>Force yourself into situations where you're the dumbest person in the conversation. Ask stupid questions. Get things wrong, listen for corrections, but leave room to ask followups.
In the spirit of asking stupid questions, what does "leave room to ask followups" mean here? What part of "listen for corrections" or "ask stupid questions" is it qualifying?
I don't think OP meant literally "leave the room," but rather "leave space for follow-ups," i.e. don't pack everything into the initial question; keep it vague so that you can ask a follow-up based on the first answer (which could otherwise be constrained by your possibly-wrong framing).
While there isn’t anything particularly novel in this list, I do like how this highlights the process of technical/science communication. The way to get good at sci comms is to practice it and to query your audience when they don’t understand it!
What I wonder is how you define "neat" if not related to "useful".
Personally, I think something would be neat to build if it (1) does not yet exist and (2) would be useful to have and (3) the technology at hand lends itself to build the thing with it, but the poster downplays utility. Since you have spend time only once, working on one neat thing comes at the expense of all other things you could build instead, so it does matter what you choose to spend it on.
Umm... So none of this sounded like "work". It sounded like playing with a fun new technology then bothering other people to try and gain some sort of status as "architect" or expert in the fun new thing.
How do you get paid to spend so much time on the fun new thing when there are boring things that people paying you want done ?
Yeah it's great if you have the free time, no kids etc. Otherwise the grind of staying ahead is just that - another grind.
I used to work with Blardo. His desk was right next to mine roughly a decade ago.
I think he's describing his own experience of his turbo-nuclear sense of curiosity. I don't think he ever seeks out status as an expert or architect - but that sometimes is the natural result of the way his brain works.
The grind is only a grind to those for whom work is not fun. And boring things are only boring when you look at them through a certain lens.
Ok before I go any further I have to comment - is anyone else unreasonably distracted by the double-cerebellum brain image up top? Oddly mesmerizing… another win for AI art IMO.
EDIT: Made me smile, feel a bit less alone. I wish you many more cool things! I suspect this phrase will stick with me for a while yet:
I've played with creating some chest x-ray images using diffusion.
I almost gave my ER friend a heart attack after I sent him X-rays with flipped hearts and even missing organs. He was very confused (these was early in the year when GebAI wasn't so mainstream)
In the spirit of asking stupid questions, what does "leave room to ask followups" mean here? What part of "listen for corrections" or "ask stupid questions" is it qualifying?