wehrkeoruw

It's not a meme, it's true. Anything that subsists on advertising and user expression is going to end up taking a stand of some kind.

If you don't want to take a stand, make something yourself.

That's my point, it's literally got a rule telling us to not talk about it. We really should talk about it, though.

There are lots of ways to interact with folks who don't understand something that get your point across without making them feel bad. I'm guessing you didn't employ any of those strategies.

We're having this conversation as if everyone making SQL queries is one fat finger away from irrevocable data loss. I know very little about SQL but have managed to build literally dozens of systems on top of Postgres without ever causing a data loss event as a result of my poor SQL skills...

Brute force? Nothing brute force about bringing you your laptop/phone so you can unlock your password store.

They'd get you access to your password store, I assume.

Or in other words, stop having fun?

There is value in relaxing, there is value in letting go of control and following your impulses. Trying to drive out all fun may lead to a more productive life, but at the cost of a pleasurable life.

Are you passionate in the same way the commenter's friend meant, though? Passion means different things to different people, and maybe his friend was expressing his desire to be more passionate, which actually sounds like a trait you share with him, considering you're not more passionate about any one particular thing over other things.

I agree with you, but would go even further and say you're not born interested, the set of experiences you have are what shape your interest. It's both an important and useful idea to consider that people are born blank slates, and experiences drive us.

The people who dominate the stereotype of "genius" are also those who have debilitating mental disorders, and far too many people can't separate those two things.

I'm not sure it's a given that natural talent is even part of the equation. A decent number of the behavioral economics who have written popular books (Grit, Peak, to name a few) seem to be converging on the idea that talent isn't really worth discussing as a prerequisite to greatness.

That especially follows if you consider the luck factor mentioned in this article; is it really talent to have a unique way of looking at a topic that moves the topic forward? Or is the uniqueness merely a factor of the set of experiences a person just happens to bring to bear on a problem?

I say this because far too many people get caught up on talent, trying to find what their talent is, when they'd be much more productive simply obsessing.

People have been right since the begining, and no one wants to talk about it.

Love this mindset; far too many people think of the System 1 part of our brains as things to fear and reduce as much as possible. Training it is vastly superior.