stanrivers

I’m scared for what happens ten years from now when none of the junior folk ever learned to write code themselves and now think they are senior engineers…

> There's a prediction for every outcome

Have never heard this phrase - stealing it!

I guess… how do we get people paid for reviewing? It’s an interesting point that the incentives are not helping us here.

Oh interesting - is this in any way related to why the Israel flag went with blue?

“ It's to the point where every journal publisher and every editor will tell you, if they're being honest, that they have been and are continually being offered bribes. I would be very suspicious if someone tried to act shocked at the question, as if they'd never heard of such a thing. This is the state of scientific publishing in the 2020s, and we have to realize it. What we don't have to do is accept it.”

Well… then start reporting it with names publicly and to authorities…

I think this accountability is a good point… if someone told me absent any other information that a company had the issues Boeing has been having, then I would assume they get shut down or forced into a restructured management with hugely increased regulatory oversight.

I think there is something very different about handwriting than typing. Like, listen to a lecture and write notes on a pad, and then go to the lecture the next day and type them on a computer.

Then, wait a week, and take a test without reviewing anything.

My money, based on my experience, is on you better remembering the handwritten notes. I think this is because you cannot write as fast as you type, so you have to hear, think about what is important, and summarize when handwriting. When typing, you can get almost all the words someone says typed out. So you switch to "hear-to-type" mode without thinking.

So, I think it is important for learning to have that skill. I think it is better in the real world too, for some use cases. If I am in a meeting with a counterparty, I take hand written notes. I rarely look at the notes after. Why? I remember what we talked about.

I used to bring a computer and type out notes - and I still do if I need perfect information to reference later - but when I do that, my notes take the place of my memory.

It seems more efficient to handwrite my notes and have my memory be my memory instead.

The other thing that is important about reading beyond brain development is the learning of lessons / history / culture. I can't remember who the quote is from, but something like "He who does not read lives but one life. He who reads can live thousands."

There is also something about forming your own identity that is important too - like understanding history tells you something about who you are and who you can become. Stealing from David McCullough [1]:

"History is philosophy taught with examples... First of all we have to get across the idea that we have to know who we were if we’re to know who we are and where we’re headed."

"The Greeks said that character is destiny, and the more I read and understand of history, the more convinced I am that they were right... It is not in the still calm of life or the repose of a pacific station that great characters are formed."

And so reading is much more than just developing skills around reading and focus, it is about learning and growing as an individual.

[1] https://www.butwhatfor.com/p/takeaway-tuesday-knowing-histor...

This is amazing; really puts in perspective how hard it would be to say you know someone sent a balloon exactly to you, or that they didn't mean to... its something you could plan for (like this shows) and something that probably is very fickle

Nice Latin; that's something I never learned.

I know, right? I don't loath him though... like, maybe I purposefully have chosen to not judge him, and maybe he is a bad person generally... but there is something human about the contradictions. You can hear in his writing the same things I feel when I am looking at the weights I bough downstairs telling myself I should work out, but then also watching myself walk upstairs to watch TV instead.

It's also hard because, it's like... are his ideas just made up and not possible to follow, then? or, can you learn from someone that failed at reaching their own "ideal," because everyone falls short.

He's an interesting study, for sure.

One of the things I like about Cicero is that he shows that event when one is not perfect, you can consistently improve yourself and others. Cicero was kind of a disgusting person, to me - he was very vain, easily influenced by popular opinion and wanting to fit in, wanted to be close to men of power, changed his position on topics based on what was politically convenient, and so on.

But he also was a great thinker. And as he aged, he was forced to confront his own declining capabilities. And I think some regrets around the above "failed" personality traits lead to him realizing that the only way to be "successful" in old age is to have been moral, as your own brain sees it, when you were young.

So it's interesting that so much of how we judge ourselves is based on what we ourselves believe is right and wrong... and you can't escape that, it seems.