[HN Gopher] The silent majority of experts (2012) ___________________________________________________________________ The silent majority of experts (2012) Author : bluedino Score : 197 points Date : 2022-06-16 16:23 UTC (6 hours ago) (HTM) web link (prog21.dadgum.com) (TXT) w3m dump (prog21.dadgum.com) | chadcmulligan wrote: | The empty vessel makes the most sound? | d23 wrote: | I can't help but think this way about nearly everything. Almost | all compound, higher order effects are hidden from the naked eye | and cursory glances. We tend to focus on superficial, simplistic | explanations, or, at least, things that are imminently visible. | Negative space is much larger and has more impact on our world | but rarely gets much attention. | pavon wrote: | On the other hand, the internet has exposed me to people who are | highly skilled and blog about it who have taught me lessons I | would have been unlikely to learn on my own, and would have never | been able to learn from 1-on-1. | | Folks like Bruce Dawson, Brenden Gregg, Raymond Chen, Joel | Spolsky, John Carmack, and many others. And people with strong | experience to chime in on forums like HN not unfrequently. I've | never had much issue taking popular opinion with a grain of salt | (as least consciously), the main challenge I have is finding the | right balance of time to spend online looking for the wheat in | the chaff. | planarhobbit wrote: | > Yes, there are many people who blog and otherwise publicly | discuss development methodologies and what they're working on, | but there are even more people who don't. Blogging takes time, | for example, and not everyone enjoys it. Other people are working | on commercial products and can't divulge the inner workings of | their code. | | There's a subset of this silent majority who tried to contribute | to discussion platforms but gave up when they saw prominent | voices that had next to no idea what they were talking about | being promoted, hailed, and so on. The loudest voice is rarely | the most articulate, and for subject matter experts articulation, | nuance, and other learned-through-experience things count for a | lot, one would assume. | bombcar wrote: | Almost certainly if you're good at blogging, speaking, self- | promotion you're not the most expert in some other field. The | cases where there's a cross-over are perhaps not surprisingly | rare (Raymond Chen is a good one, John Carmack) or are indirect | (Linus doesn't "blog" per se but some of the mailing list | emails are as good as one). | | And if there's not something to "verify" the writer/performer, | it can get wildly out of control. The streamers that claim to | be good at the game they're playing can be verified (and many | don't even need to be, it is entertainment after all) but the | agile evangelist doesn't have the same way to prove it. | | If you try to say something that's not the "defacto thought" of | the group, you have to be _even better_ at all the above, which | makes it even more likely that those who go against the grain | remain silent. | bluedino wrote: | >> Almost certainly if you're good at blogging, speaking, | self-promotion you're not the most expert in some other | field. | | This would explain a lot of bad programming books. | bombcar wrote: | Those can be even worse, because the publishing company is | _also_ not an expert and just wants to get a book out the | door. | | e.g.: https://wozniak.ca/blog/2018/06/25/1/index.html | | In this it is a writer who is arguably knowledgeable in one | programming language (BASIC) writing a book about another | (C) and getting fundamental things wrong. Being a domain | expert in one _even relatively close area_ doesn 't mean it | automatically applies in another. | a4isms wrote: | _Here 's a comment I made a few days ago here on HN about a | blog post, it may be relevant:_ | | ---------- | | The author is relating second-hand information. That's | useful, it's good to have people who have a skill of curating | business advice and pointing us in good directions. But my | first-hand advice is to recognize the difference between: | | Alice: "I'm making five figures a month for five hours a week | reselling five products." | | And Bob: "People like Alice make as much as five figures a | month for five hours a week reselling five products." | | In the first case, Alice has direct experience with success. | In the second case, the incentives are such that Bob is | someone whose experience and expertise is in selecting | stories that have verisimilitude, that is, things that sound | true. | | And what makes something sound true? Quite often, something | we want to be true sounds true even if it isn't, and | something we don't want to be true doesn't sound true, even | if it is. Bob nearly always sounds more authoritative than | Alice, because Bob's business is sounding authoritative, | whereas Alice's business is being authoritative. Why doesn't | Alice always sound authoritative? Because she speaks the | truth whether it appeals to our biases or opposes them, | whether we want her truth to be true or not. | | Bob, on the other hand, is an authority on what people want | to hear. Bob is just as expert in Bob's business as Alice is | in hers. Bob uses metrics and data to write headlines and | even choose the most compelling adjectives to use in his | posts. Bob sounds authoritative to people lacking expertise | in whatever Bob is talking about. | | The Bobs of this world can (but don't always) become "a poor | man's idea of a rich man, and a failure's idea of a success," | because their customers are people early in their lives and | careers. | | So what to do when a Bob suggests something is true? Well, we | shouldn't dismiss it. But let's think of it the way we'd | think of Bob referring a candidate for a job in our | businesses. We might fast-track them into an interview, but | we'd still interview the candidate. And so it must be with | business advice. Bob pointing us to an idea is Bob referring | an idea to us. Our job is to take Bob's referral and still | validate the idea by seeking original, authoritative | expertise. Bob's value is suggesting ideas to think about, | not teaching us about business. | | p.s. I say all of the above as an authority on the subject: | I'm a Bob. | | ------ | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31715485 | bombcar wrote: | The other huge hidden danger is the Bobs of the world can | generalize, intentionally or accidentally, a situation and | make it seem that _anyone_ can be an Alice; but it may be | (and Alice may openly admit if you ask) that there 's only | room for one Alice, and her mechanism simply will not work | for anyone else. | | The biggest example of this is in things that involve large | amounts of luck (or are even totally luck-driven); think | gambling or stock market picks or startups - the "winners" | have a hard time distinguishing what they did from the luck | involved, and often give too little to luck. | | If the Bobs are not drawing out the luck side of things but | instead amplifying the apparent skills, it can be a huge | disservice, but, hey, it's usually more popular than saying | "it's luck". | notahacker wrote: | The flip side of that is: the Bobs of this world | _sometimes_ have seen enough to (i) not be fooled by | survivorship bias into believing their way is the best way | and (ii) spot patterns in what many Alices do and many | people trying to be like Alices don 't | | And there are a _lot_ of fake Alices. I mean, I 'm | bombarded with ads from people who apparently spend five | hours a week making five figures per month... and then | apparently spend the rest of their life promoting their | ability to offer one on one "coaching" sessions to be just | like them at rates which don't really make much sense if | they're making $x,xxx per hour on their real gig. Which | links back to the original post: the people who _do_ make | five figures per month for five hours a week reselling | stuff tend to not talk about it. Or at least not nearly as | much as the people cosplaying that lifestyle or the people | whose interest in such businesses is purely academic. | fleddr wrote: | You're absolutely right and this problem is getting worse and | worse. | | As one example, Twitter has this concept of "Topics", which you | can kind of see as a sub community. Take a topic like "Web | development" and the grifters are constantly on top. | | They know exactly how to work the algorithms. They'll post | something stupid like "HTML is not a programming language" to | get maximum engagement. There's a rich playbook of such | engagement patterns to win the game. And they do win. | | Same situation on Medium, where there's "Categories". They're | all gamed and corrupted like this. | | The value adding voices are not heard, and will therefore give | up. | samstave wrote: | I know a number of "secret experts" -- one of which has been a | good friend of mine for more than 20 years. He is an expert you | have never heard of, but you have interacted with his efforts | in everything from VoIP, streaming, ads, all sorts of stuff... | | He is a cowboy from texas with a stereotypical texas accent, | looks like he works at a gas station, but can look at a PCB, | take the labels of the chips on the board and the layout, and | actually write linux drivers for said board. (HE ACTUALLY DID | THIS) - but he will regularly tell me "goin hog huntin" in the | most deadpan texas drawl... and this week was "went deep sea | fishin. back in dallas." | | I am really lucky to be on a firstname call any time basis with | this guy. | | There are TONs of them. | clairity wrote: | i grew up in the south but lived on the east and west coasts | as an adult. my experience is that intelligence and aptitude | are more evenly distributed than insecure city slickers would | love to believe. there are homeless people in LA who can | rejigger electric scooters for free rides in 2 minutes flat, | and they didn't watch youtube to figure it out. | fleddr wrote: | I have a colleague similar to that. | | Although it's not a popular term, he truly is a super | architect and 10 x coder. You can throw any problem at him | and he'll solve it, fast and with quality. As part of this, | he explores new technologies and seems to master them in | hours or days at most, and it all looks so effortless. Even | more rare for such a powerhouse of tech skill, he's no nerd. | An excellent communicator with deep business insight. | | I often wonder about him, if you can do all that...if you can | manage such absurd scope and complexity in your mind whilst | it seems you're not even breaking a sweat...doesn't that mean | you can do anything? Anything at all? | | Anyway, his online exposure: he has an email address, but | don't expect a response. He has a smartphone but I never see | him use it. He has no social media. | | If he would post online, he'd inevitably be recognized as a | guru. But he won't, he goes home to his family. Not just | smart, also wise. | 99_00 wrote: | You are reading an online discussion about how online discussions | lack value. | arbuge wrote: | This comes to mind for me: | | https://observer.com/2011/05/keith-rabois-says-great-founder... | softwaredoug wrote: | In my field (search) there is a strong strong bias towards | cutting edge, machine learning, etc etc in conference talks and | blogs (including my own). It's exciting to peer into the future | and push the boundaries of what's possible. | | Not many people are blogging about the standard, block and tackle | techniques that feel 'obvious' (yet aren't quite obvious to non- | experts) | dang wrote: | Related: | | _The Silent Majority of Experts_ - | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7015139 - Jan 2014 (37 | comments) | | _The Silent Majority of Experts_ - | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4243573 - July 2012 (115 | comments) | maxk42 wrote: | I think about this constantly while reading Hacker News. So many | articles and comments by people whose level of enthusiasm doesn't | match their experience. Try to voice a comment that goes against | the flow of that enthusiasm and you'll be downvoted to oblivion, | even if you speak with more experience and context than the | masses. I'm horrified by some of the stuff I see here and feel | like it's often useless to speak out. | fleddr wrote: | Horrified is a bit strong, but you have a point. There's a few | themes that are strongly popular or unpopular by some type of | community consensus. In those cases, it doesn't seem to matter | what you have to say as minds are already made up. | | Another interesting effect I experienced is regarding expert | credibility. | | When I found this place, I was impressed. I figured the world's | top engineers are posting. I see them writing about very | advanced topics I know little about. Comments are well written, | and combined this creates trust. | | But there's been incidents. I'm the type of person that has an | extremely deep level of knowledge in about 2 or 3 very niche | topics that frankly normally nobody cares about. I know that | sounds pretentious, but for the sake of argument, let's accept | it for now. | | By chance, very infrequently, an article and discussion may be | about those extremely niche topics. And now things are falling | apart. As before, seemingly insightful professional-level | comments are written. The problem is, 70% of them are wrong. | I'm not talking "different opinion", I mean factually wrong, | that's not how this works, and you seem to have no idea what | you're talking about. | | I imagine to the outsider not in the niche reading along: | interesting expert discussion. Just as I was reading about all | those topics I know little about. | | This raises the obvious question: when I read impressive | comments regarding topics I know little about, how many are | actually trustworthy and accurate expertise versus how many are | just well written made up nonsense? | | This question hits me hard because it kind of forces you to | become skeptical and cynical by default, which I don't want to | be. | MAMAMassakali wrote: | Gell-Mann amnesia | amself wrote: | What motivates people to make up nonsense? | d23 wrote: | I've become a lot more willing to burn my karma on here as of | late. Not because I want to, per se, but what's the point of | getting it if you can't spend it occasionally when you really | have something you need to say? | RealityVoid wrote: | That, and, well, there isn't _really_ a cost to burning | Karma, it's all the same anyway. I find it much better and | more interesting to speak truthfully (while not being an | asshole!) than just to go with the hive mind. | eterm wrote: | Absolutely, I've always held karma both on here and reddit as | a resource that is to be spent when needed. | | That's not to say, "be an arsehole" or go against ToS, but | definitely it's made me willing to stand my ground even when | I hold unpopular opinions or opinions where my culture | clashes with the dominant one. | saagarjha wrote: | Hacker News caps downvotes so it's quite easy to actually say | what you need to at times where it's important. (Before | someone says something like "but I got shadowbanned for doing | this" consider it you 1. followed the guidelines while doing | so and 2. actually backed your position up with evidence.) | closedloop129 wrote: | It would be nice if votes were more accessible. If it were | possible to reduce the weight of those who downvote those | comments, the overall ranking should improve. | whitepoplar wrote: | Care to share some of the stuff you've been horrified by on | here? I'd love to read more. | [deleted] | kayamon wrote: | haha try mentioning crypto and wait to see if a useful, | informed, coherent discussion ensues. | rootusrootus wrote: | Have you considered going into politics? ;-). That comment | is wonderful for what it doesn't say. | headmelted wrote: | To be honest I've come to suspect I may be guilty of this | myself. I'm trying to do better at being open-minded to | unpopular opinions (not always successfully). | boris wrote: | _" The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern | world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of | doubt."_ Bertrand Russell | [deleted] | swatcoder wrote: | A great point well made. | | And I think it's especially important to keep in mind that we | have a generational divide among experts even now, that | introduces a bias to the particular expertise that gets shared. | | Not only have many deeply experienced, talented experts naturally | shifted their surplus attention to other life responsibilities | like families, health issues, etc -- but many younger experts | grew up with a social media fluency that makes engaging online | more natural to them. | | So even without evaluating what's said by each, you inevitably | see a lot more of the opinions of these younger experts and less | from the old greybeards with differently informed perspectives. | bombcar wrote: | And the young are filled with vim and vigor, the older you are | the less likely you want to have the same dang discussion for | the hundredth time why rewriting the Linux kernel in "pop | language of the week" is not a great use of time. | | The real hard part is keeping your mind open to newer ways | without either spending all your time on them, or getting fed | up with it. | crispyambulance wrote: | I am going to propose a radical idea: There is NO PATTERN. | | People reach mastery and expertise in all different kinds of | ways. Some folks have it handed to them on a silver platter, | others overcome outrageously unfair circumstances, some do it | alone, some have mentors, some read-learn-do, some just do, some | do it despite hating what they do, others do it out of love. | tomohawk wrote: | It's really the silent majority of everyone. Very few people | exhibit themselves on social media. | andi999 wrote: | Although with forth i would argue the experts were not a silent | _majority_... | charlie0 wrote: | I've heard about this before. The very very best are people | you've never heard of. Why? | | Because they spend nearly all their mental resources on | perfecting their craft, not writing blogs or marketing themselves | online (which is an entirely different skillset). Not to say that | there aren't very good people who also write blogs or give talks | on certain subjects. Just thinking about it from first | principles. All things being equal, those that give 100% in one | thing will edge out someone who split spent 90%/10% | blogging/marketing on that same topic. | robocat wrote: | Working alone prevents you from standing on the shoulders of | the giants around you. Working alone prevents you from | challenging yourself against the best and learning from them. | Teaching others close to your skill level, forces you to | understand your own skills and gives you more insight into | changes you can make. | | In my experience, highly skilled people seem to be unusually | skilled at a wide variety of disciplines, including soft-skills | and apparently unrelated skills to the one they are known for. | | Edit: sure, there are a lot of bullshit bloggers and marketers. | One signal of very talented people is they are good at | filtering for good information. Or they can pay attention to | bullshit and pick out the one useful insight. Or perhaps use | bullshit as abstract noise to smash out interesting ideas or | test themselves against. | | Edit 2: The problem is not that experts don't publish, it is | that "unskilled and unaware" is published in such abundance. I | think Dan Luu writes about the problem very well: | https://danluu.com/hn-comments/ . . . I do think there is | confirmation/selection bias that we only see the talented that | write, but I also believe that the most talented communicate to | better themselves, and those that don't communicate are holding | themselves back from their potential. | bluedino wrote: | This isn't limited to programming. Take automotive forums, for | example. | | You will have someone go on all day about how a certain engine or | something will not make a certain number of HP. They'll say they | have never seen it, after all, they have visited all the websites | and watched all the Youtube videos. | | Then someone that runs a performance shop will pipe in with, "Of | course it's possible. We've built six of them this year alone. | The owners just don't post their cars on the internet." | drc500free wrote: | There's a weird parallel to the pizzagate kerfuffle. Lots of | people who wanted to get to the "real truth" by only looking at | online sources, like it's some sort of virtual escape room | that's been pre-built with clues. Staring at google street view | images and trying to find the pattern in all the store signs on | the same block, coming up with bizarre circular logic around | "cp" where references to pizza at a pizza parlor meant children | were being abused. | | Finally one of them bothered to show up in person (with a | rifle, to "save the children") and found... a neighborhood | pizza shop with no basement. And when he went back online and | said "hey guys, I checked it out and there's nothing there" | they all decided he was a government plant. | | It's like people have forgotten the real world exists, and is | the actual reality that's being referred to online. | YeBanKo wrote: | This is survivorship biased and does not pertain to software or | tech exclusively. Same think happens everywhere: from any niche | informational space to rumors on social media. What is most | interesting to me it can cut you twice, because you don't see 2 | things: other advice by silent expert, that can be as good or | better, but also when most popular advice fails in practice for | someone, other than the author. Thus not only you are missing out | on not seeing the best, but you also maybe looking at something | subpar, because there is no efficient feedback loop that would | differentiate appropriately. | pacetherace wrote: | This is where I feel listening to talks at conferences is more | important than participating in random online discussions (but | that's what I am doing right now :D) | systems_glitch wrote: | I love that FORTH is the cited example :P | blueflow wrote: | This is sometimes a bit infuriating, because due to these online | forums, there developed some "common sense" that is factually | wrong. I can recount following misbeliefs from my head: | | - Wine is not an emulation | | - MS-DOS is not an OS because it cant do paging and virtual | memory | | - Microprocessors are not Microcontrollers because they have | paging | | There are also some tinier things like notorious NIH syndrome due | to not reading documentation, like the tons of blog articles | about SSH features that could all be replaced by ten minutes of | reading ssh-keygen(1). | | I've seen that on IRC, Reddit and HN as well, and i ended up | preferring official documentation over anything else what people | online say. If this writing sounds like venting, it surely is. | bombcar wrote: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine_(software) - "Wine (formerly | a recursive backronym for Wine Is Not an Emulator, now just | "Wine")" - depends on how technical you want to get about it, | does emulation just mean translating one machine code into | another, or can you "emulate library calls"? | | Official documentation can be a great source, but in things | like ssh-keygen there are often just way too many options and | so people want "just tell me how to do what I want to do". One | of the reasons sane defaults are so important. | sgtnoodle wrote: | When it comes to names, I prefer not to be too pedantic. | Names are for people to communicate with other people, and | most humans naturally and successfully cope with | irrationality all the time. A more concise, accurate name is | always better to start out with when possible, but it isn't | always easy. We can all just agree to call it Wine, and | appreciate it running crappy productivity software and 20 | year old games on our modern Linux computers. | blueflow wrote: | You can say "We'd need something that emulates the Windows | ABI like Wine does" and you will get a misinformed person | derailing the discussion. | | You can explain your tinc mesh setup, but as soon as you | call it "VPN" some people will believe its some sort of | proxy to hide your IP address while watching porn. | | You can explain how PHP interacts with the server | environment, but as soon as you call it "Server API", some | people will think its a machine-consumable REST/Json/Xml | service or sth like that. | | This generates many landmines you might step onto. | Sometimes you need to argue total nonsense to work around | these people. Painful. So yeah you are right, but it doesnt | solve the Problem. | sgtnoodle wrote: | Well sure, but it seems like there are always going to be | quirky, pedantic people to argue with about anything. It | seems like the solution to that problem is learning how | to strike a balance between patience and honest, critical | feedback. | blueflow wrote: | Check out https://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=emulati | on&rdfrom... | | Its actually a pretty generic term that is used similarly | like "imitation". You can see it used like that in xterm, | which is a terminal emulator. | | For some reason, many people believe it means something like | "virtual machine", to the extent that the Wine project needed | to rename to avoid being understood as a virtual machine, | which is was associated with really bad performance back | then. | | > just tell me how to do what I want to do | | I think this attitude is part of the problem. Like, when you | try to weld you need to know about many details like | preventing heat-corrosion and inclusions, otherwise your seam | is going to be unacceptably bad. Welders do have training for | that reason, but yet we dont apply the same standards to | computing. | bombcar wrote: | Both points are spot on - people nowadays forget just how | amazing things like Rosetta are; around the time WINE began | emulation was synonymous with "slow as hell". | | The second is why things _really_ need to have sane | defaults, especially in cryptography - learning all the why | 's and wherefores for someone who is NOT a specialist is | quite difficult and foot-guns abound. | | We're just starting to get the idea of failsafes and safe | by design in coding, and we need more of it. Too often the | answer has been "you're holding it wrong" instead of "oh, | wow, the way this is setup you could easily make it | insecure". | | The Unix/Linux philosophy has been a bit hard to grow here; | the "you should have known to use --no-foot-gun" mentality | can be hard to overcome, especially if you battled through | them on your way up. | blueflow wrote: | If i was a surgeon and "held it wrong" I'd probably get | sued or fired. | | If i was a welder and "held it wrong" I'd get a written | warning, which later might end up in a termination. | | If i use ssh-keygen wrong in production because i did not | read the documentation... then its the tools fault for | not having sane defaults? | bombcar wrote: | If you were a pilot and "held it wrong" you'd probably be | dead, and Boeing would get away scott-free ... the first | time. | | Somewhere between "everything is a death-trap, learn how | to use it" and "this device is perfectly safe, because it | cannot do anything" lies the mean we need to hit. | blueflow wrote: | Not reading the available documentation for your tools is | neglience either way. | jacquesm wrote: | I'm willing to bet a pretty good sum of money that no | professional programmer has read all of the available | documentation for all of their tools. | blueflow wrote: | Yeah, that does not happen either, but it would be nice | if professional programmers would at least try to read it | instead of relying on reddit, stackoverflow and random | peoples blogposts. | afiori wrote: | That is why it is allowed to buy morphine by the pound at | Wallmart, you are trusted to understand the consequences | and use it right. | | More seriously, the actual objective is not blaming the | guilty but rather avoiding the problems. | | If system A interacting with system B is likely to causes | an incident then either A, B, or the interaction need to | change. | | For surgeons all three have happened, the same for | airline pilots. | | The surgeon had to swear very convincingly to have "read | the documentation" before being even allowed to think | about "holding it wrong". | | In the case of people using GPG wrong the only solutions | you have is to make is easier to "hold right" or make is | so heavy and painful that anyone without true | determination gives up trying to "hold it" at all. | insightcheck wrote: | Yep. On a related note, when I was younger, I searched for advice | from experts for how to develop expertise in studying and | productivity on Reddit. It led to lots of highly-upvoted advice | (including stuff like supplements, largely with few real benefits | besides placebo), popular blogs by influencers (like Scott | Young), and popular self-help books. | | However, the actual experts I knew in high school who later went | on to great institutions like MIT or applied and got into | extremely competitive investment banks didn't browse the internet | very much, or relied on supplements and these books. | | Similar to the ideas expressed in the submitted article, these | people didn't spend time online reading blogs and Reddit, or | blogging/self-promoting themselves. They generally were involved | in a sport (track and field or squash), spent little time online, | and spent a lot of time using a lot of paper studying. | | They also were careful who they associated with as friends (they | hung out with studious people). Less in one's control, their | parents were financially successful or were in competitive | positions (e.g. were professors or physicians), so they may have | learned these strategies from them, versus inventing them | independently. | | Long story short: there is absolutely a culture of improvement | that is primarily offline and less visible, because people either | don't record it, or people do record it and it doesn't get | upvoted or ranked highly on Google searches. Examples of recorded | good advice appeared on HN recently, shared by computer scientist | Donald Knuth who is also usually offline: | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31482116 | tester756 wrote: | >didn't browse the internet very much | | I see it other way | | Internet allows you to discuss everything you want with various | people from your industry | | I think it allows you to become better not only faster, but | also makes you more aware of different perspectives | | Why wouldn't you want to do so? | bena wrote: | You realize what you did here, right? | | You said you disagreed with the experiences of the OP and | essentially the article. | | Posited as evidence that your view was correct based on your | opinion on what you perceive as the advantages of the | internet. | | Then treated your opinion as a fact that would be crazy to be | argued against. | | It's true. The internet does allow for easy communication | between people. It does contain a whole lot of information. | You can get the documents to most things. You can access most | information quickly. | | But that information doesn't require commentary. And it's not | a guarantee that the people you want to talk to want to talk | to you. | | If I want to learn Rust, I don't go to a Rust forum, I look | up the Rust documentation. If I want to know how to do | something Rust, I search for the specific information. | Oftentimes, my issue is a faulty assumption about how | something works or not knowing the exact name of the method I | want to call. Once again, that's not something I need | personal interaction for. The very last thing I do, is ask | people on the internet. Not out of any misguided misanthropy, | but just because it's hardly ever needed. | nescioquid wrote: | I think it is reasonable to rebut the premise of an | argument (in fact, if the reasoning of the argument is | sound, that seems to be the only basis on which a rebuttal | _can_ be formulated). | | Article Premise: [the internet provides] an intersection of | the people working on interesting things and who like to | write about it--and that's not the whole story. | | Article Conclusion: Your time may better spent getting in | there and trying things rather than reading about what | other people think. | | tester756: I think [the internet] allows you to become | better not only faster, but also makes you more aware of | different perspectives | | Charitably reading, I understand tester756 to be saying | that in fact, that intersection _is_ broad enough that the | article 's conclusion doesn't readily follow. | | Did tester756 provide enough of a warrant for the rebuttal? | Maybe, maybe not. Frankly I don't think this article | warrants a high degree of rigor to comment on it, though, | so I think it's fine. | tester756 wrote: | >If I want to learn Rust, I don't go to a Rust forum, I | look up the Rust documentation. If I want to know how to do | something Rust, I search for the specific information. | Oftentimes, my issue is a faulty assumption about how | something works or not knowing the exact name of the method | I want to call. Once again, that's not something I need | personal interaction for. The very last thing I do, is ask | people on the internet. Not out of any misguided | misanthropy, but just because it's hardly ever needed. | | How about scenerios like: you have 3 solutions to one | problem, but you want opinion about which one is the best? | | For example endless discussions about OOP / DDD / | Microservices / SOLID / FP, etc. | | >Then treated your opinion as a fact that would be crazy to | be argued against. | | That wasn't intended | | My opinion is still just my opinion. I've spent years on | various reddits/discords/hns/forums and I do really believe | that you can get a lot out of those discussions | | Internet here is just medium, it may be similar to talk | with your colleagues, attending debate, etc. | vlunkr wrote: | The point of the article is that experts don't always hang | out on the internet. There's a small cross-section of people | who are truly experts at something, and also blog or discuss | it in online forums. So yeah, you can talk to people from the | industry online, but how do you know if their advice is worth | anything? | [deleted] | bena wrote: | This largely tracks with my own opinions on certain things. | Mostly why moderation eventually fails and how social | interaction doesn't scale well. | | People doing shit don't have time for bullshit. | | If you have hours to dedicate defending your pet fan theory | online, you clearly aren't using those hours to do anything | meaningful. And I'm not talking side-hustle-gotta-make-that- | bread kind of stuff, I'm talking about just more fulfilling | pursuits in general. Learning an instrument, tinkering with | projects with no other goal but messing around, reading, etc. | | So while you think you may have "won" the argument about | whether or not Superman can beat Wolverine, the truth is the | other person left because you and the discussion in general | wasn't worth their time. And they don't need your validation. | They find fulfillment in the stuff they do outside of the | internet. | clairity wrote: | > "...the truth is the other person left because you and the | discussion in general wasn't worth their time. And they don't | need your validation. They find fulfillment in the stuff they | do outside of the internet." | | yup. i almost never go back and forth more than a couple | times with anyone here, because it's most common that the | other person is bullshitting, and i don't really need or want | that. if i argue a point, i want the other person to bring | something new to the table that i didn't know before, not | rehash tired old platitudes. | | relatedly, experts don't need to claim for themselves the | term "expert", and folks who start conversations with their | credentials have already "lost" the discussion, so to speak. | if your arguments can't stand on their own merits, proffering | a credential won't help. | bombcar wrote: | It's part of the reason the self-help and diet book section is | so large; people _love_ the idea that they can get what they | want with one weird trick; but the reality is it 's not very | complicated, it's just _hard_. | dgb23 wrote: | I think in many cases it might be hard but in an unfair way. | I think some people are just wired differently. It is easy | for them to stay focused and disciplined for longer, so they | never worry about it or try to seek help and just do the | work. People who do seek help often have some weaknesses that | they cannot seem to overcome by themselves. They are | vulnerable and they can be exploited by snake-oil salesmen. | Some get stuck that way in a perpetuating, self indulging | loop. | | However there are people who have gotten help and made real | progress. Think of some of the hardest things one can do: | dealing with addiction, overcoming crippling fear, radically | changing bad habits etc. | | There's people who were weak and gotten strong. Some of them | read self help books, some found social support. That's were | the focus should be, not on the people who always walked the | happy path and just "worked hard". Overcoming hopeless | situations, stigma, bias, ego. That's actually hard. | nradov wrote: | I'm skeptical about most people being wired differently. | Almost anyone can greatly increase their ability to stay | focused and disciplined. Those are learned skills and | mainly a matter of building good habits. But sometimes | people need to fail hard first due to lack of focus and | discipline in order to gain the motivation necessary to | improve. | | https://davidgoggins.com/book/ | bombcar wrote: | There _are_ people who are "wired differently" but as | with many things, there's majority who _insist_ they are | and it 's the source of their failings don't actually | have a major issue. | | It's a similar thing with dieting, the number of people | who have gone to the trouble of actually counting every | calorie they eat, restricting themselves to a certain | amount to lose weight, and not lost weight is pretty | small. But the number who tell themselves that they've | done it is much higher. | kayodelycaon wrote: | I sincerely hope "almost anyone" doesn't include the vast | number of people with a mental disability that severely | affects executive function. | | About 2.8% of the US population has a diagnosis of | bipolar disorder. (In a wider study including other | countries, the average is 2.4%) I have no reason to doubt | this because I have far too many people I knew before my | diagnosis who have since told me they have an extended | family member who are bipolar. And not the "oh they have | a diagnosis" kind, but people who destroy their own lives | and those of the people around them. I was shocked how | common it is. | | And this is just bipolar. There are many other mental and | physical problems that affect the ability to have | discipline if they just worked on it. | | Edit: I should state I definitely believe focus and | attention is a skill, but you can't effectively use a | skill when your tools are broken. Good luck racing a car | that's disassembled in the garage. | folkhack wrote: | I was a smoker for many years... everyone in the family | smoked - father, mother, and brother. I was a dumb kid in | an industrial town in Iowa - constant opportunity and | social pull to consume nicotine. | | After awhile I didn't want to be a smoker anymore and found | a self help book - "Allen Carr's Easy Way To Stop Smoking." | Friends of mine suggested it, and I found a PDF and read it | during a dead afternoon at work. | | Instead of focusing on the "hard" trope of quitting smoking | it presented it as easy - hence the title. It framed the | habit for exactly what it was, a drug addiction, but it | never talked harshly to you about how you became a nicotine | addict or the quitting process. It focused on telling you | _exactly_ what to expect if you decide to quit, and then | gave you a positive framework to help overcome the effects | of quitting. The overall message was always "think of how | much you're going to gain by quitting... health, money, | etc." | | It worked, I am no longer a nicotine addict. I don't think | I would have had the capability to quit without some mental | reframing which that book 100% helped me accomplish. | | > That's were the focus should be, not on the people who | always walked the happy path and just "worked hard". | Overcoming hopeless situations, stigma, bias, ego. That's | actually hard. | | Agree. | | There's always the "work hard" narrative and I find it's | often coupled with a discrediting attitude like OP's | comment. The effect of that attitude demotivates more than | it helps. As cheesy as it was I found the tools to fix my | nicotine addiction in a self-help book ha | bombcar wrote: | That was the point I was getting at - the book presented | you information in a way that helped, _but you still did | the hard work_ of actually implementing it. | | Almost all diets _work_ if you stick to them, and almost | nobody does. People want behavioral changes to be _easy_ | but they 're not - they require hard work. | | Perhaps more diet books would be successful if they | treated it as a food addiction instead of a "eat healthy | to look sexy". | FredPret wrote: | Thank the gods for Allen Carr. He helped me too. | insightcheck wrote: | >"There's people who were weak and gotten strong. Some of | them read self help books, some found social support. | That's were the focus should be, not on the people who | always walked the happy path and just "worked hard". | Overcoming hopeless situations, stigma, bias, ego. That's | actually hard." | | Absolutely. I've also personally benefitted from some self- | help books, though I've read many other self-help books | that seemed to be useful at the time, but were ultimately | forgettable and likely a distraction from issues I would | have been better off directly taking of. | | A good heuristic I've found is to prefer self-help books | written by academics over influencers (anyone with a | marketing background or associated with the word "guru"). | Good books included those written by BJ Fogg (professor at | Stanford) on habits, David Burns on useful versus self- | defeating beliefs (psychiatrist and professor also | affiliated with Stanford), and to a less extent Cal Newport | (computer science professor at Georgetown). | | As a side note, Cal Newport's advice was generally good, | but -- though I may be misremembering -- his advice | appeared to mostly be useful for people who already have a | very clear goal and strong motivation about what to do, and | didn't really struggle with self-defeating beliefs, close | relationships that were unhealthy in life, or people who | had fallen behind in mathematics skill development. | closeparen wrote: | Several times in my life I have seen what I thought were | crises of willpower turn on silly contingent circumstances. | | * Huge procrastination problem in college melted away as soon | as I started working 9-5 in an office. | | * Couldn't run 5 minutes, until I incidentally started | wearing a smart-watch, tried running again, and noticed the | heart rate monitor telling me to slow down. | | * Doom-scrolling trances easily broken by shutting down the | computer or putting the phone out of arm's reach. | | I don't think any particular advice in the self-help genre is | likely to be _true_ , but these "one weird trick" style | solutions do keep on working for me. | mmcgaha wrote: | Sometimes there really is a "one weird trick" that can help | people. I used to get stuck on problems and it would cripple | my productivity. A programmer with two decades more | experience than me noticed what I was doing and gave me the | best advice of my career. | | If you are interested in the solution, you can signup for my | . . . | | Seriously though the answer was to just do something else. | Don't sit around thinking about the problem; just do | something else and the problem will be easier to solve the | next time you try to solve it. | bombcar wrote: | That's the problem - the self help books often have _good | actionable advice_ just like the diet books do; but it can | be summed up in a few paragraphs. Most of the book is often | trying to convince someone it 's worth doing, or providing | ways to get around procrastination, etc that might prevent | it. | | But as you've shown, often a good mentor can do just as | well, or better. | criddell wrote: | The _wait until tomorrow_ advice works well when learning a | musical instrument too (at least in the beginning). I still | really can 't play my guitar, but when I'm trying to learn | something new, I work on the hard part until I stop making | progress then take a break. Often, the next day I can get a | little further. | bluGill wrote: | Even if there is more than one trick, all you can really | apply at once is one. So best to look for a trick that | seems like it should work and make it a habit. If that | still isn't enough, then look for another. Sometimes you | need to break a bad habit that results from this, but often | it is many good habits combined that you need. | bluedino wrote: | >> Sometimes there really is a "one weird trick" that can | help people. I used to get stuck on problems and it would | cripple my productivity. A programmer with two decades more | experience than me noticed what I was doing and gave me the | best advice of my career. | | If you could make that part about 5 minutes longer you'll | have a future in YouTube commercials | folkhack wrote: | > Less in one's control, their parents were financially | successful or were in competitive positions (e.g. were | professors or physicians), so they may have learned these | strategies from them, versus inventing them independently. | | As I grow older, I see a huge divide between those who have/had | parental support vs those who don't/didn't. It doesn't even | take financially or professionally successful parents. Many of | my peers had middle-class parents working normal jobs who just | loved unconditionally + put effort forward... the difference | between them and those who had less than ideal upbringings is | typically vast. | | Having loving parents who teach, model, and promote healthy | discipline habits is paramount for a kid's success. | Unfortunately _many_ children don 't win that lottery. | dfxm12 wrote: | I think part of this that is important enough to be | individually specified is that knowing you have parents who | will keep a bed for you and put food on the table for you in | case you take a (business, career, whatever) risk and it | doesn't pay off as well as you had hoped is a huge advantage. | | Not having to worry about that stuff, whether it's | immediately after graduating from high school or college or | when thinking about taking all your money and investing it in | yourself/your new business venture is liberating. | | Of course, this require two things of the parents, to put | forth the effort like you say, and also to have the means to | support a dependent. | folkhack wrote: | You're afforded way less risk when you don't have a safety | net. There's also the emotional part of still being | accepted even though you stumble... without parents you're | missing a literal cornerstone of support | plonk wrote: | > Many of my peers had middle-class parents working normal | jobs who just loved unconditionally + put effort forward... | the difference between them and those who had less than ideal | upbringings is typically vast. | | Do you mean their career success, or their personalities in | general? | folkhack wrote: | Both. | | Positive upbringings helped those folks navigate everything | in life better from simple chores like laundry, to | relationships, to school, to careers... etc. | | People are more healthy when they're in an environment that | promotes emotional/educational growth vs. when they're | forced into a survival mentality. Those who had the | opportunity to grow in safety have an easier time socially | vs. those who had to navigate turbulent childhoods. | | Much of it is just trust | new_stranger wrote: | Not OP, and just opinion, but I've seen markedly different | career and personality/friend/family success. They seem | like talented happy people able to take on a wide variety | of challenges and do well. | | The friends with troubled upbringing often do find success | in one area of life, but they seem unstable overall and | often crash or stall in multiple other areas. | pvarangot wrote: | I tell myself it's the difference between starting adulthood | at 14 or whenever your family fails you, and starting it at | 24 or 26 after college. The extra years of "streetwise" | usually come at an expense of early onset of burnout, for | various reasons. Leaving your shell with the energy to take | over the world at 26 usually results in more productive | endeavors than when you are a teenager. | annyeonghada wrote: | >The extra years of "streetwise" usually come at an expense | of early onset of burnout | | I almost cried reading this sentence. I've never realized | how my precocious adulting wasn't healthy: every adult | compliments you about how "mature" and "responsible" you | are. You're actually just anxious because you paternal | responsibility _on yourself_ : I had to basically raise | myself. The cost of this "independence" has been that, at | 27 I feel like a 50 years old with multiple regrets: as a | simple, non threatening example, I watched an anime episode | or played a video game for the first time as a 25 years | old. I've never learned how to relax, or how to have faith | in the future for that matter. And it hasn't been positive: | life is becoming more and more heavy on my shoulders. | folkhack wrote: | Agree. | | > The extra years of "streetwise" | | Let's acknowledge exactly what "streetwise" is... it's the | ability to operate in unsafe and not ideal environments in | a way that maximizes personal safety. | | It's a privilege to not have to be "streetwise" in regards | to your parents/upbringing. So many kids are just out there | trying not to get their asses beat only to get steamrolled | by a crippled education system that has no resources to | help them. | | The setback that comes along with "streetwise" is immense | dvtrn wrote: | "setback" | | Interesting. I was nodding in somewhat agreement until | this, because as a city kid I don't see it as a set back, | just another tool in the utility belt of life. | | That said, if _all_ one has are 'street-smarts' (just | like if _all_ one has is 'book-learning') well, it may | just mean the pivot point is they're just gonna have a | different calculus for getting by, than someone on the | opposite end. | folkhack wrote: | I'm contextually referring to those kids who have to | learn "street-smarts" in the home as a survival | mechanism. The same "street-smarts" you're valuing should | never be something that is required of a child _in their | home, against their parents_. | | When it is a constant in your life to stay "street-smart" | it is a setback because it drowns out other intelligence | - this happens with abusive parents. | | Although related, I am not referring to the traditional | city kid's need for some "street smarts" - I'm referring | to unsafe environments at home/with parenting which I | specifically stated in parent comment: | | > Let's acknowledge exactly what "streetwise" is... it's | the ability to operate in unsafe and not ideal | environments in a way that maximizes personal safety. | | > "streetwise" in regards to your parents/upbringing | | --- | | My overall point is if one has to get "street-smart" | because of what is happening at home... that's heinous | because children should be safe, and I 100% see it as a | setback inflicted on the child. | random-human wrote: | >> As I grow older, I see a huge divide between those who | have/had parental support vs those who don't/didn't. | | This really gets lost in the traditional nuclear family | argument. From personal experience, having both biological | parents in the same house doesn't mean a healthy family | environment, and no amount of moralizing is going to wish it | into being. | | Also overlooked is the impact one can have through simple | acts of support and empowerment. | | Had a High School teacher that let me into a photojournalism | class that was already full (the school admins denied my | schedule transfer after we had moved to the 'correct' side of | the street (literally) and into an upper middle class school | district). This teacher simply allowed me to be socially- | weird-awkward-me and set a basic structure to thrive in | (eventually winning state and national awards with the school | newspaper). By giving me (and others) a chance to show we | belonged and could compete helped build my self-esteem after | it had been consistently torn down at home. | | Didn't know it then, and doubt that teacher has any idea, but | it changed the course of my life. I think I'm more a | practical realist or even a cynic about life and society than | I am optimistic - still, that experience reminds me to try | and build others up and pay that empowerment forward | mathattack wrote: | Yes. Generally people giving advice publicly are in the advice | business, not the business on which they are advising. I worked | with a Salesperson who got fired for non-performance, who then | reinvented themselves as a Sales guru by publicly giving tons | of advice. | | People who are experts in their business (as opposed to being | advice folks) tend to give it quietly 1 on 1 to people they | trust. It's a Close Friend game rather than an Acquaintance | game. | hbn wrote: | "Those who can, do; those who can't, teach." | photik wrote: | In my experience this is likely one half of a principle in | which there are at least as many examples of people who can | do things really well, but have no idea how to | pedagogically transmit the building blocks of their domain | understanding to others in a tractionable way. | | Maybe a more wholistic take on this is something like: | | 'Those that can't do, teach, and those that can't teach | would really be doing everyone a huge favor if they would | just go do somewhere.' | | If this is a more complete take, it suggests to me that the | master/apprentice paradigm existed for so long for a | reason; masters have spent their lives specializing | narrowly, not necessarily transmitting their understanding, | thus the deconstruction of their expertise is only | accessible via osmosis over time, because essentially they | can't teach. | zhengyi13 wrote: | Please don't perpetuate the misuse of this phrase, which is | so often used to denigrate those with expertise and desire | trying so hard to pass them on. | | Consider the possibility, say, in a guild context: those | who can, do. They work for the guild, and do whatever the | guild does. Those who can't, from age, infirmity, injury: | they teach, passing on knowledge and wisdom. | Uehreka wrote: | As a former teacher who is currently by all accounts a | fairly capable software developer, this saying drives me up | a wall. | | I took 2 years out of my life to work for almost nothing so | I could share my love of math and programming with the next | generation. That I eventually gave in and moved into | software engineering to make money says far more about my | lack of altruism than my competence then or now. | | But forget me, I taught in a cushy city post, I know some | people in the peace corps (I taught abroad) who are still | in the game, teaching math and English out in the sticks, | sometimes having to build or maintain their own school | buildings and learning the local language with no | assistance. The idea that the defining trait of teachers is | a lack of competence is laughable. | fleddr wrote: | Kind of like a dating "expert". The only way to become such | expert is to date a lot, which means you're not very good at | dating in the first place. That is, if we assume that the | point of dating is to efficiently find somebody for a long | term relationship. | Xeronate wrote: | That's a bad assumption to make. Plenty of people just want | to have fun dating. | nathias wrote: | reddit is a system where a guy with 100 IQ decides what is best | for all, it isn't that suprising that it doesn't work well for | anything more complex or nouanced | LordDragonfang wrote: | I have to wonder whether the average IQ on reddit is higher | or lower than the general population average, because based | on my experience there, I could see arguments for either | direction. | nathias wrote: | I'm sure its average, but the self-reported IQ might be way | higher ... | monkeybutton wrote: | With 50M DAU its going to be the population average, no? | dan-robertson wrote: | There's surely still some selection effects, eg younger | (average iq scores have gone up over time), college- | educated, more literate (ok this one is questionable for | Reddit), and so on. | LeifCarrotson wrote: | Where 100 guys with 100 IQ decide what is best for all, which | may or may not be better than one guy with 120. | nathias wrote: | For contexts that can be exploited to benefit the one guy | at the expense of other for sure. For contexts where there | is no downside it depends, its good for broad research, bad | for in depth content. The problem is there are hardly any | places for the latter type of content anymore, because | reddit took over with its subreddits that seem good fit for | nieches and the price wasn't apparent in advance ... | walkhour wrote: | This is indeed the relevant question. There are similar | scenarios where the answer is the 100 guys, like some | markets, that when organized centrally by "smart" people, | they stop working. | insightcheck wrote: | It's clear in hindsight, but a high school student with | little life experience who sees a long text post with | hundreds of upvotes and a couple awards can be an easy mark. | | It's especially difficult because there is actually good | advice mixed with the bad and unsubstantiated. I've taken | good advice from certain comments (e.g. that led to the | discovery of open courseware and actually quality resources | on physical exercise programs). | | But part of maturity is learning to be skeptical of advice | independent of upvotes, so one can get the good advice while | avoiding getting mislead. To answer quick questions, I try to | search for articles from reputable newspapers first (to see | if a verified expert interviewed by a journalist is quoted at | length) and possibly HN's archives via Googling with | site:news.ycombinator.com. For more complex questions and | topics, I try to find book recommendations from Reddit that | were written by academics or low-profile experts over | influencers, and then reading about the topic at length (e.g. | it's usually far better to learn about big social problems if | curious through well-sourced books, versus any hot takes | online, regardless of the popularity of these hot takes). | clairity wrote: | > "To answer quick questions, I try to search for articles | from reputable newspapers first (to see if a verified | expert interviewed by a journalist is quoted at length)..." | | you just failed your own test. "reputable" and "expert" | indicate you're offloading evaluation to others rather than | doing the hard work yourself of discerning the validity or | plausibility of those claims. | insightcheck wrote: | Sure, but there's not enough time to be an expert at | everything. Let's say I want to better understand how | worried I should be about the US economy. | | I could study economics textbooks, take online courses, | and get a part-time degree in economics over hundreds of | hours, read economics papers from journals and the NBER | (and equivalent institutions), develop a reputation and a | network of experts, and then develop my own analysis and | debate with these experts. | | Alternatively, I could accept that I'm a non-expert for | this particular domain, read some in-depth analyses in | the Financial Times (a better source than Reddit), | realize I should be cautious and save more, and move on | with my life. | | If the subject is more important, e.g. I want to work on | a months-long project that requires an understanding of a | specific economic concept, it would be useful to search | for reputable books related to that topic and then study | them. | clairity wrote: | the point is that those aren't "experts", but rather, | reporters with differing motivations. | | don't look for experts, look for arguments you can verify | through your own experience and validate through your own | thought experiments. don't reach for immediate judgment, | but rather, leave questions open until the evidence is | conclusive. the term "expert" is rhetorical at best, and | manipulative in most cases. relying on experts is a | surefire way to be misled. | | as a side note, there's an entire branch of marketing | dedicated to using social proof manipulatively. | concinds wrote: | Agreed. In general: | | 1) Successful people tend to be found in selective | environments. A website that lets anyone in will by | definition be filled with junk, bored people, teens, and | time-wasters. Since 'successful people' know this, it's a | self-fulfilling prophecy (they know their peers aren't | there). | | 2) Most professional peer connections are still offline. Want | to know what your peers think about a recent paper? If you're | established in your field you'll know them on a first-name | basis and will just call them. | | Twitter is the only exeption to both these rules, | miraculously, though only to a degree. | JumpCrisscross wrote: | > _these people didn 't spend time online reading blogs and | Reddit, or blogging/self-promoting themselves_ | | Or they're online, they're just not talking about what they're | experts in. Because they don't want to spend their free time | teaching a 101 class. | pvarangot wrote: | The main reason why I don't usually talk seriously about what | I'm an expert in on Reddit is that I sometimes can't deal | with the cringe from the replies, usually it's ok but it's | been really bad a couple times and that just pushed me off. | Now when I am commenting on something I consider myself an | expert of it's usually jokes and sarcasm. | | Reddit is seriously full of teenagers LARPing as adults, or | adults stoned to the point where they basically are behaving | like teenagers... not that I have anything against that. When | you start seeing it like that it's much easy to get what you | want from it, like when I realized The Economist is mostly | idealist very smart mid 20s college graduates on their first | serious job. | Claude_Shannon wrote: | In their defence, often there's no way of telling who is | expert and who is faking. | | Though it applies to almost everywhere online. | JumpCrisscross wrote: | Places like HN and Reddit are fun for things one has an | understanding of but not expertise in. You can hash out | arguments, get corrected when wrong and genuinely learn | from the experience. For matters I have expertise in, I | know the other experts. They're more rewarding conversation | on those topics. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-06-16 23:00 UTC)