Yet another Hacker News

What I learned from six months of being stupid on purpose

43 points wvez22 1 hour ago 26 comments

keybrd-intrrpt 1 hour ago | parent

> six months of being stupid on purpose

Those are rookie numbers.

I've been doing that for 40 years

wvez22 1 hour ago | parent

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

b33l 20 minutes ago | parent

You make it look effortless!

alsetmusic 58 minutes ago | parent

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

Yeah, ok… Not for me.

cousinbryce 53 minutes ago | parent

Somehow I doubt it’s entirely written by a human

wvez22 50 minutes ago | parent

Maybe my writing style is just out of this world

weezing 24 minutes ago | parent

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

abanana 42 minutes ago | parent

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 21 minutes ago | parent

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.

drivebyhooting 7 minutes ago | parent

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

greenavocado 51 minutes ago | parent

Can't tell if this is n8n viral marketing

wvez22 49 minutes ago | parent

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

bitwize 50 minutes ago | parent

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

Razengan 46 minutes ago | parent

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

maxverse 43 minutes ago | parent

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 35 minutes ago | parent

>"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 16 minutes ago | parent

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

KPGv2 39 minutes ago | parent

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.

programjames 37 minutes ago | parent

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.

janwillemb 32 minutes ago | parent

The pull chord for dark/light mode is nice!

quirkot 31 minutes ago | parent

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

bethekidyouwant 7 minutes ago | parent

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

mindtricks 3 minutes ago | parent

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.