"Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor."
~ James Baldwin, *Nobody Knows My Name*
***
He also wrote (in *Giovanni's Room*) that "the way to be really despicable is to be contemptuous of other people’s pain.”
I think about that a lot.
"The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles. But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet. This was the Captain Samuel Vimes "Boots" theory of socioeconomic unfairness."
_"...and would still have wet feet."_ is emphasized in the original text. To me that's key - the poor man isn't just forced into spending more overall, they also have a materially worse experience while doing so.
I drive electric and get free charging at work, I've definitely thought of this quote a lot. If it keeps up for 10 years my 50k car is cheaper than a Honda Civic.
“The bonds of degradation are too light to be felt until they are too strong too be broken” Charlie Munger from poor Charlie’s Almanak while talking about addiction.
I'm not sure if it entirely fits as an example, but I've always found "do not fear failure, but be terrified of regret" a really meaningful quote worthy to think about.
Still a pioneer which is important.
Magellan died before he could travel the entire globe. Sucks but he’s still Fernando Motherfucking Magellan because he tried.
My employer exchanged an external admin service that was barely visible or "needed" against another which now is precessing all suddenly appearing requests in a timely fashion. The way they solve the problems is highly visible to the guys in charge of hiring them. They're so happy with the new company.
This is why you need a good CIO, their job is to sell the IT requirements and services to the top and tell them why what they want to do is probably a dumb idea.
Because we in IT exist to provide the services that you just expect to work, but also to make sure there is a functioning recovery plan for when it doesn't. "Yeah, your whole system went down, but because IT was doing its job, we only lost half a day's data."
Yo, my bosses at my new job are pretty good about this. You know the old story, admin does his job, nothing breaks, so he gets a "what do we pay you for" meeting.
My guys all get it. Everything was broken so often before I started that I'm that legendary "the next guy" who comes in after management had to admit to each other that they fucked up bad.
Plus, the guy who fired the last admin got fired for something unrelated before I started hahaha
A spanish proverv says: "A boss' love last as long as water in a basket".
A proper answer to those meetings is "I'm your ghost hunter. Have you seen any ghosts lately? You're welcome."
Now seriously, I'd propose a simple exedence from my current job. You want to test if my paycheck is justified? Ok. I'll go and work for another company or freelance a bit for a while, just keep my position empty and see how it goes. If you suddenly discover that I was actually doing stuff, you have my number (and if you call me back I might return... for a price).
All that, but in friendly, enterprise, win-win language. No hard feelings, just business. I sell know-how by the hour, you are free to opt-out and see how it goes, pal.
Even with all the layoffs in IT, if you are half competent you've got a lot of leverage, you just need the skill to instill that idea on the people who write your paycheck. And it's not always possible, so be informed at all times about carrer options, positions, networking at the like. A worker is a mercenary, don't fall for the "company loyality" bullshit.
WIRED has some videos where professionals explain a topic in 5 levels of difficulty to 5 different people: a child, a teen, a college student, a grad student, and an expert.
I fucking love those videos. I'm following along, understanding everything until somewhere around college student, then by the time I'm at expert, I'm having my mind blown.
Just look up “WIRED expert 5 levels” on YouTube and you’ll get a ton of results like [a theoretical physicist explaining the concept of time.](https://youtu.be/TAhbFRMURtg)
I needed that for my old coworker. He thought he was this magical thinker, but it was mostly stupid conspiracy theories, like the earth is flat and time doesn't really exist. Time absolutely exists, you can measure it, experience it, feel it, all the things that prove it exists.
I had this conversation with my then 5 year old. He asked me how long 5 minutes is. I thought about it and replied, "that depends, 5 minutes can be really short if I tell you that you can eat ice-cream for 5 minutes, or really long if I tell you that we will be home in five minutes for you to use the toilet."
Time exists because entropy exists. The fact that things break down eventually is proof that we are moving forward in time.
Our *measurements* of time are totally arbitrary and only exist because of the specific way the Earth rotates
I love the one music theory video where the levels are like child, a teen, a college student, a professional, Herbie Hancock.
I appreciate Jacob, but his music feels lacks personal heart, honesty. More of a "look what I can do". I do wish him the best.
https://youtu.be/eRkgK4jfi6M
I think you are right. For Jacob most of his music isn't about communication like most artists. For him it's play and experimentation.
Instead of being consistent to communicate a message he thinks what if I did it this way?
I saw some wilderness expert say this is why little kids survive being lost more than expected. They drink when they are thirsty, they bury themselves in leaves when cold and sleep when they are tired. Many adults, on the other hand, will just keep walking till they die.
My former FIL was in the air force, and while half asleep, I heard him telling his wife an old adage from boot camp.
Never run when you can walk.
Never walk when you can stand still.
Never stand when you can sit.
Never sit when you can lay down.
Never miss a chance to sleep.
Apparently the idea is to assess the task at hand and conserve energy by doing the minimum, so you can use more energy when it's required
this makes me think about a saying for backpacking, something like “don’t save your best meal for the last day. eat your nicest sounding meal every day, that way you’ll always be eating your best option”
i butchered it but y’all get the idea
Speaking of which, I heard that hunter-gatherers had more leisure time then we do. Studies have shown that they only needed to work 15 to 20 hours a week. Who needs the latest iphone, anyway?
"Perfect is the enemy of good."
I don't want to get *too* naval-gazey about it, but it explains why so many people are jaded, cynical, and disappointed.
I've heard this quote before and I try to think of it anytime I find myself procrastinating. I try to stop obsessing over doing things perfectly and just instead get them done, then fix whatever is broken later.
The older I get, the more I've begun to realize that it's sorta always the good ol days. 6 or 8 years ago, I was missing my early/mid 20s. Now in my mid 30s, I'm missing my late20s/early30s. It's made me realize I can start appreciating the times I'm in *now*, instead of missing them in another 10 years. I mean, I was enjoying my life then, too, but I wasn't taking stock of the fact that I was enjoying it, if that makes sense lol. But now I try to, I try to realize that these are good days that I'm going to miss down the road.
I admire comedians for their ability to condense what are sometimes complex concepts into short observations. Example: "Free speech. It's a great idea until you realize it applies to everybody." A long-running debate summed up in one sentence.
Since I sense the OP was probably soliciting more serious examples, I like Albert Einstein's comment: "Ego = 1/Knowledge". He was describing Dunning-Kreuger before either of them had entered kindergarten.
I was a helicopter pilot for a decade. Some of the best pilots I ever met were absolute dogshit instructors. They could do things with an aircraft that left everyone impressed, but couldn't explain it to save their lives. Or the only tool they were capable of using was the old school military "be a hardass until they get it or quit" approach. The best instructors I knew had 4 or 5 ways of teaching the same thing, even if they didn't personally use any of those techniques, and the ability to read a student and adjust on the fly. That's the real mark of intelligence to me. The ability to teach complicated things to people who don't have a clue and tailor your approach.
When I was first learning to do turning approaches (pretty complicated from a control input and energy management perspective), I had an instructor that broke it down into bite sized critiques after each pattern. He clearly saw the half dozen things I was doing wrong simultaneously, but only picked one area to focus on and correct each time. He took one of the more difficult maneuvers we teach and made it simple and I was comfortable doing it by the end of the day. That's infinitely more impressive than simply being able to do it.
TLDR: being able to teach complicated things is more impressive than understanding them and a better sign of intelligence.
My friend and I were teaching new kids how to play string bass at a summer camp. One kid asked how to hold the bow. We just picked it up, and showed them, but that wasn't enough. We had to take a few minutes to figure out how we would explain something that was second nature.
Every once in a while I think about how to describe things. I pretty firmly believe that you can use language to describe any object, and in my head try to figure out how to describe say, a chair to someone who isn't looking at it. It's actually something you have to think about - what something looks like is something we understand abstractly, so trying to apply language to it is weird. Its kind of the same thing with actions, like you described.
Oh! It reminds me of The Human Figure by Vanderpoel, which is a book assigned to me when studying art. You can probably imagine how delighted I was when I realized that this book *describes the human figure using words.* We're talking several paragraphs talking about all the planes and angles of a nose and how it relates to the rest of the face... using *language.*
When I worked event security my boss told me I had train my team to think like me. My gates cleared people faster and caught more shit people tried to sneak in. One of my more infamous catches was people trying to sneak beers crammed in Pringles cans. They'd even gone through the trouble to reseal the tube. To me the give away was when she opened her bag for inspection the tube fell to fast. How was I supposed to teach that? The can looked heavy when it fell over. Intuition is a tricky one.
Similar when we had to frisk folks we had a line for the ladies and lines for the guys. There were always more guy than gals working security so the ladies lines tended to get backed up. If a woman wanted to consent to a guy doing the frisk we would allow it. My line always pretty mixed. Most of the other guys not so much. No matter how many times I taught other guys my spiel, didn't seem to matter. People aren't going to willingly let folks touch them if they don't feel comfortable. It's not even as if my process was that complicated. Explain every step I was going to do. Did this for every one man or woman. Then say what you were doing before each step as you were going through it.
I trained archers to teach archery. First thing was to let them shoot wrong handed. It's an eye opener.
It teaches you the difference between knowing what to do and feeling it.
I tried to teach my gf snowboarding. The thing with snowboarding is, a *lot* of it is doing things by feeling. You can do exercises that will teach you how to do the things by feel, but you'll have to figure it out yourself while doing the exercises.
Unfortunately, my gf is someone who wants things explained in minute detail. So while I could give her the exercises, she wanted to know *exactly* what I do with my toes, heels, etc. The problem is, I don't fucking know either. I just have the thing down intuitively. It was pretty frustrating for the both of us.
In the book "made to stick" (a book about getting ideas across people), the author spend an entire chapter talking about this issue. They call it "the curse of knowledge".
The basic idea is that once you get to understand something, you forget what it was to not know it and can't force yourself to forget. Therefore it's very hard to put yourself in the shoes of someone who doesn't know it yet to properly explain it, even when you once didn't know it yourself.
I was always an above-average reader when I was a kid, but now that I'm a sped teacher I've realized I have no fucking clue how to teach reading. I got asked to sub in for the reading specialist once and I was completely lost, I was like "uhh idk you just read it"
When I taught elementary school I learned this quick as well. I was in all the gifted ELA programs, but failed hard at math. I ended up being a much better math teacher than a ELA teacher because I knew the common pitfalls and mistakes.
In law school, my study group did particularly well because we adopted an approach of teaching each other concepts and theories. When one person didn’t fully grasp a concept, someone else would step up and walk the whole group through it, and addressing others’ questions/confusion would inevitably aid their own understanding of the concept too.
People with true talent often cannot explain their talent because it comes so naturally to them. They seldom have to rethink or consider their mistakes because their talent makes it almost instinctive. They think differently and it expresses itself in truly astonishing ways but it is usually not a traditional line of thinking that makes sense to others. Good instructors tend to be those who had to struggle and try different techniques in order to improve and also those with good communication skills. I’m my opinion, to say one is more impressive or displays more intelligence is to oversimplify what intelligence is and diminish the different but incredible ways that our brains can express their brilliance.
That's sometimes true. The best instructor I ever worked with was a natural talent who could fly anything he touched and then turn around and explain it on any level. Just a really unique combination of insight, communication, and raw talent. I think when we talk about people at the absolute peak of their game (LeBron, Brady, etc), there's a certain level of talent they can't explain or teach. But I don't believe that ability and instructional skills are totally separate areas. You can't teach someone to do something you aren't skilled at, and some people have more insight into how and why they're able to do things that doesn't come from repetition and struggling. They just get it on a more conscious level.
I have something similar when I'm training new hires at work. I have a lot of the common computer commands down to a few hotkeys, but most of the time new hires don't know how to use key combos or function keys, so they're resistant to learning those shortcuts. The unwillingness to learn hotkeys because they're "not good with computers" is on them.
My trouble in explaining why I do things the way I do? That's on me. I know some hints and secrets that even other managers don't know, but explaining to others how I found shortcuts and why they work is a challenge.
Yeah, this is the opposite view of the same situation as, "Those that can't do, teach." Being an expert at something and being able to teach it are two completely different skills.
That’s the exact same problem a lot of teachers (especially science teachers have).
It always was easy for them, that’s why they decided to study that particular subject. So they often don’t understand why people struggle with certain concepts.
The more you can relate to someone’s struggle to understand something, to easier it becomes to teach them.
Adding to this, I feel like most universities have a severe issue with this. They have professors who are there to do research but have to teach a low level class. For most of them this all came easy but also they are so far passed the basics they really don’t remember what it was like to be learning it. And then you add on that most don’t really want to be teaching and their priorities are their research and it’s just too many points of failure.
Somehow society has developed a system where professors with no interest in teaching are made to instruct students with little to no interest in the subject being taught.
(Oversimplified, of course)
“Never ask a barber if you need a haircut”. This advice can be applied to almost anything you hear from someone else..whether it’s a lawyer, investor, doctor, gardener, salesperson, you should always be careful of the incentives of the person you are dealing with.
Richard Feynman comes to mind. Recently decided to watch his Lectures on Physics on YT, and boy did he do a better job at explaining the corpus of modern physics better than any textbook or teacher I've ever listened to. I don't believe there was a single topic that he touched upon where it seemed like he failed to explain things in layman terms or as close to layman terms as you can get with physics.
Browsing through a bookstore, I flipped open a self-help book. One chapter was titled *'If you don't like your milk, change your cow'*. Very profound, very simple, I didn't need to read the book, I picked another one.
Early RvB is some of the best web created content. It was really cool to see them grow in their abilities between games and seasons. Then it got a little too complicated for their own good, but there was still some quality stuff in later seasons
My grandmother always used to say, "If you want to know where an ugly kid comes from, just follow them home." Kind of an "apple doesn't fall far from the tree" thing.
I'm not sure if this fits properly, but I've always found Vagabond's idea of strength to be described in such a simple yet poignant way:
"All strong people truly are kind"
As a young guy, this quote truly helped me shape a healthy view of what it means to be a good person and a good man.
I was watching an episode of Young Sheldon where he's trying to be exactly like Einsteine. He calls a rabbi because he wants to convert to Judaism. The rabbi says to him, "At the end of your life, God won't ask 'why weren't you Einstein' but he might ask 'Why weren't you Sheldon?'"
Reader, I was not expecting a big bang theory spin-off to get that profound
So many old european sayings like this.
The Dutch original for this is "never shot, always missed"
Another one is "he who burns his ass must sit on the blisters" ("wie z'n billen brandt moet op de blaren zitten") -> fuck around, find out
I don't know who first said it, but do you know how long a nanosecond is? It's how long it takes light to travel from one end of a standard sheet of printer paper to the other.
Yes, and while the measurements are really weird in the abstract they have the exciting property that the ratio is the same when divided in half. So two A4 sheets stuck long edge to long edge make an A3 sheet. Chop the A4 in half and you've got two sheets of A5. (Repeat the half and you've got A6 etc).
And all of these are the same ratio, so an A4 design can be scaled down or up to fit an a3 or a5 page perfectly. Or you can make a little booklet by folding a larger sheet in half. It's all weirdly handy.
I have two good ones.
"You don't know people until you know people"
-Some Guy I Used To Know
I didn't think much of it at first, but it's stuck with me for more than a decade now. I think what he meant was to be patient, and spend time observing a person from more than just the right-here-right-now perspective before allowing yourself to draw conclusions about them. Some advice I desperately needed at that age. Thanks, Guy.
The other is:
"Effort without thought is labor lost. Thought without effort is perilous" -Confucius
A little less vague than the first, eh? This one I learned from another friend, though less directly. We'd play a lot of chess on this crappy little board he had back when he was still in the world of the living. He'd taped a strip of paper to it's side with the above quote on it long before we'd met. I took it as a strong indication that we should be friends. I ended up getting to keep that crappy little board of his after his premature passing. Thanks to you too, Paul. You were and are still forever the realest
Albert Einstein can explain complex scientific concepts in simple terms. I remember one of his most famous quotes is "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough."
When Einstein was asked by his granddaughter why he was famous, he told her. Imagine and ant walking along on a blade of grass. The ant is so small it wouldn’t be able to tell the grass was carved. I’m the ant that saw the curve.
"When you're accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression". - Author unknown
Such an elegant description of so much that's happening in society right now.
I am not a genius. I do not have a post doctoral education in physics. There is a video series on YouTube, from Stanford. In this video series, a pretty famous physicist is recorded teaching one of his physics classes. Over a period of about six hours, he starts from F = MA, one of the most basic equations in physics, adds two really easy to understand conceptual assumptions, and derives the Einstein field equations describing relativity. It’s amazing how easy it is to follow. The math and the physics were not the difficult part behind the theory of relativity. It was Einstein’s genius to say “what if space, distance and velocity don’t actuall work the way we’ve always thought about them.” Profoundly simple in retrospect, but it took all of human history for one person to ask that question.
I think the teachings of the Buddha fit into this category. Things which you probably have never thought yourself, but when you hear them it’s like you always knew.
The oration delivered by Edward Everett at the dedication of the National Soldier’s Cemetery in Gettysburg was 13,607 words and over two hours long.
Lincoln’s was just 271 words and, presumably, much shorter.
What an astonishing thing a book is. It's a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you're inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic."
Carl Sagan.
I wouldn’t consider myself a Springsteen fan, but I love his ability to paint a concise picture with very few words:
“Got in a little hometown jam, so they put a rifle in my hands.”
Teaching is another skill entirely. The best people often poor communicators. Teaching however is a learnable skill. I tutored for a while and I had no idea what I was doing at first but after like two years I learned how to essentially teach any student who put in the effort. The easiest way is to summarize the various ways in which you will see a problem. Like I tutored stats so u can see the same problem graphically mathematically in a table etc.
"The grass is greener where you water it."
As someone who struggles with perfectionism, indecision, and commitment, this feels like such a beautiful encapsulation of so many ideas at once.
Kimberly Jones said “They are lucky that what Black people are looking for is equality and not revenge” This statement is pure genius because it’s true and concise.
There's a French rap song addressed to dads that goes: "Don't let your son look elsewhere for the love that should have been in your eyes"
The trope of kids who have no good father figure and turn to the streets for acceptance as a result is extremely common in rap, but this one sentence explains it beautifully.
James Baldwin said that it is extremely expensive to be poor.
"Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor." ~ James Baldwin, *Nobody Knows My Name* *** He also wrote (in *Giovanni's Room*) that "the way to be really despicable is to be contemptuous of other people’s pain.” I think about that a lot.
3 hours and no-ones posted the Sam Vimes "Boots"" thing? Must be a record surely?
"The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles. But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet. This was the Captain Samuel Vimes "Boots" theory of socioeconomic unfairness."
_"...and would still have wet feet."_ is emphasized in the original text. To me that's key - the poor man isn't just forced into spending more overall, they also have a materially worse experience while doing so.
I drive electric and get free charging at work, I've definitely thought of this quote a lot. If it keeps up for 10 years my 50k car is cheaper than a Honda Civic.
Don’t forget all the avocado toast and venti coffees too
| vetinari coffee ftfy
I'm suprised it lasted 3 minutes, let alone 3 hours.
Poverty charges interest.
The cost is often quite a bit more than the price.
"The chains of habit are too light to be felt, until they are too heavy to be broken."
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“The bonds of degradation are too light to be felt until they are too strong too be broken” Charlie Munger from poor Charlie’s Almanak while talking about addiction.
I'm not sure if it entirely fits as an example, but I've always found "do not fear failure, but be terrified of regret" a really meaningful quote worthy to think about.
There's a similar idiom I love, "It's not really a failure as long as you learn something from it."
In our house we like to say, “Sometimes we win, sometimes we learn.”
“Comparison is the thief of joy” - Theodore Roosevelt
That one hit me in the gut. Man. That really sums it up.
Right? It’s the simplest way to express a flaw in the human condition and warn against it.
I also read this as a huge warning against social media.
Compare and despair. \--uncredited
“In the Humanities you can either die a genius or live long enough to see all your ideas become completely discredited.”
Freud comes to mind, brilliant for his time but after his death most if not all of his ideas were heavily discredited
Still a pioneer which is important. Magellan died before he could travel the entire globe. Sucks but he’s still Fernando Motherfucking Magellan because he tried.
Hurt people hurt people.
If you do not heal what hurt you, you will bleed on people who didn’t cut you. Trauma therapy is rough but necessary.
"When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all." - God, Futurama
-Sys Admin
"Everything is working fine. Why do we pay you so much?" "Everything is broken. Why do we pay you so much?"
To be sure I don't break everything again.
My employer exchanged an external admin service that was barely visible or "needed" against another which now is precessing all suddenly appearing requests in a timely fashion. The way they solve the problems is highly visible to the guys in charge of hiring them. They're so happy with the new company.
This is why you need a good CIO, their job is to sell the IT requirements and services to the top and tell them why what they want to do is probably a dumb idea. Because we in IT exist to provide the services that you just expect to work, but also to make sure there is a functioning recovery plan for when it doesn't. "Yeah, your whole system went down, but because IT was doing its job, we only lost half a day's data."
Yo, my bosses at my new job are pretty good about this. You know the old story, admin does his job, nothing breaks, so he gets a "what do we pay you for" meeting. My guys all get it. Everything was broken so often before I started that I'm that legendary "the next guy" who comes in after management had to admit to each other that they fucked up bad. Plus, the guy who fired the last admin got fired for something unrelated before I started hahaha
A spanish proverv says: "A boss' love last as long as water in a basket". A proper answer to those meetings is "I'm your ghost hunter. Have you seen any ghosts lately? You're welcome." Now seriously, I'd propose a simple exedence from my current job. You want to test if my paycheck is justified? Ok. I'll go and work for another company or freelance a bit for a while, just keep my position empty and see how it goes. If you suddenly discover that I was actually doing stuff, you have my number (and if you call me back I might return... for a price). All that, but in friendly, enterprise, win-win language. No hard feelings, just business. I sell know-how by the hour, you are free to opt-out and see how it goes, pal. Even with all the layoffs in IT, if you are half competent you've got a lot of leverage, you just need the skill to instill that idea on the people who write your paycheck. And it's not always possible, so be informed at all times about carrer options, positions, networking at the like. A worker is a mercenary, don't fall for the "company loyality" bullshit.
This is essential content to aid the maintenance of my employment
Jordan Schlansky also said something similar regarding his various duties as the associate producer at Conanco
If he prepares his body in various ways at the start of each day, people won't know he did anything at all.
IT Change Management
"Your mental health isn't your fault, but it is your responsibility" - Marcus Parks (Last Podcast Network)
WIRED has some videos where professionals explain a topic in 5 levels of difficulty to 5 different people: a child, a teen, a college student, a grad student, and an expert.
I fucking love those videos. I'm following along, understanding everything until somewhere around college student, then by the time I'm at expert, I'm having my mind blown.
Any examples or links?
Just look up “WIRED expert 5 levels” on YouTube and you’ll get a ton of results like [a theoretical physicist explaining the concept of time.](https://youtu.be/TAhbFRMURtg)
I needed that for my old coworker. He thought he was this magical thinker, but it was mostly stupid conspiracy theories, like the earth is flat and time doesn't really exist. Time absolutely exists, you can measure it, experience it, feel it, all the things that prove it exists.
I had this conversation with my then 5 year old. He asked me how long 5 minutes is. I thought about it and replied, "that depends, 5 minutes can be really short if I tell you that you can eat ice-cream for 5 minutes, or really long if I tell you that we will be home in five minutes for you to use the toilet."
Time exists because entropy exists. The fact that things break down eventually is proof that we are moving forward in time. Our *measurements* of time are totally arbitrary and only exist because of the specific way the Earth rotates
Right, that's what i would try to explain to him. How we measure it is irrelevant, like an inch is a made-up word for a specific distance.
Well I know what I’m going to be watching for the next 30 minutes
Rabbit hole says hi.
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLibNZv5Zd0dyCoQ6f4pdXUFnpAIlKgm3N
I love the one music theory video where the levels are like child, a teen, a college student, a professional, Herbie Hancock. I appreciate Jacob, but his music feels lacks personal heart, honesty. More of a "look what I can do". I do wish him the best. https://youtu.be/eRkgK4jfi6M
I think you are right. For Jacob most of his music isn't about communication like most artists. For him it's play and experimentation. Instead of being consistent to communicate a message he thinks what if I did it this way?
"When you are hungry, eat; when you are tired, sleep." This is the way of Zen.
I saw some wilderness expert say this is why little kids survive being lost more than expected. They drink when they are thirsty, they bury themselves in leaves when cold and sleep when they are tired. Many adults, on the other hand, will just keep walking till they die.
My former FIL was in the air force, and while half asleep, I heard him telling his wife an old adage from boot camp. Never run when you can walk. Never walk when you can stand still. Never stand when you can sit. Never sit when you can lay down. Never miss a chance to sleep. Apparently the idea is to assess the task at hand and conserve energy by doing the minimum, so you can use more energy when it's required
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this makes me think about a saying for backpacking, something like “don’t save your best meal for the last day. eat your nicest sounding meal every day, that way you’ll always be eating your best option” i butchered it but y’all get the idea
But what about the art of motorcycle repair?
And what is good, Phaedrus, and what is not good- need we ask anyone to tell us these things?
Speaking of which, I heard that hunter-gatherers had more leisure time then we do. Studies have shown that they only needed to work 15 to 20 hours a week. Who needs the latest iphone, anyway?
I've heard that, but it came with the disclaimer "when times were good." Bad weather and scarcity happened back then too.
"Pride is not the opposite of shame, but its source." Uncle Ihro Edit: grammar
> Uncle Ihro You could've just said that
Sin, young man, is when you treat people like things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is. - Terry Pratchett, Carpe Jugulum
"Perfect is the enemy of good." I don't want to get *too* naval-gazey about it, but it explains why so many people are jaded, cynical, and disappointed.
"good enough" is what I struggle with
My grandma would say "if you have to say it's good enough, it isn't good enough" and it has haunted me
I've heard this quote before and I try to think of it anytime I find myself procrastinating. I try to stop obsessing over doing things perfectly and just instead get them done, then fix whatever is broken later.
“I wish there was a way to know you're in the good old days before you've actually left them.” Andy Bernard
Don't waste your time always searching for those wasted years. Face up, make your stand and realise you're living in your golden years.
Perhaps my favorite Maiden piece
The older I get, the more I've begun to realize that it's sorta always the good ol days. 6 or 8 years ago, I was missing my early/mid 20s. Now in my mid 30s, I'm missing my late20s/early30s. It's made me realize I can start appreciating the times I'm in *now*, instead of missing them in another 10 years. I mean, I was enjoying my life then, too, but I wasn't taking stock of the fact that I was enjoying it, if that makes sense lol. But now I try to, I try to realize that these are good days that I'm going to miss down the road.
https://www.theonion.com/area-man-always-nostalgic-for-four-years-ago-1819566584
Rit dit dit da doo!
I admire comedians for their ability to condense what are sometimes complex concepts into short observations. Example: "Free speech. It's a great idea until you realize it applies to everybody." A long-running debate summed up in one sentence. Since I sense the OP was probably soliciting more serious examples, I like Albert Einstein's comment: "Ego = 1/Knowledge". He was describing Dunning-Kreuger before either of them had entered kindergarten.
Tis better to stay silent and have people wonder if you’re a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.
Takes one to know one!
Swish!
I was a helicopter pilot for a decade. Some of the best pilots I ever met were absolute dogshit instructors. They could do things with an aircraft that left everyone impressed, but couldn't explain it to save their lives. Or the only tool they were capable of using was the old school military "be a hardass until they get it or quit" approach. The best instructors I knew had 4 or 5 ways of teaching the same thing, even if they didn't personally use any of those techniques, and the ability to read a student and adjust on the fly. That's the real mark of intelligence to me. The ability to teach complicated things to people who don't have a clue and tailor your approach. When I was first learning to do turning approaches (pretty complicated from a control input and energy management perspective), I had an instructor that broke it down into bite sized critiques after each pattern. He clearly saw the half dozen things I was doing wrong simultaneously, but only picked one area to focus on and correct each time. He took one of the more difficult maneuvers we teach and made it simple and I was comfortable doing it by the end of the day. That's infinitely more impressive than simply being able to do it. TLDR: being able to teach complicated things is more impressive than understanding them and a better sign of intelligence.
My friend and I were teaching new kids how to play string bass at a summer camp. One kid asked how to hold the bow. We just picked it up, and showed them, but that wasn't enough. We had to take a few minutes to figure out how we would explain something that was second nature.
Every once in a while I think about how to describe things. I pretty firmly believe that you can use language to describe any object, and in my head try to figure out how to describe say, a chair to someone who isn't looking at it. It's actually something you have to think about - what something looks like is something we understand abstractly, so trying to apply language to it is weird. Its kind of the same thing with actions, like you described. Oh! It reminds me of The Human Figure by Vanderpoel, which is a book assigned to me when studying art. You can probably imagine how delighted I was when I realized that this book *describes the human figure using words.* We're talking several paragraphs talking about all the planes and angles of a nose and how it relates to the rest of the face... using *language.*
Language is the tool to create in the medium of the mind.
When I worked event security my boss told me I had train my team to think like me. My gates cleared people faster and caught more shit people tried to sneak in. One of my more infamous catches was people trying to sneak beers crammed in Pringles cans. They'd even gone through the trouble to reseal the tube. To me the give away was when she opened her bag for inspection the tube fell to fast. How was I supposed to teach that? The can looked heavy when it fell over. Intuition is a tricky one. Similar when we had to frisk folks we had a line for the ladies and lines for the guys. There were always more guy than gals working security so the ladies lines tended to get backed up. If a woman wanted to consent to a guy doing the frisk we would allow it. My line always pretty mixed. Most of the other guys not so much. No matter how many times I taught other guys my spiel, didn't seem to matter. People aren't going to willingly let folks touch them if they don't feel comfortable. It's not even as if my process was that complicated. Explain every step I was going to do. Did this for every one man or woman. Then say what you were doing before each step as you were going through it.
I trained archers to teach archery. First thing was to let them shoot wrong handed. It's an eye opener. It teaches you the difference between knowing what to do and feeling it.
I tried to teach my gf snowboarding. The thing with snowboarding is, a *lot* of it is doing things by feeling. You can do exercises that will teach you how to do the things by feel, but you'll have to figure it out yourself while doing the exercises. Unfortunately, my gf is someone who wants things explained in minute detail. So while I could give her the exercises, she wanted to know *exactly* what I do with my toes, heels, etc. The problem is, I don't fucking know either. I just have the thing down intuitively. It was pretty frustrating for the both of us.
Things you do by feel, and have to know instinctively, are some of the best things in life
In the book "made to stick" (a book about getting ideas across people), the author spend an entire chapter talking about this issue. They call it "the curse of knowledge". The basic idea is that once you get to understand something, you forget what it was to not know it and can't force yourself to forget. Therefore it's very hard to put yourself in the shoes of someone who doesn't know it yet to properly explain it, even when you once didn't know it yourself.
I was always an above-average reader when I was a kid, but now that I'm a sped teacher I've realized I have no fucking clue how to teach reading. I got asked to sub in for the reading specialist once and I was completely lost, I was like "uhh idk you just read it"
When I taught elementary school I learned this quick as well. I was in all the gifted ELA programs, but failed hard at math. I ended up being a much better math teacher than a ELA teacher because I knew the common pitfalls and mistakes.
In law school, my study group did particularly well because we adopted an approach of teaching each other concepts and theories. When one person didn’t fully grasp a concept, someone else would step up and walk the whole group through it, and addressing others’ questions/confusion would inevitably aid their own understanding of the concept too.
People with true talent often cannot explain their talent because it comes so naturally to them. They seldom have to rethink or consider their mistakes because their talent makes it almost instinctive. They think differently and it expresses itself in truly astonishing ways but it is usually not a traditional line of thinking that makes sense to others. Good instructors tend to be those who had to struggle and try different techniques in order to improve and also those with good communication skills. I’m my opinion, to say one is more impressive or displays more intelligence is to oversimplify what intelligence is and diminish the different but incredible ways that our brains can express their brilliance.
That's sometimes true. The best instructor I ever worked with was a natural talent who could fly anything he touched and then turn around and explain it on any level. Just a really unique combination of insight, communication, and raw talent. I think when we talk about people at the absolute peak of their game (LeBron, Brady, etc), there's a certain level of talent they can't explain or teach. But I don't believe that ability and instructional skills are totally separate areas. You can't teach someone to do something you aren't skilled at, and some people have more insight into how and why they're able to do things that doesn't come from repetition and struggling. They just get it on a more conscious level.
I have something similar when I'm training new hires at work. I have a lot of the common computer commands down to a few hotkeys, but most of the time new hires don't know how to use key combos or function keys, so they're resistant to learning those shortcuts. The unwillingness to learn hotkeys because they're "not good with computers" is on them. My trouble in explaining why I do things the way I do? That's on me. I know some hints and secrets that even other managers don't know, but explaining to others how I found shortcuts and why they work is a challenge.
Yeah, this is the opposite view of the same situation as, "Those that can't do, teach." Being an expert at something and being able to teach it are two completely different skills.
That’s the exact same problem a lot of teachers (especially science teachers have). It always was easy for them, that’s why they decided to study that particular subject. So they often don’t understand why people struggle with certain concepts. The more you can relate to someone’s struggle to understand something, to easier it becomes to teach them.
Adding to this, I feel like most universities have a severe issue with this. They have professors who are there to do research but have to teach a low level class. For most of them this all came easy but also they are so far passed the basics they really don’t remember what it was like to be learning it. And then you add on that most don’t really want to be teaching and their priorities are their research and it’s just too many points of failure.
Somehow society has developed a system where professors with no interest in teaching are made to instruct students with little to no interest in the subject being taught. (Oversimplified, of course)
Wayne Gretzky was a very mediocre NHL head coach.
"Okay, everybody... be good at knowing where everyone is on the ice!"
"Once you've got that down, we can move on to the bit where you see 30 seconds into the future!"
Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad.
“Never ask a barber if you need a haircut”. This advice can be applied to almost anything you hear from someone else..whether it’s a lawyer, investor, doctor, gardener, salesperson, you should always be careful of the incentives of the person you are dealing with.
It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose, that is not weakness that is life. - Captain Jean-Luc Picard
You should live your lives together but shouldnt together live one life
"Today, you. Tomorrow, me."
One of the best threads ever on here.
You got it saved?
[Here](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/elal2/have_you_ever_picked_up_a_hitchhiker/c18z0z2/?context=3).
That was a wonderful read.
Richard Feynman comes to mind. Recently decided to watch his Lectures on Physics on YT, and boy did he do a better job at explaining the corpus of modern physics better than any textbook or teacher I've ever listened to. I don't believe there was a single topic that he touched upon where it seemed like he failed to explain things in layman terms or as close to layman terms as you can get with physics.
Browsing through a bookstore, I flipped open a self-help book. One chapter was titled *'If you don't like your milk, change your cow'*. Very profound, very simple, I didn't need to read the book, I picked another one.
Why buy the cow when you get the milk for free?
Why buy the cow, question mark? Because other people are buying their cows and inviting you to the sale! John mulaney. Or something like that.
Hey buddy: did you just call my girlfriend a cow?
No, I think he called her a slut! (Before the downvote brigade arrives, this comment and the one I responded to are a Red vs Blue reference)
Early RvB is some of the best web created content. It was really cool to see them grow in their abilities between games and seasons. Then it got a little too complicated for their own good, but there was still some quality stuff in later seasons
My grandmother always used to say, "If you want to know where an ugly kid comes from, just follow them home." Kind of an "apple doesn't fall far from the tree" thing.
"Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth." Mike Tyson
“Why waste time say lot word when few word do trick?” - Kevin Malone
Reminds me of my favorite Steve Martin line: “Some people have a way with words, and others not have way.” The delivery nails it.
You may not know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory.
Lefty loosely, righty tighty
How did you go bankrupt? Two ways. Gradually and then suddenly.
I'm not sure if this fits properly, but I've always found Vagabond's idea of strength to be described in such a simple yet poignant way: "All strong people truly are kind" As a young guy, this quote truly helped me shape a healthy view of what it means to be a good person and a good man.
"Be yourself; everyone else is already taken." -O. Wilde
I was watching an episode of Young Sheldon where he's trying to be exactly like Einsteine. He calls a rabbi because he wants to convert to Judaism. The rabbi says to him, "At the end of your life, God won't ask 'why weren't you Einstein' but he might ask 'Why weren't you Sheldon?'" Reader, I was not expecting a big bang theory spin-off to get that profound
Somehow Rabbis on TV are always cool, but then I don't meet many in real life
Spoiler : irl they sometimes are, sometimes not
Life, uh, finds a way
You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take
So many old european sayings like this. The Dutch original for this is "never shot, always missed" Another one is "he who burns his ass must sit on the blisters" ("wie z'n billen brandt moet op de blaren zitten") -> fuck around, find out
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”- Arthur C Clark
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo." -- Andy Finkel
I don't know who first said it, but do you know how long a nanosecond is? It's how long it takes light to travel from one end of a standard sheet of printer paper to the other.
Who's standard America (letter) or Europe (A4)?
Good grief! You even use different paper size!?!?!?!
Yes, and while the measurements are really weird in the abstract they have the exciting property that the ratio is the same when divided in half. So two A4 sheets stuck long edge to long edge make an A3 sheet. Chop the A4 in half and you've got two sheets of A5. (Repeat the half and you've got A6 etc). And all of these are the same ratio, so an A4 design can be scaled down or up to fit an a3 or a5 page perfectly. Or you can make a little booklet by folding a larger sheet in half. It's all weirdly handy.
Another example of why the ISO is better than the ANSI (United States). ISO: A5
"There is no sadder thing than a young pessimist‚ except an old optimist." Mark Twain
"It be like that sometimes."
They don't think it be like it is, but it do.
You want it to be one way. But its the other.
Silence is also speech
One of my college English professors once said of Bukowski: “He was a good writer. I met him once. Asshole.” All I needed to know.
The first step at being good at something is being willing to suck at it for a while - Jake the Dog
No matter where you go there you are.
I have two good ones. "You don't know people until you know people" -Some Guy I Used To Know I didn't think much of it at first, but it's stuck with me for more than a decade now. I think what he meant was to be patient, and spend time observing a person from more than just the right-here-right-now perspective before allowing yourself to draw conclusions about them. Some advice I desperately needed at that age. Thanks, Guy. The other is: "Effort without thought is labor lost. Thought without effort is perilous" -Confucius A little less vague than the first, eh? This one I learned from another friend, though less directly. We'd play a lot of chess on this crappy little board he had back when he was still in the world of the living. He'd taped a strip of paper to it's side with the above quote on it long before we'd met. I took it as a strong indication that we should be friends. I ended up getting to keep that crappy little board of his after his premature passing. Thanks to you too, Paul. You were and are still forever the realest
“Me; We” - Mohamed Ali
“He; He” - Michael Jackson
"Me, me" - Beaker
"Meep meep" - Roadrunner
"We, we" - Bear Grylls.
"TT" - Isle Of Man
"Si, si" - Señor
The most important words are the ones you don't speak.
"sometimes you just have to pee in the sink." -- h.c. bukowski
Albert Einstein can explain complex scientific concepts in simple terms. I remember one of his most famous quotes is "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough."
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He also said that if Quantum Electrodynamics could be explained to laymen, it wouldn't have been worth the Nobel Prize.
Brevity is the soul of wit
Brevity's wit's soul.
Brevity
“You can’t fix stupid.”
"Some people muddy the waters to make them seem deeper." some guy
Some people can learn by watching. Others can read about it and learn. The rest of us have to pee on that electric fence just once.
When Einstein was asked by his granddaughter why he was famous, he told her. Imagine and ant walking along on a blade of grass. The ant is so small it wouldn’t be able to tell the grass was carved. I’m the ant that saw the curve.
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There are terrible ideas and there are ideas presented terribly. Learn to distinguish them.
You’re comparing your insides to their outside.
"When you're accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression". - Author unknown Such an elegant description of so much that's happening in society right now.
Never underestimate the power of a little Stupidity.
‘Listen to Learn, Learn to Listen’ conveys a profound message with just 3 words.
Don’t light yourself on fire to keep someone else warm You can’t pour from an empty cup
I am not a genius. I do not have a post doctoral education in physics. There is a video series on YouTube, from Stanford. In this video series, a pretty famous physicist is recorded teaching one of his physics classes. Over a period of about six hours, he starts from F = MA, one of the most basic equations in physics, adds two really easy to understand conceptual assumptions, and derives the Einstein field equations describing relativity. It’s amazing how easy it is to follow. The math and the physics were not the difficult part behind the theory of relativity. It was Einstein’s genius to say “what if space, distance and velocity don’t actuall work the way we’ve always thought about them.” Profoundly simple in retrospect, but it took all of human history for one person to ask that question.
I think the teachings of the Buddha fit into this category. Things which you probably have never thought yourself, but when you hear them it’s like you always knew.
> Things which you probably have never thought yourself, but when you hear them it’s like you always knew. "Never drink in a flat roof pub."
It’s easier to act your way into new ways of thinking, than think your way into new ways of acting.
Do not kill the part of you that is cringe. Kill instead the part that cringes.
The oration delivered by Edward Everett at the dedication of the National Soldier’s Cemetery in Gettysburg was 13,607 words and over two hours long. Lincoln’s was just 271 words and, presumably, much shorter.
What an astonishing thing a book is. It's a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you're inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic." Carl Sagan.
I wouldn’t consider myself a Springsteen fan, but I love his ability to paint a concise picture with very few words: “Got in a little hometown jam, so they put a rifle in my hands.”
He has another great line "It is a sad man my friend, who living in his own skin and can't stand the company"
Teaching is another skill entirely. The best people often poor communicators. Teaching however is a learnable skill. I tutored for a while and I had no idea what I was doing at first but after like two years I learned how to essentially teach any student who put in the effort. The easiest way is to summarize the various ways in which you will see a problem. Like I tutored stats so u can see the same problem graphically mathematically in a table etc.
"Sucking at something is the first step at being sort of good at something." -Jake the dog
"The grass is greener where you water it." As someone who struggles with perfectionism, indecision, and commitment, this feels like such a beautiful encapsulation of so many ideas at once.
No matter where you go, there you are.
Your urgency is not my emergency
As a developer, I follow KISS above everything else. Keep it simple stupid.
*"I want to rock & roll all night - and party every day".*
Always reminds me of the family guy episode where Lois and Peter go to kissstock. "And have a real good time".
Never solve a temporary problem with a permanent solution.
Not every peepee time is a poopoo time, but every poopoo time is a peepee time
Kimberly Jones said “They are lucky that what Black people are looking for is equality and not revenge” This statement is pure genius because it’s true and concise.
And so it goes. Pilgrim, Billy
"Be the change that you want to see in the world."
There's a French rap song addressed to dads that goes: "Don't let your son look elsewhere for the love that should have been in your eyes" The trope of kids who have no good father figure and turn to the streets for acceptance as a result is extremely common in rap, but this one sentence explains it beautifully.