What seemingly backwards solutions have worked for you in life?
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i don't use a.i. for searching (until i give up if i can't find it). i feel my vocab increased thinking of similar words to get to the page i want.
How is this backwards solution?
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Such as counterintuitive fixes to a problem, or where a mistake unexpectedly results in an even better outcome than originally hoped for.
Hard to think of one on the spot, but I have an unintentional one/mistake.
When I was a kid, my mother had a digital camera that broke. It had a mechanical lens (or I suppose "lens housing" that would extend when powering on, then retract when powering off. I guess somehow the lens got stuck in between states, and so the camera would refuse to fully boot up. A bit after that happened, she got a new digital camera.
Me being the tinkerer I was, I asked if I could mess around with the old camera and was basically given it since it was useless (or so she thought). While messing with it, I accidentally dropped it - it somehow fell at just the perfect angle and "knocked" the lens back into place (without breaking anything). Camera worked perfectly fine after that!
Unfortunately while I was still allowed to keep it, that never really "kick started" a passion for photography in me. As far as I recall I got bored of it pretty quickly.
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This is pure genius.
I think it only works if your brain is wired in a particular way.
Tons of open browser tabs?
Long, impossible-to-complete to-do list?
Unread emails?
Unplayed Steam Games?Good chance of it working
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I think it only works if your brain is wired in a particular way.
Tons of open browser tabs?
Long, impossible-to-complete to-do list?
Unread emails?
Unplayed Steam Games?Good chance of it working
I have all of those... Except my to-do lists are not actually long because I never get around to adding stuff to them.
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I have all of those... Except my to-do lists are not actually long because I never get around to adding stuff to them.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]Hahaha.
I used to have a home office room, and I bought and installed a whiteboard on the wall, for noting things down, planning, to-do list etc.
For five years, it had a single scrap of paper blue-tacked to it, which read "1) Buy a whiteboard pen".
I eventually solved it by moving house.
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Such as counterintuitive fixes to a problem, or where a mistake unexpectedly results in an even better outcome than originally hoped for.
I found a bug by slacking off.
Without details, there was a product that we were supposed to test before it hit mass market. It had an annoying bug where it would forget certain configuration items, seemingly at random. Nobody could reproduce it.
Until me and my friends decided that this was the perfect opportunity to slack off, and took a >1h lunch break ("can't be online on teams, I'm testing..."). As it turns out, the product goes into deep standby after >30 minutes. Official break time was 30 minutes. So if you take the break on the dot, it will never go to deep standby, and never forget its configuration.
So, we figured out the bug by taking a long-ass lunch break.
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i don't use a.i. for searching (until i give up if i can't find it). i feel my vocab increased thinking of similar words to get to the page i want.
If I cannot think of a word in my mother language, I see if I can think about it in English, and then put it into an online dictionary to get the mother language synonyms. Works pretty often.
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Such as counterintuitive fixes to a problem, or where a mistake unexpectedly results in an even better outcome than originally hoped for.
Lost my driver license. Searched for a while, then decided I'm going to get a replacement. I seldom drive, anyway. Never got around to it until 4 years later I got a letter that it was found. Saved 70€ doing nothing!
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When I can't sleep, I take my finger and draw infinity symbols in a pillow or the sheet and it always makes me tired. There's some science behind it but give it a try
Sounds like a type of meditation.
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How is this backwards solution?
wrote on last edited by [email protected]is it seemingly backwards though?
the point is, because the a.i. aggressively marketed now are llms. these have a strong point when it comes to language and syntax. the other half of this a.i. that we really want to skip are the made up facts they fill in.
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If I cannot think of a word in my mother language, I see if I can think about it in English, and then put it into an online dictionary to get the mother language synonyms. Works pretty often.
I see if I can think about it in English, and then put it into an online dictionary to get the mother language synonym
totally agree. there's just some words out there in the internet that are too used liked 'banned' or 'slams' that get too saturated in search.
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I found a bug by slacking off.
Without details, there was a product that we were supposed to test before it hit mass market. It had an annoying bug where it would forget certain configuration items, seemingly at random. Nobody could reproduce it.
Until me and my friends decided that this was the perfect opportunity to slack off, and took a >1h lunch break ("can't be online on teams, I'm testing..."). As it turns out, the product goes into deep standby after >30 minutes. Official break time was 30 minutes. So if you take the break on the dot, it will never go to deep standby, and never forget its configuration.
So, we figured out the bug by taking a long-ass lunch break.
Testing should have some specified time windows eh? If the maker knows that the software does a thing at 30 minutes, that should be an intentional part of the test.
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"Drinking water backwards." And no, I'm not talking about an enema.
Say you have the hiccups.
Get half a glass of water. Bend over at your waist like you're about to pick something up off the floor. While bent over, rest the glass against your upper lip and drink the water.
Poof Hiccups gone instantly. I know it sounds insane but it works.
I once had a really long running bout of hiccups, like more than a day and it was really draining on me and I was very tired. I looked myself in the mirror and said "you don't have hiccups any more" and they stopped immediately.
Tried it again several times since and it never worked again but for that brief moment I was invincible.
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"Drinking water backwards." And no, I'm not talking about an enema.
Say you have the hiccups.
Get half a glass of water. Bend over at your waist like you're about to pick something up off the floor. While bent over, rest the glass against your upper lip and drink the water.
Poof Hiccups gone instantly. I know it sounds insane but it works.
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There is a solution to this problem. One line that just feeds all the lanes. Unfortunately, the geometry of grocery stores would make it difficult to implement. Also, most people like the illusion of choice.
The one I go to does this. One line and they call out which lane is opening next for you to go to. The long line is arranged perpendicular to the registers and It really doesn't seem to take up that much more space compared to stores that don't do that.
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And you get to be the genius who fixed the Internet for everyone living there. Nice one!
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Almost anything with managing kids’ behavior.
If you want them not to do something, tell them a bunch of things to do instead. (It may be appropriate to discuss the undesired behavior later).
Want them to talk to you? Listen to them.
Want them to learn a lot and be successful in school? Praise their effort, and not their intelligence or knowledge.
This can also be good advice for dealing with adults.
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Consider relocating somewhere safe where people are still humane on average, if you can. Kinda sad and unfair on you to isolate yourself...
Funny enough I did just that. The COVID shutdown was just about the best my life had ever been. My wife and I bought a house in the mountains in a town with 1000 people. Behind my house is thousands of acres of forest. We live like a retired couple and I've never been happier. I have learned how to live within my personal stimulation threshold.
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I love how all of this was just to avoid asking a family member "hey can I change some settings on your router to fix the Wi-Fi?"
I mean, I get it. More often than not you'll either become the de facto tech support or they'll find a way to blame you the next time something doesn't work.
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When I wanted to stop smoking, the idea of never smoking again would make me stressed and make me want to smoke.
The solution was I put "have a cigarette" on my to-do list, at the bottom.
So I never quit smoking, I'm definitely going to have a cigarette at some point, when I get round to it - just after I've re-tiled the bathroom, wrote a novel, made a computer game, taught the cat to play piano, finished a series of 100 paintings, wrote an album of songs etc...
... so it's over ten years since I last had a cigarette, and there's only a thousand or so things to do on my to-do list.
Would you accept a cigarette from Scp-4999?
