4 ms·

I don't know how much you can cultivate that attitude, and how much it's just something you're born with.

by jibiki 18y ago

azanar 18y ago
I think this is a deeper question than the downvoting you're receiving suggests that it is. There is a certain amount of one's desire to learn that is a matter of personality, and my understanding is that there is some degree of a person's personality that is determined by things other than socialization. Not all of it, but enough to possibly make a difference. The flip-side of this is that if there are people who, due to some or another in-born trait, are unable to cultivate an attitude of continued hunger for knowledge, that is something they need to deal with by not entering into a profession that demands it. And programming is definitely one of those fields. EDIT: silencing my own inner grammar nazi
- lisper 18y ago
  > I think this is a deeper question than the downvoting your receiving suggests that it is. Yes, I agree. (I upvoted the comment.) A full response to this will take longer than I have right now (maybe I'll work on a blog entry later tonight). But for now, just for the record, my problem was definitely not that I was unwilling to learn new things. I love learning new things, and always have.
  - lisper 18y ago
    http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=546080 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=546080
    - jibiki 18y ago
      > That's one of the reasons I hate Java, because learning Java didn't teach me anything except how truly brain-damaged a language can be. > I learned more in my one year at Google than in the previous thirty. This actually makes sense. It's not about being curious, it's about what you're curious about. I remember once asking one of my friends a very basic question about ring theory (whether a certain ring axiom is overly strong.) He completely refused to consider the problem, because it didn't seem relevant. That's not a lack of curiosity, just a lack of curiosity about irrelevant questions, and math is all about knowing which questions to ask. It's not like you learn nothing by solving the problem, just not anything you would have ever wanted to know.
    - azanar 18y ago
      Thanks for the perspective on this; it appears I did misinterpret what you wrote in the originally linked post, likely due to the lack of context you mention. The reaction I had to this was primarily due to me seeing in this post the stories of countless other developers who stagnate but then don't have the self-reflection to realize that they have, and don't have the motivation to get themselves out of the hole they've fallen into. While attempting to motivate the Lisp community to wake up and get working, in my mind you unintentionally created an anthem to all of them. Hopefully my initial response to this makes a little more sense. :-)
whughes 18y ago
The problem I see with talking about that attitude-from-birth is that it encourages complacency. Can you get to that instinctive level? I don't know, but I think that a person could certainly try and achieve a good level of competence. Saying that it's an accident of birth discourages hard work and encourages the idea of 'innate hacker skill.'
- jibiki 18y ago
  > The problem I see with talking about that attitude-from-birth is that it encourages complacency. Whether a statement is true or false is independent of what it encourages. Let's assume that curiosity is totally hard-wired. Then is it really a good thing for someone to try to become more curious, instead of investing that effort into something else?
  - ahoyhere 18y ago
    And just because it's "from birth" doesn't make it "hard-wired," and even if it is "hard-wired," that doesn't mean it can't be rewired and worked around. Neuroplasticity FTW. The human brain is a most adaptable tool. But that said, how many infants are 'incurious'? They either are curious, or there is something wrong with them. No baby is incurious without some kind of pathology.

I don't know how much you can cultivate that attitude, and how much it's just something you're born with.

by jibiki 18y ago

I don't know how much you can cultivate that attitude, and how much it's just something you're born with.

I think this is a deeper question than the downvoting you're receiving suggests that it is. There is a certain amount of one's desire to learn that is a matter of personality, and my understanding is that there is some degree of a person's personality that is determined by things other than socialization. Not all of it, but enough to possibly make a difference. The flip-side of this is that if there are people who, due to some or another in-born trait, are unable to cultivate an attitude of continued hunger for knowledge, that is something they need to deal with by not entering into a profession that demands it. And programming is definitely one of those fields. EDIT: silencing my own inner grammar nazi

lisper 18y ago
> I think this is a deeper question than the downvoting your receiving suggests that it is. Yes, I agree. (I upvoted the comment.) A full response to this will take longer than I have right now (maybe I'll work on a blog entry later tonight). But for now, just for the record, my problem was definitely not that I was unwilling to learn new things. I love learning new things, and always have.
- lisper 18y ago
  http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=546080 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=546080
  - jibiki 18y ago
    > That's one of the reasons I hate Java, because learning Java didn't teach me anything except how truly brain-damaged a language can be. > I learned more in my one year at Google than in the previous thirty. This actually makes sense. It's not about being curious, it's about what you're curious about. I remember once asking one of my friends a very basic question about ring theory (whether a certain ring axiom is overly strong.) He completely refused to consider the problem, because it didn't seem relevant. That's not a lack of curiosity, just a lack of curiosity about irrelevant questions, and math is all about knowing which questions to ask. It's not like you learn nothing by solving the problem, just not anything you would have ever wanted to know.
  - azanar 18y ago
    Thanks for the perspective on this; it appears I did misinterpret what you wrote in the originally linked post, likely due to the lack of context you mention. The reaction I had to this was primarily due to me seeing in this post the stories of countless other developers who stagnate but then don't have the self-reflection to realize that they have, and don't have the motivation to get themselves out of the hole they've fallen into. While attempting to motivate the Lisp community to wake up and get working, in my mind you unintentionally created an anthem to all of them. Hopefully my initial response to this makes a little more sense. :-)

whughes 18y ago

The problem I see with talking about that attitude-from-birth is that it encourages complacency. Can you get to that instinctive level? I don't know, but I think that a person could certainly try and achieve a good level of competence. Saying that it's an accident of birth discourages hard work and encourages the idea of 'innate hacker skill.'

jibiki 18y ago
> The problem I see with talking about that attitude-from-birth is that it encourages complacency. Whether a statement is true or false is independent of what it encourages. Let's assume that curiosity is totally hard-wired. Then is it really a good thing for someone to try to become more curious, instead of investing that effort into something else?
- ahoyhere 18y ago
  And just because it's "from birth" doesn't make it "hard-wired," and even if it is "hard-wired," that doesn't mean it can't be rewired and worked around. Neuroplasticity FTW. The human brain is a most adaptable tool. But that said, how many infants are 'incurious'? They either are curious, or there is something wrong with them. No baby is incurious without some kind of pathology.