Ask HN: What's your greatest epiphany? |
Ask HN: What's your greatest epiphany? |
- If you want something, the responsibility of getting that lies on you and you alone. You are responsible for both success and failure.
- To get what you want, 'You should do what it takes'. Even if that's not within the moral/ethical/acceptable norms of the society. Or unpleasant or unhelpful to people people around you.
- You will either follow this and rise, or will be used(and then thrown) by those who follow this. Where you want to be, you decide.
- When you get successful and rich, what ever you do becomes right. Even if that was actually wrong per everybody else before.
But most of all, remembering I am just a person as well. No better or worse than anyone else.
Maybe it sounds obvious, but it truly helped me in life.
Yes, that's exactly what I meant.
Tons of people will buy stuff for reasons you can't even conceive.
The difference between being poor and having a bright future has a lot to do with knowledge and awareness, more than initial means.
There are heaps of differences between people of different cultures, religions, countries, but there are still very strong common elements you can use as a basis to work together.
Building a solid network and community around you is a big driver for luck, probably more than your own skills.
That happiness is just a matter of wanting less as opposed to having more.
And learning about the financial crossover point was another light-bulb moment. When you can save most of what you earn, to get to a point where working isn't necessary, but a pleasure..
- Some people look at the world as a series of things that happen to them. They relish the sympathy and attention they get. Do not befriend these people, they will drain you emotionally, and you might be the next person they accuse of doing them wrong.
- Instead, think of the world as a set of resources provided to you for the purposes of achieving your goals.
Edit: I see you elaborated on your comment a bit, which makes mine read quite differently. I also agree with you loads more now.
Race, money, even colors like blue and green only exist in a particular social context.
Time is more valuable than money and things. It can't be regained.
Value experiences over things. Experiences last a lifetime, things don't.
My way of re-phrasing "90 percent of success is just showing up".
Most people would be depressed with this epiphany but for me, it was liberating.
Which means I obsess less and less over what others think, I compare myself less and less and I let things that I can't control influence my happiness less and less. Basically I'm a nihilist.
This affects your ability to influence others and be influenced by others.
The takeaway for you receiving wisdom is to be open to things that you are not yet ready to hear, to remember them and keep them in mind as it may apply to you in the future when you are ready.
If you need to share wisdom, empathise with where the receiver is currently and tell them what they're ready to hear based on where they are today (or will shortly be).
Considering this and keeping my mouth shut has saved me many a fruitless argument.
The reasonable person asks for half the cake, the unreasonable person asks for the whole cake.
They compromise and split the difference - the unreasonable person gets three quarters of the cake and the reasonable person gets a quarter.
[I wish I knew the origins of this - I heard it years ago.]
They generally come to a mutually satisfactory conclusion, normally kindness (apparently inherent in human society) surfaces quickly.
Intelligence would perhaps suggest it's most efficient not be a dick in the long run.
I have my own, but I'm curious about what people believe is the moral of the story.
First: You don't get what you don't ask for. the other person might really only want a quarter of the cake, but by asking for more than your "fair share" you open the door to allowing them to give you what you want.
Second: By asking for the whole thing, you have placed yourself in a position of power and privilege. The mere act of asking for more implies that you think you deserve it. Someone mentioned posturing in another comment.
If you wish to get what you want, you have to use any means possible. And there is nothing wrong in it.
Actually if you look at it that is how most successful people get successful.
Think of your own good first, even if that's not very helpful to the other guy.
http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-o...
However most people don't ask for it. So only the ones who take the time to ask for it and write two sentences of why they should receive one get it.
More often than most people realize, their deep wishes can be accomplished by another way than working your butt off or winning the lottery.
My motivation for being rich (in the monetary sense) would be that I don't have to work anymore. My deeper wish is the absense of authority (a boss) and to be able to spend more time with my children. If you think of it that way, it would be crazy to work more hours, right? I work 4 days a week now, hardly no overtime, and my boss values responsible individuals more than mindless office drones. I have more than enough time to see my children growing up, and even enough time for some challenging side projects and hobbies. Which brings me to another epiphany, I guess: time might be money, but money != time. Time you spend with your kids can never be taken away from you, time you don't spend with your kids can never be brought back. It's gone forever.
I'm the richest man in the world.
Robin Hanson has some extensive descriptions[1] of what I mean, with the crucial insight that "X is not about Y"[2], and that rationalization may be the original, evolutionary purpose of rational thinking rather than its perversion[3]. He even offers remedies[4] if you consider it a problem.
[1] http://www.overcomingbias.com/tag/signaling
[2] http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/09/politics-isnt-a.html
[3] http://www.overcomingbias.com/2014/04/reason-stories-both-tu...
I couldn't even remember what the problem had been because it was totally, and completely, solved.
I started to think about what this might mean for finding answers to questions. Perhaps people who have TRULY solved certain problems aren't the ones talking the most about them.
"I think [X], therefore I am [X]" -- whatever you think, and focus your thought and will and desire on is what you create out of yourself.
The tricky part is, when you're talking to someone, to figure out the boundaries of their viewpoint and take that into account when you communicate.
The trickier part is seeing the boundaries of your own viewpoint and forcing them wider. This is hard as your view of the narrowness of your own viewpoint is limited by the narrowness of your own viewpoint.
From there it was pretty much a lot of sitting, breath meditation, and hard work - it's very tempting to chase thoughts that pop-up during meditation, but reminding yourself to let it go and move back to focusing on the breath builds the ability later in "everyday" life to notice you have a poor/misguided thought pattern motivated by ego or emotion and to step back and realize you are not that emotion or thought, it is just something happening, and you're able to let those emotions go much easier and make calmer and more rational decisions. I am in no way an expert of any sort, I'm still figuring out this stuff as well, but it's been significantly beneficial just from the short time I've been practicing.
Honestly the /r/meditation FAQ has some good resources and links there, especially ones relating to mindfulness in plain English (it cuts out the spirituality aspect quite a bit). There is also a course on Coursera called Buddhism and Modern Psychology ( https://www.coursera.org/course/psychbuddhism ) that I was interested, but I have no experience with it. Hopefully this helps in some way :-)
Here is a great talk about it from a doctor withouth any new age babble. He gives very simple advice and even backs up his claims with some research.
The gist of it is: - For 15 minutes a day sit down and try not to think/observe your body/observe what is going on in your dead - Do this for 30 days, after that your brain should pick it up and do it more or less automatically
This made a huge differenc in my life for sure.
[NB I'm listening to the excellent "Revolutions" podcast at the moment http://www.revolutionspodcast.com/]
It also doesn't apply 100% of the time. Does anything?
- If you focus on the money you won't get anywhere. You must focus on the creation of value for other people in an area that will allow for exponential customer growth. It's all about serving other people at scale. Getting rich is the side effect of this. The process accelerates if you love what you are doing and are having fun.
* On human relations:
- You are never too talented, too smart or too good looking to burn bridges, think less about others or not make an effort to be liked by all and treat everyone with respect and courtesy. Not doing this will always come back to haunt you.
- No matter how bad things get in your family never betray your family member's trust.
- Be as gracious as you can to those who are disrespectful to you, pivot in your mind and thank them for their encouragement. Use it as fuel.
* On getting stuff done:
- Focus. Multitasking is a myth.
- Forget doing stuff solo, you need a team to do anything really amazing. Each team member needs to know their strengths and weaknesses and your team should be a cohesive and complementary whole where strengths cover weaknesses.
Although the saint puts himself last, he finds himself in the lead.
Although he is not self-concerned, he finds himself accomplished.
It is because he is not focused on self-interests and hence can fulfill his true nature.
Either you're getting a much higher rate of return than the rest of us, or you're awfully excited about maybe 5 cents.
Or you're just being hyperbolic.
The upshot of that is (A) that you can't do "everything" just because you can afford it (B) life is too short to "stick it out" if you really don't like what you are doing.
Books are a perfect example of "B": If you read part of a book and you don't like it, stop/quit and read another instead. It makes no sense to read a "bad" book just because you've been conditioned to "finish what you start". There are just too many other great books you could read if you quit reading the bad one and started reading another one.
You can probably guess where I put my focus.
While your options are wide open at 20 they are far more limited at 40 or 50 simply because you don't have time to start anew.
And, similar to software, your life requires far more maintenance time as it goes on :)
Being smarter might actually be harmful as the human brain isn't good at filtering all the impressions that the person feels with a higher IQs. For instance, a high IQ often comes with social anxiety, autism and other mental restrictions that lessen the person's capability.
For IQs above 140, people become more specialized from what I've seen. They might be very useful to solve specific problems such as curing cancer/inventing the theory of relativity, but they have a hard time executing a bigger vision involving hundreds of employees and knowledge across numerous fields as one needs to create a startup.
I believe the sweet spot, where a human being can have the biggest impact on the world is somewhere between 130-140. This is an IQ, where a person can understand pretty much everything, but isn't overwhelmed by all the input it gets.
I used to be crippled by some social settings, but identified the root cause of the paralysis from a very specific childhood event, rationalized against it, and was able to overcome it with practice.
Anyone with more knowledge behind the psychology care to elaborate/provide some resources? Thanks
Epiphany 1: one day I realized that Bresenham's line algorithm wasn't just a way to draw lines. In reality, it linearly interpolates values over a range. Example: get the gradient/color values along a horizontal line from x0,color0 to x1,color1.
Epiphany 2: The 2nd big "aha" moment was when I worked for a machine tool company and someone explained how our ball screws (a big threaded rod that moves a tool or cross slide when you turn it) was "mapped" so we could tell what the error was at each point and thus correct for that error with a resulting greater accuracy. That concept can be applied to all kinds of problems. For example: Instead of making a "perfect" lens at great expense, you can make a "map" of the lens's imperfections and correct the image in software.
Sadly, colors don't blend as easy as coordinates: http://www.stuartdenman.com/improved-color-blending/ ... but in general I agree.
Human advancement has come mostly from markets and freed up the thinking man.
People aren't interested in facts or the truth, they want the story.
Human change is extremely slow and only happens in iterations.
Poor people pay interest, rich people collect it.
If you put something out there for sale, people will buy it, somehow.
Really? The Soviet Union invested a much larger share of it GDP in military.
I had to start running slower than the slowest part of the couch-to-5k program (a.k.a the most newbie program to get into running) to get my breath and body used to it. Now I can run 5k no problem.
- Learned helplessness is one of the biggest enemies to learning, but it's insidious in that sufferers don't recognize it. Often, I'll try to teach someone something, and I'll know for sure that they can and will grasp a concept, but they'll just stop short on their own accord, chalking failure up to their own (imagined) inherent inability rather than a specific situational lack of something. Usually accompanied with a general statement like "I'm just not a technical person" or "I'm not that smart" (sometimes not voiced) or "I don't get math" or "I'm more of a right-brain person". It's interesting that of the tons of much likelier reasons for failure (bad teaching, not enough practice, not having the right foundation), the most commonly chosen is "it's me".
The opposite side to this is to incorporate failure and retrial as part of the learning process, and to realize that the failure is a specific situation and mostly not a general statement of ability.
Anyway, when they're encouraged a bit and they do succeed, their surprise and satisfaction is one of my favourite things in the world.
- Psychology is not bullshit like I used to think before.
- Introspection and self-examination is very important and ignoring your inner world does not make your problems go away. Regularly taking time to consider your thoughts, worries, knee-jerk reactions, big life events, priorities is a great idea, and keeps problems from bottling up. A multitude of lingering things on your mind that don't seem immediate on their own can add up fast. I didn't even know this could happen until it did to me.
As a positive result though, I discovered a whole new meta-level of thought. Observing the process through which thoughts materialize in my mind is enlightening. Watching chains of thought develop step by step uncovers biases and thought-tendencies that are often unconscious but can be damaging.
It also promotes self-honesty, which sometimes saves you a lot of time and money and is often a great antidote to ignorance. There isn't a switch you can flip to be more objective but a decent attempt helps.
- When people say things, don't forget to think about why they're saying them. Often this provides valuable perspective. What's motivating them to say that? Is it conscious? Sometimes a pipe is a pipe, but sometimes it's not. For example, if someone tells you "never trust women", concluding that the person has probably been severely hurt by women before (conclusion from asking why the person said this) is much more valuable than concluding women are evil (the direct conclusion).
One day my boss comes over and just starts helping me fix the machine. He's humming a little song and happily fixing things. And I just looked at him, and I said "Doesn't this fucking piss you off? That this fucking machine keeps fucking breaking?" (I was a kid. "Fucking" was a fun word to say. Still is, actually.)
He looks at me and says, "Does the machine care if you're mad?"
Huh.
My understanding that it wasn't the amount of tax - which was actually quite low, but the fact that they did not (and arguably, could never have) any meaningful representation within the power structures that raised these taxes.
I'm just finishing up on a Bayesian flamewar detector. If you would tell the high-school me this years ago I would have said you were crazy...
Yes. I assume most HNers are "rational", logical, analytic thinkers that despise office politics and allowing feelings to clout "sound" decisions. However, feelings exist, office politics exist, and humans are irrational. Therefore, being logical and "rational" we have to account for these pesky "stupid" things and act accordingly if we want to maintain our logical and "rational" self labels.
EDIT: quotes.
I also discovered how powerful is cognitive reconstruction (i translated it from italian definition).
This also had some nice side effects, I was really good at languages, history and biology, so I could take my brother's tests. He was good at math and science, so he occasionally took mine.
Yes. Either this maxim applies 100% of the time, or there is some other statement that does.