[HN Gopher] The silent majority of experts (2012)
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The silent majority of experts (2012)
Author : bluedino
Score : 197 points
Date : 2022-06-16 16:23 UTC (6 hours ago)
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| 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.
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