What I learned from six months of being stupid on purpose (wvez.org)

85 pointsby wvez224 days ago53 comments

maxverse 4 days ago

This takes me back to the weirdness of my post-college years: so much pressure to show that I know what I'm doing but no actual work or life experience to draw from. The transition thinking success is good grade to realizing that real success is figuring out what the questions are and how much effort I should put into answering them.

I definitely relate to the crux of the article though:

> I realized getting to a point where you reap the benefits from what you’re hoping to learn requires you to do it yourself and fail. A lot.

I also had to work hard to shift from the fixed mindset: "I'm smart therefore I need to be good at this. If I'm not good at this, then I'm dumb" to "I'm going to put the effort it and give myself the grace that learning takes a long time". Almost nobody is smart enough to get it right away, and truly, nobody starts out knowing everything.

I learned this most clearly from running, where I had no expectations to live up to, no "I should". I put in the work for years, and ran faster and further than I ever thought I would. I'm never ashamed to say "today was a crappy run" or "I didn't do very well, better sleep it off". Then why was I afraid to say "I don't get this complex idea yet, I better spend some time reading it 12 more times until it starts making sense"?

pvab3 4 days ago

>"I'm smart therefore I need to be good at this. If I'm not good at this, then I'm dumb"

This reminds me of the meme "If I can't get this barbell off my chest, I'm gay and my whole family dies"

Which got me more gains than any other time in my life

exceptione 4 days ago

You are over-complicating things; you can be gay without a barbell on your chest.

mulderc 4 days ago

I honestly don’t understand how that specific thought was motivating for you but I guess whatever works…

rcxdude 3 days ago

That kind of logic is more or less the kind of disordered thinking that typifies OCD.

gloryjulio 4 days ago

So stay hungry, stay foolish?

UltraSane 4 days ago

The sense of having lots of knowledge but no real confidence in my abilities caused me much anxiety after graduating college.

BigHatLogan 4 days ago

I'm working through something similar right now. I like your thought about shifting away from the fixed mindset. I'm also realizing a lot of this, maybe all of this, comes down to identity and ego.

I'm taking an evening class right now in computer science at a local university. Without mincing words, I am getting my ass kicked by it. Absolutely handed to me. It's proofs-based, and I don't have much of a background in this (even during my time in college back in the day, I didn't take these types of courses).

I'm getting stuck all the time, finding it hard to understand the lectures, and then avoiding studying altogether because it's not "clicking" for me. But if I'm being honest, what I'm doing above all is avoiding studying because of how painful it feels, and how much of my own identity as a "smart" person comes into question. I've never really had trouble with coursework, and would even say a lot of it came naturally to me, so from that I built up a little castle wall of an identity wherein I'm a "smart person who learns things easily."

Yet here I am unable to learn this easily at all. I'm discovering that I need to tweak my mindset and keep my identity smaller. Why do I have to be a smart person? Why can't I just be a person who wants to learn something that he's finding challenging? Is it helping me to belittle myself by telling myself that I "should" understand this quickly? Or is it just leading me to running away from the whole thing altogether, thereby worsening the situation?

Sorry for the rant / writeup. I'm processing all of this in real-time myself, and trying to get myself back to studying...

keybrd-intrrpt 4 days ago

> six months of being stupid on purpose

Those are rookie numbers.

I've been doing that for 40 years

wvez22 4 days ago

A true master of their craft. You can't see it, but I'm bowing right now.

b33l 4 days ago

You make it look effortless!

programjames 4 days ago

Alternative title:

What I learned spending a lifetime making the world a little bit worse for everyone else for fun and profit.

-----

Their entire mindset seems to be, "how can I take advantage of other people making mistakes to make a few dollars here and there? and how can I induce them to make even more mistakes in my realm of influence so it is even easier to profit from them?"

This is why he is always chasing the latest fad—"dropshipping massage guns, rug tufting, rainbow-loom bracelets, you name it"—people who follow fads are less likely to do their research and more likely to click buy on the overpriced TikTok ad. AI just empowers him to do more of this.

The only skill he seems to work on is his "taking advantage of others" skill. It's astounding that he got to this age without knowing even the basics of programming... and he only learned those basics once it became relevant to taking advantage of others. Rather than trying to create something new, or create a better version of something old, he just wants to disrupt efficient commerce so he can skim off the top.

I'm sure he makes a ton of money doing this. I wish that weren't possible.

alphawhisky 4 days ago

Bro is a professional leech. Dropshipping -> Private Healthcare -> Siphoning VC Dollars is a crazy pipeline.

s1artibartfast 3 days ago

It is really interesting how different people can view those behavior as abusive versus neutral or positively good.

I think it comes down to some pretty fundamental views about human autonomy and meaning.

E.g. if you respect someone's desire to buy a rainbow bracelet, or think you know better and they should be treated like a child.

eudamoniac 3 days ago

It's not about buying the thing or not but about inserting oneself as an unnecessary middleman who just raises the price, which only works due to the customer's ignorance. It's essentially deceiving someone into paying more than they had to. I don't see how it could be considered positive.

s1artibartfast 3 days ago

I see, that makes a little more sense if you start from the assumption it isnt adding value and also raising prices, then of course it isnt positive.

I think this underappreciates that value added by having multiple sellers/retailers competing and advertising. I dont think the world where everything must be bought from a manufacturer or small set of retailers is better.

DisruptiveDave 4 days ago

Will take this chance to plug one of my favorite books - How I Became Stupid by Martin Page[0].

[0]https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/186837.How_I_Became_S...

janwillemb 4 days ago

The pull chord for dark/light mode is nice!

kraquepype 4 days ago

Right? I came back just to comment on it... haven't even read the article.

I got distracted by the shiny dangly thing and it took a little while to figure out it was a pull chain.

KPGv2 4 days ago

This is a joke, right? It's horribly written, and full of financebro bullshit. I feel like I'm back in law school talking to the business majors who couldn't get a good job and used law as a fallback.

I commend him for trying to learn new skills. no one needs to know this shit. It's not instagram.

quietfox 4 days ago

> I feel that tutorials and informative reading are always good starting points for getting down the basics of a skill.

And for seeing what’s possible with a skill. But this can be very overwhelming as well. When you watch the masters doing what looks really easy and after that start with your first steps - and fail - it’s way more discouraging than starting without having seen this and being proud of small achievements.

bitwize 4 days ago

Relevant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMhwddNQSWQ

greenavocado 4 days ago

Can't tell if this is n8n viral marketing

wvez22 4 days ago

Dw its not, paying them for anything is a scam. Self host until death.

travisjungroth 4 days ago

Why is paying them for anything a scam?

HoldOnAMinute 4 days ago

I think they call it "submarining"

alsetmusic 4 days ago

> I’ve been an entrepreneur for as long as I can remember

Yeah, ok… Not for me.

cousinbryce 4 days ago

Somehow I doubt it’s entirely written by a human

wvez22 4 days ago

Maybe my writing style is just out of this world

weezing 4 days ago

It was written by an entrepreneur since the very early womb days.

abanana 4 days ago

It seems these days everybody is determined to call themselves an entrepreneur.

Alan Sugar was right when he told off a contestant on The Apprentice UK for doing it - it's not meant to be something you call yourself, it's something others call you as a means of recognising your success if you've earned it. Pity that doesn't appear to be the dominant viewpoint.

It's also noticeable how the vast majority of well-known people are described on Wikipedia as either an entrepreneur or a businessperson. The rationale is sometimes as simple as "their management team sells merchandise with their name and image"! I've read that it's a very deliberate attempt by their marketing people, who push their ideas via Wikipedia etc, to give them more credibility than they supposedly get from things like sports or acting, by jumping on this fashion.

hax0ron3 4 days ago

Part of it is marketing, but part of it has to do with changes in how Americans think about making money.

Young Americans can see the direction in which the wind is blowing. They believe less and less in the idea of a "comfortable middle class lifestyle with a steady career" and more and more in the idea that you have to be some some kind of entrepreneur or hustler if you want to have hope for a decent living and a decent amount of personal freedom in the current system, given economic trends and trends in AI.

I think this is also part of the reason why socialism has returned as a viable force in American politics. The alternative to becoming an entrepreneur or hustler in the current system is to change the current system.

longtimelistnr 4 days ago

As a young(er) American I can relate to this sentiment. Either hit big or hope the whole thing comes down trying.

dr_kiszonka 4 days ago

Is "the whole thing" referring to the "current system"or something else? Asking out of curiosity, as I am sadly not a younger American.

drivebyhooting 4 days ago

Cool when asked what I do I’ll say I’m an unemployed code monkey instead.

vel0city 4 days ago

One time at a pub I had started casually talking to a dude sitting next to me. I had just been there reading a novel, we had some small back and forth. One of my strategies of encouraging conversation is being interested in the other person, so I asked "so, what do you do?"

He got very upset with me about that question. He went on about how everyone around here is so focused on their work and not living life (this was in a very corporate office tower part of town, so...yeah). Everyone only cares about what you produce, not with how you live. It turns out he had also been laid off earlier that day as well. We discussed this a good bit, and in the end had a good night hanging out at the bar. I never met him again, but I think about that conversation often.

That interaction made me decide not to ask that question going forward. These days, instead of asking "what do you do?", I ask things like "what keeps you busy in life?" Because ultimately that's closer to what I'm really wondering.

abanana 4 days ago

True, I've always thought it's unfortunate that so many people define themselves by their job and expect everyone else to do the same. It works for some but absolutely not for all, and ideally speaking it shouldn't be our default means of labelling others.

solyin 4 days ago

> it's something others call you as a means of recognising your success if you've earned it. Pity that doesn't appear to be the dominant viewpoint.

That's just human psychology being dumb again. Just make multiple social media accounts and use one to make posts and have the other ones come along to call the first a great entrepreneur. Won't magically make you Warren Buffett but if it gets people to buy the product the first one is selling so you can pay for food/rent so you don't starve, who cares?

fcarraldo 4 days ago

Maybe the investors who you are potentially defrauding, or the FTC which regulates deceptive business practices?

deadbabe 4 days ago

At this point I look at everyone who self-identifies as an "entrepreneur" with the same suspicion as people who join MLM schemes.

JDups 4 days ago

A Venn diagram that is very nearly a circle.

Razengan 4 days ago

Title reminded me of this: https://i.imgur.com/17qzK8h.jpg

mindtricks 4 days ago

Can someone explain the n8n hate? I recently used it as part of a course and it helped connect some dots for me on what I'd been studying.

HoldOnAMinute 4 days ago

What is the purpose of it? Visual programming has failed since the 80's.

Why not just have GenAI create you a custom tool to perform the automation?

tsunitsuni 4 days ago

n8n has been around a lot longer than LLMs and, as explained in the article, can be a useful substrate for your LLMs to write custom tools with (for those uncomfortable with the terminal or wanting lots of API integrations)

dr_kiszonka 4 days ago

I don't know if people hate it, but I don't use it because it is overpriced (you need the $50 pro subscription to do more than tinker) and it had multiple CVEs this year. There are also a lot of n8n "influencers" on YouTube, but that is not n8n's fault.

I think it is fine for prototyping if someone prefers a GUI.

HoldOnAMinute 4 days ago

How is n8n any different from the "Visual" tools from the 80's and 90's like Visual Smalltalk?

quirkot 4 days ago

It's nice to see the kids having the same sorts of discoveries the olds had once upon a time. Specifics change, but we're just stupid humans spinning around the sun together

apt-apt-apt-apt 4 days ago

Yeah, but can he find a building skyline or the best time to buy and sell stock

olwmc 4 days ago

"Social media content factory" "[Automated] Ebay flipping"

What a vile, vile thing.

baseonmars 4 days ago

I hate to nitpick, but what is 'a software'? I see and hear the phrase being used on social media but folks I know in real life just say 'software'.

I build a software vs I build some software.

popularonion 4 days ago

I just assumed it came out of Indian English, and kept spreading as more and more people like to use the word “software” as a synonym for “app” or “program”.

In my house, software will always be an uncountable noun.

bethekidyouwant 4 days ago

Well, the sloppening is real. Finance Bros really be burning tokens.