It's a great analogy. I first came across it in Gerald Weinberg's 'More Secrets of Consulting: The Consultant's Tool Kit', where he spends some time talking about burnout, what it means, and how to get out when you find your way in.
Yeah there are some similar suggestions but all the examples I can think of are at least a bit of a stretch. Matthew 7:3–5 mebbe? Remove the log from your own eye before focusing on smaller chunks of wood in the eyes of others?
For what it's worth, I wanted to downvote this because it doesn't provide much additional context. Which verses? Is there a link?
(I didn't downvote)
Saying "oh yeah the bible mentions that" doesn't really add to a conversation - the bible mentions a lot of stuff!
However, if I downvote you because you didn't provide context, you might misinterpret it as "wow, hacker news hates the bible" (I have no opinion on hn audience feelings towards religion)
So for additional context, one could look up the "speck vs log" which seems most straightforwardly about taking care of your own issues first (although it's in the context of hypocrisy, which doesn't quite match the original thread iiuc)
I found a few others, but none quite seemed like the close match I was hoping for (Mark 12:31, 1 Corinthians 6:19-20, etc)
In the 90's, I worked for a small consulting company with large corporate clients.
We joked that we could assess the health of a company's culture by whether Dilbert cartoons were tapped up in cubicles. Companies without them tended to have not much in the way of a sense of humor, or irony, or self-awareness.
The worst job I ever had was working for a manager who literally had a "no Dilbert cartoons in the workplace" policy. Other cartoons, fine, go crazy. But no Dilbert.
That place wasn't just kinda like Initech in Office Space, it pretty much WAS Initech in Office Space, only way less funny and interesting.
I worked for a Pointy-Haired Boss who used to pass out Dilbert strips he himself found funny and relevant to that person. Sadly, he could not recognize the PHB in himself.
Yeah I think that Joel Spolsky wrote some blog post about Dilbert cartoons on walls being a red flag. However, surely no cartoons is surely more often down to stiff policy which in it self is a way worse red flag. (Black flag? At least on the beach)
Jerry Weinberg wrote a number of books to this point, starting with 1971's 'The Psychology of Computer Programming.' Here's what he had to say a decade or so later...
"The First Law of Consulting: In spite of what your client may tell you, there’s always a problem.
The Second Law of Consulting: No matter how it looks at first, it’s always a people problem." [0]
Everything he wrote is worth the time to read.
[0] Weinberg, Gerald. "The Secrets of Consulting: A Guide to Giving and Getting Advice Successfully", 1986
1. "The Tobacco Institute was founded in 1958 as a trade association by cigarette manufacturers, who funded it proportionally to each company's sales. It was initially to supplement the work of the Tobacco Industry Research Committee (TIRC), which later became the Council for Tobacco Research. The TIRC work had been limited to attacking scientific studies that put tobacco in a bad light, and the Tobacco Institute had a broader mission to put out good news about tobacco, especially economic news." [0]
2. "[Lewis Powell] worked for Hunton & Williams, a large law firm in Richmond, Virginia, focusing on corporate law and representing clients such as the Tobacco Institute. His 1971 Powell Memorandum became the blueprint for the rise of the American conservative movement and the formation of a network of influential right-wing think tanks and lobbying organizations, such as The Heritage Foundation and the American Legislative Exchange Council."
We were in our 20's when my friend said 'A day in your 20's is worth a year in your 30's, a day in your 30's is worth a year in your 40's, etc...' Now in our 60's we're a little less adamant - every day is worth something.- but it has been a useful perspective.
Physically, I don’t feel a lot different than in my 40s. ( I’m pretty firm in my exercise schedule. ) But looking over almost anyone in their 80s, I’m reminded that the 60s likely kicks off ‘the fourth quarter’, to use sports parlance.
Time to let it all hang out, leave nothing on the table.
A day in my 20s was worth nothing. I went and flipped burgers for $4/hr, then probably went out for beers at a dive bar that night. Just living day to day.
Think about how often you got to a museum, library, or park compared to how often you eat and pay the monthly bills. The more expensive the area, the higher the routine bills and wages don't always track that, especially at the low end.
Both have significant advantages, shared walls reducing energy costs and the ability to live without a car can make a huge difference at the bottom.
It’s really suburbs that end up the most expensive. You combine higher housing and labor costs vs rural areas without any of the cost savings of cities.
I've posted this before, but I think it will be a perennial comment and concern:
Excerpted from Tony Hoare's 1980 Turing Award speech, 'The Emperor's Old Clothes'...
"At last, there breezed into my office the most senior manager of all, a general manager of our parent company, Andrew St. Johnston. I was surprised that he had even heard of me. "You know what went wrong?" he shouted--he always shouted-- "You let your programmers do things which you yourself do not understand." I stared in astonishment. He was obviously out of touch with present day realities. How could one person ever understand the whole of a modern software product like the Elliott 503 Mark II software system? I realized later that he was absolutely right; he had diagnosed the true cause of the problem and he had planted the seed of its later solution."
My interpretation is that whether shifting from delegation to programmers, or to compilers, or to LLMs, the invariant is that we will always have to understand the consequences of our choices, or suffer the consequences.
Applied to your specific example, yes, LLMs can be a good assistants for learning. I would add that triangulation against other sources and against empirical evidence is always necessary before one can trust that learning.
My guess is that you get practice in habit-building that can be applied to useful habits. Sort of like having students do exercises that have solutions in the back of the textbook. It's not the solution that's needed, it's the practice.
