Hacker News Reader

Comment by pvarangot | Hacker News Reader

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.

View on HN

>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.

There's still time, friend. If you have the means, see a therapist. You can undo plenty of damage before it undoes you, and keep the good from your forced growth.

Wishing you the best.

Hey cool, are you me?

26 years old with a father with Asperger's (with the anger issues and emotional non-understanding that comes with it), an over-bearing mother who sheltered me from pretty much everything crippling my social and personal skills growing up preventing me from getting help when I needed it - now I'm playing perpetual catch-up with both my personal life (social/romantic relationships), and the untreated mental problems I've been suffering from - I'm finally realizing the problems I've been beating myself up about through my whole life are not really my fault and I should have gotten help with my issues much much earlier.

I can only wonder what life would have been like if I would have stood up for myself much earlier and gotten the help I need - despite the repeated claims from both parents that I'd ruin the family and rip everybody apart if I did try to get help.

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

“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.

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.

Exactly. The complex part about it is that our survival strategies often express themselves as some of our greatest strengths too. For example, to feel safe in my home as a kid I learned to actively, constantly monitor the emotional state of the people around me. That strategy as a child makes me really good at therapy or therapy adjacent roles, because tracking someone’s emotional state is a skill I’ve been practicing for decades.

The downside is I don’t know how to turn that off. Or to put it in other terms, I don’t have the capacity to choose whether I track other people’s emotional state or not. Tracking people’s emotional state all the time is exhausting, and distracting. When I’m doing that I’m not in touch with what I want or need in that moment. Growing up for me (with the help of a good therapist) currently involves learning to put that down. And it’s terrifying.

Basically every survival strategy also gives us superpowers. But it’s ok - we get to keep those superpowers even after we’ve healed those wounds.

This is where terms like "cycles of poverty/abuse", "equality of outcome", "welfare", and the like come into play, erroneously or not. Although it may vex a not-insignificant number of people: if one accepts that the state of the parent's life largely determines the state of the life of even the most talented or determined youth, it must also be accepted that any useful intervention is going to assist the parents in concert with the child. In fact, if we accept that there is a sort of psychosocial inheritance from even our dead forebears, we must also see to the rectification of their troubles, as much as we may be able to.

I think we all know what we're talking about when we use terms like "street smarts" and "streetwise" instead of "common sense" or "vigilance" or "poise". So, then, I'm hoping that there's clarity with regards to the kinds of policies the above statements, if accepted, should lead us to support. I'm trying not to state them directly because their utterance tends to lead to a kneejerk reaction; let's see if some rhetorical remove is helpful in quelling passions.

I can definitely see it being true in some cases, but in software I strongly disagree. I'm speaking as someone who started programming for clients at 15 and am poised to retire at 33. Everyone starts slowing down after 25. The extra years learning by experience gave me a leg up that was completely unmatched by others. It opened a ton of doors that shouldn't exist for a lower income kid with no opportunity for college.

Chess is a more extreme example. Grandmasters regularly play their best games in their late 20s for a reason. Super grandmasters all started playing around the same age.

I see what you mean, but let's not confuse 'productive' with 'lucrative'.

Even a lot of people with seemingly 'good jobs', I would argue, are not necessarily providing a ton of material value.

For example, I'm coming to the point where I believe the vast majority of 'Data Science' is 'Business Academia' and a giant pile of over-optimization and busy work.

The surpluses are concentrated in groups that have power, but those dollars are not necessarily used to maintain or support those systems directly, rather, they become applied R&D shops.

Data Science is a poor term (unfortunately, the right one, statistics or statistical modeling, was deemed to be "unsexy"), but the expertise is certainly very relevant in today's data-driven businesses. Think predictions, forecasting, clustering, A/B experiments, recommender systems. Yes, some parts of what's commonly called Data Science can also be called Machine Learning, then maybe Deep Learning can be called AI, and in the end it seems that whatever choice we make with definitions, it is largely a mess anyway. And, on the top of that, the definitions are situational.

There is certainly a lot of busy work in DS like there is a lot of busy work in any non-critical pockets of operations, software engineering included.

I don't know what "over-optimization" means. If it means that, for instance, that the accuracy provided by the models is greater than the business needs, sometimes that's true and I agree. But are other parts of the business at fault for not being, broadly speaking, responsive enough or it is an "over-optimization" problem?

'Over optimization' means that a lot recommendation systems, A/B tests, forecasts in business are nearly irrelevant, or rubbish i.e. a lot of cost for very marginal value add. Such a small margin that it's within variance of what might even be considered a positive outcome.

There are few business that have the kind scale in which a lot of that will be hugely useful (at high degrees of sophistication), let alone, afford the teams of researchers. Most of the optimizations are low hanging fruit which can be achieved via some kind of basic algorithm.

I believe you could nuke Snowflake and all their giant lakes of historical data and the world would not skip a beat.

This is take I don't agree with on a real problem, which is the usefulness of data science in modern business, and for which processes in the business.

I try to explain.

Recommender systems add tremendous value, millions when not billions in revenue, to any retail business, streaming business. Is it by chance that all the online retailers had to set up a recommender system?

A/B tests are not needed? If A/B testing and actions taken looking the results would not be useful, don't you think that business would know it?

Forecasts in business are nearly irrelevant, or rubbish, you say. Like in the sense that in complex systems is irrelevant to know what's going to happen next, that is better just to play it along at best? Having worked in companies in media, retail, healthcare, and telco for which forecasting is crucial for planning the use of resources, negotiation of contracts etc., this comment is off-base.

Going from abstract to practical, I have worked recently with one telco giant on one of the services they offer. Their forecast of subscribers done by drawing a straight line that follows the latest data is making them leave tens of millions on the table each year. I proposed to make some A/B testing on their "coupon" strategy and they were not interested, preferring to send a "coupon" to everybody and their grandfather because they did not want to study for a week how to set up an experiment. It is mostly laziness. Clearly to know if A/B testing is working or not (say increase engagement, revenue etc.), one has to try it. But they don't, because they are mentally lazy.

One thing I agree with is that most legacy business are not ready to adopt a data-driven modern way of doing business, due to stiff processes, old-timers that would like to go on with their business like they were doing 30 years ago, and general fear of changing.

The fact that the legacy businesses are still "working" may give the impression that all these data-driven "baloney" is subtracting rather than adding to the business. Why do we need forecasts, they say, I cannot believe that these people want to use data, isn't our expertise enough? Don't you see we are the still among the 5 top companies that do what we do?

But their position in the market is not due to sound business practices, but due to their dominant position in the market. But then the dominant position goes away and the old-timers finally recognize that A/B testing, forecasting etc. combined with domain-knowledge are a plus for the business.

Maybe you don't need 1,000 DS, maybe you need 20 (practitioners, not "researchers"), that depends on the business. Clearly the mom and pop business does not need any data science.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com