

You Can’t Take It With You - jason_tko
http://steveblank.com/2010/07/26/you-cant-take-it-with-you/

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dan_sim
I had a conversation with a well-known entrepreneur in my city. He has created
a chain of cafés (completely different from my field) but we talked a lot (in
fact, he talked, I questioned and listened) and I learned a great deal.

At the end of the conversation, he said "it has been a long time since I
talked that much". WHAT? It meant that I was probably one of the few lucky who
had learned from his experience. I always thought that entrepreneur were
sharing their knowledge to everyone once they were big enough.

I hope that he will write about this someday but for the moment, I'll just
write it myself in a document and try to find a way to share it.

~~~
tomjen3
It properly meant that he didn't run into any good listeners.

Most people, including me at times, take part in a conversation just to say
something, which means that those who listen can learn a lot.

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etal
Quick poll: When you were in school, especially college, were the best
teachers young or old?

There are young teachers with talent, but in my opinion, the most outstanding
lecturers were older and had a depth and variety of experience that the young
ones couldn't match. Older teachers have the fabled 10,000 hours of deliberate
practice to account for, as well as a diversity of experience and the time
necessary to assemble some perspective on all of it.

So here's a big +1 for hiring adjunct professors from outside the usual pool
of fresh young faces. Let the young people work, and the old people teach.

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
Both (I think).

When getting my master's the most interesting instructors were the about-to-
retire grey hair teaching Software Project Management who had decades of PM
war stories mostly from massive Government projects.

At the other end was the young guy (looked like he was the youngest instructor
in the program) teaching Introduction to Networks. He was absolutely amazing:
there seemed to be nothing that he didn't know on any aspect of either
circuit-switched or packet-switched networks! I think only once did he say
"I'll have to research that and let you know next week." He was probably older
than he looked since he'd worked quite a while at either Alcatel or Nortel.

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keltex
Better to take it one step further. Find people like this, interview them, put
the videos online and let everybody share in their wisdom.

~~~
sanj
Sweet fancy Moses, please no videos. Transcribe to text.

My bandwidth reading is an order of magnitude greater reading than watching.

I've almost given up on video on the web for interviews.

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lenni
He probably has a point about preserving your knowledge but I find his
fascination with this 'Fortune 100 lawyer' a little odd. Those are the guys
that battle out stuff like Microsoft/SCO vs. IBM or the hypothetical "MPEG-LA
patent trolls Google for WebM", right?

~~~
vidar
He is not fascinated with the lawyer but with his proficiency in his field,
the field is irrelevant.

~~~
gaius
Hmm, but:

 _I’ll use misdirection to get the opposing counsel thinking I’m heading in
one direction_

This is the wrong lesson. He's good at exploiting the legal system, that's
all. It's not about who is right, it's about who has the cleverer lawyer. All
this guy's "experience" is zero-sum, he's creating no wealth, he's purely
parasitic. He's like a salesman who sells you something you don't want just
because he's good at persuasion. Why would you want to teach the next
generation of lawyers to milk their clients more effectively?

~~~
arethuza
In an adversarial system like the US and the UK each side in the case is
expected to put up the best argument possible presenting their side of the
case - it's not about them presenting the "truth" (although they obviously
can't lie).

~~~
dhimes
I read a passage on a standardized exam once that led me to believe that of
the US and UK, only the US was adversarial, and the UK was more inquisitorial.
The point of the exam passage was the contrast: in the UK, for example, both
sides had to present all of the evidence they had. Not so in the US. Perhaps
it's more of a sliding scale between the systems than a dichotomy.

Now, I have to admit I never followed up on this, maybe the passage was
fictionalized.

~~~
Ardit20
US and UK have pretty much the same legal system. The French legal system is
inquisitorial and pretty much all of Europe or is it the world except for the
common wealth?

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dark9light
Because non-tech knowledge, being harder to reverse-engineer, is harder to
pass down. The main point seems kind of like Asimov's Foundation, keep from
falling back too many generations by leaving key checkpoint materials while
cutting out some of the initially necessary but essentially unworking steps
that we just go through to reach a solution (assumption -> oh this would be no
that can't be -> ok reduction ad absurdum -> next possibility).

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petercooper
I came to a similiar conclusion a few weeks ago and have just finished setting
up a system to try and record anything interesting I learn or find out in life
in text and/or video form. I can't wait to get it rolling. Merely being able
to read digests of what I've read or learn before should, I hope, bring most
of the ideas back. Is there a name for this sort of recording?

~~~
Ardit20
Yes. Its a diary.

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ascuttlefish
There's an entire field devoted to this: Knowledge Management
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_management>).

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amichail
I doubt the lawyer would risk his career by giving away his strategy/tactics.

~~~
andreyf
Hence the suggestion that he do it after retiring from practice.

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c00p3r
_If you don’t teach it or write it down, the accumulated knowledge of your
career is gone._ Yeah. Keep your knowledge in a working memory. Keep your
tools sharp. We learn by doing and so on..

Add to this that in an IT field things are changing so fast, that you need a
constant daily learning to stay in a shape.

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bokonist
_I worry we may be heading for a future in which only a few people plot their
own itinerary through no-land, while everyone else books a package tour._

That's been the case for the majority of human history. It's mostly the case
now. Most non-religious, progressive thinking people, don't actually think
through most issues for themselves. They believe in institutions - academia,
NPR, etc. Most people believe what they do about nutrition for instance, not
from reading studies themselves, but through accredited officials (PHD's) as
interpreted by the NYTimes.

~~~
tnorthcutt
How did this get here?

