Comment by ofalkaed
5 hours ago
When I was starting out in electronics I found the easiest way to build an oscillator was to build an amplifier and the easiest way to build an amplifier was to build an oscillator. I guess the trick is to be 7 years old and have far more ambition than skill. Couldn't guess at how many tries it took me to make an amplifier that didn't oscillate and when I moved onto oscillators, they never oscillated but they did amplify. In that first year or so, I couldn't actually read resistor color codes, but I thought I could.
If you combine a 3 year-old, whose favorite word is "why?", and the ambition of a 7 year-old you might just end up with the most productive genius possible.
> the trick is to be 7 years old and have far more ambition than skill
Never lose this
Apologies for my bluntness, but in my humble opinion, American society would be better if it had fewer adults like this.
Wait until you see what some of the people in other countries do when they try to imitate Americans.
It makes you think, why even bother?
Not my downvote BTW.
Why talk about Americans now?
Being able to enjoy and find worth in the process regardless of the outcome is bad? Are we man-children if we don't treat everything as if it were as serious as cancer? I'm not really sure what you are trying to say.
You are likely talking about a different aspect of child-mindedness than the person you were responding to.
Yes, but then again, we could make a very similar comment about Hackernews.
Ambition develops skill. One of the problems with American society is people thinking they have skill when they don't. If people knew they had ambition and no skill, they'd try things and learn.
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I think the scenario of childlike wonder and limitless ambition is a little different to the scenario of embraced ignorance and wilful misrepresentation of any surviving facts in furtherance of the agenda du jour.
that's a helluva thing to just drop. What are your priors? Are you American yourself, or living in or near it? In what way would it be better? How so?
Often the biggest thing holding you back from doing something is the sensible, mature understanding that it’s impossible.