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Ask HN: What was your most humbling learning moment?

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Re: Ask HN: What was your most humbling learning moment?

#261

Post by filleduchaos »

__turbobrew__ wrote: post #251
massysett wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you discounting the importance of video game skill? With esports people are making a living on it. Person B is specializing in a skill and mastering it. Person A is a jack of all trades and master of nothing.

Playing video games for that long destroys your body, I personally know from experience. Exercise also makes you better in every other thing in your life as well (including video games).

I mean, playing sports (nowhere near even a semi-pro level) has destroyed my body a hell of a lot more than playing video games has. People just find one source of body destruction more "worthy" than the other, and that's more a societal value judgment thing than an objective danger level thing.

It isn't only video games that get hit with this; for example, in my experience ballerinas get a lot more faux concern about "destroying their feet" than, say, sprinters do, never mind that they have pretty much the same foot injury profiles.

(See also: sitting at a desk for eight hours to play video games is obviously bad for you, but sitting at a desk for eight hours to type reports for your employer couldn't possibly cause you any issues that said employer might be on the hook for.)

Re: Ask HN: What was your most humbling learning moment?

#262

Post by jongjong »

My most humbling moment was when I realized that I'm not a genius. It's that almost everyone else is dumb.

... Just kidding!

Actually, I've been humbled to realize that people who may be really dumb in one area can be really smart in another area and that there isn't one kind of intelligence.

I think even being good at sports is itself a form of intelligence. Being able to manipulate others politically or to draw/paint well or to ask the right questions, etc... It's rare to find people who are equally good at everything. I'm actually a pretty good all-rounder so I never understood how it's possible to be good at something and not good at other things. Surely people can apply the same reasoning skills to all these different endeavors! I thought. Wrong. For a lot of people (not me obviously), their intelligence is intuitive (subconscious) so they can't really repurpose it towards other tasks.

Intuition can be a very powerful tool. I'm kind of envious of people who have really excellent domain intuition. They come up with answers with such speed and ease, it's almost like muscle memory. Whereas my mind has to always work hard to get the same result. If I can do something, I can 100% explain it down to every detail. None of it is subconscious for me.

I think Jeff Bezos said something along those lines when discussing why he didn't pursue a PhD in Physics. He understood that Physics wasn't intuitive for him as it was for the smartest guy at his university.

Re: Ask HN: What was your most humbling learning moment?

#263

Post by nyanpasu64 »

fifilura wrote: post #62
jv22222 wrote: post #54

I was asked by a pro. documentary maker (who I met on the plane flying in to London) to get some B role for a G&R concert he was filming (with his spare video camera). I was given the camera and sent in to the mosh pit to film from that perspective. After the show I gave the camera back to him. He said, "where's the footage?" I had been "filming" looking through the view finder, but I had forgotten to press record. G…

G&R = Guns N'Roses

"B [roll] for a G&R concert" sounds like a joke about RGB in little endian.

Re: Ask HN: What was your most humbling learning moment?

#266

Post by protocolture »

rexreed wrote: post #185
protocolture wrote: post #182

1. Seeing my boss just completely side step an issue, where his switch was sending vlan tags to his carrier causing the carrier to shut down the port, by purchasing a switch that didnt support vlan tagging. I died on the inside but lesson about end user troubleshooting learned. 2. Being able to break into a 24 hour data centre because the data centres building management just didnt give a shit. Turns out they had fir…

> 3. I used to lock my bike to my tool shelf. A thief came along and used my hacksaw from my toolshelf You locked your bike to a toolshelf that contained the tool they used to steal the bike? That would be like putting jewelry behind a glass cabinet and putting a hammer next to it.

Yes. I did exactly that.

Re: Ask HN: What was your most humbling learning moment?

#267

Post by motoxpro »

massysett wrote: post #174
motoxpro wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait so you are a particle physicist, a statesman, a mountain man, a mob boss, and an astronaut? Stop thinking global maxima (everyone in the world) and start thinking local maxima (you) and I promise there is someone that beats every local (you) metric you have.

Nope. There is no one that beats me at every metric I have. Does anyone know my family as well as I do? No. Does anyone know my staff as well as I do? No. Does anyone maintain my house as well as I do? No.

But there is someone who knows THEIR own family better than you know YOUR own family, they know their staff better than you know your staff, and they maintain their house better than you maintain your house. Again, at the metrics you care about, whatever they may be, there is someone better.

Of course you are the "best" version of you, but there is only one of you, that's not the point.

Re: Ask HN: What was your most humbling learning moment?

#268

Post by udev4096 »

hiAndrewQuinn wrote: post #258
stavros wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a false dichotomy. On one end, you have "overarchitects everything so much that the code is soon unmaintainable" and on the other end you have "architects the code so little that the code is soon unmaintainable". Always write the simplest thing you can, but no simpler. Finding that line is where all the art is.

It's cliche, but I really do feel reading the Art of Unix Programming gave me a very good sense early on for how to walk this line carefully. Unix programs are high quality - but they're also, ideally, small , and written with an eye to compositionality with the rest of the ecosystem. The best architecture is in the middle, and often the best first draft is a simple series of pipes. https://www.catb.org/~esr/writings…

That's a really good book. Thanks for mentioning it

Re: Ask HN: What was your most humbling learning moment?

#269

Post by lelanthran »

makk wrote: post #244
adolph wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "It's okay to half-ass something, when all you need is half an ass". Going to mule that over.

Sometimes, in the interest of efficiency, you only use half your horsepower.

> Sometimes, in the interest of efficiency, you only use half your horsepower.

Or, in this case, half your asspower.

I think the asspower unit of effort makes more sense than story points.

Re: Ask HN: What was your most humbling learning moment?

#270

Post by tradertef »

perihelions wrote: post #7

I took my Thinkpad to a repair shop because its charging port was damaged. A very stoic human pointed out to me it has *two* identical ones, USB-C type, right next to each other.

Haha.. I had exactly the same issue. To be fair, the other port is a little hidden since it is also part of a proprietary docking station port.
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