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Ask HN: Concepts that clicked only years after you first encountered them?

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Re: Ask HN: Concepts that clicked only years after you first encountered them?

#451

Post by jasonwatkinspdx »

quacked wrote: post #444
jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Growing up this was a big realization for me the other way. I was raised by evangelicals in Kansas, including going to a mennonite school for most of my education. As a teenager I realized how at my school, at my church, at basically everything in my family's shared life, there was not a single person with brown skin. Not even one. And worse, no one had real awareness of this, and would not understand how it could be…

[flagged]

Obviously I understand my childhood community in far more detail and depth than your rather transparent question. My conclusions of their racism are based on far more than I mention, but yes, it has since then proven to be a very clear smoke signal. Other places I've seen the same thing but not as severely are snow sports and auto racing.

I have no desire to retread the 101 of how "white" cannot be treated as logically equivalent to other racial labels. Go do some reading on the subject. A good place to start is trying to enumerate exactly what heritages count as white, and how that has changed over time.

Re: Ask HN: Concepts that clicked only years after you first encountered them?

#452

Post by jsonne »

You should look up a concept called "Gestalt Learning". I liken it to the "Eureka" effect that Thomas Edison talked about.

For any professional educators or other folks more familiar with this I am about to butcher this concept I am sure but my layman's understanding is the following. Basically rather than a bottom up approach to learning it's a top down approach where you see the whole picture first rather than each piece and then dance around it until you just "get it". Think of imagining a house and then learning about it until the entire house system makes sense. You might imagine the house, then learn a large "chunk" which is the foundation, then another chunk which is the plumbing, etc. etc. A more typical learning method might be you learn what a brick is and then you learn how they're put together, then you understand a wall, etc. etc. This style of learning is more common in folks on the ASD spectrum but isn't exclusive to ASD folks. I find for me I'll encounter a concept, then think on it periodically over some period of time until one day I just sort of "get it". It's not better or worse than other ways of learning but it just means you need to approach things differently to learn more efficiently.

Re: Ask HN: Concepts that clicked only years after you first encountered them?

#453

Post by heavyset_go »

fortituded0002 wrote: post #196

1. Everyone is the main character in their own story. This manifest in all sorts of ways - from people not being there when you need them the most, from friends dying off as soon as proximity changes, to how and why get people get promoted in jobs. This isn't necessarily bad, but if you don't know how to navigate this it can be quite painful and confusing. 2. Representation matters. I knew this for a long time, but i…

> 3. Rules in life are just constructs that we as humans have created.

> Starting a business helped the most on this one. That's when I started to see that "rules" or "procedure" are all made up and exceptions can always be made.

This is a big one that I learned through the same experience. Everything is arbitrary, the rules are made up and the points don't matter.

It made me appreciate those who recognize this, and in turn treat others well, even when shit hits the fan metaphorically, and I have absolutely zero tolerance for bullshit hoop jumping and assholes. I know you don't have to play by that book, so I won't, and I'm happier for it.

Re: Ask HN: Concepts that clicked only years after you first encountered them?

#454

Post by dev_0 »

jsonne wrote: post #452

You should look up a concept called "Gestalt Learning". I liken it to the "Eureka" effect that Thomas Edison talked about. For any professional educators or other folks more familiar with this I am about to butcher this concept I am sure but my layman's understanding is the following. Basically rather than a bottom up approach to learning it's a top down approach where you see the whole picture first rather than each…

[dead]

Re: Ask HN: Concepts that clicked only years after you first encountered them?

#455

Post by flippinburgers »

crackercrews wrote: post #390
fortituded0002 wrote: post #196

1. Everyone is the main character in their own story. This manifest in all sorts of ways - from people not being there when you need them the most, from friends dying off as soon as proximity changes, to how and why get people get promoted in jobs. This isn't necessarily bad, but if you don't know how to navigate this it can be quite painful and confusing. 2. Representation matters. I knew this for a long time, but i…

Interesting interplay between 2 and 3. Why does representation matter so much if these are just human-created constructs? Genuinely interested to know how the same person had both of these epiphanies.

The most popular humanly constructed narrative these days in the US is that representation is everything so I tend to agree with your point. There is an interesting immediate clash between the two.

Re: Ask HN: Concepts that clicked only years after you first encountered them?

#456

Post by quacked »

jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #451
quacked wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Obviously I understand my childhood community in far more detail and depth than your rather transparent question. My conclusions of their racism are based on far more than I mention, but yes, it has since then proven to be a very clear smoke signal. Other places I've seen the same thing but not as severely are snow sports and auto racing. I have no desire to retread the 101 of how "white" cannot be treated as logical…

[flagged]

Re: Ask HN: Concepts that clicked only years after you first encountered them?

#457

Post by alexmolas »

Social constructs aren't less real than other tangible concepts. For instance, I used to complain a lot about the non-sense that's to wear a tuxedo in weddings. I was the typical kid saying that I would like to go wearing my best sweatpants to weddings, and that probably my sweatpants are more expensive than some of the tuxedos there. Then, I matured and realized that what we wear have a meaning, wether we like it or not. It's like words, maybe you don't like the definition of the word "car", but using an alternative word would be useles since nobody else would understand you. So if you care about the people getting married and you want to communicate it you need to wear the damn tuxedo.

Re: Ask HN: Concepts that clicked only years after you first encountered them?

#458

Post by fortituded0002 »

atonse wrote: post #439
fortituded0002 wrote: post #196

1. Everyone is the main character in their own story. This manifest in all sorts of ways - from people not being there when you need them the most, from friends dying off as soon as proximity changes, to how and why get people get promoted in jobs. This isn't necessarily bad, but if you don't know how to navigate this it can be quite painful and confusing. 2. Representation matters. I knew this for a long time, but i…

While I do see merit in the idea that representation matters, to me, it all depends on what representation in particular. Racial representation gets all the attention but I find that one less compelling. But for example, seeing that a philosophy major can have a successful programming career, can encourage others in the humanities to see themselves do it too. Or seeing someone with ADHD run a business successfully an…

> Seeing that a philosophy major can have a successful programming career, can encourage others in the humanities to see themselves do it too. Or seeing someone with ADHD run a business successfully and overcome executive function challenges, can also help others with ADHD.

These are great call outs. The definition for representation can be highly nuanced and very personal. This is not to say that issues like race and gender aren't important and don't need support. Just that there are so many things that people bring to the table that can make them feel like "the other" which holds them back. It's surprising how lack of role models can lead some people to think it's not feasible or not even possible.

Re: Ask HN: Concepts that clicked only years after you first encountered them?

#459

Post by analog31 »

layer8 wrote: post #315
analog31 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read the earliest articles on OO and SmallTalk in Byte Magazine, which IIRC would have been the early 80s. OOP was totally and utterly bewildering to me, a BASIC and Pascal programmer. It "clicked" much later, in two stages, using languages that were "kind of like" OOP, even if not rigorously so: LabVIEW, HyperCard, Visual Basic. I think VB had a decent strategy for introducing OO to the rest of us. Out of the box,…

> the first couple volumes of the Win32 programmer's manuals What books exactly are you referring to here?

That's a long time ago. ;-) As I recall, there was a set of 2 or more books, published in the early 90s. And I never had my copy, but several of the software devs had them on their shelf, and I'd borrow them as needed. Typically, my use was to write a binding for Visual Basic. For instance I hacked into the audio hardware, and wrote a bespoke interface to the serial ports.

It was strictly API stuff, not how the actual OS works inside.

Re: Ask HN: Concepts that clicked only years after you first encountered them?

#460

Post by heavyset_go »

ShredKazoo wrote: post #305
nivethan wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2. Hits home for me as I’ve begun to realize the same thing. Not seeing any person of color in an activity makes it’s so I don’t want to be the first.

As a white guy, I'd certainly encourage you not to worry about this -- if we're talking about an upper middle class, professional-ish activity, you can be fairly sure that all those white people feel self-conscious about their group being so white and would welcome you to join them. Anyway, I'd be interested to hear more about the psychology of this. I remember when I was growing up in the 90s and 00s in California,…

> As a white guy, I'd certainly encourage you not to worry about this -- if we're talking about an upper middle class, professional-ish activity, you can be fairly sure that all those white people feel self-conscious about their group being so white and would welcome you to join them.

I've heard similar things, but as a non-minority, you don't see what happens when you aren't looking or when people think they can get away with something without consequences, including social or professional consequences. Someone who is a minority has to live it 24/7, so they get a bigger picture that you don't.

You might be well-intentioned and surrounded by people who you believe are well-intentioned, but not everyone is, and plenty of the people who talk and act as if they're well-intentioned will turn around and betray those purported intentions when you aren't paying attention.

With regard to race-blindness in the 90s and 00s, consider that today's focus on race is a reaction to the willful ignorance of the decades prior. Race mattered just as much back then as it does now, it's just that the majority in the past had patted themselves on the back and convinced themselves that it was a solved problem if they just stop talking about it.

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