stephendause

This is a blog post from a consultant I work with. I found it helpful to get a basic grasp of how to manage the systems engineering process in a way that is lightweight and flexible.

There may be something to that, at least according to one study. Specifically, this article [1] indicates "embracing new mental challenges may be the key to preserving both brain tissue and brain function."

[1] https://www.health.harvard.edu/healthy-aging/what-does-it-ta...

> I'm firmly of the opinion that kids are naturally born geniuses

Do you mean that, relative to kids' intelligence today, everyone could do a lot better but not necessarily equally better? Or do you mean that everyone is born with roughly the same ability and that only some people succeed due to our child-rearing and educational systems?

Very nice!

Does this tool have a state model that you can check the application state against? In other words, does it have property-based testing? Here[1] is a demo of what that looks like.

I

[1] https://medium.com/criteo-engineering/detecting-the-unexpect...

The argument seems very poorly reasoned to me.

> First, he conflates the ability to generate human-like text with the ability to communicate.

This is incorrect. In fact, lukev does the opposite. That is one of the fundamental parts of his argument -- that those two things are different.

> Second, LukeV claims that GPT-3 is at its weakest when writing about the relationships between a set of concepts. However, this is not necessarily true. GPT-3 may not be able to generate text that is perfectly grammatical or that makes perfect sense, but it is often able to generate text that is nonetheless meaningful and insightful. For example, GPT-3 has been used to generate essays on complex topics such as the philosophy of mind, and these essays have been well-received by readers.

I believe this is the best paragraph of the argument, but it is also the most difficult to rebut because it is rather subjective. Whether a text is meaningful or insightful is up the individual reading it. I would be surprised, however, if experts on the philosophy of mind found the essays mentioned by GPT-3 to be meaningful or insightful -- as opposed to regurgitations of concepts that are in the texts that have been fed to GPT-3's model.

> Third, LukeV argues that the world does not need more words, but this is clearly not the case. The world needs more communication...

The presence of more words in the world does not necessarily entail more communication. The two concepts are fairly closely related but are definitely not synonymous.

This doesn't necessarily mean that I agree with lukev, of course. I do think that GPT-3 as it currently exists should not be used to generate text that is meant for human consumption without being edited first. I can certainly see how it would be useful as a tool for generating an outline of an essay, especially with well-crafted prompts.

I am of course open to more arguments and data on the subject =)

I don't think you're alone in this. That seems to be about my limit as well. If one is focusing as hard as they possibly can on a complex problem, I think the limit is more like 25 hours a week.

I have been wondering whether there is any psychological research on this. I imagine that it would be hard to do since focus and productivity are difficult things to measure in a way that would be externally valid.

Do you have data for the comparison of profits from sales to service? I never get my vehicle serviced at a dealer. I don't know what percentage of people do, but that would play a big factor in this analysis.

I would recommend people use sites like allsides.com or ground.news to read from a wide variety of sources across the political spectrum. Any one site (even one edited by a variety of people) will have its own set of biases, so I find it best to visit Web sites that contain links to coverage of the same event from a few different sources with different biases.

Maybe, but I don't know see an obvious causal link between that and the quality of the answers and questions.

Here you go:

https://www.twoplustwo.com/acronyms.php

I am not sure, but I think:

GTO means game theoretic optimal PLO means pot limit Omaha NLO means no limit Omaha

I don't think there are only two alternatives: "bullshit" questions or Leetcode. For example, you can ask the interviewee to review code, design a system with them, or ask them to describe, in detail, the technical aspects of a project that they worked on. I think these are less prone to bullshit answers but are not as contrived as Leetcode (though I do think Leetcode has its place).

> This isn't even remotely true. Kanban establishes specific measures, including throughput, that, combined with statistical modeling, specifically allow for forecasting to be done.

That's interesting to me as I hadn't heard that about Kanban before. Do you have a particular reference in mind that you think describes this well?

Nice list! I will have to read and think about it more, but I definitely agree with the spirit of it. You may like the book Atomic Habits. It has many suggestions that are similar to yours, although it approaches self-improvement from the angle of forming and maintaining healthy and productive habits.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40121378-atomic-habits

Not the parent comment, but I have had a devil of a time getting Bluetooth headphones to work with Ubuntu. By contrast, my experience with Android has been the same as yours -- basically flawless, and I love it.

This is something that I've thought some about doing and sometimes try to do, albeit haphazardly. One thing I've wondered about is whether the overhead of recording your mistakes and then looking them up in the future is worth it. I probably make at least a couple dozen small mistakes a day, depending on my level of familiarity with the tools that I am using.

It's been difficult for me to decide what to write down and what not to. On the one hand, I may encounter an issue again, but then again, maybe I'll just remember how it works naturally if I encounter the issue frequently, so it might not be worth the time.

As an example, if I am learning git, the subtleties of the `git checkout` command would likely trip me up, but should I write that down? It is such a common command that, if I am using git regularly, I will probably remember it without having to write it down.

As another example, what if I have an issue with something that I likely won't ever use again? Say, for example, I have to get my W-2 from a former employer, and their Web site requires you to call a number that's really hard to find to reset your password and then navigate a complicated phone tree. Should I write down the mistakes I made in figuring out how to do all that? I would say probably not, because I won't have to deal with this issue again.

Finally, there is the fact that technologies change. Some things, like Unix commands, are pretty stable, whereas other things, like best practices for JavaScript, are not. How much time should I dedicate to writing things down when they are likely to change?

All of this is to say: I agree it's a good thing to document mistakes, and I should probably do that more systematically, but I think there is some art to deciding what to write down and what not to.

Cool! I've also used these:

https://github.com/lkostrowski/job-interview-questions-to-as... https://github.com/viraptor/reverse-interview

I think part of the point of Zettelkasten is that by manually making the links yourself, you are forming the associations in your brain, which is part of the learning, thinking, and remembering process.

I am just now learning about it from the book How to Take Smart Notes, so I could be off, but that's part of the idea. With that said, I think what you suggest could possibly be a cool supplement or replacement.

I think that often, the best way to develop confidence is to engage in the activity about which you aren't feeling confident. I have found interviewing.io to be very helpful for this. Once you have some measure of success with a live interview, it can be easier to keep going.

I have also found that mindfulness meditation has helped me put my focus where it needs to be. It's done this in two ways: 1) during meditation, if I feel anxious thoughts, I can act as an independent observer of those thoughts and simply notice them without judging them. 2) During an interview, if I feel anxious thoughts, I can recognize those thoughts as being normal without being overwhelmed by them. Once I do this, I can more easily put them aside so I can focus on doing the best that I can on the task at hand.