I think this speaks to that time-old trade-off between expertise and generality. I can only speak for myself when I say that empirically expertise seems to pay off in job prospects, exercise, and love. Perhaps my risk heuristic function needs adjusting to focus on exploration?
My career, mostly as a sysadmin, has been defined by shallow and wide knowledge.
One thing I've noticed, as I've progressed into a team lead position is that the shallow/wide is very difficult for the people who aren't as experienced as me. So my initial "just do it the way I did it!" was very, very wrong. I'm changing that attitude in myself to target folks as subject matter experts (sorry for corporate-speak!)
This is relevant because it's actually difficult to try to learn 20+ years of wide/shallow stuff in 6 months. Who'd have thunk it? But people still try to chase that extra knowledge, thinking they have to somehow achieve parity with those much smarter or further along in their careers. (I don't consider myself much smarter, I'm a bear of very little brain)
As they progress in their careers and experience, then the wide/shallow can be introduced.
Is there an inverse correlation between curiosity and the aversion of feeling like a noob? Exploring unknown areas/subjects/places may be a bigger driver than overcoming the ‘noob feeling aversion’
There is the assumption that people necessarily mind feeling like a noob. I don't really. What I dislike is a situation where I freely admit of being a noob and then people who know clearly even less about the situation than I do acting superior. Or people who know more than me now about it, but will know less than me in a month acting superior. Or, just people acting superior :-)
The last several years it seems I've encountered a lot less abrasive, condescending superior-intellect types. In the past I've worked with people with egos the size of the Sun. I've been wondering if I've just been lucky recently, or if there's just less of them out there.
Then again, it could just be that I've learned to tolerate various personalities better as I've gotten older.
I didn't say do what they say, or let them push you around. Just let them act how they want to act, and then go with what you know. Why does it matter to me if someone acts superior about a topic if I have my own confidence in what I know?
Talking about zen, the concept "beginners mind" [1] is where this "feeling like a noob" is the desired state that will help you not get stuck in your ego when you get good at something.
Good advice. At the same time, in some cases, this approach can bring real world consequences?
E.g. might result in that other silly and superior acting person, getting the job, and you didn't. Or the girls like him better because he seems confident?
But anyway, generally, I like the Zen-out approach. And probably it's possible to be a good self esteem Noob too -- I mean, to stay happy when one tries and fails repeatedly, also when everyone is watching, although maybe not so easy.
There's a fundamental human need to feel better than others.
It's not always a bad thing, as it is used as a carrot to bond teams and push for excellence (Think "Semper Fi").
But it is quite grating. The main thing that gets me, is when folks being superior either withhold information, or deliberately try to interfere with my learning.
On StackOverflow, I have almost twice as many questions as I have answers. This doesn't really get me any respect.
I guess that I could up that, for myself, but I don't usually hang there to answer questions.
I'm too busy writing code. I try to give back to the community, so I do answer a few. SO is a hugely valuable resource for me, and I sincerely appreciate the help that I get there; even when it is delivered with a sneer.
What I dislike is a situation where I feel like I _ought_ to be a noob, or feel like a noob, or be acting like a noob, but other people treat like an expert who doesn't realise that he is acting like a noob.
Agreed. I don't mind being a noob since I think it's perfectly ok to be a noob and I have a ton of respect for anyone else who is trying to learn something new.
I got angry recently when I asked a question on amazon about a home improvement hardware item and one of the responses I got was something like, "This job is better left to a professional." They completely dismissed my question like everyone who works in that profession was born with this knowledge.
I just wanted to know if it was possible to disconnect two of the pieces (and someone else confirmed it was possible, so it wasn't a dumb question after all). Not to mention, it was for an art project, so the "professional" quality/safety advice doesn't apply. That's when being a noob feels bad.
Sigh. Do such low-effort posts from other people as these recent pg ones ever appear on the HN front page?! Guess I just won't click on them in future. It's depressing to see –because I really love many of his essays on non-startup subjects, and learned a lot from them, and probably will again next time I read them.
I don't mind them at all. If Paul writes anything, I want to know about it. So please upvote so it gets to my attention.
Also note that Pauls blog is blazingly fast and does not have ADs/Cookie Conent/Tracking madness. I don't click Medium links anymore b/c all that bloat + crap.
With blogs like this, I am back to HN in less than 5 seconds if I don't like the content.
Do you want to know about it because he’s a billionaire that might fund your hot dog recognition app or because he’s said anything particularly revelatory?
Because I for one and sick and tired of wealth worship in this country.
The post is not interesting and shouldn’t be on the front page.
There's a good chance that a millionaire came from old money. That doesn't make them inherently interesting. The ones who are self-made, the anomalies in that population, are more likely to be interesting.
Old money are mostly out of the rat race, more distant from the need of self-marketing, and usually with better education and taste (in fact, it's almost proverbial that old money have better taste than the "nouveaux rich").
All kinds of writers, artists, scientists etc were once from that group.
So it's more probable to listen to something interesting from an old money millionaire who inherited wealth, than from a self-made one (which would tire you with self-promotion and gloating about their business acumen, bravado, and hardships they had to overcome).
That's exactly the point! This post is a generic, pretty universally-recognized point, written by a billionaire, and is only the length of a handful of tweets.
The only possible criteria that a post this small and with this little substance would get upmodded for is the billionaire bit, and possibly that people are just upmodding 'pg without checking the actual content (I've seen a few people talk about how they use upmodding as a 'read later' function).
I don't even mind that it was, but the comment makes a decent point.
It is the point. But it isn't the billionaire bit that matters. It's that PG is a celebrity on HN. He wrote this forum and most of the early posts were his blog posts. HN used to be all startups and tech all the time. Before Y-Combinator was successful PG was already a celebrity here who would get auto voted up. Before that it was /. Then Reddit I guess but I missed the golden year for Reddit. There are other HN celebrities PG just happens to be the founder.
This isn't Billionare worship it is celebrity worship. And it's caused because PG has written enough things insightful enough that people can feel their minds changing as they read, that they will reflexively upvote.
I hate seeing anti-wealth rhetoric on HN. If the point is wealth doesn't matter then the criticism ought to be more substantive then 'aye, he's just popular because he's a billionaire'. HN is one of the only places I know of where ambition has been celebrated. I get that startups and the startup culture didn't turn out to be a necessary good thing so there's some cynicism there. But we can do better than demonizing the money, a result, rather than causes.
>most of the early posts were his blog posts. HN used to be all startups and tech all the time.
To respond just to this part: I don't think either of these things are true. With "past" you can look around the front page in 2007-8. I just did - not very different at all from today. Not many pg essays around - none on most days on the front page. The titles are a lot longer today, seems the main difference!
I shouldn’t have been so hyperbolic. Basically PG was a huge part of HN back then. You’ll see a lot of people writing as if they know him and everything by him or the likes of Steve Blank was voted to the top.
Because that's how people often treat it (whether they should or not).
You're implying that since it's not actually a variable (X being rich = X having something interesting to say), it can't function as a variable.
But it very much can. Whether it should or shouldn't be a variable, for many people it functions as one.
The same way people buy music or watch movies of "good looking" actors and musicians, even though being "good looking" is not a variable to judge whether a song/movie is good or not.
So, since this (treating wealth/beauty/fame/etc as a variable as to whether something is interesting) exists, and is often prevalent, it makes sense to wonder when someone listens to somebody else X that is rich/beautiful/famous whether they merely listen to X because he is those things (and not because X has something interesting to say).
This text gives me comfort in that the fact that I feel like a noob in many topics should be an encouragement to learn more, rather than give up because the wealthy people are superhuman and I'm not.
It's the world we are living in nowadays.
I subscribed to Seth Godin's newsletter and I receive a post everyday from him. I admire Godin but the quality is shitty.
It is an example of what happens when you feel the urge to say something for the sake of saying it.
And all of this makes me think that maybe somehow there is more randomness to wealth Creation and distribution than we already acknowledge.
I want to know because many of his essays are insightful. This one in particular was a bit short, and to me an obvious premise. However, there may be some people who would benefit from hearing that it is good to be in situations where you have to learn new things.
In Graham's case, writing interesting content had more to do with him becoming a billionaire, than people thinking what he says is interesting because he's a billionaire.
Sure, he was relatively wealthy from the sale of ViaWeb. But the popularity of his writing is what led to YCombinator and then to him becoming much more wealthy.
I think it's interesting and it has spawned interesting comments (except this thread). Why do you get to decide what's interesting or not just because you begrudge billionaires?
> Because I for one and sick and tired of wealth worship in this country.
Amen brother! As I was leaving the house this morning I caught a snippet of something about Oprah being on a tour; top tickets are in the thousands of dollars. Nothing against Oprah but what does she have to say that is actionable and I haven't heard before, that I (or anyone, really) should pay to hear? I think it was Gore Vidal (rest his crusty vituperative heart) who wrote that Americans think proximity to wealth eventually confers it on them, especially if they f*-- it. Paraphrased obviously, am not about to google it at work.
I asked a supporter of the present POTUS what possible opposition candidate he would vote for. He said Oprah. His even more conservative wife agreed. I started to laugh before realizing they were completely serious.
It was so out of box to me that I think it speaks to how a large portion of the electorate prefers personalities, particularly those who “created” something.
That's ridiculously dismissive and just smacks of sour grapes.
Are many looking to read what the Waltons say?
No, this isn't wealth worship. The reason why people pay attention to folks like PG and Buffet is because they've repeatedly proven to have useful insights. Does that mean everything they say is of great value? Of course not. But their batting average is strong and they offer a lot of free wisdom. It's a good idea to learn from those who have things to teach, and Paul is a good teacher.
I'd be surprised and suspicious of those colleges if they're teaching based on the Walton heirs... Sam would be a different story, but wasn't who I was referring to with the present tense of "Waltons say".
Agree with some points there Drangus. I am stoned to the bone and 'shiiiiiittt' that was some deep stuff. What if being a noob is better than being pro??? Maybe that idea works for some cases , but i definitely want to work with professional software devs not noob coders. What do you think Dingus? (hope you are a T&E fan. might as well just take your sister to prom ya dangus she's a girl too!)
This is a website run by a startup incubator. Seems like the wrong place for no wealth worship. Essentially, I don't understand why you chose this place if you sort of don't like it.
I liked it. Correlating the feeling of hunger vs abundant food leading to being overweight against the desire to know as much as everyone else. That worked for me, yes it's common sense, but sometimes it helps to have things spelled out clearly for you to have a small epiphany about yourself.
I agree - while I normally find Paul Graham's posts very insightful, this post definitely feels like one where, if it were written by someone with no name (such as myself), the post would get maybe a few votes at best.
It's a useful reminder, but it doesn't stand out. Anyone and everyone these days gives advice about learning voraciously, whether or not anyone listens or does it.
I guess I'll really regret asking for a few examples of that! But here goes - Some evidence for that claim? Recent links? (This site has stuff that made the front page I think, if that helps https://hckrnews.com/ )
By low-effort, I meant..the combination of bland content, first-draft-quality style, and very short. I don't think I've seen anything that short on here, and it's high on the blandometer too, though some people on this page say they got value from it. (Aw I feel bad criticizing now, hopefully he takes his own advice not to read HN pages about one's own stuff..)
edit: Ah, someone on this page mentioned Seth Godin, which reminds me he had a blog-post linked recently (not sure if it made the front page) - even shorter, and much less to say. One of the most popular blogs in the world! It said. Amazing. My first exposure to him. Well, maybe he used to be good, I don't know.
Add to that all the content-less "new Node release", "here's 2 minor changes in Golang 1.1x", "I tried framework X and I don't like it" (with trivial arguments), etc... that somehow are voted to be first page...
Hi. :-) I guess that includes me? Not sure who else you're talking about[0]. That's an ominous, vague, passive sentence there. I can't see I've offended the guidelines, except possibly not being kind, shallow dismissal of other's work..I have a feeling you meant "Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate" but I don't think I'm doing that exactly. More complaining/disappointed about excess votes and deficient quality, I guess. I did think it was worthless so I flagged it as advised.
[0] Possibly yourself? Among your most recent few comments are ones beginning If you'd bothered to read you'd realise that the.. and Are you serious?
They appear on the front page because of the 'Newman effect'. I just coined that term for back in the day what made Paul Newman's salad dressing successful and has since been copied as a formula by many celebrity brands. Basically if you have two salad dressings on the shelf in a supermarket people will pay attention and potentially buy the one that they notice for a reason that is not even related to the quality of the product. And as everyone knows in sales or marketing (or should know) getting your message across and getting listened to is (arbitrarily I am making this up) half the battle. [1]
Of course Paul Newman had other things going for him as well. He could get the supermarket to consider his product because of the halo around him as a movie star. He could get top quality people to help with the product as a result of being a movie star. He even (iirc) pioneered (or at least popularized) giving profits to charity (from memory). But much of the success was for sure dependent on his name recognition which made it more likely that people would try the product (same thing happens with why stars are featured in movies obviously although with Netflix that is becoming less important for sure).
[1] This is also what an intro does for you it gets the person to listen to what you have to say which you might not even get the chance to do if you are just cold calling.
Low-effort here means "short"? There's nothing wrong with short.
I find these essays, even the short ones, useful and insightful. I hope PG is not unduly influenced by the recent backlash to his publishing more.
I came to this community originally largely due to his insights and the particular culture he nurtured here. The recent uptick in his contributions is welcome.
I for one find it absolutely hilarious to watch people take these ‘essays’ seriously. I have nothing but respect for PG in regards to his work with startups, but when he wrote this essay [1] on the field of philosophy, it should have been a sign to everyone to stop and question the author when he talks about anything other than startups or computer science.
It’s also worth pointing out that this kind of overblown humility also tends to work out a lot less well for you in life if you don’t already have a billion dollars and founders hanging on your every tweet.
A large part of the audience here wants to get money from pg and people like him and find articles like this useful for trying to make money from SV vcs.
Disagree. It’s very important for people feeling like “noobs” to realize that it’s okay, even desired. PG is a legend and have him clearly state so is refreshing, and necessary.
If someone has completed a process even only once, they may have some insight that an old timer has missed. It's always a good idea to listen to a "noob". You may learn something. Noobs also may have the best ideas about improving a process. They haven't fallen into the "we've always done it that way" mind set as of yet.
I like the feeling of being a noob. It means I have something new to learn and discover.
Asking questions, whether it's to Google or another person is a very rewarding process when you eventually find an answer.
I would have thought most people in the tech industry would think like this since it requires so much ongoing learning and feeling like a noob every time a new library / framework comes out. Maybe not?
I think this misses that the word "noob" (or at least its negative connotation) is mostly used in comparison to other people, and doesn't apply at the boundary of human knowledge. Newton wasn't a "noob" because he didn't know about relativity. He probably didn't feel like a "noob". He was just very curious.
I think noob (short for 'new boy' where I come from) just means that you're new to an institution, like a school, or today an open source community. It doesn't imply anything to do with competence.
Probably just multiple people with different understandings of the word. For example, I picked it up from StarCraft multiplayer in the late 90s/early 2000s, where there were levels:
newb(ie) - New to the game (typically doesn't know what they're doing).
noob - Currently not good at the game, but is trying to get better (usually lots of overlap with "newb(ie)").
n00b - Insult for someone who isn't good at the game, and is not trying to get better. Often deludes themselves into thinking they're already good at the game.
I think his assertion is that Newton did feel like a noob. I tend to think pg's right. He's done novel enough things that he has an informed view. My experience with novel though less significant investigation and problem solving shows the same.
I changed careers and at 40 something I'm a noob again.
It can be frustrating not knowing and I'll go down the path of analysis paralysis and procrastination sometimes. I'm a bit prone to that as in my previous career I kinda had things down pretty solidly.
But I try to embrace it. Is this the right code here? No better way to find out than try things and see what happens....if it doesn't work, well I'm a noob, that is going to happen. (obviously these are somewhat educated / calculated risks, not just random)
I like it. There's a freedom in not worrying if you're doing it right all the time and recognizing that doing it wrong is ok provided you learn.
How did you manage the drastic income change that comes with a late-life career change? I've considered it several times in the past, but with a family to support it's not really that feasible.
I received a generous severance package from my previous employer when they were bought by another company and waited out that event in order to support my family for a few months while I attended a coding camp (I studied a lot before and after but wanted some in person instruction).
I managed to save a small stash of money as well on the side over nearly 20 years of work that I had as both an emergency fund and "one day I kinda want to do something different" fund.
My wife works as well and while she doesn't make much (teacher) it helped of set some costs).
The turnaround time from end of previous career to new job was about 8 months and that was probabbly the key. That's not too bad. I would have loved to go back to college for a more formal education but that was not an option due to the time commitment / I was a terrible college student when I was younger so i would have a lot to make up at a traditional college.
As a n00b i was making very little at my first job initially but after proving myself my salary has risen quite quickly. I'm not where I used to be in terms of income, but I'm happier for sure.
If you don’t mind me asking, what was your job before and what is it now? Were you in software in both cases, but just drastically different roles? Or totally different?
I like this post. There are Socratic echoes here: "I know that I know nothing", though pg is making a different point. It seems cliche and low effort but often times deep truths ARE cliched. The older I get, the more okay I am with embracing my lack of knowledge in a domain. Now I see it more as a potential first step in future mastery.
As a teenager I frequently saw the way someone did something and assumed that person was stupid, now as an adult I understand how that person's domain of expertise may be very different from mine and I'm less likely to judge.
And his idea that this is some evolutionary trait is debatable. The uneasy feeling of not knowing something is probably more related to social proof and fear of judgment by others.
Perhaps you don't owe billionaires any better (btw, is pg one? I had no idea), but you definitely owe this community better than this—much better—if you're posting here.
> Perhaps you don't owe billionaires any better (btw, is pg one? I had no idea)
He means in a sense 'rich as croesus' is my guess not literally that he has more than a billion (arbitrary anyway, right?) amount of money. And for that matter even someone who owns a billion worth of stock is not like they have a billion of liquid cash but it's referred to (and has always been 'a billionaire').
That said I think the parent comment expresses some of the sentiment of other comments (including my own) that what PG says it taken as more important than the same thing said by a nobody. (And not in particular that HN votes it up or not but just this general sense in the world that a 'halo' is not merit based which is what many people want to think success should be based on.)
The simplest explanation is that HN users upvote PG's essays because they like them and find them interesting, and because they are interested in what he writes/thinks because of his history with this community. The idea that it has something to do with his bank account seems an invention of the rage-based comments which unfortunately have become a tedious fixture of these threads.
But he wouldn't be PG (in the context of my point) if he hadn't made money based on what he has done. I mean I'd never read what he said if he was just a guy who did Lisp and wrote essays. And if I wanted 'my aunt' to read what he said a hook wouldn't be 'he went to Harvard and is a programmer and wrote a book..'. But money? That attracts people and you know makes you popular and accepted by a much larger group of people.
Just like Wozniak wouldn't be Woz if there was not money attached to what he has done.
Now to support your point I could also point out many people who are revered on HN who are not associated with making money for sure. So it is (I agree) misplaced to tie my comment to having money maybe I should have said 'fame' was the currency.
Taking it one step further let's say you and I meet on an airplane. I find out what you do and that you are tied into YC and HN etc and Graham. I know who Graham is. So sure I am going to be more impressed then if you are doing the same thing for someone who has not scored it big.
Let's take it one step further for discussion. Let's say my aunt runs into you on an airplane. She has never heard of YC HN or Paul Graham. So you rattle off some YC companies she has heard of and even uses. All the sudden you are viewed in a different light.
PG has a halo plain and simple. That halo can even be extended in a way by people surrounding him. Part of that halo is as a result of money plain and simple. Money is viewed as success and envied. Sure he's not a billionaire (maybe) but certainly is viewed as probably having a large amount of money (I do as well btw..)
dangus and others who's reaction is similar to dangus, can you suggest other forums where this is not true? I got to move on from this hub of retards at HN.
There's a great book by Truesdell, named "An Idiot's Fugitive Essays on Science". According to Truesdell, the initial meaning of the word "idiot" was one who does not have preconceived ideas.
Hmm I can't really see that sense here. But thanks, I shall check out that book, looks interesting!
idiot (n.)
early 14c., "person so mentally deficient as to be incapable of ordinary reasoning;" also in Middle English "simple man, uneducated person, layman" (late 14c.), from Old French idiote "uneducated or ignorant person" (12c.), from Latin idiota "ordinary person, layman; outsider," in Late Latin "uneducated or ignorant person," from Greek idiotes "layman, person lacking professional skill" (opposed to writer, soldier, skilled workman), literally "private person" (as opposed to one taking part in public affairs), used patronizingly for "ignorant person," from idios "one's own" (see idiom).
In plural, the Greek word could mean "one's own countrymen." In old English law, one who has been without reasoning or understanding from birth, as distinguished from a lunatic, who became that way.
Meh, I think post could have been a tweet. Learning new things will have you feeling like a noob. It's okay to feel like a noob and totally clueless, it's sign that you're learning. Learn often, embrace being a noob often.
I'm pretty good at keeping up with the SOTA in subjects like crypto, AI. But it's because I make an effort. And they interest me immensely. And it's easy with the wealth of information online.
Where I find it harder to keep up is that esoteric knowledge of "the culture". What is current in music and movies and art. Even interacting with young people a lot. The velocity of relevance seems to have altered significantly.
Another interesting take is returning to childhood passions. I used to be into sailing and thought if I have some free time I'll take it up as a hobby again. Maybe book a class in Annapolis MD. Or charter a small yacht for a day trip in Florida during spring break.
But the world of sailing has just metastasized into a massive industrialized complex! Lexus has a concept luxury yacht. You can control the helm 100% using a Garmin Smart Marine Watch. There exist software platforms for archival wind data.
Don't get me wrong, it's awesome. But there is an activation energy. And I am sure there are still single person Hobie Cats available. But it does make you feel as if you need to be all-in or else exist in a perpetual state of n00b-ishness ;)
>>But it does make you feel as if you need to be all-in
Hmm, this is a bigger point than I think you make it out to be. (?)
It's something that's pained me for a long time too.
I'll ramble a bit...
I think part of the problem, in my case at least, is that the world programmed me to think that I need to be all-in.
"All-in" to me means I have to get the Lexus yacht and the Garmin smart marine watch, and all the _stuff_ that comes with that, if I want to partake in this activity. If I want to enjoy its pleasures.
"All-in" to me also means that this activity (in this modern form) and its ecosystem and community has been structured (by that massive industrialized complex) such that if I don't go all-in, then it wouldn't work. The real action happens when you go all-in.
From another angle, if I had the luck of realizing that I can do sailing with a simple Hobie Cat, with a friend, on the local lake. I'd still have to overcome this very difficult impression left on me by the marketers of the Lexus + Garmin + Goodies that a simple Hobie Cat wouldn't be good enough to bring a very broad smile to my face. They would want me to sit with the all-in image in my head. They would want to suppress the simple option.
--
which then is where we can look at your other statement:
>>>The velocity of relevance seems to have altered significantly.
You cannot just go all-in today and be set. you need to do it every year, "new" updates, upgrades, all sold by the same marketers in such a way that the previous models just seem not usable anymore.
--
Reading again, I also see
>>>it does make you feel
you see, thats what they want!
>>>it does make you feel as if you need to be all-in
so they want to create the idea that being behind, being a noob (the "perpetual state" as you put it) is a bad thing. Or maybe rather, they know humans (as PG says were in the old days required to overcome noobness to survive) so it's built into us. marketers exploit this to get you to buy again and again.
-------
which brings us to philosophy. The stuff I've come to realize sit even underneath the above statements.
See, philosophers tells us that happiness already exists inside us. Right now. Right here. Inside.
If you could be made to believe it is outside, then you could be told 'one of the things' out there might be the one for you. Which implies, you'd have to try out a lot of stuff to hopefully find it between the options. Which gives you the idea that if you get something, and it doesn't work, you just gotta try something else. But what you don't know, the trick, is that none of it will fulfill.
Also, problem for a capitalist world is that, if you know happiness is inside, then you have no reason to seek it outside of you.
If you're not seeking it outside, and you feel it inside, you won't be open to suggestions of products that might fulfill this suggested feeling of emptiness.
Which means they can't sell you anything, and thus not take your money.
So, ask yourself then, how much of how our society is built, its structures, how we're educated, deliberately avoids helping you to find the happiness inside, and deliberately pushes you to seek for it outside of yourself.
-
being a noob i think then is not something we should seek in all cases. when learning , yes definately.
but ito happiness, being in the moment and enjoying it as it is, is all you need. no noobness attitude.
----
ok, ramble done. I may've gone way beyond your comment, but you triggered something, and I enjoyed it , thanks!
No thank you qwertygerty, for the lovely digression ;)
I've always felt that you can't be liberated from your attachments, if you don't fully realize what it means to be enslaved by them in the first place
I've always thought the subject of Renunciation in Hindu Philosophy would make the subject of a terrific screenplay
There's a film you may enjoy, one of my favorites actually, The Razor's Edge (1947), written by Somerset Maugham
Young American, born at the right place and the right time, who instead of contributing to the booming growth that would place his nation at the forefront of nations, chooses to chuck it all and "idle" for awhile
Here's the scene he arrives at an Ashram in the Himalayas after a chance suggestion from a stranger
Thank you for this suggestion, this definitely looks like something I'd enjoy.
"...the myst caught in the treetop. I've never seen or felt anything like it!" " I felt as if I've been released from my body" "sense of knowledge more than human"
Return to _silence_. Without the distraction of others and the world, ie isolation. And in there, after the mind-chatter waned, he found _himself_
I've very recently had similar amazing experiences in the wilderness of mountains where it felt like I was beginning to melt away into it all. Very peculiar! Something I want to go back to...
--
Renunciation. Yes, that's a tough one.
"renunciation of material desires and prejudices, represented by a state of disinterest and detachment from material life, and has the purpose of spending one's life in peaceful, love-inspired, simple spiritual life"
In my own struggles with existentialism, I find the deeper I go into spirituality, the more I naturally experience "disinterest and detachment from material life". It just happens.
What's most interesting to me, is as this happens, also the world seems to fight back, like it wants to pull me in again, not just the struggle with worldly desires, but things like these out-of-the-blue amazing "opportunities" arrive, that when looked at, is just a very polished way to try and pull me back into the world!
Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News? You've already done it quite a bit, and we're trying for a different sort of quality level here. The idea is: if you have a substantive point to make, make it thoughtfully; if you don't, please don't comment until you do.
I think the terse nature of my writing strikes again. While my remark was intended to be a bit silly, I picked the handle that I have for a reason. I'd prefer to be the noob in the room rather than the expert. Getting outside your comfort zone will set you up for big gains - you won't find your limit until you find your limit. Pick something you want to learn and surround yourself with some smart folks in that area, be the noob and watch your growth. It probably won't be easy but it will be worth it. I didn't blog about but I did fly my noob flag.
> The life of hunter-gatherers was complex, but it didn't change as much as life does now. They didn't suddenly have to figure out what to do about cryptocurrency.
> the more of a noob you are locally, the less of a noob you are globally.
> if you stay in your home country, you'll feel less of a noob
> And yet you'll know more if you move.
I experienced this in the US when I was scheduling interviews for an internship with a US company. I had waited for the interviewer for half an hour and shoot them an email asking for rescheduling after they did not show up.
Turns out I forgot the timezone difference. In all my (quarter-century)life, I had never needed to check timezone in the same country. Felt like the biggest noob. I know more in general now but, even for a simple thing like scheduling an interview, I became "locally" noob.
That one has caught me out, too, and I've spent most of my life frequently crossing time zone boundaries (Central/Mountain and lately Central/Eastern).
"the more you feel like a noob, the better."
I am not convinced.
With experience it should become rarer and rarer to encounter some things that makes so little sense that you feel like a noob, and you certainly shouldn't feel aimless.
The more systems you explore, the bigger the toolbox you acquire. And there are not infinitely many existing tools because they once have been invented. And often these tools can be categorized by their operating principles which are even fewer. Because most disciplines overlap, the more you explore the faster the exploration goes.
Sure, when you encounter something new you will need to gather some info before you are operational, but when you are enough of a generalist, you will have picked up enough heuristics to know who, where, and what to look for, and it shouldn't take long.
Sure, we can dig and make any subject arbitrarily deep so there are infinitely many new things to explore and be amazed by. Staying humble, curious, honest and acknowledging that there are plenty of things that you have explored yet is also necessary.
But if you disperse by being contempt of being a noob you risk becoming lost in a senseless experiencing of a chaotic mess, and not gather experience by seeing the order things could be arranged into.
I feel like this is exactly the point he's making: if you're not putting yourself in positions where you feel like a noob, you'er not engaging your skills to their fullest potential, because the 'sorting it out' part is the thing that's really good for you. Nowhere here does he say 'feel like a noob and stay that way."
That's not my way of reading it.
He seems to imply that feeling like a noob is normal due to the modern age complexity of this world. If I understand correctly he is telling go and don't be afraid of feeling like a noob.
I'm saying if you feel like a noob, stop and fix it before exploring further or risk being lost.
I take the contrarian opinion that even though there is growing complexity it is still orderly enough that once experienced enough feeling like a noob should be something akin finding a gem, or having a paradigm shift, which although you should be happy to find, it should remain occasional.
I don't believe you need to feel like a noob to be engaging your skills at their fullest potential. In fact that's quite the opposite.
It's akin to having bugs in software.
Having bugs in software could be a symptom of engaging your skills to the max. But it's more likely the symptom of sloppiness that has accumulated.
In fact when your software has bugs, you spend your time doing some bug fixing, instead of doing more interesting things.
If you are in position that you are feeling like a noob, or have bug in software, try to understand what went so wrong that you are in this situation and try as much as possible to not be again (but keep exploring and building software). This is a symptom that you are working in a messy environment that is on a path to more mess where you will get lost.
You won't sculpt a fine piece of art if you spend your time fixing your chisel every ten minutes.
> With experience it should become rarer and rarer to encounter some things that makes so little sense that you feel like a noob, and you certainly shouldn't feel aimless.
Then you're not pushing yourself or trying new things. Noob == newbie, so it applies even to experts who are learning things in an unfamiliar area.
I felt like a noob when I learned about functional programming. Then I felt like a noob again when I started learning Haskell.
I read about Coq yesterday and felt like a total and utter noob.
I read about the `nom` lexing crate for Rust recently and felt like a noob getting up to speed.
I still am a noob when it comes to using every unix utility: I recently learned about gnu parallel and read about xargs more finely.
I never want to be in a situation where I never feel like a noob, because in computing alone that's basically impossible unless I'm not challenging myself.
I agree that you want to attempt things that may fail to challenge yourself.
But rewarding libraries (by using them) that make you feel like a noob is kind of rewarding an abusive behavior.
Before you use something you probably should already have a good model of how it operates from a high level perspective, what you need to give them, why you are using them...
The software should serve your need instead of forcing you to adapt conventions. If you invest time learning a bad software then the sunk cost fallacy will make you keep using the bad software and sunk-in more time.
Exploring is hard, you should have a strategy for it, you should explore things in the right order so that exploring is easy, and you explore what you want. If your exploring strategy is to follow the steepest learning curve you will get lost in an infinite hellish mess like Sisyphus.
Nowhere did I state that I had to use any such libraries. The only reason I started learning nom, is because I received multiple recommendations to check it out. Regardless if I use it or not, it still was a fun learning experience.
I interpreted the post much more broadly, way beyond software tools. There are tons of things in existence outside of computers, and each of us is a noob in most things. Just some examples that come to mind:
Playing musical instruments and singing, yoga poses, barbell training with correct form, Buddhism, how to negotiate in an Arab bazaar, tax returns, training animals, riding a motorcycle, how to navigate forests, how to navigate the sea on a sailboat, how to direct and edit a movie, reciting poems, how to structure a novel, cooking and baking well, brewing beer, how the electric wiring works in a house, hobby electronics, how to build furniture, how to shoot guns and how they work, self defense and martial arts, fixing a car, hunting and fishing, BDSM and fetishes, finance products and the stock market, law and the court system in various countries, foreign languages, diet and nutrition, amateur radio, physics, painting, calligraphy, psychedelic drugs, networking effectively with important people, being a bartender or other service personnel, backpacking alone, raising children...
Some may say "I may not have much practice in [particular thing], but surely it's easy, it's just [...]", but I really recommend reading that blog post called "Reality has a surprising amount of detail", which shows how many things there are to learn about simple sounding special cases (like building a staircase). All these things and hundreds more are rabbit holes with more and more branches of rabbit holes of communities, cultures, various levels of expertise attainable in each branch and subbranch etc.
Of course. In this case I specifically applied it to my professional domain, but this advice applies to every single facet of life. Life is also incredibly boring if you're not challenging yourself to do new things. Which is why I force myself to try new hobbies, events, programming languages. I almost always walk away glad that I pushed myself to expand and grow, even if I end up not enjoying or pursuing that thing.
lol literally the opposite of his twitter feed in which he revels in telling people what to think and do. that's the opposite of noob mentality. pg jumped the shark.
This needs to be qualified. If I'm a noob at something and I find the right person to help me understand said something, it can be an amazingly rewarding experience and not at all unpleasant.
I love beginner’s mindset and usually takes me quite far as I don’t have any idea what the proper limits are. However, I do find it unpleasant when a more advanced person explains advanced concepts that are not gradpable yet even though they make sense. I need to digest it myself first. And ocasionally I find the advanced person who articulates exactly what I was stuck at but was unable to ask for help
I don't mind PG's stuff. I don't care if he's a bazillionaire. I'm not looking for a dime from anyone, and I don't worship wealth. Lots of billionaires say stuff to which I'd rather give a pass.
I don't really mind being a n00b. In fact, I seek it out deliberately. It does get me lots of sneers and micro-aggro; but we never learn anything new, if we don't try something new. I have a pretty thick skin.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 262 ms ] threadOne thing I've noticed, as I've progressed into a team lead position is that the shallow/wide is very difficult for the people who aren't as experienced as me. So my initial "just do it the way I did it!" was very, very wrong. I'm changing that attitude in myself to target folks as subject matter experts (sorry for corporate-speak!)
This is relevant because it's actually difficult to try to learn 20+ years of wide/shallow stuff in 6 months. Who'd have thunk it? But people still try to chase that extra knowledge, thinking they have to somehow achieve parity with those much smarter or further along in their careers. (I don't consider myself much smarter, I'm a bear of very little brain)
As they progress in their careers and experience, then the wide/shallow can be introduced.
Then again, it could just be that I've learned to tolerate various personalities better as I've gotten older.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoshin
E.g. might result in that other silly and superior acting person, getting the job, and you didn't. Or the girls like him better because he seems confident?
But anyway, generally, I like the Zen-out approach. And probably it's possible to be a good self esteem Noob too -- I mean, to stay happy when one tries and fails repeatedly, also when everyone is watching, although maybe not so easy.
It's not always a bad thing, as it is used as a carrot to bond teams and push for excellence (Think "Semper Fi").
But it is quite grating. The main thing that gets me, is when folks being superior either withhold information, or deliberately try to interfere with my learning.
On StackOverflow, I have almost twice as many questions as I have answers. This doesn't really get me any respect.
But boy oh boy, have I learned a lot.
I'm too busy writing code. I try to give back to the community, so I do answer a few. SO is a hugely valuable resource for me, and I sincerely appreciate the help that I get there; even when it is delivered with a sneer.
I got angry recently when I asked a question on amazon about a home improvement hardware item and one of the responses I got was something like, "This job is better left to a professional." They completely dismissed my question like everyone who works in that profession was born with this knowledge.
I just wanted to know if it was possible to disconnect two of the pieces (and someone else confirmed it was possible, so it wasn't a dumb question after all). Not to mention, it was for an art project, so the "professional" quality/safety advice doesn't apply. That's when being a noob feels bad.
edit: oh, now its #1.
Also note that Pauls blog is blazingly fast and does not have ADs/Cookie Conent/Tracking madness. I don't click Medium links anymore b/c all that bloat + crap. With blogs like this, I am back to HN in less than 5 seconds if I don't like the content.
Because I for one and sick and tired of wealth worship in this country.
The post is not interesting and shouldn’t be on the front page.
Why is someone being a zillionaire even a variable to judge whether something was interesting or not?
All kinds of writers, artists, scientists etc were once from that group.
So it's more probable to listen to something interesting from an old money millionaire who inherited wealth, than from a self-made one (which would tire you with self-promotion and gloating about their business acumen, bravado, and hardships they had to overcome).
The only possible criteria that a post this small and with this little substance would get upmodded for is the billionaire bit, and possibly that people are just upmodding 'pg without checking the actual content (I've seen a few people talk about how they use upmodding as a 'read later' function).
I don't even mind that it was, but the comment makes a decent point.
This isn't Billionare worship it is celebrity worship. And it's caused because PG has written enough things insightful enough that people can feel their minds changing as they read, that they will reflexively upvote.
I hate seeing anti-wealth rhetoric on HN. If the point is wealth doesn't matter then the criticism ought to be more substantive then 'aye, he's just popular because he's a billionaire'. HN is one of the only places I know of where ambition has been celebrated. I get that startups and the startup culture didn't turn out to be a necessary good thing so there's some cynicism there. But we can do better than demonizing the money, a result, rather than causes.
(Anyway, I think I'd like to join lobste.rs)
To respond just to this part: I don't think either of these things are true. With "past" you can look around the front page in 2007-8. I just did - not very different at all from today. Not many pg essays around - none on most days on the front page. The titles are a lot longer today, seems the main difference!
You're implying that since it's not actually a variable (X being rich = X having something interesting to say), it can't function as a variable.
But it very much can. Whether it should or shouldn't be a variable, for many people it functions as one.
The same way people buy music or watch movies of "good looking" actors and musicians, even though being "good looking" is not a variable to judge whether a song/movie is good or not.
So, since this (treating wealth/beauty/fame/etc as a variable as to whether something is interesting) exists, and is often prevalent, it makes sense to wonder when someone listens to somebody else X that is rich/beautiful/famous whether they merely listen to X because he is those things (and not because X has something interesting to say).
It is an example of what happens when you feel the urge to say something for the sake of saying it.
And all of this makes me think that maybe somehow there is more randomness to wealth Creation and distribution than we already acknowledge.
Sure, he was relatively wealthy from the sale of ViaWeb. But the popularity of his writing is what led to YCombinator and then to him becoming much more wealthy.
Amen brother! As I was leaving the house this morning I caught a snippet of something about Oprah being on a tour; top tickets are in the thousands of dollars. Nothing against Oprah but what does she have to say that is actionable and I haven't heard before, that I (or anyone, really) should pay to hear? I think it was Gore Vidal (rest his crusty vituperative heart) who wrote that Americans think proximity to wealth eventually confers it on them, especially if they f*-- it. Paraphrased obviously, am not about to google it at work.
It was so out of box to me that I think it speaks to how a large portion of the electorate prefers personalities, particularly those who “created” something.
Are many looking to read what the Waltons say?
No, this isn't wealth worship. The reason why people pay attention to folks like PG and Buffet is because they've repeatedly proven to have useful insights. Does that mean everything they say is of great value? Of course not. But their batting average is strong and they offer a lot of free wisdom. It's a good idea to learn from those who have things to teach, and Paul is a good teacher.
Have you ever been inside a Business College?
Also I enjoy his books and essays, in particular the ones about LISP.
I don't know about his financial situation. And frankly I don't care.
Here you go: http://paulgraham.com/rss.html
This is kind of what the original criticism highlighted....
It's a useful reminder, but it doesn't stand out. Anyone and everyone these days gives advice about learning voraciously, whether or not anyone listens or does it.
All the time. Both "personal insight/self help" stuff, and all kinds of low-effort development posts. So?
I guess I'll really regret asking for a few examples of that! But here goes - Some evidence for that claim? Recent links? (This site has stuff that made the front page I think, if that helps https://hckrnews.com/ )
By low-effort, I meant..the combination of bland content, first-draft-quality style, and very short. I don't think I've seen anything that short on here, and it's high on the blandometer too, though some people on this page say they got value from it. (Aw I feel bad criticizing now, hopefully he takes his own advice not to read HN pages about one's own stuff..)
edit: Ah, someone on this page mentioned Seth Godin, which reminds me he had a blog-post linked recently (not sure if it made the front page) - even shorter, and much less to say. One of the most popular blogs in the world! It said. Amazing. My first exposure to him. Well, maybe he used to be good, I don't know.
Plus lots of one-off posts of random "wisdom"
Add to that all the content-less "new Node release", "here's 2 minor changes in Golang 1.1x", "I tried framework X and I don't like it" (with trivial arguments), etc... that somehow are voted to be first page...
To be fair, yes regularly.
Maybe it's supposed to be a meta essay, an essay about noobs that reads like it was written by a noob?
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Hi. :-) I guess that includes me? Not sure who else you're talking about[0]. That's an ominous, vague, passive sentence there. I can't see I've offended the guidelines, except possibly not being kind, shallow dismissal of other's work..I have a feeling you meant "Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate" but I don't think I'm doing that exactly. More complaining/disappointed about excess votes and deficient quality, I guess. I did think it was worthless so I flagged it as advised.
[0] Possibly yourself? Among your most recent few comments are ones beginning If you'd bothered to read you'd realise that the.. and Are you serious?
They appear on the front page because of the 'Newman effect'. I just coined that term for back in the day what made Paul Newman's salad dressing successful and has since been copied as a formula by many celebrity brands. Basically if you have two salad dressings on the shelf in a supermarket people will pay attention and potentially buy the one that they notice for a reason that is not even related to the quality of the product. And as everyone knows in sales or marketing (or should know) getting your message across and getting listened to is (arbitrarily I am making this up) half the battle. [1]
Of course Paul Newman had other things going for him as well. He could get the supermarket to consider his product because of the halo around him as a movie star. He could get top quality people to help with the product as a result of being a movie star. He even (iirc) pioneered (or at least popularized) giving profits to charity (from memory). But much of the success was for sure dependent on his name recognition which made it more likely that people would try the product (same thing happens with why stars are featured in movies obviously although with Netflix that is becoming less important for sure).
[1] This is also what an intro does for you it gets the person to listen to what you have to say which you might not even get the chance to do if you are just cold calling.
I find these essays, even the short ones, useful and insightful. I hope PG is not unduly influenced by the recent backlash to his publishing more.
I came to this community originally largely due to his insights and the particular culture he nurtured here. The recent uptick in his contributions is welcome.
1. http://www.paulgraham.com/philosophy.html
You can expect to have control over something you created.
Asking questions, whether it's to Google or another person is a very rewarding process when you eventually find an answer.
I would have thought most people in the tech industry would think like this since it requires so much ongoing learning and feeling like a noob every time a new library / framework comes out. Maybe not?
newb(ie) - New to the game (typically doesn't know what they're doing).
noob - Currently not good at the game, but is trying to get better (usually lots of overlap with "newb(ie)").
n00b - Insult for someone who isn't good at the game, and is not trying to get better. Often deludes themselves into thinking they're already good at the game.
It can be frustrating not knowing and I'll go down the path of analysis paralysis and procrastination sometimes. I'm a bit prone to that as in my previous career I kinda had things down pretty solidly.
But I try to embrace it. Is this the right code here? No better way to find out than try things and see what happens....if it doesn't work, well I'm a noob, that is going to happen. (obviously these are somewhat educated / calculated risks, not just random)
I like it. There's a freedom in not worrying if you're doing it right all the time and recognizing that doing it wrong is ok provided you learn.
I managed to save a small stash of money as well on the side over nearly 20 years of work that I had as both an emergency fund and "one day I kinda want to do something different" fund.
My wife works as well and while she doesn't make much (teacher) it helped of set some costs).
The turnaround time from end of previous career to new job was about 8 months and that was probabbly the key. That's not too bad. I would have loved to go back to college for a more formal education but that was not an option due to the time commitment / I was a terrible college student when I was younger so i would have a lot to make up at a traditional college.
As a n00b i was making very little at my first job initially but after proving myself my salary has risen quite quickly. I'm not where I used to be in terms of income, but I'm happier for sure.
There are not that many non-obvious stuff left to be said in the current state of the world.
This is a post saying how learning new things is good.
At the same time, this is a post saying "I wonder why evolution discouraged a lack of confidence!"
Like, duh. I'm all for Paul, but pretty much any stoned teenager would be able to come up with this.
No, it was not just saying that. If that's how you interpreted it then you probably read it too fast.
Perhaps you don't owe billionaires any better (btw, is pg one? I had no idea), but you definitely owe this community better than this—much better—if you're posting here.
> Perhaps you don't owe billionaires any better (btw, is pg one? I had no idea)
He means in a sense 'rich as croesus' is my guess not literally that he has more than a billion (arbitrary anyway, right?) amount of money. And for that matter even someone who owns a billion worth of stock is not like they have a billion of liquid cash but it's referred to (and has always been 'a billionaire').
That said I think the parent comment expresses some of the sentiment of other comments (including my own) that what PG says it taken as more important than the same thing said by a nobody. (And not in particular that HN votes it up or not but just this general sense in the world that a 'halo' is not merit based which is what many people want to think success should be based on.)
But he wouldn't be PG (in the context of my point) if he hadn't made money based on what he has done. I mean I'd never read what he said if he was just a guy who did Lisp and wrote essays. And if I wanted 'my aunt' to read what he said a hook wouldn't be 'he went to Harvard and is a programmer and wrote a book..'. But money? That attracts people and you know makes you popular and accepted by a much larger group of people.
Just like Wozniak wouldn't be Woz if there was not money attached to what he has done.
Now to support your point I could also point out many people who are revered on HN who are not associated with making money for sure. So it is (I agree) misplaced to tie my comment to having money maybe I should have said 'fame' was the currency.
Taking it one step further let's say you and I meet on an airplane. I find out what you do and that you are tied into YC and HN etc and Graham. I know who Graham is. So sure I am going to be more impressed then if you are doing the same thing for someone who has not scored it big.
Let's take it one step further for discussion. Let's say my aunt runs into you on an airplane. She has never heard of YC HN or Paul Graham. So you rattle off some YC companies she has heard of and even uses. All the sudden you are viewed in a different light.
PG has a halo plain and simple. That halo can even be extended in a way by people surrounding him. Part of that halo is as a result of money plain and simple. Money is viewed as success and envied. Sure he's not a billionaire (maybe) but certainly is viewed as probably having a large amount of money (I do as well btw..)
https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9781461381877
idiot (n.)
early 14c., "person so mentally deficient as to be incapable of ordinary reasoning;" also in Middle English "simple man, uneducated person, layman" (late 14c.), from Old French idiote "uneducated or ignorant person" (12c.), from Latin idiota "ordinary person, layman; outsider," in Late Latin "uneducated or ignorant person," from Greek idiotes "layman, person lacking professional skill" (opposed to writer, soldier, skilled workman), literally "private person" (as opposed to one taking part in public affairs), used patronizingly for "ignorant person," from idios "one's own" (see idiom).
In plural, the Greek word could mean "one's own countrymen." In old English law, one who has been without reasoning or understanding from birth, as distinguished from a lunatic, who became that way.
https://www.etymonline.com/word/idiot
opp. to a professed orator, opp. a professed philosopher
Comes from http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:19...
where you can find: opp. public, my personal opinion, unique and different from others
Where I find it harder to keep up is that esoteric knowledge of "the culture". What is current in music and movies and art. Even interacting with young people a lot. The velocity of relevance seems to have altered significantly.
Another interesting take is returning to childhood passions. I used to be into sailing and thought if I have some free time I'll take it up as a hobby again. Maybe book a class in Annapolis MD. Or charter a small yacht for a day trip in Florida during spring break.
But the world of sailing has just metastasized into a massive industrialized complex! Lexus has a concept luxury yacht. You can control the helm 100% using a Garmin Smart Marine Watch. There exist software platforms for archival wind data.
Don't get me wrong, it's awesome. But there is an activation energy. And I am sure there are still single person Hobie Cats available. But it does make you feel as if you need to be all-in or else exist in a perpetual state of n00b-ishness ;)
Hmm, this is a bigger point than I think you make it out to be. (?)
It's something that's pained me for a long time too. I'll ramble a bit...
I think part of the problem, in my case at least, is that the world programmed me to think that I need to be all-in.
"All-in" to me means I have to get the Lexus yacht and the Garmin smart marine watch, and all the _stuff_ that comes with that, if I want to partake in this activity. If I want to enjoy its pleasures.
"All-in" to me also means that this activity (in this modern form) and its ecosystem and community has been structured (by that massive industrialized complex) such that if I don't go all-in, then it wouldn't work. The real action happens when you go all-in.
From another angle, if I had the luck of realizing that I can do sailing with a simple Hobie Cat, with a friend, on the local lake. I'd still have to overcome this very difficult impression left on me by the marketers of the Lexus + Garmin + Goodies that a simple Hobie Cat wouldn't be good enough to bring a very broad smile to my face. They would want me to sit with the all-in image in my head. They would want to suppress the simple option.
-- which then is where we can look at your other statement: >>>The velocity of relevance seems to have altered significantly.
You cannot just go all-in today and be set. you need to do it every year, "new" updates, upgrades, all sold by the same marketers in such a way that the previous models just seem not usable anymore.
-- Reading again, I also see >>>it does make you feel you see, thats what they want!
>>>it does make you feel as if you need to be all-in
so they want to create the idea that being behind, being a noob (the "perpetual state" as you put it) is a bad thing. Or maybe rather, they know humans (as PG says were in the old days required to overcome noobness to survive) so it's built into us. marketers exploit this to get you to buy again and again.
------- which brings us to philosophy. The stuff I've come to realize sit even underneath the above statements.
See, philosophers tells us that happiness already exists inside us. Right now. Right here. Inside.
If you could be made to believe it is outside, then you could be told 'one of the things' out there might be the one for you. Which implies, you'd have to try out a lot of stuff to hopefully find it between the options. Which gives you the idea that if you get something, and it doesn't work, you just gotta try something else. But what you don't know, the trick, is that none of it will fulfill.
Also, problem for a capitalist world is that, if you know happiness is inside, then you have no reason to seek it outside of you. If you're not seeking it outside, and you feel it inside, you won't be open to suggestions of products that might fulfill this suggested feeling of emptiness. Which means they can't sell you anything, and thus not take your money.
So, ask yourself then, how much of how our society is built, its structures, how we're educated, deliberately avoids helping you to find the happiness inside, and deliberately pushes you to seek for it outside of yourself.
- being a noob i think then is not something we should seek in all cases. when learning , yes definately.
but ito happiness, being in the moment and enjoying it as it is, is all you need. no noobness attitude.
---- ok, ramble done. I may've gone way beyond your comment, but you triggered something, and I enjoyed it , thanks!
I've always felt that you can't be liberated from your attachments, if you don't fully realize what it means to be enslaved by them in the first place
I've always thought the subject of Renunciation in Hindu Philosophy would make the subject of a terrific screenplay
There's a film you may enjoy, one of my favorites actually, The Razor's Edge (1947), written by Somerset Maugham
Young American, born at the right place and the right time, who instead of contributing to the booming growth that would place his nation at the forefront of nations, chooses to chuck it all and "idle" for awhile
Here's the scene he arrives at an Ashram in the Himalayas after a chance suggestion from a stranger
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDGwAoLhJE4
"...the myst caught in the treetop. I've never seen or felt anything like it!" " I felt as if I've been released from my body" "sense of knowledge more than human"
Return to _silence_. Without the distraction of others and the world, ie isolation. And in there, after the mind-chatter waned, he found _himself_
I've very recently had similar amazing experiences in the wilderness of mountains where it felt like I was beginning to melt away into it all. Very peculiar! Something I want to go back to... --
Just did a quick search for philosophy around this movie, the theme of existentialism comes up among others. http://www.philfilms.utm.edu/1/razors.htm
I'll have to spend some more time here :-D --
Renunciation. Yes, that's a tough one. "renunciation of material desires and prejudices, represented by a state of disinterest and detachment from material life, and has the purpose of spending one's life in peaceful, love-inspired, simple spiritual life"
In my own struggles with existentialism, I find the deeper I go into spirituality, the more I naturally experience "disinterest and detachment from material life". It just happens. What's most interesting to me, is as this happens, also the world seems to fight back, like it wants to pull me in again, not just the struggle with worldly desires, but things like these out-of-the-blue amazing "opportunities" arrive, that when looked at, is just a very polished way to try and pull me back into the world!
Life is amazing indeed.
I very much doubt that being stupid correlates with feeling like a noob. In fact, my own experience of 'stupid' people suggests the very opposite.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
This line gave me a good laugh.
> if you stay in your home country, you'll feel less of a noob
> And yet you'll know more if you move.
I experienced this in the US when I was scheduling interviews for an internship with a US company. I had waited for the interviewer for half an hour and shoot them an email asking for rescheduling after they did not show up.
Turns out I forgot the timezone difference. In all my (quarter-century)life, I had never needed to check timezone in the same country. Felt like the biggest noob. I know more in general now but, even for a simple thing like scheduling an interview, I became "locally" noob.
With experience it should become rarer and rarer to encounter some things that makes so little sense that you feel like a noob, and you certainly shouldn't feel aimless.
The more systems you explore, the bigger the toolbox you acquire. And there are not infinitely many existing tools because they once have been invented. And often these tools can be categorized by their operating principles which are even fewer. Because most disciplines overlap, the more you explore the faster the exploration goes.
Sure, when you encounter something new you will need to gather some info before you are operational, but when you are enough of a generalist, you will have picked up enough heuristics to know who, where, and what to look for, and it shouldn't take long.
Sure, we can dig and make any subject arbitrarily deep so there are infinitely many new things to explore and be amazed by. Staying humble, curious, honest and acknowledging that there are plenty of things that you have explored yet is also necessary.
But if you disperse by being contempt of being a noob you risk becoming lost in a senseless experiencing of a chaotic mess, and not gather experience by seeing the order things could be arranged into.
So when you feel like a noob, sort it out.
I feel like this is exactly the point he's making: if you're not putting yourself in positions where you feel like a noob, you'er not engaging your skills to their fullest potential, because the 'sorting it out' part is the thing that's really good for you. Nowhere here does he say 'feel like a noob and stay that way."
I'm saying if you feel like a noob, stop and fix it before exploring further or risk being lost.
I take the contrarian opinion that even though there is growing complexity it is still orderly enough that once experienced enough feeling like a noob should be something akin finding a gem, or having a paradigm shift, which although you should be happy to find, it should remain occasional.
I don't believe you need to feel like a noob to be engaging your skills at their fullest potential. In fact that's quite the opposite.
It's akin to having bugs in software.
Having bugs in software could be a symptom of engaging your skills to the max. But it's more likely the symptom of sloppiness that has accumulated.
In fact when your software has bugs, you spend your time doing some bug fixing, instead of doing more interesting things.
If you are in position that you are feeling like a noob, or have bug in software, try to understand what went so wrong that you are in this situation and try as much as possible to not be again (but keep exploring and building software). This is a symptom that you are working in a messy environment that is on a path to more mess where you will get lost.
You won't sculpt a fine piece of art if you spend your time fixing your chisel every ten minutes.
Then you're not pushing yourself or trying new things. Noob == newbie, so it applies even to experts who are learning things in an unfamiliar area.
I felt like a noob when I learned about functional programming. Then I felt like a noob again when I started learning Haskell.
I read about Coq yesterday and felt like a total and utter noob.
I read about the `nom` lexing crate for Rust recently and felt like a noob getting up to speed.
I still am a noob when it comes to using every unix utility: I recently learned about gnu parallel and read about xargs more finely.
I never want to be in a situation where I never feel like a noob, because in computing alone that's basically impossible unless I'm not challenging myself.
But rewarding libraries (by using them) that make you feel like a noob is kind of rewarding an abusive behavior.
Before you use something you probably should already have a good model of how it operates from a high level perspective, what you need to give them, why you are using them...
The software should serve your need instead of forcing you to adapt conventions. If you invest time learning a bad software then the sunk cost fallacy will make you keep using the bad software and sunk-in more time.
Exploring is hard, you should have a strategy for it, you should explore things in the right order so that exploring is easy, and you explore what you want. If your exploring strategy is to follow the steepest learning curve you will get lost in an infinite hellish mess like Sisyphus.
Playing musical instruments and singing, yoga poses, barbell training with correct form, Buddhism, how to negotiate in an Arab bazaar, tax returns, training animals, riding a motorcycle, how to navigate forests, how to navigate the sea on a sailboat, how to direct and edit a movie, reciting poems, how to structure a novel, cooking and baking well, brewing beer, how the electric wiring works in a house, hobby electronics, how to build furniture, how to shoot guns and how they work, self defense and martial arts, fixing a car, hunting and fishing, BDSM and fetishes, finance products and the stock market, law and the court system in various countries, foreign languages, diet and nutrition, amateur radio, physics, painting, calligraphy, psychedelic drugs, networking effectively with important people, being a bartender or other service personnel, backpacking alone, raising children...
Some may say "I may not have much practice in [particular thing], but surely it's easy, it's just [...]", but I really recommend reading that blog post called "Reality has a surprising amount of detail", which shows how many things there are to learn about simple sounding special cases (like building a staircase). All these things and hundreds more are rabbit holes with more and more branches of rabbit holes of communities, cultures, various levels of expertise attainable in each branch and subbranch etc.
This needs to be qualified. If I'm a noob at something and I find the right person to help me understand said something, it can be an amazingly rewarding experience and not at all unpleasant.
I don't really mind being a n00b. In fact, I seek it out deliberately. It does get me lots of sneers and micro-aggro; but we never learn anything new, if we don't try something new. I have a pretty thick skin.
https://medium.com/chrismarshallny/thats-not-what-ships-are-...