[HN Gopher] Ability to see expertise is a milestone worth aiming...
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Ability to see expertise is a milestone worth aiming for (2022)
Author : nickwritesit
Score : 231 points
Date : 2023-07-19 11:51 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (commoncog.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (commoncog.com)
| fidotron wrote:
| There is clearly a major problem with this in SV. A lot of people
| seem to confuse confidence with expertise, and fail to grasp that
| a scary proportion of the time the individual is so confident
| because they don't understand the problems with what they are
| doing.
|
| Furthermore, modern software management practice doesn't want
| this because it wants replaceable cogs. If you can recognize
| expertise you have to appreciate that teams where everyone is
| good at everything are nonsensical, and that you need actual
| balanced mixes of personalities and specialists, which makes
| hiring a far harder problem. As such recognizing expertise is
| very much not the order of the day.
| dilyevsky wrote:
| > Furthermore, modern software management practice doesn't want
| this because it wants replaceable cogs
|
| In my mind that was always just an excuse to hire as many
| people as possible to grow their org and get promoted to n+1.
| But hey it worked with 0% rates!
| [deleted]
| Enginerrrd wrote:
| I actually think ageism is a huge component of this.
|
| In classical engineering fields, experience was highly valued.
| In some it still is. In civil engineering, no 24 year old will
| be able to bullshit their way into senior level roles. It just
| doesn't happen. The senior guys get more and more valuable. A
| big part of that is that it's very hard to bullshit your way
| through that field without at least 6-8 years of experience,
| and by then you'll hopefully have been humbled enough not to
| try and bullshit it.
|
| I think missteps and mistakes hit differently when someone
| traceably stamps their name on a finished product and takes
| personal liability for it in perpetuity.
| 3abiton wrote:
| Dunning-kruger strikes again
| dustingetz wrote:
| it's not DK, it's sales. It exploits substitution bias:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attribute_substitution
|
| "Thinking Fast and Slow" has a whole chapter on this with
| ample evidence
| Justsignedup wrote:
| Expertise makes sense in larger teams and companies. The
| smaller you are the more one person has to do. The larger ypu
| are the more you can afford to have a few people who are
| absolute experts of a small section but can't make a project
| complete end to end. But at a large enough company it doesn't
| matter.
|
| If you have 10 engineers, you need generalists.if you have 1000
| engineers, generalists generally are smart people who are
| potential experts, but not really that useful.
| wesapien wrote:
| Wouldn't it be better to hire a mixture of specialists and
| generalists especially today when diversity should be focused
| in thought rather than looks. Someone not me said that
| specialists are a master of one and connector of none.
| nradov wrote:
| Sure, ideally. In the real world hiring managers have to take
| what they can get from the applications that come in. And in
| a rapidly changing industry the specialists that you need
| today might be useless in two years. One approach that can
| work in some organizations is to hire mostly generalists as
| employees, and bring in specialists when needed as temporary
| contractors.
| ModernMech wrote:
| Major problem on HN too. You can't even mention expertise,
| experience, or credentials here without someone screeching
| "fallacy! appeal to authority!!"
| kashunstva wrote:
| This relates closely to Anders Ericsson's theory of expert
| performance through deliberate practice. The article discusses
| the role of nuanced domain-specific vocabulary to describe
| elements of expertise before pivoting to subsume it all under the
| rubric of _models_. This is exactly how Ericsson sees deliberate
| practice working - by building extraordinarily detailed and
| nuanced neurocognitive models and being able to draw on them
| readily (and often unconsciously) in performance.
| lapcat wrote:
| The problem with the author's tennis anecdote about Roger
| Federer's 2017 career resurgence is that in reality it had more
| to do with the top player Novak Djokovic's elbow injury than with
| Federer's backhand.
|
| "In 2017, Djokovic suffered from an elbow injury that weakened
| his results until the 2018 Wimbledon Championships, where he won
| the title while ranked No. 21 in the world."
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novak_Djokovic#Career_statisti...
| nativecoinc wrote:
| There are some teachers of Samatha meditation, a Buddhist
| concentration meditation, that teach that you at any point are
| meditating at one of ten _stages_. This is both about skill as
| well as about factors like how agitated your mind is in general.
| And these stages seem to have very well-defined descriptions: for
| example one stage might be differentiated from the previous one
| by overcoming drowsiness. This is very helpful since some people
| teach meditation by just telling you how to _do_ it but not (in
| fact sometimes actively avoiding) how you can evaluate where you
| _are_ and how you are doing. Then the practice becomes just about
| "being present" and other slogans that might be wholly non-
| actionable.
|
| It's also very difficult to protest this kind of approach (edit:
| the non-goal approach) since merely mentioning things like "goal"
| or "evaluation" will trigger someone's knee-jerk you're-doing-it-
| wrong reaction, even though what _they_ practice might be
| completely different to what you are doing or trying to achieve.
| xyzelement wrote:
| Not directly related to the article but I had two amusing
| encounters with expertise recently.
|
| I sat next to an Econ professor (at an Ivy) on a flight. I told
| him I had worked at a hedge fund, and he was like "wow, I could
| never put myself in a situation where my living depended on my
| economic theories being right."
|
| A good friend of mine is a kinda-famous evolutionary biologist.
| He's in his mid-40s now, unmarried and doesn't have kids, and
| likely none on the horizon.
|
| In the economist case, what does it mean that in his expert
| opinion, he wouldn't trust his own expert opinion! In the
| biologist case, what does it mean to be one of the world's
| leading experts on "evolutionary biology" and yet completely fail
| to pass your own genes?
|
| What's most interesting to me is that neither of these scenarios
| strike us as "super wrong." I can imagine most people wouldn't
| hesitate to attend a class taught by either one of these guys,
| while we'd avoid analogous situations (eg: we wouldn't use a
| broke financial advisor or fly on an airplane whose designer
| refuses to set foot on it.) What's the difference?
| leetcrew wrote:
| the difference is that academic research is several degrees of
| abstraction removed from real world applications.
|
| the economist might not specialize in theories about why, when,
| or how much specific assets go up or down. even if he did, he
| might not have the skills to make actionable predictions from
| messy input data. doesn't mean his theories are wrong, just
| that someone else needs to bridge the gap between theory and
| application.
|
| evolutionary biology has almost nothing to do with being a good
| parent. I don't think this even requires an explanation.
|
| the financial advisor is the exact opposite. managing personal
| finances is the exact problem they are supposed to help you
| solve. if they can't do it for themselves, that's a pretty
| strong reason to doubt they can do it for you.
| bitwize wrote:
| Some people are just more cut out to study something intently
| than to reproduce. They leave other things to the future
| besides descendants.
| Qwertious wrote:
| >what does it mean to be one of the world's leading experts on
| "evolutionary biology" and yet completely fail to pass your own
| genes?
|
| It means he sees the difference between a biological imperative
| and a moral imperative - who says he's "supposed" to pass on
| his genes? A strand of deoxyribonucleic acid? Is this judgement
| exhibited exclusively by proteins, or can a chunk of plastic
| also judge you for not knocking a girl up?
| nonameiguess wrote:
| Unlike you, an evolutionary biologist knows that if enough of
| his siblings and cousins have children, the probability is very
| high that most of his genes have been passed on even if he
| wasn't the one to do it. Also, only 50% of your own get passed
| on per child, so it's entirely possible _more_ of your genes
| were passed on by other people even if you have a child or two.
| selykg wrote:
| As far as the economist. I suspect he understands that they're
| theories, thus, to some extent guesses. Some data might support
| it, but does it hold true in every case? Probably not. Does it
| hold true in most cases? Maybe not. Would he bet money,
| effectively what a hedge fund does in my very limited
| experience here? Sounds like no.
|
| This to me sounds like a simple example of he understands the
| limitations of his work!
|
| As for your evolutionary biologist friend. Being interested in
| evolutionary biology does not mean you are inherently someone
| that wants to be a parent. These are very very different
| things. Besides, evolutionary biology impacts more than just
| humans, it impacts every species. Being a parent comes with a
| great responsibility. Someone could just as easily be a really
| big fan of dogs, but not want one because of the responsibility
| or the costs, or similar.
| synetic wrote:
| It was a joke (most likely) in the part of the economist.
| Self deprecation.
| xyzelement wrote:
| Yup, your explanation resonates with what I think are the
| superficial reasons society is accepting of both of these
| cases. You have to think a little bit deeper to feel why this
| might be problematic.
|
| If the economist weighs the risk to not put too much stock in
| these theories (no pun intended actually), why does he not
| likewise hesitate to teach these theories to his students?
| Like "I don't believe 100% that this is how the world works
| enough to bet my own money, but I am going to tell hundreds
| of students every year this is how the world works."
|
| The biologist story is subtler. One could argue that failure
| to become a parent signals that you deeply, fundamentally,
| don't get biology - despite your superficial interest and
| theoretical knowledge? Like, you may talk about zygotes all
| day but you failed to make one...
|
| Maybe the difference between economists and biologists vs
| financial advisors and engineers is that we expect the later
| to have skin in the game but for some reason allow the former
| to not have to.
| selykg wrote:
| I don't really agree with any of that. You seem to be
| really trying hard to draw lines to make these seem more
| than they are.
|
| Economics is complicated because at a fundamental level
| you're trying to understand people and their decisions.
| Sorry but you're really never going to "solve" that
| problem. Stuff will forever be a theory.
|
| You are also assuming that the economist is teaching this
| and saying "this is how it works, it's 100% accurate" and
| not starting off with "this is a theory, and we work
| towards making it better over time with new data and new
| ideas." Just because something may not be 100% perfect does
| not mean you don't strive to improve what you have and you
| won't improve what you have if you just let it rot on the
| vine and not teach the next generation.
|
| The biology one is even more convoluted. Having an
| _interest_ in something does not mean you have to "be" the
| interest. A simple example, I work to live, not live to
| work. I am not my work. My work is only here to support me
| living my life. You are claiming that the biologist is a
| failure because they didn't want, or couldn't, create
| offspring despite their interest being in evolutionary
| biology. That's some kind of weird argument to make there
| man...
| gilleain wrote:
| The biologist example is, respectfully, ridiculous.
|
| Would you expect experts in criminal psychology to be
| serial killers?
| [deleted]
| ceejayoz wrote:
| By their standard, the world's foremost expert in fluid
| dynamics is a river.
| ubermonkey wrote:
| >One could argue that failure to become a parent signals
| that you deeply, fundamentally, don't get biology
|
| This is complete and utter nonsense.
| digging wrote:
| Just stop pushing these theories. You're _way_ off.
|
| > I don't believe 100% that this is how the world works
| enough to bet my own money, but I am going to tell hundreds
| of students every year this is how the world works
|
| This is a fundamental misunderstanding of what a good
| professor does. If the economist acts in this way, they
| have failed as a teacher, not as an expert in economics.
| Likewise I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of
| economics as a science - it's not one, and it sounds like
| the economist was making a quip at the predictive weakness
| of the field overall.
|
| > The biologist story is subtler.
|
| No, it's not. You're just having to push harder to keep it
| afloat.
|
| > One could argue that failure to become a parent signals
| that you deeply, fundamentally, don't get biology
|
| One would be wildly wrong to make that argument. Once
| again, I think this shows a deep lack of understanding on
| your part of the field itself and what it means to study a
| field. And also what it means to have a child as a human,
| honestly.
|
| > economists and biologists vs financial advisors and
| engineers is that we expect the later to have skin in the
| game but for some reason allow the former to not have to
|
| Is this not obvious? You're reaching very hard to dig at
| researchers in a way that indicates you don't know what
| research actually is. Or maybe you're defensive of the work
| you do? I shouldn't speculate too hard here or I risk also
| being this wrong.
| pvaldes wrote:
| I have met several paleontologists and no one were able to
| fossilize properly. There are a lot of fake experts in science,
| it seems.
| phkahler wrote:
| I can tie these together. Even if the biologist is in favor of
| eugenics (selective breeding of humans) he probably also knows
| that we are not good judges of overall fitness. The econ guy
| may have some great ideas, but he knows the difference between
| theory and practice. In both cases they "know what they don't
| know". On a more personal level, maybe the biologist just wants
| to follow his heart (which is actually the correct move), and
| the economist likes to play it safe?
|
| "You do you" is the correct answer in almost every case.
| Evolution does not pre-select and deliberately make copies.
| It's a process where individuals do their thing and let the
| chips fall where they may. The process takes care of the rest.
| krisoft wrote:
| I see zero problem with having no children and studying
| evolution. You don't need to become superconductive to study
| the physics of superconductivity. You don't need to become
| infected by every virus to study virology, and you definietly
| don't need to be a virus to be a good virologist. So why would
| you need to pass on your genes to study evolution?
| xyzelement wrote:
| // So why would you need to pass on your genes to study
| evolution?
|
| You can study whatever you want, I am questioning if you can
| be considered "expert" if you profoundly fail at the topic of
| your field.
| krisoft wrote:
| > I am questioning if you can be considered "expert" if you
| profoundly fail at the topic of your field.
|
| You are confusing the person with the field of study.
|
| This confusion is more obvious if you think about the
| superconductor/ expert on superconduction example.
|
| A superconductor is a material which conducts direct
| current with near zero resistance. You can test if
| something is a superconductor by aligator clipping a
| voltage source on it and measuring the resistance.
|
| An expert on superconductors is a person who is
| knowledgeable about the phenomenon of superconduction. You
| can test if someone is such an expert by asking them
| questions about what materials are superconducting, under
| what circumstances they are, what phenomena can be observed
| during super conducting and etc etc.
|
| If you get confused and clip the aligator clips on the
| expert you will measure a larger than zero resistance. If
| you start asking quiz questions from a superconductive
| material about superconductivity you will observe that it
| does not answer any of them.
|
| These two things are fundamentally different. You can be
| good at one while miserably failing the other, or vice
| versa.
|
| Similarly someone who studies evolutionary biology is
| someone who studies the effect of evolution on different
| kind of living things. They are good at predicting things
| which they can prove later either experimentally, or with
| observations about creatures and their circumstances. It
| has nothing to do with the act of procreation. A
| disembodied AI can be an expert at evolutionary biology as
| long as it has good theories on the topic which it can
| support with relevant evidence.
|
| Through two practical examples. Someone who is good at
| surviving at evolutionary timescales is for example a
| person with a handfull of healthy, and fit children. Each
| of them carrying a mutation which makes their female
| offspring (daughters, grand-daughters and so on) have a
| tiny bit wider hips thus increasing their chances of having
| uncomplicated births, thus increasing the chances of having
| lots of lots of offspring a tiny bit.
|
| Someone who is good at studying evolutionary biology for
| example might be able to explain why animals trapped on an
| island all over the world seem to change in a way that
| their offspring becomes smaller in stature.
|
| Mixing up these two is as silly as measuring the resistance
| of your superconductivity experts.
| dullcrisp wrote:
| Okay yes, but I measured a supposed superconductive
| expert and they weren't superconductive even at lower
| temperatures. What would you say to that?
| bena wrote:
| How does not having kids cause you to be a failure at
| evolutionary biology?
| c22 wrote:
| If anything it sounds like the expert has correctly
| identified the fact that expertise in evolutionary
| biology confers no evolutionary advantage.
| [deleted]
| Zetice wrote:
| Your examples don't show people failing, they show you
| don't understand their fields enough to know what success
| means.
| koonsolo wrote:
| You can also be an expert on healthy food, but don't have
| the self control to actually follow your own advice.
|
| In the end, those are 2 different domains. Knowing a
| certain theory and overcoming all the limitations of
| applying those are very different.
|
| Let me give you another example: Formula 1 or MotoGP. The
| engineers are not driving the thing, and the drivers are
| not engineering it. Claiming that one needs to be able to
| be a master in the other is weird.
| [deleted]
| nouveaux wrote:
| In the case of the economist, he may have the best theories but
| it doesn't mean it's correct. He is likely saying his theories
| have too much uncertainties.
|
| In the case of the evolutionary biologist, successful
| procreation does not require any knowledge of biology.
|
| When it comes to planes, there is a high correlation between
| the quality of the plane and the quality of the design.
| xyzelement wrote:
| // successful procreation does not require any knowledge of
| biology.
|
| Maybe this is a good point. I would argue that a high school
| kid who knocks up his girlfriend has demonstrated a better
| _intuitive_ grasp of biology than my PhD friend.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Your conflating _understanding_ biology and _performing_
| biology is very odd.
|
| A bacterium can perform cell division, but it can't explain
| it. The evolutionary biologist's job isn't to personally
| have sex, it's to explain what happens when many
| generations of organisms do so.
| sharkbot wrote:
| Just to be clear, there are many aspects of biology that
| that professor is ignoring on a regular basis that you've
| elided (hibernation, molting, limb regeneration, etc). What
| specifically about procreation is important enough to call
| that individual's expertise into question?
| digging wrote:
| > a better intuitive grasp of biology
|
| Not even a little. The high school students are slaves to
| unconscious drives in their bodies and that's not even
| _related_ to having an understanding of biology. Or do you
| say that a world expert in biology who would rather spend
| their time furthering studies than raising a child actually
| knows less about biology than rabbits? Your arguments aren
| 't making any sense.
| msp_yc wrote:
| As much as I don't care for the adage, "those who can, do;
| those who don't, teach" fits here :)
| nradov wrote:
| I actually would hesitate to take a course from an economist
| who doesn't have a track record of making accurate predictions
| in the real world (not necessarily about trading specifically).
| Most of econ has always been unscientific bunk that isn't even
| useful for practical modeling. Why waste any time learning it
| unless you need the course to meet arbitrary graduation
| requirements or something?
| booleandilemma wrote:
| I only trust biology teachers with three kids at a minimum.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > What's most interesting to me is that neither of these
| scenarios strike us as "super wrong.
|
| I don't think they are wrong at all. That's what I would
| expect. In my experience, one of the marks of being an expert
| in a subject is being very aware of the limits of their
| knowledge and expertise in it.
| nerdchum wrote:
| Maybe the evolutionary biologist is so next level that they
| want humans to die out so other animals evolve.
| motohagiography wrote:
| I'd venture the difference is being a professor vs. a
| practitioner. To _profess_ is to talk and teach and expand the
| opportunities of the discipline by lodging the ideas in peoples
| minds. A practitioner is someone who actually does something,
| but it doesn 't really scale much past their own ability to
| physically do it. They have a practice. One plants, the other
| harvests. Such a good question to pose though.
| hiatus wrote:
| > One plants, the other harvests.
|
| This sentiment was so elegantly expressed and struck a chord.
| Thank you for that.
| hardware2win wrote:
| This is why arguing with people from industry and reading a lot
| is very useful, because it allows you to build your nomenclature
|
| In software world such a word for me was "modeling"
|
| It no longer was "coding", "programming", I started modeling real
| world
| someweirdperson wrote:
| But that's only for code that's painted using the mouse, not
| for code typed on the keyboard.
| taeric wrote:
| I'm curious what you mean? Code is very much a symbolic
| modeling of a problem domain.
| someweirdperson wrote:
| There are people who consider software written, I mean
| painted, or as they say modelled, in the language of e.g.
| Simulink to be of higher value than other representations
| of code.
|
| The reason for this is probably different use of the same
| terms. Some code might be tested within an implementation
| of a model of the real environment. That is a frequent use-
| case used to sell graphical languages. The term model is
| used for two different things: The model of the real world
| to allow testing and for the implementation of the solution
| in a graphical language. Of course developers in those
| environments are Klingons like we all are, no real effort
| for tests, and only the graphical solution remains. But it
| is perceived as if it had all the positive attributes of a
| solution tested in a simulated reality. And therefore
| something modelled is better, because it is modelled.
| taeric wrote:
| I think this is still doing it a disservice. You don't
| test a code with a model of the real environment. You
| execute the code, which was modeling something.
|
| Consider, "F=ma" is a mathematical model relating force
| to mass and acceleration. You can test this by dropping
| several things each from the same height and seeing that
| the force linearly increases based on the mass of what
| you are dropping. Similarly, you could test the model by
| accelerating something to a halt at different speeds and
| seeing how much force is imparted into it.
|
| Is that not a "model" because it is not necessarily
| graphical?
|
| So, similarly, much CRUD software can be seen as modeling
| different agents in an overall system and what happens
| when they interact in certain ways.
|
| Edit: I want to add that I think I see where you are
| coming from. Many treatments of graphical models like to
| hold them up as a special form of modeling.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| Is expertise still important in the age of ChatGPT?
| astrobe_ wrote:
| Yeah. ChatGPT has no expertise at all, just a huge amount of
| knowledge.
|
| Because there are two parts in expertise: pure knowledge, and a
| set of weighed criteria to evaluate things. This second part is
| what I think TFA calls "tacit" knowledge. This stuff is a job
| for neural networks, but more for Alpha0 than for ChatGPT -
| although it does probably that under the hood, but it's an
| expertise used to string together questions and answers. That's
| enough to give the illusion of expertise, but you still face
| the problem how evaluating that artificial expert. There are
| many reports that ChatGPT can be "slightly wrong" that only
| experts can really spot. You can have ChatGPT do your
| boilerplate code or bulk work _if_ you are an expert in the
| field.
|
| I personally think of this part of expertise as the expert's
| "intuition". This intuition is indeed sometimes difficult to
| communicate. Sometimes because it comes from various
| experiences, and describing those experiences in enough details
| would take far too long. Sometimes A just "feels" better than B
| because those criteria and weights are subconscious; pretty
| much like you apply a certain amount of force to lift an object
| because you have subconsciously evaluated its weight (either
| with material density and shape, or from memory because you've
| lifted similar things before) - and sometimes you are surprised
| because it is magnetized or it the box has been emptied.
|
| However, my criteria to evaluate expertise is still how well
| the expert can explain something to me - that is, if they are
| good teachers. This also an unreliable proxy like the "vocab
| point" of TFA. Not everyone is a good teacher, and impostors or
| poseurs can make you feel like you understand when they are
| actually bullshitting you.
|
| ChatGPT could be a good (enough) teacher that can help you
| becoming an expert (partly because of the fact checking work
| you'll have to do, something you normally don't have to do with
| an actual teacher), but ChatGPT as an expert, it is a no-no in
| my book.
| [deleted]
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| This is a good question, and I don't think you should be
| downvoted.
|
| It is important for several reasons:
|
| - As other commenters pointed out, filtering, adapting and
| integrating ChatGPT output has a better ROI with experts.
|
| - An expert will know the ROI of using ChatGPT, including on
| the long run, and can assess if it's worth it or not. A non
| expert will use it for as long as it works, and can hit a wall
| of technical debts accumulated from the GPT usage that will now
| sunk the cost of the entire operation.
|
| - Expertise comes with a lot of implicit knowledge that ChatGPT
| doesn't access to.
|
| - ChatGPT doesn't learn from mistakes in the way humans does.
| And humans don't share the mistakes they made as much. And
| experts have made all the mistakes.
|
| - ChatGPT tries very hard not to not be opinionated, or to have
| an opinion that will offend the least amount of people. IRL
| though, you want opinionated takes.
|
| There are, however, many situations where being an expert to
| benefit from ChatGPT is no required. I also find that sometimes
| being an expert prevents me from getting the most of ChatGPT,
| because I stick to what I know instead of embracing novel
| workflows. I have a friend coding things with repeated ChatGPT
| copy/paste loops over days, and they have done great things
| with it.
| ido wrote:
| yes
| SanderNL wrote:
| If anything it's _more_ important. Without it you cannot
| separate its confabulation from its useful output.
|
| Knowing when to use what tool, how to do it properly and to
| what extent takes expertise as well.
|
| Carpenters and craftsmen in general are infinitely more
| productive with woodworking and related tools than I will ever
| be. My destiny is assembling IKEA cupboards. The same principle
| will apply with AI tools. Sure you can whip up something, but a
| specialist will do it infinitely better in 1/100th of the time
| with the same tools.
|
| Guess who will be employed to make use of said tools?
| candiddevmike wrote:
| Probably not the best comparison, as a carpenter or craftsmen
| can't tell a LLM something to build X out of wood and have it
| come out mostly OK (yet?). Anyone can tell ChatGPT to write
| some code to do X, not just expert programmers. It may not be
| perfect, but it's only going to get better, no?
| SanderNL wrote:
| This metaphor is not about the tools so much as it is about
| the nature of expertise and its effect on the results of
| said tools.
|
| Someone with expertise will use any tools, including GPT,
| in ways a novice can't even understand. Same tools,
| different outputs. Not the tools, because basically anyone
| has access, but the one using it will determine the
| outcome. In a capitalist society you will have to compete
| otherwise known as staying employed.
|
| Someone with expertise can hook up AIs in ways and with a
| velocity that will leave amateurs in the dust. The amateurs
| will still be fiddling around with "prompts" and Googling
| or ChatGPT'ing what "latent" means while the expert has
| working systems ready to go.
|
| I don't see this chasm getting smaller. These tools
| _magnify_ your inherent (in)competency. Try to compete with
| a professional artist competent with Stable Diffusion if
| you want a taste of that.
| derbOac wrote:
| I understand the intent, but this article seems to be arguing for
| an Emperor's New Clothes scenario where no one can identify the
| value of something except for a vanishingly small number of
| people.
|
| It's some economic variant of the tree falling in the forest
| analogy: if a service has quality but no one can recognize it
| does it have value?
|
| It strikes me as a recipe for regulatory capture and
| overcredentialing.
|
| Value ultimately lies in the purchaser, not the producer.
|
| Maybe it depends on the market but this seemed to be arguing for
| something dangerous to me.
| blackbear_ wrote:
| > Value ultimately lies in the purchaser, not the producer.
|
| I'm not entirely convinced that this holds, in practice. It
| makes sense for rational purchasers with perfect and complete
| information, but that is never true in reality, and it ignored
| all cognitive biases that humans use to make decisions,
| including being misled by advertisment.
|
| For example, the tobacco industry can scream all they want that
| smoking does not cause cancer, but being loud about it does not
| make it true. Initially, people didn't even like smoking
| because of the bad taste, but massive advertising campaigns
| including paying celebrities to smoke in public changed the
| perception of the value of smoking. In a similar manner, after
| acquiring all major sources of diamonds and inflating their
| prices, advertisement convinced the public that a man
| absolutely needs a ring with a diamond to "prove" their love to
| their bride. Same for the food industry and sugar, you know
| where I am going.
|
| All of these are examples of "value" created by producers by
| misleading customers that their product is good and not harmful
| for them. But facts don't become true or false just because
| everybody believes in them. People can believe false things,
| and no matter what they do or say, those things remain false.
|
| Not to mention that immediate value for individuals can have
| considerable negative value in the long-term for society. Think
| at the huge resources we spend on finding cures for cancer and
| obesity, just because we sell addictive stuff and pretend that
| people "want" those. If you consider society as a whole, this
| appears to be an extremely inefficient use of resources.
| WanderPanda wrote:
| I would go further and say it is not even with the purchaser
| but with the consumer (who by definition "destroys" that value)
| xyzelement wrote:
| // Customers tends not to be experts. So after a certain level of
| skill has been achieved, any improvements that are made through
| experience are invisible to the people you're selling to.
|
| The relevant question is - does it matter? The Formula 1 pit crew
| is more expert than the mechanics at the Toyota dealership in
| ways I can't appreciate - but does it matter for my Highlander's
| oil change?
|
| The answer might be "Yes, the F1 crew will do it in a way that
| prolongs the life of your engine" (I care about that!) or "Yes,
| the F1 crew will change your oil in 20% of the time" (I may or
| may not care about saving a few minutes every 6 months) or "No,
| you won't notice a difference but they are just more expert" (in
| which case I totally don't care!)
|
| Part of expertise is ability to articulate its relevance to a
| given situation. Your customer may need help in _validating_ your
| expertise, but at least start with the claim of what you can do.
| nradov wrote:
| F1 pit crew members are highly trained athletes who specialize
| in fast tire changes. Many of them are recruited from other
| sports based on strength, speed, and agility. They often have
| no real experience as automotive technicians.
|
| F1 teams do have world class mechanics but most of them aren't
| part of the pit crews.
| Etheryte wrote:
| Are you familiar with the expression missing the forest for
| the trees?
| Cipater wrote:
| >Many of them are recruited from other sports based on
| strength, speed, and agility.
|
| This is not true at all. F1 pit crews are mechanics who have
| worked with cars in other motorsport racing series/feeder
| series and worked their way up to an F1 team.
| ianmcgowan wrote:
| I think the point is when reaching higher levels of expertise
| is not to try and convince existing customers to move up the
| ladder with you, it's that you need to find an entirely new set
| of customers who need that level of expertise and appreciate
| the difference. It's not about explaining - there's a quantum
| leap between levels.
|
| It might be trite, but as a contractor walking my rate up over
| 10 years, I found it interesting.
| xyzelement wrote:
| I agree on "forget your existing low level customers" and I
| think you're hitting on one of the growth paths but there's
| another one.
|
| The path you are hitting on implies the client/employer
| already knows what they need and are gatekeeping on it. It's
| great to be able to get past those gates - ie, if you've
| grown yourself into a FAANG-caliber engineer, go interview at
| Google, but in this case Google already knows what they need
| and what that looks like.
|
| The line from the article that I cited is the other dynamic -
| where the client doesn't know what they need. You're right
| that might be because they are a low level client and don't
| actually need your expertise (what you mentioned) but it may
| also be the case that they _do_ badly need you but can 't
| recognize it because of your relative difference in levels.
|
| In general, the higher your level, the more likely it is that
| even otherwise high-level people will not understand the
| nuance of what you can bring to them. In that case, there's
| the sales process that should kick in, and by sales I simply
| mean helping the client see that they have a problem and that
| they would be much better off if that problem was solved, and
| that you're a rare breed who can do it.
| ianmcgowan wrote:
| That's a good point, and the sales education process is
| definitely important. It's a fine line between "let's step
| back and look at your actual pain points" and "what else
| can I upsell you on while I have your attention?", that
| customers are very wary of crossing.
| FailMore wrote:
| Really enjoyed. Very nice to have a new concept inserted into
| your brain! And well written to boot
| jiggawatts wrote:
| This is an extremely important article to read for professionals
| of all sorts, not just freelancers.
|
| It's an issue that I struggle with nearly daily. I _can 't_
| convince customers to pay me what I'm worth, because they can't
| judge my true value. Meanwhile, they'll happily pay Deloitte or
| Accenture 3x as much as what I charge, and then take the
| misguided ramblings of a junior-sold-as-senior at face value, not
| knowing the difference.
|
| > _I've noticed that in nearly every skill tree I've climbed,
| there comes a point where you begin to notice certain nuances of
| skill that novices not only don't notice, but that you cannot
| articulate using the commonly accepted vocabulary of the skill._
|
| This happened to me just over the last month or so. I was trying
| to explain to a CTO how horrifically wrong it is to plumb their
| entire cloud network through just a pair of virtual machines for
| "security". I just could not make him understand that 5
| milliseconds of additional latency in the era where _microseconds
| are an eternity_ is a disaster for a veritable smorgasbord of
| upcoming projects. It just. Would. Not. Sink. In.
|
| To some people, "micro" and "milli" sound the same. Latency just
| doesn't compute as a _thing_ to be concerned about.
|
| I've spent my career performance tuning, but then how do I
| explain this to people who think a 60-second timeout is a
| performance problem best solved by buying another million dollars
| worth of kit?
|
| The article jumps between martial arts and the world of finance,
| so I'll jump to another example: AI playing games.
|
| When I watched AlphaZero play chess, I was just a tiny bit
| impressed. I watched it beat the Go grandmaster and I was not
| very impressed. Then I watched it play Dota 2 -- in which I've
| sunk several thousand hours -- and holy crap. Wow! It was
| suddenly _terrifying_ how good it was, because I could judge the
| nuance of what it was doing.
| thrw4wy-d2 wrote:
| > Then I watched it play Dota 2 -- in which I've sunk several
| thousand hours -- and holy crap
|
| Fascinating. I've never professionally worked in what it sounds
| like you do, so I was moderately agreeing with you until this.
|
| I've played Dota likely as long as you in addition to playing
| at a semi pro level (placing well in a couple official pro
| qualifying tournaments as well as playing pubs with the players
| the AI played against) and I couldn't disagree more.
|
| It was impressive, but it's main advantage came from its
| inhuman reaction times. They added some buffer but still didn't
| account for 5 players working in perfect unison. That kind of
| coordination is an enormous advantage in a game like Dota. I
| left roughly feeling like I do now about AI - very impressive,
| but way over hyped and only sold to people that don't truly get
| Dota.
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| It sounds like you were just telling the CTO "this is wrong"
| instead of offering an alternative solution?
|
| If that's the case it's not surprising it didn't sink in.
| You're just giving him another problem.
|
| > _I 've spent my career performance tuning, but then how do I
| explain this to people who think a 60-second timeout is a
| performance problem best solved by buying another million
| dollars worth of kit?_
|
| I'm surprised you've spent your career doing this and you still
| haven't figured out how to get people to listen to you.
|
| Making your work legible to others feels as important as the
| work itself.
| yard2010 wrote:
| Did you read the article? This is the point, selling a good
| service to people that has no idea is inherently hard
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| That is very much _not_ the point of the article. The
| article is very focused on exploring the idea of
| identifying expertise and only briefly mentions money in
| the beginning of the piece.
|
| Cedric explicitly directs people to another article which
| discusses how this idea relates to money: _" Bellotti's
| observations are worth reading in their entirety,
| especially if you're interested in the actionable
| implications of the idea. But I'd like to take this
| property of expertise in another direction. Now that we
| know that expertise is more legible to experts, could we
| perhaps invert this observation and turn it into a goal by
| itself? Could you turn this into something that helps you
| acquire expertise?"_.
| jiggawatts wrote:
| For reference, I did offer alternative solutions.
|
| > I'm surprised you've spent your career doing this and you
| still haven't figured out how to get people to listen to you.
|
| This is the point of the article, which you appear to have
| missed.
|
| There's a point where it becomes essentially impossible to
| articulate the differences to the lay person. Or for that
| matter, someone actually quite skilled, but not a "master".
|
| It's not a lack of skill on the part of the expert, it's the
| lack of skill on the part of everybody else.
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| I have been familiar with the author and this article for a
| long time.
|
| > _It 's not a lack of skill on the part of the expert,
| it's the lack of skill on the part of everybody else_
|
| This is a very poor frame of reference. It's not other
| people's fault they cannot understand the value you
| provide, it's your fault.
|
| The thing that tends to bother engineers is that
| articulating your value (I.e. sales and marketing) is
| generally orthogonal to your key competencies.
| brookst wrote:
| I see this so often: engineers who think it's demeaning
| to explain deeply technical things in business terms, so
| they refuse. Like it's somehow noble to only speak one
| language.
| mgkimsal wrote:
| > engineers who think it's demeaning to explain deeply
| technical things in business terms, so they refuse
|
| I can, and have, explained 'deeply technical things' in
| 'business terms'. And people understood. Then made a
| bad/poor/wrong choice anyway, because... "well... all
| those things you're saying might happen, they might not.
| Or... it may not happen for months or years, and we
| already committed to date X for project Y".
|
| I can tell people the cost of punting on 'deeply
| technical thing' will be enormous, like... "this will
| require doubling the dept headcount and stopping all new
| progress for 6-12 months". Then offer alternatives. Then
| get summarily ignored, and watch things crash months
| later, and the dept is then stuck for months scrambling
| to understand all the problems they could have avoided.
| The decision maker who decided for extremely short term
| gain? They're gone (sometimes of their own choosing,
| sometimes not).
|
| The "risks" can seem wildly out of touch with reality,
| but many times if you're making poor choices you do hit
| the "worst case scenario" wall. Colleague has been
| contracting inside a shop on and off for a few years. He
| indicated "if we don't do X, we will not be able to do
| any new feature development for at least 18 months".
| And... closing in on 4 years later, they've not shipped
| any substantial new features (some bug fixes, but that's
| about it).
|
| I've seen this happen once up close, and have seen inside
| other companies and got the war stories from others.
|
| Does this happen every single time? Of course not. But
| even if you can confidently and correctly and pleasingly
| describe deep tech things to business folks in their own
| language, showing the pros/cons/costs/risks... that
| doesn't mean they will take your side. Saving face,
| hitting deadlines at all costs, and other factors weight
| on decisions, and you can't control that. You can control
| where and how you work though.
| jiggawatts wrote:
| My equivalent of this was finding a brand new SAN array
| had been formatted wrong. It was nearly empty and unused
| so it would have been a 5-minute job format 99% of it and
| shuffle the in-use 1% around so that the rest can be
| fixed too.
|
| Both the storage vendor tech and I vehemently argued for
| solving this immediately but were told to "do it later".
|
| I pointed out that "later" would be when it is full and
| has 10K production users using it 24/7. Hence any
| reformatting would be a six-month project requiring
| additional kit for the scratch space needed.
|
| I was wrong. It took 12 months.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| It sounds like you cannot convince them based on merit,
| because they simply do not understand you and the language
| you speak. It sounds like you need to change tack, convince
| them you're an expert in $field without using words and
| prhases from $field; keep your secrets and knowledge, feed
| them some generic drivel. Maybe hire someone that can help
| you with your sales pitch.
| brookst wrote:
| I mean who would be convinced by an "expert" who can't
| explain to a non-expert?
|
| Yes, maybe I desperately need to frobulize the
| macrowublitz to avoid pracknation, but I'll wait for
| someone who can explain why it's a high priority to
| achieve my goals.
| thesumofall wrote:
| But is this really the point of the article? The article
| argues that it is difficult to identify expertise. However,
| the situation you describe is one where (if I read you
| correctly) not your expertise was questioned but your
| recommendation. If there wasn't any tangible difference
| between the CTO's and your suggested course of action on a
| metric that he as a customer cared about, then maybe his
| proposal was indeed the better one? And yes, probably he
| didn't care about the exact latencies in the system, but he
| would probably care about customer retention, system
| availability, etc.?
| jiggawatts wrote:
| I'm finding this entire line of discussion incredibly
| curious because not only does it confirm my original
| argument and the that of the article, but it hammers the
| point home.
|
| Everything you've just said is gibberish to a master.
|
| It's like making a straight-faced argument that setting
| the speed limit to 1 mph on a _motorway_ might make
| perfect sense, and the _traffic engineer_ is actually at
| fault for not making it clear that this is nonsense.
|
| I get that you don't see the ridiculousness of 50
| microseconds vs 5 milliseconds, but that's the point.
|
| You _don 't_ see it, and you start making random
| arguments untethered from reality.
|
| The fact that you are blind to it, unlike being blind to
| 1 mph vs 65 mph is the entire point.
|
| You may have driven thousands of hours. You have don't
| have thousands of hours of network performance tuning
| expertise.
|
| Both of us wouldn't be able to even begin to understand
| the complaints Ayrton Senna might make about how the
| steering is too "crunchy" at the extremes or that the
| brake strength imbalance is shifting the car about.
|
| There's levels of expertise, and if two people are too
| far apart, meaningful communication between them becomes
| impossible.
| thesumofall wrote:
| But again: is the CTO really not able to spot the
| expertise or is the expert so detached that he can't
| translate between the worlds anymore? I find it much
| easier to believe that the CTO fully understands that he
| has an expert in front of him who knows what he is
| talking about but doesn't see the relevance of the
| recommendation. My doctor might tell me that I should eat
| more vegetables and I'm fully convinced of the doctor's
| expertise, but I might still not follow the advice
| [deleted]
| digging wrote:
| > There's levels of expertise, and if two people are too
| far apart, meaningful communication between them becomes
| impossible.
|
| You've disproved this yourself earlier in this comment.
| You made an analogy to explain a concept to a non-expert.
|
| It is entirely on you to make yourself understood to non-
| experts. It is both possible and extremely important.
| rvba wrote:
| The person who was talking about this optimization should
| know that they should provide context.
|
| Do they work for a high frequency trading firm? Do they
| make a CRUD app which has few users and (as much as I
| hate that) "they can wait even 5 seconds".
|
| If the person does not give context then they dont
| explain well..
|
| On a side note: for me the problem seems to be not the
| speed, but the choke point - just 2 servers (with no
| redudancy?). What one or both go down?
| ryanklee wrote:
| Really does sound like you have difficulties with
| communicating your points that do not have to do with
| external factors, but with your actual skill at
| communicating. Experts manage to successfully argue fine
| points to laypersons all the time to non experts in every
| field. You are coming across as deflective.
| bazooka wrote:
| He is not deflective. Your comments are rather dense. The
| orthodoxy of 'changing frame' and 'putting it in a
| language they understand' is layman drivel. It is not
| always possible to do so and it is overwhelmingly
| untractable if you eskew the fundamental reasons in a
| discussion with a non-expert that insists on technical
| justification and just doesn't take your cookie-cutter
| time/money/competitive advantage talking points and can't
| provide you with specifics that can be quantified.
| yohannesk wrote:
| What real life project only involves experts on specific
| field? Are you working on toy problems? Isn't there
| cost/benefit analysis to everything? If I understand
| something well, I can explain it to non-experts in
| understandable way. If I can't, then I probably lack full
| grasp of the topic
| yobbo wrote:
| > I can explain it to non-experts in understandable way
|
| Ok? But you are required to motivate a decision that is
| based on terms, conditions, probabilities, consequences
| that can only be encoded at knowledge-level A. When
| projected down to knowledge-level C, it sounds like
| "otherwise bad things might happen".
|
| The _jargon_ is not what matters. The logic of the
| decision is not meaningful or believable without
| knowledge of the "physics of the system" at level A.
|
| Most people understand nuclear bombs in layman terms, and
| they understand them intuitively from watching videos and
| pictures. Without videos and pictures, no one would care.
| kritiko wrote:
| Nuclear risk is about the reaction to somebody using a
| nuclear weapon, not the bomb itself being bad.
| ryanklee wrote:
| It's the job of an expert to communicate their
| understanding of the world in a way that motivates non
| experts to make the correct the decision. If an expert
| isn't successful in this, they need to improve their
| methods of communication. Everything else is an excuse.
| jiggawatts wrote:
| This presumes that the expert shouldn't be the one making
| the decision.
|
| Law firms are run by lawyers. The chief of surgery is a
| surgeon. Architecture firms are run by architects at the
| top.
|
| Why is it that in IT it is expected that all management
| of IT is "non technical" to the point of _not
| understanding what they're hearing_ from direct reports!?
|
| Would it be normal in your mind for a chemical plant
| foreman in charge of the process to not know what _atoms
| are!?_
| gilleain wrote:
| 'Eschew' is probably the word you want instead of
| 'eskew'.
| yohannesk wrote:
| If I were to guess, I would say an average 4th grader
| knows the difference between nano, milli or micro
| seconds. Understanding the magnitude might not be the
| problem for the CTO. But why should the CTO care? How
| does it translate to his business requirements? That's
| your job to explain, no?
| barry-cotter wrote:
| > If I were to guess, I would say an average 4th grader
| knows the difference between nano, milli or micro
| seconds.
|
| Have you ever spent any significant time in an
| environment where most people are not (children of)
| college graduates? Because this is absurd. The average
| person who has just finished a year of high school
| physics probably can't tell you those.
| uoaei wrote:
| If I were to guess, your child is attending Palo Alto
| High School when the next school year begins.
| dumpsterdiver wrote:
| If two nearly identical wallets (very minor, but noticeable
| differences) are placed on a counter and one is significantly
| more expensive... how would you expect those wallets to sell?
|
| I would expect both of them to sell out. The people looking for
| a higher quality product will immediately go for the more
| expensive product, and the remaining wallets would sell to
| people who just need a wallet.
| joshuaissac wrote:
| > The people looking for a higher quality product will
| immediately go for the more expensive product
|
| It is more complicated than that. There is no guarantee that
| the more expensive wallet is also the higher-quality product.
| The people looking for a higher-quality product can be
| classified into those who can measure the quality well
| (perhaps by observing those minor differences), and those who
| have to use less effective proxies of quality (like price).
| detourdog wrote:
| This day and age we can make our own inflation. We are all
| free to pay as much or as little for wallet as we would
| like. So we all shop by price, quality, or availability.
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| > _When I watched AlphaZero play chess, I was just a tiny bit
| impressed. I watched it beat the Go grandmaster and I was not
| very impressed. Then I watched it play Dota 2 -- in which I 've
| sunk several thousand hours -- and holy crap. Wow! It was
| suddenly terrifying how good it was, because I could judge the
| nuance of what it was doing_
|
| Funny, my game of choice is StarCraft 2 and when I watched
| AlphaStar beat StarCraft 2 pros I was significantly less
| impressed than when I watched AlphaGo beat Lee Sedol at Go.
| DharmaPolice wrote:
| My knowledge of Starcraft 2 is pretty limited so this is my
| lack of expertise speaking but it always felt like a strange
| choice to demonstrate AI skill. Even limiting the AI to human
| level actions per minute - so much of the game seems to about
| efficient multitasking which obviously computers are good at.
| jiggawatts wrote:
| You should be more impressed knowing that that AlphaStar was
| _handicapped_. Its clicking was rate-limited and its inputs
| were delayed by something like 150 milliseconds to make it
| "fair" for the humans.
|
| If you remove those limits, it would absolutely wipe the
| floor with the twitching corpse of any human player.
|
| I saw it play Warcraft 2 without the limiters, and it was
| just ridiculous. It would dance the units around and keep
| using them with 1 hp left for _many minutes_ and then heal
| them back up _juuuuust_ enough to take exactly one hit from
| an enemy.
| whateveracct wrote:
| But not having human reaction time in a real-time game
| isn't interesting. And the strategies that arise from that
| aren't either. If anything, human-level I/O constraints
| should make the AI more impressive because it's actually
| playing the same game.
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| The handicapping was very ineffective. AlphaStar had
| 250-300+ APM and it was basically 100% effective APM. Pros
| have 300-400+ APM, but their effective APM is much lower
| due to spam patterns and checking production among other
| things.
|
| Almost everyone in the community seemed to agree AlphaStar
| was very unfair. Things like a 3 way surround and
| performing blink micro on individual Stalkers on opposite
| sides of the screen are completely inhuman.
|
| This is also what made the Dota 2 bots feel somewhat
| disappointing. Of course perfect mechanical skill beats
| humans. Watching the SF mid 1v1 matches illustrated this
| very clearly to me. The AI chipped the player down with
| perfect AAs, then finished them off with perfect distance
| razes.
|
| The bots weren't 100% mechanical skill, but it was a large
| enough proportion that it was uninteresting.
| darkerside wrote:
| Isn't it possible that you may not understand the CTO's
| priorities? Security is clearly essential to him, and
| performance is essential to you. I don't doubt there are other
| ways to satisfy both criteria, but frankly, it just doesn't
| sound like the CTO cared about those milliseconds.
| jiggawatts wrote:
| That came up too. The security aspect of the product does
| less than nothing: not only does it fail to encrypt data end-
| to-end, it uses public ip addresses for both the control and
| data plane. Those public endpoints had an unauthenticated RCE
| vulnerability recently.
|
| It's a staggeringly bad product and it blew my mind now it
| was impossible to convince _anyone_ of this.
|
| We used _pictures_ , for crying out loud. We did all the
| things everyone here has been helpfully suggesting. Talking
| about business consequences (dire), costs (enormous), risks
| (massive), etc...
|
| The response was: "the sales guy from the vendor assured me
| it's all fine. _This is just your opinion."_
|
| The causal chain of a->b->c was just not sinking in.
|
| The CTO he could not judge anyone's expertise not just mine
| -- he also couldn't judge the lack of expertise by the vendor
| and their sales team.
|
| So he chose based on who has the nicer suit, the shiniest
| smile, etc...
| ianpurton wrote:
| > Meanwhile, they'll happily pay Deloitte or Accenture 3x as
| much as what I charge, and then take the misguided ramblings of
| a junior-sold-as-senior at face value, not knowing the
| difference.
|
| This is so true.
|
| It's also very difficult to stop as the consultancy gets the
| project and the client doesn't get to interview the people who
| actually turn up.
| 3abiton wrote:
| > Meanwhile, they'll happily pay Deloitte or Accenture 3x as
| much as what I charge, and then take the misguided ramblings of
| a junior-sold-as-senior at face value, not knowing the
| difference.
|
| The main selling point is that big 4/8/16 have standard
| process, that does not really work, but gives the impression of
| "high quality" to clients, who are not technical.
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| Branding is real.
| xyzelement wrote:
| // I just could not make him understand that 5 milliseconds of
| additional latency in the era where microseconds are an
| eternity is a disaster for a veritable smorgasbord of upcoming
| projects. It just. Would. Not. Sink. In.
|
| Does this company do something where this latency would be
| noticeable? Can you give an example of business impact that
| would result from it?
|
| If you can, why don't you? If you can't, then sounds like it
| doesn't matter.
|
| The CTO didn't get to be the CTO by optimizing the irrelevant.
| cgeier wrote:
| Ideally, estimate the business values in local currency (and
| be able to defend those estimates).
| xyzelement wrote:
| I agree that's ideal but probably wouldn't expect a latency
| optimization expert to understand my business well enough
| to do that and that's fine. But I -would- expect them to
| say something on the level of: "this is the kinda latency
| that will prevent you from ever moving to a cloud desktop"
| or "at this level of latency, you are going to suffer X
| second delay every time you interact with a complex web app
| like Jira" or "you are an HFT firm and I know that your
| competitors are at about 1% of your latency." Then let your
| client decide if this is something that matters to them.
| Quite different than "wow the CTO is too dumb to understand
| my genius"
| heyoni wrote:
| That was my exact reaction too. There's a reason python and
| other "slow" languages are dominating. Very few industries
| require that kind speed, and even fewer require it at the
| cost of simplifying code or architecture.
| girvo wrote:
| In my experience the CTO got to be CTO because they're
| friends with the CEO, the board, etc, rather than their own
| technical ability being superior than the seniors/leads under
| them. And that goes for me too, when I was CTO. It's a
| position, it doesn't have any inherent guarantee of ability
| to avoid optimising the irrelevant: some will, some won't.
| msp26 wrote:
| It's interesting that you bring up Dota because I find that
| it's a ready example of the vocab point failing. When you
| listen to pros talk, they misuse words and concepts all the
| time but it doesn't matter because the other pros listening get
| the 'feel' of what they're saying.
|
| (I'm not a pro or anything, just high rank, but to use myself
| as an example) I try to make an effort to use the correct words
| when explaining things to friends. But even I find myself
| saying things like 'just look at the [lane] creeps' to explain
| what I want my laning partner to do and then I realise how
| unhelpful it is. Because when they see the creeps they don't
| understand what I see.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| > To some people, "micro" and "milli" sound the same
|
| To be fair, it almost is. Both units are used to talk about
| times of about the same size. Using both in the same sentence
| is like mixing meters and feet. It's much clearer to say e.g.
| 1500us vs 3us; or 1.5ms vs 0.003ms.
|
| Don't mix units when making a comparison.
| verve_rat wrote:
| I whole heartedly disagree. Micrometers and millimetres are
| very, very different and that should be obvious to anyone
| that uses grams and kgs, or meters and km everyday.
| Microseconds and milliseconds are obviously different orders
| of magnitude, that's sort of the whole point of SI prefixes.
|
| That CTO is just doesn't sound qualified for the job.
| chaxor wrote:
| In the era of Electron, most things take minutes anyway, so
| milliseconds is an upgrade.
| maccard wrote:
| The reason things take minutes is because people ignore
| order of magnitude diffences when they're insignificant,
| (it doesn't matter if X takes 10ms instead of 0.1ms), and
| then over time someone builds on that and makes the same
| assumption (it doesn't matter if it takes 100ms, when it
| could take 1ms, followed by it doesn't matter if it takes
| 10s). Avoiding these order of magnitude differencdz early
| on is the best way to ensure you don't end up with a SPA
| that takes 15 seconds to populate a list with 20 items in
| it.
| nooby12345 wrote:
| A factor of 1000 actually
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Hmm, I'm clearly not awake enough to SI. But the point
| still stands. Don't mix units.
| jiggawatts wrote:
| The lack of expertise here is confirming the point of the
| article.
|
| I'm _not_ mixing units.
|
| Milliseconds and microseconds are both measured in units
| of _seconds_.
|
| The milli- and micro- prefixes are _orders of magnitude_.
| They 're scales, not units.
|
| When a scientist starts talking about measurements
| accurate to attoseconds, I sit up and take notice.
|
| The number in front doesn't make a difference. It's the
| "atto" that raises my eyebrows.
|
| Back to computing:
|
| I had a debate here with someone who claimed that 128-bit
| floats are required for some chip layout codes. I
| questioned that, because a 32-bit number can subdivide
| the side-length of a chip down to sub-atomic resolution,
| and a 64-bit float can model the wiggles of the hadrons
| making up the atomic nuclei!
|
| To some people, 128-bit sounds "twice as good as 64-bit".
|
| To experts, it's... umm... a sign you've made a mistake.
| jononor wrote:
| So maybe the term scale is more correct than unit. But
| more importantly, is the advise useful or not?
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| We can absolutely go into a long side-discussion about
| units and how most imperial units are also clearly just a
| constant-factor away from SI units and nobody would argue
| they are the same unit, but I don't think any of that
| actually matters. It's semantics.
|
| When you are an expert, nearly by definition the average
| person you're talking to is less well read on the subject
| than you, the expert. Because of this, it's extremely
| important to be able to communicate with clarity and
| patience.
|
| Your expertise doesn't matter if you can't make yourself
| understood, and it's not reasonable to expect people
| around you to share your expertise, so you need to adapt
| the message.
|
| Communication in general is easier the fewer concepts you
| invoke. In almost all situations it's better to be mostly
| correct and well understood than to be perfectly correct
| and not understood at all.
|
| Even if you can expect most people to have an
| understanding of SI units, far fewer will have an
| _intuition_ for them (because they aren 't working with
| them daily). Everyone has a basic intuition for big
| numbers though, so if you want to say "this is bad", show
| them a big number; the bigger the better.
|
| It can still be correct and make a well founded argument,
| but presentation matters _a lot_ more than you 'd think
| for convincing someone. In increasing order of likelihood
| it will convince anyone:
|
| The new solution adds a 15ms latency, whereas our usual
| requests have a 2us latency.
|
| The new solution adds a 15ms latency, whereas our usual
| requests have 0.002ms latency.
|
| The new solution is a factor 7.5e3 slower than the
| existing solution, which has a 2 microsecond latency.
|
| The new solution is 7,500 times slower than the existing
| solution, which has a 2 microsecond latency.
|
| The new solution is 75,000% slower than the existing
| solution, which has a 2 microsecond latency.
|
| What is said is basically identical in each version, but
| the presentation puts an increasing emphasis on just how
| big a difference this is by literally showing a big
| number.
| Attrecomet wrote:
| This is beautiful, thank you
|
| Edit: aww, ninja edit takes away all the fun :/
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| > Edit: aww, ninja edit takes away all the fun :/
|
| You know I have a degree in theoretical physics so I really
| should get this stuff right, but before I've had my morning
| coffee all bets are off :P
| hef19898 wrote:
| Well, the difference is the whole point in fields like, e.g.,
| high frequency trading
| hardware2win wrote:
| >. I just could not make him understand that 5 milliseconds of
| additional latency in the era where microseconds are an
| eternity
|
| Context matters, not everywhere 5ms more makes difference.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| I felt the context was really far down the stack, so services
| that lots of other services would be depending on was how I
| read it. The places I want fast, high volume and never
| failing cause so much depends on a red wheelbarrow.
| jiggawatts wrote:
| At the _core_ of a data centre, between VMs, it _always_
| makes a difference. An enormous one.
| nmcela wrote:
| As a gamedev, that sentence nearly gave me a heart attack. :)
|
| I get where you are coming from, but the amount of work you
| can do in 5ms is mindblowing.
| VoodooJuJu wrote:
| >I've noticed that in nearly every skill tree I've climbed,
| there comes a point where you begin to notice certain nuances
| of skill that novices not only don't notice, but that you
| cannot articulate using the commonly accepted vocabulary of the
| skill.
|
| I've encountered this, and what works is re-framing it in terms
| they'll understand. Things that are universally understood are:
| time, money, and competition.
|
| In this case, the "micro" and "milli" pitch is technical
| minutiae and is not what I'm referring to when I say "time".
| These are more effective frames:
|
| >If we do this, it will save/cost us months/years/dollars...
|
| >If we do this, the performance hit will knock out our
| competitive advantage, which we'll have to make up for it with
| something else, which will cost time/money...
|
| >This thing is insufficient for our customer's needs, which
| will cause our customers to seek out competitors, which will
| cause us to lose money...
|
| >This thing is too complex and will require additional training
| and is error-prone, which will cost us time and money...
|
| In addition to those, for every decision you refute, recommend
| a superior alternative, and again, frame it in terms of time
| and money.
|
| Now, this won't be a one-sided thing, you'll likely get into a
| conversation, and a lot of "why's" will try to extract that
| technical minutiae answer from you, which you might want to
| mention at some point in the exchange, but don't give it up
| easily, and do not emphasize it. Make sure you continue to
| emphasize the more convincing frames: time and money.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "take the misguided ramblings of a junior-sold-as-senior at
| face value, not knowing the difference"
|
| Based on my experiences, I'm throughly convinced that most of
| the time the consultants will tell management what they want to
| hear. If management doesn't like the answer then they go to
| someone else. How likely it is that they will accept an
| unwanted opinion from a consultant is solely based on prestige.
| rvba wrote:
| One thing are presentations, other thing is actuall stuff
| build by 'juniors sold as seniors'.
|
| Read all the horror stories of shitty software or ERP
| implementations. Often it is the consultant's fault - since
| they are technically weak.
| [deleted]
| parpfish wrote:
| This seems like a factor in Dunning-Krueger.
|
| Experts can see all the gradients in ability and will extrapolate
| how far they are from the top, but all novices know is how far
| they are from the bottom. If those distance estimates are biased,
| it'd lead to novices overestimating ability and experts
| underestimating
| bena wrote:
| Dunning-Kruger is more of a statistical effect than a
| psychological one. The same graphs can be reproduced using
| random noise.
| taeric wrote:
| I really regret how hard of a hold the Dunning-Kruger report
| has had on our generation. Worse, it seems every reference
| trying to point out that it is, in fact, not saying what
| people think it says just reinforces folks believe that it
| says what they want it to say. :(
| atleastoptimal wrote:
| I'd wager a large portion social embarrassment is when a person
| ostensibly believes they have competence in a certain realm but
| do not. Being aware of yourself and how your peaks and valleys
| are perceived is the foundation of charisma.
| xyzt wrote:
| [dead]
| [deleted]
| swyx wrote:
| great article and well supported (loved the tennis example).
|
| i can't help but notice that Cedric (author of commoncog, and a
| friend) is accumulating a good body of work exploring knowledge
| and expertise acquisition. is this something that is generically
| applicable or are we reading convincing-sounding text generated
| by a very advanced human expertise language model? I guess the
| only way to know for sure is for Cedric to open up a coaching
| practice and see the results?
| shawntan wrote:
| great substack and podcast (love the guests you have on)
|
| i can't help but notice that Swyx (author of latent space) is
| accumulating a body of work exploring LLMs and covering AI
| progress. is this something that is analysis by an expert or
| are we reading convincing-sounding text generated by a very
| advanced AI hype language model? I guess the only way to know
| for sure is for Swyx to train an LLM or do deep learning
| research and see the results?
| swyx wrote:
| lmao.. not either of those things but i do have something
| smol i am working on
| shadowsun7 wrote:
| Author here. Previous time this was on the front page:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30930985
|
| As an update, I temporarily relocated to a different city and
| spent four months training Judo for five hours every day and have
| since reached the vocab point for the sport. That experiment was
| covered here: https://commoncog.com/expertise-acceleration-
| experiment-judo... and https://commoncog.com/mental-strength-
| judo-life/
| Swizec wrote:
| Wow! How did you make time for 5 hours per day? I workout a lot
| and time is one of my biggest challenges.
| ssivark wrote:
| Loved the post. Just to add to the principal observation about
| the vocab point -- One thing I've noticed is that experts who
| can communicate/teach well are very effective at getting _you_
| to the vocab point (to the extent possible without experience)
| quickly! And once you reach the vocab point, the field is
| legible enough that you have the means to organize deliberate
| practice and interpret experience (if you want to go towards
| mastery) or delegate details (if you don't need them). I wonder
| if this provokes any more thoughts from you.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| I'm glad you were able to articulate this idea so clearly. I
| think similar advice which maybe isn't so clear is to try to
| avoid "being the smartest person in the room".
|
| On the topic, I'm reminded of coworkers talking about the most
| recent Super Bowl (I think, I don't follow sports) which
| included commentary from players who played as quarterbacks in
| the same season. One of the things my coworkers mentioned was
| how interesting it was to hear them talk about the game because
| they used unfamiliar terms.
| the-mitr wrote:
| also related is Marvin Minsky's idea of negative expertise
|
| https://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/papers/NegExp.mss.txt
| someweirdperson wrote:
| (2022)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30930985
| dang wrote:
| Thanks! Macroexpanded:
|
| _Ability to see expertise is a milestone worth aiming for_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30930985 - April 2022 (18
| comments)
| a_c wrote:
| The trick I use for myself is, if all I could see is binary (this
| is too easy, how hard can it be, or it is impossible), then I'm
| either too novice or I'm an true expert in this particular
| subject matter. As Bruce Lee put it, a punch is a punch [1]. I'm
| still hoping to be the latter
|
| 1. https://brucelee.com/podcast-blog/2017/6/21/51-the-three-
| sta...
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