from Hacker News

Re: Did You Hear We Got Osama?

by chegra84 on 2/18/12, 8:09 PM with 9 comments

• by repos on 2/19/12, 12:49 AM

  It's the premise that exposing ourselves to communities based on idea dissemination (HN, Twitter, etc) maximizes our serendipity. Reading X article may set you on a path that leads to an opportunity you never could have predicted.

  As with all things, moderation is critical. On one extreme, you're just gorging articles and reading about ideas. But you don't do anything about them, you just keep on reading. On the other extreme, you shut out the world and live in your head. There is the chance that you'll "create your own opportunity" (to use the phrase of the author) but you limit your chances by not interacting with others.

  Read something, see if you can act on it. If not, move along. There's no reason to take either extreme.

• by lbotos on 2/18/12, 10:18 PM

  I liked this post. If you are the author you have a few grammatical errors:

  because I hanged with a guy / because I hung out with a guy

  I tell them you need to relax; get your head out of the book. / I tell them they need to relax; get their head out of the book.

  over the long hall it works out./ over the long haul it works out.

  I'm not trying to be a downer, just offering some HN feedback. :)

  Keep on rocking. With a little refinement I think this post would make a good counter to "Did you hear we got Osama" but as it stands it's not as clear cut. I ass/u/me you are not a native english speaker but nonetheless I got your gist.

  Just playing devils advocate: You suggest to your friend "Get your head out of the book" but is not HN/etc the "proverbial" book?

• by billpatrianakos on 2/18/12, 10:35 PM

  I totally agree with the premise here and it was pretty much my first reaction to the original but I feel like this kind of rambled a bit. But oh well, the point is tuning out is not a good idea. It's great for information overload but not in generall on the other hand I disagree that it's alright to consume the amounts of information given as examples in this post. At a certain point you either have to scale back your consumption or go quench your thirst for knowledge. This article was closer to a good idea than the one it was written in response to but I must say it again: Balance. Strike a balance between learning and being around for opportunities to arise and pure stoppage of all input.

  This should be common sense. Learn and be knowledgeable but don't get consumed and paralyzed.

• by georgieporgie on 2/19/12, 2:00 AM

  Way too many parenthetical blocks, and it seems to jump around a lot. Frankly, it reads a bit like an amphetamine-powered 48th hour rant. I think you were arguing for the consumption of masses of information, but the style of this post pretty much proved the opposite to me.