Ask HN: Where are the great scientific theories of our lifetime? - <AUTHOR>

It seems to me that all the GREAT theories and discoveries happened before we were born:
Evolution, Big Bang, special relativity, general relativity, quantum mechanics, Godel's incompleteness theorem, continental drift, asteroid death of dinosaurs (K-T extinction event), fission/fusion, germ theory, etc.
All of those theories and discoveries are at least 50 years old.
You'd think that with scientific knowledge supposedly doubling every 7 years that we'd have many new really important discoveries and truly groundbreaking theories. But we don't. Why not? <comment><USER3> Well, you didn't say when you were born. But let me have a go:

Inflation theory (1980), Gluons (1979), Experimental verification of quarks (mid 1970's), Quantum Chromodynamics (1960, modern version 1975), Quantum Computing (1982), Spintronics (1980s), Josephson effect (1962), SQUIDS (1964/1965), Semiconductor Photolithography (1982), Nanotechnology (1980s), high temperature superconductivity (1986).

Nothing interesting happened after 1994 because of the invention of the Spice Girls and because the eighties were over and everyone became obsessed with having answers immediately and looking it up on the web instead of reading books and so on. (It's just possible that this is when I gave up reading books and so I don't know about anything that happened since then. But I'd rate that possibility at less than 10% based on a back of the envelope calculation.)

<comment><AUTHOR> These are technology (not theories or scientific discoveries): \- SQUIDS (1964/1965) \- Semiconductor Photolithography (1982) \- Nanotechnology (1980s) \- High temperature superconductivity (1986) \- Quantum Computing (1982) \- Spintronics (1980s)

And these are old (which was my original point about nothing happening recently): \- Josephson effect (1962) \- Inflation theory (1980) \- Gluons (1979) \- Experimental verification of quarks (mid 1970's) \- Quantum Chromodynamics (1960, modern version 1975)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> At least part of the problem is in communicating great discoveries to the general public. Let me give an example. In the last few decades, Cosmology transformed from being a speculative, mostly theoretical field to a precise, quantitative science. Experiments that measured the Cosmic Microwave Background (WMAP in 2001 and others) enabled us to form a history of the universe that is backed by evidence. Measurements of supernovae (1998) showed the universe is accelerating (an amazing fact by itself) and from this we understand its future behavior.

Within Cosmology, I think the theory of inflation (Guth, 1980) deserves special mention. Its purpose is to explain what happened before what most people think of as The Big Bang, and it does so successfully, agreeing with highly nontrivial experimental tests (with data collected by WMAP and others). The fact that we can say something meaningful about what happened before the big bang, and then check it experimentally -- isn't it just mind blowing? What's fascinating is that inflation requires quantum mechanics and general relativity to work together to produce the effects we measure in the microwave background -- the very effects that are later crucial for the formation of galaxies. [1]

And yet, no one I talked to outside the physics community is even remotely aware of any of this. We are making great strides toward understanding where we came from -- the very origins of the universe -- and yet almost no one seems to notice. Wouldn't surprise me if there are similar examples in other fields.

[1] The basic picture is that the microscopic uncertainties of QM are amplified by GR to become cosmic-scale perturbations, which later collapse (due to gravity) to form galaxies.

</comment><comment><USER3> Listing Godel's incompleteness theorem is a bit unfair to mathematics. What about K-theory, Schemes, Motives, the Langland's programme, Agrawal-Kayal- Saxena on primes, Number Field Sieve, RSA and Elliptic Curve Crytography, all more recent. The list goes on, forever.... Proofs of Fermat's Last Theorem, the class number 1 conjecture, the Bieberbach conjecture, Catalan's conjecture, Serre's conjecture, Kepler conjecture, Poincare conjecture (Thurston's geometrization conjecture)....

<comment><AUTHOR> I can't comment on all of those, but the proof of Fermat's Last Theorem is not in the same category of importance as the examples I gave. It's an accomplishment certainly, but not a theory or discovery of GREAT importance to the world.

I do agree that public key cryptography is hugely important to the world, but it's technology rather than a discovery or a theory. (For the same reason, I didn't put the Web or Wikipedia on the list. It's very important, but it's technology.)

Are you saying that some of the others on your list are (a) recent, and (b) in the same magnitude of importance as the Big Bang and Godel's incompleteness theorem?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think groundbreaking theories just aren't as obvious anymore because many of the big general questions have been answered and with these answers, disciplines are constantly dividing and subdividing. Therefore, the great ideas of today don't seem as far reaching. Take evolution, for example - pioneered back when the study of "biology" was mostly just taxonomy and natural history; it now has applications in the vast array of modern biological sciences, including ecology, medicine, genetics, and even computing.

There are some great movements in science today that wouldn't have been possible in the past. Bioinformatics, working with huge amounts of genomic data, is one example - how about the Human Genome Project, which was completed in the last decade? Another is James Brown's "macroecology," the idea of using statistics and huge amounts of data to learn about general patterns in the world at enormous temporal and spatial scales (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macroecology>) and answer questions like "what effect would climate change have on the world?" And, depending on how old you are, the potential global application of immunology to eradicate infectious diseases such as smallpox and polio.

</comment><comment><USER6> _At first I was a detractor but it seems Lee Smolin agrees with you. From "The Trouble with Physics" (free preview part):_

The period of time I will address -- roughly since 1975 -- is the span of my own professional career as a theoretical physicist. It may also be the ... most frustrating period ... since Kepler and Galileo....

The story I will tell ... tragedy. To put it bluntly...we have failed. We inherited a science ... that had been progressing so fast for so long ... model for ... other kinds of science.... For more than two centuries, until the present period, our understanding of the laws of nature expanded rapidly. But today, despite our best efforts, what we know for certain about these laws is no more than what we knew back in the 1970s.

How unusual is it for three decades to pass without major progress in fundamental physics? Even if we look back more than two hundred years, to a time when science was the concern mostly of wealthy amateurs, it is unprecedented.

</comment><comment><USER7> Maybe you are adding up all of the great discoveries throughout all of history and comparing them to a 50 year period.

Another issue is that many of the "great" theories were considered to be crocks at the time. It took decades for them to be proven and/or accepted. Anything equivalent discovered now might not be proven for a hundred years.

For example theory of manmade global warming. Telomere theory of aging - <USER2> lead to everlasting life Genetic basis of disease How viruses are integrated into our genome

Things that are yet to be proven but there are competing theories. Some may turn out to be correct Origin of species Unified theory Extraterrestrial life

</comment><comment><USER8> I'd say it's because you consider the 'GREATNESS' of a discovery is correlated how well it answers a simple question that almost anyone can come up with. Evolution is a great answer to simple questions about life for anyone willing to accept it, but subatomic particle research just doesn't have immediate implications to most people.

Edit: Also, what are your thoughts on technology? While it isn't a theory or scientific discovery, personal computing has had a major impact on society in the last couple of decades.

<comment><AUTHOR> There's no question that personal computing, the Web, Wikipedia, advance in semiconductors, networking, etc. have been amazing in the last few decades. That's why my question is _not_ , "Where are the great technical developments of our lifetime?" :-).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I just read a book about astrophysics where he was lamenting just that.

They've been stuck by not being able to combine general relativity and quantum physics for decades now, entire careers. Pretty frustrating if you're in that field.

</comment><comment><USER10> I once read that the 20th century was the domain of physics, and (by all predictions) the 21st century will be the domain of biology and chemistry. Perhaps the breakthrough advances are in those fields?

<comment><AUTHOR> But can you name ANY amazing breakthrough in physics in the 20th century past about 1960? Or in biology and chemistry for that matter? The original question still stands.

<comment><USER11> For biology:

\- Various advancements in stem cell research. Eg: skin cells into stem cells. \- The creation of a living organism with a completely synthetically constructed genome. \- The sequencing of the human genome. \- Nearly all of neuroscience.

<comment><AUTHOR> Those example are all technology. Astounding technology, sure, but still technology. They're not great theories or discoveries. (And by "discovery" I mean a discovery of something that exists in nature -- like plate tectonics -- not discovering a way to make something.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Prospect Theory is a great one. <http://prospect- theory.behaviouralfinance.net/>

</comment><comment><USER12> The memristor is one to watch.

</comment><comment><USER13> Maybe we do and they just are less visible in part because there are so many -- ie the big ideas are not towering head and shoulders over everything else in the landscape, so we kind of don't notice. "Can't see the trees for the forest" type thing.

<comment><AUTHOR> So you're saying that the great theories and discoveries these days don't get the fame that, say, the Big Bang gets, because there are so many of them. If that's the case you should still be able to name a theory or discovery in _your_ area of expertise that you think qualifies as a great theory or discovery--of the same caliber as the Big Bang or evolution--even though it is not famous.

<comment><USER13> As I said above: I have cystic fibrosis and got myself well. I'm a former homemaker. I have no fame. I have no idea if this will lead to fame or not. (Personally, I generally assume that if I get fame, it will be for something else and then people will nag me for info on how I did it. Until then, no one gives a flying f __*.) But it's a pretty amazing accomplishment. And it's not a fluke: My oldest son has the same diagnosis and he is even healthier than I am. I have some theories regarding my condition and acting on those theories is what has gotten results. Two key concepts are that excess acidity and the salt issue are two very major factors in all that goes wrong down the line and that effectively addressing those prevents/reverses what are really secondary, tertiary or further down the order of hierarchy effects. So, yeah, I think big things are going on and not being noticed. I have reason to believe that some of what I have figured out can be used to good effect for figuring out how to effectively treat other genetic disorders and medical conditions. The small number of people who have taken an interest in what I'm up to tend to report astonishingly good results.

What I have accomplished was built on the info out there, so I think lots of amazing stuff is currently available. But clearly I'm biased.

Peace.</comment></comment></comment>


Why Is Microsoft So Scared of OpenOffice? - <AUTHOR> http://news.idg.no/cw/art.cfm?id=ACB4238E-1A64-6A71-CEB54AA1B1D9423E

<comment><AUTHOR> My bet? Microsoft fears Oracle will invest in better integration between OOo and Oracle applications. Remember that now OOo has Oracle's "seal of approval".

Oracle could invest some time improving OOo's spreadsheet and giving it means to easily import and/or manipulate real-time data coming from Oracle's backoffice applications.</comment>


Y Combinator made it into FontAwesome - <AUTHOR> http://fontawesome.io/icon/y-combinator/ <comment><USER2> That has been in Font Awesome since the beginning.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not sure - YC icon is in the section "66 New Icons in 4.4" (latest version)</comment></comment>


Steve Ballmer was right about open source - <AUTHOR> https://blog.tidelift.com/steve-ballmer-was-right-about-open-source <comment><USER2> I think the biggest thing open source does is allow you to choose the level of investment you have in it. As someone who works in IT, I don't generally just grab an open source project and deploy it at work: It becomes a burden on me, not the developer, when things aren't working right. I need things which are supported.

But that's a choice I make. I could choose to use an open source system, and we could hire a developer to make it do what we need rather than paying the company. Maybe I can just use a free open source solution for something if it's temporary or not critical and not a big deal if something happens.

Many open source products have commercial tiers and support offerings, and I can choose those if needbe, but I'm not forced to. Really, the main difference here is that I get to choose my risk with open source, whereas a closed source product will have a set cost.</comment>


Gizmodo asks readers to take photos of Zuckerberg for $20 - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/06/09/if-i-were-mark-zuckerberg-id-submit-500-photos-of-myself-to-gizmodo/

<comment><USER2> This is the same Gizmodo that banned stories on kickstarter projects because there's a possibility that it's not legit. Seems a little strange that their now willing to give people $20 for pics like paparazzi.</comment>


Can France Create Its Own MIT? - <AUTHOR> https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/06/28/france-considers-plan-create-university-mit <comment><USER2> What arrogance and ignorance.

France has its own MIT, it's called École Polytechnique. There's also INRIA and other institutions...

<comment><USER3> > _France has its own MIT, it 's called École Polytechnique_

Is EP's productivity (in terms of companies founded by, landmark inventions/discoveries made by or patents awarded to) comparable to MIT? I thought it was more geared towards producing future politicians.

<comment> da-bacon Per alumni, it has the same rate of Nobel prize winners as MIT [https://www.nature.com/news/where-nobel-winners-get-their- st...](https://www.nature.com/news/where-nobel-winners-get-their- start-1.20757)

<comment><USER4> This is a good measure: divide number of Nobel winners by total student population. By that standard, EP seems to be top ranked. The problem is that the last EP student who won the prize was enrolled in 1960s. Many other winners were all the wY back in 1800s. It seems that EP was one of the best institute before WW II but then something happened and things went downhill. This could be great case study.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_École_normale_supéri...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_École_normale_supérieure_people#Nobel_laureates)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What! The land that gave the world Fourier, Poincare, Galois, Laplace, Pascal, Lagrange, Cauchy, Descartes, Fermat, Hadamard, Borel ... they had their MIT a long time earlier.

<comment><USER6> Which is meaningless in the present. Just ask Greece how valuable to your present circumstances basking in the very, very distant past is.

Australia has none of that immense legacy, due to the age of their nation. And yet Australians are already richer than the French at the median, along with having a far higher GDP per capita. The impressive history of France doesn't matter very much in the scope of most practical matters related to the present.

<comment><USER7> > Which is meaningless in the present. Just ask Greece how valuable to your > present circumstances basking in the very, very distant past is.

Slightly off-topic, but for some reason I've run into a seemingly disproportionate (in terms of world population) number of good computer scientists who were born in Greece.

<comment><USER8> A Greek professor told me that when he started his PhD (in the US) his Greek advisor told him as a Greek in America his two options were to become a control theorist or open a diner.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> They are missing an important structural point: MIT isn't really a school, it's a huge government research lab with a small school attached (look at the budget for which education is about 14% of revenues and 16% of expenditures). Research is primary (whereas, as some other comments have noted, it has atrophied in the French Grandes Écoles). They need another INRIA in the mix -- though not INRIA itself; that excellent institution would not survive merging with these others.

FWIW I am an MIT graduate who has lived and worked in research in the USA and France

</comment><comment><USER10> France already has an excellent research system, and the phrase "create its own MIT" is ambiguous at best: This is mainly about branding to increase international visibility of the institutions.

</comment><comment><USER11> France has a problem with long lived institutions - they get filled with "union tenured" staff and new work suffers. I have heard that the French are well aware of this problem and when they establish an institution they set the budget and longevity for it. At the end of that time it is shut down and all the released people must find new jobs based on their merits. A long process to get rid of dead wood, which in the USA would be long gone.

</comment><comment><USER12> Actually MIT was modelled from the French "École Polytechnique". In a same way like the white house was a copy of "Château de Rastignac".

</comment><comment><USER13> Why isn't the ENS part of this? The best math and science students go there.

<comment><USER14> Guess Ecole Poly is good enough. Is ENS more like the Harvard/Oxford, and EP more like the MIT/Cambridge of France? This would be my layman reading of the situation, charitably not invoking politics.

<comment><USER15> EP and ENS are both excellent schools. I am a mathematician and mathematics is more traditionally associated with ENS than with EP, but I've met excellent mathematicians, at all level of career (from PhD student to full professor) from both schools.

My impression is that all the French Grandes Ecoles are trying to expand their range of activities and subjects, reducing the level of diversification.

<comment><USER16> Well I guess "more traditionally associated" is one way to put it, but... 11 out of France's 12 fields medal came from people who studied at ENS. The only other country to even have 11 or more fields medal is the USA at 13. They literally exude math competency.

<comment><USER17> Having been in the selection in grande ecoles - and having been in one of those myself - EP is definitely a school of engineers and ens a school of researchers/professors. All of our teachers were from ens. Not that there aren't researchers in so or my own grande ecole but I have seen people refuse to go to ep to attempt and the next year. But those schools really are top notch, each in their own way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It can't, it shouldn't and it definitely does not have to.

France is doing just fine in terms of research in many fields.

Those that would like France to produce an 'MIT' would also like Europe to produce the next Facebook and neither is going to happen.

But that doesn't mean things are bad, they're just different and no less valuable.

<comment><USER19> Out of curiosity, why is this true? Why does it seem like so many relevant tech companies are American, yet I see tons of talented European developers and conferences all the time? Are Euro nations just hostile to startups in a way the US isn't?

<comment><USER18> > Why does it seem like so many relevant tech companies are American

The ones that are relevant to _you_.

To me all but very few of the relevant tech companies are irrelevant, and the miracle of Silicon Valley has not been replicated inside the USA either. So the reason those companies are American is because SV is in the United States, it has little to do with America as a whole, if it did then Silicon Valley would not be an exception within the United States.

Euro nations as a rule are not hostile to start-ups in any way that is different from say Texas or Michigan.

Then, finally, there _are_ a large number of relevant EU tech start-ups. They are working from a slight disadvantage (need to market/sell immediately in a whole bunch of languages if they want to escape their home-territory) but plenty of them do well enough that they end up listed on stock-exchanges all over the planet.

That they are not relevant to you is another matter, but IT companies account for a huge percentage of EU employment and they're all doing stuff that they feel is relevant.

So it looks as if your argument mostly revolves around what you think is relevant and what isn't.

The only American company I can't seem to get around is Google, and they're a one-off even by US standards.

Apple, FB, MS, Twitter and so on can all be done without (at least: I could do without them).

On the hardware front that leaves Intel and AMD, neither of which could be classed as start-ups today any more than you could class Siemens or Sony as one.

<comment><USER19> You're right they don't seem relevant to me, but I can acknowledge some things are not relevant to me but are still important. Take Baidu for instance, I get I'll never likely use it, but that doesn't mean I don't acknowledge its importance. Looking at software vendors in the EU, there doesn't seem to be any companies that offer a service I would ever want. There are a few large ERP vendors, and some Anti-virus firms, and what?

Seriously, this isn't meant to be mean, I just don't know any of them. There seems to be an unlimited array of talented euro engineers on twitter talking about specialized type systems and exotic data models and theoretical comp sci and then a net nothing on the software front. Do they all just leave and work in SV?

This is one of those cases where I would love someone to come in and set me right. I'd much rather a world where there is a huge amount of cool things happening that I'm unaware of, rather than just MS, Apple, and Google sucking all the engineers from their countries to Silicon Valley.

<comment><USER18> TomTom TeamViewer Skype Adyen Takaway.com Zalando Hellofresh and many many more...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Honestly sounds too big.

Isn't a bit of the appeal of elite institutions that they put elite people in close proximity to each other? Adding a lot of padding* in between them would make it harder for them to find and get to know each other.

*I am fully aware that in this context I am considered padding

</comment><comment><USER21> I'll take any EP hacker over any MIT hacker. They are just better. Anyone heard of OCAML, compilers, netsec or security engineering? That's where they are better.

</comment><comment><USER22> I doubt it. Laboratories which teach and work in English have a huge advantage in modern academia because they are able to draw in talent from a far larger pool.

The majority of international academics working in France are from other Romance language countries. I presume the other Romance language countries have the same problem as France.

<comment><USER23> French is an extremely easy language to pick for someone who already speaks English.

In fact, English took from French over 30% of its vocabulary. French was the official language in England of the highly educated until mere centuries ago.

Most researchers in France already speak English.

The huge advantage of the US/UK is one: money, you could become rich and apply your ideas to real products(in a bigger market) much much more easily than in France.

The huge advantage of France: quality of life.

<comment><USER18> And _much_ less pressure to commercialize, there is a lot of fundamental and other research that is not immediately aimed at generating a cash-cow somewhere.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> CentraleSupelec is France's best attempt to match MIT (more than 1000 students each year). It was formed from the merger of Centrale Paris and Supelec schools.

And it's a unique school, not like this merger: it's a reunion of several schools that want to keep their independance. I think it'll be harder for them to act in coordination to achieve their goals.

</comment><comment><USER25> No 42 in the list, sad

<comment><USER26> 42 doesn't have anything close to those schools regarding general science curriculum. No serious maths, no chemistry or physics , no engineering. It's a very good school if you want to learn to code in 3 years, but let's not make it anything else...</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What is your experience selling private shares on a secondary market? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Positive, but every situation is unique.

You're welcome to send me an email if you've got specific questions.</comment>


Ask HN: What do you use when you need a "secure" VoIP/IM connection? - <AUTHOR>

With any semblence of privacy being eroded from Skype, I was wondering what tools/systems HN readers are using when they require a more secure connection for voice and IM. <comment><USER2> I use OTR[1], works with irssi and pidgin (maybe all libpurple clients?). For voice I recently saw a reference to Jitsi[2] here on HN. So I have no experience with it.

[1] <http://www.cypherpunks.ca/otr/>

[2] <https://jitsi.org/>

Addendum:

I went to give jitsi a try and was suprised to see that there are no signatures for any of the downloads. It does not seem that binary signatures are that important to the jitsi team. I took a peak inside the debian package and discovered that the repository signing key has no signatures on it. There is also an open bug to have signatures for the windows binary but that is also an open issue.

If you get bored add a +1 to:

<https://java.net/jira/browse/JITSI-1162>

<https://java.net/jira/browse/JITSI-1161>

<https://java.net/jira/browse/JITSI-1048>

<comment><USER3> I use OTR very frequently. It also works in Adium on OSX>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You may want to recalibrate your idea of what "any semblence of privacy" means. Meanwhile I recommend <http://www.whispersystems.org/>

<comment><AUTHOR> This thread is part of my re-calibration. There's always a trade-off between practicality and security, and I'm interested to see where it falls for everyone else.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to actually "talk to your customers"? - <AUTHOR> I find this thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14146850 very insightful and stressing some important common points in comments.
The most precious advice as I see is to "talk to your customers".
How do I practically turn this advice into action?
Say, I have:
- an office with a computer and internet
- a map of the town and its suburbs I located in
- search engine to my service
- some details about the domain I'd like to work for
- zero contacts
Now, how do I actually talk to my potential customers? I can knock at doors of every office I find online and with a broad smile say a pitch then attack them with my questions? I don't think it will work as I would like it to. More likely they will think I am trying to sell some bs and thus be quite skeptical and cold to me.
Should I try to approach bosses or common workers of companies?
Should I phone them, ask for an appointment, explain my goals and if they let me in, do the talk?
What is the right approach to talk to my potential customers?
Can you please share your experience and maybe books about how to do it properly?
Thanks! <comment><USER2> Cart is ahead of the horse. Getting out of the office to talk to potential customers has NOTHING to do with selling. It has to do with learning about the sector you THINK you want to be working in. In other words, you need to accept that your foundational knowledge is largely made up of information that made its way to you by going through your filter of preconceived notions and biases. My advice to my sales team (and to you) is to stop thinking about your needs (selling something, validating your product, etc.) and start thinking about discovering their needs. You do this by asking questions and listening.

People love to talk about themselves and their businesses. You will get a ton of positive response by picking up the phone (or sending emails) saying "I'm new to this sector and I've been learning everything I can online and through books and trade magazines. But I know I would learn more by talking to someone working in the field. Could I stop by Monday morning for 15 minutes and learn about your business. I'm interested in finding out how you came to even be in this business, what parts are enjoyable, and what parts are challenging. Thank you for your consideration."

<comment><USER3> What industry are you in that this is common, or even accepted? Nowhere I've worked would have answered yes to a site visit by a random salesperson.

<comment><USER4> Honestly, I agree with you.

Its true what the op says that there are people that naturally want to share and mentor what they do. Now that you can easily find them or that there are signs of it you can find as a stranger..

Im running a b2b business, and even though i have personal contacts in the area, im frequently stonewalled to even start a basic conversation, let alone a product sales one.

<comment><USER5> Are you leveraging social media to warm up the leads? Find and target them with ads and follow up with a phone call or visit. Works pretty well.

<comment><USER6> Interesting idea! Are people not creeped out by that?

<comment><USER5> They signed up for it by using the network. Try it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Here's a specific anecdote of how I did it in Palo Alto (after just arriving in the US from South Africa):

The first day I was in Palo Alto (and the US), I had absolutely no contacts and was severely jet lagged. I had just moved to the US to establish my startup ([https://journeyapps.com](https://journeyapps.com)) in the US, raise "Silicon Valley VC" and chase the dream ;) tl;dr - JourneyApps is a platform for businesses to quickly developer mobile apps for internal use.

I walked down University Avenue, and spotted Palo Alto bicycles. I walked in (very nervous) and asked one of the sales people if the manager is in. Jeff (the manager), was there and asked what I wanted. I explained I'd just moved here, and was working on a startup that eliminates paper forms.

He was kind enough to not kick me out, and (because it was closing time), spent some time talking to me about how they sell bicycles and which paper forms he uses. He also explained how much of a pain it is.

I kept delving into the details of his business, which he absolutely loves, so he was keen to keep talking. After forming a good idea of what his world looks like, I asked if he'd be keen to do an experiment with us. We'd make an app that does bicycle sales on a tablet, and bring it to him in a day or two. The experiment would be free, he just needs to tell us what works and what doesn't.

He was really keen, and gave me copies of the forms he uses. Overnight we built an app on our platform that acts like his paper forms. The next day we rolled out in his store, and waited for bicycle sales.

The app worked, and we learnt a heck of a lot about US business culture, even though it was just a "small family owned" bicycle store.

Eventually we raised the mythical Silicon Valley VC money and got our first Fortune 100 customers, but the process stayed remarkably similar:

1) Find someone who's passionate about their business

2) Talk to them with genuine interest and learn about their world

3) Be upfront and open about which problems you think you can help with, and which not

4) Over deliver.

<comment><USER8> Hi there,

I watched the Emerson video; very neat. Is JourneyApps something that I'd be able to utilize as a third party to create solutions for clients I've had previously and future opportunities?

Or, do you work one-on-one with all of your customers and develop only in- house?

<comment><USER7> It (used to be) accessible to any developer on the internet as a platform :-)

Unfortunately, it's shifted to internal use (Journey employees, and enterprise employees).

Also - Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I hear you. There's a lot of guidance on the importance of talking to customers, but a dearth of information on how to do it.

Fwiw, I've become mildly obsessed with this topic, and have written up a couple articles that may help:

* How to talk to customers: [http://customerdevlabs.com/2013/11/05/how-i-interview-custom...](http://customerdevlabs.com/2013/11/05/how-i-interview-customers/)

* Which customers should you talk to first: [http://customerdevlabs.com/2017/03/20/who-are-early-adopters...](http://customerdevlabs.com/2017/03/20/who-are-early-adopters/)

* How to ask for conversations: [http://customerdevlabs.com/2014/02/18/how-to-send-cold-email...](http://customerdevlabs.com/2014/02/18/how-to-send-cold-emails/)

<comment><USER10> I have read the first one of those links previously. I thought it was very insightful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It depends a lot on what you are selling.

If you go to a small retail business (say a cafe) when it is not the peak hour, you might find the owner working there. It is usually not hard to get them in a conversation, many of them will talk your ear off. (Sometimes this even works for a supermarket or a large chain store.)

On that front, people usually like to be heard so if you do a lot of listening that takes the pressure off you. Often a good sales call is 90% or more listening to the customer talk.

I've gotten good prospects through LinkedIn and simlar means and have had very good luck (much better than 80%) at sending a message or email and getting an appointment for a phone call.

If I have any challenge here it is that there are people out there who really like to talk and talk and you can easily wind up having an absurd number of calls over a long period of time and get no sales. However, almost always in B2B sales you will need to make several calls over a period of 2-3 months. Big companies lke IBM can tolerate a sales process that runs longer that, but you can't.

<comment><USER12> I think you have to be careful to separate those who will buy your product versus those who will talk about the industry.

<comment><USER13> You want both, just deal with them them differently.

Who does the talker know? Introductions and referrals are often worth some chatter.

<comment><USER11> Also the focus changes as your company grows.

Early on you are doing business development, which involves developing product-market fit and figuring out how you sell your product.

Later on you get into straight sales, where you have a playbook that you can give new salespeople that has a proven strategy for selling your offering. At this point you are interested in scaling and optimization, and qualifying customers (knowing if they are real buyers) is really critical.

If you are not a natural born salesperson it is more important to get comfortable with it than it is to carefully qualify people. Later on when you find talking to people is easy but you're frustrated about wasting time, you will reach this point where qualifying people will seem really urgent.

<comment><USER13> Truth

Well said and agreed

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> For me, when I was a tool for indie iOS devs

\- still at the idea stage, I began talking to people online on iOS dev forums - iphonedevsdk forum, and reddit.com/r/ios /r/iphone, etc

\- I asked my friends who I knew were devs. I live in Poland, and my target audience is mostly US, so their feedback was slightly limited, but still valuable, because I could talk to them in real life

\- as soon as possible I went to San Francisco, and went to any meetup I could find through my contacts, on Meetup.com, and Startup Digest

\- I try to follow news as closely as possible (e.g. there is iOS dev weekly newsletter), and look for opportunities to engage in the communication. Even without mentioning the name of my project (which is AppCodes.com -- a shameless plug here :D )

\- Sometimes I write to bloggers and people who write about my subjects about something I work on, to honestly gather their feedback, and of course to ask if they want to know more about my project. It's always personal.

After a few years of doing various projects, I noticed that it almost always takes around 6 months for the word to go out that I do things, and people start coming back to me by themselves ("are you still doing X?"). With time, finding connections is easier, but not faster - it always takes exactly 6 months :)

<comment><USER15> First read I was thinking- 'well, maybe that's what you were, but don't be so hard on yourself...' realized you must have omitted the word 'developing'.

As a former indie iOS dev, ( ie. a tool for Apple Computer Inc. ), my honest feedback is- if I was ever making enough on the App Store to afford a $15 monthly subscription, I wouldn't need the help; for the most part indie iOS developers don't make jack so our #1 consideration for any product is going to be "Is it free...?"

Of course if you already figured that out; but saw that people were thinking "Why the hell am I not making any money on the App Store, maybe I need; like; SEO?" and are likely to give it a try- even if they don't like it, even if it doesn't work, you still got $15 out of that customer which is 10x what they're making on each customer who downloads their $1.99 app; so- good on you.

<comment><USER16> It would probably only take a few months to work out if the tool was going to drive a return for you, that is $45. I doubt the kind of customer they would want would be one that wasn't prepared to put down $45.

I realize it is a different target market but often SEO/search marketing/email/retargeting solutions can cost thousands of dollars upfront, without any guarantee of a return.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> If you have no network, the first thing to do is build a network. You can do this by building something people sign up for, getting leads, by talking to your neighbors, by talking to organizations, by giving talks or by sitting out in the park with a sign that says "Talk To Me About JavaScript", but you can't build something people are going to use without knowing the people who are going to use it and the best way to find those people is by asking people you've already met.

<comment><USER5> Talk to me about Javascript. I love and will steal the hell out of it. Great comment too. Best in thread. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Well .... it really depends on what you are selling. You said service, but doing what? In what domain?

Ok, that wasn't helpful. So let me try to break it down, without knowing anything about what you are selling.

I will assume that your service is to solve some problem in a particular business domain. From that you can decide on who would have the problem you are solving and how critical it is for them. Hair on fire is good. Nicer typography on the menu - meh. Nevertheless, you can sketch your ideal customer. Potentially only a very small proportion of your town's business population is a possible prospect. Once you have identified the businesses, you could look at who in those businesses would be most motivated to do something about getting you to solve the problem(s) you have identified and are capable of solving.

Then you go an talk to the people you have identified. You listen more than you talk and refine your approach.

For a far more detailed approach you could read "Four Steps to Epiphany" by Steve Blank. Customer Development Method might be exactly what you need to help you maximise the productivity of your time when you are out of the office, talking with prospects.

If you provide some details about your business then some HNers might be able to give you specific advice.

Good Luck.

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm working on a consumer product. Here's what I do.

\- Include an invite for a quick 10-15 minute chat in the welcome email (more people than you would think actually take up the offer)

\- Ask them why they signed up (this is key to help you determine what problem people want you to solve)

\- Ask them their biggest frustrations about the solution so far

And just take it from there.

<comment><USER20> Give them a $5 Starbucks card at the end as a thank-you.

<comment><USER21> If you do this I recommend you don't mention the gift card until after the meeting.

I might meet to chat for 10 minutes but if you told me you'd give me a $5 (or even $50) gift card in exchange for my time, I probably wouldn't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> No contacts, no domain experience -> you need 5-10 years to build these. Contacts+Experience are also a longer way to say "business value".

You have two ways to build it. One is always coming from the outside, hoping for nice/stupid people to explain it to you, hoping to get shitty contracts to make some kind of money. This way will be the slave road.

The alternative is becoming an excited new employee at a customer or another provider for your customers and work there for 5-10 years. You have rights (like laws working in your favour), you have regular income, you are at the table where things happen and get some tips from people who work in that area for 10+ years, and hell, you may even save a few bucks that later can be used to found a company.

Yes, you'll be your bosses bitch, but only to some degree, because of laws. Customers will be much, much more cruel. If you can't bow to a boss, you certainly won't be able to handle customers yourself.

If you neither have rich parents nor business value, don't attempt to build your own business. People just say that because they are part of the economy that makes money from the sacrifices you take on your own, or at least have rich parents themselves and therefore don't even know that it can be a problem if one is behind rent payment and lacks $20k in funds.

<comment><USER23> I respectfully disagree.

I know two different entrepreneurs who set up internet businesses in domains completely unknown to them and simply walked into all the businesses they wanted to target and signed people up in the first weeks of operating.

Restaurants + B&Bs were the domains.

<comment><USER22> You forgot the affiliate link to the $200 course where they explain how they did it. ;-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> It depends on your market.

But if you try to build a company, I assume that you want to solve a problem.

If you solve a B2C problem: talk to friends affected by the problem, or launch a Meetup based on this problem. You'll get free feedbacks and people LOVE to talk about themselves.

If you solve a B2B problem: talk to friendly businesses affected by the problem, or go to events and conferences as a vendor with kakemonos talking about the problem you solve. If the problem you solve is really important, you'll get plenty of people coming to your stand to talk to you.

Once you'll have a few "leads", you will be able to refine the market segments that are the most affected by the problem you solve. THIS is really important: for B2C, you'll have to target this segment in your future ads, for B2B, you'll have to target this segment in leads generation.

Also:

\- "Should I try to approach bosses or common workers of companies?" => Talk to the guy affected by the problem you solve. It might be the CEO, or a manager, or the worker.

\- "Should I phone them, ask for an appointment, explain my goals and if they let me in, do the talk?" => Yes, phone is better than cold email. But be prepared, it's really harder than cold email.

\- "What is the right approach to talk to my potential customers?" => Beginner script: Hi, my name is X, I represent Y, we solve THE_PROBLEM_YOU_SOLVE. Are you affected by this problem? Could we talk about this in person at your office?

</comment><comment><USER25> Too early to try and sell them on anything. Call them up.

"Hello, this is cosmorocket, and I'd like to learn more about your industry. Can I stop by sometime and ask you some questions? Perhaps shadow you for a little while? I'll bring coffee and danish."

Just watch and listen. If you see them get frustrated by something, give them a moment then ask "So, what just happened?"

</comment><comment><USER26> From experience, it's much easier to recruit from a list of people who've already said that they'd be willing to talk to you than doing cold calls. Cold calls work, but expect a way lower response rate than if you find a way to pre-assess your customers.

For example, I've worked with clients where we would insert an NPS question at some strategic point in the digital parts of their service. Not at a point where it would be intrusive, but rather, for example, at the very end of completing a bank transfer. Make it very small: 1) The NPS 1-10 scale, 2) Field for free comments 3) Checkbox to the effect of "is it OK if we contact you for more questions?"

This serves the dual purpose of finding people who are willing to talk to you, as well as giving you an idea of what they think of your service at the current moment.

You can now contact the people who put less than 9 on the NPS scale to do two things: 1) find out what you can do to improve the service, and 2) take care of the complaints they might have and improve your relationship to the customer in question directly, potentially turning a negative impression into a promoter.

Obviously, if the product doesn't exist yet, you will have to find a different way to reach your potential customers rather than inserting it into the existing service.

</comment><comment><USER27> I have no suggestions where to find people to talk to (that really depends on your field).

But on the topic of how to talk to people, I really want to recommend the book by Dale Carnegie 'How to make friends and influence people'. Ignore the corny title and read it. This book has changed how I talk to people.

The biggest takeaway for me from that book was that people love to talk about themselves. Make the conversation about them; focus on their situation instead of on your product.

</comment><comment><USER21> Your problem with figuring out how to talk to customers is that you don't know who you are trying to talk to.

First you need to figure out who you want your customers to be.

If your answer is local coffee shop owners, then it's easy to make a list of customers and you can call them, email them, or visit them in person.

There are many places on the internet that give free advice on how to do cold calls, emails, visits, etc. Steli Efti writes about it a lot on the close.io blog. There are numerous questions asked and answered on quora.

Start at those two places and once you know more of the basics, you can start learning more specific skills.

But if you don't know who to talk to, then you are trying to solve two problems at the same time: who to talk to and how to talk to them.

Solve one problem first, then the other.

Once you know who to talk to, then you can start talking to them to see if they have the problem that you are trying to solve.

If the service or product you are selling doesn't solve their problem you are not going to be able to sell it to them.

It's much, much easier if you are trying to sell to a customer base (market) that you understand well or already know some problems they face.

Then you can talk to them and verify that you are correct and they have the problem that you think they have.

<comment><USER28> > But if you don't know who to talk to, then you are trying to solve two > problems at the same time: who to talk to and how to talk to them.

Great point

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Maybe I can answer the question "where to find people to talk to." I'm in consumer research; here's what's worked for me.

If you need b2b: LinkedIn, conference and trade show lobbies (you don't need a ticket to hang out in the lobby), email lists you can buy online. There are also companies that maintain lists of experts with every imaginable background you can speak to for an hourly fee; not cheap but worth it.

If you need consumers: survey panel companies will let you field a simple survey to people who match your criteria, who you can then recruit into a phone/Skype call. You can also recruit people yourself through well-targeted Facebook and Twitter ads. Craigslist works well; set up a short survey to prequalify people.

Money is a great accelerant. You will always find people who would talk to you for free, but offering to pay them for their time and expertise makes things go a lot faster. Plus, if you are on the shy side, money changes the dynamic. You are now not asking for a favor, but are offering to engage in a business transaction.

Six people is often all you need to start seeing some common themes.

<comment><USER30> >> Six people is often all you need to start seeing some common themes.

That's interesting. I am curious how you came up with that number. Getting six people to give you their opinions is much easier than doing any kind of extensive research.

<comment><USER29> From personal experience of doing a bunch of interviews and surveys over the years, after about 6, you'll start hearing patterns. If you are new to the subject you are researching, doing some reading and talking to about six people will get you to a point where you'll be able to evolve the questions you are capable of asking, or formulate hypotheses for testing.

"How To Measure Anything" has a great chapter on how talking to only a few people can reduce uncertainty with a pretty amazing accuracy, but I don't have a copy handy.

<comment><USER30> I hadn't heard about that book. Thanks for the recommendation.

<comment><USER29> Here's another place where I remember reading about 5 users, took me a couple of days to find it: [https://www.nngroup.com/articles/why-you-only-need-to- test-w...](https://www.nngroup.com/articles/why-you-only-need-to-test- with-5-users/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I'm no expert, but I've tried this so far and it worked a bit:

Wrote to a bunch of strangers. Made it a point to stress that I've nothing to sell (not yet at least) and just want to talk and pick brain. Promised not to take more than 15 mins and never did. Most people never replied, a handful of them did and I had lovely conversations with them. One even became a friend (I referred her to the place I work) and we still keep in touch, even though the original reason I talked to her didn't work out. When I thanked one person, she simply said "no need, just promise me you'd do the same if a stranger reaches out to you".

From my limited experience, it is more or less a numbers game, unless you are willing to spend enormous amount of time looking for that specific set of people who is the perfect fit to help you. There is no guarantee that they would though (why should they? Everyone is busy with whatever they are upto anyways)

<comment><USER32> > Wrote to a bunch of strangers. Made it a point to stress that I've nothing > to sell (not yet at least) and just want to talk and pick brain. Promised > not to take more than 15 mins and never did.

I did the same thing but in person. Went to an airport hall where tons of people are just bored waiting. Said clearly at the beginning of the discussion that I want feedback on my project and won't ask for money or personal info.

These were the hours where I learned the most from my potential customers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> You should consider your idea if you are building it for a group you literally know 0 people who are part of it.

The advice is good but often it means talk to your users. You can use it to validate your idea, but it is helpful to validate your product.

If you are building something be damn sure it's something people want this is hard if you don't know those people

</comment><comment><USER34> On an earlier idea I had, I wanted to do something with tech recruiters. They were always calling me or emailing me, so I thought it would be pretty easy to talk to them since they were coming to me. I build a script that I semi memorized based off the template in the Running Lean book. I adapted it for this industry. I also have a paper form where I could fill in the answers.

I would schedule a phone meeting or in person meeting, and I would run through the script. After the meeting I would quickly write down all the answers off the top of my head while it was still fresh.

I did this for about 30 interviews, and then I created an answer matrix in a spreadsheet. My goal was to try to see if there were any common problems among the majority of people I talked to. The answer ended up being a big NO, but I did not write a single line of code in this process. It did save me a ton of pain in the long run doing this up front.

</comment><comment><USER35> Wouldn't even talk to them. Try to find ways to observe in a passive manner instead.

If you are making software for restaurants, go sit at the restaurant during peak and off hours, and be keen about what's actually going on, down to the minute detail.

If the problem you are solving is in the kitchen, see if you can offer a hand doing dishes for free and observe at a detailed level what everyone else is doing and what their problems also are.

Asking questions in survey format could potentially work, though I doubt it. It could also be high barrier if you are basically a nobody trying to talk to restaurant owners.

The worst thing that can happen is people telling you they have a problem they don't actually have, and you create an imaginary problem to solve that nobody cares about.

<comment><USER36> This is similar to the 30x500 method. There are a lot of places where people are talking online. Make sure you have a grasp of that before you talk to someone face to face. It is far easier to discern patterns when you can look over many conversations quickly.

If you don't think there's a group of people online discussing the problem you are trying to solve, then you either haven't looked that hard, don't know the domain, or have a golden opportunity to build the community and have that be a source of leads and content. Depending on your demographic, Reddit, Facebook or forums are good places to look.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Highly recommend the Mom Test which is exactly about this.

[https://www.amazon.com/Mom-Test-customers-business- everyone/...](https://www.amazon.com/Mom-Test-customers-business- everyone/dp/1492180742)

<comment><USER38> +1 for the recommendation

Easily the best book on how to do non-biased interviews

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Stop thinking about selling your idea to your customers.

You're talking to them in order to understand the problem that you're trying to solve.

The best book on this that I've read is "The Mom Test", well worth the price

<comment><USER40> I can definitely second the book recommendation. To elaborate a bit, one of the core ideas of the book is to avoid leading your customers by telling them what you're planning to do (which they invariably respond to with "that's awesome!"), and rather get them to reveal their real problems. This allows you to make sure your product is aimed at the real problems.

Another great skill is to understand the "commerce" of various interactions and commitments. Getting a "that's great, send me a mail when you guys are finished" sounds wonderful, but is actually "leave me alone, I'm busy". How to gauge the potential client's level of interest, and to actually seal various levels of commitment from them was a real eye opener.

<comment><USER10> > To elaborate a bit, one of the core ideas of the book is to avoid leading > your customers by telling them what you're planning to do

Yep. Been there, got the t-shirt.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Read the book "The Mom Test" -> [http://momtestbook.com](http://momtestbook.com). Even if you just read the first chapter, it'll help you out a lot.

To properly talk to customers to identify if there is a need for your product/idea requires for you to not bias them by telling them what you are working on. You should be able to talk to your mom about your idea without her ever knowing that you have an idea for a product.

</comment><comment><USER42> Say a little more about what space you are in.

Let me assume that you have a consumer product -- an app, or a piece of hardware. There are things out there that do something vaguely similar, but you think yours is better.

Go to the comments sections of various chat boards that are discussing the current way of doing things. Make note of the complaints.

Ask the people there if they will chat with you for 5-10 minutes about a product idea.

Be polite.

</comment><comment><USER43> I will recommend the book "Wishcraft." It is not specifically about this, but has a lot of good general advice for just getting things done.

You might also find the UX book "Don't make me think" generally useful. I am mentioning it because it does talk about how to get effective feedback on your website. If you are doing an online thing, you may find it very pertinent.

</comment><comment><USER44> I sent 100s of LinkedIn emails saying 'Im a software entrepreneur interested in learning about the problems/challenges in your industry. Would you be open to chatting? I have nothing to sell and only want to learn.'

Then I'd call them up and chat.

At first I'd setup calls only with those who responded.

Then I began calling up people even if they did not respond.

Most people are happy to talk about problems.

</comment><comment><USER45> This is how I did it for my first failed startup which did not go beyond the survey phase

1\. Make a list of fb friends who would be interested, add them to a group, a secret one. 2\. Try to validate the idea 3\. use reddit to validate the idea 4\. using HN is tricky because you can't guarantee that the post will get attention.

</comment><comment><USER46> Take up Uber driving and use it as an opportunity to pitch your idea/service to riders: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14166730](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14166730)

</comment><comment><USER47> Is it talk with potential customers (market research) or talk with existing customers (customer service and support)? Seems like it should be the latter. If you have no customers, then consider a new product, right?

</comment><comment><USER48> Try not to look at your customers with as walking dollar signs :)

Think of what you can do to support what your customers need to do rather than think of how you can get your customers to fill your pocket :)

</comment><comment><USER49> I answer their phone calls and have a conversation. Seriously,. Don't over think this.

I see the zero customers part. I would update my content marketing game until someone called me.

</comment><comment><USER50> What if your customers are big companies? As in fortune 500? How do you talk to them? There will probably many different people with different opinions.

</comment><comment><USER51> > some details about the domain I'd like to work for

Improving here might be crucial.

</comment><comment><USER20> >> I don't think it will work as I would like it to.

Yes! That is _exactly_ the point of the advice.

Go out in the field and you will learn something - because it will NOT be what you expected!

I am excited for you! Good luck!</comment>


What Every Computer Scientist Should Know About Floating-Point Arithmetic - <AUTHOR> http://docs.sun.com/source/806-3568/ncg_goldberg.html

<comment><USER2> An old favorite:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1746797>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=687604>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=453396>

Related:

[http://searchyc.com/submissions/floating+point?page=1&so...](http://searchyc.com/submissions/floating+point?page=1&sort=by_date)</comment>


Pure Ruby gem implemention of a Prolog-like DSL for AI and logical programming - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/preston/ruby-prolog <comment><USER2> This is pretty cool. One thing I have thought about is using some kind of RPC mechanism to leverage an actual Prolog runtime instead of re-implementing it in the embedding language. So instead of embedding backtracking, memoization, constraint propagation, and other logic techniques in Ruby we just leverage a running Prolog process and send it the facts and definitions and let the existing runtime do all the necessary computation and then serialize the results and send them back to Ruby.

The reason for this is that Ruby is unlikely to be faster than an optimized implementation of Prolog like SWI-PL ([https://www.swi- prolog.org/](https://www.swi-prolog.org/)). Most Prolog implementations already feel like databases so it would be similar to interacting with a database but instead of SQL (MySQL, Postgres, etc.) we can use the full capabilities of a Prolog implementation.

Edit: Looks like the author thought of something similar about serializing the database and loading it into a Prolog runtime.

> Then you can do a quick copy/paste into an environment like Tau Prolog's > sandbox or SWISH and run some queries.</comment>


The Disturbing Consequences of Seeing Your Doppelgänger - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150821-the-dangerous-consequences-of-seeing-your-doppelganger <comment><USER2> This sounds similar to the much more common false awakening dreams: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_awakening](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_awakening)

I get these occasionally, sometimes with multiple nested dreams, and the sensation of waking is highly realistic. It can last a subjectively long time until some detail tips me off that it's not real (usually attempting to read and the text reading like Markov chain output). If I'm capable of generating all this highly believable imagery it seems only a minor change to also generate a model of my own body.

<comment><USER3> It's interesting how you sometimes can't tell if you are awake or not, when you are sleeping, but you can ALWAYS tell if you're awake when you're awake. Looks like some faculties are working robustly when you are awake which aren't when you are asleep.

That said, I've had dreams where characters in my dream knew things I didn't, and even made fun of me. When I woke up, I realized that they were actually quite interesting, fully developed characters with their own personalities and knowledge! And they would develop over several months of dreaming. Sometimes I also awoke with a solution to a problem I had been thinking about the night before.

So... interesting!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I had an interesting experience a few days ago: I was walking to my office, through a small cluster of other buildings in the same complex, and I ended up walking perpendicular to someone who I immediately recognized, based on body shape, face, hairstyle, dress, and shoes, as myself. Of course my rational bits knew it was just some other guy who looked a lot like me, but it was a close enough match that my recognition bits would intermittently "lock on" and tell me I was watching myself from 20 feet away. And that was disturbing as hell.

Anyway, now I know I have a doppelgänger working two buildings over, so I need to figure out what team he's on so I can crash his next office unwinder.

<comment><USER5> When I was in high school, my girlfriend texted me a photo of me kissing some girl (not her) who was sitting in a swing.

At first I thought "Woah who is taking secret pictures of me?!" but then I realized I didn't recognize the girl I was kissing in the photo.

So at that point I'm really confused -- there is a photo of me kissing a girl I don't know, in a park I've never been to. Photoshop? Is this a prank?

My girlfriend then quickly follows up with "Weird right? I met this couple at the park and he looks just like you from the side. From the front he has a bit of a wider face, though. And he's Italian."

Had she not told me that, I would have completely believed that I'd been photoshopped into a photo. I couldn't spot a single dissimilarity.

I wonder if any relationships have ended because someone's significant other saw what looked like them with another person.

<comment><USER6> Phenotype space is probably not continuous given genome structure. So it appears like you can vary features almost arbitrarily, as you see in the Oblivion video game, but in fact you see a lot of genetic collisions due to a much smaller search space combined with the birthday paradox.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Story time. When I was 4 or so, I fell asleep at my aunt's house on the couch. I recall being above my body, looking down. I then looked over to the table where the adults were, still looking down. I could look down upon the table and its contents, something I could not see normally (hey, I was 4 and small, I could not see over the edge of the thing). This is the first time I ever saw square pizza. From Dominoes. The experience of being out of body was not meaningful to me at the time, but, man, square pizza?! I remember thinking that was quite novel.

<comment><USER6> I've heard enough of these stories to have no doubt this is a real experience, but what could a scientific explanation of this possibly look like? I take coherence of worldview very seriously and will rewrite my entire ontology if necessary, but I'm having difficulties here. I don't want to accept the cognitive dissonance and say you're making it up or are fabricating the memory, or simply dismiss this comment altogether. On the other hand, it seems a very difficult hallucination to conjure.

<comment><USER8> This one has an easy explanation. The child was making noises while sleeping, perhaps having a bad dream, prompting an adult to pick him/her up. The child was exceptionally sleepy, groggy, slipping in and out of awareness. The adult walked back over to the other adults, and the pizza, while holding the child.

If you've ever seen how out of it a very tired child can be, you understand that's more than enough to explain the sense of out of body + seeing above the table. We're talking about a four year old after all, their comprehension of the awake/asleep line in that circumstance would be extremely low. Even for an adult, it can be easy to confuse whether you're still in a dream briefly upon waking.

<comment><USER9> There;s a pretty good chance this is the answer, but even if the child couldn't see the table from above but only reach and see things near the edge, if they could interact with objects on the table at all they'd still have some kind of mental model of the objects on the table and their positions and orientation. That could be enough to be able to generate an impression of seeing the table from above.

When my eldest was about 6 or 7 she woke us up because the was wandering around upstairs opening all the doors. I lead her to the toilet and when she'd finished took her to bed and tucked her in. The next morning she told me she'd had a weird dream that she'd been going around the house opening all the doors looking for something, but had no memory of me or going to the toilet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> François Brunelle did a photoseries called "I'm not a look-alike!" photographing unrelated people who _do_ look alike. Pretty neat.

[https://portrait.photogrist.com/francois- brunelle/](https://portrait.photogrist.com/francois-brunelle/) [http://blog.chasejarvis.com/blog/2013/02/me-myself-and-i- fra...](http://blog.chasejarvis.com/blog/2013/02/me-myself-and-i-francois- brunelle-and-his-doppelganger-project-find-your-look-alike/)

(His site is down otherwise I would link to the source.)

</comment><comment><USER11> All that happened a long time ago, but in 2001 I went to a event in the next bigger town. There were lots of people strolling around, suddenly a girl greeted me a little bit too enthusiastic. I didn't know her at all, but greeted her and started small talk with her.

She was obviously bugged and asked me if I didn't know her ? I declined, but she didn't give up. She thought she knew me from a party from a town about 15km away and had an affair with him on this party. She was very angry, that I didn't recognise her and didn't remember any thing. She even knew which school this guy went to (different school) and some things about his friends.

She didn't trust me that I wasn't this guy and was pretty angry that I didn't recognize her.

Never met this guy. Don't know if he was really so similar to me, but it was a really strange experience.

</comment><comment><USER12> Reminds me of the classic "Tulpa" creepypasta:

[http://creepypasta.wikia.com/wiki/Tulpa](http://creepypasta.wikia.com/wiki/Tulpa)

</comment><comment><USER13> Doing a sensory deprivation experiment once gave me an OOBE. It was pretty wild, didn't have enough time to start doing research though. One of the experiments I would run is have an assistant go into another room and write or draw something on a pad, then do your OOBE, go over to the room and read the pad, then come back into your body, wake up and tell them what they wrote (or reproduce it). That was a claim made by the Eckankar[1] people, back in the 70's, I wanted to test.

The interesting bit from this research is that it adds a bit of credence to the notion that you can at least perceive you are outside your body, given the right conditions. The question being then how you do this to yourself on demand without sticking an electrode into your head in order to do some research on it.

[1] [http://www.eckankar.org/whatis.html](http://www.eckankar.org/whatis.html)

<comment><USER14> >That was a claim made by the Eckankar[1] people, back in the 70's, I wanted to test.

I take it you were unable to reproduce any psychic claims! :)

If you could, it would be a trivial way to win $1M: [http://web.randi.org/the- million-dollar-challenge.html](http://web.randi.org/the-million-dollar- challenge.html) The fact that the James Randi challenge has existed (in one form or another) since 1964, and no psychic in over half a century has ever passed the challenge, well, that should speak volumes about psychic/paranormal/parapsychology claims.

<comment><USER6> To play devil's advocate, it could also indicate Randi is using a god of the gaps type play and psychics have given up knowing he won't part with the money.

<comment><USER15> Nope.

He works with the psychic to agree on a test of what the psychic claims to be able to do, with low enough probability that you can't pass by chance. (I believe the threshold is somewhere below 1/million.)

Doesn't matter what ability you think you have. A test can be set up and agreed to.

A number of psychics have wound up concluding that their abilities won't work under the influence of unbelievers. But nobody that I know of has complained that Randi was not willing to set up a fair test.

<comment><USER16> >> But nobody that I know of has complained that Randi was not willing to set up a fair test.

I remember reading about how people who claimed that Randi would not test them.

ref : 1. [http://dailygrail.com/features/the-myth-of-james-randis- mill...](http://dailygrail.com/features/the-myth-of-james-randis-million- dollar-challenge) 2\. [https://weilerpsiblog.wordpress.com/randis-million- dollar-ch...](https://weilerpsiblog.wordpress.com/randis-million-dollar- challenge/)

I guess its his test, his rules.. pity rational people mischarecterise it as Scientific.

In the words of Chris Carter, author of Parapsychology and the Skeptics:

If Randi were genuinely interested in testing unusual claims, then he would also not insist upon odds of at least one million to one against chance for the results. Anyone familiar with scientific studies will be aware that experimental results against chance of say, 800,000 to one would be considered extraordinary; but results this high would be, according to Randi, a "failure."

<comment><USER17> To be fair most people who claims to have psychic power also claim that, even if not perfect, have a statically significant success rate.

I mean if you really had a psychic power that worked 1 in 800,000 trials, a single life wouldn't be long enough to discover it. By comparison, we only live about 30,000 days. I would not hire a water diviner finding water with such low success rate.

<comment><USER16> I think you have it the wrong way around..

Anyway, the only way a tester can prove their point is by running the tests at their own expense and they need a fair number of them.. but Randi restricts them to just a few and set the rules on who, how its done and who witnesses it..

Which means even on successful tests, he and his skeptic friends will assume that they were tricked and then use fraud to mess with the results.. They are judge and jury, no witnesses. Randi is self-confessed fraudster and has been caught red handed as well.

This was an extract from a Randi Volunteer who saw the light :)

I realize that there is almost no interest in holding Randi and the MDC to the standards that they claim for themselves. I've always been in a ridiculed minority when I make these suggestions. It is clear that the Challenge is not about allowing people to demonstrate their claims, but rather about providing examples for our ridicule – partly for education, partly for group-bonding (my guesses). I am in the process of moving on from the idea of trying to persuade anyone to care to that of trying to get the JREF and Randi to be more upfront about this instead, in order to thwart criticism. I fully realize that this will be a futile effort as well. I also continue to tell people to quit smoking. (…)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This story reminds me a lot of the Dostoevsky novel "The Double". Does anyone know if Dostoevsky himself suffered an incident like this, or of any similar incidents at the time that he may have heard about?

<comment><USER19> He definitely used his own experiences with epilepsy and pre-epileptic visions when writing _The Idiot_ , but that was much later. I think _The Double_ had more purely literary antecedents. Doppelgängers were an established trope by then, which Dostoevsky got from the German romantics—people like E.T.A. Hoffmann, who specialized in stories with weird phenomena that _could_ have a natural explanation (e.g. the mentally ill hero's delusional imagination) but are uncanny and probably magical all the same.

 _The Double_ was only Dostoevsky's second novel but it was one of the best things he ever wrote. It's fabulous! And short.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I've seen pictures of a guy that was once a college student in our city. Though I never met him, my sister walked up to him and started a conversation - convinced it was me. When his voice didn't match she still thought it was me trying to prank me. Finally she called me at work and heard my voice while he was talking to someone else. I wish I'd have bumped into him while he lived here.

</comment><comment><USER21> I don't view the "electrode stimulation and see what happens and then believe it's probably the same as patients experiences" as something scientific.

Given that we don't exactly know how the brain works, what if out of body experiences are real and the scientific explanation just tries to fit it in the general accepted world view as a brain bug just because it's too strange?

<comment><USER22> Nobody's disputing that OOB experiences are "real". What's at issue is the mechanism(s) by which they occur. The hypothesis in the article is that it's a psychological effect that can be exacerbated by brain injury. And the evidence outlined, such as experiments that can reliably produce equivalent effects, and similar brain lesions accompanying the most extreme examples provides some, although not overwhelming, evidence for the hypothesis.

If you're suggesting that people's perceptions and consciousness are actually physically separating from their body, well then that's just another hypothesis. One that needs supporting evidence and a proposed mechanism before it can be taken seriously. That is how science works. Simply saying "this phenomenon is strange" doesn't change anything. It doesn't make it immune to scientific inquiry, and it doesn't lower the standard of proof required of explanations. Science has successfully explained many phenomenon far weirder than OOB experiences.

<comment><USER23> >> One that needs supporting evidence and a proposed mechanism before it can be taken seriously.

IMHO it only needs supporting evidence - good solid evidence. A proposed mechanism is nice but is it really necessary? Do they really know how aspirin works? If so, did they prior to widespread use? Does anyone have a mechanism for quantum physics? Did Kepler have a mechanism for planetary motion?

I think a lot of science is actually people looking for the mechanism to explain accepted phenomena.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The more we learn about the brain the more amazing/frightening it becomes. What if this type of experience can be triggered on purpose via drugs or other mechanisms. It would make a scary as hell weapon.

</comment><comment><USER25> Why is there so much bbc content today? The episode of the man jumping out the window is terrifying though.

<comment><USER26> Probably submitters are inspired by Oliver Sacks' death.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Will these insights induce the next paradigm shift in the science of torture? Simply hook the victim to a brain stimulator and alter his perception of reality. Can be administered by the press of a button and is even cleaner than water-boarding.

</comment><comment><USER28> So how do you actually create doppelgänger on your own?</comment>


Could Iran be a software growth market? - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/adrianbridgwater/2015/11/09/could-iran-be-a-software-growth-market/ <comment><USER2> It looks like a promotional piece for Taskulu rather than an in depth analysis of what the title suggest!

<comment><USER3> It's not a promotion as much as an example and an interview on the subject.

Taskulu is established in Iran and has gone through some harsh times while Iran was under all sorts of sanctions.

You can't talk about Iran's tech atmosphere without talking about one of it's most successful startups.

<comment><USER2> Being someone familiare with the matter both inside and outside of Iran (and understanding the harshness of the situation as you mentioned), its is not easy to justify Taskulu as one of the most successful startups unless you expand the scope of "most successful" to 50! Also, as general rules of journalism dictate, having only one perspective (and here only one company to be more specific!) to talk about is not an in depth analysis of the subject as indicated in my first comment. I would rather see this story with a less deceiving title to promote a good Iranian startup like Taskulu.</comment></comment></comment>


Financing your free software with Google AdSense - <AUTHOR> http://www.invece.org/article/financing.html <comment><USER2> Don't do it! Please!

I'm a heavy consumer of AdSense (i.e. I'm the guy who actually pays for these clicks) and I also sell software. I happily put ads for my software on the pages of free competitors and similar applications (as well as many, many other pages on the Internet). They convert like nobody's business, unsurprisingly, because if you're staring at a page for Software That Does X you're probably in the market for Software That Does X.

I don't do this out of a sense of charity -- ooh look at me I can use Google to give this chap some programmer welfare! I'm paying Programmer X $2 a sale to make $25 a sale. It strikes me that if I were Programmer X I'd rather have the $25, right? That is why I actually, you know, sell stuff.

Moreover, since I know that I have Google set to buy every stitch of advertising inventory I can get on this site and I know how many impressions I get from him, I can guesstimate his monthly income and CPM to within a fairly decent range. Its probably close to a $3 CPM. He is the free competitor to me, bounces above or below me in the search results, and I make twenty times that on a CPM basis and quite a bit more on an absolute basis even when figuring in estimates of his higher traffic.

More broadly, if you're doing this on OSS software (as opposed to free-as-in- beer software), you need to come to terms with the fact that OSS enthusiasts are about the worst possible market for most advertising. Half of them run Firefox with AdBlock installed. The other half just never click on ads. And when they do click on ads, it is not to buy stuff. Websites which have visitors who tend to buy stuff get better click prices than the ones that send lookie-loos, for obvious reasons.

 _Losing your focus:_

If you're going to do well with AdSense you have to optimize your site for it. You've got better things to do with your time, both in terms of "earns me money" and "accomplishes any sort of value for my users aside from shunting them to the competitor actually prepared to pay money". You also might have to spend time manually disallowing ads, if for example your paid competitor starts buying your visitors for $2 a sale.

True story: I sent a courtesy offer to one of my free competitors telling him I'd pay him $X for him to replace the adsense with just a static ad pointing to me, where $X was twice my best estimate as to what he was making a month. He asked how I picked the number and I told him "Oh, yeah, I place about 1/4 of the ads on your site and am getting it for an absolute song so I really want the other 3/4s too".

He promptly banned my ads (his site, his call -- I bear him no ill will for that decision).

My armchair psychoanalysis is that he didn't want other folks profiting more from his work that he did, and he was in fact willing to take less money just to make sure that was the case.

There's a simple solution to that: _charge money for value_.

<comment><USER3> Ok ok...but for me, as a website owner, the whole point of placing Adsense is, that I do not worry about conversion rates - You and Google does.

I think the original advice is good - free software developer can monetize his traffic a little with one-time additional work. It's not his concern that those ads don't convert that well.

<comment><USER2> >> I do not worry about conversion rates >>

You are not correct. Advertisers don't pay for traffic that doesn't convert for long -- if they were made to, they'd get POed at Google. Accordingly, if your traffic does not convert, you will be given "smart pricing" -- essentially, ads placed on your site will be automatically discounted. Heavily. This will result in CPMs (cost per thousand pageviews) so low they will be measured in cents.

[http://adsense.blogspot.com/2005/10/facts-about-smart- pricin...](http://adsense.blogspot.com/2005/10/facts-about-smart-pricing.html)

The submission article suggests that $10 to $150 is reasonable for a site with 100 pageviews a day (i.e. 3k per month, implying a CPM of $3.33 to $50). If a 3k per month site gets smart priced, its monthly earnings will drop to between about a buck and two bucks (or less). Since Google does not issue checks for less than $100, you will be lucky if you see a check in the next five years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Great article. This guy wrote more helpful stuff about ads in the name of free software than many ad "experts" do with no other pretext.

</comment><comment><USER5> How does this advice compare to free online software? Does Google Adsense make sense for free online software?

</comment><comment><USER6> Very through article.

Defiantly something people should look into.</comment>


WebGL Equation Plot - <AUTHOR> http://vicapow.github.io/equation-plot-webgl/#cos(x%20*%2010)%20*%20sin(y%20*%2010)%20%2F%2010%20%2B%200.5

<comment><USER2> This reminds me my biggest hobby project when in high school; I was so fascinated with 3D plots that I spent I don't know how much time to create a compiler from math formulas to to machine code so that I could plot this kind of things on my Amiga (without a math coprocessor). What amazes me the most is not that you can now animate that in real time in an interpreted language in a browser, but how easy is to learn all these things through the internet, instead of having to find a book in the bookstore and hope that it could have what you needed...

</comment><comment><USER3> Cool! I made half a sphere with 0.5+sqrt(0.2-((x-0.5)^2+(y-0.5)^2)). If there was a way to do a mirroring on the xy plane (as in a +/\- z value) it could be a full one.

<comment><USER4> I managed to modify yours to make a full sphere with a bad hack: [http://vicapow.github.io/equation-plot- webgl/index.html#0.5%...](http://vicapow.github.io/equation-plot- webgl/index.html#0.5%2Bsqrt\(0.2-\(\(x-0.5\)%5E2%2B\(y-0.5\)%5E2\)\)%20*%20\(round\(random\(\)\)%20*%202%20-%201\)%20)

There's probably a better way to choose which points go above and below than random(), but it works.

Edit: Got it to work non-randomly. Adjacent dots alternate above and below: [http://vicapow.github.io/equation-plot- webgl/index.html#0.5%...](http://vicapow.github.io/equation-plot- webgl/index.html#0.5%2Bsqrt\(0.2-\(\(x-0.5\)%5E2%2B\(y-0.5\)%5E2\)\)%20*%20\(\(0%20%3D%3D%20\(\(x%20*%2040\)%20%25%202\)\)*%202%20-%201\)%20%20*%20\(\(0%20%3D%3D%20\(\(y%20*%2040\)%20%25%202\)\)*%202%20-%201\)%20%20)

<comment><USER5> It seems the result is a complex number. Fiddled around with it a bit until I got lucky and got the plane to disappear.

[http://vicapow.github.io/equation-plot- webgl/index.html#0.48...](http://vicapow.github.io/equation-plot- webgl/index.html#0.48-re\(\(sqrt\(0.15-\(\(x-0.5\)%5E2%2B\(y-0.5\)%5E2\)\)*i*100%20%2B%20\(sqrt\(0.15-\(\(x-0.5\)%5E2%2B\(y-0.5\)%5E2\)\)%20*%20\(round\(random\(\)\)%20*%202%20-%201\)\)\)\)))

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> [http://vicapow.github.io/equation-plot- webgl/#number(%220011...](http://vicapow.github.io/equation-plot- webgl/#number\(%22001111100111100011110011110010000000011000111000111001001110011100110011111111000010000110011100110011001110011111111001000100100111110010000011110000001111001111100100000000010011001110011111111001111100100111110010011100110011111111001111100100111110010011110010000000011111111111111111111111111111111111111111100000011100000001100111110010000000011001111001001111100100011100010011111111001111111001111100100001000010011111111100000011001111100100100010010000001111111111001001111100100111110010011111111001111001001111100100111110010011111111100000011100000001100111110010000000011111111111111111111111111111111111111111000000001001111100100100111100110000001111001111001111100100100011100100111100111001111001111100100100001100100111111111001111000000000100100100100100111000111001111001111100100100110000100111100111001111001111100100100111000100111100111001111001111100100100111100110000001111111111111111111111111111111111111111111000000001110000000011100111111111111111001111100110011111001100111111111111111001111100110011111001100111111111111111000000001110000000011100111111111111111001111111110011111111100111111111111111001111111110011111111100111111111111111001111111110011111111100000000111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111100111111001111000111100111100100000000100110011001110010011100011100111100111100110011001100111001100001100111100111100110011001001111100100100100111100111100110011001000000000100110000111100111100110011001001111100100111000111100111110001100011001111100100111100111100111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111%22\(floor\(x*39\)%2Bfloor\(y*40\)*39%2B1\)\)*10%2B0.2)

</comment><comment><USER6> If anyone is interested in a full-featured library for this sort of thing, see MathBox.js

[https://github.com/unconed/MathBox.js](https://github.com/unconed/MathBox.js)

</comment><comment><USER7> for comparison, here's a version in SVG: [http://vicapow.github.io/dz/example/equation- plot.html](http://vicapow.github.io/dz/example/equation-plot.html)

<comment><USER8> Weird question, but, did you possibly, by chance, develop/debug this in part in a café in Berkeley on Saturday with a copy of Think Bayes on the table? 'Cause I may have been sitting at the next table if so.

<comment><USER7> omg! yeah, i was. small world. do you go to Berkeley?

<comment><USER8> Freakish--I don't go to Berkeley, hadn't been to that cafe before! Anyway, woot, very cool hack! (And cool enough for the glance at it to stick in one's memory for a few days, apparently.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Half-cone and triangle.

      http://vicapow.github.io/equation-plot-webgl/#sqrt(-(x*x)%2B(x*y))

<comment><USER10> This produces a nice flared tube or "neck"

[http://vicapow.github.io/equation-plot- webgl/#0.1*cos%286.28...](http://vicapow.github.io/equation-plot- webgl/#0.1*cos%286.28*x%29*tan%283.14*y%29)

0.1 _cos(6.28_ x) _tan(3.14_ y)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm getting "Uncaught TypeError: Cannot call method 'getExtension' of null" in Chrome 32.0.1700.55 beta - anyone know what that's about? My chrome://flags/ are all set to default.

</comment><comment><USER12> This is really nice, already sent in a pull request! I've been meaning to learn about WebGL for a while, I think I'll give it a try this weekend.</comment>


Ask HN: How to feel work not like work? - <AUTHOR> Front End Dev:- React Native 1.5 yr exp Working in startup,worked in service based.
Feeling stuck, i do like programming and want to be in developer zone and building things,but working and developing as per requirements and as per orders for others just doesn't feel right for me, feels like endless loops where i am just doing things which needs to be done within particular time and deliver and not taking time,enjoying,learning and doesn't feel like it is something that i have to do, but just complete tasks There is no feeling of connection to the idea, no control, thats what is missing for me
Do you guys facing any of this?How do you go about it and any advice,suggestion for me?
Thanks <comment><USER2> I had the same problem and took up a past time learning about complexity theory. Eventually it landed me working in a research programming role at a university (because student's didn't bother applying, they were chasing highly paid internships) and then my work was no longer work it was research, even if all I was doing was designing a dashboard for post-doc's to look at data at first. If this doesn't interest you then look on Angel List for some startup you can be interested in instead of where you currently are or better yet teach what you know, make some youtube videos.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for you response.I might consider taking break and doing something that i want to work on my ideas maybe small projects like indie projects, because working again for some startup which feels like interesting and exciting from outside is going to again come down to feel like work that needs to be done as per requirements on others ideas and not something that i want to do, though problem solving is i like, but still i feel it is going to be the same way like escaping from one cage to going to another :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Yeah, look, it's called purpose, not a "zone".

A book recommendation: "If Life Is a Game, How Come I'm Not Having Fun?: A Guide to Life's Challenges", Paul Brenner. Another one: "Man's Search for Meaning", Viktor Frankl. Regarding the "zone": everything written by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey Thanks for your response. Will definitely check out and thanks for recommendation, checked your profile as you mentioned can mail you there is no mail-id,Can you give if i might need just in case for queries or for questions?

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure you're referring to me, because I both didn't refer you back to my profile for anything, nor I miss the email address there ;)

You're welcome. But I have something I'd like to ask you in return. Think about it - what's the point of gathering people's contact details if there's no prof that what they can offer even in terms of an advice is of any meaningful value? So, first read the books I've mentioned, or at least those you find interesting from that pool, then you can make your decision about how persistent you're ready to be in order to get to someone based on the real value that person can deliver. People are busy. Almost all of them. And a chance that a reasonable person is going to have more time than a regular Joe, who'd be thrilled to misguide you with his retarded ideas, is, well, not very reasonable. I'm sure you get it. Moreover, it's perfectly logical.

Regarding building your own healthy life philosophy your own work is crucial. Only rarely someone can point you toward a reasonable direction, which will mostly come down to a book recommendation. A back-an-forth Q-and-A ping pong game via email or anything else has no chance to work. I'd like life to be that simple, though! One needs to think for oneself, and there's no way to pass understanding from one person to another. Again, I wish it could be possible.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes thanks,i think i needed that kind of rough answer to stop validating myself on someone else's opinion and understand my inner-self better to improve myself.

I understand your point very well,i have started journalling to understand things better,the reason i asked because i find this community very helpful and they really are and regarding the email i guess it doesn't gets visible unless you explicitly add in about section and not just in email section of your profile,sorry for the trouble and its ok..

Anyway thanks for getting back :)

<comment><USER3> If you really can distinguish a BS advice from a brilliant one, you're almost there. I consider what you do very important. There's no way one can do anything of substantial value in life, whether performed on oneself or others, without understanding oneself first (what is reality and what's it mean to be human, and what are logical extensions of these answers? -- are the oldest questions in philosophy; they're also considered the obvious common ground in terms of what people consider interesting among intelligent individuals). Making notes, creating written feedback loops with yourself, is probably the best way to get to bottom of what's really going on with almost everything. I know it changed my life. Decades passed by and I only do more of that. I knew you get it :-) I'm so happy. The world is going to have one more reasonable individual. So keep going!

Beware of HN and similar communities, though. Although often one can meet exceptional people here, the HN also suffers from usual: social-media-ish mobs, cargo cults, herd thinking. I wouldn't be for instance particularly eager to take life advises from techies. A lot of them are let's say not very much grounded in reality ;) But every person who can reasonably answer the previously mentioned "what is reality and what's it mean to be human, and what are logical extensions of these answers?" is truly a good candidate for asking. One must have a framework in which one interprets reality. Gödel's incompleteness theorems are all about that (that might be the most important conclusion in the philosophy of science ever made). Our problems, even if just trivial ones, are definitely a part of reality, therefore one must know reality top to bottom in order to efficiently maneuver in it. The only other wisdom one can stumble upon is how to efficiently deal with this or that (I mean technical, not necessarily technological, problems). I must say that HN is great for that.

Also, consider learning about biases typical for human beings. Among them the most crucial one might be the survivorship bias. Knowing what kind of cognitive errors people make tremendously helps in our own reasoning, especially in keeping oneself vigilant in regard to that kind of stuff. It might save you life one day.

PS: Regarding "sorry for the trouble" \- to me our discussion is far from that. It's a pleasure to help others, especially if that person is going to really apply the advice. It's like having 1000 children all over the world. Good ones. Also, thanks for pointing that email visibility issue. Now I get it. I was pretty sure the email address is available for registered user, which isn't the case. Howk!

PS2: Surely, we can only validate ourselves using logic. Then we can take other people's words and put them thru the filter of logic. If something is going to remain intact during that process, it's worth to think about it. Usually it isn't going to be the case. There's a well known phenomena in psychology called "crabs in the barrel" problem. Take a look on that. Let's not be like that kind of individuals, also let's not listen to what they say. Otherwise we'd be left with no time at our hands to do the real work, only confusion which crabs are eager to share with others to make themselves feel better.

PS3: From my experience and to the best of my knowledge, there's only one kind of successful individual this planet can deliver. A self-directed, self- managing, hungry for truth one. Again, you seem to be on a good way toward that.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the response again :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I feel exactly the same way!

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, thanks for you reply How are you coping with it, how you go about it?

<comment><USER4> I just try to do one day at a time. I put in my required 8 hours and hate my life for every minute of it. I look forward to signing off for the day and dream, unrealistically, of early retirement.</comment></comment></comment>