[HN Gopher] Ask HN: What mental models do you use everyday?
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Ask HN: What mental models do you use everyday?
I use this mental model called 'Play to your strengths'. It's more
a saying than a model, but a model nonetheless. Anyways it has
helped me build great things, since I can only ever build on
strength. I fix my weaknesses where I can, but I don't pay my
weaknesses too much attention. There's this whole cult about
'fixing' yourself, and seminars galore by 'successful people' who
want you to mimic their behaviors so you can be 'successful' too,
so I avoid this groupthink. What other little sayings do you
repeat to yourself or what other mental models do you employ daily?
Author : DerekBickerton
Score : 131 points
Date : 2021-11-21 16:43 UTC (6 hours ago)
| 656565656565 wrote:
| The first principle is that you must not fool yourself -- and you
| are the easiest person to fool.
|
| If it disagrees with experiment, it's wrong. In that simple
| statement is the key to science.
| paulcole wrote:
| Most people are wrong about most things.
|
| Most people are average at their jobs. If they were really good
| at them, they'd have better jobs.
| kurthr wrote:
| Not quite a subscriber to the Peter Principle then...
| [deleted]
| worker767424 wrote:
| These two things are subtly different. If most people are
| incompetent in their roles, then both statements can hold.
| chrsig wrote:
| - KISS
|
| - YAGNI
|
| - Test what you ship and ship what you test
|
| - Either learn a new technology or a new domain. Don't try to
| learn both at once.
|
| - Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good
|
| - Just keep breathing, that's the key
|
| - Everything is fine
|
| - If a test isn't automated, it's not test
|
| - It's better to do something poorly than not do it at all
| cseleborg wrote:
| > Either learn a new technology or a new domain. Don't try to
| learn both
|
| I like that one, I'd never heard of it. Thanks! Is this
| attributed to someone in particular? Where did you come across
| it?
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| It's similar to "take technical risk or product risk, not
| both" with respect to starting a company. It's incredibly
| stupid to take both risks.
| chrsig wrote:
| As far as I know, I coined it for myself. It's possible I
| read it somewhere that I've forgotten and am not properly
| attributing it.
|
| It's something that I've had to learn the hard way, but has
| recently really been instilled in me. For a long time I'd
| jump to trying to learn a technology designed to work in a
| domain (e.g., learn erlang to try and write a distributed
| system), and I'd wind up just spinning my wheels, because I'd
| be trying to figure out too much all at once.
|
| Somewhat recently however, I wanted to get into ray tracing,
| and decided to use Go for my first attempt (a language I'm
| very familiar with, but not necessarily the best for the
| domain...though, it did make some parts of it easier!)
|
| If I'd jumped right into trying to use cuda, I'd never have
| gotten anywhere with it, because I'd just be lost in trying
| to figure out all of cuda's idiosyncrasies.
|
| Instead I was able to get pretty far with go, making a bvh
| tree, triangle meshes, textures, area lights, convolutional
| filtering. Once I'd gotten pretty far with it, I wanted to
| get some experience with k8s, and so I modified it to be able
| to run an arbitrary number of worker pods and send samples to
| an aggregation pod.
|
| Now that I've gotten some good experience in the domain, I've
| started to rewrite it in c++/cuda, where I can now make some
| more educated decisions, because I spent the time learning
| the domain first -- I know roughly what I'm building.
|
| Long winded way of saying I arrived at the saying because
| it's the only thing that's been effective for me.
| throwawayacc2 wrote:
| Don't let perfect become the enemy of good.
| mrwnmonm wrote:
| Love this one
| biofox wrote:
| As a perfectionist, this line of thinking has been life
| changing for me... but I still regularly forget to follow it.
| Another variant I like is:
|
| "Good enough, is good enough".
| adamnemecek wrote:
| Adjoints, norms and fixed points.
|
| https://github.com/adamnemecek/adjoint
| hiepph wrote:
| Make it work. Make it right. Make it fast.
|
| This saved me so much time dwelling on yak-shaving and premature
| optimization.
| LVB wrote:
| The last bit from The Martian (movie) about how you just need to
| start solving problems: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mDYCLFE86Po
| reayn wrote:
| 20% of the work can lead to 80% of results
|
| law of diminishing returns (the logarithmic curve)
|
| you don't know as much as you think (dunning-kruger effect)
| xyzzy4 wrote:
| 80/20 principle. Only do significant things and drop the rest
| qsort wrote:
| "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
| courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the
| difference".
| _old_dude_ wrote:
| 1. imitate to understand the rules
|
| 2. create following the rules
|
| 3. break the rules
| alpenbazi wrote:
| vincere aut mori
| leobg wrote:
| HEURISTIC #1 When in doubt, chose the adventure. (Credit:
| Nietzsche)
|
| HEURISTIC #2 What's the right thing to do here, versus the
| comfortable one?
|
| HEURISTIC #3 To make a thing inevitable, do as much as you can
| right now. For instance, to make it inevitable to take a letter
| to my office the next day, I put it inside my shoes. (Credit: BF
| Skinner)
|
| HEURISTIC #4 If it's popular and most people agree with it, walk
| on. Interesting and unfashionable is where the real fun is - and,
| likely, the values of tomorrow. (Credit: Peter Thiel, and, again,
| Nietzsche)
| _3u10 wrote:
| Definitely agree. One of the heuristics I use is NPC vs PC. If
| it feels like something NPCs do or is a fetch quest I avoid it,
| delegate it, outsource it, etc. If it's a PC thing, then I do
| it myself.
| otikik wrote:
| "It is not a compiler error, it's your code"
| yhoiseth wrote:
| Some I try to live by:
|
| - Praise in public, criticise in private
|
| - You could leave life right now
|
| - Fix yourself first
|
| - Be honest
| lifebeyondfife wrote:
| Budget: how many are working on the project? Features: what
| should the project do? Timeliness: when do you want the project
| done?
|
| You get to choose only two.
| [deleted]
| Liron wrote:
| "What's an example" - IMO the #1 most useful and underrated
| thinking tool
| bear8642 wrote:
| and a small one at that - less to think about trying to show
| idea
| swayvil wrote:
| Lists. Lots of lists.
| guntribam wrote:
| I use enneagram as a mental model to understand people
| one_off_comment wrote:
| "Don't believe everything you read on the internet."
|
| -- Abraham Lincoln -- Michael Scott
| nickjj wrote:
| "I'm in a loop" -> To help escape indecision and pick something
| to try out
|
| "View it from the balcony" -> To force myself to step back and
| think of the big picture
| srvmshr wrote:
| * Time is money.
|
| * Don't lie to the person in the mirror. Accept your shortcomings
| as they are.
|
| * Having few good work partners is better than a dozen work
| friends.
|
| * Trust is non-negotiable & irreparable.
|
| * Always have a plan B if you want to complete something.
|
| * Always remember Plan B shouldn't become your Plan A by default
| - stay ambitious.
|
| * No question is a bad question - (sometimes questioning the
| status quo makes a big dent)
|
| Also, something I always cherish from my advisor (translated from
| his native Japanese):
|
| "You relish your sucess when your mind is paired with immense
| hardwork, dogged determination, indomitable grit and the
| acceptance of possible failure at each step of the way.
| Achievements are divine but it makes us better humans to
| understand the journey, not the destination"
| hirundo wrote:
| Acknowledge your shortcomings and then refuse to accept them.
| danschumann wrote:
| Feelings wheel feelings wheel feelings wheel feelings wheel
| feelings wheel feelings wheel feelings wheel
|
| The groupings of the finest emotions within the 2nd group are
| immensely helpful... for instance, "successful" and "confident"
| are in the proud category. And to feel successful, first trust in
| your own ability, then work for others and when they trust in
| your abilities too, you are successful.
|
| Respected and valued are in the same subcategory. To feel
| respected, first value something, and if you can get an employee
| to value the same thing, then they truly respect you.
|
| On the anger side, disrespected and ridiculed are in the same
| subcategory, and they are similar, but disrespected is when
| someone devalues your orders, and ridiculed is when they make fun
| of your form(body).
|
| On the sad side, isolated and abandoned are grouped, isolated is
| when you're sad for being taken out of something(a group or a
| feeling), and abandoned is when you and the rest remain, but a
| person leaves it.
|
| I've been reprocessing my whole life with finer emotional
| granularity, and I recommend it, highly so!
| Uhhrrr wrote:
| This sounds interesting and I've never heard about it. Is it
| just about categorizing feelings better? Any recommended links?
| bla3 wrote:
| Never heard about it either, but probably
| https://feelingswheel.com/
| nikivi wrote:
| A lot of my mental models are defined as hard coded rules:
| https://wiki.nikitavoloboev.xyz/focusing/rules
| contingencies wrote:
| I maintain a large collection of pithy quotes on such matters:
| https://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup
|
| Less in the self-help context, more in the process context, one I
| often appreciate for its simplicity is this:
|
| _There are two models of reality that I find to be the most
| useful ones, especially when writing programs. The first is
| functions, and the second is sequences of states._ - Leslie
| Lamport
| michaelwm wrote:
| There are exceptions to every rule, and there are rules to every
| exception.
| RhysU wrote:
| Less is more.
|
| C'mon, we're all dying here.
|
| Finishing is a skill (per Derek Yu).
|
| All measuring devices have noise.
|
| Symmetry and continuity impart incredibly strong constraints on
| systems.
|
| A dollar isn't worth a dollar to everyone.
|
| I am probably overreacting or missing something.
|
| Most of the value can be had by delivering less than 100%.
|
| Many problems cannot be solved, simply changed into other
| problems.
|
| If my team succeeds then I succeed.
| binnyva wrote:
| I'm didn't understand "Symmetry and continuity impart
| incredibly strong constraints on systems." Can you elaborate?
| Give an example if possible?
| djenendik wrote:
| Consider conservation of energy and momentum. Of course, one
| should operate within the limits of thermodynamics too.
| RhysU wrote:
| These relate to physics/modeling. I am going to hand wave a
| bunch.
|
| If a system has to operate the same way under
| rotation/reflection, that strongly constrains what the system
| can be doing. Think crystals or isotropic forces or, in the
| day job, what should happen if you negate a feature going
| into a neutral network then retrain. Should it matter from
| which perspective you look at a thing?
|
| If a system is continuous then smooth changes to inputs
| should cause smooth changes to outputs. The system probably
| will be robust to small perturbations because they will
| result in small output changes.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbulence#Kolmogorov.27s_th.
| .. is something of an example.
| sockaddr wrote:
| Not OP, but I view this as a special case of "form over
| function"
| Zababa wrote:
| > C'mon, we're all dying here.
|
| What does this mean?
| laristine wrote:
| It means everyone will die.
| RhysU wrote:
| With every passing moment we are, every one of us, a moment
| closer to death.
|
| Time is a finite resource for everyone. Savor it. And,
| respect the time of others.
| Zababa wrote:
| Thanks!
| worker767424 wrote:
| > Finishing is a skill
|
| I've also heard "it's better to finish something than to start
| something." At the same time, don't fall for the sunk cost
| fallacy. Finishing a dead idea only makes you feel good.
| zubspace wrote:
| Climb the wall.
|
| Written white on black on my desktop background. It's kind of
| funny, how sometimes random stuff you see on the web sticks to
| your head. I think it was one of those procrastination links on
| Hacker News which somehow brought me to this weird video [1]
| about how to "Climb the wall of awful". I was a hobby climber
| before and it somehow made sense to me at that time.
|
| Another thing I like to say to myself is "Just do it" at moments
| when I read Hacker News, Reddit, Twitter and come back to Hacker
| News for another round. [2]
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uo08uS904Rg
|
| [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXsQAXx_ao0
| roydivision wrote:
| "Do no harm, but take no shit."
|
| If I could distill my approach to life into one sentence it is
| this.
| is_true wrote:
| Nice!
| Shared404 wrote:
| Commented this elsewhere on HN not that long ago, but...
|
| One issue is what to say and not say, to solve this the three
| gates[0] are what I try (and admittedly fail miserably) to
| implement, though not in their original form.
|
| I generally try for "Is it true", "Is it useful", "Is it kind" -
| in that order of precedence if they can not all be met.
|
| [0] Is it true, is it necessary, is it kind.
| chrisaycock wrote:
| Happiness for me is _building the future_ : learning new
| material, meeting other interested people, and working on my
| goals.
|
| On the other hand, I must _live in the present_. Thinking about
| the future makes me stressed, and thinking about the past makes
| me angry.
|
| So I experience the present while working on the future I desire.
| resonator wrote:
| I lean on my default mode network to find solutions and
| scrutinise my ideas.
|
| This means that I avoid committing to important decisions until
| I've at least had a chance to sleep on them. The next day I
| normally have a lot more clarity and confidence in the decision
| when it's right, or what is wrong when it isn't.
|
| I also don't stress if I can't find the answer to a problem. I
| try to keep the problem at the front of my mind but don't
| pressure myself to activally solve it. Very often, this results
| in what feels like an epiphiny, a shower thought, or the answer
| will come to me in a dream. Activally working to find those
| solutions would be difficult and success would be hit and miss,
| it's low stress and gives me space to work on something else in
| the meantime.
| imperistan wrote:
| I use the DISC personality model a lot. Sure, it's a
| simplification but a very useful one. It's about four personality
| types: Dominant Influentual Steady Compliant It helps a lot in
| understanding the behavior of people who have a different
| personality than yourself
| mattlondon wrote:
| "You never know what is going to happen."
|
| For better or worse, tomorrow could be a good or bad surprise. If
| life sucks today, something great might happen out of the blue
| tomorrow so don't give up! If times are good, live for the moment
| because something might go to shit tomorrow.
| elamje wrote:
| Inversion.
|
| When the answer to a question is hazy, just flip the question
| around.
|
| Question: How do I succeed in my career?
|
| Inversion: How do I completely fail in my career? Now I know
| exactly what not to do.
|
| Question: How do I manage my team well?
|
| Inversion: How can I manage my team terribly?
| aghilmort wrote:
| "sometimes, it takes eight miles" - reminder that sometimes the
| grind is real, and the best or fastest way to get certain things
| done
| mrwnmonm wrote:
| Not if sure if this counts as a mental model or not.
|
| There are basic concepts in CBT that really helps, like learning
| that bad mode is like a wave, you need to learn how to work
| through it. https://clip.cafe/batman-gotham-knight-2008/are-in-
| pain-s1 - sorry, just kidding.
|
| Also trying to dig deeper into the reasons that cause your
| dysfunctionality, I mean the unconscious reasons.
|
| And there are some congnitive distortions that are common,
| knowing them is very useful.
|
| I don't like self-help books, but after going through a lot of
| them, I found two that are good: "Feeling Good", and "Rewire _
| Change Your Brain to Break Bad Habits, Overcome Addictions,
| Conquer Self-Destructive Behavior"
| acd wrote:
| If you use Kiss keep it simple stupid. Simple system simple to
| fix, complex system complex to fix.
|
| Kiss priniciple https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/KISS_principle
| mrsmee89 wrote:
| Similar to the heuristic mentioned by op.
|
| For those who grew up in the "you can do anything you put your
| mind to" era.
|
| Accept your strengths and weaknesses.
|
| If something takes little to no effort, that's a real good sign
| that it's a strength :) if it takes a lot of effort, it's
| probably a weakness.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| I avoid 'mental models' altogether because I think this notion
| that there is some sort of model world different from lived
| reality is weirdly dualistic and fortune cookie like.
|
| I think if you're faced with a problem the answer to that is
| having acquired proper integrated intuition through experience,
| not 'advice' in form of some model. Say if you're a runner, the
| better you get, the less you have a model like "I put the left
| foot in front of the right foot and breathe three times" you just
| learn what to do holistically.
|
| Or if you get better at chess, the less you rely on generic
| advice like 'the pawn is worth 1 point, the bishop 3", and the
| more you get a sense of a position that you can't express as some
| verbal model. The very best players can play 'without thinking'.
| mlac wrote:
| This seems costly in learning / addressing new situations.
|
| Mental models can help avoid a lot of pain or give you options
| to approach new situations that you might not otherwise
| consider without trial and error.
|
| Sometimes watching a YouTube video makes a lot more sense than
| acquiring proper integrated intuition through experience. I
| don't want my surgeon to perform my routine procedure using
| mental models. If things go wrong, I absolutely want her to
| apply mental models as she troubleshoots the issue.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| I think it is costly but I'm just very skeptical about how
| much cost and trial and error you really can avoid when
| actually doing / building something. For example with the
| surgeon I would say it's really important that she is quick,
| pays attention and is calm and reacts to new problems. Speed
| itself is a huge thing because thinking doesn't help you if
| the world moves on while you're thinking. I think people
| underestimate how tactile and sensory most problems are, even
| 'intellectual' ones.
|
| Another example is John Carmack recently pointing out how
| useless it is to talk about the 'metaverse' in abstract
| terms. When really you need to understand how the nuts and
| bolts and gears are engineered and hang together. The people
| who really build things often stay intentionally away from
| generalized wisdom.
| nhod wrote:
| - Hanlon's Razor: never ascribe to malice that which can be
| ascribed to ignorance or stupidity.
|
| Or, more broadly:
|
| - There is "what happened," and there is "the meaning you assign
| to what happened," and crucially, _they are not the same thing._
|
| This one lesson underlies virtually every mindfulness and
| personal development practice in the world.
| mrjangles wrote:
| This is the worst saying ever.
|
| I have only ever heard people say it who were either incredibly
| naive, or worse, malicious.
|
| I would go so far as to say: "Never ascribe to stupidity what
| can _reasonably_ be ascribed to malice. "
| jiggawatts wrote:
| Wait, what?
|
| You consider it malicious to not assume that everyone is out
| to get you unless proven otherwise?
| mrjangles wrote:
| Your comment is an excellent example. You completely straw
| manned my argument. There is zero connection between what
| you claimed I said, and what I actually said. Zero.
|
| Your comment was _obviously_ malicious, but I guarantee you
| will now proceed to avoid responsibility by feigning
| ignorance. To those you wish to manipulate, particularly
| those without particularly good linguistic ability, your
| comment could work to trick them into ignoring what I said.
| However, to everyone else who can clearly see that isn 't
| what I said, you will pretend to have 'simply not
| understood what I was saying'.
| Vanit wrote:
| Agreed, there is definitely a great example in this
| little thread of a malicious comment that everyone else
| can clearly see.
| sabertoothed wrote:
| You're really testing the boundaries of Hanlon's razor
| here. Some verbal disarmament would be good.
| mistermann wrote:
| > There is "what happened," and there is "the meaning you
| assign to what happened," and crucially, _they are not the same
| thing.
|
| Also known as Brahman vs Maya:
|
| https://www.yogapedia.com/brahman-and-maya-an-explanation-of...
|
| Unfortunately, since these concepts are presented through a
| religious lens, Maya renders many people _unable to even
| consider_ (and therefore falling back to binary heuristic
| thinking, not realized as such) the valid neuro-scientific
| concepts contained within.
|
| A simpler, secular version of the same general idea:
|
| There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen
| to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them
| and says "Morning, boys. How's the water?" And the two young
| fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks
| over at the other and goes "What the hell is water?"
| kgwxd wrote:
| I absolutely hate Hanlon's Razor, it's an automatic pass for
| people acting with malice as long as they play the plausible
| deniability angle.
| dimitrios1 wrote:
| That requires a certain level of intelligence to pull off.
|
| Think of how stupid the average person you know is, and
| realize that half the population are stupider than that
| (another mental model I ascribe to).
| kgwxd wrote:
| The difference between average "stupid" and average "smart"
| is nowhere near significant enough to make a practical
| difference. It's a question of how willing someone is to
| take advantage of their situation.
|
| By maybe 3 years old, humans figure out they can lie about
| their ignorance of what's generally good or bad to get away
| with a ton and that will be taken advantage of until some
| sense of accountability and honor is learned, or there's
| some significant threat to their personal well-being. A lot
| of people don't get past that stage until their late teens,
| but young people don't have much opportunity to do a ton
| damage with that mindset, they don't tend to have much
| power. Some people never develop the sense of
| accountability and go on to test the limits of their
| feigned ignorance until they find the lines, and walk them
| as close as possible. As adults, on average, they may not
| "succeed" as much as "smart" people, but the problem is,
| people like that are more likely to seek a position that
| allow them to get away with it, and "smart" people keep
| letting them off with a look of disappointment, and the
| assumption that they've "learned from their mistake" and
| won't do it again, but what they've really learned is
| they're not as close to the lines as they thought and go a
| little further next time.
| capableweb wrote:
| Similarly, never assume you know the context. I tend to apply
| this while driving a lot, when someone is speeding past me.
| "Idiot! But, maybe his wife is in the middle of birthing his
| son and he is rushing to the hospital?", helps me keep calm
| when others act like idiots.
|
| There is also a funny video you can share with people to
| explain the same idea:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-9Gci8MuHw
| baby wrote:
| Or: always focus on the intent. People do things for
| different reasons, but you should only judge them based on
| the intent.
|
| For example, all lives matter, sounds good, but what is the
| intent behind that? Is it really to signal that all lives
| matter?
| binbag wrote:
| The concept of 'sharpening the saw', which I (rightly or wrongly,
| but it works for me) take to mean taking time to stop and think
| alone about where I am with a [usually work-related]
| project/mission/goal, draw a line under progress to date, and
| think about where I'm going now and what's most effective at this
| stage given present circumstances. Related is the phrase "Plans
| are worthless, but planning is everything" (attributed to US
| General MacArthur). Take time to stop, recap, take stock, and
| plan your next moves. Refresh your thinking.
|
| The other model/technique I've used successfully over the years
| (or, at least, I think it contributed to the successes, but it's
| difficult to say with certainty) is affirmations, as brought into
| common discourse probably most effectively and controversially by
| Scott Adams of Dilbert fame.
| binbag wrote:
| Also! Sorry, but I have to add this one because I find it
| factors in quite often (unfortunately):
|
| "The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics
| are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full
| of doubts." (Bertrand Russell nailing it.)
| emmelaich wrote:
| That can be overstated. Also Russell was a eugenicist, at
| least for a while. That puts an unpleasant spin on that.
|
| I prefer the somewhat related "everyone is a conservative
| about what they know best"
| sorethescore wrote:
| The 10/80/10 rule. 10% of the things are harmful 80% of the
| things are agnostic 10% of the things are helpful.
| nicoburns wrote:
| The Epistemic - Metaphysical distinction: being clear about the
| difference between something being true, and a particular person
| of group of people knowing that that thing is true.
| richardw wrote:
| Knowing what we need to win an Oscar for. Used like "we don't
| need to win an Oscar for that". An area where extra effort
| doesn't target the outcome you need. Put extra time into the area
| where you need to win the Oscar.
|
| What gets us into the newspapers. Don't fuck that up.
|
| Add an interface. Where you know you need an answer, create the
| interface and a simple implementation. Come back later when you
| need it implemented better, now you know where that has to be and
| it's already lined up to use the better version. Sometimes simple
| version is enough and you've saved the time.
|
| You don't need a phd in that. Same as Oscar. Know where to focus
| learning.
|
| CAP theorem. Often people choose consistency without knowing they
| have. Or insist on unnecessary availability when consistency is
| crucial. You're always choosing so make it conscious and make
| sure the view is shared.
|
| Specialisation is for insects. Learn D3 and ML and Kafka and
| PowerPoint and marketing.
| 533474 wrote:
| stay young, work hard play harder, KISS
| icompetetowin wrote:
| Only paying attention to those who survive or succeed can mislead
| you.
|
| Mental model exercises I wrote a few months ago:
|
| https://newsletter.decisionschool.org/p/decision-making-bias...
| cseleborg wrote:
| Failing to prepare is preparing to fail (e.g. business meetings,
| important decisions, getting ready for the next day in the
| evening)
|
| Pick your battles (invaluable when raising children!)
|
| Be kind (also to yourself)
| thecleaner wrote:
| For the play to your strengths thing, that only works when you're
| in a market where you get to play to your strengths. Playing to
| your strengths vs not fixing your weakness is the classic
| exploitation-exploration trade-off, you might want to lookup the
| issues with constant exploitation. Having said that, its actually
| a pretty good idea to follow.
| sigotirandolas wrote:
| It's better to be decent in a lot of areas than to be great in
| one area and terrible in another. If A, B, C, D is how much value
| you provide in different areas, you should try to maximize
| ln(A)+ln(B)+ln(C)+ln(D) rather than A+B+C+D. Also see "Law of
| diminishing returns", "All happy families are alike; each unhappy
| family is unhappy in its own way."
|
| In creative fields nobody knows what they're doing and most time
| and money is wasted. It's often as important to think about what
| thing to do as doing the thing. You will most likely provide
| great value to your company/work a few days of the year (the days
| where you implement some feature your customer really needs or
| where you fix some potential or ongoing big production problem)
| and most days you will provide break-even or negative value. Also
| see "Impostor syndrome".
|
| Always automate manual or boring processes. Do not think too much
| about ROI calculations, they don't work because productivity in
| creative fields is very non-linear. Instant feedback is very
| important for concentration and morale.
|
| If you're prone to anxiety, saving money and building skills
| allows you to act without fear of major setbacks. And most of the
| time it's better to ask for forgiveness than permission.
| selfhifive wrote:
| Your memories are inaccurate and you can't predict the future so
| the only thing you can be sure of is the present.
| SuboptimalEng wrote:
| I heard this recently from one of Justin Kan's YouTube videos and
| it's really shaped the way I think about my career.
|
| "Work in your zone of genius [not your zone of competence]."
|
| Simply put, it means to work on problems that:
|
| 1. you have a natural inclination towards
|
| 2. (and perhaps more importantly) give you energy
|
| For example, I am good at full stack web development because that
| is the first job I got out of college. If I want to "optimize my
| career", it would be best to continue down this path and apply
| for roles that fit my experience. But, unfortunately for me,
| building web apps is not something that "gives me energy".
|
| One thing that does give me energy is thinking about/playing
| video games. I've always spent my evenings watching GDC talks or
| game dev documentaries. After watching Justin's video, I decided
| to take a shot at making games[0] and it's been a very different
| experience from making web apps. Even after a full day of coding,
| I continued to think about how to make the game better!
|
| The key insight is that you get better faster when you work on
| stuff you have a natural inclination towards, and that gives you
| energy to work harder on those problems.
|
| The hard part is making the leap to work on these problems, even
| if the trade-off is super high. For example, should I continue
| down the FAANG path and have a good life with all those perks as
| a full stack developer, or do I follow my "zone of genius" and
| enter the gaming industry which is known for some extreme
| practices.
|
| Who knows, with the way gaming is shaping up (Roblox, MineCraft,
| Unity, Fortnite, Meta, etc.) perhaps switching to this gaming
| industry is actually the more optimal solution :P
|
| [0] https://github.com/SuboptimalEng/GameDev
| tlarkworthy wrote:
| the best model of a cat is a cat, preferably the same one
| wanderingmind wrote:
| The most important for me are
|
| 1. Do I really need to do this or alternatively you can ask will
| this activity create value (for you, your family, your company,
| your customers).
|
| 2. Who is likely to be benefit from an action (this helps to
| filter the news).
|
| 3. Is this event worth getting upset over (helps with people who
| have kids who will mess up a lot).
| syngrog66 wrote:
| many, depending
|
| one of the most common tools/models I use is the Bayesian
| inference graph. I maintain an informal Bayesian inference graph
| for tons of things in my everyday experience. update it as I go
| along. leverage it when it applies. I suspect nearly everybody
| else does too, even when they do not realize it explicitly.
| neonnoodle wrote:
| - memento mori: we're all worm food and likely to be forgotten by
| the world at large. None of us knows the hour and manner of our
| deaths. There is no earthly or cosmic justice, no just desserts,
| no reward or punishment beyond what life offers.
|
| - revealed preferences: what people actually spend their time
| doing is a better indicator of their values than what they say
| they want.
|
| - people are not internally consistent, nor should we be:
| logical-minded people can get really frustrated when someone says
| they believe XYZ, but have other hypocritical or conflicting
| beliefs or actions. You won't cajole people into reconciling
| their beliefs into a cohesive elegant whole--and that includes
| yourself (hello Rationalists). Live with it.
| wanderingmind wrote:
| For your last point I have a nice catch phrase.
|
| "The only constant is change and the only consistent thing is
| hypocrisy"
|
| Accepting all of us are hypocrites at some level helps to deal
| quite a bit with frustration and depression.
| [deleted]
| dsizzle wrote:
| Bayes Theorem
| system2 wrote:
| "When applied, the probabilities involved in the theorem may
| have different probability interpretations. With Bayesian
| probability interpretation, the theorem expresses how a degree
| of belief, expressed as a probability, should rationally change
| to account for the availability of related evidence."
|
| Well, that's a mouthful.
| ahdh8f4hf4h8 wrote:
| The most important part of Bayes rule is the concept of Prior
| knowledge and Bayesian updating - new data should always be
| combined with your existing knowledge (starting with the
| "base rate"), based on levels of uncertainty.
|
| Closely related is the concept of conditional probability -
| how does the probability of something change as you include
| other information.
|
| It takes some studying to understand probability theory well,
| but it is very powerful once you start to think that way.
| Most of the garbage science reporting in the media would be
| fixed if reporters actually thought this way and honestly
| applied it.
| Am_I_Right wrote:
| My most precious mental model hack is, that if I see anything on
| news.ycombinator.com, that's something to avoid hard in real
| life.
|
| So, venturebros? Hard pass. Cryptobros? Hard, hard, pass.
| Anything else that smells like a Peter Thiel-acolyte? Kill it
| with fire, then deny, pass, pass, pass.
|
| I'm definitely stronger for all that!
| lokimedes wrote:
| Luck is a large factor in most successes. Luck can be harnessed
| by frequent sampling. Try many things, revisit rejected ideas and
| try again.
| martinflack wrote:
| You can't change what happened. Deal with the challenge.
| tunesmith wrote:
| I think I made this up: In order to get to where you're going,
| you gotta start with where you are.
|
| Also, form versus content in general.
|
| A bit of Bayesianism, enough to feel glad when I'm wrong as an
| opportunity to better update my own understand.
|
| And inspired by Claude Shannon's "surprise is information"
| insight, trying to notice whenever something surprises me as
| something that gives me valuable information. Helps a lot with
| debugging problems, where oftentimes a seemingly irrelevant "well
| that was weird" ends up being the vital clue toward understanding
| the system.
| Pyramus wrote:
| In many cases good is not the opposite of bad.
|
| Our brain is fantastic evaluation and extrapolation machine.
| Often I find myself judging something on a 1 dimensional scale,
| where 'good' is at one end and 'bad' at the other.
|
| More often than not that's a gross over simplification, and not
| helpful as a mental model. The 2 dimensional model, bad vs not
| bad and good vs not good is, in many cases, a much better fit.
| (Of course reality has a lot more dimensions usually - you get
| the gist).
|
| To make an example, Elon Musk is not a genius or an idiot, he is
| likely both a genius and an idiot.
| teawrecks wrote:
| I heard a variation of this in a podcast comparing the difference
| between various language learning apps:
|
| Easy things feel fast, hard things feel slow, but in the long run
| you'll get more from doing the hard thing.
|
| In the context of language learning, they were comparing apps
| like Duolingo to WaniKani (for learning kanji). In summary, your
| brain can sucker you into thinking it's learning something, when
| in reality you're not being challenged at all. Doing 100 multiple
| choice in a day can FEEL like you're learning a lot in a short
| amount of time, but picking an answer when it's in front of you
| doesn't test your recall. Being forced to recall 10 kanji from
| memory over 10 days will help you learn them more reliably.
|
| I think this lesson extends to almost any domain. You can fall
| into a trap thinking "I understand how to do X in theory, but
| actually doing it will take so much longer. It would be a waste
| of time for me to do something I already understand how to do."
| But in almost every case where you've thought that, once you dig
| in and actually do the thing, you will hit roadblocks that you
| have to work around, you'll feel discouraged and confused about
| why it wasn't straight forward, you'll commit things to memory
| because you're forced to, and when it's all said and done you
| will have a much deeper understanding than if you had optimized
| that task out.
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