@Exuma, this comment is ridiculously resonant with me, the part about 'learning transaction isolation for the 50th time' is very on point too.
Everything you said I pretty much feel the same way. I've accepted it as part of how I work, and the advantages are many (and valued by many) - but yes, interacting with deep experts usually ends with feeling a bit like a fraud. I feel like I maybe was an expert at whatever the thing is at some point in time, momentarily, but then I just shed the information as soon as the next thing needs to be done, and it just ends up as part of the background inference pattern matcher.
Certain things where I'm really forced to learn something deeply do stick, but I find my ways of thinking about that domain to be very different to most 'true' experts, and rely heavily on visual models and analogies with other concepts.
haha yes! What mentioned about analogies... I must use like 50 analogies a day. I also noticed I can use phrases like "always" and "never" and I can say them without a second of hesitation, because they are merely indications of magnitude in a predictive sense, not a literal interpretation. But to someone who must understand information deeply, they never use phrases like that because they operate based on observed knowledge and sort of "hypothesis testing" like a scientist.
It's fun to realize other people are out there who can relate. Thanks for your comment
I like how you've expressed this insight, and it is so true.
Becoming great at a particular technology stack means modelling it in great detail in your head, so you can move through it without external assistance. But that leaves an arena without discovery, where you just reinforce the same synapses, leading to rigidity and an absence of awe.
ADHD is quite badly named imo. It's not so much a deficit of attention but a disregulation. If you are interested in something then you can invoke an almost obsessive fixation on the task (hyperfocus I believe some people call it) which lends itself well to coding in certain conditions.
> If you could look for something like multiple accounts tweeting the same thing within 1 minute, in the past couple weeks, you could turn up some candidates for test accounts
I think this would turn up alot more results than you bargained for.
I think it could be easy enough to pare down programmatically. You'd have to search by adding things like:
* 5+ accounts tweeting exactly the same message
* Not using the mobile app
* Fewer than 10 followers
* Fewer than 10 following
* Liked fewer than 10 tweets
* Retweeted fewer than 10 tweets
* Accounts created within 24 hours of each other
* Account creation metadata is similar
* Account less than 1 month old
You could probably come up with more criteria to help narrow the scope and play with the numbers. I would bet that you probably come up with hundreds to low thousands of accounts fitting those criteria at most. You could spend an hour scrolling through them looking for something suspicious - and I don't think it would take too long to put this kind of thing together if you had database access.
One problem there is Wikipedia culture. Suppose you're a bona-fide content-area expert, fully capable of accurately conveying your knowledge in clear language that most people can understand. You might want to concentrate on creating the article.
Instead ... if the topic is not obscure and unpopular ... odds are high that you'll wind up jousting with dozens of inspired but unqualified challengers. The first time two of the paragraphs you've spent hours crafting disappear on someone's whim, you're probably going to stay gone.
"Anyone can edit"? In many cases, no. Take the 'Start-class' article 'performing arts', for example: how many people are truly qualified to summarize that enormous topic?
A-quality doesn't emerge from a melange of bits and pieces.
I would add - going for a walk and having a shower are both excellent circuit breakers.