5 ms·
"Tell me what you pay attention to and I will tell you who you are." - Jose Ortega This is fantastic. I've always had a hunch that experts are "seeing" things
by BigHatLogan 7y ago
"Tell me what you pay attention to and I will tell you who you are." - Jose Ortega
This is fantastic. I've always had a hunch that experts are "seeing" things differently than novices, and seeing things that people who aren't in the same domain aren't even aware of. As people develop more expertise, I imagine the gap becomes larger, to the point where they're aware of things that "laymen" aren't even cognizant of.
Two examples:
In one of Malcolm Gladwell's books--I forget which one--he writes about a firefighter who, almost unconsciously, ordered his men out of a building right before it collapsed. He didn't even know why. After going through the day's events with a researcher, the researcher realized that the fireman was subconsciously (unconsciously?) attuned to what was happening around him. His brain was operating unbeknownst to him due to his years of expertise.
A friend of mine started a small business late last year. He started it on a lark, after a trip to the local autobody shop. Usually his spouse handled all of the car-related affairs, but for some reason he ended up having to do it himself this time. When he went to the store, he noticed that the software they were using to manage their inventory was dated and quite awful. He took down the manager's information and messaged him a week later with a proposal for revamping their software system. The autobody became his first client. The manager said that hundreds of people come in and out of that store every day, but my friend was the first person to point out that their software wasn't very good. My friend isn't an expert programmer by any stretch, but he was more of an expert than anybody in that office in regards to developing software. His brain basically zeroed in on it without him noticing.
Related to a thread from last week about our brains physically changing depending on what we do and pay attention to: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22201771 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22201771
I've become somewhat "obsessed" with this topic recently and would love to know if others know of any resources I can check out. I read "The World Beyond Your Head" by Matthew Crawford recently--he spells out this phenomenon quite well.
EDIT: Jose Ortega's full name is Jose Ortega y Gasset--I forgot to add the last part.
- low_common 7y agoHow's his business doing? Is he doing consulting?
- BigHatLogan 7y agoI think he's basically using it as "passive income." They pay him a few hundred dollars per month for "maintenance", but I'm not quite sure what that entails. There was a lot of initial legwork to write the software, but it's a pretty simple CRUD app, according to him. He noticed that everybody at the office was using expensive iPads to do basic tasks, so he convinced the manager that he could do it for cheaper. He's not actively growing the business or finding new clients. This was more of an experiment on his part to see how easy or hard it would be to get a paying customer.
- sergi_chalauri 7y agoBtw, that Gladwell's book is called Blink. An excellent read!
- BigHatLogan 7y agoThat's the one--thanks! I've read three of his books, so a lot of the stories have bled together over the years. I forget which book had which stories.
- mattrp 7y agoI think understanding these expert responses could be a way to advance generalized AI. It seems to me that one part of pattern recognition is having a guess that's indexed to a key composed of the senses. There may be multiple close matches (the expert) or many distant or conflicting matches (the novice). <<I'm certainly not informed on AGI state of the art so forgive me if this sounds like a total NOOB statement...
- MayeulC 7y agoMy guess is that this is related to how LSTM networks operate: they learn to pay attention differently to various parts of data, focusing more on some depending on the input. I believe the broader class is composed of various "attention mechanisms". But I'm mostly giving keywords away, I do not have an intricate understanding of the way they work either.
- akira2501 7y ago"Tell me what you eat: I'll tell you what you are." - Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
- s_dev 7y agoYou are what you eat. - Old proverb
- croh 7y agoConstant chat in our head, keeps us away from reality. Try not think for few seconds and see how you become aware about surroundings. Only intense moments shook us from this chit-chat. Take a look on yoga too. I am not an expert but core philosophy is being aware/conscious/witness about yourself. https://aeon.co/ideas/an-ant-colony-has-memories-that-its-individual-members-dont-have https://aeon.co/ideas/an-ant-colony-has-memories-that-its-in...
- BigHatLogan 7y agoThanks for the recommendation. I think you're onto something--this idea of being more aware and conscious about the things around you. I've noticed that when I spend time away from my phone I'm a lot more clear-headed. Initially, I get really antsy--"What's happening on HN? Twitter? Reddit?"--but after some time I become a lot calmer.