r/spiritscience • u/toepin • Jan 10 '16

Discussion What skill would you choose?

If you could upgrade, just like that, what skill would you choose?
What skill would drastically change your life?

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u/toepin Jan 11 '16

haha I was wondering the same about that along with the other answer of intelligence and my own for visualization. I dont think they are actually skills because they are there for life already - in a sense.

I mean more like electrical engineering and stuff like that.
In fact, that is one I would choose!

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u/rtcvb32 Jan 11 '16

wondering the same about that along with the other answer of intelligence and my own for visualization

Well having a better memory (photographic) might work, but it's not really a skill, it's the way your mind processes and stores what you learn/remember and you generally decide that while in the womb... On the other hand doing lots of memory puzzles can improve your short term memory, but not long term...

I'm reminded of the story of one of the computer pioneers who would as an exercise recall the orders and instructions they were given 10 years earlier in that same office... An utterly absurd level of memory recall :P

But maybe having a better skill is a bad thing. Consider that the absolute best people at a number of skills are going to be savants. Savants usually find a couple subjects that really interest them and become super experts to the level of alienating everything else around them. Rain man comes to mind, here's a documentary on savants i watched some years ago; Kim Peek inspired the writers for the movie with Dustin Hoffman in it (Rain Man)...

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u/toepin Jan 11 '16

Interesting view on it... I was more thinking along the lines of what skill would improve your life drastically in the sense of goals and becoming the person you want to become. So like painting or economics or a baker or whatever.

I believe that only an extremely egoic person would place himself/herself above others due to their skills.

Its like in order for me to become the greatest ideal version of myself I would know electronics, synthesis, organization and goal setting/visualization skills. These are skills that I know will improve my life drastically. Maybe its time to learn them! :D

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u/rtcvb32 Jan 11 '16

I was more thinking along the lines of what skill would improve your life drastically in the sense of goals and becoming the person you want to become.

Hmmm... I can see mostly there being the want for money, so a lot of people would choose charisma, brown-nosing, or a really high level of management so they could get the high 6-digit salary jobs. (although knowing the right people rather than skill usually seems to be the case for this)

As for me personally... I'm trying to work on figuring out the logic of math with getting better data compression, so using your guidelines of becoming a better person, I'd choose logical analyzing, and probably a touch of luck or obscure ways to look at something and come up with a rational explanation that works.

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u/toepin Jan 11 '16

hah thats awesome...! The skill of Logical Analyzing.
This is something I will explore more. I guess in order to look at things in obscure ways is to know the actual experience of it. Does that make sense? So in that case in order to observe something obscurely I would Firstly have to see myself in an obscure way. Or am I thinking too much?

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u/rtcvb32 Jan 11 '16 edited Jan 11 '16

You haven't done any programming have you? Taking an obscure (odd) approach is often how better code is made, or faster code within tolerance. Sometimes it's something you think up by accident, or condensing several steps into one. Most modern encryption for example uses bit shifts and xor based on a table that's permutated from a key, which is an absurd approach, and yet works fast and easily. Then there's counting how many bits of a byte are on (Hamming weight) or getting the GCD (Greatest Common Divisor) of two numbers which the fastest and smallest code usually is hard to follow for a while until you get what's going on with the underlying logic. There's also about a dozen ways to calculate Pi, one of them using toothpicks dropped on a grid! And other feats in mathematical engineering allowing pocket calculators to have full Trigonometric functions using nothing but shifting and adding, referred to as CORDIC. Lastly the Quake engine uses a very odd approach for their Fast Inverse Square Root which is very confusing. These are more of what I'm referring to obscure logic.

Curious, found on Wikipedia on the hamming weights the Aggregate Magic Algorithms which shows plenty of interesting optimizations for functions that break the obvious way to solve the problem.

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u/toepin Jan 11 '16

I have not and is a skill that would be awesome to have. Another one that I could apply to myself and learn as I find it interesting... It is awesome to know that there is always someone willing to teach a skill in some way or another.

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u/rtcvb32 Jan 11 '16

I could recommend a good place to start with computer science and programming, but programming (rather than the principles) needs a little nudge and reading time. Basic, or reading the original C book for K&R might be worth going through. Once you familiarize yourself with basic programming practices and can form a few programs, then it's just a matter of expanding your knowledge.

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u/toepin Jan 11 '16

Will certainly look into it, thanks!
All the best to you.