Ask HN: Thinkers that have greatly influenced your way of thinking?
10 comments
I grew up on our family farm and my grandpa was tough old German immigrant who had all these sage old saying (often laced with colorful language, swear words in German). But most of that old wisdom and sayings all turn out to be true as ever today I think.
He would say things like:
Doing something the right way is hard work, but not as much work as doing it again because you screwed it up the first time.
Or if someone, a farm hand or whoever (sometimes me) would be struggling to figure out how to do something (e.g. get the tractor engine going) he would ask if you wanted him to do it for you, if you said yes then he would call you a nutzloser scheist (useless shit) or something like that. The correct answer was no, please tell me how sir, or something along those lines.
He told me, if you hate farm work you better do good in school so you can get a good job, become an engineer, then you won't have to come back here and work like a dog all day.
He had a lot of them like that, it stuck with me. Sorry I don't have any famous people to name.
He would say things like:
Doing something the right way is hard work, but not as much work as doing it again because you screwed it up the first time.
Or if someone, a farm hand or whoever (sometimes me) would be struggling to figure out how to do something (e.g. get the tractor engine going) he would ask if you wanted him to do it for you, if you said yes then he would call you a nutzloser scheist (useless shit) or something like that. The correct answer was no, please tell me how sir, or something along those lines.
He told me, if you hate farm work you better do good in school so you can get a good job, become an engineer, then you won't have to come back here and work like a dog all day.
He had a lot of them like that, it stuck with me. Sorry I don't have any famous people to name.
Haha this is lovely and hilarious. Thanks for this :)
The dilbert guy: biggest lesson, you don't have to be the smartest guy. just smart enough across multiple verticals and it's like a superpower.
and the stoic guy marcus aurelius: don't sweat imagined horrors it's almost never that serious.
and the stoic guy marcus aurelius: don't sweat imagined horrors it's almost never that serious.
I grew up on our family farm and my grandpa was tough old German immigrant who had all these sage old saying (often laced with colorful language, swear words in German). But most of that old wisdom and sayings all turn out to be true as ever today I think.
He would say things like:
Doing something the right way is hard work, but not as much work as doing it again because you screwed it up the first time.
Or if someone, a farm hand or whoever (sometimes me) would be struggling to figure out how to do something (e.g. get the tractor engine going) he would ask if you wanted him to do it for you, if you said yes then he would call you a nutzloser scheist (useless shit) or something like that. The correct answer was no, please tell me how sir, or something along those lines.
He told me, if you hate farm work you better do good in school so you can get a good job, become an engineer, then you won't have to come back here and work like a dog all day.
He had a lot of them like that, it stuck with me.
He would say things like:
Doing something the right way is hard work, but not as much work as doing it again because you screwed it up the first time.
Or if someone, a farm hand or whoever (sometimes me) would be struggling to figure out how to do something (e.g. get the tractor engine going) he would ask if you wanted him to do it for you, if you said yes then he would call you a nutzloser scheist (useless shit) or something like that. The correct answer was no, please tell me how sir, or something along those lines.
He told me, if you hate farm work you better do good in school so you can get a good job, become an engineer, then you won't have to come back here and work like a dog all day.
He had a lot of them like that, it stuck with me.
My therapist.
I realised that I have all the answers (regarding my own life) already right within me - I just need someone from the outside to dig through it with me.
I could name all the Navals of the world, and yes, these people do help. Still, I believe that very often, maybe more than ever before, we underestimate our own thoughts.
I realised that I have all the answers (regarding my own life) already right within me - I just need someone from the outside to dig through it with me.
I could name all the Navals of the world, and yes, these people do help. Still, I believe that very often, maybe more than ever before, we underestimate our own thoughts.
John Maynard Keynes did a lot of serious economic works and a lot of thinking about what economics means to daily life. One of his better points: you don't have to like your job, you need to like the life your job affords you
Orality & Literacy by Walter Ong: read it in grad school, opened my eyes to how writing and technology in general feed back into societies and can change them. Influenced my work in the early web in the 1990s.
A variety of books and essays by Mark Poster [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Poster]. Fairly left on the political spectrum. Marxist analyses of technology and information technology specifically and how they can both benefit as well as oppress.
danah boyd [https://www.danah.org/] I enjoy her analysis & criticism of technology from a sociological perspective. She gave a great talk at one of the O'Reilly etech or web 2.0 conferences around 2009–2010 about how we were all building these great social media services with zero grasp of sociological implications. Like. By 2010 there was ~20-25 years of people being shitty online to one another in one form or another across The Source, Compuserve, AOL, Usenet, Fidonet, etc before everything shifted to the web. There were, and are, basic considerations to take into account when building an online "community" and yet time after time people are shocked, shocked to learn that people can be terrible online and that the services we build can amplify these behaviors massively.
I didn't find McLuhan nearly as useful as I was taught he'd be as the online world evolved into the web world. Prescient, yes, but I think moreso in a cheerleader for how great and wonderful the new world would be.
A variety of books and essays by Mark Poster [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Poster]. Fairly left on the political spectrum. Marxist analyses of technology and information technology specifically and how they can both benefit as well as oppress.
danah boyd [https://www.danah.org/] I enjoy her analysis & criticism of technology from a sociological perspective. She gave a great talk at one of the O'Reilly etech or web 2.0 conferences around 2009–2010 about how we were all building these great social media services with zero grasp of sociological implications. Like. By 2010 there was ~20-25 years of people being shitty online to one another in one form or another across The Source, Compuserve, AOL, Usenet, Fidonet, etc before everything shifted to the web. There were, and are, basic considerations to take into account when building an online "community" and yet time after time people are shocked, shocked to learn that people can be terrible online and that the services we build can amplify these behaviors massively.
I didn't find McLuhan nearly as useful as I was taught he'd be as the online world evolved into the web world. Prescient, yes, but I think moreso in a cheerleader for how great and wonderful the new world would be.
This is really great stuff!! I am both fascinated by and concerned for the way technology is influencing society and vice versa. The complexity of these interactions and their far reaching implications, I'm surprised how little people seem to care or even be aware of it.
I'm quite new to these social science issues. If you're open, I would love to follow up with more questions. :)
I'm quite new to these social science issues. If you're open, I would love to follow up with more questions. :)
Sure, I’m my-hacker-news-account @ my-hacker-news-account + ostello.com.
Nassim taleb, George Orwell books
And I mean "thinkers" in the broadest sense (eg writers, artists, bloggers, people in your field, etc.).
I think the HN crowd is super smart and would really love to learn about your influences!!
A list of multiple people (with explanations if you'd like) would be even better :)