[HN Gopher] A little bit of slope makes up for a lot of y-interc...
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A little bit of slope makes up for a lot of y-intercept (2012)
Author : mooreds
Score : 178 points
Date : 2023-02-12 20:17 UTC (2 hours ago)
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(TXT) w3m dump (gist.github.com)
| tpoacher wrote:
| Mistake #1 is assuming a linear function in the first place.
|
| If I'd known this when I was younger I probably wouldn't have
| spent so much time learning all those languages, none of which I
| now remember.
| CPLX wrote:
| Indeed. I think a much more accurate model looks a lot like the
| returns on an investment.
|
| Returns are always accumulating to what you already have. If
| you know a lot you have context to recognize the next thing
| that comes along better. You're in a place that is more wired
| for learning surrounded by smarter people.
|
| The guy says as much himself when he says "you're at Stanford"
| for god sakes. People who didn't have enough of the good thing
| in high school aren't starting at a lower Y-Axis point they're
| simply not on the graph at all.
|
| Most of life's "graphs" don't look like linear lines they look
| like compound interest.
| fsckboy wrote:
| I'm sure he's well aware of polynomials and exponentials, but
| that's not really his point.
| paulpauper wrote:
| _Another example is hiring. Before I came back to academia a
| couple of years ago I was out doing startups. What I noticed is
| that when people hire they are almost always hire based on
| experience. They 're looking for somebody's resume trying to find
| the person who has already done the job they want them to do
| three times over. That's basically hiring based on Y-intercept._
|
| _Personally I don 't think that's a very good way to hire. The
| people who are doing the same thing over and over again often get
| burnt out and typically the reason they're doing the same thing
| over and over again is they've maxed out. They can't do anything
| more than that. And, in fact, typically what happens when you
| level off is you level off slightly above your level of
| competence. So in fact you're not actually doing the current job
| all that well._
|
| I dunno if his experience is true anymore. Maybe it was 20 years
| ago. There does seem to be a shift in the other way. This can
| explain why many tech or finance companies seek younger
| applicants who have credentials that confer with steep slope over
| more experience. Things like learning speed, ability to
| understand abstractions, making inferences, etc. This is why so
| many top companies use phone interviews as a sort of weeding-out
| process for applicants who cannot think fast on their feet
| despite having experience or credentials.
| bumby wrote:
| It may depend on the type of position being hired for. There's
| a concept of "fluid" vs. "crystalline" intelligence, where
| people tend to transition from fluid to crystalline as they
| age. Meaning, young people tend to learn faster while older
| people tend to understand the greater context. This may mean
| younger people make better individual contributors but older
| people tend to be better at strategizing.
| webmaven wrote:
| _> This is why so many top companies use phone interviews as a
| sort of weeding-out process for applicants who cannot think
| fast on their feet despite having experience or credentials._
|
| OTOH, conflating " thinking fast on their feet" with "learns
| fast" (rather than with "is bullshit artist") its own logical
| fallacy.
| mdeck_ wrote:
| > So in general I say that people emphasize too much how much
| they know and not how fast they're learning.
|
| > That's good news for all of you people because you're in
| Stanford and that means you learn really, really fast. This is a
| great advantage for you. Now let me give you some examples. The
| first example is: you shouldn't be afraid to try new things even
| if you're completely clueless about the area you're going into.
| No need to be afraid about that. As long as you learn fast you'll
| catch up and you'll be fine.
|
| Hmm... I think this kind of self-confidence was how the U.S. got
| 60,000 Americans killed in the Vietnam War.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Best_and_the_Brightest
| rippercushions wrote:
| I don't think "curiosity to try new things" was anywhere near
| the top of the list of reasons why US leadership decided to go
| to war in Vietnam. Even "Join the Army, travel the world, meet
| interesting people and kill them" was supposed to be an anti-
| war slogan.
| bumby wrote:
| I read the post as more about the pitfalls of overconfidence
| than curiosity. Meaning a self-proclaimed fast-learner can't
| necessarily make up for lack of experience *, exemplified
| with the "whiz kids" that defined war strategy in Vietnam.
|
| * at least when short-term consequences tend to be dire
| seizethecheese wrote:
| Previous slope is correlated both with y axis and future slope.
| oblio wrote:
| Y intercept = Current Y position?
| FPGAhacker wrote:
| A number have people have replied and I think they are all
| correct, but I want to be explicit.
|
| Given a function y = mx+b. Graphically, the function is a line
| on the xy plane, and if you trace your finger along the line
| toward the y axis, where your finger "intercepts" the y axis is
| the value of the y intercept.
|
| That's the idea of the name.
|
| And everyone else is also correct, Its value is f(0) where y =
| f(x) = mx + b.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| Y intercept is the value of a function f(x) at x = 0. In the
| analogy, it's the starting position. Someone starting at a
| higher baseline knowledge is not necessarily destined to stay
| ahead of a fast learner who happens to start at a lower
| baseline of knowledge.
| adammarples wrote:
| Y intercept is where the line crossed the y axis at time 0. So
| it's the initial state.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Y value at x=0. Also sometimes known as "initial conditions"
| water-your-self wrote:
| Y = mx + b
| vmatsiiako wrote:
| This is also very true for startups! 2-people teams can iterate
| and learn so quickly that at some point they are able to
| outcompete (or come very close to) existing market leaders (e.g.,
| Figma/Adobe, Linear/Asana, Pulley/Carta). So the y-intercept (or
| the starting point) turns out to not matter much if the slope
| (growth and learning) is high!
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| When hiring, you can more accurately estimate y than you can
| dy/dx, unless you have a trial period.
| moffkalast wrote:
| > That's good news for all of you people because you're in
| Stanford and that means you learn really, really fast.
|
| > Personally I don't think that's a very good way to hire. The
| people who are doing the same thing over and over again often get
| burnt out and typically the reason they're doing the same thing
| over and over again is they've maxed out.
|
| Anyone else who feels like they haven't learned a thing in their
| field of work since they left university?
|
| Once you get hired for and do what you're good at while there's
| nobody else at the company you can learn from it just feels like
| gradual regressing.
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| Complete opposite. University was theory without application
| and I generally hated learning CS theory. Now that I'm actually
| building things, I find the theory more interesting because I
| can apply it.
|
| Aside from theory, I've also learned infinitely more about
| software development.
|
| If there's no one else at your company you can learn from and
| you want to have that it sounds like you should check out some
| other companies.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| > _Anyone else who feels like they haven 't learned a thing in
| their field of work since they left university?_
|
| Professional self-training is important in this field. I've
| started taking many courses online that are high quality in
| order to upgrade my skills. Of particular note:
|
| - Epic React by Kent C Dodds: Very useful for learning advanced
| React patterns such as composite components, HOCs vs hooks,
| inversion of control etc.
|
| - CSS for JS Devs by Josh W Comeau: Most people hate CSS
| because they don't actually learn it properly, they just pick
| it up as they go along, then wonder why it's hard. It's like
| learning to build a house by stacking wood instead of learning
| the parts of a house, planning the house architecture and
| construction, putting down a foundation, etc.
|
| - ThreeJS Journey by Bruno Simon: This is more for fun, but I
| always wanted to know how people do those wild 3D websites
| (which are more like interactive experiences than informational
| sites), and this teaches you pretty well.
|
| - Flutter State Management by Vandad Nahavandipoor: Free on
| YouTube, this is a deep dive into all the various ways you can
| do state management in Flutter, which most people don't really
| know about. They just pick a paradigm and stick with it instead
| of assessing pros and cons. The best thing though is _this is
| not Flutter specific_ , it is more about overall software
| architecture than Flutter concepts.
|
| - Teach Yourself CS: This is a much longer "course" (more like
| a collection of books to read) but it makes you learn a lot of
| foundational concepts, even if you've taken them in a college
| CS program already, and if you haven't, it teaches you anyway.
| baxtr wrote:
| It's the exact opposite for me. I learned so much after
| graduating from university. And there isn't really much from my
| studies that I could use today.
| longcommonname wrote:
| Absolutely not. I have learned all sorts of things. But I have
| to seek them out.
| moffkalast wrote:
| Maybe that's the main difference. In the student days you're
| forced to learn enormous amounts of new skills in impossibly
| short time spans. Afterwards you kind of have to self
| motivate if you want to continue, and dive into research
| papers to get up to speed on the bleeding edge stuff since
| there's no real other study material available yet.
|
| I've found myself mainly focusing on learning things from
| adjacent or unrelated fields instead, since I guess it's
| easier to get a grasp of the pre-grad stuff. It sure isn't
| making me any better at my job though lol.
| hyperific wrote:
| Reminds me of "Car vs Motorcycle vs Jet"
| https://youtu.be/Y9YsxO30PXI
| s17n wrote:
| The problem with hiring programmers for learning speed is that
| even fast learners will take months to years to catch up to
| experienced people. If you're doubling the size of your company
| every year, even without attrition, you end up with most of your
| code written by people who aren't that good (yet).
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Code review is your friend in that situation.
| nostrademons wrote:
| I used to live by this philosophy when this article came out. But
| now I think it's a fairly imperfect model of the world that can
| lead you astray easily.
|
| The problem with it is that it's very easy to interpret that
| y-axis, "something good", as static. It's pretty hard to make
| sense of the model at all if you don't interpret as static,
| because your slope will bend all over the place, out of the
| plane, into multiple dimensions, etc. But once you've set your
| goal point, your "something good" axis, the natural temptation is
| to optimize your slope until you're steadily progressing against
| it. And that's dangerous, because you might forget that the
| "something good" axis was arbitrary to begin with.
|
| Instead, I've become much more of a fan of John Boyd's "OODA
| loop" [1] model. Here, you're continually reacting to your
| environment, which is also continually changing around you. And
| the person or organization that can react faster usually has an
| advantage, because they can set the terms of the engagement. We
| can call that adaptation "learning", but the key point is that
| it's learning an environment that is dynamic, not static.
| Sometimes the environment will change in a way that invalidates
| all of your accumulated learning, _and that 's okay_ (and you
| don't really get a choice about it anyway).
|
| This also drives home the point that choosing the environment
| you're adapting against is a pretty critical skill, and often
| dominates _how well you adapt to it_ (i.e. your learning rate). I
| 've seen some relatively mediocre people become billionaires
| because they picked the right industry and the right opportunity
| within it to join. Similarly, there are people who are brilliant
| problem solvers but end up in jail because the environment they
| are in rewards problem-solving that will get you sent there
| (think Omar from The Wire, or SBF from FTX).
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OODA_loop
| d23 wrote:
| I think you're basically making the same point he is. He even
| cites the environment change as an example (e.g. changing
| jobs).
| nostrademons wrote:
| I think the additional point I'm making is that a 2D-graph
| necessarily biases your brain into ignoring the environment
| change, and that makes this a poor model to think about the
| world. Indeed, the other comment reply posted as of now still
| references the graph metaphor, but with S-curves instead of
| straight lines (which isn't really the point I was making -
| I'm trying to argue that your lines need to be in infinite-
| dimension space, regardless of their equation). You certainly
| can have environment change as an additional mental model you
| draw on when necessary - but if the quality of a model is in
| its ability to draw useful conclusions about the world from
| it, then conclusions which need to be corrected by some other
| model should be viewed with some suspicion.
| Swizec wrote:
| I think you may have re-discovered the S-curve?
|
| The y-axis isn't forever. Once you plateau, it's time to change
| the definition. Then a new S-curve can begin.
|
| Over time you observe periods of quantifiable growth
| interspersed with discrete jumps.
|
| That said, I believe the core of y-intercept advice hides two
| key wisdoms: a) don't be discouraged when you're new, and b)
| don't rest on your laurels when you're experienced
|
| And perhaps c) if someone is both way better than you _and_
| improving faster, you'll never catch up. This is why I never
| pursued competitive boxing, for example. Don't have the talent.
| cratermoon wrote:
| Interesting that he doesn't mention anything about how starting
| high enough at the y-intercept means that you'll forever be above
| someone who started low enough, even if the slope of their
| learning exceeds yours.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| Except he does allude to it:
|
| > unless you think you're going to die before you get to the
| crossing point
|
| Though based on the comments in this discussion I think a lot
| of people missed that statement.
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _"A little bit of slope makes up for a lot of y-intercept"_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8055868 - July 2014 (62
| comments)
| twawaaay wrote:
| It is old question of getting something right now or delay your
| gratification and get more in the future.
|
| If I learned anything from playing strategy games like Starcraft
| it is two things:
|
| "Agility wins almost always over bunker mentality" Be nimble.
| Ability to pivot quickly has a value.
|
| "You only take now what you need to survive plus a safety margin
| and use everything else to macro." Macro = investing in improving
| your income/production ability). Greedy = low safety margin. You
| can lower your safety margins if you can get better at gathering
| information.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| The thing this fails on, the thing a lot of academically minded
| people fail on, is that knowing things is at best half the
| battle.
|
| There are very few areas of life (academia being the stand out)
| where knowing things is sufficient.
|
| To build something almost always requires organising other people
| which requires co-ordination with, alignment with, persuasion of
| other people.
|
| Two founders - one technical, one "politician" (sales, film
| producer, fixer)
|
| And there is no "fast learning" there. In fact I think it is the
| very opposite of the kind of focus that learning needs - you need
| to spend time with, talk with people.
| n_eutrino wrote:
| The effort of keeping learning new knowledge everyday is
| applausable. But the real world life is, your current knowledge
| base highly determines your horizon and how efficiently and
| broadly you learn new things.
| throwawaytemp29 wrote:
| Isn't the integral of the blue curve higher though? Like if I
| want to maximize total utility over the displayed time the blue
| would be higher.
|
| Also time has value, getting something earlier is generally
| better due to compound interest. Even some vague utility function
| like fun can display such a property of being better earlier, due
| to being able to remember the memory for longer.
| teo_zero wrote:
| The fallacy is to neglect how important the delta-x (the time it
| takes for the red curve to catch up) could be in some cases. An
| inexperienced-yet-eager-to-learn candidate could be an awful
| choice for your startup if your project has a hard deadline at
| the horizon!
| revskill wrote:
| Learning something new is easy. Doing something in a productive
| way is hard and could take a very very long time. And this is the
| difference between learning and working.
|
| So this talk to me is more about learning, than hiring. When
| conducting hiring, one must be prepared enough for productive
| work, not just learning.
|
| I love companies which offers internship programs for new
| workers. It's to me is the best way of hiring.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| I like this kind of wisdom because you read it, then you fill in
| the blanks. What is Y to you, etc.? Better than someone telling
| you to go to the gym every week etc. :-). In real life the curves
| are more complex.
|
| A tortoise and hare curve would be more interesting. The hare is
| doing a hackthon at the weekend, getting super tired and giving
| up. THe tortoise is working on your side project for 4 hours a
| week every week for years.
| carls wrote:
| I took a class with Professor Ousterhout. He would end every
| Friday's lecture with a "Thought for the Weekend", such as this
| one.
|
| It was very entertaining and charming to hear him discuss his
| personal and professional life, and lessons he's learned
| throughout them often occasionally have very little to do with
| computer science.
|
| I don't remember all of his "Thoughts for the Weekend", but I do
| remember one story he told about wishing he had apologized sooner
| to resolve some conflict he was in. That was a bit of wisdom that
| stuck with me from the class, beyond any of the computer science
| topics we covered.
| egillie wrote:
| Was it the scar tissue one?
| https://gist.github.com/gtallen1187/27a585fcf36d6e657db2
| jtbayly wrote:
| Does anybody know why I have to sign in to GitHub to read this?
| cratermoon wrote:
| It may be that github thinks you're coming from an IP address
| associated with a lot of botting or malicious activity, so it's
| throwing up an extra wall. Can you try hitting it through a VPN
| or via some other network?
| nishs wrote:
| don't know why. but it's publicly viewable from a private
| browser window for me.
| elchief wrote:
| Rate of learning depends on quality of teaching, and I found most
| textbooks, professors, and especially TAs to be laughably bad,
| despite going to a top Canadian university. Thank goodness for
| online ratings of books and courses to weed out the bad ones
| (worse now w more fake reviews, sadly)
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