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Showing posts from 2018

Keep your life options open till you are sure

I have been contemplating this quotes from Naval Ravikant: First, In making decision if you are not sure, then don't do it. Second, if it boils down only 2 options and it's fifty/fifty then choose the one that is painful in the short term and bring equanimity in the longer term. Like should i do sports this today or not? Should I eat healthy food or not? The first one it seems you have 1 option to choose vs myriads of options. This seems to me if people have some money in their pocket. so they have this liberty to keep their option in life to always open. Especially we are now living in an exponentially option abundance in our time because of the proliferation of technology. So, ideally we always want to keep our options/choice open in life until we are pretty damn sure we want to do it whole heartedly. Meaning not just with your mind but also with your heart and soul. I think this boils down do what you want! Not what the society/parents/obligation tells you what to do! I

why technology matters and what technology to focus on

I have been listening to a16z ( www.a16z.com ) : podcast, youtube channel and particularly the famous Marc Andreessen (considered to be the founding father of the internet + a16z cofounder). Yup he created the Netscape browser and also been listening to Balaji Srinivasan (he is one of the GP at 16z) ..not sure if he is still there. I wanted to convey this very simple yet very important message, that the role of technology is to create abundance . To make something that is scarce into abundance , hence improving human life. I had Master in electrical engineering but yet I have never thought about the role of technology in a simple yet profound manner. It is so simple yet so mind boggling to me, I could not see it until recently, and I am going to be 49 this year. I know right!, I am a slow learner in that regard :) Amazing! I felt I have the obligation and talent (although if i have to be honest with myself I am just an average learner in math or software engineering) to continu

How to enter flow state?

Do something that is fun, make the brain engaged. That is the only way to learn. Other helpful ways to enter the flow: - Do something that is scary but educational or learning something. - Exercise to increase the oxygen to our head. - Learn something that is really hard but not boring. If it gets boring, it means your brain is not engaged. STOP whatever you are doing, and change to something else. Learn new things, normally when it is learning new things it makes the brain engaged more in an overdrive fashion. - Be in the present moment - by first taking a deep breath - be mindful and focus all your attention on the present moment. - feel your body sensation, feel the hand doing the typing, feel the movement of your leg and so on. - practice meditation. I did not realized that being in a flow is the same as being in the present moment when the ego fades on the background. Interesting. Practice, practice and practice to be in the present moment. Probably you could al

Notation in Math

Notation is a kind of technology. Used heavily in mathematics to express a very specific idea which could be hard and complex to express it using human language. I have never think it in this way, very interesting. So, study notation or mathematics symbol (some of them in Greek letters I think like Zigma or all them ? yes like + 'plus  sign) is like leveraging technology ...just like using a smartphone to make enhance our lives:)

correlation is not causation

I have been learning about deep learning and machine learning in general. One struck me is that all of this mapping from input to output could be done accurately by the machine, in some respect even better than human. It got me thinking that those mapping from input to output, many people would be easily deceived that it is a causation relationship but in fact many of them would be in correlation relationship. this is tricky, because the confusion between the two would be dangerous. Or at least in some applications we could say that is not just one. two or even x inputs that causes a certain output. I think the world kind of confused which one is correlation and which one is causation. It is very time consuming and energy intensive to establish a causation theory. Most people would just give up or mislead their way of thinking.