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You can't tell people anything (2004)

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Re: You can't tell people anything (2004)

#81

Post by cuddlybacon »

techopoly wrote: post #65
cuddlybacon wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing I've noticed is the better an engineer gets, the better they are at shooting down every idea they see. While I have seen many cases where a person did it anyways and failed, I have also seen many cases where they did it anyways and where massively successful.

One obvious example of that is when Dropbox was presented here as a startup and was shot down in glorious fashion.

That is a great example. The only ones I could think of were internal to my office, and didn't want to go posting about them on HN.

Re: You can't tell people anything (2004)

#82

Post by contrapunter »

throwaway713 wrote: post #8

> When people ask me about my life’s ambitions, I often joke that my goal is to become independently wealthy so that I can afford to get some work done. Mainly that’s about being able to do things without having to explain them first, so that the finished product can be the explanation. I think this will be a major labor saving improvement. This is an excellent explanation that mirrors my own life goals, but I have s…

>> Mainly that’s about being able to do things without having to explain them first

It seems as good a rational definition of faith as any.

Re: You can't tell people anything (2004)

#83

Post by Animats »

I'm still amazed those guys were able to cram the Habitat client into a Commodore 64. I can why Fujitsu didn't take the risk of trying to cram a somewhat more ambitious client into the tiny user side machines of the era. If it doesn't fit, the whole project fails. Here's a video of the gameplay, running on a Commodore 64 emulator.[1] Remember, this is 64KB (not MB, not GB) over a 300 baud connection.

The trouble with Xanadu was the business model. Everything is pay per view in Xanadu. It's all about micropayments. Really micro micropayments. Edit something by someone else, as with Wikipedia, and you get a tiny fraction of the revenue. Ted Nelson wanted to track the history of every snippet. Also, the design was all built around centralized servers. Not open at all.

[1] https://youtu.be/VmpAnhp31C0

Re: You can't tell people anything (2004)

#85

Post by teej »

d23 wrote: post #61

I also call this the head nod effect. It's particularly a problem in technical discussions. I've come to the conclusion that 90% of the time 90% of people don't understand what 90% of what's being said. You essentially have to start from a point of already understanding entirely what the person is saying to be able to keep up, unless they're just saying something completely trivial. The glue that keeps the illusion t…

> The beautiful irony is that I simultaneously understand what the author means by this and I find it completely incomprehensible. Well, it's not that bad, but I guess it's just that the concept has morphed into such a complex shape of neurons in my head that doesn't seem to quite fit the words this author is saying, so it doesn't jive quite right. I think I know what they mean, but maybe I don't.

You might already know about this but you should ready about the "Memory Palace" technique used for remembering lots of things. Using a physical space in your mind to "store" information.

Personally, I need a place for things to live for me to remember it. That either needs to be a physical space - I write something down to help me remember it, in a way because the memory is on the paper in my mind, or at the end of a linked list of memories, so that I can remember it by the things it's associated with.

Re: You can't tell people anything (2004)

#86

Post by icedchai »

memexy wrote: post #59
xboxnolifes wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It generally leads to being fired for not completing milestones, which leads to not having income to support yourself.

How much monthly income would a person need to support themselves and work on what they want to work on?

Have you heard of the 4% rule? That basically means if you save up X amount, you can spend 4% of X every year, in perpetuity, given some reasonable return like 7%. So if you can live on $80k/year, save and invest $2 million.

Re: You can't tell people anything (2004)

#87

Post by war1025 »

jrussino wrote: post #74
memco wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I often think of this as "it's hard to tell people the solution to a problem they don't have", or don't know they have. This may be way off in another field, but this is actually frustrating to me as a father in another way: when we watch shows or read books with our child so many of the stories are so far detached from reality as to make me ask, "Why are we asking kids to care about this?" I have particular ire fo…

Have you found any good counterexamples? We let our three-year-old watch Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood and I love it because it is exactly this: short (~10 minute) stories about situations and conflicts that a young child will encounter in everyday life. I’d be really interested to hear of other good shows & books like this. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Daniel_Tiger%27s_Nei...

I don't know how "real life" it is, but Sarah and Duck [1] is about the best young kids show we've come across. It used to be on Netflix, but they took it off. We've bought all 9? seasons on Amazon by now though. It's a great show of just of just completely mundane things with a bit of imagination tossed in.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_%26_Duck

Re: You can't tell people anything (2004)

#88

Post by cpursley »

goblin89 wrote: post #19
baxtr wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recommend the book or the blog posts of JL Collin. His posts are all about how to achieve financial independence https://jlcollinsnh.com/

Websites that aim to help people become wealthier, and yet are sprinkled with ads, inevitably give an impression that their owners consider ad revenue a viable source of income. If that is so, I’d be reluctant to follow any advice given on such a site, as I do not want to be in a position where I rely on ads for own financial independence.

His advice is simple: stick your money in low fee index funds.

Re: You can't tell people anything (2004)

#89

Post by memco »

_jal wrote: post #68
memco wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I often think of this as "it's hard to tell people the solution to a problem they don't have", or don't know they have. This may be way off in another field, but this is actually frustrating to me as a father in another way: when we watch shows or read books with our child so many of the stories are so far detached from reality as to make me ask, "Why are we asking kids to care about this?" I have particular ire fo…

> Disney's penchant to make kids think they need to be groomed for life in royal society That's not about teaching your kids to live in royal society - that's grooming your children to know they are not part of it.

Yeah, I agree. It seems to support the idea that you’re not good enough, pretty enough, etc. And then you go to Disneyland pay them to make you feel special after all the issues of self-worth they fueled with their shows.

Re: You can't tell people anything (2004)

#90

Post by GuiA »

d23 wrote: post #61

I also call this the head nod effect. It's particularly a problem in technical discussions. I've come to the conclusion that 90% of the time 90% of people don't understand what 90% of what's being said. You essentially have to start from a point of already understanding entirely what the person is saying to be able to keep up, unless they're just saying something completely trivial. The glue that keeps the illusion t…

Agreed with you, but I think you don’t push enough on:

> I then have the decision as the speaker whether to ask for questions or just slow down a bit or stop altogether and see if they naturally show their curiosity.

Much like people don’t get 90% of what is said 90% of the time, I find that 90% of the time speakers don’t really want to cause understanding in their audience. They want to show off how smart they are, how cool their solution is - they want validation and recognition, but not to teach.

If your goal is to create understanding in your listeners, then you have to also be listening to their feedback (vocal or not) and aggressively adapting your approach based on the feedback you get, rather than rattling 500 words that sound SO GOOD in your head.

You are likely to end up in a situation where the “listener” is doing most of the talking, and that’s a great sign! But people think of a great teacher/explainer as someone who finds the magic words to make the right connections in their student’s head, but that’s not really how it works.

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