idoh

To what extent do you think that billionaires earn the wealth that they have?

Turns out, we were both wrong, it is "collectively" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MECE_principle

Even if you were nitpicking then that's OK. On Hacker News we critique the words and not the person, right?

Fluid as in able to easily apply MECE to conversations. I guess being fluid with the application of MECE will lead to more fluent conversations. They both have the same latin root.

edit - updated the GP to make it clear that I was talking about being fluid in applying MECE to a given domain, which could be written or oral.

If you want to try it out, my recommendation is to set a very moderate goal, like ten minutes a day (an app setting) and then just stick with it. Don't be like me and who set it for 30 minutes, and then burned out.

The brain training app has n-back style questions. I find them extremely challenging, which is probably a good thing!

This is a bit wild, but learning and being fluid in MECE changed my life. Not really, but it really helped me in interviews and all types of conversations. Check out How to be MECE on Youtube. MECE = mutually exhaustive and completely exclusive.

The short version is that when you describe something you want to divide it up into mutually exclusive and completely exhaustive chunks. There are five ways to be MECE - algebraic, process, conceptual, segmenting, and opposite words (in descending priority of insight).

For example, if you are asked a question about how increase revenue for a grocery store, then you break it down into revenue = number of tickets * value per ticket, and then you can attack it that way. This would be the algebraic way to be MECE.

Trick A is that almost all conversations can be broken into MECE, and that gives good practice. E.g. if you are planning a road trip then when you are talking about it you use a process MECE to add structure.

Trick B is that it takes about an hour or two to be fluid in applying MECE to a given domain, just start picking random topics and breaking them down, and the more insightful the better. E.g. how would you describe the items on a menu? Different programming languages? Features you worked on?

If you do that, then it gives a proper narrative, good structure, and you can use the time where you are setting up the structure to think about everything else. By running through all items in the MECE list it shows that you are thorough and you have literally thought of everything (because you've created an exhaustive list).

Anki - jam everything into here. Various work facts, chess mate in X move puzzles, watched movie plots, every time I make a mistake I add it, etc.

BrainHQ - train your brain every day, get sharper. I found out about it after reading that Tom Brady uses it to be a better QB. After using it for a couple weeks I could notice a difference.

tl;dr - work at smaller companies in less regulated industries

I'm a PM for security at a CI/CD company, and adding "friction" comes up as a feature request in 50%+ of calls with customers and prospects. As companies grow to a certain size, as a practical matter you can't trust employees to not do bad things. Also, in order to win more business you have to comply with more regulations. Access controls, separation of responsibilities, etc.

Restated, one person's friction is another person's compliance.

I have a catch all domain and regret it. I have a four letter TLD (idoh.com naturally) and not a day goes by where I don't catch splash damage from someone who made a typo or plugged in a fake email address somewhere.

Twitter, for example, seems to allow people to make accounts with unverified email addresses, and lately I've been getting password reset requests from a twitter user who plugged in some-japanese-name@idoh.com as their email address for Twitter.

Sometimes I get emails from, e.g., a vet's office, or some local cubs scout group. I've tried telling people that they got the wrong email address, but no way of explanation succeeds in getting people to understand that someone put down the wrong email address.

Can you elaborate on how avoiding competition is the root of much evil? It is plausible if you mean it as avoiding by stifling or suppressing it.

On the other hand, I believe that competition, broadly construed, is the root of evil (competition is for losers). The more we can not compete with each other, but rather support each other in our own personal endeavors, the better.

That's the point of the article - you can understand without agreeing.

Elon's comment is just as likely to have been made in jest as serious, which is not a take I've seen in these comments. If you follow his Twitter account then it seems in line with his sense of humor.

A lot of people get pretty riled up over his tweets it seems. If it brings you joy then follow it. If it messes with your mind, then maybe just unfollow it. He's rich, mercurial, sarcastic, and a lot of other things, but ultimately you can just disconnect from it and go about your life.

There's always a tradeoff between cost and safety, how else would you imagine this to work?

What do you use for your notes? Is it crazy to just use the built in Notes app?

Yeah, maybe I'm doing it wrong. Don't try to do everything on it, just use it for when you would want to sketch things out and don't look back. This comment inspired me to plug in my pencil and try it out for that.

It has the ambition, agree that they haven't figured it out yet. I think that it just might be a hard problem to figure out. I have an iPhone, an iPad, and a MacBook. I really understand when I want to use the phone or the notebook computer. The iPad is sort of in the middle.

I have made attempts at doing all my work stuff on it, but failed every time. Simple things like taking a screenshot over here and pasting it over there just feel harder on the iPad. I really want them to figure it out though!

First, I'm sorry you had a bad experience with that teacher and that it caused you problems for many years down the line.

I'm trying to figure out how this relates. It sounds like you had a bad experience with tracking, and there is a fundamental issue with tracking where some amount of people will have bad experiences, but ultimately you were able to achieve your potential anyway, so why make the experience bad with tracking if people will eventually get to the right level over time - is that a fair interpretation of your comment?

SF CA resident, parent of two school age children chiming in. The direction with math seems pretty dismal, in that as of right now, everyone is singly tracked together for math through freshman year of high school. This results in children who have higher aptitudes[1] to not be well served by schools. The majority of people I know who have the means opt out of the public school system, which probably makes the problem worse generally but solves a pain point for them.

[1] - I take it as a fact that different people have different talent levels for different things, but not everyone agrees with that, and disagreement on this point is a big driver (but not the only driver) in the "everyone gets exactly the same" approach that is trending now.

Here's a comparison between MA and CA standards: https://twitter.com/BethKellySF/status/1518991575526699008?s...

I have literally never worked at an org, large or small, that didn't outsource payroll.

Snap - booming product, public since 2017, so where's the profit? What are they waiting for?

Can cars burn ammonia in the same way as hydrogen? Or are you saying that you convert to ammonia for shipping, then reconvert back to hydrogen just before it gets into the car?

I'm willing to bet that 2030 is too soon and they'll kick out the deadline as it approaches and turns out to be impossible to meet. It's one thing to mandate a thing to happen, it's another when it collides with reality.

Any insight as to why fires on ships are hard to control? I hear it and believe. On the other hand I've been inside of military ships before and they are partitioned, with lots of metal doors to section off and contain damage, so I don't understand the difficulty.

That seems pretty wild. Torpedos don't strike the side of a ship, rather they are meant to explode underneath for max damage. So even if a CVN could hydroplane, I don't think it would evade a torpedo.

"If you want to see a miracle, be a miracle." Sort of a trite platitude, but it is very easy to make a huge difference in someone's life. That can be a source of meaning.

Same. How much would you pay? I’d do $500 easy.

What’s FLP?

It’s on my bucket list to read through these lectures and grok them. Maybe it will be a retirement project? While we are talking about this, I feel like I need to brush up on my math. Does anyone know what level of math is required to work through these?