The diminishing half-life of knowledge • Hacker News Board

Re: The diminishing half-life of knowledge

#81

Post by jacquesm » Sun, Dec 10, 2023, 10:47 PM UTC

rightbyte wrote: post #80

yetanother12345 wrote: post #77

This is not specific to IT. It is a general trend. Also, it's not new; cf the saying "Jack of all trades, master of none". Also, the reason why we don't see Da Vinci types anymore. Enthropy is increasing. Things that used to be in one domain will in time split up into multiple, each having a higher level of detail / sophistication than before. Or, that one domain will die off, possibly being replaced by "something el…

> "you cannot unbreak the broken glass" I really don't like this analogy. You can weld glass back together. Or melt the pieces down and reforge it.

Replace 'glass' with 'vase'.

Analogies are always breaking down but break down faster if people don't just try to see them as analogies rather than the thing itself, the idea was to convey a point and you indicated that you got it perfectly well.

Re: The diminishing half-life of knowledge

#82

Post by 7thaccount » Mon, Dec 11, 2023, 3:11 AM UTC

fluoridation wrote: post #68

7thaccount wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both your comment and the parent you're replying to are awesome and match my experience in my area of electrical engineering (includes a lot of software, programming, database needs as well, so fairly relevant). There are those that have resumes tailored to a single particular thing that if hot right now, will have 1000 recruiters after them to run certain grid studies. I'm more of a fundamentalist (need to think of…

>I'm more of a fundamentalist (need to think of a better term) "I tend to focus more on the fundamentals".

Thanks!

Re: The diminishing half-life of knowledge

#83

Post by 7thaccount » Mon, Dec 11, 2023, 3:18 AM UTC

zaptheimpaler wrote: post #72

7thaccount wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both your comment and the parent you're replying to are awesome and match my experience in my area of electrical engineering (includes a lot of software, programming, database needs as well, so fairly relevant). There are those that have resumes tailored to a single particular thing that if hot right now, will have 1000 recruiters after them to run certain grid studies. I'm more of a fundamentalist (need to think of…

How do you arrange talking to someone at the company?

In my industry there are a lot of big, medium, and small companies. However, it's still somehow a small world. Go to enough major conferences and you meet enough people and start to recognize the faces and before you know it you've made friends with key people at a lot of companies. So it's not too hard to email someone or give them a call and talk about what you're interested in and if they're interested if that makes sense.

Re: The diminishing half-life of knowledge

#84

Post by throwaway290 » Wed, Dec 13, 2023, 8:17 PM UTC

sshine wrote: post #30

zer00eyz wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is them covering the topic directly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9eXi3RL8q4 AS for the ADHD thing, I get it, it's also a pretty accurate description of how I feel some days working in this industry. Its hard not to be a technological magpie collecting shiny rocks!

For context: both of these YouTubers were eventually denied stay in China and turned their channel into bashing China full time for a living. I really valued their insight and perspective (rural China by motorcycle, for example, is not a common perspective in the west), but eventually had to unsubscribe from their toxic bitterness.

Plenty of toxic bitterness for sure, but there is signal in the noise and unless you personally know people in China who are free thinking and also consider you close enough that they would tell you things that can incriminate them this may be the only source of that signal...