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loquor

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Ask HN: When we note down cool things for later, why do they feel boring?

34 points·by loquor·4 lata temu·13 comments

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loquor
·4 lata temu·discuss
"Pluck" is a wonderful verb for this action of picking from a curated list. Thanks, I will use it from now on.
loquor
·4 lata temu·discuss
I too was like this kid not so long ago. Here are some perspectives.

1. THE CAUSE - How is he doing academically? I was doing really poorly because of lack of support, and to suppress that frustration I would try to stifle it with games, anime etc. So do consider that possibility that its a response to an emotional problem and not a deliberate decision. They may not want to indulge in media consumption all day, and it may merely be a way to reduce their friction against the world and themselves.

2. THEIR BACKGROUND - Some of the responses here suggest kicking out the kid as they're a legal adult. If my parents were to suddently ask me to step up massively at 18 and did so using force, I would resent it tremendously. Because since I hit my teens, they had long abdicated the role of supporting any personality development activity for me. So I would directly attribute my inabilities to them. Some of you would be aghast reading this, like how could an "18 year old adult" claim this. That's because I'm not American, there was a genuine lack of such opportunities during high school because all was forfeit at the altar of college exams. I actually still resent it a little that they didn't enroll me in something like the (Boy) Scouts, or a karate class, or a swimming class etc. i.e. avenues where I could get out and grow a little as a person. In hindsight, I've recognized that ny parents are people too with shortcomings, and I shouldn't blame them for everything because I can. That would be foolish and myopic. However, my point is that the parents were responsible kid's upbringing and environment growing up, so the resulting kid they have at 18 is their creation. (Americans wouldn't agree, I'm sure some Asians who grew up middle/upper-middle class would.) So its not fair to pin it all on the child. Punitive measures may be a bad idea. I much prefer what /u/WastingMyTime89 has suggested below, to sit down with your child regularly so that they open up about their issues and problems. In any case, opportunities for the kid to get out would be a great idea, both by themselves or with their parents.

3. GLOBAL TRENDS - I assume the kid is a male. I've observed the same phenomenon happening with a male cousin personally, wherein a boy doesn't grow into a being a young adult very well, and instead retreats into his room and anime/games/porn. I think Warren Ferrel's work might be a good start. It might be good to take a birds eye viee of the whole thing and be informed by other individuals ans how they self-improved.

P.S. of course, the kid in question may be quite different from what I've described. But if they are the trying-but-struggling type, you could give him a book called 12 Rules for Life by Jordan Peterson. It seems to have been fantastically effective for and well-received by many many young men. My 2 cents.
loquor
·4 lata temu·discuss
I remember watching this cartoon called Kochikame as a kid. One episode features a this guy who carries around a portable TV, watching all his TV shows as he goes around. That blew my mind. Such a thing clearly couldn't exist, I thought back then, but just thinking about it made me giddy with excitement. Fast forward 13 years, and I carry such a device with me at all times. Its the stuff of fiction come materialized. Stories like this remind me to stay grateful for the amazing progress that has happened that sometimes goes unrecognized by us.
loquor
·4 lata temu·discuss
Exploration vs Exploitation in ML. It seems you explore a lot to find whats 'best', but it keeps you from implementing (in this case Exploiting) a set of ideas. There is an optimum between the two. You could read up on this.

My 2 cents: Learn by need. Figure out your needs (e.g. required feature) and go get just that knowledge from the internet, and put it to practice.
loquor
·4 lata temu·discuss
Edsger Dijkstra was suspicious of terms like intuition. He reasoned:

My Pocket Oxford Dictionary --which requires a rather large pocket-- defines "intuition: immediate apprehension by the mind without reasoning". If we don't believe in miracles, we seem to have only two possibilities: either the reasoning required is so short and standard that it is hardly worth being recorded or mentioned, or the "immediate apprehension" does not amount to much. In the first case "intuitively clear" means "obvious", in the second case it probably means no more than the absence of obvious counterexamples. In both cases, mathematical texts "recommended" for their appeal to the reader's intuition should be ignored, for such texts promote non-reasoning instead of better reasoning.

Despite the above, there are still people that believe that intuition is a good thing; there is no point in arguing with them for they prefer to believe in miracles.

-----------------------

Source: https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD08xx/E...
loquor
·5 lat temu·discuss
Wow. But why would your manager do that though? Were you working unreasonably hard, so much so that others couldn't keep up and it made them look bad? Did they dislike something about your attitude? I want to understand their perspective on why they jettisoned a high-performing employee.
loquor
·5 lat temu·discuss
> I have a bit of a man-crush on Leslie Lamport

+1 - I really admire him too. I wonder, what makes people like him and Edsger Dijkstra so charismatic in this sense?
loquor
·5 lat temu·discuss
Right, it is software. I meant software product or software tool.
loquor
·5 lat temu·discuss
Its survival bias. She stuck her head out, didn't budge, and navigated the criticism smartly. But many other faculty members and writers have been forcibly ushered out of their positions or made to recant their non-woke opinions.
loquor
·5 lat temu·discuss
Its doesn't have to be a software. Mine is a python script that jiggles every N minutes, where N is a command line parameter.
loquor
·5 lat temu·discuss
The chilling effect is real. It's disheartening that we are asked to play along with unsubstantiated dogma on topics as fundamental as gender. Has anyone here managed to express opinions like Shrier's in a casual manner without having the reputation take a hit?
loquor
·5 lat temu·discuss
> Easy things feel fast, hard things feel slow, but in the long run you'll get more from doing the hard thing.

Yes! These are called desirable difficulties in the book 'Range'.
loquor
·5 lat temu·discuss
> I, for some strange/personal reasons struggle to write what's in my head. My thoughts are very disorganized and always feel what's on the paper doesn't reflect the original idea. If you have felt in a similar way, I am very interested in hearing stories on how you overcame this.

I logged into HN after a year to respond to this prompt. I've dealt with this too, and some things did help quite a lot.

1. Orwell wrote this about choosing words, which I found in a similarly excellent LessWrong article[1]: "What is above all needed is to let the meaning choose the word, and not the other way around. In prose, the worst thing one can do with words is surrender to them. When you think of a concrete object, you think wordlessly, and then, if you want to describe the thing you have been visualising you probably hunt about until you find the exact words that seem to fit it. When you think of something abstract you are more inclined to use words from the start, and unless you make a conscious effort to prevent it, the existing dialect will come rushing in and do the job for you, at the expense of blurring or even changing your meaning. Probably it is better to put off using words as long as possible and get one’s meaning as clear as one can through pictures and sensations."

2. It also gave me great relief to find that Edsger Dijkstra, one of the greats of Computer Science, wrote slowly in order to write elegantly and correctly: Whether written using a fountain pen or typewriter, Dijkstra’s technical reports were composed at a speed of around three words per minute(!!). “The rest of the time,” he remarked, “is taken up by thinking.”

3. Try ditching full sentences. Write phrases. Make some words in the sentences BIG FOR EMPHASIS. Do whatever styling or structuring that corresponds to the feeling in your mind. Your notes are for you, they only need to make sense for you.

4. Even if what's on the paper doesn't reflect the original idea, write it down regardless. Even if it doesn't do your original thought justice, the written version will persist into the future while the thought in your head will fade, losing much or all of its clarity. That written version will continue to be useful. The more you practice this habit of writing, the better you will get at representing your own thoughts. In time, you will be able to consistently write notes that are passably good. Keep at it. This is the most important thing.

5. The last and yes the least, I'd suggest experimenting with tools. Google Keep is garbage as a platform for creating and organizing your notes. I switched to Notion earlier this year, and it was a paradigm shift. Through Notion, I found this nice site called Excalidraw where you can draw things online. When it comes to writing on phone, I found that I only like to see my current sentence when I'm writing. So I made a solo group on Whatsapp, and write my notes there. It really makes a difference.

[1] https://www.readthesequences.com/Rationality-And-The-English...