> Our dislike of feeling like a noob is our brain telling us "Come on, come on, figure this out."
Maybe I'm projecting from my own social anxiety, but I believe most of the negative sensation of feeling like a noob is being seen to not know something.
People want to come across as valuable to others and one way we do that is by offerring expertise. If we are seen to be noobs, it implies we may be less valuable to others because we don't know a thing.
Unfortunately, being a noob is a necessary precondition to actually learning a thing. It's very hard to learn without putting yourself out there in some way and trying. So there is this tension between wanting to be comfortable with looking like an amateur so that you can immerse yourself in the kind of environments where rapid learning happens, while also wanting to come across as an expert at other times.
I do have an anxiety disorder so I absolutely get this. A big breakthrough for me through therapy was working on my self worth and realizing that I have inherent value. I can't speak for everyone but I was raised to believe that my worth was really only the sum of my actions in a very utilitarian sort of way rather than a deontological way. I suspect a lot of other young men in my generation were instilled with very similar values. If you know that you existing just as you are is valuable regardless then the social anxiety around not knowing something or being "perfect" tends to melt away (or it at least helps). Perfectionism is a lot more insidious than most folks realize. That said when you get to the place where you can get past that it's quite liberating.
Yes, this is exactly the experience I'm going through right now. My "I'm only as good as what I do" mindset got me pretty far and does materially help me have a successful career which in turn helps me take care of my family well. But right around mid-life crisis time, many of those low-self-worth chickens came home to roost. Parenting meant I no longer had enough free time to constantly make and do things to pump up my self-worth through actions. My self-esteem dropped and I took that resentment out on my wife and kids.
Thanks to a very good therapist, I'm making a lot of progress now.
> Perfectionism is a lot more insidious than most folks realize.
Like most personality attributes I think it has functional and disfunctional characteristics. My perfectionism helps me be a hard worker and create things that help other people like books and open source stuff. It provides real value to my life and the lives of others.
But it also makes me feel like what I do is never enough and by extension I an never enough. And it makes it very hard for me to explore new activities because I dislike the feeling of not being good at something. Figuring out how to manage the unhealthy aspects while still retaining some of the healthy parts is a challenge.
> I can't speak for everyone but I was raised to believe that my worth was really only the sum of my actions in a very utilitarian sort of way rather than a deontological way. I suspect a lot of other young men in my generation were instilled with very similar values.
I feel for you, what a horrible philosophy to be raised under.
It's even worse to be raised under a philosophy that leads you to believe you are living a good life just because you are following good rules that lead to bad outcomes. It's a super selfish approach to living because it conveniently lets you discard consequences.
I think your username adequately describes the state of your generation (guessing you are about 30, based on your thinking); the smoldering remnants of a great fire that once was.
The idea that, somehow, your actions do not define your value is so fundamentally broken that it isn’t found elsewhere in nature. There isn’t a single creature in nature that gets to be valuable in the eyes of the very objective and unrelenting judge that is evolution.
We are fortunate that the younger generation, filled with potential, is almost here to replace the vast void.
I'll bite, since you could be in a really nihilistic or even self-hating space asking an earnest question.
_Being_ a person is inherently valuable, _making more people_ is not necessarily an inherent value. This inherent value is from the internalized perspective of the person doing the existing. The external recognition of this value is in - at minimum - recognition of inalienable human rights, as conveyed by documents such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Perhaps I am unfairly reading your questions above, but notice they seem to carry an implicit (to me) or (to you) at the end of each one. The idea of inalienable rights and corresponding inherent human value is that people do not have justify their worth (to me) or (to you).
This doesn't people can't or shouldn't strive to provide interpersonal, tangible or social goods beyond their inherent human value. It means that the encouraged interpretation of "existential original sin" is "As I develop as a person, I perceive more I could have done or could do better." BUT NOT "I started out worthless and must continually prove my value to person or group X until I earn value."
I learned to play hockey about 5 years ago. Part of that was going to stick and puck sessions during the week, where I could basically do whatever I wanted; work on skating, stick handling, etc. Sometimes there would be literally no one else at the rink, and during those times it was super fun being a noob. I had a ton of stuff I could work on, and I would see progress from week-to-week. I started playing on a real team not long after starting to learn, and the games were the opposite. I just felt super embarrassed the whole time.
I have thought about this phenomenon with regard to the internet a lot. Online it's easy to be exposed to videos and other content produced by people who are literally among the best in the world at anything. This means we start to measure ourselves against the most unforgiving yardstick imaginable, which makes being a noob (or even "normal") even more painful.
No matter what you do, for anything you put effort into, you are probably above average at it, when you include not just everyone who tries it but also everyone who hasn't even tried.
You can be the worst person at your job and still do a job worth getting paid for.
I think it depends upon their relationship to the noob. In a situation where the noob has a clear negative impact on the person, you can see a very negative reaction to noobs. Take a game like Dota 2 where a noob can be a handicap that can sink a team and how toxic the culture that game has developed.
It's the transient nature of that sort of game that makes for the extreme noob hate. The value of the noob is that they can learn and grow, and become an equal who does things exactly as you prefer, because you taught them. If you're not going to see that noob again, then the value proposition doesn't really pay off.
>People want to come across as valuable to others and one way we do that is by offerring expertise.
I've found the trick to getting over this is realizing no matter how good you are at something, there's always someone better and when you find yourself as the noob, you get to ask all the questions and learn and everbody will be ok with this. You also get to make mistakes, and everybody will be ok with this.
I've recently found myself going from being the expert to bottom of the barrel noob again and honestly it's refreshing, there's no pressure on you, somebody else makes the decisions, you just kinda do what you're told and absorb knowledge, and when something goes wrong you don't need to figure it out. It does make a nice change, though it can be frustrating, especially when it's a situation when you know what to do, but nobody listens because you're the noob.
You just have to remember, at some point you won't be the noob again and someone else will be, might as well enjoy it while you can.
It's also kind of an interesting situation, I started my new job just after a younger guy who's only had one or two other jobs before. There's a big difference between the way the two of us learn and work just because of our gap in life experience. It made me realize there's different levels between even noobs based on a bunch of different factors.
In the end though, i've found it best when you're the noob to just learn whatever you can as fast as you can, bring whatever knowledge and experience you can, but do it unspokenly through actions rather than words and eventually, without realizing it, you're not the noob any more.
> Maybe I'm projecting from my own social anxiety, but I believe most of the negative sensation of feeling like a noob is being seen to not know something.
I can anecdotally agree with this. In general, I don’t care at all what people think about me (I still care if people think I’ve wronged them, it’s more what they judgementally think of me), and I have never felt bad about being a noob, or being seen as a noob.
I’ve learnt two languages through immersion, and I’ve been told I pick them up very quickly. Learning languages like that is basically repeating things you’ve heard, and then figuring out what everything really means through asking questions and a huge amount of trial and error... with lots and lots of error. Really I’m not any better at learning things than anybody else is, but because I didn’t ever feel bad about making those errors, I’d wake up in the morning, and spend the whole day happily making “embarrassing” language mistakes. Which over time quickly became less and less common.
Along similar lines, it's not just that you can't offer expertise. It's also that you're participating in a community defined by knowledge of a particular topic. And relative to that community, you're an outsider since you don't have that knowledge. So all of your primate fears about approaching a community as an outsider kick in.
There's also generally the uncomfortable feeling of confronting your ignorance when being informed, or skilled, or intelligent is a major part of your self image.
I don't so much care about being seen as a noob. If I don't know something I'm fine with asking. What I hate is when one of the junior devs asks me something and I don't have an answer for them. I don't know everything about our product so often the best I can do is show them how I would find out the answer.
> I don't know everything about our product so often the best I can do is show them how I would find out the answer.
I feel like this is often more helpful than simply giving an answer, and I sometimes feign ignorance on a topic as an excuse to show how I would go about searching for an answer without seeming like an asshole who's going on an unrelated tangent.
It more becomes a problem when I don't even know the direct path to the answer and it becomes "Can you open this file, now open this file, can you console log this value, ok its none of that, check this file"
At some point it becomes easier for me to just go back to my computer and find the answer and come back but then I'm doing their work for them.
The trick I've learned is to never assume I'm an expert, and always question basics. It's suprisingly easy to do, and makes honest the most paramount. Also, this perspective has made me look at folks who are always trying to convince others how expert they are as silly and annoying.
I'm not sure I relate to Paul Graham's experience of finding being a "noob" unpleasant -- if anything, I find it's the opposite, because any time you're a "noob," there's so much low-hanging fruit to pick.
New city? There's a bunch of cool/fun things to do that you haven't tried yet. New hobby? Hop onto Youtube and there's hundreds of hours of "explainer" videos made by passionate hobbyists looking to share their favorite parts of that hobby with you. New to a particular field? Other people have probably already done the work of curating the 1% most interesting, important, and fascinating things to learn about. It's easy to feel like you're making progress when you're starting from zero.
I recently bought a guitar and started playing Rocksmith -- think Guitar Hero, but with a real guitar hooked up to your computer, with learning tools designed to help you learn how to play songs of your choosing, along with lessons covering everything from how to play power chords to the very basics of how to hold your guitar when sitting vs standing. I'm a total noob when it comes to playing guitar, but I've enjoyed every part of my time with Rocksmith, from the very first moment I plugged in my guitar and let the software step me through the process of tuning it.
I've found it incredibly edifying largely because the experience of picking up an instrument and learning how to play it has reminded me of what it's like to learn a completely new skill from scratch -- I think spending a week with Rocksmith has not only taught me guitar basics, but also given me a refresher course on how to learn a new skill.
In fact, I wonder if this can lead to its own problem -- someone who gets too much pleasure from the experience of being a noob and may turn into a dilettante, moving from hobby to hobby without ever taking the time to spend years cultivating a deep expertise. Which, I suppose, is fine on a certain level, but there are definitely times when I've procrastinated and hidden from the intimidating prospect of achieving mastery in a field where I already have a lot of experience, and instead spent that time venturing into new fields where there's still low-hanging fruit for me to pick.
To add my two cents, I've studied half a dozen languages over my life and managed to become fluent in three, give or take. My favorite part of the process is always the first few months, when new concepts come the quickest and one sees major progress made every day.
In the end, I think the learning process for almost any skill follows an S-curve, and that initial takeoff is always the most intoxicating period for me. That said, I've spoken about this with others in my classes, and most of them find this early period more daunting and relish later stages, when their footing has become solid.
Yeah I definitely relate to this enjoying the rush of so many new concepts falling into place and making sense. That said I realized there is another level of enjoying a kind of mastery or advanced skill. For me theres this huge intermediate desert thats hard to cross its like first 6 months - enjoy noob gains, 6mo - 5 years kind of sucking, and after many years finally starting to get some new insights at most people never get. I’ve only ever managed it once too and getting paid definitely helps.
There is the assumption that people necessarily mind feeling like a noob. I don't really. What I dislike is a situation where I freely admit of being a noob and then people who know clearly even less about the situation than I do acting superior. Or people who know more than me now about it, but will know less than me in a month acting superior. Or, just people acting superior :-)
Agreed. I don't mind being a noob since I think it's perfectly ok to be a noob and I have a ton of respect for anyone else who is trying to learn something new.
I got angry recently when I asked a question on amazon about a home improvement hardware item and one of the responses I got was something like, "This job is better left to a professional." They completely dismissed my question like everyone who works in that profession was born with this knowledge.
I just wanted to know if it was possible to disconnect two of the pieces (and someone else confirmed it was possible, so it wasn't a dumb question after all). Not to mention, it was for an art project, so the "professional" quality/safety advice doesn't apply. That's when being a noob feels bad.
Talking about zen, the concept "beginners mind" [1] is where this "feeling like a noob" is the desired state that will help you not get stuck in your ego when you get good at something.
The last several years it seems I've encountered a lot less abrasive, condescending superior-intellect types. In the past I've worked with people with egos the size of the Sun. I've been wondering if I've just been lucky recently, or if there's just less of them out there.
Then again, it could just be that I've learned to tolerate various personalities better as I've gotten older.
Good advice. At the same time, in some cases, this approach can bring real world consequences?
E.g. might result in that other silly and superior acting person, getting the job, and you didn't. Or the girls like him better because he seems confident?
But anyway, generally, I like the Zen-out approach. And probably it's possible to be a good self esteem Noob too -- I mean, to stay happy when one tries and fails repeatedly, also when everyone is watching, although maybe not so easy.
I didn't say do what they say, or let them push you around. Just let them act how they want to act, and then go with what you know. Why does it matter to me if someone acts superior about a topic if I have my own confidence in what I know?
There's a fundamental human need to feel better than others.
It's not always a bad thing, as it is used as a carrot to bond teams and push for excellence (Think "Semper Fi").
But it is quite grating. The main thing that gets me, is when folks being superior either withhold information, or deliberately try to interfere with my learning.
On StackOverflow, I have almost twice as many questions as I have answers. This doesn't really get me any respect.
I guess that I could up that, for myself, but I don't usually hang there to answer questions.
I'm too busy writing code. I try to give back to the community, so I do answer a few. SO is a hugely valuable resource for me, and I sincerely appreciate the help that I get there; even when it is delivered with a sneer.
What I dislike is a situation where I feel like I _ought_ to be a noob, or feel like a noob, or be acting like a noob, but other people treat like an expert who doesn't realise that he is acting like a noob.
If you're a constant noob, you're a tourist of knowledge. Actual competence takes time. In many fields, it takes a lifetime. In some fields, it takes more than one lifetime -- you can't achieve greatness if your parents weren't already knowledgeable.
Being a noob is neither pleasant nor unpleasant. We are learning machines and curiosity is one of our main drives in life.
Appearing as a noob can probably rub some people the wrong way. People who are, how should we put it? Ego sensitive?
Fields where you have to start very young. For instance, it's very unlikely that you'll become world class in gymnastics, chess, or piano unless your parents were at least knowledgeable enough to get you very good teachers by the time you were ten. Sometimes, a nation that cares enough can substitute.
Your family has to get rich enough to send you to university, there's the two generations, it is the best you have these days.
A lot of great actors break into Hollywood without legacy.
Pre-printed text it may have have had more truth, but if a father can pass it to their son, they can pass it to anyone. I think it's more a romantic idea.
Being a noob is more a feeling. You can have that feeling with two generations of experience while you are the most knowledgeable person alive in the field.
When you do not feel like a noob anymore, you might become complacent. That, I think is the main problem.
My daily yoga practice has taught me to embrace challenging new poses (or situations in life) in a great new way.
A paradigm shift, if you will.
I used to look at challenging poses with dread. "Oh god, that's going to be uncomfortable..." or perhaps "There is no way I am strong enough to do that..." and I am always right. It is going to be uncomfortable and I am usually too weak to perform the asana with grace.
But what really excited me upon learning recently... and what helps me pull through it every single time now is this:
I am about to be able to move my body in a way that was never before possible... at least not possible since I was 6 years old or so most likely...
If I can just bear through it...
In a few weeks time I know I'll be able to move my body in ways that I never even thought was possible... and that's really exciting for a yogi!
Trying new things is exhilarating!
I feel sorry for my former self who dreaded them for far too long.
I changed careers and at 40 something I'm a noob again.
It can be frustrating not knowing and I'll go down the path of analysis paralysis and procrastination sometimes. I'm a bit prone to that as in my previous career I kinda had things down pretty solidly.
But I try to embrace it. Is this the right code here? No better way to find out than try things and see what happens....if it doesn't work, well I'm a noob, that is going to happen. (obviously these are somewhat educated / calculated risks, not just random)
I like it. There's a freedom in not worrying if you're doing it right all the time and recognizing that doing it wrong is ok provided you learn.
How did you manage the drastic income change that comes with a late-life career change? I've considered it several times in the past, but with a family to support it's not really that feasible.
I received a generous severance package from my previous employer when they were bought by another company and waited out that event in order to support my family for a few months while I attended a coding camp (I studied a lot before and after but wanted some in person instruction).
I managed to save a small stash of money as well on the side over nearly 20 years of work that I had as both an emergency fund and "one day I kinda want to do something different" fund.
My wife works as well and while she doesn't make much (teacher) it helped of set some costs).
The turnaround time from end of previous career to new job was about 8 months and that was probabbly the key. That's not too bad. I would have loved to go back to college for a more formal education but that was not an option due to the time commitment / I was a terrible college student when I was younger so i would have a lot to make up at a traditional college.
As a n00b i was making very little at my first job initially but after proving myself my salary has risen quite quickly. I'm not where I used to be in terms of income, but I'm happier for sure.
If you don’t mind me asking, what was your job before and what is it now? Were you in software in both cases, but just drastically different roles? Or totally different?
Meh, I think post could have been a tweet. Learning new things will have you feeling like a noob. It's okay to feel like a noob and totally clueless, it's sign that you're learning. Learn often, embrace being a noob often.
> the more of a noob you are locally, the less of a noob you are globally.
> if you stay in your home country, you'll feel less of a noob
> And yet you'll know more if you move.
I experienced this in the US when I was scheduling interviews for an internship with a US company. I had waited for the interviewer for half an hour and shoot them an email asking for rescheduling after they did not show up.
Turns out I forgot the timezone difference. In all my (quarter-century)life, I had never needed to check timezone in the same country. Felt like the biggest noob. I know more in general now but, even for a simple thing like scheduling an interview, I became "locally" noob.
That one has caught me out, too, and I've spent most of my life frequently crossing time zone boundaries (Central/Mountain and lately Central/Eastern).
I too think of myself as a noob. I believe it has to do about knowledge and experience. You know the old adage "The more you know, the more you know you don't know." To me this is very true.
I was reprimanded the other day, by management because I said in a presentation "I don't know" when discussing how to solve a particular problem. When having a discussion there is a few rules that must be followed in order for you to have a meaningful exchange of opinions that brings you closer to some sort of consensus. One of these is principle of charity: "interpreting a speaker's statements in the most rational way possible and, in the case of any argument, considering its best, strongest possible interpretation." My manager did the the opposite of this principle and assumed that when I said "I don't know" that that meant that I was going to find out on my own and disregard his opinion and directive. What I meant was that "I don't know, let's gather a group of experts, let them gather information and interpret this in such a way that he can take a proper decision on what to do next."
I regret that I wasn't this clear when communicating with him to begin with.
To me, in IT nothing is more worse than someone who claim they know everything, have all the answers and don't want to listen.
Recently on I recently read the quote "The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance; it is the illusion of knowledge." I think this complements the above quote very well, and is something important that we all need to be aware of. To be a noob means at least you have the self-insight to understand that you have much more to learn, and that you are willing to collaborate with your colleagues to achieve more wisdom.
> I was reprimanded the other day, by management because I said in a presentation "I don't know"
Maybe it's because I'm still in the junior / recent-grad mindset, but my experience has been the opposite.
The most striking difference for me between academia and industry is that now it's okay to not know things. In academia you're expected to have the answers and be able to reproduce them on tests and things; in industry it seems much more acceptable to admit ignorance so long as you plan on eventually getting an answer.
In academia they usually know the answers on beforehand, unless you are doing a master or a PhD you must learn the basics and show that you understand the concepts of your subject.
At work you have to use all your tools to continue to learn, and solve problems that has potentially never been solved before while considering cost-benefit with your solutions and making sure you do whatever it is you are doing with some sort of integrity in place.
I'm a bit suspicious of people who call me a noob when I'm learning something. Its too often a pejorative as if from on high. As if they were never a beginner. But its a lie. They were once a beginner. And they themselves have probably plateaued. To me its as bad as them bragging about their being a perfectionist. I don't appreciate perfectionism either because they tend to never finish anything.
If being a noob is shameful then becoming good and then later an expert is made much more difficult than it should be. Mistakes and failures are also seen as shameful and must be hidden. If you can't be open about making mistakes and learning from them then you're more likely surrounded by idiots or jerks.
Failure is part of learning. So if you aren't failing at what you're doing right now in some way, to some degree, then its not challenging enough for you. That is fine because sometimes the job needs to be done right because you're doing the performance. But if you aren't pushing hard into a space where mistakes and failures are actually possible then your goals aren't big enough. Likely stagnating.
A stagnating expert is someone who is afraid of the next level. They are afraid of becoming a beginner again. Afraid perhaps to even get into the practice nets and practice batting or throwing. Afraid to practice scales or try some hard piece they've never played.
"the more you feel like a noob, the better."
I am not convinced.
With experience it should become rarer and rarer to encounter some things that makes so little sense that you feel like a noob, and you certainly shouldn't feel aimless.
The more systems you explore, the bigger the toolbox you acquire. And there are not infinitely many existing tools because they once have been invented. And often these tools can be categorized by their operating principles which are even fewer. Because most disciplines overlap, the more you explore the faster the exploration goes.
Sure, when you encounter something new you will need to gather some info before you are operational, but when you are enough of a generalist, you will have picked up enough heuristics to know who, where, and what to look for, and it shouldn't take long.
Sure, we can dig and make any subject arbitrarily deep so there are infinitely many new things to explore and be amazed by. Staying humble, curious, honest and acknowledging that there are plenty of things that you have explored yet is also necessary.
But if you disperse by being contempt of being a noob you risk becoming lost in a senseless experiencing of a chaotic mess, and not gather experience by seeing the order things could be arranged into.
> With experience it should become rarer and rarer to encounter some things that makes so little sense that you feel like a noob, and you certainly shouldn't feel aimless.
Then you're not pushing yourself or trying new things. Noob == newbie, so it applies even to experts who are learning things in an unfamiliar area.
I felt like a noob when I learned about functional programming. Then I felt like a noob again when I started learning Haskell.
I read about Coq yesterday and felt like a total and utter noob.
I read about the `nom` lexing crate for Rust recently and felt like a noob getting up to speed.
I still am a noob when it comes to using every unix utility: I recently learned about gnu parallel and read about xargs more finely.
I never want to be in a situation where I never feel like a noob, because in computing alone that's basically impossible unless I'm not challenging myself.
I interpreted the post much more broadly, way beyond software tools. There are tons of things in existence outside of computers, and each of us is a noob in most things. Just some examples that come to mind:
Playing musical instruments and singing, yoga poses, barbell training with correct form, Buddhism, how to negotiate in an Arab bazaar, tax returns, training animals, riding a motorcycle, how to navigate forests, how to navigate the sea on a sailboat, how to direct and edit a movie, reciting poems, how to structure a novel, cooking and baking well, brewing beer, how the electric wiring works in a house, hobby electronics, how to build furniture, how to shoot guns and how they work, self defense and martial arts, fixing a car, hunting and fishing, BDSM and fetishes, finance products and the stock market, law and the court system in various countries, foreign languages, diet and nutrition, amateur radio, physics, painting, calligraphy, psychedelic drugs, networking effectively with important people, being a bartender or other service personnel, backpacking alone, raising children...
Some may say "I may not have much practice in [particular thing], but surely it's easy, it's just [...]", but I really recommend reading that blog post called "Reality has a surprising amount of detail", which shows how many things there are to learn about simple sounding special cases (like building a staircase). All these things and hundreds more are rabbit holes with more and more branches of rabbit holes of communities, cultures, various levels of expertise attainable in each branch and subbranch etc.
Of course. In this case I specifically applied it to my professional domain, but this advice applies to every single facet of life. Life is also incredibly boring if you're not challenging yourself to do new things. Which is why I force myself to try new hobbies, events, programming languages. I almost always walk away glad that I pushed myself to expand and grow, even if I end up not enjoying or pursuing that thing.
I agree that you want to attempt things that may fail to challenge yourself.
But rewarding libraries (by using them) that make you feel like a noob is kind of rewarding an abusive behavior.
Before you use something you probably should already have a good model of how it operates from a high level perspective, what you need to give them, why you are using them...
The software should serve your need instead of forcing you to adapt conventions. If you invest time learning a bad software then the sunk cost fallacy will make you keep using the bad software and sunk-in more time.
Exploring is hard, you should have a strategy for it, you should explore things in the right order so that exploring is easy, and you explore what you want. If your exploring strategy is to follow the steepest learning curve you will get lost in an infinite hellish mess like Sisyphus.
Nowhere did I state that I had to use any such libraries. The only reason I started learning nom, is because I received multiple recommendations to check it out. Regardless if I use it or not, it still was a fun learning experience.
I feel like this is exactly the point he's making: if you're not putting yourself in positions where you feel like a noob, you'er not engaging your skills to their fullest potential, because the 'sorting it out' part is the thing that's really good for you. Nowhere here does he say 'feel like a noob and stay that way."
That's not my way of reading it.
He seems to imply that feeling like a noob is normal due to the modern age complexity of this world. If I understand correctly he is telling go and don't be afraid of feeling like a noob.
I'm saying if you feel like a noob, stop and fix it before exploring further or risk being lost.
I take the contrarian opinion that even though there is growing complexity it is still orderly enough that once experienced enough feeling like a noob should be something akin finding a gem, or having a paradigm shift, which although you should be happy to find, it should remain occasional.
I don't believe you need to feel like a noob to be engaging your skills at their fullest potential. In fact that's quite the opposite.
It's akin to having bugs in software.
Having bugs in software could be a symptom of engaging your skills to the max. But it's more likely the symptom of sloppiness that has accumulated.
In fact when your software has bugs, you spend your time doing some bug fixing, instead of doing more interesting things.
If you are in position that you are feeling like a noob, or have bug in software, try to understand what went so wrong that you are in this situation and try as much as possible to not be again (but keep exploring and building software). This is a symptom that you are working in a messy environment that is on a path to more mess where you will get lost.
You won't sculpt a fine piece of art if you spend your time fixing your chisel every ten minutes.
I'm pretty good at keeping up with the SOTA in subjects like crypto, AI. But it's because I make an effort. And they interest me immensely. And it's easy with the wealth of information online.
Where I find it harder to keep up is that esoteric knowledge of "the culture". What is current in music and movies and art. Even interacting with young people a lot. The velocity of relevance seems to have altered significantly.
Another interesting take is returning to childhood passions. I used to be into sailing and thought if I have some free time I'll take it up as a hobby again. Maybe book a class in Annapolis MD. Or charter a small yacht for a day trip in Florida during spring break.
But the world of sailing has just metastasized into a massive industrialized complex! Lexus has a concept luxury yacht. You can control the helm 100% using a Garmin Smart Marine Watch. There exist software platforms for archival wind data.
Don't get me wrong, it's awesome. But there is an activation energy. And I am sure there are still single person Hobie Cats available. But it does make you feel as if you need to be all-in or else exist in a perpetual state of n00b-ishness ;)
>>But it does make you feel as if you need to be all-in
Hmm, this is a bigger point than I think you make it out to be. (?)
It's something that's pained me for a long time too.
I'll ramble a bit...
I think part of the problem, in my case at least, is that the world programmed me to think that I need to be all-in.
"All-in" to me means I have to get the Lexus yacht and the Garmin smart marine watch, and all the _stuff_ that comes with that, if I want to partake in this activity. If I want to enjoy its pleasures.
"All-in" to me also means that this activity (in this modern form) and its ecosystem and community has been structured (by that massive industrialized complex) such that if I don't go all-in, then it wouldn't work. The real action happens when you go all-in.
From another angle, if I had the luck of realizing that I can do sailing with a simple Hobie Cat, with a friend, on the local lake. I'd still have to overcome this very difficult impression left on me by the marketers of the Lexus + Garmin + Goodies that a simple Hobie Cat wouldn't be good enough to bring a very broad smile to my face. They would want me to sit with the all-in image in my head. They would want to suppress the simple option.
--
which then is where we can look at your other statement:
>>>The velocity of relevance seems to have altered significantly.
You cannot just go all-in today and be set. you need to do it every year, "new" updates, upgrades, all sold by the same marketers in such a way that the previous models just seem not usable anymore.
--
Reading again, I also see
>>>it does make you feel
you see, thats what they want!
>>>it does make you feel as if you need to be all-in
so they want to create the idea that being behind, being a noob (the "perpetual state" as you put it) is a bad thing. Or maybe rather, they know humans (as PG says were in the old days required to overcome noobness to survive) so it's built into us. marketers exploit this to get you to buy again and again.
-------
which brings us to philosophy. The stuff I've come to realize sit even underneath the above statements.
See, philosophers tells us that happiness already exists inside us. Right now. Right here. Inside.
If you could be made to believe it is outside, then you could be told 'one of the things' out there might be the one for you. Which implies, you'd have to try out a lot of stuff to hopefully find it between the options. Which gives you the idea that if you get something, and it doesn't work, you just gotta try something else. But what you don't know, the trick, is that none of it will fulfill.
Also, problem for a capitalist world is that, if you know happiness is inside, then you have no reason to seek it outside of you.
If you're not seeking it outside, and you feel it inside, you won't be open to suggestions of products that might fulfill this suggested feeling of emptiness.
Which means they can't sell you anything, and thus not take your money.
So, ask yourself then, how much of how our society is built, its structures, how we're educated, deliberately avoids helping you to find the happiness inside, and deliberately pushes you to seek for it outside of yourself.
-
being a noob i think then is not something we should seek in all cases. when learning , yes definately.
but ito happiness, being in the moment and enjoying it as it is, is all you need. no noobness attitude.
----
ok, ramble done. I may've gone way beyond your comment, but you triggered something, and I enjoyed it , thanks!
No thank you qwertygerty, for the lovely digression ;)
I've always felt that you can't be liberated from your attachments, if you don't fully realize what it means to be enslaved by them in the first place
I've always thought the subject of Renunciation in Hindu Philosophy would make the subject of a terrific screenplay
There's a film you may enjoy, one of my favorites actually, The Razor's Edge (1947), written by Somerset Maugham
Young American, born at the right place and the right time, who instead of contributing to the booming growth that would place his nation at the forefront of nations, chooses to chuck it all and "idle" for awhile
Here's the scene he arrives at an Ashram in the Himalayas after a chance suggestion from a stranger
Thank you for this suggestion, this definitely looks like something I'd enjoy.
"...the myst caught in the treetop. I've never seen or felt anything like it!" " I felt as if I've been released from my body" "sense of knowledge more than human"
Return to _silence_. Without the distraction of others and the world, ie isolation. And in there, after the mind-chatter waned, he found _himself_
I've very recently had similar amazing experiences in the wilderness of mountains where it felt like I was beginning to melt away into it all. Very peculiar! Something I want to go back to...
--
Renunciation. Yes, that's a tough one.
"renunciation of material desires and prejudices, represented by a state of disinterest and detachment from material life, and has the purpose of spending one's life in peaceful, love-inspired, simple spiritual life"
In my own struggles with existentialism, I find the deeper I go into spirituality, the more I naturally experience "disinterest and detachment from material life". It just happens.
What's most interesting to me, is as this happens, also the world seems to fight back, like it wants to pull me in again, not just the struggle with worldly desires, but things like these out-of-the-blue amazing "opportunities" arrive, that when looked at, is just a very polished way to try and pull me back into the world!
I like this post. There are Socratic echoes here: "I know that I know nothing", though pg is making a different point. It seems cliche and low effort but often times deep truths ARE cliched. The older I get, the more okay I am with embracing my lack of knowledge in a domain. Now I see it more as a potential first step in future mastery.
As a teenager I frequently saw the way someone did something and assumed that person was stupid, now as an adult I understand how that person's domain of expertise may be very different from mine and I'm less likely to judge.
lol literally the opposite of his twitter feed in which he revels in telling people what to think and do. that's the opposite of noob mentality. pg jumped the shark.
Huh this essay seems really confusing. I can't figure out what pg is actually trying to say - it is short but talks about being a noob in roundabout ways. If this is so popular, perhaps I should get back to blogging again.
I get a joyous, almost dreamlike experience out of being a noob, I love to try things for that feeling of difficulty. There is this rapt appreciation that comes with it, even if I don't personally get good at the thing.
Ambling about like a dunce myself, trying to gain some knowledge or skill, and watching professionals do it makes me feel in awe. I am overcome with love for humans reaching for the divine, like Faust pondering future human goodness and joy of participation in human life (as he dies).
I can't say I share the feelings that PG is describing.
I don't really mind being a noob at something I see as useful to learn. The feeling that I get in that case is a drive to find out what is up with that thing. In programming it is not always clear, though, that the new thing is that great or even that it should exist in the first place. This makes me then feel not to great. But it is more of a feeling of irritation at the thing that I suspect of not needing to exist.
If someone has completed a process even only once, they may have some insight that an old timer has missed. It's always a good idea to listen to a "noob". You may learn something. Noobs also may have the best ideas about improving a process. They haven't fallen into the "we've always done it that way" mind set as of yet.
I think this speaks to that time-old trade-off between expertise and generality. I can only speak for myself when I say that empirically expertise seems to pay off in job prospects, exercise, and love. Perhaps my risk heuristic function needs adjusting to focus on exploration?
My career, mostly as a sysadmin, has been defined by shallow and wide knowledge.
One thing I've noticed, as I've progressed into a team lead position is that the shallow/wide is very difficult for the people who aren't as experienced as me. So my initial "just do it the way I did it!" was very, very wrong. I'm changing that attitude in myself to target folks as subject matter experts (sorry for corporate-speak!)
This is relevant because it's actually difficult to try to learn 20+ years of wide/shallow stuff in 6 months. Who'd have thunk it? But people still try to chase that extra knowledge, thinking they have to somehow achieve parity with those much smarter or further along in their careers. (I don't consider myself much smarter, I'm a bear of very little brain)
As they progress in their careers and experience, then the wide/shallow can be introduced.
I don't relate to this at all. Yes, I find being a 'noob' unpleasant, but for me it's not about something tugging at me to figure it out, at least not for intrinsic reasons, but because of some sort of inferiority complex. I don't like that the people around me know more than I do.
And the idea that "the more of a noob you are locally, the less a noob you are globally" just feels like faulty logic. Any and all combinations of noob-ness are possible, and pretty likely, IMO. And regardless, this sort of statement just seems like advocating for being a jack of all trades, master of none. There's value in that to some people, but going deep on a subject or place also has value that shouldn't be minimized.
Heh. This guy (looks around sheepishly) almost nailed it...
For me the feeling of being a n00b is exciting and scary, but one I sort of constantly run towards because it's the one reliable indicator that I am growing. Further, the more knowledge I acquire only emphasizes how little I know sort of making this my steady state in life. I dig it, it's a reason to get up in the morning.
The more you know, the less you know. In life as we acquire knowledge we leave the darkness and step into the light, fortunately (IMHO), each time we leave that darkness we find a new world, with each world new shadows we will have to emerge from, ad infinitum.
The bounds of which we can know, like our universe is expanding, to not feel like a n00b, is to have stopped learning.
I don't mind PG's stuff. I don't care if he's a bazillionaire. I'm not looking for a dime from anyone, and I don't worship wealth. Lots of billionaires say stuff to which I'd rather give a pass.
I don't really mind being a n00b. In fact, I seek it out deliberately. It does get me lots of sneers and micro-aggro; but we never learn anything new, if we don't try something new. I have a pretty thick skin.
It's the other way round for me. When I was young, I thought old people had nothing figured out. Now, though I'm not that old but I think young people need to figure out much more.
Maybe it was because when I was young, I tried to have a go at things in spite of being a noob at many and being told not to 'experiment'.
Now, when I see my children with the same train of thoughts, I remember those days and let them have theirs.
I agree with PG > "the more of a noob you are locally, the less of a noob you are globally." And I kind of feel OK being a noob in a new place. Gives me the opportunity to explore without inhibitions.
Every X years the tech and methods we know and use; get old and eventually useless.
This is because we work with and live of something we made up ourselves. Computers, the internet. It just keeps changing. _We_ keep changing it. Law and economics are other examples of studying things we make up ourselves.
The opposite, say a botanist or physisist, studies nature and natural laws. How much does flowers, plants and vegetation change? Science and nature doesn't change. Only our insight of nature changes.
If you want to become a master, and not reverting to noob over and over - studying nature is a better bet than tech.
I think this is a great post. Value isn't a function of length. For me value of content like this is a function of insight.
While the insight from this article may be obvious to many commenting here and be of less value, in the broader world this idea is not obvious.
And while I love and respect everyone commenting, including the negative comments, I am wondering if some may have a higher view their insight on this topic than is real.
Metrics may help here:
- How many languages do you speak?
- How many countries have you spent at least 3 days in?
- How many books do you read per year?
The higher these numbers to more you likely can appreciate this post.
Is there an inverse correlation between curiosity and the aversion of feeling like a noob? Exploring unknown areas/subjects/places may be a bigger driver than overcoming the ‘noob feeling aversion’
I don't dislike it at all. I love feeling like a noob. The last summer I purchased a 3D printer (one of those you have to assemble yourself) and, not knowing anything about it, I started to learn, to make tests. I felt like a child again.
You are noob, then you master a skill, then you think you are getting good at it. You browse some forum and notice that you really don't know much. Somehow you started to use this skill at work, and it's not so much fun anymore.
It's time for searching another thing to be a noob again...
> The life of hunter-gatherers was complex, but it didn't change as much as life does now. They didn't suddenly have to figure out what to do about cryptocurrency.
> The life of hunter-gatherers was complex, but it didn't change as much as life does now.
I agree with this sentiment but draw a different conclusion. Stepping outside of your comfort zone as a hunter gatherer was a lot more dangerous -- new terrains, new plants that could be poisonous, new animals that could kill you. Tipping wrong or sticking your chopsticks in your rice bowl is unlikely to lead to death or dismemberment, but it's possible our nervous system is trained to send signals that it might.
Some people live to feel like a noob. It's a rush. They seek the feeling out. When they stop feeling like a noob, the rush goes away and they look for something else they can be a noob at.
These people have trouble finishing projects. Given enough energy and creative thought, they can be quite successful. But the the key is self-awareness.
Noobophiles who deny their tendency can strangle a project or company. They can find it hard to let go when success itself is the novelty.
Success sells. PG has achieved success, so he can freely endorse a noob mentality. But take a loser and add a noob mentality, and you're only signaling a bigger loser.
This is not to say a noob mentality is counterproductive - quite the contrary - but that it's not always optimal to flaunt.
I like the feeling of being a noob. It means I have something new to learn and discover.
Asking questions, whether it's to Google or another person is a very rewarding process when you eventually find an answer.
I would have thought most people in the tech industry would think like this since it requires so much ongoing learning and feeling like a noob every time a new library / framework comes out. Maybe not?
Work and hobby-wise, being noob is pretty much my life so far. On the rare occasions where I first think I know everything I do begin to worry as things I tend to work with rarely are that simple, really.
Same with people at work. It's often better to be the dullest pencil in the box because if you end up being the sharpest one yourself you know there's likely nobody left to challenge you.
I remember listening to a joe rogan podcast where he mentioned the term "personal sovereignty". I took it to be the state people reach when they're the sort of captain of their own boat.
And being a noob is sort of the opposite of this... you're sort of at the mercy of things.
I think you have to be a noob to get to personal sovereignty, and you have to ping pong back and forth to maintain it.
There's a great book by Truesdell, named "An Idiot's Fugitive Essays on Science". According to Truesdell, the initial meaning of the word "idiot" was one who does not have preconceived ideas.
Hmm I can't really see that sense here. But thanks, I shall check out that book, looks interesting!
idiot (n.)
early 14c., "person so mentally deficient as to be incapable of ordinary reasoning;" also in Middle English "simple man, uneducated person, layman" (late 14c.), from Old French idiote "uneducated or ignorant person" (12c.), from Latin idiota "ordinary person, layman; outsider," in Late Latin "uneducated or ignorant person," from Greek idiotes "layman, person lacking professional skill" (opposed to writer, soldier, skilled workman), literally "private person" (as opposed to one taking part in public affairs), used patronizingly for "ignorant person," from idios "one's own" (see idiom).
In plural, the Greek word could mean "one's own countrymen." In old English law, one who has been without reasoning or understanding from birth, as distinguished from a lunatic, who became that way.
Maybe the discomfort of feeling like a noob helps temper the gratification of novelty and curiosity.
Sometimes it feels like a balancing act, I want to learn everything, but at the same time the valley of noobness forces me to pick the things that seem particularly interesting. Novelty causes exploration, while the discomfort of learning produces exploitation of only some things.
I think this misses that the word "noob" (or at least its negative connotation) is mostly used in comparison to other people, and doesn't apply at the boundary of human knowledge. Newton wasn't a "noob" because he didn't know about relativity. He probably didn't feel like a "noob". He was just very curious.
I think his assertion is that Newton did feel like a noob. I tend to think pg's right. He's done novel enough things that he has an informed view. My experience with novel though less significant investigation and problem solving shows the same.
I think noob (short for 'new boy' where I come from) just means that you're new to an institution, like a school, or today an open source community. It doesn't imply anything to do with competence.
Probably just multiple people with different understandings of the word. For example, I picked it up from StarCraft multiplayer in the late 90s/early 2000s, where there were levels:
newb(ie) - New to the game (typically doesn't know what they're doing).
noob - Currently not good at the game, but is trying to get better (usually lots of overlap with "newb(ie)").
n00b - Insult for someone who isn't good at the game, and is not trying to get better. Often deludes themselves into thinking they're already good at the game.
It’s refreshing to hear this from an authority figure. My personal website https://yingw787.com has the Socratic creed “the only thing I know is that I know nothing”. I try to live up to that ideal and not let my pride and ego get in the way. A constant fight, but one worth having.
This has to be something that people have studied.
Novelty and new challenges are good for your brain. I'm positive that has been researched.
As to why learning new things makes you a bit grumpy, I'd bet that has been studied too. Probably it's just that feeling of knowing you're not good at it - and maybe envy of those who are.
I don't find this feeling uncomfortable. I have been driven by an unending curiosity about things that I don't yet know anything about. My career has had many turns into unknown territory.
I wonder if a compulsion to be an authority makes the noob feeling uncomfortable.
This needs to be qualified. If I'm a noob at something and I find the right person to help me understand said something, it can be an amazingly rewarding experience and not at all unpleasant.
I love beginner’s mindset and usually takes me quite far as I don’t have any idea what the proper limits are. However, I do find it unpleasant when a more advanced person explains advanced concepts that are not gradpable yet even though they make sense. I need to digest it myself first. And ocasionally I find the advanced person who articulates exactly what I was stuck at but was unable to ask for help
There's a place for expertise and a place to be a noob. You have to keep learning.
But I find this constant degradation of work and effort, something I see a lot in Silicon Valley, pretty tiresome. I feel like the culture is pushing us to be dilettantes in everything, to be more clever, and to "work smarter", rather than putting in the hours -- striving for Olympic-level athletic performance, pushing the state of the art forward in hard science, or bootstrapping an industry cluster from scratch -- any of these could be 10-20 year undertakings.
This is pg, in 2012: "If you're not at the leading edge of some rapidly changing field, you can get to one. For example, anyone reasonably smart can probably get to an edge of programming (e.g. building mobile apps) in a year." http://www.paulgraham.com/startupideas.html
So yes, I don't think we should be provincial, but there is value in doing the same thing every day, and getting really, really good at it. Some things aren't so easily "disrupted". If you don't put in the time, you can waste your entire life chasing the new and shiny in 2-year increments, and accomplish absolutely nothing of value.
The reasoning of the author is totally flawed. If you feel like a noob locally, there is no guarantee that you will not feel like a noob globally too. In other words, it's not always good to feel like a noob.
Great post. One thing that jumped out at me was the challenge that concurrency poses to PG and other VCs. When plenty of cash, speculation on platform adoption, and speculation on new financial markets all collide. Which tech is the right horse to ride, if any? Are coins part of terms sheets now? Are DAOs something we should fund?
Being far removed from SV and VC means I don't know what the actual questions are surfacing right now, but I do know that it is a perfect example of a situation where a "Beginner's Mind" can serve one well.
I don't know enough about the topic to have a real opinion on it but I dislike tying everything to how we "evolved". Not everything is based on evolution unless you say that our culture and society is based on evolution so it's true by association. It smacks of Deepak Chopra's tying his nonsense to words used in physics and saying it's all science.
Man, the hate is thick on the HN comment ground today.
Lots of august people are very afraid of looking or feeling stupid. Ask anyone in a product development meeting to take a firm stance on the technical feasibility of a product feature and you'll get a lot of hemming and hawing about it whether the details are feasible, and very few people willing to put their neck out and say "Yes, we can do it." Because if you're wrong, you've spent some of your political capital in a way that fixes in everyone's mind: "Well, the last time we listened to cushychicken, we fucked up!"
The angle that I think pg is missing is: when can you safely be a noob, without torpedoing your credibility?
That's a much more difficult and interesting question.
> Man, the hate is thick on the HN comment ground today.
Am I the only one who's really annoyed by these kind of vague, middlebrow dismissals? If you want to say something, just say it. Let other people judge whether it's a more compelling perspective than other comments.
I suppose my point was that people with the expertise to know how to do so are typically reluctant to stick their neck out and say so in front of a crowd.
I should know. I'm one of those people. I very rarely agree to a feature without ironclad certainty (e.g. a working prototype in hand) that it can be done.
That’s the point. If someone is never a noob, that’s bad, and if you confer greater credibility to noob-averse people, you’re not thinking optimally. Fight the urge to assign greater credibility to those who are afraid to be noobs.
Sigh. Do such low-effort posts from other people as these recent pg ones ever appear on the HN front page?! Guess I just won't click on them in future. It's depressing to see –because I really love many of his essays on non-startup subjects, and learned a lot from them, and probably will again next time I read them.
I don't mind them at all. If Paul writes anything, I want to know about it. So please upvote so it gets to my attention.
Also note that Pauls blog is blazingly fast and does not have ADs/Cookie Conent/Tracking madness. I don't click Medium links anymore b/c all that bloat + crap.
With blogs like this, I am back to HN in less than 5 seconds if I don't like the content.
Do you want to know about it because he’s a billionaire that might fund your hot dog recognition app or because he’s said anything particularly revelatory?
Because I for one and sick and tired of wealth worship in this country.
The post is not interesting and shouldn’t be on the front page.
That's ridiculously dismissive and just smacks of sour grapes.
Are many looking to read what the Waltons say?
No, this isn't wealth worship. The reason why people pay attention to folks like PG and Buffet is because they've repeatedly proven to have useful insights. Does that mean everything they say is of great value? Of course not. But their batting average is strong and they offer a lot of free wisdom. It's a good idea to learn from those who have things to teach, and Paul is a good teacher.
I'd be surprised and suspicious of those colleges if they're teaching based on the Walton heirs... Sam would be a different story, but wasn't who I was referring to with the present tense of "Waltons say".
I want to know because many of his essays are insightful. This one in particular was a bit short, and to me an obvious premise. However, there may be some people who would benefit from hearing that it is good to be in situations where you have to learn new things.
That's exactly the point! This post is a generic, pretty universally-recognized point, written by a billionaire, and is only the length of a handful of tweets.
The only possible criteria that a post this small and with this little substance would get upmodded for is the billionaire bit, and possibly that people are just upmodding 'pg without checking the actual content (I've seen a few people talk about how they use upmodding as a 'read later' function).
I don't even mind that it was, but the comment makes a decent point.
It is the point. But it isn't the billionaire bit that matters. It's that PG is a celebrity on HN. He wrote this forum and most of the early posts were his blog posts. HN used to be all startups and tech all the time. Before Y-Combinator was successful PG was already a celebrity here who would get auto voted up. Before that it was /. Then Reddit I guess but I missed the golden year for Reddit. There are other HN celebrities PG just happens to be the founder.
This isn't Billionare worship it is celebrity worship. And it's caused because PG has written enough things insightful enough that people can feel their minds changing as they read, that they will reflexively upvote.
I hate seeing anti-wealth rhetoric on HN. If the point is wealth doesn't matter then the criticism ought to be more substantive then 'aye, he's just popular because he's a billionaire'. HN is one of the only places I know of where ambition has been celebrated. I get that startups and the startup culture didn't turn out to be a necessary good thing so there's some cynicism there. But we can do better than demonizing the money, a result, rather than causes.
>most of the early posts were his blog posts. HN used to be all startups and tech all the time.
To respond just to this part: I don't think either of these things are true. With "past" you can look around the front page in 2007-8. I just did - not very different at all from today. Not many pg essays around - none on most days on the front page. The titles are a lot longer today, seems the main difference!
I shouldn’t have been so hyperbolic. Basically PG was a huge part of HN back then. You’ll see a lot of people writing as if they know him and everything by him or the likes of Steve Blank was voted to the top.
It's the world we are living in nowadays.
I subscribed to Seth Godin's newsletter and I receive a post everyday from him. I admire Godin but the quality is shitty.
It is an example of what happens when you feel the urge to say something for the sake of saying it.
And all of this makes me think that maybe somehow there is more randomness to wealth Creation and distribution than we already acknowledge.
Because that's how people often treat it (whether they should or not).
You're implying that since it's not actually a variable (X being rich = X having something interesting to say), it can't function as a variable.
But it very much can. Whether it should or shouldn't be a variable, for many people it functions as one.
The same way people buy music or watch movies of "good looking" actors and musicians, even though being "good looking" is not a variable to judge whether a song/movie is good or not.
So, since this (treating wealth/beauty/fame/etc as a variable as to whether something is interesting) exists, and is often prevalent, it makes sense to wonder when someone listens to somebody else X that is rich/beautiful/famous whether they merely listen to X because he is those things (and not because X has something interesting to say).
There's a good chance that a millionaire came from old money. That doesn't make them inherently interesting. The ones who are self-made, the anomalies in that population, are more likely to be interesting.
Old money are mostly out of the rat race, more distant from the need of self-marketing, and usually with better education and taste (in fact, it's almost proverbial that old money have better taste than the "nouveaux rich").
All kinds of writers, artists, scientists etc were once from that group.
So it's more probable to listen to something interesting from an old money millionaire who inherited wealth, than from a self-made one (which would tire you with self-promotion and gloating about their business acumen, bravado, and hardships they had to overcome).
This text gives me comfort in that the fact that I feel like a noob in many topics should be an encouragement to learn more, rather than give up because the wealthy people are superhuman and I'm not.
In Graham's case, writing interesting content had more to do with him becoming a billionaire, than people thinking what he says is interesting because he's a billionaire.
Sure, he was relatively wealthy from the sale of ViaWeb. But the popularity of his writing is what led to YCombinator and then to him becoming much more wealthy.
This is a website run by a startup incubator. Seems like the wrong place for no wealth worship. Essentially, I don't understand why you chose this place if you sort of don't like it.
I think it's interesting and it has spawned interesting comments (except this thread). Why do you get to decide what's interesting or not just because you begrudge billionaires?
> Because I for one and sick and tired of wealth worship in this country.
Amen brother! As I was leaving the house this morning I caught a snippet of something about Oprah being on a tour; top tickets are in the thousands of dollars. Nothing against Oprah but what does she have to say that is actionable and I haven't heard before, that I (or anyone, really) should pay to hear? I think it was Gore Vidal (rest his crusty vituperative heart) who wrote that Americans think proximity to wealth eventually confers it on them, especially if they f*-- it. Paraphrased obviously, am not about to google it at work.
I asked a supporter of the present POTUS what possible opposition candidate he would vote for. He said Oprah. His even more conservative wife agreed. I started to laugh before realizing they were completely serious.
It was so out of box to me that I think it speaks to how a large portion of the electorate prefers personalities, particularly those who “created” something.
Low-effort here means "short"? There's nothing wrong with short.
I find these essays, even the short ones, useful and insightful. I hope PG is not unduly influenced by the recent backlash to his publishing more.
I came to this community originally largely due to his insights and the particular culture he nurtured here. The recent uptick in his contributions is welcome.
I liked it. Correlating the feeling of hunger vs abundant food leading to being overweight against the desire to know as much as everyone else. That worked for me, yes it's common sense, but sometimes it helps to have things spelled out clearly for you to have a small epiphany about yourself.
I guess I'll really regret asking for a few examples of that! But here goes - Some evidence for that claim? Recent links? (This site has stuff that made the front page I think, if that helps https://hckrnews.com/ )
By low-effort, I meant..the combination of bland content, first-draft-quality style, and very short. I don't think I've seen anything that short on here, and it's high on the blandometer too, though some people on this page say they got value from it. (Aw I feel bad criticizing now, hopefully he takes his own advice not to read HN pages about one's own stuff..)
edit: Ah, someone on this page mentioned Seth Godin, which reminds me he had a blog-post linked recently (not sure if it made the front page) - even shorter, and much less to say. One of the most popular blogs in the world! It said. Amazing. My first exposure to him. Well, maybe he used to be good, I don't know.
Add to that all the content-less "new Node release", "here's 2 minor changes in Golang 1.1x", "I tried framework X and I don't like it" (with trivial arguments), etc... that somehow are voted to be first page...
I agree - while I normally find Paul Graham's posts very insightful, this post definitely feels like one where, if it were written by someone with no name (such as myself), the post would get maybe a few votes at best.
It's a useful reminder, but it doesn't stand out. Anyone and everyone these days gives advice about learning voraciously, whether or not anyone listens or does it.
Disagree. It’s very important for people feeling like “noobs” to realize that it’s okay, even desired. PG is a legend and have him clearly state so is refreshing, and necessary.
A large part of the audience here wants to get money from pg and people like him and find articles like this useful for trying to make money from SV vcs.
It’s also worth pointing out that this kind of overblown humility also tends to work out a lot less well for you in life if you don’t already have a billion dollars and founders hanging on your every tweet.
I for one find it absolutely hilarious to watch people take these ‘essays’ seriously. I have nothing but respect for PG in regards to his work with startups, but when he wrote this essay [1] on the field of philosophy, it should have been a sign to everyone to stop and question the author when he talks about anything other than startups or computer science.
They appear on the front page because of the 'Newman effect'. I just coined that term for back in the day what made Paul Newman's salad dressing successful and has since been copied as a formula by many celebrity brands. Basically if you have two salad dressings on the shelf in a supermarket people will pay attention and potentially buy the one that they notice for a reason that is not even related to the quality of the product. And as everyone knows in sales or marketing (or should know) getting your message across and getting listened to is (arbitrarily I am making this up) half the battle. [1]
Of course Paul Newman had other things going for him as well. He could get the supermarket to consider his product because of the halo around him as a movie star. He could get top quality people to help with the product as a result of being a movie star. He even (iirc) pioneered (or at least popularized) giving profits to charity (from memory). But much of the success was for sure dependent on his name recognition which made it more likely that people would try the product (same thing happens with why stars are featured in movies obviously although with Netflix that is becoming less important for sure).
[1] This is also what an intro does for you it gets the person to listen to what you have to say which you might not even get the chance to do if you are just cold calling.
Perhaps you don't owe billionaires any better (btw, is pg one? I had no idea), but you definitely owe this community better than this—much better—if you're posting here.
> Perhaps you don't owe billionaires any better (btw, is pg one? I had no idea)
He means in a sense 'rich as croesus' is my guess not literally that he has more than a billion (arbitrary anyway, right?) amount of money. And for that matter even someone who owns a billion worth of stock is not like they have a billion of liquid cash but it's referred to (and has always been 'a billionaire').
That said I think the parent comment expresses some of the sentiment of other comments (including my own) that what PG says it taken as more important than the same thing said by a nobody. (And not in particular that HN votes it up or not but just this general sense in the world that a 'halo' is not merit based which is what many people want to think success should be based on.)
The simplest explanation is that HN users upvote PG's essays because they like them and find them interesting, and because they are interested in what he writes/thinks because of his history with this community. The idea that it has something to do with his bank account seems an invention of the rage-based comments which unfortunately have become a tedious fixture of these threads.
But he wouldn't be PG (in the context of my point) if he hadn't made money based on what he has done. I mean I'd never read what he said if he was just a guy who did Lisp and wrote essays. And if I wanted 'my aunt' to read what he said a hook wouldn't be 'he went to Harvard and is a programmer and wrote a book..'. But money? That attracts people and you know makes you popular and accepted by a much larger group of people.
Just like Wozniak wouldn't be Woz if there was not money attached to what he has done.
Now to support your point I could also point out many people who are revered on HN who are not associated with making money for sure. So it is (I agree) misplaced to tie my comment to having money maybe I should have said 'fame' was the currency.
Taking it one step further let's say you and I meet on an airplane. I find out what you do and that you are tied into YC and HN etc and Graham. I know who Graham is. So sure I am going to be more impressed then if you are doing the same thing for someone who has not scored it big.
Let's take it one step further for discussion. Let's say my aunt runs into you on an airplane. She has never heard of YC HN or Paul Graham. So you rattle off some YC companies she has heard of and even uses. All the sudden you are viewed in a different light.
PG has a halo plain and simple. That halo can even be extended in a way by people surrounding him. Part of that halo is as a result of money plain and simple. Money is viewed as success and envied. Sure he's not a billionaire (maybe) but certainly is viewed as probably having a large amount of money (I do as well btw..)
And his idea that this is some evolutionary trait is debatable. The uneasy feeling of not knowing something is probably more related to social proof and fear of judgment by others.
dangus and others who's reaction is similar to dangus, can you suggest other forums where this is not true? I got to move on from this hub of retards at HN.
Trying to understand certain phenomena in these times (like the election and continuing support of certain presidents) can be utterly mystifying to academics, intellectuals and other mental explorers.
But it helps to realize that half the country lives outside of major cities and their biggest concerns are mostly things like whether gas prices will go up, and real estate taxes, and if they'll have a job next year. The environment or corporate malfeasance or discrimination are so far below their radar that they can be considered second-order effects. They know their way of life and they want it to stay that way forever and they're certain that they sure don't want some far off know-it-all to tell them what to do.
Pew did a comprehensive study of urban, suburban, and rural communities (link below). Their empirically-backed findings are pretty divergent from these common stereotypes.
There's even an entire portion of the report that basically boils down to "everyone thinks others do not understand their community's problems but is pretty confident they understand other community's problems".
Interesting, I wonder if this has been changing due to the arrival of the telephone, internet, etc. Like maybe other factors contribute to local vs global thinking more than geography.
I'm honestly at kind of a loss as to why politics is so polarized right now. I've tried just about everything I can think of, but can't create a self-consistent system of logic that explains the reasoning behind why people vote the opposite way that I do. It must be something subjective like religion or some context that I'm not privvy to.
I'm kind of joking and kind of not when I say that I wish we had an AI trained to be either liberal or conservative so that we could study it and see where it diverged. It's like we're way out on separate branches of a large search tree, so lack the context to understand where the other side is coming from. It really messes with me, because I should be able to understand a system of logic even if I don't agree with it. But I can't even get that far. What gives?!
I think the terse nature of my writing strikes again. While my remark was intended to be a bit silly, I picked the handle that I have for a reason. I'd prefer to be the noob in the room rather than the expert. Getting outside your comfort zone will set you up for big gains - you won't find your limit until you find your limit. Pick something you want to learn and surround yourself with some smart folks in that area, be the noob and watch your growth. It probably won't be easy but it will be worth it. I didn't blog about but I did fly my noob flag.
Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News? You've already done it quite a bit, and we're trying for a different sort of quality level here. The idea is: if you have a substantive point to make, make it thoughtfully; if you don't, please don't comment until you do.
Maybe I'm projecting from my own social anxiety, but I believe most of the negative sensation of feeling like a noob is being seen to not know something.
People want to come across as valuable to others and one way we do that is by offerring expertise. If we are seen to be noobs, it implies we may be less valuable to others because we don't know a thing.
Unfortunately, being a noob is a necessary precondition to actually learning a thing. It's very hard to learn without putting yourself out there in some way and trying. So there is this tension between wanting to be comfortable with looking like an amateur so that you can immerse yourself in the kind of environments where rapid learning happens, while also wanting to come across as an expert at other times.