Discussion summary
Discussions on the value of learning and talent, with some emphasizing lifelong learning as a key skill. Participants mention personal experiences, future AI roles, and the importance of skills like writing.
What the discussion says
- Most agree lifelong learning is valuable.
- Some believe innate talent is less important than support and effort.
- Others see learning as a personal or leisure activity.
- The role of AI in future learning is considered.
“Lifelong learning as the ultimate skill”
“Struggling with what to learn? Learn to write! It’s the ultimate meta-skill.”
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- Hacker News
- One “trick” nowadays is to just do a thing for the sake of doing the thing. I draw. Not to post my drawings to social media, not to try to get income from paid commissions, but rather just to enjoy the act of drawing. It’s very liberating in a world where it feels like almost everything has to be in service of some kind of larger scheme.by ronbenton
- I retired a few years ago and now do a slew of things (photography, robotics, 3D printing, etc.) entirely for myself. I'll start a project, have a blast learning/building, then simply move on to the next thing.
Learning for the sake of learning is one of my favorite things in life.
by LatencyKills - The education system is to blame.
Kids are conditioned to associate learning with a formal course with a tutor culminating in exams.
It's also intentional to segregate skills, if schools taught every child basic plumbing or car mechanics for example instead of spending a month teaching something that won't get used in life, there would be less job in those fields.
by khurs - "I have never let my schooling interfere with my education."by sanderjd
- So there's a conspiracy between plumbers, mechanics, and public schools to not teach basic handyman skills to the students?
We used to have "shop" (or similarly named) classes for this in junior high/middle school. They have mostly been cut, but more for budgetary reasons. A lot of high schools still have a vocational department for the kids who are not college-bound and not complete wasteoids.
by SoftTalker - "have infants ricocheting around your home like screaming DVD logos, then you may want to put this ambition aside for now and deal with that instead"
Even older kids... my 6 year old is jumping on the couch as I type this..
I like remote work but when I had to commute it was really nice to have that downtime built in to the day. I learned a lot of Dutch vocabulary on the train.
by CalRobert - Children are not god for peace of mind and a life of liberty. I do not recommend anyone to have children, becaues of how negatively it affects your life, cost of living etc. It is basically just tying yourself down to the wheel of consumption, and in order to jutsify everything, all the struggle, push your hopes and aspirations to the next generation, and then letting them deal with it.
If you are rich, you can get around this by hiring people to take care of the children, so then it could be possible, but it will still be a huge financial burden.
by abc123abc123 - There's something useful about time that is already spoken for. You're on the train, you can't do much else, so learning some Dutch feels easy. At home the same half hour somehow gets fragmented into six different thingsby HexPhantom
- The hobby can be with the kid! E.g. go out on a kayak with them (safety first etc.) or learn to coach sport.by hahahaa
- Don’t be fooled, the first few years you get spoiled with “the first moments” of things. Then suddenly the “last moments” start creeping in, “the last nappy”, “the last car seat”, at first they seem like a god send but then they accumulate like an avalanche.
One day you will pick them up and, and most likely neither of you will know it, but it will be the last time you ever do.
Treasure everything, even the insanity.
by asp_hornet - I live in Europe, had to get my permanent residence permit and for that - you have to pass the language exam. Boy, that was some experience!
I'm in my 40's so learning a new language has activated the brain muscles that were last active when I was... 4?
They were so rusty, slow and amost physically refused to cooperate at first. This was tough. Now looking back it was absolutely worth it, best brain workout ever. Best.
by jitbit - This is why I don’t get the perverse pleasure people get when they say they don’t look at code anymore
It’s not like we’ve created a new abstraction layer with coding agents. It’s a leaky factory where every part up and down can break and/or be improved.
The best factories thrive in a learning culture. Where humans grow their knowledge to improve the operation of the factory. From nuts and bolts up to larger systems.
How do you do that without reading code? Without writing code?
I started even replacing my use of specs with exploratory coding to grow my own knowledge and context
https://softwaredoug.com/blog/2026/07/04/write-code-not-spec...
by softwaredoug - I started playing video games in Spanish about a year ago. I've finished about 20 now. I had a base of course & was doing little courses etc. But I've sunk 100s of hours now focusing on text and voice heavy games and it went from very tiring and looking up the dictionary constantly to fun and fluid. I can finally watch a lot of stuff without subtitles now. Someone catalogues which games have been dubbed (focused on Spanish of Spain) at this site https://www.doblajevideojuegos.es/ the quality of most new dubs I've seen has been very highby aguacaterojo
- As someone who has done “self-directed” learning, for my entire life (high school dropout, with a GED), I can certainly relate.
I like to learn new stuff, every day. I have found LLMs to be a godsend, here. Makes it much easier to just barge into unfamiliar territory.
Whenever I come across essays like this, I like to post The Gap, by Ira Glass[0]; one of the more encouraging short essays out there.
- LLMs can definitely be helpful, but you need your radar set to 11 because they will convincingly feed you smart sounding nonsense when you are most at risk.
- There's really a feeling now pushing back against learning in general. The feeling is that it is pointless since technology would just do it for you. When I started learning Chinese a friend just wouldn't stop talking about how the latest airpods will just be able to translate for you. It was really rather demoralising. But there is still something incredibly rewarding about having that knowledge in your own head and not having to go find someone or something to ask. I push on regardless.
- It is helpful in such cases to look up, touch grass, and realise that "do it for you" is doing a lot of work there. The technology still can only emit a convolution of its training, and this is an ontological, conceptual limit on the technology, not something that the next model will just overcome. It's not "intelligence" -- you still have to know things.
It's easy to think, reading HN, that we're in some "post-knowledge" apocalypse, but that's just not the reality. It is, however, tragic that the irrationality of capitalism can be sustained so long, perhaps longer than some of us can stay solvent.
by abalashov - I've been learning Russian by myself since the pandemic and along the way I've picked up bits and bobs about food, history, geography, music, and even electronics. Learning a language is not just about the language per se.
I've even realised a few things about my own language.
by forinti - Learning a language is still absolutely worth it. The feeling you get when finally being able to communicate with native speakers is not something you could achieve with technology. Sure if all you care about is exchanging information then translation technology does the job, but if you want to actually connect with people I believe you have to do the talkingby lajisam
- Even if so, once I realized how pointless doomscrolling is I figured I might as well use that time to learn something pointless.by bilsbie
- I've been learning Spanish and I find a big positive motivator is finding and practicing slang words and vulgar phrases. They usually have cultural roots and are highly contextual, so it requires a deeper understanding than just translation. I only speak them sparingly with my few native speaker friends, who find it hilarious when I inevitably use them incorrectly - or rarely get it exactly right.
- Technology is a choice. If you speak natively you get completely different immersion in culture.
Imagine your perception as a VR headset, and any gadgets and apps are inserting a layer between you and your VR headset, making it worse.
The same goes with any augmenting technology you perceive not the real thing.
by cwiz - > The feeling is that it is pointless since technology would just do it for you.
Why walk or jog of the car can do it for you?
by bilsbie - Funny that your example is Chinese. Have you seen the reports that Chinese universities are cutting back on foreign-language programmes because the expectation is that AI translation is the way of the future?
So, your friend was just expressing the general zeitgeist. But something to be aware of, is that “having that knowledge in one’s own head” might be unrewarding in time. Namely, once high-quality AI translation in near-real-time becomes the social norm, Chinese people (and most other people on earth) will become much less tolerant of a foreigner trying to speak their language imperfectly. You can already see something similar if you go to countries like Netherlands or Sweden and try to speak the local language at anything short of a high B2-level: people will complain you’re wasting their time compared to just using English.
by TFNA - I’ll chime in. I started learning to draw in my early twenties, couple hours a week. What helps a lot is joining a club, I’ve got a group in my town that just goes to a bar one night a week and draws and chats for 3 hours. Great way to ensure that you get at least a few hours of drawing in, even if your week is too busy for “practice”.
It takes about 2-3 years of mild practice to get good enough that you’ll routinely impress yourself, about 5 years to get good enough that you could do paid commissions.
Seems like a long time, but unless you start in your seventies you’ll have decades left of enjoying being an artist afterwards.
by Fraterkes - And even if you don’t get all that good or turn it into a lifelong hobby, that just sounds fun.by coffeefirst
- One thing I wish this emphasized more is that adults often confuse learning with consuming material about learning, which is why my useful rule has become: if I'm not producing errors, I'm probably not practicing yetby HexPhantom
- Excellent motto, too good to pass a genuine appreciation commentby Sxubas
- Knowing is input and skills are output. If you can't produce some kind of output in response to input, you've got a nice imagination but no skills.by titzer
- I love this take. I built some feature and then when I tried to layer new features on top, I saw all the bad decisions surface and errors appear. Its beautiful to walk back and have it "click"by mawadev