I have no idea what I'm doing • Hacker News Board

Re: I have no idea what I'm doing

#31

Post by jarcane » Tue, Feb 03, 2015, 5:45 PM UTC

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #29

jarcane wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They'll also abandon perfectly good dams just to move up stream and build another. They're some of the most environmentally destructive critters on earth; like most creatures if allowed to thrive they'll just keep devouring every tree and damming every river until they starve and die off, only beavers can wind up taking whole ecosystems with them.

Depends on your point of view. North America used to be a festering swamp of mosquito-ridden beaver ponds. Built over millions of years. That WAS the ecology. The landscape we see today is unnatural and temporary. We reformed this continent to suit ourselves. Most attempts to protect some bit of land and trees in the name of preservation is ... shortsighted at the least.

Eh, I think the more important take from it is that any species is prone to developing an unbalanced advantage that ultimately does them in.

We humans just happen to be the ones on top right now doing the unbalanced expansion thing.

Re: I have no idea what I'm doing

#32

Post by julian_t » Tue, Feb 03, 2015, 5:51 PM UTC

lazyant wrote: post #21

sanderjd wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious about this too. I wonder if he means that you don't really make any money compared to the opportunity cost of all the hours you spend on it, or if you really don't make any money in an absolute sense. Unfortunately, I suspect it's actually the latter due to the relatively tiny size of the target market for such books.

From other tech book authors it seems it's the former; they work many hours for a year and then they make 20k or that kind of minimum wage money

That's right. I wrote some computer books some years back, and the royalties were somewhere around 10% of the wholesale cost of the book. So a book with a $40 shelf price might have a $20 wholesale price... and with only about 6000 copies as a typical print run, I didn't make much at all.

And also bear in mind that an advance is just that: it comes off the royalties, so you may not end up making any money for quite a while.

Re: I have no idea what I'm doing

#33

Post by pcthrowaway » Tue, Feb 03, 2015, 5:51 PM UTC

peterwwillis wrote: post #23

Recently I found this note on my desk at home. It says “I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I’M DOING”. I don’t remember writing it, but it was in my house on my desk in my handwriting, so I obviously did. He might want to seek some psychiatric help if this persists. So what did it mean? Was it a cry for help? A product idea? A topic for a blog post? Or could it be an idea for a conference talk? The card was a cry for help. This tal…

Not only have you missed the point of this author's talk, you've also missed the point of Feynman's answer, which served to demonstrate that the question being asked did not have a simple answer that could be succinctly constructed in a way that does the whole story justice. He wasn't saying 'don't try to understand magnets, just use them' he was saying 'I can't answer that question in a satisfactory way without first explaining all of Physics'

The author of this talk is not abnormal to do things without remembering them. I write things down all the time only to come across them a year later with no recollection.

It must be nice to be so self-assured of one's intellectual superiority though. Most of us have no idea what we're doing, after all.

Re: I have no idea what I'm doing

#34

Post by pekk » Tue, Feb 03, 2015, 6:04 PM UTC

calcsam wrote: post #30

In one sense the author is right. In another sense, saying "I have no idea what I'm doing" is a status play. Those a bit down on the totem pole don't have the luxury of publicly questioning their own competence.

Hmm. I don't agree. Is it better to publicly represent that you are the smartest guy in the room and make the people lower on the totem pole feel bad? Maybe it would be nice if the normal way of things changed so that you didn't have to pretend in this way (never admitting vulnerability) just because you felt your position was insecure.

Re: I have no idea what I'm doing

#35

Post by pekk » Tue, Feb 03, 2015, 6:09 PM UTC

engendered wrote: post #3

This sort of post seems to do well on HN, so to offer a bit of criticism I'd like to posit that often they seem to be a thin veneer over humble bragging. e.g. I don't know what I'm doing, but then neither does anyone else but I am stating it so therefore I'm actually better than them and I have impostor syndrome so that actually makes me better at what I do than you, and everyone who says they know what they're doing…

If I state that I feel lost sometimes or that I have impostor syndrome it doesn't in any way imply that I'm better. You're just attacking people for showing vulnerability.

Re: I have no idea what I'm doing

#36

Post by joncameron » Tue, Feb 03, 2015, 6:10 PM UTC

calcsam wrote: post #30

In one sense the author is right. In another sense, saying "I have no idea what I'm doing" is a status play. Those a bit down on the totem pole don't have the luxury of publicly questioning their own competence.

That's sometimes true, but it's nice to hear someone with status admit they're not an infallible paragon. There's value in that, especially for those lower on the pole who stew in their own minds with assumptions about how everyone else is x amount smarter and more competent, however true that may be.

Re: I have no idea what I'm doing

#37

Post by hawleyal » Tue, Feb 03, 2015, 6:12 PM UTC

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #17

senthil_rajasek wrote: post #15

"If you only take one thing away from this talk, make it this: beavers are idiots. They have no idea why they’re building these huge structures; they just blindly do it." I can understand the author's use of the Beaver analogy but it may not be the right analogy. Beavers build these dams to keep the water level at a certain height. This not only offers protection from predators but also makes it easy to access food.…

Go further - the beaver doesn't know that its building a dam. It just builds because it feels compelled to. Then when the dam is done (the beaver triggers on the sound of water falling and stops when the sound is gone) the beaver reaps some benefit. Over millions of years, beavers that behaved like this prospered. The beaver doesn't know why or even think about it. No more than you think about your particular cell en…

Go further. All things behave this way. You were compelled to comment given your current circumstance, your particular makeup of cells and electricity sitting in your chair typing, blah blah blah. The beaver knows it's building a dam insasmuch as anyone else knows what they are doing.

Re: I have no idea what I'm doing

#38

Post by jarcane » Tue, Feb 03, 2015, 6:25 PM UTC

julian_t wrote: post #32

lazyant wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From other tech book authors it seems it's the former; they work many hours for a year and then they make 20k or that kind of minimum wage money

That's right. I wrote some computer books some years back, and the royalties were somewhere around 10% of the wholesale cost of the book. So a book with a $40 shelf price might have a $20 wholesale price... and with only about 6000 copies as a typical print run, I didn't make much at all. And also bear in mind that an advance is just that: it comes off the royalties, so you may not end up making any money for quite a…

That's a good point. With a run like that, the advance may be all you ever see.

Re: I have no idea what I'm doing

#39

Post by hawleyal » Tue, Feb 03, 2015, 6:40 PM UTC

I know TDD has been discussed to death. However, I disagree completely with TDD encouraging creativity and material exploration. In my opinion, small, iterative increments are much more useful. Creating a test puts a tight box around how you assume (without any experimentation) an interface should work. As opposed to a tiny iteration to learn about how it could work. Then writing a test after for that tiny bit. Finally, moving on and refactoring with the test in hand.

Re: I have no idea what I'm doing

#40

Post by engendered » Tue, Feb 03, 2015, 6:45 PM UTC

pekk wrote: post #35

engendered wrote: post #3

This sort of post seems to do well on HN, so to offer a bit of criticism I'd like to posit that often they seem to be a thin veneer over humble bragging. e.g. I don't know what I'm doing, but then neither does anyone else but I am stating it so therefore I'm actually better than them and I have impostor syndrome so that actually makes me better at what I do than you, and everyone who says they know what they're doing…

If I state that I feel lost sometimes or that I have impostor syndrome it doesn't in any way imply that I'm better. You're just attacking people for showing vulnerability.

>You're just attacking people for showing vulnerability.

These missives never simply say "sometimes I feel like an impostor". They invariably mention the whole Dunning-Kruger effect, and invariably claim that this self-doubt is because one has achieved such heights of knowledge that they've gained full awareness of all the things they don't know. It always turns this so-called vulnerability into some sort of heightened awareness.

I'm not "attacking" anyone in any case. I'm pointing out that this is a bit of a trend right now to show ones enlightenment by claiming one's vulnerability.