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Comment by the_cat_kittles | Hacker News Reader

this is a type of article and thinking that is appealing to people because its very easy to understand, and appears useful. theres no barrier to entry here because theres no corpus of knowledge required or demonstration of skill. just say something that sounds kind of coherent and simple, that probably reinforces what people already believe.

it might seem overly negative to care about this. maybe it is. but this website describes itself as "Brain Food. A weekly newsletter packed with timeless insights and actionable ideas from a wide range of disciplines." its selling the idea that you can gain something from reading 45 second articles that say hardly anything. this kind of stuff is for people who are too lazy or dont have enough time to learn something for real, and i think its worse than useless

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Conversely, there is a type of person who thinks everything worth knowing must require investment on behalf of the learner.

It's not surprising this type of person is very common among the highly educated: school indoctrinates us with this belief.

For these people everything is a struggle.

They may even miss opportunities to easily pick up simple but useful ideas or skills because they have a closed mindset.

These are two perspectives from two people, one of whom had perhaps heard of this approach before, and one who perhaps had not.

The key distinguishing factor here in continuing education is not what you describe, though. As you become more educated, you realize there are more approaches to anything than you can functionally know at any one time, much less use.

This article essentially suggests you simply consider more consequences. Both useful in concept (if you’ve never thought of it), and totally useless in advanced practice due to the complexity of the system and your inability to predict the future accurately due to the nature of complexity.

The thing that is really under-appreciated by the less educated is the incredible amounts of information available in the written word that can be had with additional critical reading comprehension training and experience.

It was obvious before we got to the totally made-up success vs second-order thinking chart that this article was low effort and no substance. Quoting Ray Dalio was an early red flag. After the chart it was just sort of funny.

I think you'd be interested in this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32335165

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