6 ms·

There is also, practically, a massive gulf between: 1) Being vaguely aware that something exists and knowing you can Google for it. 2) Having such a deep, int

by vp8989 8y ago

There is also, practically, a massive gulf between: 1) Being vaguely aware that something exists and knowing you can Google for it. 2) Having such a deep, intuitive understanding of said thing that you can actually use knowledge of that thing to solve complex problems.

collyw 8y ago
You can google for two, no? Seems like a good deal of my job as a software engineer.
- personlurking 8y ago
  The new way to "google" something might become the next gig market. "The next gig economy will be on-demand knowledge" (2019) https://qz.com/work/1527544/the-next-gig-economy-will-be-on-demand-knowledge/ https://qz.com/work/1527544/the-next-gig-economy-will-be-on-...
  - noahmoss 8y ago
    This seems to be written by the CEO of a company that provides the exact service the article describes. That doesn't necessarily invalidate it, but I'd read it more as a business pitch than an honest, unbiased opinion.
    - p1necone 8y ago
      You're being generous. Thinly veiled as a blog post advertising is such a common thing and so so transparent. I wouldn't treat this any differently than a banner ad on a website.
    - personlurking 8y ago
      Google itself tried to validate the idea but ended up shutting it down in 2015. Google Helpouts used Google Hangouts to connect people with experts. If someone could make it a two-way street, and use credits instead of cash, it could become a time bank, which is what I'd really like to see proliferate.
- yetihehe 8y ago
  If you know what to google for. It happened many times to me that I was unable to even know what/how to search for something or didn't know someone already solved that problem in ingenious ways and every specialist knew that, but I wasn't a specialist. I'm a programmer but when I watch machining videos on YT I discover solutions to problems I've never thought would exist.
  - collyw 8y ago
    Ok, that's true when you are in a new domain and don't know the terminology well enough to google effectively.
  - Kye 8y ago
    This is circle of competence, another common topic on Farnam Street. It's knowing what you don't know so you can find out rather than puff up and fake it.
- ovi256 8y ago
  In cutting-edge domains, a lot of that won't be written down, so ungooglable by definition. For example, in deep learning research, good labs were using good initialization functions before somebody bothered to write a research paper explaining why it was good idea. If you didn't work in one of those good labs and so were never told to do that, you would just struggle and say "yeah these deep nets suck they don't even converge".
131012 8y ago
There is also different of usage of Google. There is a big difference between copy-pasting shit from stackoverflow and reading the whole documentation to understand why the hell this method was written this way. I'd say the latter is much more "buffetian".
- bloopernova 8y ago
  Precisely. I work in Ops with a dash of devops thrown in. My coworkers will "document" something by copying and pasting the commands used into a confluence page and calling it done. Which isn't very useful when you come to something 18 months later wondering "why" rather than "how". Because "why" is often more useful than "how" when you are trying to troubleshoot something. I guess it could be condensed to wisdom over knowledge, but how do you tell people that wisdom is valuable when they clearly don't want to hear that? Wisdom takes time and effort, knowledge is a copy and paste away.
james_s_tayler 8y ago
Totally. Everyone that says "I hate maths" would shit their pants at how much they loved math if it didn't hurt their feelings and they could see it's raw power. It's not deep part of your mental model if you have to Google for it. Though sometimes just having an awareness of something so that you can recognize this is a situation where it's useful and now is when you should Google for it is useful. Learning shit deeply is such a game changer. There is no substitute.

by vp8989 8y ago

collyw 8y ago

You can google for two, no? Seems like a good deal of my job as a software engineer.

personlurking 8y ago
The new way to "google" something might become the next gig market. "The next gig economy will be on-demand knowledge" (2019) https://qz.com/work/1527544/the-next-gig-economy-will-be-on-demand-knowledge/ https://qz.com/work/1527544/the-next-gig-economy-will-be-on-...
- noahmoss 8y ago
  This seems to be written by the CEO of a company that provides the exact service the article describes. That doesn't necessarily invalidate it, but I'd read it more as a business pitch than an honest, unbiased opinion.
  - p1necone 8y ago
    You're being generous. Thinly veiled as a blog post advertising is such a common thing and so so transparent. I wouldn't treat this any differently than a banner ad on a website.
  - personlurking 8y ago
    Google itself tried to validate the idea but ended up shutting it down in 2015. Google Helpouts used Google Hangouts to connect people with experts. If someone could make it a two-way street, and use credits instead of cash, it could become a time bank, which is what I'd really like to see proliferate.
yetihehe 8y ago
If you know what to google for. It happened many times to me that I was unable to even know what/how to search for something or didn't know someone already solved that problem in ingenious ways and every specialist knew that, but I wasn't a specialist. I'm a programmer but when I watch machining videos on YT I discover solutions to problems I've never thought would exist.
- collyw 8y ago
  Ok, that's true when you are in a new domain and don't know the terminology well enough to google effectively.
- Kye 8y ago
  This is circle of competence, another common topic on Farnam Street. It's knowing what you don't know so you can find out rather than puff up and fake it.
ovi256 8y ago
In cutting-edge domains, a lot of that won't be written down, so ungooglable by definition. For example, in deep learning research, good labs were using good initialization functions before somebody bothered to write a research paper explaining why it was good idea. If you didn't work in one of those good labs and so were never told to do that, you would just struggle and say "yeah these deep nets suck they don't even converge".

131012 8y ago

There is also different of usage of Google. There is a big difference between copy-pasting shit from stackoverflow and reading the whole documentation to understand why the hell this method was written this way. I'd say the latter is much more "buffetian".

bloopernova 8y ago
Precisely. I work in Ops with a dash of devops thrown in. My coworkers will "document" something by copying and pasting the commands used into a confluence page and calling it done. Which isn't very useful when you come to something 18 months later wondering "why" rather than "how". Because "why" is often more useful than "how" when you are trying to troubleshoot something. I guess it could be condensed to wisdom over knowledge, but how do you tell people that wisdom is valuable when they clearly don't want to hear that? Wisdom takes time and effort, knowledge is a copy and paste away.

james_s_tayler 8y ago

Totally. Everyone that says "I hate maths" would shit their pants at how much they loved math if it didn't hurt their feelings and they could see it's raw power. It's not deep part of your mental model if you have to Google for it. Though sometimes just having an awareness of something so that you can recognize this is a situation where it's useful and now is when you should Google for it is useful. Learning shit deeply is such a game changer. There is no substitute.