I see the same response everywhere on TypeScript: when a project becomes big enough, it's a good way to keep it under control.
And I tend to agree: types can be annoying, but when stability and robustness come into play, TypeScript is most certainly the way to go. It enforces good behavior.
And yeah, of course it slows JavaScript down, that's entirely the point..! JS allows you to do whatever you want, but that doesn't mean it's always the right choice
After having read Sapiens I realized that there's something deeply disturbing about it all, though.
The fact that Harari seems to think that everything is just a 'story' that we tell ourselves, is way too nihilistic.
Maybe, taking this external perspective, we can understand better the direction in which we're going, but it doesn't resolve a fundamental question: why do we live the way we do?
In the long(human timescale) run, this is unsustainable and depressing, it takes away from the ethics and the aesthetics that have made human life what it is, that have brought us to live the way we do.
> The fact that Harari seems to think that everything is just a 'story' that we tell ourselves, is way too nihilistic.
I find that the great challenge that confronts our species is precisely the search for meaning.
There are myriad options for sale in the marketplace of ideas, many coming with pre-packaged meaning. This is the typical case with Judeo-Christian religions, where some external authority dictates meaning to us. But let's suppose that there really is an Anthropomorphic God in the Sky that created everything and has rules for us. Ok, good for him I guess, but you have to lack a bit of imagination to not see the absurdity of that situation. It's just a parent-child relationship, with an imaginary parent, that spares the followers the pain of confronting existential questions, provided that development remains arrested.
The same is true of Atheists and Materialists. Ok, there's only atoms. Everything can be explained as a cold mechanism that progresses from the Big Bang, through evolution, to us and all of our preferences and inclinations. Of course, given that the scientific model of reality is so useful, it is easy to forget that it is just another story when it comes to meaning.
To actually reach adulthood, I believe that one has to confront the scary reality that one is one's own source of meaning. In one sense the universe is made of atoms, in another it is made of stories. Both of these models are useful, but no model can ever spare you from the task of becoming your own source of meaning.
To you and parent's points: I think Harari dwells on the this distinction so much because one "model" can be changed, and one cannot.
The whole book is a cry for people to understand that most facts of life stem from the stories model, not the physical model, and hence are to some extent under our control.
You are correct on all points. Finding your own purpose can be hard especially for those who have lived by the ideas of others well into adulthood. Living on the modern economic treadmill also makes it harder. You have to find purpose within the world you live.
I realize that everyone is different - but for me the idea that we create our own meaning is WAY more exciting than a pre-existing or assigned meaning.
It erases any limits on what's possible and makes thinking creatively (humanity's biggest strength) a lot more fun. It also makes the search for truth that much more urgent, since in a nihilistic universe that's all we have.
I also don't see any conflict between this kind of optimistic nihilism and fundamental ethics - mainly that you shouldn't hurt others.
Ditto. To my personality nothing is more empowering than knowing that as a species and as individuals the stories we tell ourselves can shape not only our individual lives but the rest of the race as a whole, good and bad (I assume this is where some fears towards this notion stem). I have a feeling people from more collectivist cultures (arguably non-western) dislike this view because it means they aren't writing their "own" story and just being part of someone else's story. I'm just riffing on this latter point.
You can interpret it the other way. The stories we tell ourselves are mostly fiction. We make progress using these stories. It can lead us to unhappy places. We want to find meaning and purpose. But we end up with nihilistic reality. The author has explored aspects of Taoism, the fluctuation between meaning and nihilism. We need to find a balance.
I'm all up for constructing my own meanings, but I reject the premise that it's all "just a story".
The enjoyment I get from riding my mountain bike comes at least in part from adrenaline, endorphins and exposure to sunlight - these are biological realities we likely share with species which can't tell stories.
It’s just taking a materialist view of the world. E.g., a Marxist would argue our culture is shaped by the prevailing mode of production. Anarchists would also say that any hierarchical structures are imaginary. It’s not really nihilistic, it’s just a different way of seeing how we got to where we are in humans’ cultural evolution.
Instead of thinking that culture just popped out of our heads, it’s thinking that culture is mostly if not entirely tied to events happening in the real world.
I find a common error when reading technical books is to focus on understanding everything deeply the first pass and going through all the exercises. In my experience this quickly leads to burn out and you give up on a book half way through.
Don't get me wrong, doing the exercises is important and (perhaps) essential for learning a subject, but the key is not to burn out too quickly. Very often some of the best and most important material is in the latter part of a technical book. So I recommend reading them like technical papers: in multiple passes. If you at least superficially read through the book cover to cover at the very least you'll have a map of the territory. Additionally, it's often the case that more advanced topics in a book give you insight into why the early topics are truly so important.
And while exercises are good, you'll learn even faster if you find a practical problem you want to solve related to the material. Most people on HN will say that you must do all the exercises or you can't possibly learn. But I've found the best tactic is to read a technical book until you hit something that scratches a personal itch. For example, maybe you'll be reading a book on deep learning and then late in the book come across a section on latent factors, a problem that you're interested in and didn't know about. Even though you skimmed most of the book until this point, if you want to implement this model you have to go back and really learn all of the pieces you need to build what you want.
What if you never find anything that really clicks with you? Then you're probably better off just skimming the book for now. The key part of that is "for now". Suppose you read through a stats book and nothing piques your interest, but you come across the idea that there is some way to run a test such that you control for variance between two groups. We'll perhaps in 5 years you'll come across a problem that requires you to do just this! Because you skimmed the book you'll at least know "statistics has a solution to this problem!" Then you can go back and really learn how this solution works.
Personally I recommend against doing every exercise in a book until you need to understand that material to solve a larger, more practical problem. The best way to learn anything technical is to solve a problem with it, but you can't solve a problem with a technique if you don't even know the technique exists, so keep reading!
One thing I learned (or maybe realized?) about math books especially is that they all follow a similar structure: a topic is presented with some proofs, followed by some sample exercises worked out step-by-step, followed, of course by practice exercises whose answers are available in the back of the book. One thing that helped me retain a lot of the material was to try to work the sample exercises on my own without looking at the author’s step-by-step instructions, just based on the description the preceded it. Once I was finished, I compared my work with his - I often found myself catching important concepts that way that I would have glossed over if I had just skimmed over the example.
I have a theory that I've made up for being not particularly quick by just throwing time and effort at the problem.
Get the book on your phone, and just read it every now and again and if it doesn't make sense, try to use it as a detailed study plan e.g. Many compiler textbooks emphasize the importance of instruction scheduling without necessarily teaching it very well, but now you know that you need to understand instruction scheduling from somewhere.
^ If I'm learning a new topic I'll usually grab one famous book and two more modern one's and alternate between books if something is vague/confusing
At the end of each chapter/section, write a one page summary, in as simple language as possible, to teach a hypothetical new student what you just learned.
Even better if you can then compare what you just learned to other things you know to clearly separate them in your mind.
What exactly is your problem?
Comprehension or remembering what you read?
If it is comprehension then I would suggest picking up better book and/or a dictionary. For remembering what you learn. Practice!
what also helps with a technical book is to refresh what you learnt yesterday in the beginning on a session. You will remember things better and load the context.
Paul Graham's blog is still full of pearls, thanks a lot for sharing.
One thing that I think is missing in his essay is the fact that Wittgenstein in the end also realized that philosophy is incredibly effective as meditation, I still find that thinking about things is relaxing and cathartic.
Philosophize This! is really an incredible take on older and more modern philosophy. Stephen West is a great story teller and every episode is very well curated and researched.
Couples Therapy with Candice and Casey
I've never been a fan of talk shows, but they manage to talk about all aspects of life and relationships.
I'm left-handed and years later I found I had written things on my grandma's (outside, stone) wall with chalk in mirror script. This dated from when I just started writing, so on an anecdotal level, this seems to be a natural way to write if you're left handed.
I started taking some of my whiteboard notes in mirror script after reading it assisted in neuroplasticity, and it really didn't take long to get the hang of. I haven't done it in a while though, can you still do it like muscle memory?
I really do hope that we can find a way to make sense of everything in Physics, but Bohm's description of the infinite in the article is rather fascinating. Maybe there's no way out after all
Yep, a lot of techies fail to appreciate the extent to which this is true. For those who disagree and were around in 2000, where is Sun Microsystems, Compaq, Yahoo, AOL, and Netscape today?
They were all acquired or merged for a lot of money - and they were all highly profitable companies. None of those businesses failed. That is just natural business evolution for successful businesses.
And I tend to agree: types can be annoying, but when stability and robustness come into play, TypeScript is most certainly the way to go. It enforces good behavior.
And yeah, of course it slows JavaScript down, that's entirely the point..! JS allows you to do whatever you want, but that doesn't mean it's always the right choice