> As to progress -- we don’t know how much progress we made, actually, but if you practice it you will realize -- some day you will realize that our progress is not -- it is not possible to make rapid, extraordinary progress. Even though you try very hard, you cannot actually make progress. The progress you make is always little by little. It is like -- to go through fog. You don’t know when you get wet, but if you just walk through fog you will be wet, little by little, even though you don’t know -- it is not like a shower.
> When you go out when it is showering you will feel, ‘Oh, that’s terrible!”. It is not so bad but when you get wet by fog it is very difficult to dry yourself. This is how we make progress. So actually there is not need to worry about your progress. Just to do it is the way. It is, maybe, like to study language. Just repeating, you will master it. You cannot do it all of a sudden. This is how we practice, especially Soto way, is to do it little by little. To make progress little by little. Or we do not even mind, we do not expect to make progress, just to do it is our way. The point is to do it with sincerity in each moment. That is the point. There should not be Nirvana besides our practice.
For while the tired waves, vainly breaking
Seem here no painful inch to gain,
Far back through creeks and inlets making,
Comes silent, flooding in, the main.
And not by eastern windows only,
When daylight comes, comes in the light,
In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly,
But westward, look, the land is bright.
I was hoping that the large COVID response in this country at the start of it all would finally get people to breathe, slow, and all that you mention. For a while , around my location, you could see life almost returning to a more connected to life, life.
When things settled down, nothing much seemed to stick. The rat race restarted the grid is good to go, and the pace ever more frantic.
People can, will, do, and should do whatever it is that makes them live their fulfilled life, 100%.
I just hope they do it for themselves, not for others. Would be a shame.
...Reminds me of how I ruined my old wallet, hiking thirty miles on a foggy day in Algonquin Provincial Park.
Quoting from 'The Road Less Traveled' by M. Soctt Peck.[0]
Section on Problem-Solving and Time:
> At the age of thirty-seven I learned how to fix things. Prior to that time almost all my attempts to make minor plumbing repairs, mend toys or assemble boxed furniture according to the accompanying hieroglyphical instruction sheet ended in confusion, failure and frustration. Despite having managed to make it through medical school and support a family as a more or less successful executive and psychiatrist, I considered myself to be a mechanical idiot. I was convinced I was deficient in some gene, or by curse of nature lacking some mystical quality responsible for mechanical ability. Then one day at the end of my thirty-seventh year, while taking a spring Sunday walk, I happened upon a neighbor in the process of re-pairing a lawn mower. After greeting him I remarked, "Boy, I sure admire you. I've never been able to fix those kind of things or do anything like that." My neighbor, without a moment's hesitation, shot back, "That's because you don't take the time."...
> The issue is important, because many people simply do not take the time necessary to solve many of life's intellectual, social or spiritual problems, just as I did not take the time to solve mechanical problems...
> And this is precisely the way that so many of us approach other dilemmas of day-to-day living. Who among us can say that they unfailingly devote sufficient time to analyzing their children's problems or tensions within the family? Who among us is so self-disciplined that he or she never says resignedly in the face of family problems, "It's beyond me"?...
> Actually, there is a defect in the approach to problem-solving more primitive and more destructive than impatiently in-adequate attempts to find instant solutions, a defect even more ubiquitous and universal. It is the hope that problems will go away of their own accord.
>Problems do not go away. They must be worked through or else they remain, forever a barrier to the growth and development of the spirit.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._Scott_Peck#The_Road_Less_Tr...
https://www.flickr.com/photos/57934548@N02/
There's also this old blogger blog where I waffle-on about them:
https://ultraiterator.blogspot.com/
And here's one example of a 16k rendering:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1g1B6pVennldNsswyiiA2qOsy2Nv...
If anyone wants to do a print of any of these, definitely let me know (email on profile)! I will be happy to do a 16k render too if I haven't done the one you like at 16k yet!
> I often have people newer to the tech industry ask me for secrets to success. There aren’t many, really, but this secret — being willing to do something so terrifically tedious that it appears to be magic — works in tech too.
https://jacobian.org/2021/apr/7/embrace-the-grind/ Discussed at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26747305
Some get their rocks off interfacing with the relationship between their art and those who engage with it. Others are entirely satisfied with the process of making art itself. The former is an externalized process, the latter is internalized.
Different strokes for different folks, but you can put me in a box with no human interaction and a keyboard, and I will find no end of entertainment through self-exploration via the artistic process.
I can see the artistic value of the full magic act, but does that make a tool used in the act to itself be art on its own?
Is the bow used by a violin player in itself a piece of art? Perhaps it could be. But if it's burried?
> Is the bow used by a violin player in itself a piece of art
A pencil is a work of art.
What the artist thinks or desires is often irrelevant. (Edited)
But discovering the path to the goal also has meaning.
Every little step down the path, the surprising things that are easy, the unexpected things that are hard, is worth celebrating. They are all taking us where we want to go! The ups and downs are the path.
And the path is a teacher.
My wish for 2025 is for massive, decentralized, slow yet steady psychological magic. HNY, HN.
For example, I had absent drug addict parents, was instead raised by extremely abusive and restrictive guardians. I was homeless since 16 and I spent my 20's undertaking the self-actualization that I should have been doing in my teens but lacked the safety, stability, autonomy and financial requirements.
Meanwhile, my typical peer has a functioning family unit, and has enjoyed a relatively struggle-free existence. I also had to overcome disabilities such as ADHD, which has had an enormous negative impact on my life and mental health.
I'm not jealous of anyone, and I love and support my peers who were provided more opportunities and didn't waste them. But it's quite clear to me that the level of effort that I and the average US adult had to expend in order to achieve inner peace is off by magnitudes. Cognizance of this fact is important.
Nevertheless, I don't see any value on acknowledging the delta between me and peers that happened to be luckier. It'd be useful were I on the other side: for instance, if I hadn't seen my father sink into dementia, if he was still with me, I'd better keep reminding myself of the importance and blessing of growing alongside a functional, healthy dad.
But now... Thoughts like "I have struggled more than these guys" seem dangerous to me. Whenever I've taken them seriously I've ended up using them as justification for the next tiny act of self-destruction.
A world of truth in that phrase
It all really comes down to the tiny acts of building one's self or wasting the time... Yes a (non-wasteful) strategy & goal is key, but it comes down to how we spend our seconds...
I've lashed out at people before while under a great deal of stress. I've been the recipient of such as well. I've seen and experienced what poverty, illness and depression can do to the mind, how it warps habits and motivations. How things that some people might see as no-brainers for fixing a situation might simply not be options for others at that moment, at least not without assistance. A good support network makes all the difference in someone's life.
There is some truth to Maslow's hierarchy of needs, and in addition to not being jealous of those dealt a better hand, we should be supportive and attentive to those who weren't, and resist applying our own heuristics to their lives.
Are you sure about this? I know that I enjoyed a relatively struggle-free existence, and assumed that most other people did. But, whenever I have taken the time to get to know someone really well, I have found that they had struggles beyond anything I had to handle, and that do not reveal themselves at all until you know them very well.
And I have tried. The older I get, the more it just looks like PTSD when I do try and relate with people. That doesn't mean that each of them haven't had their share of struggles, it just seems like a magnitude or more less for the majority of folk I know.
The difference in current struggle has dropped off a bit in the last few years because life has been getting rough for everyone outside the wealthy class, but the majority of my life was absolute hell. The first time I put a gun in my mouth and sat with a finger on the trigger, I was nine years old.
Most of my published code consists of SPM modules.
I test the bejeezus out of each one, and some, I never use, but it’s worth it, to me, to have their functionality available, when I need it. It’s not particularly practical or efficient. It’s very effective, though.
But WFM. YMMV.
I don’t get paid for the work I do, and seldom have schedule pressure. This allows me to deliver really high-Quality results, fairly quickly. Also, since I’m usually working alone, it allows me to ship rather significant-scope deliverables.
I'd guess, less than 1% of engineers in the industry have an opportunity to learn something drastically new at least once a year. Most are doing the same in terms of engineering and just occasionally learn new (not better) tools (that's the only thing that pops in my mind in response to your observation about art moving forward).
On the other hand, considering your 25 yrs of experience, I'd guess just you understanding networking or compilation/linking process will make you look like a magician to 99% of SW engineers outside of your bubble.
I am doing some deeper dives on reusable knowledge though now. On my list is learn etcd (at a code level) for some reason I am drawn to it. It feels like a microcosm of what bigger complex systems like Kubernetes would be like.
Compare yourself to a person with no experience in software engineering at all and you will quickly understand how many you have, too.
I also remember watching Penn (I assume) explaining this concept and it's been living in my head ever since. Does anyone know the video?
The way I heard him describe it was "To any normal person this would seem like a totally unreasonable amount of time, EXCEPT to a magician [because that's their job]", or something like that.
EDIT: Maybe it was actually an anecdote from his movie Tim's Vermeer? Been a long time since I saw it...
There's a version of that trick in this video.
"Derren Brown, a British illusionist and mentalist, showcased a horse racing betting experiment called "The System" in a 2008 Channel 4 special. In this program, he demonstrated a method that appeared to guarantee winning bets on horse races. The process began with Brown anonymously sending a woman named Khadisha a series of correct predictions for five consecutive races, leading her to believe in the infallibility of his system. Subsequently, she was encouraged to stake a substantial sum on a sixth race.
The underlying mechanism of "The System" involved initially contacting 7,776 individuals, dividing them into six groups, and assigning each group a different horse in a six-horse race. After each race, only the group with the winning horse progressed, while the others were eliminated. This process was repeated through successive races, reducing the number of participants exponentially, until only Khadisha remained, having experienced an unbroken series of wins."
The system and the fact that he executed it though is genius.
Perhaps (likely?) he himself should be counted too, so 7777 in total.
But what a nice execution. I really liked how be complimented the core idea with a bit of sleight of hand in the last episode, turning the mark from a victim into a winner.
It operates on a similar mechanism: a set of predictions is sent to large number of marks. Roughly half the predictions are in the money, the set of marks is reduced with each successive round to those who's previous "predictions" were accurate. At the end of the cycle, there are only a small number of marks left, but they're given the option to subscribe to future predictions for a handsome sum. Of course there are no further predictions....
There's also the apocryphal physician's trick of predicting a baby's gender (back when this wasn't trivially determinable in advance). The doctor would verbally give their prediction, and write it down in an envelope. Occasionally the parents would recall a different answer, but opening the envelope would confirm the gender of the infant.
The trick of course was that was was written was the opposite of what was said. When what was said matched the delivery the envelope wasn't opened, so the secret was safe.
At this point all I learned was to fear the next thing, obliterating most of my hyperspecific interests if I'm just going to lead myself down the path of a hermit again another N years. I get out instead but it doesn't make me feel much better anymore. It took too much out of me.
1. They pour a large bowl of rice onto a table
2. They reveal the exact number of grains
Would this feel exciting as a card buried under the ground? No
Does this still require a lot of effort to count every grain? Yes
Applying a huge amount of effort doesn’t equal achieving the desired result (in this case the suspense, surprise and magical element)
The direction one is going is often even more important than the effort applied
The effort it turns out is only part of the equation. Directing the effort into the most productive avenues is seemingly nearly as important.
I have a friend, who runs setup of major venues. Like, stadiums and conference centers, for big-time events (thousands of people).
The deal is, that a whole lot of moving parts, need to come together, for one event, and there can be no screwups[0].
Takes a lot of planning, prep work, validation, and, most importantly, experience (my friend is in his sixties), as there are bound to be curveballs, and newbies aren't very good at handling out-of-band events.
Not many people can actually do it, but almost everyone thinks they can do it.
You could gather all the "technology", all the equipment, all the cables and boxes and speakers and ropes and everything else, and hand it off to a smart, motivated young crew of complete newbies, and the "techology" wouldn't work. The show would not make it, and it's possible people would even get badly hurt or killed trying.
This is the real catastrophe when a team gets nuked and the jobs sent somewhere else, anywhere else, doesn't even matter. You can transfer the code, you can transfer the infrastructure, but you can't transfer the lived experience. Our so-called elite managers understand that this is why they can't be replaced but lack the courtesy to extend that understanding to the people who work for them, that everyone everywhere who does anything non-trivial ends up building these same networks of lived experience that are the real ability to achieve.
Putting on a show isn't about knowing that steel is made of carbon-infused iron; it's all the networks of lived experience that have developed to the level that they can achieve something like a major stadium show, safely.
The term “tribal knowledge,” is used as a pejorative, in tech architecture, but I have found it to be the “magic ingredient” to really successful endeavors.
I worked for a corporation that is over a hundred years old, and is absolutely dripping with “tribal knowledge.” They regularly accomplish stuff that is considered nearly impossible.
But “tribal knowledge” basically means that you need to keep employees around for a while, and also, stay at a job for a while, which is sort of anathema, in today’s tech culture.
I think so, too!
I organise a yearly two week long event for about a hundred people. I do it for free. I have a couple volunteers helping me. I believe that doing this as a job, with heaps of money and teams of paid professionals isn't all that astonishing...
I have been involved with setting up weekend-long or one-day-long events, for decades.
I’m a bit of a P&T fan, and I’m pleased to be able to share a fairly obscure old video where they do indeed explain this trick. I’m glad I remembered it, and managed to find it again.
Derren Brown also used a similar idea in his TV special 'The System' [0], though with a darker twist. I'm sure the idea goes way back.
It's in the context of learning crafts, and the main point is that many people are discouraged because they don't seem to get quick results from their practice—but nor does anyone else! When you have a good sense of how much time is required to get good at something, your expectations will be more in line with reality.
Fail fast is a pretty trash idea, if you exclusively mean don't be afraid to do new things, then I'm all for it. If you're careless with the idea, as most of the people who embrace it seem to be. It means do something bad to your users.
I'm gonna steal (badly) a quote from superfastmatt here (before I go find the video and correct the quote)
> The motto of hech companies is "fail fast", the motto of companies like NASA might be "never fail", the motto of Boeing is just "fail"
I think it perfectly highlights the dichotomy between good engineering, and bad.
edit: yeah, his delivery is so much better than my atrocious attempt https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQ867EDWcls it's the very start of the video, and his entire channel is amazing and hilarious.
the real quote: Tech companies have a mantra of "fail fast, fail often", This is in contrast to an organization like NASA who could have the phrase "try not to fail", or Boeing who prefers the simpler "fail". While NASA would prefer to do things methodically making sure to check all the boxes along the way; SpaceX would rather just take an educated guess build something strap a bunch of sensors to it and see what happens. You can learn a lot very quickly the second way, I also do things this way but not because I'm trying to disrupt any paradigms it's because it's just more fun to do it that way [...]
Fail fast = use it when in exploration mode. Dig here, dig there until you find something of worth
Embrace the grind = once you have found something worthwhile, speed a lot of time
These same techniques are used by politicians and others, too.
This is kind of my secret to everything I do. I'm not super skilled in anything short term. My main talent is just the endurance to do something and concentrate on something for a long time. Running, Elden Ring, investing, gardening, my former career as a scientist. You can get pretty far with just grit, and it is more rare than you would think.
https://www.nosmallendeavor.com/angela-duckworth-is-grit-the...
I truly understand it takes unreasonable amount of time and dedicated focused effort to get good at something. But why is there any explanation for it? I know about the traditional neuro-sci explanation of myelin[1].
So my question is, is there any research on how to reduce this time? Like we all know life is short and as human we have interest in many things and we should specialize and try to go deep in one craft.But is there any way of getting closed to that master level performance in short practice-perfomance cycle