[HN Gopher] We overestimate our short-term ability, but underest...
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We overestimate our short-term ability, but underestimate our long-
term ability
Author : p44v9n
Score : 346 points
Date : 2023-02-13 09:45 UTC (13 hours ago)
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| credit_guy wrote:
| Indeed, a good example is that people overestimate how many
| pounds they can lose in the short term, and underestimate how
| many pounds they can gain in the long term.
| cloverich wrote:
| Best example I ever saw was doing my family practice rotation.
| Patient was complaining they'd gained 10 lbs. Physician asked
| "You add a can of soda to your lunch or dinner last year?".
| They said (paraphrasing) "Yes lol how did you know". They did
| the math. Keep everything constant. Add ONE can of soda a day.
| One year will add 10lbs. Was mind boggling for the patient and
| me at the time.
| kerblang wrote:
| All good, but esp. in the tech industry people tend to make 1001
| excuses for 100% short-term thinking at the complete exclusion of
| long-term thinking, and that means a mountain of unresolved
| always-just-barely-worked as well as an organic journey that
| lands you in a random spot instead of an ideal one.
|
| Put differently, consecutive short-term investment payoffs do not
| add up to the same value as long-term investment over the same
| period. The long play is harder with greater rewards accordingly.
| So you balance "keeping the lights on" with "where do I wanna be
| in 10 years?"
| voisin wrote:
| Tony Robbins has been saying this for decades. People
| overestimate what they can do in a year but massively
| underestimate what they can do in a decade. One implication being
| that if you take up a hobby (say, playing the piano) after a year
| you are probably not very good and a lot of people then give it
| up because their performance doesn't meet their
| (over-)expectation. But stick with it, grinding it out year after
| year, and almost anyone can meet their expectations. The trick,
| of course, is to only undertake those few things which you think
| you'll want to stick with over the long term.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| I think people are wired to seasons and beyond that things get
| pretty abstract.
| bitexploder wrote:
| Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, a grappling martial art, is very much like
| that. And there was a great post on HN yesterday about this.
| And I just randomly had a talk with my son about effort and
| hard work (he is 16, struggling with school, ADHD, just like
| me). Here are my anecdotes:
|
| BJJ: After one year, all but the newest people still make you
| feel like you don't know anything, they can submit you pretty
| easily. Train for 10 years and you are at or close to "black
| belt" (Which takes on average 10-12 years in BJJ, it is not
| easy to get at all) and you can fold people up on instinct. The
| funny thing about the 1 year mark, you FEEL like you haven't
| learned anything, but you can gently fold the average human up
| now if it comes down to it.
|
| Business: We built a business over 8 years. It was hard. The
| first year we were negative in profit, paying ourselves out of
| our bank accounts. Overnight success in 8 years. Just keep
| learning everything that wasn't tech, marketing, people
| management skills, etc. Eventually we did well got up to like
| 20 person head count purely with organic growth and were
| acquired.
|
| Skills in general:
| https://gist.github.com/gtallen1187/e83ed02eac6cc8d7e185 "A
| little slope makes up for a lot of y-intercept".
|
| So now when people ask me anything. Career advice. How do I
| lose weight. How do I get in shape. "Let me tell you about my
| 10 year plan for you. you can't even imagine how long and hard
| 10 years is, I know, but that is what it is going to take to
| make a life long change. do you still want my advice?" Of
| course many good things happen sooner, but I only talk to
| people that can at least accept it is going to be hard and I
| don't hold any secrets about anything other than you have to
| work really hard and apply effort.
| borroka wrote:
| BJJ black belt who has been training for 12 years and
| previously trained in wrestling.
|
| "After one year, all but the newest people still make you
| feel like you don't know anything, they can submit you pretty
| easily": this is not true in general, only with context.
| Athletic people in general would not be hopeless after one
| year at the local club level. I have athletic kids who show
| up and immediately give me problems because, despite still
| poor technique, their speed, power, cardio, flexibility, etc.
| make them dangerously competitive.
|
| The fact is that the vast majority of adults who start jiu
| jitsu today are not athletic. Jiu jitsu attracts a population
| of mostly nerds who, because of the cerebral nature of jiu
| jitsu, can do very well over the years, but for the first
| year or two their still poor or average technique does not
| allow them to overcome athletic limitations.
|
| Moreover, except for a few clubs, there is no pedagogy to
| speak of around jiu jitsu. If trained properly, many
| hobbyists will improve much faster, but jiu jitsu clubs are
| for-profit businesses that need first to make money and then
| to make people better.
|
| Also, it is common to hear "it's been a while since I've seen
| Jack on the mat" with a disappointing tone, without realizing
| that doing any activity, especially one that is psychically
| demanding and involves being "beaten up," for more than 2 or
| 3 years requires uncommon dedication. "Keep doing it for 10
| years and see how good you will become" sounds much sweeter
| in print than when you live it.
| blueorange8 wrote:
| Yes this is exactly right. In my case the business has been
| 12 years and now we are probably valued around $65m. 12 years
| is a really long time. I never would have thought it would
| take this long, but also I never would have expected to have
| the success we have had. I often look at other startups and I
| think to myself -- This was really freaking hard to build
| this business bootstrapped, but it wasn't impossible. It also
| didn't take any special skills. It just took determination
| and hard work and continuing to do that for a long time - and
| i wonder why they don't try the same thing I did. It must be
| because people underestimate the impact of hard work over
| time. The key thing is don't die and continue growing, even
| if its a small amount. Continue fixing things, getting
| better, getting more customers, etc. Just like you said
| above.
|
| In the case of my business i wasn't thinking long term, i
| just was obsessively focused on it and never gave up. I think
| the human mind is just really poorly equipped to think long
| term and there are many many opportunities out there for
| people who can.
| matwood wrote:
| I'm glad someone brought up BJJ. I'm ~4 years in, and it
| works exactly this way. The day to day doesn't seem like
| you're learning that much. In fact, I don't even feel like I
| know that much after 4 years. But, when I roll with high
| belts now many have to really work to get me. And like you
| said, if I go against someone who has never grappled before,
| I can gently fold them up without breathing hard.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I'm also doing BJJ; due to <life stuff> I haven't been able
| to be consistent. I would say I'm about at the 1-year
| equivalent mark though. Hard part for me is that I'm big,
| so it's hard to tell if I can fold up beginners because I'm
| big or because I've learned, though I'm sure it's a
| combination of the two.
| bitexploder wrote:
| Just play guard or give up some position to smaller folks
| and see how it goes. I was pretty tired on Sunday so I
| just flopped around playing defense and subbing the white
| belts from bad places during Randori :)
| bitexploder wrote:
| I am at 4 years. Lay off for COVID. Just starting to get
| the hang of some things and present problems to higher
| belts. The interesting thing to me, once I can funnel
| someone into a dilemma game I know well, there isn't as
| much difference as I thought there would be between upper
| belts. I would say tougher black belts have seen it all
| before and give a really hard fight at each decision point
| in the attack tree, and can often just escape if technique
| is a little lose, but it isn't insanely different. I know
| how to fix things and make it harder every time I find a
| little gap like that now and they are little gaps. I still
| just get beat up most of the time, heh, but when things
| work they really work as I implement more of the game I
| like. I think that is an interesting place in skill
| development. Not an expert, but not a novice.
| matwood wrote:
| I definitely still get beat up most of the time. Also,
| within black belts there can be a lot of variation. But
| to your point, you have enough tools now that if you
| execute properly and lead a high belt down your path, you
| _could_ catch them. That simply would never happen until
| 3-4 years in (and I 'm not counting life long wrestlers
| who show up with 'no' BJJ experience).
|
| A big turning point for me was when I would lose and
| could walk backwards the whole roll in my head and see
| the root error. BJJ is a lot like chess in this way. When
| you start you just get beat and see the move that beat
| you. As you get better you see the chain of events that
| lead to the finish.
| bitexploder wrote:
| Yeah, I am not great at visualizing 3d space, but I have
| thought enough about BJJ that I can map it all back out
| as well now. Plus you learn the heuristics. Usually it is
| something small. Lost a grip, allowed a grip, let
| something get loose in your half guard that lead to being
| cross faced, passed, etc. Often I know right away now
| when something is bad, though it takes a little work to
| figure out exactly how it happened (upper belts are
| sneaky like that) and unforced errors happen as well, at
| least those are easier to figure out :)
| sizzle wrote:
| How do wrestlers fare at BJJ? Do they throw you for a
| loop so to speak because their moves are so unpredictable
| and they have advanced grapple reflexes?
| rezz wrote:
| Nicky Rodriguez, a life long wrestler was beating world
| class black belts in only a year of training. We had a D1
| wrestler join our gym and after the first week was
| awarded a blue belt (usually takes 2-3 years).
|
| They won't know many submissions, and initially are more
| susceptible to exposing their back (in wrestling being on
| your back is the worst possible outcome where in jiu
| jitsu it's an offensive position), but at the end of the
| day grappling is grappling.
| bitexploder wrote:
| Nicky Rod is also a big exception. D1 wrestlers are a
| small % of all wrestlers. Most wrestlers I encounter are
| like good white belts, but they have a ton of bad habits
| like you mentioned. Wrestlers do alright in BJJ though,
| for sure. They have a good sense of bodies and weight,
| though I have seen it hinder some wrestlers who stay in
| their comfort zone and never branch out, eventually
| losing out to folks who focus more on BJJ technique.
| matwood wrote:
| Wrestlers aren't that unpredictable, and are usually more
| controlled than an untrained person off the street.
| Depending on how much wrestling experience someone has,
| it can definitely start them out at a higher level. But,
| they still have a lot of blind spots - particularly if
| you put a gi on them.
| diceduckmonk wrote:
| Same as how cumulative effects and exponential are unintuitive.
| JadeNB wrote:
| > Same as how cumulative effects and exponential are
| unintuitive.
|
| Indeed, I'd argue that cumulative effects are unintuitive
| _because_ (if done right! ... or badly wrong, I suppose) they
| 're exponential.
| SunghoYahng wrote:
| Well, then if I'm only interested in getting results in the short
| term and don't care about getting results in many years from now
| when I'm old, what could I do?
|
| A psychotherapist? Denying reality and dooming myself?
| elSidCampeador wrote:
| > Well, then if I'm only interested in getting results in the
| short term and don't care about getting results in many years
| from now when I'm old, what could I do?
|
| become good at learning from your mistakes quickly
| michaelbuckbee wrote:
| Something to consider is that if things go well, you'll get
| old. So the big choices are really about where you want to be
| when you are old.
|
| Short term I feel like this article is still useful advice as
| it helps to avoid the trap of working on something for a small
| amount of time and feeling like it was a waste when it was
| really stacking bricks to make a larger effort.
| bluGill wrote:
| You won't be old for long either. Some religions (not all)
| offer some form of afterlife, but they mostly say "we are the
| only ones that can deliver, all those others cannot deliver
| so follow us". Navigating this is left as an exercise to the
| reader.
|
| Religion aside (don't go against whatever religion you choose
| says), you need to compromise between short term and long
| term. You might die tonight, you might live to 120, and odds
| are you don't have any better idea. You also don't know how
| you will age. There are people climbing mountains at 90.
| There are people at 65 who need to help get out of bed. If
| you are lucky to be healthy enough climb mountains at 90,
| then it makes sense to save a little now so you have enough
| money to afford to do what you want. If you lose your health
| by 65 then there is no point in savings as you can't enjoy
| life anyway.
| SunghoYahng wrote:
| >Something to consider is that if things go well, you'll get
| old. So the big choices are really about where you want to be
| when you are old.
|
| It feels like shit vs more shit
| esperent wrote:
| This is a sign of depression or something similar. Usually
| people will suggest therapy in these situations, have you
| considered it?
|
| It's far from the only path though. There's many possible
| causes of depression and even more possible solutions. Find
| one that works for you. You deserve more than shit. As
| someone who's been deep in that shit more than once, you
| can claw your way out and once you do, the world is a
| beautiful place that's worth growing old in. Then you'll
| end up in the shit again but each time climbing out gets
| easier.
|
| Personally it took me moving country, changing career more
| than once until I found one that gave me a sense of
| purpose, finding a beautiful and totally surprising
| partner, and lots more to find my present stability.
|
| That's what worked for me. What will work for you? You need
| to find that out. You only have one life, if it's shitty
| now them what have you got to lose by making every possible
| effort to change that? I mean, what could possibly be more
| important than making that effort? Certainly not a shitty
| career or a shitty relationship or a shitty family. Leave
| them if you need to. Nothing controls you except you. And
| physics, and the law and immigration officers and so on.
| But there's always room to maneuver.
| xyzelement wrote:
| What a gross attitude. At its best , life means you get to
| do hard work now and see it benefit others later. Eg raise
| your kids and then enjoy their kids when you are old.
|
| This is incredibly meaningful and if someone can get their
| mind working this way, they appreciate every minute of
| life.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| What a gross attitude.
| DharmaPolice wrote:
| I don't know how old you are but there's usually a midpoint
| between now and "when you're old". It's like people who want to
| lose a drastic amount of weight in a month - that's only going
| to be achievable through fairly unsafe surgery and maybe not
| even then. But over the course of 3 years? Or 5 years? That's
| almost always going to be possible.
| bluGill wrote:
| Jack of all trades, master of none.
|
| You have to accept and enjoy not being great at anything, but
| in turn you can do anything. It is a different mindset. You
| will never be the star of whatever you do, but you will often
| be the guy in the background at all events who jumps in to take
| care of something unrelated to the event in question that needs
| to be done.
| rumblerock wrote:
| As someone grappling with a career that has seen fits and
| starts, bouncing between roles this is an interesting
| perspective.
|
| I'm currently looking at jobs and definitely harbor a lot of
| self-doubt because I don't have specialized skills that match
| desired skills, but have so much other experience outside of
| any one domain.
|
| One of my aims is certainly to sit down and master something
| in the domain of work that can make things smoother / more
| sustainable, but at least going into jobs assigning proper
| value to my suite of skills is a helpful thing to keep in
| mind.
| codingdave wrote:
| Acceptance of who you are and where you are in life is a
| perfectly healthy place to be. If you want improvement in your
| life, act on it. If you are fine where you are, just be happy
| with it. There is no rule that say you cannot just get to a
| good place in life and stay there.
|
| So it really comes down to your own decision - are you
| satisfied with your life or not?
| augustk wrote:
| Got me thinking of
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tortoise_and_the_Hare
| xianshou wrote:
| Very similar to Amara's Law, the equivalent for technology - we
| overestimate short-term impact while underestimating long-term.
| Funny how this phenomenon crops up at both the societal and the
| individual scale:
|
| https://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/amaras-law
| p44v9n wrote:
| Ooo sweet. Thanks for sharing!
| revskill wrote:
| Done means perfectable. It means it's not perfect, but there must
| be a simple way to make it perfect.
|
| That's why monopoly, or monothlic architecture eventually failed.
| They can't scale.
| cosmojg wrote:
| > That's why monopoly, or monothlic architecture eventually
| failed. They can't scale.
|
| Could you provide some examples? One counterexample: Linux, the
| world's biggest monolithic kernel, seems to be going pretty
| strong.
| kzrdude wrote:
| It's called monolithic but it still has modules
| wongarsu wrote:
| On the software level the monoliths are going strong, but I
| guess you could make the argument on the hardware level? IBM
| system Z revenue is half what it was two decades ago, and
| every new system is designed to achieve scale and uptime by
| using multiple smallish servers, instead of one giant
| earthquake-safe mainframe with hotswappable processors.
| sharadov wrote:
| I see this most often with people who get all gung-ho about
| working out, they get themselves into these hours-long intense
| workout regimens and then either run out of steam or hurt
| themselves.
|
| Rather just do a 30 min routine 3-4 days a week and look at
| yourself after 1/3/6 months.
|
| You will have built a habit and achieved a lot more.
| kmt-lnh wrote:
| In April 2021 I started to read 4 pages a day from big books I
| always wanted to read, but never had time for it. 4 pages and
| stop even if I get into the flow, 4 pages even if I'm falling
| asleep because it's so boring.
|
| Not even 2 years in, I've already read the Bible, the Elements of
| Euclid, Zeldovich's Intro to Higher Math, and am in the middle of
| Das Kapital. The Great Books canon never looked more
| approachable.
|
| Just 4 pages a day. It really adds up.
| fitzroy wrote:
| I keep thinking of a service that sends famously long books in
| short chunks.
|
| "Infinite Text" or "War 'n Pieces"
| p44v9n wrote:
| Dracula Daily does this! More because the novel is itself
| epistolary
|
| https://draculadaily.substack.com/about
| soupfordummies wrote:
| Totally! This translates too. I've had a home office conversion
| project going on the back burner for a while and always put it
| off because its so "monumental". I've started just working
| 10mins a day on it and the progress I made in two weeks was
| really astounding to me.
|
| I would say, maybe DON'T stop if you get in the flow but don't
| feel bad if you can ONLY manage the 4 pages/ten minutes.
| munificent wrote:
| My dumb but astonishingly effective life hack: I leave a big
| non-fiction book in the bathroom and don't take my phone in
| there. I've made my way through so many textbooks one bowel
| movement at a time because even the most boring one is more fun
| that reading the shampoo bottle.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| How do you disinfect
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| You don't. People have been reading in the bathroom for
| decades. You're getting little shit particles in your nose
| regardless of whether you read in there.
| pmdr wrote:
| Plus that's the only way to realize your brother-in-law
| is actually a drug lord.
| fsckboy wrote:
| > _We overestimate our short-term ability, but underestimate our
| long-term ability._
|
| In a short timeframe, this guy started a whole bunch of projects
| that he didn't finish. In the short term, he overestimates his
| long term ability. And perhaps he underestimated his short term
| ability because he's impressed with starting so many projects,
| more than he could finish with his overestimated long term
| abilities.
|
| but don't listen to me, glass half empty sounds optimistic ("I've
| identified the problem, I can see room for improvement! I know
| how to fix this!") and glass half full sounds like you're trying
| to convince yourself you don't need to do anything, that
| everything is going to be OK.
| JoshCole wrote:
| I think we do overestimate short term things and underestimate
| long term things. However, I think it is important to clarify
| that it would be a mistake to think of this tendency in a
| pejorative way. It is, best as I can tell, more correct than the
| alternative.
|
| Some reasons for that:
|
| - Conjunction of events is less than the probability of its
| individual constituents and unless the events were certain to
| occur is always less than the probability that they occurred
| given that they occurred.
|
| - Making an estimate out of multiple different approximations
| with unknown error bounds you should have decreasing confidence
| in your approximation because you have increasing confidence of
| error in your approximation.
|
| - Modeling with the bellman equations such that overestimation of
| true utilities in short term and bad underestimation of true
| utilities in the long term can produce superhuman cognitive
| abilities in many decision making contexts.
|
| - We ought to see overestimation and underestimation: given a
| coin that is biased, it does not follow that you bet on that coin
| with probability proportional to the bias, but rather to the
| rounding. So we should see actions that correspond with rounding
| up in the short term which is more likely to be less conjuncted
| and therefore higher probability and we should see rounding down
| in the long term wherein there is more conjunction and therefore
| lower probability.
|
| This all leads me to suspect that a framing around faith being
| justified, not around whether we overestimate or underestimate,
| might be a more correct framing. This is actually exceedingly
| true in the cooperative regime wherein other agents force
| underestimation of probabilities due to the potential for
| competition, but in which a cooperative environment supports
| overestimation.
|
| To get at what I mean by that, consider that no one must teach
| you proper form such that you do not injure yourself at a gym, so
| your probability of injury is actually pretty high if you are
| estimating using only the things you can control, yet in practice
| you will probably get high quality advice to avoid injury if
| someone cooperative notices you are likely to hurt yourself - it
| is not sufficient to point at the ability to learn this
| information yourself to refute this, because all the information
| available to you is a function of a cooperative society. So the
| going to the gym and avoiding injury while doing so should use a
| non-cooperative creature like an octopus going to an open
| location and doing exercise there in sight of predators: they
| don't have access to books to help them, they have access to
| sharks. As an aside, lots of people are so surrounded by the
| waters of cooperation they can hardly notice they are swimming,
| which is kind of interesting to contrast with the octopus with
| adaptive camouflage that is more prone to death the moment it
| become visible.
|
| But now we are getting into a defense for bad estimation -
| because we are starting to get into estimates that are predicated
| on self-reference: agent one observes agent two and makes a
| decision based on their policy, but agent one is also making
| observations of agent two and deciding policy based on that! This
| is a regime wherein we start getting paradoxes like the halting
| problem, godel's incompleteness proof, or the linguistic paradox
| of heterological classification. In other words, we find strong
| evidence for the need for some other concept than yes or no,
| something more like the idea of mu or the idea of undecidability.
|
| So here we reach another reason to disagree with the idea: how
| can an answer which isn't even well defined because it is
| undedicable be an overestimate or an underestimate?
| [deleted]
| grep_name wrote:
| I think the former leads to the latter. I can't count the number
| of times I set myself up to do a ton of different projects at
| once, only to end up slowly paring it down to just whatever the
| most critical project was and spending more time than the entire
| estimate for the rest of the projects on that one thing. If that
| happens to you enough times, you'll start to extrapolate the
| pattern to long-term estimations of what you can do and it can
| really mess with your self esteem.
|
| Interestingly, I find this only happens with personal projects.
| At work I just overestimate everything to protect myself. So, it
| may also be that for things outside of work I simply
| underestimate how many of my life resources (time, energy,
| willpower) are eaten up by work and that confounds my estimates.
| I'm honestly not sure which thing is the bigger factor.
| neontomo wrote:
| I think this also leads to taking on more projects than we can
| manage.
| retrac wrote:
| Learning another (human) language is like that. Almost anyone can
| do it. It requires no special skills, training, or experience.
| There are some tricks that you can use, but mostly it's just an
| enormous amount of work, not particularly challenging work
| either, that you need to persist at for years, even decades.
|
| I'd like to think this is common knowledge, but I have many times
| talked with people who hope to learn French to fluency in six
| months, and people who are convinced they could never learn it no
| matter what. Both types are terrible with estimating their
| abilities.
| wazoox wrote:
| Yeah it's funny. 25 years ago I could manage working in English
| easily, and have English conversations, and I could read entire
| books. Gradually I went into more complex books, but the
| hardest thing was watching any movie without the need for
| subtitles, took me several years of constant listening of
| English language material, that's really what made a
| difference.
| wilburTheDog wrote:
| To be fair, I turn subtitles on for half of the movies I
| watch and I'm a native English speaker.
| TigeriusKirk wrote:
| That's the key behind success with using something like
| Duolingo. Establish a daily habit with it and keep at it for
| very long streaks. The app is the tool to keep your habit
| intact.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I remember talking with someone, who expected engineers to be
| proficient in new computer languages "in two weeks."
|
| For myself, and, as some folks here have pointed out, I am
| possibly developmentally challenged, I've found that I can
| learn the basics of a language in a short time (maybe two
| weeks? I've never clocked it).
|
| Becoming _good_ with the language, on the other hand, takes
| _years_.
|
| I've been writing Swift, every day (and learning new stuff,
| just about every day), since it was announced, in 2014, and
| there's still a _ton_ that I don 't know. The language is still
| evolving, so I'll never know it all.
|
| Also, in my experience, the difficulties are really with
| learning frameworks and SDKs. I've been learning the ins and
| outs of the various native Apple SDKs, along with Swift, all
| that time, and I still have a ways to go.
| wallflower wrote:
| When I talk with friends and acquaintances who say they want to
| learn a language, I always tell them it will be one of the most
| difficult and rewarding things they will ever do. Number one,
| you will literally vomit out words in the beginning that make
| no grammatical sense and stink to high heaven in terms of
| language non-ability. Two, you have to break away from
| Duolingo. Like learning Scratch for programming, Duolingo is
| only going to get you better at Duolingo type games and
| quizzes. If you really want to learn a language, you have to
| invest in live practice with a native speaker. In the near
| future, this could become a conversational AI. For now, go find
| a reasonable native speaker on iTalki. Practice at least twice
| a week. Do not practice with friends or family as it will be
| frustrating for both sides. Pay someone. Third, learning a
| programming language compared to a human language is difficult
| because there is shame and embarrassment connected with messing
| up for most people. As you continue to vomit out your beginner
| language, you will eventually ascend to the intermediate level.
| Like L5 at Google, many of you will never make it to advanced
| level. I think that is quite ok. You really do not have to be
| able to understand live standup comedy in your chosen second
| language. The ability to communicate thoughts, dreams, fears,
| and stories will be enough. It took me about 3 years to get to
| that level of being able to argue politics and economics in
| Spanish. I freely admit my accent is gringo (never gonna be
| able to roll Rs) and I still make mistakes and sometimes
| accents make it hard to listen. You are never going to get to
| 100% comprehension. 80/90% depending on the situation.
| kurthr wrote:
| I'm learning a language now. It's tough and embarrassing, and
| what it takes to keep getting better seems to change as I
| move along.
|
| Something that was formative in my understanding of language
| was visiting Glasgow years past, and realizing that just an
| "accent" could easily knock me back to understanding only
| 20-30% of words. Still, based on context it was possible to
| get around and after a week I was up to 70-80% comprehension
| with locals.
| LemmyInThePub wrote:
| In the UK, it isn't necessarily accent per-say.
|
| In North England and Scotland, we pronounce words using
| short vowel sounds (bath, castle) whereas in the South,
| they use long vowel sounds (b-are-th, c-are-stle).
|
| Not being able to easily pick out the vowel sounds makes it
| much harder for a non-native speaker to understand.
|
| The so called "BBC English" that you probably learnt is
| based on a Southern England 'home counties' pronunciation.
| JasonFruit wrote:
| It's not clear to me how regional differences in vowel
| pronunciation differ from accents.
| ehnto wrote:
| You may also hear BBC English called "The Queens
| English"or just Queens English.
| [deleted]
| comte7092 wrote:
| Duolingo is fine, you just have to be aware of its
| limitations. Getting the trophy isn't going to represent the
| finish line of most peoples language goals, but it's a decent
| start.
| Denzel wrote:
| > You are never going to get to 100% comprehension. 80/90%
| depending on the situation.
|
| Key insight, people should set the realistic goal of being
| _at most_ as good as their native language.
|
| I can confidently say, in my native language, there are many
| times throughout daily life where I have way less than 80/90%
| comprehension. The other key insight though is that I can
| remove that ambiguity with follow up questions and
| elaboration if I want.
|
| And that's what people should strive for when learning a
| second language. Once you get to the point where you can
| learn _in_ and _with_ the language, then you 're golden. That
| requires far far less effort than most people estimate.
| frogulis wrote:
| > (never gonna be able to roll Rs)
|
| Curious about this. Presumably you've given it plenty of
| effort after more than 3 years of Spanish study. Where do you
| feel that you're stuck, and what have you tried?
| jack_riminton wrote:
| Applies to almost everything (bar a few things with physical
| limitations)
|
| Some people define themselves as someone who "can't draw", but
| drawing is literally just making a mark, comparing it to what
| you see, adjusting the mark or making another
|
| It's not easy, but it's very simple
| Jensson wrote:
| And some people don't got that kind of patience, so they
| can't do it. Or, today we have pills that helps with
| patience, but I'm not sure if that counts.
| waboremo wrote:
| Patience is the wrong aspect here. What you need isn't
| patience, it's a reminder that this is a long process.
|
| If all you can muster is 20 minutes per day, that still
| adds up hugely. No patience required. Although of course,
| you improve faster if you can actively practice for longer
| periods. But nevertheless, it is just about showing up
| every day. In the case of drawing, it's about drawing every
| day, and wanting to improve some aspect of it. Simply doing
| the same thing over and over again won't get you anywhere.
| fluoridation wrote:
| That's what patience is, though. It's the willingness to
| wait. "It's just 20 minutes a day so it's not so bad" is
| a thought that comforts the _busy_ person, not the
| _impatient_ person. The impatient person hears that and
| thinks "so I have to do this every day for 7 years to
| see results? Can't I get it down to 1 year somehow?"
| waboremo wrote:
| Yes exactly, the willingness to wait. But we're not
| talking about waiting, we're talking about taking it day
| by day by focusing on what you can do during that day to
| the best of your abilities.
|
| Hence, patience is irrelevant, if anything a wrongful
| framing of the situation that doesn't help anybody. Show
| up as much as you can every day for yourself and you
| won't need a single drop of "patience".
| fluoridation wrote:
| We _are_ talking about waiting. The time between when you
| start and when you reach a level of useful proficiency is
| time you wait through. You don 't wait doing nothing, but
| you certainly do wait. Yes, it's not a useful way to
| frame the situation, but that's what makes impatience a
| flaw. If an impatient person could distract themselves
| from how much longer the task will take and concentrate
| on actually performing the task they would not be
| impatient, they would be a normal person coping with the
| impatience everyone feels.
| jack_riminton wrote:
| Yes and I suppose patience is directly correlated with the
| amount of interest one has in the subject. When people talk
| of talent I sometimes think obsession is a better metric,
| are they obsessed enough to keep going when others give up.
| Or rather; are they obsessed enough to become talented
| yamtaddle wrote:
| I've spent shitloads of time drawing but there's something
| mechanically wrong with how I do it--my marks don't come
| close enough to resembling what I'm _trying_ to do. Weird
| lumps and squiggles everywhere.
|
| I'm sure I could fix that, but the focused practice on
| _just_ making straight lines or circles or re-learning how
| to hold a pencil or whatever would be boring as fuck, so I
| 'm never going to.
| jack_riminton wrote:
| Actually you've brought up the next challenge of an
| artist, which marks to make!
|
| Look at the paintings of David Hockney (or even his iPad
| doodles), there's not a straight line or neat circle in
| sight. But he's a relentless doodler. As Hockney says
| himself, art is just seeing. The more you practice, the
| more you see, the better you are at knowing which marks
| to make. I'd recommend this doc if you're interested
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cdqch3-D94A
| getoj wrote:
| As someone who has learned several languages but who has
| never been able to draw, I don't think it's that simple.
|
| Even among children, where the difference in experience is
| negligible, some people are able to analyze the input they
| receive from their eyes or ears in a way that others can't.
| My friends who are artists amaze me by reducing a 3D object
| to a series of deformed polygons, or drawing a perfectly
| straight line with a pencil, and I amaze them by mimicking
| accents or memorizing song lyrics on one listen. For both of
| us, these are things that we've _always been able to do_.
|
| I don't propose that this barrier is insuperable, but there's
| only so many hours in the day. There is also likely to be a
| hard limit on how good I can get compared to someone with
| natural ability. Spending 10 years going from 0/10 to 7/10 is
| a particular kind of commitment to make.
| jack_riminton wrote:
| Flip every mention you made about language with drawing and
| you'll see it's the same thing. Likewise if someone said
| they've "never been able to speak a foreign language",
| you'd quite rightly say that's absurd, of course you can't
| speak a foreign language naturally. Same with drawing, sure
| some people are perhaps more gifted but everyone is able to
| do it
| akudha wrote:
| You're saying it requires no special skills, just persistence
| and hard work. I'd suggest that persistence itself is a skill,
| which most people lack.
| sebzim4500 wrote:
| >people who are convinced they could never learn it no matter
| what
|
| Do these people actually believe that it would be impossible
| for them, or merely that they would give up before success.
| i.e. do they think that they would not be able to learn the
| language in five years if they were offered a billion dollars?
|
| Because personally I doubt I will ever learn a second language,
| but I'm sure I could given enough time and the right incentive.
| w0m wrote:
| I _could_ learn another language. But I can 't learn a second
| language insofar-as I can't foresee a situation where I"d be
| willing or able to dedicate the mental capital toward the
| task.
| malshe wrote:
| I am one of those people who think it is impossible for me to
| learn a new language!
| yamtaddle wrote:
| > Because personally I doubt I will ever learn a second
| language, but I'm sure I could given enough time and the
| right incentive.
|
| Yeah--I know I _can_ do it, and even know that I enjoy
| learning another language, but also know from experience that
| I don 't have enough natural reasons to use anything but
| English, that I'll have any hope of keeping it up without
| committing to _permanently_ spending 10+ hours a week doing
| nothing but practicing the language for the sake of it, all
| for the occasional few minutes a year (optimistically) in
| which it 's actually useful, or for the once-a-decade trip I
| might take to somewhere it's widely spoken.
|
| _Au revoir_ my once-somewhat-decent French.
|
| Europeans sometimes imply Americans are dumb or hopelessly
| provincial for being so persistently monolingual, but it's
| hard as fuck to keep up a second language when you can travel
| 1,000 miles and the locals are all still speaking English (at
| least, mostly). European learners of other European languages
| are doing it on easy mode, compared to us. It's hard to find
| a route anywhere in Europe that long that doesn't pass
| through at least three different languages, as primarily
| spoken by the locals, and even finding one with _that few_
| takes some effort.
|
| So I'm both aware that I _can_ learn another language, and
| aware that I in-fact _won 't_ short of some huge shake-up in
| my life circumstances, which may as well be the same thing as
| "can't".
| myth2018 wrote:
| > Europeans sometimes imply Americans are dumb or
| hopelessly provincial
|
| Indeed, and not only because of monolingualism.
|
| During my time abroad, one thing frequently caught my
| attention: when I first met someone, they'd always said
| "I'm from _country A_ "... except people from US. They
| introduced by mentioning their cities instead.
|
| I always wondered why is that so? Do they assume people
| around the world know their geography? Do they don't learn
| at least a little about other countries at school?
|
| And on monolingualism: granted, English is currently the de
| facto international language, so the economic incentive for
| them to learn a second language might be lower. But don't
| they generally feel curious about other cultures, reading
| foreign original works, or simply getting a grasp on how
| other languages express ideas?
| yamtaddle wrote:
| I think when we travel abroad, we're aware everyone can
| tell we're Americans without our having to say so :-)
|
| > I always wondered why is that so? Do they assume people
| around the world know their geography? Do they don't
| learn at least a little about other countries at school?
|
| It's habit. It's how we talk to one another about where
| we're from--major city, or nearest major city. Aside from
| a few states where people like to lead with that (mostly
| Texas and California--meanwhile, if someone says "New
| York", they probably mean the city; there's a little
| easy-to-miss comic jab about this in the show Archer,
| where Archer a couple times corrects someone who says
| "New York City" with "you can just say New York", as the
| latter usage reads "higher" in a social-class sense).
| It's a consequence of our largely-homogenous culture
| being spread over such a huge land area, I think.
|
| Recall, again, that we generally have _way less
| experience_ talking to people who live in other
| countries, on account of how very far we have to travel
| to encounter many such people--and even then it 's mainly
| Canadians, who can and do sometimes pass for American
| pretty well (we're much worse at passing as Canadian) and
| Mexicans, those being _the only two_ countries that share
| a land border with us. 99.9% of the time when we 're
| telling someone where we're from, it's someone who _is_
| familiar with US geography.
|
| Besides, "American" doesn't narrow things down very much.
| It'd be like someone from Germany leading with "Europe"
| when describing where they're from. Right, I guessed that
| already--but _where_? Germany? Austria? Switzerland?
| Belgium? Our nationality is far less specific,
| geographically, than those in Europe.
|
| > But don't they generally feel curious about other
| cultures, reading foreign original works, or simply
| getting a grasp on how other languages express ideas?
|
| Sure, but it's a _big_ commitment to both learn a
| language and keep up that skill, and it mostly has to be
| maintained kind-of "artificially", for Americans.
| Conversational skills and accent in particular can be
| very difficult to maintain.
|
| Americans remain strong _aspirational_ speakers of second
| languages, it should be noted--Spanish and sometimes a
| few other languages (French is common, Chinese
| increasingly so, others like German or Italian sometimes)
| are taught, to some degree, to nearly all our kids, but
| it 's hard to even _find good teachers_ because there 's
| just no culture in which to keep up those skills, so a
| lot of the time those classes are taught by people who
| aren't good speakers (let alone native) themselves. The
| kids, for their part, promptly forget everything except a
| phrase or two, since they never use the language outside
| class, and even the ones who _try_ to go farther find it
| both practically difficult and, lacking much extrinsic
| motivation or a kind of _natural_ need, discouraging.
|
| > reading foreign original works
|
| I mean... very little reading happens these days, period,
| aside from trash-tier online reading, romance novels, and
| self-help books. At least in America. We're far removed
| from a time when "author" could practically be counted a
| blue-collar profession, there was so much demand for
| fiction. Among the same groups of people in which reading
| remains semi-common, you're likely to find folks trying
| desperately to hold onto their grasp of one or more major
| literary foreign languages (and mostly failing at it).
|
| [EDIT] Actually, now that I think about it, you may also
| be seeing some class bias--Americans who can travel
| abroad are more likely to have at least some of their
| culture and norms influenced by the set of people who
| think in cities (if not more specific!) _everywhere_
| --they don't visit France, they visit Nice, they don't
| visit Italy, they visit Milan, they don't have a modest
| apartment in America or even New York (City) but
| _Manhattan_ , and so on.
| myth2018 wrote:
| > I think when we travel abroad, we're aware everyone can
| tell we're Americans without our having to say so :-)
|
| Why? And how you do that? I believe it's not from the
| looks, right? I met a guy in Berlin who was from New
| York. When I first saw him I even thought he was
| Brazilian, because his hair and skin color were exactly
| like mine.
|
| > It's habit. It's how we talk to one another about where
| we're from--major city, or nearest major city
|
| I believe this is everybody's habit, as long as they are
| in their own country.
|
| I live in a large country too, and we don't have a lot of
| contact with people from neighboring countries (so the
| fact we share borders with many countries is irrelevant),
| but I don't know, when I go abroad something just
| switches in my mind, it feel just too obvious that I'm
| talking to people with perspectives other than what I
| find in my own country. And I notice the same behavior in
| people from other nations too. That's why this habit from
| US nationals calls my attention.
|
| > Besides, "American" doesn't narrow things down very
| much. It'd be like someone from Germany leading with
| "Europe" when describing where they're from. Right, I
| guessed that already--but where? Germany? Austria?
| Switzerland? Belgium? Our nationality is far less
| specific, geographically, than those in Europe.
|
| "American" really don't narrow things down to the city
| level. Not even to the country level. But this is what I
| find strange: why would you narrow things down to people
| who are not aware of your geography? When you visit
| another state and introduce yourself, would it make sense
| to tell them your street name, number and apartment
| instead of your state or city, to narrow things down?
| yamtaddle wrote:
| > Why?
|
| Mostly because of Europeans constantly telling us that we
| stick out like a sore thumb, when traveling--it seems to
| feature in most every discussion of Americans and
| international travel. It makes some of us really self-
| conscious about not "seeming American" abroad, which I
| guess maybe we do semi-successfully if you're in-fact
| having trouble picking us out, more often than not. Hell,
| what is leading with a city when asked "where are you
| from" if not _exactly_ one of those boorish (they always
| are boorish, aren 't they--that's why some of us are
| self-conscious about it) tells? This current exchange is
| about, exactly, one of these things!
|
| > "American" really don't narrow things down to the city
| level. Not even to the country level. But this is what I
| find strange: why would you narrow things down to people
| who are not aware of your geography? When you visit
| another state and introduce yourself, would it make sense
| to tell them your street name, number and apartment
| instead of your state or city, to narrow things down?
|
| This is not a great application of _reductio_.
|
| > I live in a large country too, and we don't have a lot
| of contact with people from neighboring countries (so the
| fact we share borders with many countries is irrelevant),
| but I don't know, when I go abroad something just
| switches in my mind, it feel just too obvious that I'm
| talking to people with perspectives other than what I
| find in my own country. And I notice the same behavior in
| people from other nations too. That's why this habit from
| US nationals calls my attention.
|
| The US is _really_ isolated. An American who travels
| outside the US, Canada (where the people largely _are_
| semi-familiar with our geography, on account of most of
| them living very close to the US and the strong media
| ties between the two countries) and (maybe) Mexico more
| than a countable-on-one-hand number of times _in their
| whole lives_ is a major outlier. A very high proportion
| of our population never, ever does. Mexico might manage
| to counter our cultural isolation a bit, but it 's
| regarded as unsafe, so travel there outside of well-
| tended resorts isn't common (see e.g. Wikipedia's list of
| global military conflicts for _why_ we might have that
| perception--yes, yes, I know, our own drug war policies
| probably contribute, et c., but the _why_ hardly matters
| for someone who 's just trying to plan a family vacation)
|
| Reasons Americans rarely travel abroad include:
|
| 1) Long flights are necessary to reach almost anywhere
| else. 6+ hours (best likely case) on a plane is really
| unpleasant, bordering on impossible for people with
| health issues (this will matter in another point).
|
| 2) Most Americans don't get much time off in a year, and
| often struggle to take even what they have as a large
| block of time. Short trips overseas suck (see: point 1
| about how long the flights are)
|
| 3) We _do_ have time off in retirement, for those of us
| who manage to retire--but by then, the difficulty of long
| flights is much-amplified (see point #1 re: health) for
| many.
|
| 4) The cost of flights makes such travel _way_ more
| expensive than a road trip--and we 're not short of
| interesting places to drive (especially natural
| attractions). It becomes hard to justify several hundred
| dollars per person for a flight when you still have a
| list of dozens of great places in the US you've yet to
| visit... so, travel abroad competes with some very-good,
| cheaper alternatives.
|
| The result is you see basically two types of American
| abroad: seasoned, usually pretty-rich travelers (if not
| committed ex-pats), and people for whom this is one of
| maybe two or three trips beyond North America they'll
| _ever_ take. Those latter aren 't likely to develop much
| in the way of overseas-travel habits. And, see my edit on
| the prior comment for why some of those richer travelers
| might tend to lead with a city--it's a class-cultural
| thing, they also tend to name cities when talking about
| other countries (they don't even go to "the Alps", or
| Switzerland, it's always somewhere more specific like
| "St. Moritz"; the same set don't go to Colorado, like the
| rest of us would tend to say in the US when visiting
| Colorado, they go to _Vale_ or whatever)
| fluoridation wrote:
| >it's hard as fuck to keep up a second language when you
| can travel 1,000 miles and the locals are all still
| speaking English (at least, mostly)
|
| Nonsense. I live in Latin America and English is a second
| language for me. I'm not sure if there are even any land
| routes I could take to reach an English-speaking country,
| as I believe the Colombian jungle interrupts the road.
| Learning a language is about four things: listening,
| speaking, reading, and writing. With the Internet you can
| do three of those four things right from home. Hell, I've
| been learning English for 24 years and for the first 20 I
| had maybe one or two conversations with native speakers.
|
| The question is not how far you need to travel to speak to
| a native, but whether there's anything in that language
| that interests you. Language after all is just a tool to
| move ideas between people's brains. If there's not then
| yeah, you would have no reason to learn a language. And I'm
| sorry to say that does make you provincial. Please don't
| take it the wrong way; I don't mean it as an insult, just
| as a statement of fact. You were born into your culture and
| you're satisfied with ignoring everything else. You've
| never thought "oh, I wish I could read this, but it's not
| in English" or "I love this book/show/movie/etc.; I wish I
| could experience it as a native would", or at least not to
| the point that it inspired you to learn.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| English is a bit of a special case, being the modern
| _lingua franca_ (LOL), having _two_ top-tier media
| producing countries behind it (plus several smaller but
| not-insignificant ones), and representing an incredible
| proportion of the world 's wealth and economic power.
| It's telling that a lot of successful creators of
| foreign-language film, in particular, end up switching to
| English--it's where the money is, which brings a lot of
| other benefits to speakers of the language (native or
| otherwise).
|
| I remember at one point, when I was a still trying to
| keep up my French, I spent a fair amount of time trying
| to track down some equivalent to what Friends has been
| (so I gather, anyway) for English-language learners--
| every option seemed much worse (far shorter, lower
| quality--which, Friends isn't even _that_ high a bar) and
| even those were nearly impossible to get ahold of,
| because the rights holders just didn 't care about
| foreign markets (since no-one who can speak English well
| is going to care much about a mediocre French sitcom,
| unless they're like me and trying to learn the language).
| Music's a little easier, but hell, even there half the
| time they sing in English. Maybe it's improved since
| about a decade ago, but at the time, there was just
| _nothing_.
|
| Meanwhile there are _dozens_ of shows with many, many
| episodes that could help provide daily exposure to
| colloquial, conversational English, that are relatively
| easy to come by (just don 't pick The Wire--even
| Americans have trouble with that, between the authentic
| Baltimore accents and slang and the pervasive cop-talk).
|
| I actually think another language that's got a huge
| advantage here, for foreign learners, is Japanese. It was
| hard not to be envious of the Japanese resources and
| media readily available, even back in the '00s (let alone
| now), compared with even a language as important and
| heavily-studied as French. Which is really surprising and
| impressive when you consider that Japanese is probably
| the most insular of the major world languages--one might
| expect French, German, and Spanish, at least, to do at
| least as well on that front, given that they're read and
| spoken widely on multiple continents by far more people
| than live in Japan, but no. I think it's in part because
| they've been able to resist the shift to preferring
| English media that other countries have experienced--you
| look at French TV schedules and there's a _lot_ of
| translated English media on there, for instance, while I
| don 't think the same is so broadly true in Japan, with
| the result that they have a stronger domestic media
| market than many other states.
| fluoridation wrote:
| >I remember at one point, when I was a still trying to
| keep up my French, I spent a fair amount of time trying
| to track down some equivalent to what Friends has been
| [...]
|
| Like I said, language is a _tool_. I have to wonder why
| you were learning French if you had no use for it. Can
| you imagine, say, picking a computer before you know if
| it will be able to run the software you need?
|
| That said, you don't have to limit yourself to
| professional productions. I'm sure there are French-
| speaking YouTubers or streamers out there nowadays.
| That's even better exposure than high-budget productions
| because you'll hear a variety of local accents. And
| again, oral is only part of the story. You can get a lot
| of grammar practice by talking to people on forums and
| such.
|
| >I actually think another language that's got a huge
| advantage here, for foreign learners, is Japanese. [...]
|
| Japanese is actually my next language, and I've been
| half-seriously considering Korean because some of the
| artists I've been following lately happen to be Korean.
| Right now it's probably the best time in history to learn
| either of the two.
|
| I don't think it's accurate to say that the Japanese have
| been "able to resist" English-language media. Like you
| said, Japanese culture is insular; xenophobic, to put it
| bluntly. It's a combination of Japan being hesitant to
| embrace culturally foreign media and thus producing more
| locally, and western cultures being more willing to
| embrace foreign things.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| > I don't think it's accurate to say that the Japanese
| have been "able to resist" English-language media. Like
| you said, Japanese culture is insular; xenophobic, to put
| it bluntly. It's a combination of Japan being hesitant to
| embrace culturally foreign media and thus producing more
| locally, and western cultures being more willing to
| embrace foreign things.
|
| Right, that's... _how_ they 've been able to resist it.
| Even the French, probably the most infamously-jealous and
| protective of their culture and language in Europe (and
| against whom accusations of xenophobia are leveled pretty
| regularly!), haven't been anywhere near as successful,
| because they don't take it nearly as far as the Japanese.
| For all its other downsides, a strong culture of
| xenophobia seems to be the only way to resist this aspect
| of globalization--even top-down heavy-handed laws don't
| work, historically speaking, even before the Internet. A
| genuine (if somewhat _cultivated_ ) culture of
| reflexively dismissing the foreign seems to work, and not
| much else.
|
| I do agree that Youtube has probably closed the gap
| somewhat, though that became a usefully-well-populated
| resource long after I gave up. Even with dedicated
| _instructional_ material on Youtube, it 's goddamn hard
| to maintain motivation when all the media you genuinely
| want to read/watch are "high" art and come with
| language/complexity barriers to match (Proust, Racine,
| Moliere, Renoir, Godard, et c.), with little material to
| provide the sugary-sweet, approachable appeal of
| sprawling, crappy anime series, or American sitcoms. Best
| the French language has for that is comic books, and even
| that's got nowhere near the volume and selection of, say,
| manga.
|
| About the only media I still consume in French is the
| occasional French news article, just because their slant
| on things or selection of what to cover is sometimes
| interesting--no coincidence that the ability to stumble
| through reading a French news article is currently where
| my French tops out, much reduced from where it once was.
| fluoridation wrote:
| >For all its other downsides, a strong culture of
| xenophobia seems to be the only way to resist this aspect
| of globalization--even top-down heavy-handed laws don't
| work, historically speaking, even before the Internet. A
| genuine (if somewhat cultivated) culture of reflexively
| dismissing the foreign seems to work, and not much else.
|
| I don't think it's a good thing overall, though. They get
| to maintain a very strong national identity, but when
| they do end up interacting with people from other places
| they appear disconnected. For example, if you've ever
| tried to interoperate with Japanese software, it's like
| going back to the '90s. They just do their own thing over
| there.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| Yeah, I'm not saying it's "the right thing to do", but it
| does seem to be the only approach that _works_ if you
| really want to keep the allure of English-language money
| and the vast wave of English-language media from being a
| huge influence on your country 's media.
|
| > For example, if you've ever tried to interoperate with
| Japanese software, it's like going back to the '90s.
|
| Hey, I thought you wrote that it _wasn 't_ a good thing!
| ;-)
| HPsquared wrote:
| I think most people who say that probably consider it "not
| economically viable". That is, their assessment is that the
| expected reward doesn't justify the expected investment.
| retrac wrote:
| Some do think that. Often an impression formed from no
| obvious progress after a few weeks.
| billfruit wrote:
| Perhaps learning to play a musical instrument is also like
| that.
| flycaliguy wrote:
| When my kids were born everybody warned me that the time
| would fly, they would be teenagers before I know it.
|
| That's why I bought a banjo. If these year are going to fly
| by then I might as well insert 10 years of banjo practice
| into the blur. I might be bad now, but by the time my kid is
| 12 I'll be 10 years in.
| criddell wrote:
| I feel that. I bought a guitar in 1996 and took a community
| college introduction to guitar class, then took private
| lessons from a teacher for a couple of years, then signed up
| for lessons at a Suzuki school for a year, then took weekly
| lessons from a teacher at a Guitar Center store for a few
| months. In between I've bought books and apps and followed
| online lessons. Right now I'm working through a rhythm
| fundamentals class from Justin Guitar. I have almost no sense
| of rhythm.
|
| I have a guitar at home and one at work so I'm often picking
| it up and messing around when I need a break from work.
|
| I still don't know a single song from start to finish (other
| than nursery rhyme songs that are just a few bars long). I'm
| pretty close though on Nirvana's _About a Girl_.
|
| I'm also essentially tone deaf but my kids, on the other
| hand, both have perfect pitch somehow. They can hear a
| microwave beep and tell you it's a b-flat the same way I can
| say a car is red. I am going to see an audiologist soon
| because I'm wondering if the crazy squealing I hear non-stop
| is related to my difficulties.
| cloverich wrote:
| One nice thing about getting over the hump in guitar is,
| once you can manage a few shapes (barre chords in
| particular), you can play thousands of new songs without
| having to learn any additional technical skills.
| criddell wrote:
| I'm okay at barre chords. I can barre the Emajor, Eminor,
| Amajor, and Aminor shapes and move them around decently.
| Power chords as well. I know lots of major, minor, and
| 7th chords on open strings.
|
| It's hard for me to describe, but I can do one thing at a
| time pretty well. I can tap my foot to a metronome. I can
| strum muted strings (so it's just a percussive sound) in
| time to a metronome. But I struggle with tapping my foot
| and strumming in time to a metronome even when all I'm
| doing with my fretting hand is muting the strings.
|
| I can play parts of some songs and some riffs but if I
| try to play it along with the original track, I lose the
| rhythm after a bar or two. I don't seem to be able to
| extend that length. I end up strumming with the rhythm of
| the lyrics (syllables) rather than the drum beat.
|
| Right now, I'm mostly working on trying to establish some
| sense of rhythm. The Justin Sandercoe's course on this is
| probably the best resource I've found. He has some
| exercises that are almost meditative.
| filoleg wrote:
| > But I struggle with tapping my foot and strumming in
| time to a metronome
|
| Why would you both tap your foot and use a metronome at
| the same time while playing a piece? I play piano, not a
| guitar, but foot tapping is usually for when you don't
| have a metronome.
|
| Sure, tapping and using a metronome at the same time is
| good, if you are trying to get your foot tapping to be
| more consistent. But actually practicing a music piece
| and using a metronome+tapping your foot feels weird, I
| cannot do it well either. For me, it is either tapping
| foot or using a metronome.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| There are intensive language programs in which you can learn
| basic fluency in about 2-3 months. But you would be spending
| 40+ hours/week in this case.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "but I have many times talked with people who hope to learn
| French to fluency in six months, and people who are convinced
| they could never learn it no matter what."
|
| It is a question of intensity. If all you do is speaking french
| and learning grammar and are surrounded by french people, you
| could reach some level of fluency in 6 months. But not while
| learning it on the side (unless you are very talented).
| tetha wrote:
| I've also been wondering if this isn't similar to the boiling
| frog idea, just on its head.
|
| Practically speaking, I don't think I made huge, noticeable
| progress in my guitar skills over the last 4-5 days, at least I
| couldn't really point out anything that has been a huge jump.
| And in fact, many if not most weeks are like that. And focusing
| on this part tends to be a bad idea.
|
| On the other hand, 4 months ago, after I got my guitar adjusted
| and fixed, I was just a mediocre bass player with some object
| with way too many, way too tiny, way too sharp strings. Just 1
| or 2 weeks ago, something in my head suddenly went "Jo, this
| actually sounds like a slow and terrible version of the rythm
| section that song you're working on covering at the moment".
| And these are the more important insights to look at.
|
| And sure, I'm also starting to realize how long the road might
| be to good, own original songs, but at the same time, the
| progress over some 2-3 years plus half a year on the guitar is
| a lot, looking at it over a longer time.
|
| This is also something healthy we do at work every 6 - 12
| months too. Stop wondering about the daily grind of incidents
| and service requests and smaller scale improvements for a
| moment and consider where we were a year ago.
| deepsun wrote:
| Sounds like author just promotes their YouTube channel.
| [deleted]
| Thespian2 wrote:
| If this is a continuous function, that implies there is some time
| horizon between short-term and long-term where our ability
| estimates are spot-on.
|
| Finding that precise time horizon is an exercise left for the
| reader.
| Hard_Space wrote:
| I have a number of personal development projects that I consider
| critical for my existence. One is to learn the language of the
| country I'm in; another is to go to the gym 3-4 times a week (75%
| of my sessions are currently with a trainer, because I'm new to
| it, started about three months ago).
|
| And a recent 'wear away the stone' project was to earn X$ per
| month writing about AI, which took five years, beginning from
| some very humble pay checks.
|
| But these are not 'vanity' projects: the latter was obviously
| pivotal to my survival, as I'm not independently wealthy, and had
| no job when I migrated; my motivation for the gym is that I have
| suffered from depression for forty years, and pushing myself
| physically and engaging with my body is the most effective
| treatment (albeit found late in life) I have ever come across to
| massively alleviate this (hence looking better, muscles, etc. is
| just collateral benefit); and the need to speak the language of
| my adopted country is obvious.
|
| Sure, there are other things I have persisted in and improved in
| because they massively accord with my interests and enthusiasm,
| but those three projects are my demonstration to myself that
| persistence, while not a magic bullet (some people are never
| going to make it in Hollywood, for instance), is as near to a
| magic bullet for personal transformation as most of us are ever
| likely to have access to.
|
| The gym is the one that fascinates me most at the moment; I look
| around me, as a relative newcomer, and wonder at the motivation
| behind the incredible bodies you see there. Are they all
| sprouting out from some deep psychological need? Even if it's
| 'just' vanity, it would have to qualify as pathological - as my
| own reason for being there is.
|
| So I am interested in people who will go through these kind of
| pain and boredom barriers for less intense reasons, if indeed
| they exist.
| ovulator wrote:
| When I first started hitting the gym, it was because of a
| horrible break up. So there was a psychological need (I found
| it better than any therapist I was trying at the time). But
| then, it just became habit. I went today because I went
| yesterday. Nothing more to it. Then covid hit, and that habit
| broke. I've been getting back into it, but in fits and starts
| because I've lacked that initial push.
| anthomtb wrote:
| I would say this is a difference between a short-term habit
| (going to the gym) and a long-term goal (being fit). Habits
| can be long term of course, but likely to fade if they don't
| resolve around some long term goal.
|
| If your goal is fitness and the gym isn't interesting, you
| will find some other way to obtain fitness. Maybe martial
| arts, maybe a physical team sport, maybe an individual sport.
| Then at some point you'll plateau at your sport, or the
| offseason hits, or you need more strength or endurance, and
| there's your reason to get back in the gym. Rinse and repeat
| for as long as you want to stay fit.
| borroka wrote:
| Side note, but most people who say they don't like lifting
| weights have never lifted weights "properly" (most personal
| trainers are not good teachers of either technique or
| intensity; it is a profession with a low barrier to entry)
| and have never seen the visible effects of lifting weights
| on their bodies.
|
| It's hard to say "I don't like lifting weights" when people
| start complimenting your body and looking at your biceps,
| pecs, glutes, etc.
| alexyz12 wrote:
| this is why I don't like school. It squeezes everything you need
| to know into a semester and you feel dumb for not understanding
| it right away. At least I do. But if you just had a little more
| time it would be totally fine.
| aerhardt wrote:
| I don't always code as much as I'd like to in my job, and
| following some advice here, I've started coding an hour every
| morning, first thing in the morning, since Jan 1st. I've only
| missed one day, which reminds me of my own falibility, but the
| habit has otherwise been transformative and liberating.
|
| I'll be writing a post about it once I hit the two or three-month
| mark for a little bit more of street cred when talking about the
| experience, but if anyone's interested I can give you a few
| preview points here.
| shredprez wrote:
| I'll bite: what do you think?
| aerhardt wrote:
| Things that have helped in sticking to it thus far:
|
| - I do it before work, right after my normal wake-up routine
| (get dressed, meditate, coffee). No excuses on this one. Been
| waking up 30min / 1 hour earlier.
|
| - It has to be programming. Can't be reading books, watching
| videos, anything that's consumption and not creation.
| Naturally, reading my own code and reflecting on design count
| as production.
|
| - On the latter, while reflection may be about 80% of coding,
| I'm trying to cultivate a working style where I write more
| instinctively and faster, and edit later.
|
| - It cannot be HTML or CSS. I enjoy front-end work but it's
| not what I'm looking to improve.
|
| - Likewise, for the moment, and as much as I love these
| activities, initial architecture and project planning don't
| count. I've found free time for that elsewhere thus far.
|
| - If I don't have a project (work or hobby) that's
| interesting, immediately resort to Leetcode, Advent of Code,
| or anything and everything that gets me coding.
|
| - Python is helping. I like many languages, but I know I can
| pick Python up at any time without too much ceremony. Good
| standard lib (including testing), good ecosystem, easy
| syntax, decent type system. Occasional hiccups with
| dependency and environment management make me want to throw
| the computer out of the window, but the positives far
| outweigh this, and such is programming.
|
| - Kept a simple to-do file at the root of the project with an
| ordered product backlog. Keeping it more or less groomed has
| helped me jump immediately back into the action every
| morning.
|
| - Liberal use of ChatGPT and Copilot. They're far from
| perfect and I see them derail often, but they've helped
| somewhat to keep motivation high by removing some of the
| grunt work.
| frogulis wrote:
| Why does my mouse say "Visitor" when I hover over the text?
| dgb23 wrote:
| It's basically a div that is positioned next to your cursor
| when you move it. It's also slightly buggy because it doesn't
| recognize whether the cursor is actually moving across the
| view-port or not. No idea why they did that.
| LorenzA wrote:
| looks like a "fun" thing there are a couple other states that
| change the image that gets displayed.
|
| Clicking up top on the dark mode to get "night own" or type the
| Konami Code to get Konami the other 2 cases seem to be disabled
| p44v9n wrote:
| Ah! Just a silly Easter Egg, I coded up this website when Figma
| was brand new. Figma is a UI design tool that allows for
| collaborative designing -- you can see where people are in the
| same file with a similar cursor label.
|
| It changes based on a few things (e.g. dark mode) + I wanted it
| to change when you entered a password (for my design portfolio)
| too but realised it was too complex.
| frogulis wrote:
| Hmm funny thing, if it had been opt-in (maybe by finding and
| clicking a semi-hidden button) I probably would've been
| intrigued and searched for all the variations. Just a
| thought.
| jasmer wrote:
| That's not an 'easter egg' that's someone licking your ear,
| one of most subtley annoying things I've ever seen on a web
| site. Like an alarm clock in the locked closet you cannot
| open to turn off the alarm.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| Too easter egg; didn't read.
| okal wrote:
| I keep getting so irritated by the cursor, that my brain
| completely refuses to process the contents of the page. So
| irritated, in fact, that I forgot I could switch to Reader
| Mode. I really wish they'd provided a way to disable it.
| p44v9n wrote:
| This is my site -- thanks for the feedback!
| RheingoldRiver wrote:
| Yeah, please disable the custom cursor. IME custom cursors
| are something that site _designers_ tend to like, and think
| are pretty cool, and site _visitors_ end up loathing. The
| cursor is your interface to the UI and as such isn 't
| exactly a *part* of the UI - it's your way of saying "hey
| I'm here, I can do things," etc. So for a UI to take hold
| of it and change it is extremely jarring.
|
| (Video games often do change your cursor of course, and
| part of that is because they're indeed trying to be
| immersive, and you're here for that experience. But such is
| not the case on a website.)
| okal wrote:
| Happy to help!
| 1bent wrote:
| This feels adjacent to something I've done for a long time: I
| will do a task of moderate complexity by hand, typing several
| commands as needed, until I've done it enough to get a feel for
| how it varies, and only then start automating it.
| ctur wrote:
| My general flow is "do it, teach it, automate it" where the
| middle step is explaining it to someone else who then also does
| it then (hopefully) helps, or at least consults, on the
| automation. This way you can iterate a bit before codifying it
| and help flush out any bad ideas or assumptions.
| js8 wrote:
| I also claim that people overestimate the effort needed but
| underestimate the time needed. Perhaps we mostly do not take
| learning (and efficiency that comes with it) into account. Longer
| real projects are more an S-curve than straight line where time =
| effort.
| SunghoYahng wrote:
| Then my hypothesis is that if someone actually puts as much
| effort into the goal as they estimate, they will achieve it in
| as little time as they estimate.
| shanebellone wrote:
| I agree with this. I'd venture a guess that we overly value
| our time which translates to overestimating the impact of
| applying that time. However, we also underestimate the true
| scope of longer timeframes.
| mberger wrote:
| I wonder if it's because of the decline in neuroplasticity as
| we age. We take a week to learn a new video game and expect
| that peace to continue when we get older. It can be a hit to
| the ego that it may take a little longer, that we aren't
| quite as 'smart' as we thought.
| Jensson wrote:
| Biggest effect is that your standards get higher. As a kid
| learning a game just meant learning to play it at a kids
| low skill level. Kids till spend years to get good. But as
| an adult who has played a lot of games you have gotten
| pretty good at many of them, then when you play a new game
| getting to that level again will take a lot of effort and
| time.
|
| For example, you see the world records in factorio aren't
| held by kids. Kids has better reflexes which is crucial for
| some games, but their ability to learn isn't much higher
| than a young adults.
| user_7832 wrote:
| While possible, I am not so sure of that. I am in my
| early/mid 20s (so hopefully no major cognitive decline!)
| but I still find things taking longer than expected. Part
| of it may be the work I'm doing today is tougher in some
| ways. I also have adhd though so that may also affect this.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Probably not. There are efficiency loses when you make things
| too much dense in time. Our brains just do not like a lot of
| focus for long times.
| p44v9n wrote:
| 100% this
| coyotespike wrote:
| I like this way of framing it. It's encouraging in that if you
| imagine how long something might take to get good at, it'll
| feel hard, but on a daily basis sitting down to practice every
| day isn't so hard.
| thenerdhead wrote:
| I think there's a point where the opposite is true in your life
| too. Especially when you've past the "productivity is bullshit"
| phase. Parkinson's law tends to be more true for people who want
| to be more efficient than productive.
| quenix wrote:
| What is the "productivity is bullshit phase"?
| thenerdhead wrote:
| That productivity hacks are temporal at best and you can be
| plenty efficient by just focusing on one thing at a time.
| That you can get more done in a day than most people get done
| in a week or month this way. That productivity gurus are not
| the people to look for answers from, but rather yourself.
|
| That overestimating your short term is limiting given people
| have wonder years through their personal development where
| they get more done in a single year than a decade. Etc. That
| people like the author might be doing too much and could
| benefit from doing less making them more efficient in both
| the short and long term.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| I'm confused. Which paragraph is the incorrect take, and
| which the correct one?
| thenerdhead wrote:
| There is no correct take because it changes with time
| over one's personal development.
|
| If you're getting more done with the limited time you
| have each day, you are in the productivity camp.
|
| If you're getting more done with less time each day, you
| are in the efficiency camp.
|
| If you're getting the right things done with less time
| each day, you're in the effectiveness camp.
|
| I am just pointing out that this author talks about all
| the stuff(productivity) they accomplished in a short
| period of time to then talk about overestimating their
| ability?
|
| If anything they are underestimating it. Imagine what
| they could do if they did one thing fully(efficiency) and
| not a handful of things partially? That's the
| productivity trap in my opinion.
|
| Take it one step further, if they knew the one thing they
| were doing is the right thing to be doing(i.e. YouTube),
| they would be especially effective.
| Jensson wrote:
| It takes a lot of work to figure out the right thing to
| do, so you need to spend all those hours. If you don't
| then you just go into the stagnation phase of your life
| where you stop growing because you stop putting in
| efforts on things you aren't sure are needed.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| I can't speak to my own accomplishments, but: I am not quite as
| often impressed by what some people manage to do in a couple of
| weekends, but I am more often impressed by the things that they
| do in a matter of months or years.
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