4 ms·

Of course! It is up to a reader to decide what is right and wrong, good book are just beautiful artistic artifacts, much like some violin concerts or very few p

Of course! It is up to a reader to decide what is right and wrong, good book are just beautiful artistic artifacts, much like some violin concerts or very few painting. Sorry for too banal sentiments.)

btilly 13y ago
Here is a fun exercise for you. Take professionals around you who seem uninterested in what you care about. Assume that they are interested in something that they can teach you. Find out what it might be. Learn it from them. If you're like me, you'll quickly find that the mapper/packer dichotomy only served as a fancy intellectual justification for flipping the bozo bit on people whose curiosity about the world happened to be about things other than what you paid attention to. You might also learn something interesting about anything from negotiation to accounting to local laws.
- dschiptsov 13y ago
  It is murderously hard to find a real, no-nonsense competence. Usually all you got are narcissistic types like patio11 and talking heads. I studying good old CS books and AIMs or watching some online courses this way.
  - btilly 13y ago
    It really looks to me like you flip the bozo bit where you shouldn't. It is really hard to find a person whose interests and competence match that which you are interested in. But it is easy to find someone you can learn useful stuff from whose interests don't so align. Don't believe me? Consider Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance for a second. The main character of that book is mechanically inclined. But are you? Could you, for instance, explain how a simple mechanical device like a differential works? Probably not. Therefore in some sense you fail to be the kind of person that Prisig was describing. Not because you lack interest, but because your interest is in a different area. (BTW if you're curious, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYAw79386WI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYAw79386WI has an excellent explanation of how a differential works.) When you start doing this, you may find something interesting. You'll notice that people like tptacek, whose actual skills should properly impress you, have great respect for people like patio11. Why? Because tptacek recognizes what patio11 is better at than he is, and can respect patio11 for that, at the same time as patio11 is very clear on what he is and isn't good at. So what is patio11 good at? It is very simple. He's good at figuring out how tech people can market themselves. This may not be a skill you care about. Not one you wish to learn. But one that tptacek sees value in. And that is how life goes. We each specialize. Some things we choose to learn. Other things we need to know who is good so we can know who to go to to do it. And the whole is bigger than the sum of the parts. Just make the transition from looking down on people who choose to be good at things you don't, to accepting and respecting them for what they are. You may be surprised at how much of your life smooths out. Or you can choose to sit in your little corner, on top of your mountain of specialized knowledge, sneering at the world to make up for the fact that others don't respect you in the way you think you deserve to be respected. And then wonder why people don't enjoy being around you.
    - dschiptsov 13y ago
      The main character of the book is not mechanically inclined, he is inclined, so to speak, with necessity to understand and explain, to find out the meaning of things and phenomena he observed. The quest for the Truth (only to find Quality instead, or a "perfect" Balance as it called on the East) is a state of mind, which is roughly a mix of curiosity, logical reasoning, imagination and persistence. Some call such set of traits the scientific mind, and some call it our Buddha nature. The book is about minds, not motorcycles. As for attitude towards other people, it is really difficult problem, because lots of our attitudes are based on social conditioning and effects of environment which heavily influences what experience we had and most importantly how do we interpret and consolidate them, a bunch of feedback loops between different "agencies" of the brain. In other words, culturally I am lower class Russian, which means I am treating other people in a different way you do. For me, for example, so called respect never to be taken for granted, but to be earned or to be a consequence of other person actions. So called "cultures of honor" are too much concerned with how others behave, it is silly, but it is what we are. So, I do respect guys like Hickey or rtm or antirez (there are few more) because not only I could appreciate what they have done, but I know what it takes to be able to perform like that. It is like a person could really have a respect for those who is capable to run 15km non-stop only when he himself could run at least 10. Then you know what it takes. So I cannot respect any talking heads or so called consultants simply because I know what it takes. Not very much. Another example is books. As long as you progress as a reader you possibly could realize how very very few really good books are here (it is not a matter of popularity or cover annotations, of course) and the general amount of nonsense around you.
      - btilly 13y ago
        I like your analogy, and will take it a step further. You're like a person who can run 10 km nonstop and therefore respects someone who can run 15 km. But since you've never tried riding a bike a long way or swimming, you don't respect people in those professions. If, instead of turning your nose up at them, you were to try those other professions, then you might find yourself developing some respect for what it takes. That's kind of where I am. I have learned some things in depth. But I've learned enough about enough things that I have come to expect there to be something real to learn to be good at pretty much anything I don't already know. Since I'm smarter than most, I can learn a lot of things relatively quickly. But I still can find ways to treat people who know things that I don't with respect.

btilly 13y ago

Here is a fun exercise for you. Take professionals around you who seem uninterested in what you care about. Assume that they are interested in something that they can teach you. Find out what it might be. Learn it from them. If you're like me, you'll quickly find that the mapper/packer dichotomy only served as a fancy intellectual justification for flipping the bozo bit on people whose curiosity about the world happened to be about things other than what you paid attention to. You might also learn something interesting about anything from negotiation to accounting to local laws.

dschiptsov 13y ago
It is murderously hard to find a real, no-nonsense competence. Usually all you got are narcissistic types like patio11 and talking heads. I studying good old CS books and AIMs or watching some online courses this way.
- btilly 13y ago
  It really looks to me like you flip the bozo bit where you shouldn't. It is really hard to find a person whose interests and competence match that which you are interested in. But it is easy to find someone you can learn useful stuff from whose interests don't so align. Don't believe me? Consider Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance for a second. The main character of that book is mechanically inclined. But are you? Could you, for instance, explain how a simple mechanical device like a differential works? Probably not. Therefore in some sense you fail to be the kind of person that Prisig was describing. Not because you lack interest, but because your interest is in a different area. (BTW if you're curious, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYAw79386WI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYAw79386WI has an excellent explanation of how a differential works.) When you start doing this, you may find something interesting. You'll notice that people like tptacek, whose actual skills should properly impress you, have great respect for people like patio11. Why? Because tptacek recognizes what patio11 is better at than he is, and can respect patio11 for that, at the same time as patio11 is very clear on what he is and isn't good at. So what is patio11 good at? It is very simple. He's good at figuring out how tech people can market themselves. This may not be a skill you care about. Not one you wish to learn. But one that tptacek sees value in. And that is how life goes. We each specialize. Some things we choose to learn. Other things we need to know who is good so we can know who to go to to do it. And the whole is bigger than the sum of the parts. Just make the transition from looking down on people who choose to be good at things you don't, to accepting and respecting them for what they are. You may be surprised at how much of your life smooths out. Or you can choose to sit in your little corner, on top of your mountain of specialized knowledge, sneering at the world to make up for the fact that others don't respect you in the way you think you deserve to be respected. And then wonder why people don't enjoy being around you.
  - dschiptsov 13y ago
    The main character of the book is not mechanically inclined, he is inclined, so to speak, with necessity to understand and explain, to find out the meaning of things and phenomena he observed. The quest for the Truth (only to find Quality instead, or a "perfect" Balance as it called on the East) is a state of mind, which is roughly a mix of curiosity, logical reasoning, imagination and persistence. Some call such set of traits the scientific mind, and some call it our Buddha nature. The book is about minds, not motorcycles. As for attitude towards other people, it is really difficult problem, because lots of our attitudes are based on social conditioning and effects of environment which heavily influences what experience we had and most importantly how do we interpret and consolidate them, a bunch of feedback loops between different "agencies" of the brain. In other words, culturally I am lower class Russian, which means I am treating other people in a different way you do. For me, for example, so called respect never to be taken for granted, but to be earned or to be a consequence of other person actions. So called "cultures of honor" are too much concerned with how others behave, it is silly, but it is what we are. So, I do respect guys like Hickey or rtm or antirez (there are few more) because not only I could appreciate what they have done, but I know what it takes to be able to perform like that. It is like a person could really have a respect for those who is capable to run 15km non-stop only when he himself could run at least 10. Then you know what it takes. So I cannot respect any talking heads or so called consultants simply because I know what it takes. Not very much. Another example is books. As long as you progress as a reader you possibly could realize how very very few really good books are here (it is not a matter of popularity or cover annotations, of course) and the general amount of nonsense around you.
    - btilly 13y ago
      I like your analogy, and will take it a step further. You're like a person who can run 10 km nonstop and therefore respects someone who can run 15 km. But since you've never tried riding a bike a long way or swimming, you don't respect people in those professions. If, instead of turning your nose up at them, you were to try those other professions, then you might find yourself developing some respect for what it takes. That's kind of where I am. I have learned some things in depth. But I've learned enough about enough things that I have come to expect there to be something real to learn to be good at pretty much anything I don't already know. Since I'm smarter than most, I can learn a lot of things relatively quickly. But I still can find ways to treat people who know things that I don't with respect.