8
kiki
2y

If you're subscribed to me only because of my jokes, feel free to ignore this rant. You won't miss anything.

If not, bear with me.

I was wrong about almost everything I can remember. Preaching so-called “conceptual thinking”, I invented a fantasy world of random anecdotes, which turned into a completely false worldview that shaped my reality. I bashed magical thinking, yet succumbed to it. What I believed to be true was just as magical, wrapped into what sounded like science. In the Dunning-Krueger scheme, I was right there on Peak Stupid.

Random hear-say, stupid concepts I invented, random “knowledge” I picked from YouTube videos, all that was rotting inside my head, one anecdote contradicting another. Ultimately, I think this was the reason of my constant anxiety and pointless, never-ending thought process in background.

If you learned anything factual from me and didn't fact-check it, please forget that immediately. The list includes but is not limited to everything on brain structure, everything on philosophy, almost everything on engineering and architecture, almost everything on systems theory and programming meta stuff (declarative, imperative, etc.)

I admit bashing unit tests. The only reason was me disliking writing them in uni. I wrote like three test cases, disliked it, and the rest was history. Everything else was a rationalization on top. If I was right about something, I was just lucky.

I'm not a CSS prodigy. I know stuff that earns me money and impresses my colleagues, but my knowledge is just one step above basics, in one thousand steps ladder.

Comments
  • 3
    According to Plato, when Socrates says "I know I know nothing", he is answering to the oracle, that had said that "Socrates is the wisest person in Athens".
    Who can both be right? Only if *no one* knows nothing and Socrates is wiser for recognizing the span of his ignorance.

    Enlightenment is not all about illuminating every dark corner, it emphasizes delineating the darkness borders, being aware of them, and being honest when assuming what is not yet clear.

    Thus, yeah, you had the "ex-smartass epiphany". It hurts. But you are made of better stuff, just stick mostly to what you do know and be explicit when trying to step in a stone you cannot see.
  • 3
    Wow. It takes courage to admit mistakes. And more importantly, it makes you smarter. Just like with that "I know that I know nothing" thing.

    Now I wonder how many of the things that you have mentioned also apply to me. I think I'm not ready for the answer, yet.
  • 2
    @JsonBoa what hurts is my brain trying to process that huge pile of crap and failing, resulting in anxiety attack, three times a day, for years
  • 1
    @kiki don't beat yourself over it. There is this "Godel's Incompleteness Theorems" thing that basically says that, if math works, then you cannot prove it works, and you cannot study it all.
    Thus, even the most prodigious luminaire can only go so far in understanding the universe. And yet every first year undergrad that just aced calculus believes they can see the matrix throught time and space.

    About the anxiety thing, for me what worked was moving out of any urban sprawl (the noise alone!), treating soda like a desert, and stationary bicycle+Pilates eeeeeevery morning. Won't solve the actual problem but gives you the stability to actually solve it.
  • 1
    @JsonBoa yes, I heard about the Godel's cards proof from Veritasium
  • 0
    This is sad, for everyone that trusted you.
  • 0
    @c3r38r170 if you blindly trust a random guy from an obscure forum where IT guys come to whine about their life and post jokes, and you trust them on some serious matter, it's your fault
  • 0
    @kiki Yeah blame it on the good faith users.
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