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Being OK with not being extraordinary

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Re: Being OK with not being extraordinary

#331

Post by red2awn »

rvn1045 wrote: post #141
remar wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, did you train at commercial gyms or powerlifting/weightlifting gyms? What if the lifters just happened to be on high volume blocks, or tapering for a meet whenever you visited?

Yeah this is mostly at commercial gyms and there are a lot more at powerlifting/weightlifting gyms for sure. But even there there aren't as many as you would expect. It's probably more common to bench 300, but never seen anyone do a 405 lbs squat atg even at a powerlifting gym.

Squatting atg is just not very common to start with.

Re: Being OK with not being extraordinary

#332

Post by divan »

arvinsim wrote: post #292
umvi wrote: post #2

> Climbing to a higher vantage point can also unlock new forms of extraordinary that you might have never noticed before. I read an article once about how the amount of work to get into the top tier in a single area is astronomical, but the amount of work to become top tier in a combination of 2-3 fields is attainable by almost anyone. For example, becoming a top tier statistician is hard. But becoming a top tier sta…

Been wondering about this. I built my career on focusing on the technical aspects of programming only. I feel that people who got domain knowledge were always better contributors even if their technical programming knowledge is not that great. Been contemplating on getting a masters on an interesting field but current economic climate is still uncertain.

Programming is not about coding or knowing technical intricacies. It’s a two step process:

  1) understand the universe
  2) explain it to the three years old
Coding comes as a part of the second step, but domain knowledge is crucial for the first.

Re: Being OK with not being extraordinary

#335

Post by barry-cotter »

lowiqengineer wrote: post #277
eggsbenedict wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weird definition of uber successful. They'll probably have steady employment but their mental health/personal anguish is probably distributed similarly to the rest of the population

I have steady employment too. But I don't have society giving me unlimited external validation. Instead, people think I'm subhuman for where I work and went to school.

> Instead, people think I'm subhuman for where I work and went to school.

My email is in my profile if you want to talk to someone. No one thinks you’re subhuman. People are incalculably more likely to be indifferent to you than to despise you. More people don’t care about you than have any opinion whatsoever about you.

Re: Being OK with not being extraordinary

#336

Post by mattmanser »

zikzak wrote: post #139
coldtea wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I respect Scott Adams for his comic, but his blog is (in my opinion) a bunch of mass-produced rhetoric-pseudo-rational ramblings¹, trading out quality for (a very large) quantity Not so sure about the "rhetoric-pseudo-rational ramblings". He writes his opinions and gives arguments. Nothing "pseudo" about them, though they could still be (and often are) wrong, either factually or as a reasoning. > It's very unlikely…

I'll probably regret posting this at some point because Scott Adams is smart (just not particularly aligned with my own moral compass). I don't think he is AS smart as he thinks he is but that doesn't mean he isn't smart, it just means he has a particularly large ego. See, I predicted Trump would win as well. It seemed incredibly obvious to me despite it being the worst possible outcome I could imagine. I based my "p…

I made the mistake of buying his Trump book on a whim.

It was terrible, couldn't get far into it.

Re: Being OK with not being extraordinary

#337

Post by mattmanser »

shostack wrote: post #40
rotexo wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The benefits of multi-classing go beyond the combat mechanics of the game, as well. If you develop a character-driven reason for multi-classing, that's character growth in action. Great for role-playing as well as for driving the plot of the campaign forwards.

Great point. This was one of my favorite aspects of it actually. I started as a rogue and would gradually "harvest" some sort of arcane trophy from various monsters we defeated or quests we went on. I gradually cobbled together a spellbook as I grew my rogue, including some hacked together spells that had some wild magic type surprises at first as I was learning. These were the most fun levels by far.

It's designed like that though, and artificially so.

It's not real.

It's like taking dating tips from films, it's made up. And if you copy what they do in films you'd end up being really creepy.

Re: Being OK with not being extraordinary

#338

Post by collyw »

no_wizard wrote: post #308
wjossey wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Join companies with problems worth solving, add value as quickly as possible, and then find problems that you can tackle and start advocating to be granted the latitude to tackle them. Most companies and teams are thrilled to have people who proactively seek to solve thorny issues. The difference with me is that most programmers are attracted to solving “problems” in a code base, which might add value but have arguab…

Better take, to add in to this: My unique (well one of) internalized properties I have is having a keen eye for good problem to technology fit. Steve Jobs said it best with “start with the experience and work backwards toward the technology” In another words, it’s extremely valuable to be able to understand when you can re use an existing tool (in this case, existing code) to achieve the result, which is different fr…

My other knowledge is in biology, but bioinformatics seems to pay less than normal software engineering.

Re: Being OK with not being extraordinary

#339

Post by collyw »

weaksauce wrote: post #203
sghiassy wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People like working with others with whom they like. Being a smart-asshole, by contrast, is a difficult way to get ahead. Being funny is one way to be like able

an aside, being funny in this context is where everyone gets a benefit of being happier. some types of humor is denigrating to a particular group or person and that's generally not going to take you very far in a lot of fields.

There is a fine line between being offensive and being funny. I think the funniest people go very close to that line, but maybe that's just the type of humour I appreciate. I tone my homour down a lot at work compared to when I am with good friends as there are a lot more consequences to going over the line.

Re: Being OK with not being extraordinary

#340

Post by MaximumYComb »

collyw wrote: post #325
read_if_gay_ wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I might be pulling things out of my ass here but IIRC the correlation is up there with that of your parents’ wealth. And in current political discussion lots of time is spent on how to deal with the latter. It may in fact still be a weak predictor, but that obviously doesn’t make it meaningless.

IQ is somewhat inheritable as well though. Is it IQ or inherited wealth that is the factor?

The studies account for wealth.
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