<story><title>You can&apos;t tell people anything (2004)</title><url>http://habitatchronicles.com/2004/04/you-cant-tell-people-anything/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>nojvek</author><text>&amp;gt; I often joke that my goal is to become independently wealthy so that I can afford to get some work done. Mainly that’s about being able to do things without having to explain them first, so that the finished product can be the explanation. I think this will be a major labor saving improvement.&lt;p&gt;I believe this is true for almost every ambitious (maker&amp;#x2F;engineer). It’s really hard to convince Management about something new because they don’t experience the pain. Sometimes their Job depends on not understanding it.&lt;p&gt;Probably a reason why Startups outperform big companies in certain niches.&lt;p&gt;The big dilemma right now is there’s little funding available that can compete with the salaries of big companies. Rents have shot up so high that it’s not easy to take 6 months of to build something so you don’t have to explain. Failure has become expensive.&lt;p&gt;My theory is that even though people are getting paid more, we’re in this weird paradox of having less innovation.</text></comment>
<story><title>You can&apos;t tell people anything (2004)</title><url>http://habitatchronicles.com/2004/04/you-cant-tell-people-anything/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>scottmsul</author><text>I was a physics TA in grad school. I was very good at explaining solutions to problems, so of course during exam reviews I would get big crowds to watch the explanations. I was also somewhat aware of this principle, so during a review I was trying to get students to come up with approaches or ideas while solving a problem, and they demanded &amp;quot;why don&amp;#x27;t you just tell us!&amp;quot; It was pretty frustrating.&lt;p&gt;Watching someone explain solutions well can be dangerous, since it gives you the very real feeling of understanding, without actual understanding. To actually understand, you have to try a problem from scratch. Then you will understand why the solution&amp;#x2F;approach is what it is, and why other approaches fail, which will give you intuition about which approaches work on future problems. But counter-intuitively, you will get lost in the weeds during the process, which makes you feel like you don&amp;#x27;t understand!</text></comment>