here on HN, I'll now spend an hour learning Vim. I doubt that this will get me very far, but I'll let you know how far I got.

type vimtutor in your shell for the "intended" tutorial

Thank you. Just did this and finally understand vim and I have used some weird editors in my day. This really helped to give me an overview

Re: What Is the Most Valuable Thing You Can Learn in One Hour?

#247

Post by shantly » Tue, Dec 31, 2019, 6:54 PM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #244

BeetleB wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 401k contribution limits (without catch-up) are about $20K/year. The GP may be referring to the $57K limit which is the total employee + employer contribution. The $20K/year limit is salary contributions. I think there's also a backdoor that lets the employee contribute more, but the real limit is $57K. > But they're actually less of a big deal for top execs etc. for whom the dollar amounts are relatively small. In…

>there's also a backdoor that lets the employee contribute more I'm not sure about backdoors but there is a catchup contribution if you're 50 or over that lets you contribute about another $6K. 401Ks are really this weird little quirk in US tax law that, as I understand the history, came about almost by accident. And they're suboptimal in a lot of ways. Of course, they're now so entrenched as a middle class benefit t…

Opening up the full contribution level for all employees and the self-employed, and simply mandating minimums of employer contribution (to keep them from withdrawing their contributions with this change and not simply adding it on to employee income, pocketing it instead, to avoid disrupting anyone's current retirement benefit) would do a lot to help. Though yeah, touching them in any way will be painted as "trying to take away your retirement", even if it's exactly the opposite.

Re: What Is the Most Valuable Thing You Can Learn in One Hour?

#248

Post by arjie » Tue, Dec 31, 2019, 7:06 PM UTC

astura wrote: post #65

tempsy wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What crowd are you in where most people have all their money in a savings account? That is borderline financial suicide.

They have all their money in checking probably because they don't have nearly enough money to invest. Those people would be much better off learning to either spend less, earn more, and get out of debt instead of learning about how to invest hypothetical money that they'll never have with their habits. I certainly didn't know a damn thing about index funds, investments, stock markets, etc until I actually had the ext…

If you have over $200 spare from operational expenses and the cushion then you can use Robinhood and buy the ETF versions of Vanguards mutual funds.

Re: What Is the Most Valuable Thing You Can Learn in One Hour?

#249

Post by Minor49er » Tue, Dec 31, 2019, 7:07 PM UTC

nordsieck wrote: post #149

IMO, the single most important thing I've ever learned is: try to be effective when you're communicating. I used to feel an obligation to correct other people if they had false beliefs. This was not an endearing trait, and even worse, I was never particularly successful at convincing the other people. One day, I read a passage from "How to make friends and influence people". It said something along the lines of: "The…

To add onto this, learning how to use communicative tools better is huge. I have seriously enhanced my productivity and understanding of my work by learning how to manage my inbox, write and respond to tickets, and share information via effective Confluence posts.

Re: What Is the Most Valuable Thing You Can Learn in One Hour?

#250

Post by ghostbrainalpha » Tue, Dec 31, 2019, 7:07 PM UTC

nordsieck wrote: post #149

IMO, the single most important thing I've ever learned is: try to be effective when you're communicating. I used to feel an obligation to correct other people if they had false beliefs. This was not an endearing trait, and even worse, I was never particularly successful at convincing the other people. One day, I read a passage from "How to make friends and influence people". It said something along the lines of: "The…

I agree with everything you said, and love the boxing reference at the end.

Anecdote... one of the proudest moments in my life was when I finally did outbox the heavy bag. I put a hole in the side where I my left hooks to the body hit. It probably took me 10 years to make that hole, and even though I needed to buy a new bag. I can't make myself throw away the old one.