mtrower

While I don’t know how I feel about the word “savant”, I do seem to match your idea of the few, and in that regard I have two things to say here…

* Interruptions affect me just as the article describes. I have my suspicions about those who claim to be unaffected.

* Talent may indeed play a role, but what you probably aren’t seeing behind the apparent talent is the self-driven obsession. Behind those 5 minutes is a mountain of self-obtained experience. As I understand it, even Mozart was no different…

Expanding on that slightly, when considering if I was special compared to the average individual: I self-taught myself from the age of 8, so yeah, probably something different about me that enabled that. On the other hand, I self-taught myself from the age of 8, spending nearly every free moment with computers. How messed up would it be if I didn’t end up with a massive lead over those just starting out?

Of course it was effortless in 5 minutes: I’d already put in more effort by that point than many would in a lifetime…

I guess the moral is, try to consider what it might be that you aren’t seeing.

I think the idea is he doesn’t get push notifications on email.

You’re right, but… do you write long reports, all day, every day?

That’s quite the claim regarding flow. Invaluable to you if so, but my question would be, how are you defining it? You mention having an eye on your kids, but flow should completely tune out everything other than the precise problem at hand.

> Collaboration happens when engineers want to share ideas, not because they're imprisoned in a glorified fish tank for eight hours a day.

I feel like this is an obvious truth that is somehow overlooked a lot, willfully or otherwise.

Once you’ve done that, you’ve already lost. Interruption encountered.

I feel in turn that this comment is the dismissive one, and in fact extremely so.

The issue is not that programmers need to focus, is that they need to focus on deep, complex work. At least a few of those other tasks you mention (don’t have much experience with sales copy, and in rather terrible with both sales and copy) do require focus but have smaller reasonable increments of progress.

Stop thinking about the workplace for a moment and think more broadly of tasks throughout the entire day. Some of those are more easily put down and returned to than others.

Some examples of tasks which require focus but interrupt well: formatting meeting notes into minutes, simple accounting (paying bills, reconciling a ledger). The main point with these are that the individual units of work are small, and don’t generally require a lot of mental preloading to begin/resume working on. So if I am interrupted it can be irritating but I don’t really lose much.

Programming generally involves a lot of mental state that needs to be preloaded, and the Subtask units are often not small. That’s all.

Regarding the insinuation that this “myth” is the result of coddling at the professional level: if this were true, then non-professionals would not discover this independently for themselves…

Maybe because you led in with “to be fair”? Perhaps “as an aside” may have been more appropriate, to indicate an intentional context switch?

Your point is valid as a tangent, but it doesn’t read as a tangent to me - it reads as attempting to address the point you are responding to.

Just my two cents here.

Of course there is, is literally their mark of trade in their space. That kind of needs to be defensible to combat fraud.

What’s not okay is how it’s being “defended” here. This is just abuse.

Them having a case which is potentially legally valid, does not preclude the case from being frivolous in nature.

So if trademarks aren’t helpful to businesses, not intended to be helpful to businesses, why file for one at all?

Yeah no, I’d assert that any similarities there, such that they exist, are due to them both drawing on the same prior art/culture. It’s kind of insane that Monster gets to just assimilate all of that under its wing for free.

I was very sad when Conkeror when to rest.

You might be interested in Nyxt, if cl doesn’t turn you off.

> Otherwise the entire populous will be flat earther simpletons.

At face value, this is obvious nonsense; if the entire populous was naught but simpletons, who would even introduce new concepts to them?

> challenged and evolved by critical thought

This is literally the opposite of what you are advocating for by "being told what to think". Or is it only the elite and privilege few that are allowed to think for themselves (presumably after having been groomed to produce very specific thoughts to begin with)?

Additionally, as noted by Max Planck:

> The German physicist Max Planck said that science advances one funeral at a time. Or more precisely: “A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”

Science basically evolves because the the people carrying the old school of thought literally die out, leaving the ideas that are more popular with the new generation. This could lead to genuine advancement, but the obvious flipside is that you could "advance" in an untrue direction. It's not just science that is like this, you see it for example in IT as well.

My entire point is that in teaching people what to think, you create this

> simpletons

..whereby in teaching them how to think, you promote this

> critical thought

They are more or less mutually exclusive.

> it is only bi-modal if there’s a single large dip in the middle of the histogram.

I don’t think this is correct, bi-modal just means there are two modes. But we don’t have to argue over a definition, I’ll just use more words. What I mean is very simple - if you go to college and get a better job due to your degree, you are undoubtably better off. If you go to college and do not obtain a better job with your degree, you are not better off (and are now worse off due to crushing debt). So there are broadly two types of people with degrees, and pay is radically different for the two groups.

When discussing these two groups of people, median is not a very useful concept - you are one group or the other, you are not going to fall in the middle. Sure, college might be a statistically beneficial choice, but it is a risky choice - if you lose, you lose big.

In case we are still not on the same page, I’ll give a very simple example - a person goes to college for an IT degree. The person is unable to land a job in IT despite their degree, and remains in unskilled labor. How is this person better off for their degree? And how are they supposed to come up with hundreds in monthly payments for the next few decades with their low paying job?

Or are you really contesting the notion that a person may not obtain a job/career with their degree?

The anger I’m familiar with surrounding bailouts has to do with the government stepping in to rescue banks that, in the eyes of the angered, were engaging in corrupt and risky/greedy practices. Whether the money came from taxpayers, or was truly magically free, this anger would remain.

Your definition of ballot is the one that is strange to me —- in attempting to avoid confusion, you would have created much confusion with me.

The world is large and varied I suppose.

No, not at all. You have to look at the context here, the post that I'm replying to. I'm a strong, staunch supporter of critical and independent thought. I'm sure some colleges probably teach that well, and I would heartily support, promote and defend such establishments, insofar as those practices were concerned. However, this is not what is being disputed.

> > A lot of what the general public gets isn't deep thought. It's being told what to think. A lot of the what to think is ideas based on assumptions and beliefs. Are people better off for learning them?

The issue is that azinman2 says this is fine (due to a claimed worse alternative). This is not critical thought at all. "Being told what to think", "based on assumptions and beliefs", is simply indoctrination. I cannot and will not support such.

> Yes, there's a big overlap between "learning" and "indoctrination".

Perhaps if you subscribe to the "chinese master" mentality. I never had much regard for this.

> For mysterious reasons we only care about not being indoctrination when it comes to adults or almost adults

Uh. I sure gave a damn for all of my memorable life --- literally since at least 4 years of age. I don't know about you.

> People wouldn't learn anything if they had to deeply understand and verify every part by themselves before moving on

This is true to some extent of everyone, but I always tried to think for myself as much as possible. Actually, it earned me a lot of scorn and ire, for not just following the herd...

> Great I guess if you're happy with most of society never moving too far past what's covered in the first stretch of middle school

If by middle school you mean social pressure to conform... well, I'd say we want the opposite of that.

If you mean that without indoctrination, people won't move past middle school in terms of knowledge... well, I would argue that most people don't seem to retain most of what they learned in middle school and high school to begin with... hell, that's basically the first half of college right there, just re-hashing those same topics...

> So if we’re going to talk about struggling, we need to be fair to the people who struggle to pay for food and housing, not just struggle to pay off their college debt.

You don't think this overlaps? If you're coming out of college with no job to show for it, what is your job? You probably didn't prep for something substantial, because college was your career plan, and it bombed.

> The average outcome for degrees is double the salary and double the lifetime earnings.

I'm not sure averages are a useful metric for bi-modal distributions --- either you got a career out of the degree, with an increased salary, or you didn't. If you didn't, you're struggling right along with the people who never went to college. Possibly you're worse off, due to worse prep, and ofc you have your mountain of debt hanging over your head that will have major lifelong repercussions (assuming it doesn't get hand-waved away). So the way I see it, I'm talking exactly about those same people.

> Totally agree! What can be done to get trade jobs to pay as much as white-collar desk jobs that require degrees?

I don't know =(

I mean, there are forces at work right now equalizing things to some degree; lack of labor supply will drive up prices. But whether it will end somewhere reasonable, I'm not sure. And with workers across the board demanding wage hikes, inflation will continue to rise, returning us to square zero...

I do think comp needs to come down for some things like software development. I realize pay distribution here is bi-modal; I'm talking about the high-side, which is way out of whack. Really doesn't match the inherent utility at all, in my opinion. This would indirectly raise the value of lower comp positions (such as the trades).

> People stopped wearing suits at work, even for interviews, because the signaling value of a suit is zero.

In fact it's become an anti-signal in software; people look at you funny. I actually failed an interview once because I wore a suit.

> Conservatives and businesses want more people to take low-paying jobs, and having the masses be educated threatens their ability to pay minimum wage.

Not having tradesman threatens the ability of society as we know it to continue. We aren't going to get far without carpenters and plumbers. These jobs simply need to pay more.

> and it really very much undermines the notion that somehow people are getting tricked into going to college.

It's also quite possible for them to come out of college $40k in debt, with no job to show for it, and end up struggling to pay that off for the rest of their lives.

Idk about the article though, it opens by saying this person had a free ride on the table. They probably should have taken it.

What is meant by finishing school in this thread? I have a feeling this is not the definition being used https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finishing_school

So wait, if a person fails to benefit from college, it's their own fault for not taking what was "handed to them on a platter" (as you mention in another of your posts" --- but if they fail to self-educate, it's only natural and thus a problem of not going to college?

If so many people are reporting this experience, it may be time to re-evaluate the current state of education.

> a dedicated professional walking you through a curriculum in a context where you’re dedicating 4 years to the endeavor.

Sounds nice. What I've actually seen is dedicated professionals walking entire classes en masse through curriculum --- a very different situation.

That's just indoctrination. Great I guess if you agree with the brainwashing. Not so great if you're on the other side.

> Those that can self-educate effectively are also ones that would thrive in a proper high education system.

That might depend on what you define as 'proper'. These environments are typically tailored toward a certain median individual and if you don't fit that median (above or below), you aren't going to have a good time. In my own experience, I can generally self-educate far better than what I've found in any traditional educational environment available* to me. I just can't deal with the snail's pace of concept introduction, the shallowness of concept exploration, etc. Everything moves so slow and I just tune it out.

* What I've seen of MIT's open courseware appeared interesting and well-paced to me, but that's not a route that was ever available to me.

Perhaps in part owing to the fact that people don’t generally keep hefty sums of cash in hand?

Anyway, how are you expecting to transact digitally with your paper notes?

What?? This does not seem to match what I’ve heard from the government before.

What do they claim the median household income at?

Sure --- but to the average individual, what is iconic about them? People who probably never saw one in real life, maybe only ever saw the one in Back to the Future? What percentage of people even know about those other vehicles?

I think most of what we could say to that would be anecdotal on both sides. So I guess, this is just my anecdotal perspective?

Totally not trying to say that those other things are not interesting, btw.