9 ms·
Speed isn’t everything, and slowness may in fact be more beneficial (2017)
- jajag 3y agoFestina lente
- dr_dshiv 3y agoBig fan of the Aldine Press. A motto for the Renaissance!
- FirmwareBurner 3y agoSloths are living proof of this.
- yamrzou 3y agoYou are joking, but you are right: From Why Are Sloths So Slow? (https://slothconservation.org/sloths-move-slow/ https://slothconservation.org/sloths-move-slow/): > The answer is surprisingly simple: Being slow is an incredibly successful strategy for survival. In fact, being slow has helped sloths to survive on this planet for almost 64 million years.
- rcme 3y agoI have the opposite conclusion. Many things have existed for millions of years, the vast majority of which are not slow. Therefore, being slow is a pretty terrible survival strategy. And, in practice, you see evidence of this: faster animals routinely kill slower ones.
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- justinator 3y agoA correlated idea to this is to practice by going back to the basics, rather than always chase the New Hot Thing.
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- hospitalJail 3y agoI wonder if the author is unaware Daniel Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow has been debunked. I suppose its a 6 year old article, but I'm still embarrassed when I have thoughts related to that book.
- Swizec 3y agoDebunked how? Got links? I'm curious because I remember quite enjoying that book and he did get a Nobel for that whole area of research whereas we're just random HN commenters.
- Kranar 3y agoDebunked might too harsh of a claim, but the book does not make any strong testable predictions so that it can either be validated or debunked. The book certainly is not fraudulent in anyway, but the research is of quite limited value. Claims about prospect theory, priming, endowment effects and happiness heavily center around what is referred to as WEIRD populations (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic), and even more specifically middle class Americans. The work has not found much success generalizing to other cultures or demographics, either geographically or even within ethnic communities within the U.S. For the most part, the book puts forth some interesting ideas and presents some interesting metaphors and it is certainly more technical than most treatments of this subject, but in terms of actually making concrete statements that can be used to actually understand human psychology, there isn't a whole lot to debunk to begin with.
- yCombLinks 3y agoThere's 1 specific chapter that he has publicly acknowledged relied on weak data. You're significantly overstating your point. Here's the actual blog post, with Kahneman responding in the comments (publicly confirmed it's him) if you page back : https://replicationindex.com/2017/02/02/reconstruction-of-a-train-wreck-how-priming-research-went-of-the-rails/comment-page-1/#comments https://replicationindex.com/2017/02/02/reconstruction-of-a-...
- fredoliveira 3y ago> I'm still embarrassed when I have thoughts related to that book You shouldn't be. The book is rightfully considered one of (if not) the defining works of behavioral psychology and you dismiss it because one chapter's methods came into question? Read his explanation of the "debunk": https://replicationindex.com/2017/02/02/reconstruction-of-a-train-wreck-how-priming-research-went-of-the-rails/comment-page-1/#comment-1454 https://replicationindex.com/2017/02/02/reconstruction-of-a-...
- PaulHoule 3y agoI dunno. For me it is a running gag when I go to a McDonald's in a distant city, particularly in a foreign country, and say to somebody who's been waiting in line "... I thought this was supposed to be fast food". In software development it is quite official that a fast computer is a good thing, I mean, idle minds do the devil's work if your compile takes 40 minutes.
- havblue 3y agoFrom my experience of being an American traveler in Paris, you should be grateful that they're serving you at all!
- smaudet 3y agoYour compile should take a minute or so, though. And that's arguably slow. 40 min is order of magnitude slower, but the goal is not to be as slow as possible. If you have e.g. a hot reload (instant recompile), that's fantastic, but you probably don't actually want to constantly re-configure the code, rather check on various state etc. You also want to eventually start over as the size of the state changes outside the normal running parameters increases, and that's when you may want a slower recompile. If it takes only a second, you probably didn't have enough code to work on, and it provides incentive to avoid frequent recompiles and stay in hot-reload. Even in languages without hot reload, this generally holds true. You want a bit of time to consider which issues to fix, and you want some reason to try to get it right...the tradeoff is generally better code. The alternative is expensive (memory/disk/time) activities such as excessive and incorrect (re)-testing. Put another way, fast cycle times are only better than slow ones if the quality and feature richness of your codebase is better than slow cycle times. I would prefer to take 40 minutes and have a compiler spit out a guarantee of correctness than spend two weeks hot reloading junk.
- zh3 3y agoRelated recent discussion on "Intelligent people take longer to solve hard problems": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36434578 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36434578
- michaelteter 3y agoAt the highest level, it's difficult to argue that anything actually matters. So being in a hurry is as pointless as pondering endlessly to make the best choice. But since we create our own isolated realities, most of which are human-lifetime based, we tend to care about the passage of hours or days. And in that scope, sometimes being quick seems important, but also having perspective and time for reflection can. There is a time (pardon the pun) for blitz chess, and there's a time for clockless chess. What matters actually is the experience, not the outcome. If we believe that our approach resulted in a better outcome, we are happier.
- bob1029 3y agoIf we are looking at this from a business perspective (which might map), the actual wizardry is in knowing exactly when to push and when to sleep on something. I think we can all agree that there are things you should think very deeply about before you even touch your computer or join the conference call. Things like what sorts of vendors and business partners you want to get married to for the next half-decade. If you want to be a Microsoft shop or some OSS champion (both valid in my view!). These kinds of things often times require starting a new company to fix after you commit. In our domain - the thing you don't want to spend a lot of time worrying about is the entire scope of the actual code/development work. Assuming you are using source control, you have a superpower that allows instant teleportation to any moment in time. The consequences of making a bad choice and acting quickly are negligible, assuming you aren't trying to lose the game on purpose (e.g. master builds straight to prod on unprotected pushes). It only gets to be adverse if you are unable to separate the bad from good ideas afterwards. Not reflecting on your prior works. I believe we'd refer to this as the "technical debt". I think it was Amazon that does the one-way/two-way door decision test. This is a fair criteria for deciding when to sleep on a proposal or when to shoot and then aim.
- pazimzadeh 3y ago> it's difficult to argue that anything actually matters > being in a hurry is as pointless as pondering endlessly to make the best choice Only during times of abundance (very recently). Historically, survival would be thing that mattered, and time is very important for running away from things, finding antidotes to poisons/disease, social coordination etc..
- sb1752 3y agohttps://shaanbatra.medium.com/slow-processing-2f1165b80ff0 https://shaanbatra.medium.com/slow-processing-2f1165b80ff0
- reaperducer 3y ago"The fastest way to move a cow is slow." - An old cowboy truism, as related in the current issue of the Navajo Times.
- scns 3y ago"Take your time i'm in a hurry" - The Emperor of China to the guy who helped him dress
- smokel 3y agoInteresting mix of pointers in this article. What I was looking for, but could not find in the article, is some more information about time perception [1]. It amazes me to no end that time seems to be passing faster and faster now that I grow older. In my youth, 10 minutes used to take ages, but now a month passes in a blink. If any of you startup guys can find a way to slow this down, I'll buy a subscription. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_perception https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_perception
- yamrzou 3y agoYou might find this interesting: Time Perception: Why Time Can Feel So Slow — https://www.spring.org.uk/2022/12/time-perception.php https://www.spring.org.uk/2022/12/time-perception.php
- smokel 3y agoI do indeed, thank you. Unfortunately, the question what causes time perception to speed up with age, remains a mystery to me. I don't buy the argument that when we grow older things are less new, and therefore time somehow appears to go faster. For one, I learn more now than I did in my teens, when there was no internet. I also get to meet more people, experience life events, learn about death, etc. All pretty new, yet time seems to only accelerate. The article also taught me a new term: "Boredom-prone individual". I think it might be an interesting experiment to try to be as bored as possible over the course of a year, and try to become a BPI. Perhaps the lasting effects will make up for the investment!
- copperx 3y agoOne theory I like is that when young, we see the world in "high FPS" (a rough metaphor for some neurological phenomenon). As we age, the "FPS" slow down, which makes everything seem much faster. At least in my subjective experience, I can tell that motion seems coarser now that I'm 40. I can still detect the "soap opera" effect when motion smoothing is turned on in a TV, but it's a bit harder to tell than when the feature was introduced.
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- pazimzadeh 3y agoThe literature on intelligence is kind of all over the place Higher intelligence is thought to be linked with more efficient use of resources rather than just faster or slower thinking: Diffusion markers of dendritic density and arborization in gray matter predict differences in intelligence https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-04268-8 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-04268-8 But, larger and faster neurons are found in people with higher IQ?: Large and fast human pyramidal neurons associate with intelligence https://elifesciences.org/articles/41714 https://elifesciences.org/articles/41714 More intelligent people have better neurological integrity and their neural impulses travel faster: Genetics of Brain Fiber Architecture and Intellectual Performance https://www.jneurosci.org/content/29/7/2212 https://www.jneurosci.org/content/29/7/2212 But, intelligent people take longer to solve difficult problems: Learning how network structure shapes decision-making for bio-inspired computing https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-38626-y https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-38626-y
- dilawar 3y agoBoy, this modern obsession with IQ is no less intense than old Indian obsession with purity. The fact that IQ can't be measured or even defined any better than purity does not take the force away. Fortunately, IQ based society looks less evil than prurity based. At least your place in society is not strictly fixed by your birth.
- gmadsen 3y agoIQ(rather g-score) is the most well understood measurement in all of pyschology..
- epgui 3y agoAnd yet it means very little and is a horrible proxy for what we consider “intelligence”.
- justrealist 3y agoIt's an incredibly good predictor of life outcomes.
- w0mbat 3y agoI love that this article was posted 6 years late.
- nico 3y agoThere is a mantra the navy seals use in training: go slow, slow is smooth, smooth is fast You are supposed to repeat it in stressful situations to hell you come down and avoid making costly mistakes There is also a saying is Spanish: vísteme despacio que tengo prisa (dress me slowly because I’m in a hurry) Which essentially advises to slow down when in a hurry
- scns 3y agoSame in practicing a musical instrument. Only after you can play it perfectly very slow, you increase the tempo.
- mordechai9000 3y agoFunny, a career mountain guide just told me the same thing last week (slow is steady and steady is fast). And the story he used to illustrate it was about a group of typical amateur climbers he'd guided on Denali, passing a group of navy seals. The navy seals were in much better physical condition, but they weren't pacing themselves and they weren't using the rest step technique.
- tjmc 3y agoThere's a good example of how fast, intuitive thinking often fails in "Thinking Fast and Slow" (referenced in the article): A bat and ball cost $1.10. The bat costs $1 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?
- ezekiel68 3y agoAs for technology implications: the Motorola 68000 CPU runs at 8MHz and was good enough for the Amiga 500. Sorted. /s
- piocaidsn 3y agoDelving into a subject slowly and thoroughly often leads to a deeper understanding. This applies to learning new skills, absorbing complex information, or appreciating art and culture. Taking time to explore nuances simply enriches ones experiences.
- piocaidsn 3y agoThis is true, Some of the most creative ideas and groundbreaking innovations come from periods of reflection and unhurried exploration. Allowing thoughts to simmer and develop over time can lead to more innovative solutions than just rushing into things blindly.