State of the Game

Lysette

Lysette
hard drives - and you guys think that is old-school computation?- stacks of punch cards put into a reader, that is the real old-school input, and output printed out on paper, with no human interaction in between - well other than waiting for an hour for the results, having coffee in the cafeteria meanwhile - at least that is what dad said, computation was like in the 70s.
 

Just

Just
Lysette said:
that is ok as well - whatever suits your fancy. To me that is kind of a hobby as well - I like to design programming languages, virtual machines and create compilers and interpreters for those - like I said, it can be addictive - it started a long time ago with reading the "lambda the ultimate" web-block, where fancy programming languages and unusual solutions for problems were discussed - and I started to really think about strengths and flaws of programming languages and why they are like they are and if those cannot be made better for a specific task at hand like massively parallel computation - commercial programming languages support this extremely poorly.
Click to expand...
When I try to do some "summary" of my life it seems like I went the "hard way" - instead of progressing in areas where I was already gifted and I learned new things easily (maths, physics, IT etc) I had to work on skills/perks that were my weaknesses.

Two examples:
1.
Problem:
small talk was extremely difficult to me as I was younger. My mind was becoming instantly purged when I was supposed to talk about "nothing".
Solution:
I had very serious money trouble soon after I moved to Germany, I was on the verge of coming back to Poland.

I had to make some cash quick - accidentally I got to know people that were in finances (life insurances, funds etc.) - they saw something in me that I wasn't even aware of and they "pulled me in" - let's say that after some quick "social interaction" training it turned out that ONCE I HAVE A GOAL I not only can talk to strangers like we were long time acquaintances, I am actually "charming" and I make a trustworthy impression on people, and I can convince them that that need what I am selling PERMANENTLY - I had not only very good results (high sales) but my clients were almost never cancelling the deals afterwards, what was the "curse" of this business -usually people tend to "think things over" and a lot of sold life insurances / funds is being cancelled soon after the sale. But somehow not mine, I was a curiosity there. Once I have "written" something in their heads, it became "read only" ;)
I left this business after several months because of moral issues anyway, I didn't like the "smallprint" of what I was selling.

2.
Problem:
Making choices / decisions.
I also used to be neurotic. I had problems making simple choices in life. Whenever I felt like there is not "enough data" to predict the outcome, I became paralised. And it leaked to literally ANY area of life.

Solution:
Well, it kind of "solved itself" After I grounded my firm, I had to make so many choices daily, that somehow this flaw just disappeared, before I realized I was a "instant choice machine". I just forgot that you can have something like dilemma, I had no time for that :)
I find it one of most QOL improving changes that happened to me.

What I mean there, is that if I went my "predestined" way of IT nerd, I would probably still have those two problems.
And several more I had to "fix" because things went "sideways".
 
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Lysette

Lysette
Just said:
When I try to do some "summary" of my life it seems like I went the "hard way" - instead of progressing in areas where I was already gifted and I learned new things easily (maths, physics, IT etc) I had to work on skills/perks that were my weaknesses.

Two examples:
1.
Problem:
small talk was extremely difficult to me as I was younger. My mind was becoming instantly purged when I was supposed to talk about "nothing".
Solution:
I had very serious money trouble soon after I moved to Germany, I was on the verge of coming back to Poland.

I had to make some cash quick - accidentally I got to know people that were in finances (life insurances, funds etc.) - they saw something in me that I wasn't even aware of and they "pulled me in" - let's say that after some quick "social interaction" training it turned out that ONCE I HAVE A GOAL I not only can talk to strangers like we were long time acquaintances, I am actually "charming" and I make a trustworthy impression on people, and I can convince them that that need what I am selling PERMANENTLY - I had not only very good results (high sales) but my clients were almost never cancelling the deals afterwards, what was the "curse" of this business -usually people tend to "think things over" and a lot of sold life insurances / funds is being cancelled soon after the sale. But somehow not mine, I was a curiosity there. When I have "written" something in their heads, it became "read only" ;)
I left this business after several months because of moral issues anyway, I didn't like the "smallprint" of what I was selling.

2.
Problem:
Making choices / decisions.
I also used to be neurotic. I had problems making simple choices in life. Whenever I felt like there is not "enough data" to predict the outcome, I became paralised. And it leaked to literally ANY area of life.

Solution:
Well, it kind of "solved itself" After I grounded my firm, I had to make so many choices daily, that somehow this flaw just disappeared, before I realized I was a "instant choice machine". I just forgot that you can have something like dilemma, I had no time for that :)
I find it one of most QOL improving changes that happened to me.

What I mean there, is that if I went my "predestined" way of IT nerd, I would probably still had those two problems.
Click to expand...
I guess you made your experience with "multi-level-marketing" then - which is in many cases pretty fraudulent, so I can understand that you got moral issues. My partner owns 2 venture capital companies and I know a bit of how marketing of investments work - given that they do high risk high yield investments which have a different target audience, namely risk takers which can deal with risks, but not with being lied to - so this is not the shady kind of business - but I know what you might have experienced there.

The second part shows that you acquired leadership - even making bad decisions is better than making none at all - and part of leadership is the ability to make decent decisions based on incomplete information just in time. Those do not have to be really good decisions, but they have to be mostly successful and this is achieved by flocking good people around you - the other part of leadership, being able to find good people, which are often as well just hired by gut feeling and not based on their paper form. This is a leadership skill too, to make these decisions by basically no better reason than "it feels right".
 
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nemolomen

nemolomen
Just said:
When I try to do some "summary" of my life it seems like I went the "hard way" - instead of progressing in areas where I was already gifted and I learned new things easily (maths, physics, IT etc) I had to work on skills/perks that were my weaknesses.

Two examples:
1.
Problem:
small talk was extremely difficult to me as I was younger. My mind was becoming instantly purged when I was supposed to talk about "nothing".
Solution:
I had very serious money trouble soon after I moved to Germany, I was on the verge of coming back to Poland.

I had to make some cash quick - accidentally I got to know people that were in finances (life insurances, funds etc.) - they saw something in me that I wasn't even aware of and they "pulled me in" - let's say that after some quick "social interaction" training it turned out that ONCE I HAVE A GOAL I not only can talk to strangers like we were long time acquaintances, I am actually "charming" and I make a trustworthy impression on people, and I can convince them that that need what I am selling PERMANENTLY - I had not only very good results (high sales) but my clients were almost never cancelling the deals afterwards, what was the "curse" of this business -usually people tend to "think things over" and a lot of sold life insurances / funds is being cancelled soon after the sale. But somehow not mine, I was a curiosity there. Once I have "written" something in their heads, it became "read only" ;)
I left this business after several months because of moral issues anyway, I didn't like the "smallprint" of what I was selling.

2.
Problem:
Making choices / decisions.
I also used to be neurotic. I had problems making simple choices in life. Whenever I felt like there is not "enough data" to predict the outcome, I became paralised. And it leaked to literally ANY area of life.

Solution:
Well, it kind of "solved itself" After I grounded my firm, I had to make so many choices daily, that somehow this flaw just disappeared, before I realized I was a "instant choice machine". I just forgot that you can have something like dilemma, I had no time for that :)
I find it one of most QOL improving changes that happened to me.

What I mean there, is that if I went my "predestined" way of IT nerd, I would probably still have those two problems.
And several more I had to "fix" because things went "sideways".
Click to expand...
Most of us have to learn our lessons the hard way. The real trick is to learn our lessons from other people's mistakes. Thanks for the instruction... ;)
 

Just

Just
nemolomen said:
Most of us have to learn our lessons the hard way. The real trick is to learn our lessons from other people's mistakes. Thanks for the instruction... ;)
Click to expand...
Well, my "instruction" is simple - we are much more "flexible" then most of us can imagine.
And our flaws/weaknesses/phobias are not really a "part" of us.
I see them as barely as kind of "habit", "inertia" of our brain. It just tries to go the "usual" way, even if it's definitely not something that is pleasant or useful.

Our brain is just a neural network, we can rebuild it very deeply, just by repeating experiences that are not fitting the current self image AND the "automatic" response model of our brain.
Eventually the "new", self trained/forced set of actions/emotions/expected outcomes supersedes the one you wanted you get rid of.
It's a interesting experience to be changed so deeply, that some your old memories seem feel like they were of someone else, or just a "movie", because you are not able to "empathize" with them anymore - they were based on programming, that just does not exist in your brain anymore.
 
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CMDR Sheehy

CMDR Sheehy
Lysette said:
hard drives - and you guys think that is old-school computation?- stacks of punch cards put into a reader, that is the real old-school input, and output printed out on paper, with no human interaction in between - well other than waiting for an hour for the results, having coffee in the cafeteria meanwhile - at least that is what dad said, computation was like in the 70s.
Click to expand...
I went to Bletchley Park once. They had a punch reader there. Long ribbons of instructions or data. And something about the bands used to driver the reader - if they snapped while you were next to them, they could cut you in half. Oh and the heat: The women working on the computers did so in their underwear because of the heat generated by these old computer. You think Dell servers have a problem? They are nothing compared to valve computing!
 

Lysette

Lysette
Just said:
Well, my "instruction" is simple - we are much more "flexible" then most of us can imagine.
And our flaws/weaknesses/phobias are not really a "part" of us.
I see them as barely as kind of "habit", "inertia" of our brain. It just tries to go the "usual" way, even if it's definitely not something that is pleasant or useful.

Our brain is just a neural network, we can rebuild it very deeply, just by repeating experiences that are not fitting the current self image AND the "automatic" response model of our brain.
Eventually the "new", self trained/forced set of actions/emotions/expected outcomes supersedes the one you wanted you get rid of.
It's a interesting experience to be changed so deeply, that some your old memories seem feel like they were of someone else, or just a "movie", because you are not able to "empathize" with them anymore - they were based on programming, that just does not exist in your brain anymore.
Click to expand...
I think we quite underestimate what role "luck" plays in our lives - increasing our luck is basically maximizing opportunities to meet the right people and charm them into helping you further on your way. IMO it is much more helpful in life to be a likable person than to be loaded with skills, but unable to communicate your abilities to those, who could help your career or whatever you are trying to achieve. I'm not saying that acquiring skills would be a bad thing, but if it is the only thing and you aren't likable, you won't be lucky either.
 
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