Name one idea that changed your life

Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.

— Ira Glass

Favor interrogative-led questions over leading questions.

A leading question attempts to get the listener to agree or disagree with a premise you feed to them.

An interrogative-led question often begins with the words: who; where; what; when; why.

Imagine the responses to these two questions:

- "Did you like the movie?" (Leading)

- "What did you think about the movie?" (Interrogative-led)

How do each of these questions make you feel? How comfortable would you be saying something you think would displease the asker in each case. What kind of responses are possible/likely in each case?

Of course, you can always be talking to someone who's not interested in talking. It's possible to answer either question with a word or two. So there's some assumption of willingness to participate. Even so, you can still sometimes use carefully-chosen interrogative-led questions to find reasons for the disinterest.

Asking good interrogative-led questions is essential for above-average results in many pursuits: science; engineering; interviewing; and negotiation; to name a few. It can also be an important way to de-escalate tense situations. I've found it especially useful when talking to subject matter experts when trying to learn something about areas I know little.

Here's an actionable way to apply the idea. The next time you find yourself asking a question that doesn't begin with {who, where, what, when, why}, stop yourself and rephrase it to begin with one of those words. What differences do you notice in how the conversation goes compared to similar conversations you've had in the past?

This might be super basic, but... assume positive intent.

Your parent is not your enemy. Your teacher is not your enemy. Your boss is not your enemy. The other team at work is not your enemy. The corporation is not your enemy. The other political party is not your enemy. Or, more accurately, YOU are not THEIR enemy. At best, you're an NPC in their game. Many of them probably even want to help you, because you are another person in the world, and that feels good.

I take back what I said about this being basic. The first steps (learning your parent, teacher, boss are on your side) is pretty basic. But applying this concept to more complex systems, like corporations and communities, can be pretty advanced. But at the end of the day, what it means is that, most of the time there isn't a conspiracy against you, there are simply incentives that you don't understand.

From my father:

No matter how correct you are, you won't get anywhere by making the other person feel stupid.

He gave me this after we went together to a conference on communication and I found the presenter to be making some rather doubtful statements. I asked questions and tried to break the presenter in the QnA session and when I didn't get what I wanted, I left. I was 15 at the time. So, I forgive myself but still cringe hard whenever I remember it.

This advice had and continues to have a really long lasting impact on me (especially in getting me out of my incredibly arrogant stage in life) and my relationships with people. I can still be critical of things while maintaining respect for the other person's context and intelligence. I've found that also helps a lot in disconnecting ego amidst a debate.

"Premature optimization is the root of all evil"

More and more, I'm realizing this applies more broadly than just for code. Abstraction is a form of optimization and shouldn't be done before the space has been properly explored to know what abstractions should be built. Standardization is a form of optimization and shouldn't be proposed until there's a body of evidence to support what's being standardized.

Failure to validate a product before building it? Premature optimization.

Build infrastructure without understanding the use case? Premature optimization.

Build tools before using them for your end product/project? Premature optimization.

This advice comes in different forms: "Progress over perfection", "Iteration quickly", "Move fast and break things", "Don't let perfection be the enemy of good enough", etc. but I find the umbrella statement of not prematurely optimizing to encompass them all.

A decade of success against steep odds later, I ran into the high school teacher who I idolized and who helped me actually achieve something. Most teachers tolerated me or insulated the rest of the classroom from me. But he put in the effort to get me engaged with something that got me to sit down and try. I was excited to show him what his work had helped me accomplish. He had two things to share with me:

1. He doesnt remember me.

2. That he felt I was smarter than him, hearing what I was working on.

It hit really hard. And when I recovered it made me realise that all relationships are ephemeral if you aren't there to foster and cherish them. There's also a lesson in there I'm trying to parse. About how I always saw him as this brilliant teacher. But he's just a guy.

My opinions are not mine and they are holding me back.

Give multiple and opposing views equal respect and disdain at the same time. Treating a thought as your own, as an opinion "you hold" greatly holds you back from a great deal of valuable perspective. Of course you surely hold some world-view and gauge things from that position but try to cultivate more of these positions as if you were someone else.

Don't get your sense of self so wrapped up in all the thoughts and ideas that flit about in your brain. You will surely be a different person in 1, 5, 10, 20 years and may well have a completely different perspective then.

There is very little original thought, mostly there is just repetition and re-contextualization of the same old stuff. That is not a bad thing but you should really divest yourself from being emotionally wrapped up in opinions (yours or others) and treat them as the conclusions of research papers with small sample sizes.

Now when you converse with someone, stop thinking about "your" response, and just listen, really listen to what they are saying and try to really understand where they are coming from so you can integrate that into your thinking.

I am going to cheat a bit and give you three things that have had a lasting impact on me:

First is this quote from Lincoln, "I hate that man. I must get to know him better".

This has helped me shed biases and prejudices that stop me from liking someone on the first few interactions. Instead of shunning them, I seek to know them better, in the hope that I see past the veil and reach out to the actual human on the other side. This ties in nicely with Stephen Covey's quote, "We judge ourselves by our intentions and others by their behaviour."

Second thing that has stuck with me is this zen-koan about a disciple having a tough time forgiving their master for a sin [0]. The koan ends with the thought that the disciple who's holding on to resentment, disapproval, outrage, disappointment, grudge is really the one who's in distress and enduring the punishment and not the master. It is really powerful, at least to me. If I liberally tie it to the 'broken windows theory' [1], it explains to me why such resentments over time aren't simply good for me, personally, despite how few the broken windows may be, they need to be fixed.

And the third is producer v consumer mindset [2]. Do not consume excessively, refrain from stifling the production line with tendency to consume all day, every day.

[0] https://medium.com/@soninilucas/two-monks-and-a-woman-zen-st...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3555237

One thing that’s been super meaningful for me is the notion that if you don’t put something into words, either in speech or in your head or on paper, you don’t know anything about it, even if it’s a feeling or a belief or an intuition deep within you that you’ve held for as long as you can remember.

The act of simply putting a thought into words makes it immediately obvious to you if you really understand it or not, and if not, where your blind spots are.

If the thing you’re concerned with is an unresolved problem or a question, simply articulating the problem or the question can make the solution or the answer obvious. Just going through the process of putting it into words, one way or another, and being sure you’ve settled on the most concise and accurate description of it you can muster, will often make so many things that were hazy obvious, and can reveal to you areas of haziness in your own thinking that you may not have been aware of.

Rubber duck debugging is one result of this. Rubber duck debugging is based on the observation that by the time you’ve explained your bug to someone, often times you figure out your next steps before they even respond. Just articulating your problem in the form of a question asked to someone else will sometimes reveal the answer to you.

The idea that your mind is not you.

That "thinking", as a process, is just a tool of your body, just like eyesight, for example.

Listening to meditation and mindfulness practitioners like Jon Kobat-Zinn and Eckhart Tolle, I found it absolutely groundbreaking, for myself, to realize that the mind is an instrument that needs training and tuning, and sometimes can lead you astray, and can't be trusted unconditionally.

Disassociating from my mind and understanding that my thinking is not my being has helped me in innumerable ways.

Nick Cave, on writer's block:

"My advice to you is to change your basic relationship to songwriting. You are not the ‘Great Creator’ of your songs, you are simply their servant, and the songs will come to you when you have adequately prepared yourself to receive them. They are not inside you, unable to get out; rather, they are outside of you, unable to get in."

https://www.theredhandfiles.com/do-u-have-any-spare-lyrics/

News == entertainment.

Originally by Aaron Swartz http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews

Although I have slightly different takes from his and the level of avoiding the news might be different too, but the core idea that I follow these days is there.

I used to think following the news was a mix of my duty as a citizen and important for my life, personal and professional. Now I believe it's quite the opposite, I better understand the world because I avoid the news. These days I think it is as much entertainment as Netflix or comics.

I’m still only somewhat recently down this particular path, but it’s proven to be one of the more profound realizations I can remember:

You can’t guilt yourself into doing things you want to accomplish. You’ll always resist and make excuses. The only way is to enjoy the act of doing them.

Fighting procrastination, whether by guilt or rewards, is a losing game. Instead, cultivate an appreciation of the task you’re resisting, however complex or banal it may be. Learn to enjoy the micro-accomplishments of each moment. Instead of the dopamine hit of procrastination, train yourself on the dopamine trickle of sustained action.

It’s not an all-at-once change, but for me, at least, it’s had a very concrete effect so far.

There are no adults in the room (https://letterstoanewdeveloper.com/2019/08/12/there-are-no-a...)

During my career I was always looking for some senior developer to guide me in my work. I was hoping someone has figured everything out and could tell me whether my solutions where good or bad. It frustrated me that most of them did not really have a clue and could not help me. I blamed it to my company which would not invest the money to hire really good senior developers and switched employers. I hoped to find better learning opportunities there (which I thought meant better guiding). But it was the same everywhere: The people who I thought had everything figured out seemed to be just as clueless as me.

It took me some time to realize this is the norm. There is no one who has the perfect understanding of everything. There is a lot of uncertainty to any solution you try out. Accepting the uncertainty and acting accordingly is the true meaning of "seniority".

"Nothing is ever personal."

The way people treat you, has nothing to do with you. They are just living out their own stories.

Related idea: "You train others how to treat you." Think reinforcement learning as applied to training a dog. (And I love dogs, have the deepest respect for them). The concept isn't that different when applied to our social interactions.

Ignorance can be bliss. Didn't change my life, but has definitely helped me in a lot of cases, especially recent times. Generally speaking, I can't affect what is currently happening in the news, despite how upsetting it might be, and it won't even affect me in a lot of cases. I try to consume little information for things I don't care about or will have a negative effect on me as a way to spare myself from anxiety.

I've gotten a lot of shit for this in the past from people saying "you just don't stay informed?" or "it's your civic duty to know what's happening in the world!". If information is really important for me to know, I'll see it. If it doesn't end up on one of the few media sources I consume, it probably won't affect me. I got this idea from MMM [1], which was inspired by The Four Hour Work Week.

[1] https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2013/10/01/the-low-informati...

Steve Jobs' explanation of the simple, obvious truth that the world is made up of everyone's contributions and how much power each individual person has to contribute and influence it too:

"Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact, and that is: Everything around you that you call life, was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use. The minute that you understand that you can poke life and actually something will, you know — if you push in, something will pop out the other side — that you can change it, you can mold it. That’s maybe the most important thing. It’s to shake off this erroneous notion that life is there and you’re just gonna live in it, versus embrace it, change it, improve it, make your mark upon it. I think that’s very important and however you learn that, once you learn it, you’ll want to change life and make it better, cause it’s kind of messed up, in a lot of ways. Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.”

The Growth Mindset.

To briefly sum up the findings: Individuals who believe their talents can be developed (through hard work, good strategies, and input from others) have a growth mindset. They tend to achieve more than those with a more fixed mindset (those who believe their talents are innate gifts). This is because they worry less about looking smart and they put more energy into learning.

Along with this goes embracing "feeling dumb" and pushing through. I don't understand something because I don't understand it...yet.

“One day Alice came to a fork in the road and saw a Cheshire cat in a tree. ‘Which road do I take?’ she asked. ‘Where do you want to go?’ was his response. ‘I don’t know,’ Alice answered. ‘Then,’ said the cat, ‘it doesn’t matter.”

― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

My Grandmother once told me:

"If you want to work at a company, dress like the people that work there. Because those are the people that the company hires."

I've used this general philosophy in my life to pass courses at university, win competitions, and get through job interviews. I don't know if my grandmother meant this in a literal sense, or was hinting at the fact that (as Tony Robbins says) success leaves clues. When you understand what people are looking for, the game becomes a lot easier - you simply need to mould yourself and your communication to fit a winning persona.

Focus on the theorem and its proof, not the name of the theorem.

My background in mathematics and there is an unhealthy adulation of genius. Granted, praise of genius is warranted, but it becomes too much.

One symptom of this is that almost every theorem is named for whoever discovered it. Gauss this or Euler that. Shannon this or Nyquist that. What can happen is you begin to think of mathematics in terms of making a mark and having something named after you, and not actually about the objective beautiful reality of the mathematics before you. The mathematics is greater than the discoverer--it certainly isn't owned by them!

Or to put it another way: Focus on the joy of the task at hand, not on the hope of adulation from the task well finished.

It is a good way to reduce anxiety.

Antifragility

Or more specifically, just getting the term for it. I spent years trying to articulate in my own mind many of the ideas in Taleb's book, and once I had a word for it I could see it everywhere and actually start to change my life to take advantage of the chaos in the world.

Basically: you can't control what happens to you, but you can set your life up so that the natural variability of the world can be used to your advantage.

I can't do it justice in an HN comment, but it's one book and one idea that has changed my life.

No one is thinking about you. That stupid thing you said in the meeting, the thing you did in middle school, that pimple on your face that feels huge. It's entirely in our mind and everyone else is too focused on themselves to ever see or think about the silly things you're embarassed about.

Spaced repetition. It's a method of learning where you only get a reminder of material when you're about to forget it. I've found a way to use spaced repetition to self-learn maths without forgetting processes between obsessive cycles. I memorize names, birthdays, dates, locations, and anything else I want to remember much easier than before because of it.

https://www.gwern.net/Spaced-repetition

Seek content-ness, not happiness. Happiness comes later.

In my early-twenties, I kept thinking that I always wanted happiness, and if I wasn't then something was wrong. I later realized that it was the pursuit of something that I could never attain that was draining and I realized that was the wrong path. I cannot attain perfection. So I decided to look for a better life-path that I could sustain, feel comfortable, and be content for long periods of time. Happiness comes later, naturally almost. It comes in small packets sometimes. Sometimes I don't even notice.

It's a concept that I read once in Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine, where the grandmother did not want to go into this box and see the world, because if she saw things she wanted but couldn't attain, she'd be unhappier than she currently was. This concept can be explained further with the parable of the fisherman and the businessman. I also think this is one of the ideas behind the movie "Mr. Holland's Opus", which took me years to understand.

Not really an idea, but I guess something of an epiphany:

We were doing a basic physics class at school at maybe 12 or 13 years old. We were learning about Newton's laws of motion etc.

One day we had a test and there was a question about why playgrounds often have rubber matting or tiles around the climbing frames or swings etc. Cue a load of waffly nonsense answers about "cushioning impact" or being "soft so it doesn't hurt" etc from everyone in the class. The teacher berated us: Force = mass X acceleration - reduce the acceleration and the force goes down too.

A lightbulb went off in my head - suddenly science actually meant something in the real world rather than just being something your learnt at school. This was how the world worked.

The fact that this moment still sticks out in my mind suggests that it was probably quite a formative moment for me and I guess changed my outlook on the world quite significantly. (... but then there was also a sort of philosophical existential thought about the "tyranny of equations" we end up living our lives by if we like it or not!)

The concept of "Unknown Unknowns" changed my approach to life for better.

I was one of those laughing to the famous speech [1] the very first time I heard it. After a few days, I begin to grasp the epistemological truth in it, making me humbler.

Today in every system I work on, I know there will be risks unexpected and possible, and the system shall be resilient and with physical negative feedback in case control loop fails. Same in private life, I do not expect luck and I try to minimize kurtosis in all known scenarios (hoping it somehow covers the unknown unknows).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_are_known_knowns

The quote "We often suffer more in imagination that we do in reality" has really stuck with me.

I consider myself to be a bit of an introvert and this idea has helped me tremendously with networking and meeting new people. I often project the worst casinario in my mind, but in reality, outcomes are almost always positive and enjoyable.

The OODA Loop [1]

Air Force Colonel John Boyd came up with the OODA loop as a simplified way to explain a very complex system of observability and feedback that he developed. I read about this in the early 2000s and ever since I've been totally obsessed with the concept of learning, iteration and optimization - and it's the prime mover in my research and work motivations to this day.

There are many parallel theories and concepts in Reinforcement Learning and Control Theory such as Sense Plan Act, but the fundamental system is the same.

The OODA loop is often abused and the depth of Boyd's contribution to decision science has been underserved in my opinion.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OODA_loop

Around 10 years ago I figured out the vast majority of mid and upper level management have no frickin clue how to do the thing they're tasked with doing, no capacity or desire to teach themselves, and will gladly fork over $250/hr or more to work with a consultant or agency who will help their immediate supervisor never catch on to that fact. Learning this took me from an overly-qualified low earning tech and marketing generalist employee to a very high level earner doing agency and solo consulting work pretty much overnight. Wish I had figured this out a few years earlier than I had but just happy I figured it out at all.

The Dichotomy of Control

A concept I discovered when reading about stoicism. Focus on the things that you can control and disregard what is outside of your control. Sounds simple and obvious, until you apply it to everyday life and realize that most things you worry about are not under your control - other people's actions, opinions, politics, most external circumstances, really. What you can control however is how you react to those circumstances - your thoughts, actions and words, for example.

Actor-observer asymmetry. Briefly, it's the idea that when we observe others, we're more likely to attribute their behavior to the nature of their personality than to their circumstances or situation, and that we do the opposite when judging our own behavior.

Example: You drive your car faster than the speed limit. You're probably doing it because you feel like you have a reasonable need (you're late for something, etc), not because you just inherently like to be a jerk and drive too fast everywhere.

On the other hand, if you see someone else speeding, you're more likely to think they're doing it because they're just an unsafe asshole, and less likely to think they're doing it for a legitimate reason.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actor%E2%80%93observer_asymmet...

"Less is more"

Applicable to programming, applicable to life. Covers everything from device convergence to PR reviews to retirement planning.

I discovered that spending less on personal happiness brought me more personal happiness. Try it sometime, give yourself permission to give away half of your stuff and see if you don't feel better.

My favorite thing about "Finite and Infinite Games" by James Carse is you can yadda-yadda the whole book:

"There are two types of games. One could be called finite; the other infinite. A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play. [...] There is only one infinite game."

"You can use your laptop power brick as a foot warmer."

Not quite so grand as some ideas here, but still... my feet are warm.

Don’t accept a “no” from someone who doesn’t have the authority to give you a “yes”.

The power of the subconscious mind.

Without actively seeking it, I happened to stumble on this idea about 8 years ago, at a time when I was struggling with some pretty big problems in my relationships, career and physical+mental health.

Since then, I've been living "as-if" the biggest factors that influence my reactions, choices and outcomes are in my subconscious, and that by continually undertaking practices that identify and resolve subconscious fears, biases, resentments, attachments, etc, I can keep my life on a steady path of improvement.

Over 8 years on, so far so good.

It also helps me to be more understanding and patient with others, when I can remind myself that this applies in different ways to all of us, and that everyone is doing the best they can in the moment.

Related: the idea of living "as-if" something is true, even if it isn't true yet, or it's unknown (but testable) whether it's true or not.

I.e., building a business for market conditions or technologies that don't exist yet but are reasonably likely to within a reasonable timeframe, and/or that may be more likely to come to exist through your work.

Or thinking/operating in a way that may not be consistent with existing laws/norms/established science, but in doing so you help to change said laws/norms or make new scientific discoveries.

Obviously, considerable risk management is necessary with this approach.

The Elephant in the Brain

A lot of common ideas about education, charity and laughter (we laugh because something is funny) are evolutionary useful lies we tell ourselves.

"But while we humans often play by ourselves (e.g., with Legos), recall that we laugh mostly in the presence of others. So what communicative purpose does laughter serve in the context of play? Gregory Bateson, a British anthropologist, figured it out during a trip to the zoo. He saw two monkeys engaged with each other in what looked like combat, but clearly wasn’t real. They were, in other words, merely play fighting. And what Bateson realized was that, in order to play fight, the monkeys needed some way to communicate their playful intentions—some way to convey the message, “We’re just playing.” Without one or more of these "play signals,” one monkey might misconstrue the other’s intentions, and their playful sparring could easily escalate into a real fight"

The recognition that the greatest success of modern marketing is having subconsciously convinced us that things are harder than they are, and there's a right way to do things.

I can't run a server without AWS. I can't run an email server without O365. I can't clean a toilet without toxic blue stuff.

Lots of things are actually pretty easy and cheap, and whatever makes you happy is the right way to do it.

“Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.” ― Terry Pratchett

The Wim Hof Method. I never had any issue with:

- snow

- rain (being soaked was in rare cases still an issue)

- anything cold really

Before that I was unhappy with whatever was cold. Now I'm neutral at worst and super exhilarated and hyped like I'm taking drugs (but legally) at best. The adrenaline rush is very strong and very real, and a lot of fun :)

How I would pitch this to my younger 18 year old self: want insta-ten-percent more happiness without changing anything about yourself, but by simply learning a breathing technique? Learn the Wim Hof Method and never complain about being cold again!

2 minute rule. Only useful productivity tool I learn from reading dozens of books a decade ago.

https://www.lifehack.org/articles/productivity/how-stop-proc...

As childish as it seems, this one actually stuck with me for over 20 years and makes me step back and relax in situations where bad thoughts can snowball and result in stress.

Basically, it's a saying that a neighbour's 5-year-old son said once (likely repeated from his father): "It's better to be pissed off than pissed on."

We have two lives, and the second begins when we realize we only have one.

Confucius

Don't sweat the small stuff. And it's almost all small stuff.

If you're finding yourself stressed out about something, ask yourself...will it have a significant impact on your life within the next month? Will you even remember it in a year?

If you can truly adopt this mentality, it cures road rage. Okay, so some asshole cut you off in traffic. Why lose your mind over it? It won't even have an impact on your day, let alone a month.

Even something more significant like a minor car collision. Yeah, you might be out your car for a few days while it gets repaired, but once it's resolved, life returns to normal.

I'm lucky that even this COVID-19 crisis hasn't significantly affected my life. The only difference is that I'm working from home and cooking more rather than eating out all the time. A vacation and two conventions have been cancelled, but life goes on.

I am responsible for what happens to me. (I.e. I am not a victim.) Accepting responsibility is very empowering, as it implies I can do something about it. Being a victim is dis-empowering, as it means you are helpless.

(People who read my posts will recognize this as a consistent theme. Being a victim is a choice. I choose not to be.)

Outside of work, to create at least as much as I consume. I'm trying to pick up writing as a hobby to shift my creation:consumption balance.

Edit: Related to that, I've been writing brief notes on interesting articles I read for the past few years. This has two advantages: 1) It helps me to read critically, and 2) It forces me to be more intentional about the articles I read - one way to combat the deluge of information

That every dollar you spend directly translates into pushing your financial independence further into the future.

I hadn't really reflected on becoming financially independent as a real possibility, but now I'm mentally bookkeeping spending against being locked into needing to work longer. The real revelation was when I realized that this "save 20% of your income for retirement" advice that's thrown around is totally backwards. Your income is not the yardstick, your spending is. Rather than scaling your spending to your income, spend what you need and save the rest. If you have a tech salary, that likely means you'll be financially independent much, much, earlier than traditional retirement age.

I was raising money and met this zen style investor for lunch to talk about some issues we were having, basically complaining and blaming and things like that, he interrupted me and said -

“Be careful the stories you tell yourself because they will eventually become true”

It hit me that I really was telling these stories of how the company was or where the business was going in a negative light and things were simply becoming more and more negative because of me. So be careful!

We may harm ourselves or others around us for nothing but the feeling of control in our lives. I remember reading somewhere that eating disorders were an example of simultaneously losing and gaining control and, though I haven't had an eating disorder before, I could see how the same logic could apply to other actions.

When I was 12 I saw a kid on a local tv show who was autistic and had intentionally started cataloging facial expressions and body language because he couldn't do it automatically like most people. I remember thinking "You can do that!?" I was very similar to him and that tv show started me on the path of trying to figure out how to get past my mental limitations, which has significantly improved my life.

Always, always, stop people to ask them questions. Whenever they do something you are surprised by or say something you don't understand, ask them to explain.

I never fail to get a positive response.

Sometimes you feel silly if it was a simple thing, but you get used to that easily, and now you know that thing for the rest of your life.

As a kid: Everything that you see was made by somebody. Someone had the idea, someone started a business for it, someone designed it, someone assembled it, etc.

As an adult: Simulated annealing for your own life (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulated_annealing) You start something by going all over the place, trying even crazy ideas. Then you start refining and refining, getting better at the details. This is the optimal way for anything: dating, starting companies, creating products, learning something new, investing, ... .

Jeff Bezos has a great interview where he talks about his decision to leave his cushy Wall Street job and start a website selling books. He talks about how he used a "regret minimization framework" where he projects himself into the future and imagines which decision he would regret the least.

I have used this technique multiple times myself to help with otherwise fraught or overwhelming decisions, and I think it's a great way to shift your frame of reference.

Interview where he describes it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwG_qR6XmDQ

If your friends--or especially your SO--don't have your back, it's time to move your back.

You deserve to have at least one person in your life that is always on your side. Especially for an SO, if they can't do that, get rid of them. Far better to be alone.

For me it was this : (job) interviews are not a one-sided judgment of your worth and value as a person where you have to do your best to convince the party, but a discussion of whether what the opposite side is searching for is in line with what you have to offer as a person / company.

It's not obvious at all, especially early in your career but it has really changed the way I handle interviews in very positive ways. It's OK to get refused, it's even expected actually. And even if it doesn't work out today, taking the meeting with proper framing can bring opportunities further down the road. Some friends are now hired in positions I was chased for, and it's a win :).

Kalzumeus has been an inspiration for me on all those things couple years back : https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/

When learning something, trying to reward myself when I feel stupid or frustrated, because that generally means I'm doing something difficult that will pay off long-term.

I think of this as another 'habit to unlearn from school' (https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/48WeP7oTec3kBEada/two-more-t...). For most of my life, I did what came easily, and I got a lot of praise and reward in those areas. I neglected the things that made me feel stupid or frustrated, and I think that consequently, my education is not as well-rounded as it might be.

Or, like Jake the Dog says [0]: "Dude, sucking at something is the first step to being sorta good at something."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smgQiGABQMs

A famous golfer once scored a hole-in-one after not playing tournaments for some time, only focusing on training.

A reported asked "Surely that was luck? You cannot train for a hole-in-one reliably."

To which the golfer answered: "Yes. But the more I train, the luckier I get."

That has stayed with me. Whenever I complained about bad luck (at least in my internal monologue), I started wondering what would have happened if I had trained more, be better prepared etc. Really helped me to shift a bit towards growth mindset.

Passive income. Or recognizing at least the goal of increasing your income/time ratio.

“The test of first rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.” - Dwight Whitney Morrow

I heard that quote sometime around age 18 and it has always stuck with me to a degree that impacts how I view everything. It’s made a habit of trying to understand both sides of hard topics...which often leads to frustration with people who only want to understand one.

Everything is temporary.

This is a central tenet in a variety of approaches and philosophies, from religions (it's one of the Marks of Existence in Buddhism) to cognitive behavioral therapy — but few ideas have changed my thinking, resilience, self-control, and happiness as much as this one.

As a German, the idea that mass murder and high tech are different sides of the same coin has shaped my world view forever (after reading Dialectic of Enlightenment and On the Critique of Instrumental Reason).

Horkheimer red-pilled me on our western societies and I'm grateful for it.

"Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know." from Keats' Ode on a Grecian Urn

Realising that honesty and candour is the root of all good things has made me a much better musician and, yes, programmer and businessperson! I don't try to appear impressive or sophisticated any more, just tell the truth and speak sincerely, and it makes life much more manageable

There are a thousand ways to suffer, and I don't know most of them.

The more I grow, the more I discover new ways people fight their own battle.

Every time I think somebody had it easy, I end up dead wrong. There is just so much I didn't know about.

I even recently realized it's very common to deeply suffer without being conscious of it, and yet being unhappy because of it. It's a terrible curse, because deep down some part of you knows there is something wrong but you cannot put your finger on it, and yet it affects your whole existence.

People just mechanically don't think about it so they can make the best out of life.

It makes you feel much closer to people, much more tolerant, and you suddenly understand a lot more about the choice they make and the things they do.

My personal realization that Evolution is the other “theory of everything”, with the exception of the laws of physics, evolutionary processes are shaping everything, including progress in science, economy, history, politics, ideas, social, emotions, religion, etc.

I read somewhere on the internet that, "If grass is greener on the other side, you aren't watering enough".

Sure some people get lucky, but on the long term, the ones who consistently make better decisions and work harder are the ones who are benefitted more often.

Weeks.

Segment your time to complete things into weeks. Months have too much wiggle room and days are too tight. Most people don’t even have the weeks option displaying on the digital calendars (phones, laptops) they use.

For long term projects of any kind using the week as a unit of time is the best way to cross the finish line.

This is possible for personal projects and for entrepreneurs. If you can get into this time frame in an organisation you are going to have a much easier time with your projects.

Another important point is not to overload the time either, if you end up completing something within a few days do not move to the next phase within that week. Stick to the schedule.

If you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room.

I am not one tenth as talented as the people I work with on a daily basis. That they give me the time of day I am grateful for. It's what keeps me coming back.

Memory is graph based, not a dictionary of key/value pairs. You learn and retain information more easily by making many connections to information.

If information equals knowledge, and knowledge equals power, then secret information is secret knowledge and hence secret power. (of course if correct and applied correctly).

One I learned at a young age is that you can learn to absorb the good traits of people around you while avoiding picking up bad traits (mostly around the idea that just because you don't like what a person does in area Y, doesn't mean they can't be good teachers/mentors etc in other areas). Rejection for single issues is a major problem in todays society I think.

"Do more and more with less and less until you can move a mountain with the push of a button."

Advice I got from a born-low-class turned upper class -- richest man I know (and father of a highschool friend).

"No One Knows What They're Doing"

This gave me more power to make stronger decisions and feel on the same plane as everyone else. I used to think there where people that had everything figured out

Since people seem to be sharing their favorite quotes, I'll share a couple of my own. It's kind of like a litany to repeat in difficult situations, replace placeholders as needed:

“What is true is already so. Owning up to it doesn't make it worse. Not being open about it doesn't make it go away. And because it's true, it is what is there to be interacted with. Anything untrue isn't there to be lived. People can stand what is true, for they are already enduring it."

"If [scary thought] is true, I want to believe that. If [scary thought] is not true, I want not to believe [scary thought]. Let me not become attached to beliefs I may not want. If I'm living in a world where [scary thought] is true, that’s what I have to believe, I have to know what’s coming, so I can stop it, or in the very worst case, be prepared to do what I can in the time I have left. Not believing it won’t stop it from happening."

"I am not afraid. I am not afraid because if I let myself get too scared I might not be able to do what needs to be done. And I'm not the type of person who backs down. I am the type of person who does the right thing, even if it's hard. Right now, the right thing is to [x]. And even if it doesn't work, I'll just do the next right thing, and the next, and the next. I'll keep on trying until I figure out a way."

The principle of non-violent communication (NVC)[1] completely changed my approach in life to stressful situations. Practicing the same with my family, friends, work colleagues changed my life. Changed the way I approach situations. Allowed me to also apply it in reverse where I am now able to lead those stressed with me towards a NVC path. I am trying to understand their fundamental base need rather than just focus on what they are saying. This allows those around me also to become in tune with themselves and I can see it on their faces when they get the aha moment. I've received simple thanks sometimes for this so I know it is not just me that finds it useful. Works wonderfully well with toddlers as well! The whole premise that kids are stupid or don't understand stuff also gets upturned when you apply NVC to communicate with them or help understand their point of view.

It wasn't easy, took months before it became habit, just had to keep it going. Even now sometimes I forget and my lizard brain pops up from years of conditioning that will take some time to undo. But am I so happy I found out about it.

[1] https://baynvc.org/key-assumptions-and-intentions-of-nvc/

"Find an excuse to win"

I had an attitude of quitting early or pausing on the first obstacle I faced. I used to think of it as "This is not my area of expertise" or "Let me wait for other person to confirm this" or "This is too hard, let me give myself some time" etc.

Unknowingly, I used to look out for excuses to no give my 100%.

Somewhere I read this quote, and that's where I realized the stark difference of mentality I had. From then on, it's really changed my life for good.

Procrastination is an emotional problem.

https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20200121-why-procrastin...

The rocket science is not a rocket science.

Meaning that we sometimes habitually consider something hard because it used to be hard, or it became known to be hard. But with time passing, sometimes things like that change.

The literal rocket science is a prime example - we reached orbit in 1957 using technology which is very modest by today's standards. It's still hard to launch a satellite - but it's so, so much easier.

Knowing that, SpaceX approach suddenly becomes practically the most logical.

One that knocked me upside the head once was, upon remarking "That's going to take a long time, like a year" to accomplish something, as if that made it not worth doing, being told, "That time is going to pass anyway." In other words, you can either start working towards it now, and be in a better place in a year, or let that length of time discourage you and then, when next year rolls around, still be discouraged. So just start.

“The desire for more positive experience is itself a negative experience. And, paradoxically, the acceptance of one’s negative experience is itself a positive experience. (p.9)”

That whole book by Mark Manson: https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/48297245-the-subtle-ar...

My wife once told me "no one wants to listen to you talk" when I was preparing to give a speech. It is obvious now, but I had never really thought about it. Her point wasn't that no one cares about what I have to say but that when I am done talking no one will think "I wish he would have talked longer."

When I interact with others, I try to spend most of my time understanding their viewpoint rather than talking at them about my viewpoint.

Someone once told me that you can tell you are close to burnout when you think that everyone around you is an idiot. You must be burning out because it's not plausible that literally everyone you encounter is an idiot!

I like it because it is a logical construction that can be deployed even when your own perception is distorted by stress. It has definitely functioned as an effective safety alarm and I'm sure prevented some chaos more than once.

All these responses are pretty good, and there's some valuable lessons in there. I thought of a simpler idea than most others have.

Honestly, coroutines.

Coroutines challenged everything that I had learned about programming at the time with something different, this made my program more powerful than just one line running after the other. It was mind-blowing to me as a young man, and I remember the impact setting me towards a journey of learning.

Class consciousness. So so so so much hypocrisy and confusion over seemingly contradictory things people say and do have a remarkably tendency to suddenly make sense when you apply rudimentary class analysis.

You don't even need to know what marxism or socialism are, much less agree with them, but if you haven't gotten the hang of basic class consciousness you're missing a key reality-rubric in life.

"No one on his deathbed ever said, I wish I had spent more time at the office." - Paul Tsongas

This line which, apparently, came from a famous con man:

Interviewer: "Sir, how did you get these otherwise worldly, intelligent and sophisticated people to give you whatever you wanted?"

Con Man: "You see, everyone has something that they desire above all else. If you can give them that thing, or appear to be able to give them that thing, they will give you whatever you want in return."

Ctrl + right arrow moves to the end of a word. Game. Changer.

The trump 2016 election (and even the whole presidency) was a slap in the face for some people, but if you look objectively there seem to be a bunch of unconventional truths / ideas in it. Like

- "Become a good person doesn't matter and can even look weak, being aggressive and though is more important". (I still remember jeb bush offended saying to trump that he will not 'bully his way to the presidency' while he was doing exactly that)

- "The person who talk the louder set the stage"

Funnily i was visiting "the red pill" subreddit.. it has become a very toxic subreddit but some of the concepts (like the concept of "frame") described on the sub explain trumps election. They basically say that women are basically only attracted to any display of "strength" and "dominance", wether it's good or bad. Kinda shocking, and you don't want to believe it until you try it

The thing I dislike the most about other people is often something I do myself.

So when dealing with any people-related issues, the first thing I do is reflect if it's something I do myself.

If it is, then I try to determine if its something I like about myself; if I like it, I try not letting it bother me again; if I don't like it, I change it.

That destruction is easy, creation is hard, but the most valiant, boring, thankless, and difficult task, that we should all do to some extent, is maintaining.

I don't have a name for this. A person can make a statement "X", and X can be true, but the person's act of claiming "X" was in no sense caused by "X" being true. In my head I call this "causal disconnection" or similar phrases, but it's not a good name.

The underlying idea here is that, when you are told "X", it's useful to think about the causal chain that resulted in you being told "X". Is the truth of X a powerful force in that chain? Is it one of many competing forces? Or is it, perhaps, totally irrelevant? In some sense this is a Bayesian viewpoint on the question "suppose somebody makes a claim -- how much should you update your probability that that claim is true?"

Politics obviously abounds with this, but a good non-political example is pop-sci rumors. For instance, I often hear the claim that cicadas sleep for prime-numbered years because that minimizes the probability of overlapping/conflicting/getting-caught-by other species (explanations vary). Now, without making much effort to evaluate the truth of this statement, think about what causes people to make this claim. Well, clearly, it sounds very good, so it'll spread quickly (as a meme). Now, what if the claim was false -- how much would that fact impede its spread? Probably not so much.

(Somewhat remarkably, this suggests a concrete reason to be wary of oft-repeated claims. The fact that a claim is often repeated suggests that it spreads quickly. The reason you're hearing the claim, then, may be because it spreads quickly, and not so much because it's true.)

It's really important that the truth or falsehood of the claim has nothing to do with the question of the nature of the causal chain underlying the claim.

A related idea is that one must have great respect for -- and fear of -- social processes. I'm far from fully appreciating the consequences of this. This is also related to another comment in this thread about evolutionary processes, because those are often the causal forces behind people making claims.

- Time spent working on myself (exercise, personal development) seems to improve my business

- Adding value for others is the best way I've found to achieve greater success

- (and this is very recent) consider price as a measure of value, like a liter is a measure of volume

"It's not done when you can't add to it, it's done when there's nothing left to take away."

Ken Segall (former ad executive that worked with Steve Jobs) shared this during a talk in Ann Arbor at the Michigan Theater in 2018.

"Before Enlightenment chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment chop wood, carry water".

Bell's theorem, proving Einstein's intuition was wrong, and that quantum mechanics does have some sort of a spooky action at a distance, (this or that the moon is not necessarily there when you don't look at it). E.g. we have either no locality (cause and effect can't propagate faster than light), or no realism (things don't have a "realness" until measured, e.g. the wave function mode of particles), or superdeterminism (everything is predetermined, no free will, nothing is random, not even the random behavior of quantum particles that seem the most random thing in the world)

Self-Discipline.

Specifically, a book called "How to do what you want to do" by Dr. Paul Hauck has influenced and shaped my thinking.

Intermittent fasting. These days I only have one meal a day

Milestones instead of deadlines for the creative process. Worry about hitting a certain benchmark, not a certain date.

Learned Optimism & Explanatory Style:

- Permanence: Optimists point to specific temporary causes for negative events; pessimists point to permanent causes.

- Pervasiveness: Optimistic people compartmentalize helplessness, whereas pessimistic people assume that failure in one area of life means failure in life as a whole.

- Personalization: Optimists blame bad events on causes outside of themselves, whereas pessimists blame themselves for events that occur.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_optimism

It is impossible to have a thought that does not stem from another thought or your senses (seeing, hearing etc.)

To demonstrate: it is impossible to imagine a color that is not some combination of colors you've already seen before.

Trace any idea to their origin, and you'll realize all ideas are founded upon by what you have already seen, heard etc.

New ideas can only come from discovery via the senses, or are thus simply a new combination of old ideas...

Your reality is limited by what you can sense and remember.

"The limits of my language mean the limits of my world" - Ludwig Wittgenstein

Adaptation == Learning

This was at the early stages of a lot of agent based modeling, genetic algorithms, etc., etc. And John Holland wrote a book called Adaptation in Natural and Artificial Systems[1]. The universality of the idea that "simple" adaptation is learning applied to a lot of different domains was crisp and very powerful.

1. (https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/adaptation-natural-and-artifi...)

For me, the most life-changing idea I've been exposed to continues to be from Bret Victor's¹ 2012 talk titled "Inventing on Principle"². The idea is that in addition to the two well-known paths to live one's life, there is also a third, less well-known path.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bret_Victor

[2] https://vimeo.com/36579366

Paul Graham - maker vs manager schedule. It instantly explained why I was frustrated with certain work environments and my own habits.

Reid Hoffman - his cofounder, in a video course at Stanford called blitz scaling, talks about a unique strength Reid has to focus on only the most important task and ignore all other tasks. He says, in the start up phase of a company there is literally too much to do, and for many this is overwhelming because they look at a growing list of tasks and they can become incapacitated. Reid can focus on the the bon fire, and ignore all the small bush fires without stress. For me personally, I felt broken for a long time. I worked as a lawyer and every task was almost equally important so there was always a long running list. I was overwhelmed and not as good as peers. I am honestly only able to focus on the existential bon fire tasks so when I saw this I felt instant clarity and validation. As a start up founder it’s been a super power and when the company transitions to a stable growth phase I know to hand it to someone that can focus on a broader task list.

The common principle of both is accept yourself and find a context where your strengths shine. We live in a culture that emphasizes certain traits and we can feel bad about our characteristics that seem to deviate but in reality they might be unique strengths if we were in different circumstances.

Praying to God at a party 30 years ago changed my life. I guess I felt like I was broken on the inside and the idea that some higher power could help led me to pray while sleeping on someone's sofa. I was so into the idea I went on to work for a missionary organisation with no salary at 19. After 25 years in IT I am on an accelerator programme now and feel like I am 19 again... doing something out there with no money...hopefully I will enjoy being a startup as much as I enjoyed my first job.

“You live in a mechanical universe. It’s time to start understanding that.”

I was disillusioned with myself. I was performing badly in highschool(even dropped out) I couldn’t understand why.

I wanted so badly to do something epic. I feared being an average guy and living an ordinary life.

I didn’t understand this advice at first. However, I decided that I couldn’t take the life I was living, so I decided to change.

If you accept that the universe is essentially mechanical, then you accept that there is nothing actually standing in your way. You do not have inherent bad luck, and you aren’t cursed.

Probably the best example of this is Elon Musk. The guy watched his entire fortune burn as his companies crumble. He worked 20 hour days. But what separated him was a very specific ability, and it wasn’t just his ability to work hard.

“Most people when confronted with a disastrous scenario start to make bad decisions. When that happens to Elon, he becomes hyper-rational. I’ve never met someone with his ability to take pain.”

This is a paraphrased quote from Musk’s biography, from a Tesla engineer who knew Musk personally when the company was on the verge of collapse. The ability to make hyper-rational decisions during hardship is one of the most important traits of a leader.

This advice got me through that period. I understood that everything had a cause and effect, so I decided to change. Reading made me more prepared for anything. Building and making things made me more friends.

The second you understand that we live in a mechanical universe is the second you are given the key to changing it. I may never become the next Elon Musk(asking myself how can I do it better, but that's another subject if you want to talk about it I'm happy to do so) but my life will be so much happier because I understand that it can change according to rules.

Rationality and a cause-effect mindset is an incredibly tough road to go down because there are no easy answers. When you do, however… you can change anything.

We don't live in reality, or even "see" it directly.

The reality that we live in is firstly based on perception of actual physical reality, and then also experienced/conceptualized via a proxy, which is a model of our perceived reality (and all the objects, people, and ideas within it), all implemented by a sophisticated biological neural network of sorts.

An example of how you can test this theory is to observe conversations on forums, where you will find plentiful (and ultra-confident) examples of supernatural acts like mind reading, future predicting, knowing things that are not knowable, etc.

Even more interestingly, these "beliefs" seem to be entrenched extremely deeply in the human psyche, and almost "protected" in some way, by some sort of process. Merely pointing out the obvious fact (the existence of this phenomenon) is highly unpopular. But even further, most people seem to be literally unable to even ponder the phenomenon, particularly in real-time. Abstract discussion seems much easier for most people, but rare is the person who can consistently walk the talk - personally, I only have one friend who can do it, across multiple domains (cross-domain capability is a key differentiator that separates those who can from those who cannot).

Not everything in life has to be solved, and in fact many things can't be solved. If you do enough therapy you begin to understand the fuzzy traps of the mind, and catch it falling into the "we must solve this" loop.

Often times the answers to many of our problems are obvious (that doesn't mean not-complex; i.e., an alcoholic often knows the best way to improve the quality of their life), and people aren't dumb, but they can't commit to the "solution."

As soon as you break from obsessing over solutions, you begin to break down habits and reasons why you're in the position you're in. Which has the corollary effect of, eventually, "solving" it.

Once I got good at noticing "solution loops" in my own mind I began to notice it in the conversations of friends. It's amazing how many people are stuck in sometimes multi-year loops. And so now, for life problems of a more macro scale: I a) never try to solve anything for anyone, and b) try to gently guide the conversation away from finding an explicit solution to better understanding why they may be in the position they're in.

This sounds simple / reductive, but it's one of the most powerful ideas / tools I've discovered in the last few years.

God's not real. We're just apes whose ancestors caught a lucky break when an asteroid flattened the dinosaurs 60 million years ago. We shouldn't even be here.

Life is a paradox.

The ultimate point is that there is no point. If you want something, the best way to get it is to not want it. You have to try to relax.

Humans can handle cognitive dissonance, things don't have to be logical for us to believe. We can believe two things that can't both be true at the same time. If we didn't we'd die.

Somehow life requires the ability to believe conflicting things... so in order to even begin perceiving reality, you have to be incapable of pure logic.

Realizing that time speeds up for us when we grow up. Maybe this sounds obvious and silly, but thinking not only how short life is, but also how faster and faster it passes by gives you something. (I had to pick one idea though!).

Here some article: https://qz.com/1516804/physics-explains-why-time-passes-fast...

“The universe is a cruel, uncaring void. The key to being happy isn't a search for meaning. It's to just keep yourself busy with unimportant nonsense, and eventually, you'll be dead.”

Thanks Mr.Peanutbutter

"Always deliver superlative value, and your customers will take care of you."

Changed everything.

A project is not done unless all the people who have to support it have access to all the information they need.

I have witnessed a lot conversations where support could not help them because support did not have the right information. This made a lot of people very angry.

So i started applying this rule more and more. Now only some people (mostly project leaders) are sometimes angry.

Opportunity cost.

It's relatively easy to measure how much an investment of time or money will "cost" in absolute terms.

But it's pretty unnatural to try and define the opportunities you're not going to pursue and factor them in as a cost.

Understanding opportunity cost has led me to make a few important decisions in my life that would have otherwise gone another way.

Permaculture.

First paragraph from wikipedia article:

> Permaculture is a set of design principles centered on whole systems thinking, simulating, or directly utilizing the patterns and resilient features observed in natural ecosystems. It uses these principles in a growing number of fields from regenerative agriculture, rewilding, and community resilience.

I forget where I got it from - a biography of an old professor I think

And the way he explained not holding on to things was "I had my turn being 19. I had my turn being 40. Now it's my turn to be 85". I did those things, nothing can change that -- I don't need to keep doing them lest I lose my worth or something.

Our minds are enormously flawed:

- There's a certain fidelity to any memory which you just can't get beyond, and the vast majority of memories are nowhere near that.

- Our memories warp and decay with time.

- Even our most logical thought processes have a really hard time grasping provable things like the Monty Hall problem and exponential growth.

- Cognitive biases are everywhere.

This sentence from Fight Club has had a long lasting impact on me: "The things you own, end up owning you".

There are two versions of you: the experiencing self and the remembering self. If you only pleasure the experiencing self then you make lots of short term decisions e.g. it's the experiencing self who enjoys the cake, but the remembering self gets almost no benefit from it. Worse, they have to deal with the consequences of the extra calories.

I'd convinced myself that there were things I didn't like so I wouldn't do them anymore, like travelling for long holidays. But after hearing this idea I realised sometimes the pain and inconvenience of being away from home, and being stressed by travel is a temporary pain for the experiencing self. The remembering self however gets lifelong benefit.

I use this model to analyse the cost/benefit to each persona which helps make better long term choices.

"Life is unfair." Simple, but for me it was an important insight. I used to think I deserved things, and now I know that while that might be true, you still need to be assertive to get them. There is no karma or divine intervention which will put a finger on the balance to make sure everything in life (love, friends, opportunities, adventure) is shared equally. And it goes multiple ways.

First, don't expect life to be fair and give you what you deserve. It won't. Don't expect other people to be fair towards you either. They might, and they might not.

Second, it is not always your fault when you are in a bad situation, because life is in fact unfair. Shit happens.

Third, be assertive to handle the unfairness. You need to stand up for yourself to get your fair share. And stand up for others to get theirs.

1. That getting good at something can sometimes be quick; if you have the right background. But when it's not quick - that doesn't mean you can't get good. It simply means it's a process. Experiencing the part where I'm bad at something as simply the "beginning of a progress bar" and knowing it's going somewhere, and that practice is necessary allows me to persevere and not experience frustration or a feeling of inadequacy.

I would tell this (along with a real life story to match about myself) to my employees whenever they got discouraged. As a team lead, I would often do the same work they did, so they compared themselves to me, thinking something should be easy for them just because it's easy for me at this point in time. I would tell them it's not a fair comparison to make - I have several years of additional experience doing this compared to you, and I've done this a thousand times, while they're doing this the first time. Of course it appears easier to me - I've had practice, and that's all the difference between them and me, not intelligence or some other trait they have no direct effect on.

2. Evaluating my own and others' ideas through a set of explicit criteria (asking yourself "what does the solution to this problem need to solve in order to be considered adequate?") keeps me from falling in love with my ideas or solutions to problems. For example, my specific implementation for some software might look good to me. If someone else shows up with a different solution (e.g. during code review), then those criteria are the questions I need to ask them to verify that it is indeed a better solution, and that it doesn't overshoot what's needed. If it is better by those criteria, then there's no reason not to toss my idea aside and use theirs.

Of course, this concept also applies to the criteria themselves - someone else might convince me that my criteria are wrong, by noting that some of them are not explained by a greater goal (such as the larger task at hand -- the company's mission, turning a profit, etc.), and so on.

The Tyranny of Structurelessness. My shallow interpretation of it is essentially: wherever there's a group of people, there's politics.

https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm

Exponential growth. Learned properly when I was maybe 7 or 8 years old. I was learning about the game of chess, and the story describes that the reward for the inventor was one seed of grain on the first square, double that on the second, double that on the third... and so on.

Rationality is self-contradictory, and part of your own motivations will always be irrational.

As a consequence, at some level, you have to stop worrying about economic consequences of your actions on you. It is, in particular, rejection of utility maximization as a human motivator, because there has to be something more, something that cannot be measured.

And empirically, it seems that people who we recognize as creators or inventors have mostly not done the things they have done for pure economic profit, but they have been driven by something else, that cannot be explained in economic terms.

Also related to this is my earlier comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22964404

1) Give yourself time, not too much and not too little, to spend alone. Then spend as much as you can with or talking to others who would return the gesture.

2) Most work, especially in tech, isn't that important and won't change anything, so reduce your sacrifice for some company. Whatever SaaS thing you're working on to save small business owners 5 minutes a day just isn't worth your mental health, and some aspects of American industrialism is toxic af. I used to think of Apple as a world changing product designer, but later I realized that it's just a company with a vaguely interesting story, and one that does make well-designed objects, but most people could do without their iPhones for a long time and be better off.

"When dealing with people, let us remember we are not dealing with creatures of logic. We are dealing with creatures of emotion, creatures bristling with prejudices and motivated by pride and vanity." ― Dale Carnegie

I think my friends would say that I am rational and calm under fire. I always knew that people have emotions and just thought, that I am pretty good at handling mine. However, the more I thought about the quote above, the more I realized, that only about 10%-20% of my decisions are rational. The other 80%-90% are driven by my emotional state and my mind just saying 'Do what you like, it's not critical'.

Accepting that humans are mostly driven by their emotions helped me understand and predict their actions.

Mindfulness.

Lately I've been reading/listening to Eckhart Tolle.

I'm a recently retired (IT Exec) and wish I'd have adopted some of these ideals earlier in life e.g. stop fretting over the future and dwelling on the past. Stay firmly routed in the moment and savour it.

"Let's have a child!"

In junior high school, at the end of the brief morning announcements broadcast to all classrooms, the principal would end with some quote. One stuck with me, and was something like this:

The character of a man is revealed by how he behaves when he knows he won't be caught.

Probability distributions.

"It is always better to not have a problem than to mitigate it", from this article that John Carmack wrote several years back[1]. In the context of the article it feels almost like a throwaway line, but I've found it to be deeply profound and it has since affected how I choose potential solutions in almost any situation. Should I do the "quick fix" (mitigating a problem), or would it be better if the problem _didn't exist in the first place_?

[1]: https://www.wired.com/2013/02/john-carmacks-latency-mitigati...

The idea that maybe there really is a God after all, and that it's a cop out to assume that, just because it's unlikely for us to know for sure, therefore no breadcrumb trails about God or religion are really worth following.

I'm unable to describe the magnitude of the amazingness of the world I found, simply by wanting to believe that God is real, and then finding out that the Resurrection actually did happen. Anyone who does enough research on this topic and has a good and honest heart will eventually become Catholic.

God how I wish I had looked into this years earlier, but I didn't because I assumed it was just too unlikely to be worth investigating. What an awfully powerful fallacy.

I just saw a similar tweet thread last night

https://twitter.com/orangebook_/status/1257710884719333376?s...

Some gems in there.

When you are surrounded by assholes, chances are that it's you who is the asshole.

Changing feedback loops has a much higher impact on a system than changing variables.

Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night: "You are what you pretend to be"

Nobody knows what you think or what you intend. Only what you do and what you say. On the flip side, you should judge people on their actions and not their hidden intentions.

Pursuit of knowledge should be a goal until your last breath. Never stop learning. Learn about new things that aren't necessarily related to your career. Use what you learn as a launching pad to explore even wider areas.

Things happen because they can. Like a vacuum that gets filled, just because it can be filled.

(The thought came at a time of mental rut, and thinking that I cannot contribute further to the idea I had)

Things get discovered/invented just because they can. If you were to stop existing at this moment, it'd still get made. The best you can do is accelerate the process. If it can exist, it will be brought into existence. The only thing you can influence is the time at which it'll start existing.

Basically led to me pacing down my life and stop living with the constant stress of "I got to make it or it'll never exist".

Selfishness is a strong motivator and one that remains consistently in your life.

You will change your country, city, neighbours, partner, community, and company once you are no longer satisfied with them.

The motivation to improve those is temporary. The motivation to improve your life and you remains till the day you die. The want to live healthier, happier, and better.

The distinction is important because motivation resulting from my selfishness is responsible for things I do for others. That means, I am only improving myself by bettering the environment I live in and everything that exists in it but my end goal still remains a better me.

Understand that failure is not the opposite of success. Failure is an essential part of success. Once you succeed, no one will remember your failures anyway. Microsoft wasn’t Bill Gates’ and Paul Allen’s first business venture. Who remembers that their original Traf-o-Data business was a flop? The actor Jim Carey was booed off many a stage while a young comedian. We have electric light bulbs because Thomas Edison refused to give up even after 10,000 failed experiments. If the word “failure” is anathema to you, then reframe it: You either succeed, or you have a learning experience.

--Steve Pavlina

Happiness depends on the discrepancy between expectations and reality.

Your mind has a simulated copy of reality. The more you develop opinions about the future based on this copy, the more likely that they are out of sync by the time the future comes.

Seeing these two as separate, and their distance as something that hurts, has made me wary of elaborating my expectations. I dream about stuff I consider important and this category shrinks with age.

I’m not saying don’t plan/dream/hope. Just pick your battles and focus your efforts on the ones you decide to keep. Otherwise, just go with the flow.

I read this in a book once:

"Never settle for anything less than you know you deserve".

Sounds simple and obvious, but when you are under pressure it is easy to give up and convince yourself you're not good enough for whatever it is you are aiming at. It always pays to aim higher. The thing you want to achieve may be hard, it may take a long time, it may not even be entirely possible, but if you keep telling yourself you don't deserve this or that sooner or later you start believing it and then your chance of achieving it is completely destroyed.

I read this in a book once:

"Never settle for anything less than what you know you deserve".

Sounds simple and obvious, but when you are under pressure it is easy to give up and convince yourself you're not good enough for whatever it is you are aiming at. It always pays to aim higher. The thing you want to achieve may be hard, it may take a long time, it may not even be entirely possible, but if you keep telling yourself you don't deserve this or that sooner or later you start believing it and then your chance of achieving it is destroyed.

There is a lot of time spent waiting that can be used for learning, thinking or other useful activities. If we just spend a little time each day improving our lives, it adds up.

The Central Limit Theorem.

It's hard to explain the precise way in which an understanding of the central limit theorem has changed my life. However, knowing how any random distribution sums up to a Gaussian has subtly changed how I perceive and comprehend the world around me. Over time, this has added to a significant number of choices and decisions that I've subconsciously made, informed only by rough estimates of a mean value and it's standard deviation.

"You're not co-workers, you're co-owners" and "you are both right, even when you are saying opposite things"

This really helped my relationships with loved ones. It's not about chores and the lack of doing them. Or about who is right in an argument. It's about both of you deciding what to do as equals, accepting differences, and loving each other especially when you don't like each other right then.

This is Water https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CrOL-ydFMI

The concept of Comparative Advantage unlocked a helpful perspective on politics for me. It led me to shed a series of errors in thinking by confronting me with the idea that a lot of critical political issues are complicated and non-obvious.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage

Don't worry about remembering facts; instead, seek to understand how and why things are the way they are. By understanding deeper reasons behind things, the facts will make contextual sense, and will be much easier to recall, or if necessary, to deduce. This can apply essentially anywhere, from physics formulas to historical events to programming conventions to political actions.

Stumbling upon "Latticework of Mental Models" concept of Charlie Munger [1] really helped me over the years to develop mental clarity, ignore noise and focus on fundamentals in many aspects of life.

[1] https://fs.blog/intellectual-giants/charlie-munger/

The tradeoff between exploration and exploitation.

Profound Ignorance. The more you think you know, the less able you are to learn anything. Being profoundly ignorant doesn't reduce your ability to do anything in life, but it can be uncomfortable for both yourself and others around you. We like thinking we know things, we like hanging with people who know things, whether anybody knows anything or not.

All ideas/technology are living organisms:

- they reproduce imperfectly through a two stage process.

- First they 'infect' a human (human sees tech or is told idea), then they replicate when that human manifests or speaks that idea to others

- Through this imperfect replication, ideas/tech evolve over time

If we believe life is inherently valuable, we should consider our stewardship of the kingdom of ideas.

Spend less time looking at a screen. Spend more time outside and/or around people I enjoy.

(Note: I'm more extroverted than introverted.)

That's easy.

You're actually tripping all of the time. Except when you're not.

And you know when you're not. But you don't know when you are.

You can stop tripping for a moment, any time you like. I find it easy to do with Wim Hof breathing, but I'm sure there are other ways of getting that. Point is, then you find out that you were tripping. Or you were being led.

Nothing (or nearly nothing) is black and white. It's shades of gray. Understand where _this thing_ is at on the spectrum.

You've only failed if you stop trying.

In my case go homeless or die is what it means to fail.

edit: granted I'm not trying to split an atom or something crazy like that, but yeah. The fear of failure is always in the back of my mind.(currently means lose job/debt or generally just making an ass of myself eg. in meetings/srum/professional convo)

Wanting to improve my handstands by easily tracking them, I came up with an app idea to leverage voice to work out.

Not only is the idea becoming real, but I learned so much that I would not have been able to learn in daily job.

More about it: https://www.handstandquest.com/

You don't HAVE to finish reading a book.

People do not understand exponential growth.

1. Lisp code is not text. An S-expression is distinct from the serialization of that S-expression into text. This is the unique feature that distinguishes Lisp from all other programming languages.

2. Measurement and entanglement are the same physical phenomenon.

3. Most people's lives suck. This is a big reason they sometimes act like dicks.

Splitting (also called black-and-white thinking or all-or-nothing thinking) was debilitating well into my adolescence.

Effectuation: https://innovationenglish.sites.ku.dk/model/sarasvathy-effec...

Entrepreneurship is a process. Effectuation helps to explain how opportunities are not just discovered but made.

Reading about alchemy, especially the concept of transmutation, has inspired my life in numerous ways. I would also suggest reading The Kybalion which, if I recall correctly, is about Gnosticism more than alchemy? Anyway, it has some great general concepts to open up your imagination, plus the prose is beautiful.

Mental health has `health` in the name for a reason - it can deteriorate and there is no shame in needing external help to heal.

Realizing this after listening to an interview with one of my favorite musicians really helped me approach my (at that point) deteriorating mental health from a different perspective and feel better.

if it's only one, then it is the idea that "the word creates objects", or that "creating a word, makes the object", and the power of language

for example, you can take some time to study a language, until it becomes impossible for you to not understand it when you perceive it, it becomes a part of you, of both your cognitive self and your subconscious, and you can encapsulate all of that, saying that "you grok the language"

you can also see this in a lot of places, instead of "the study of the properties of matter in relation to heat and temperature", you can say "thermodynamics", and you instantly convey a lot of meaning

and this has "given me" some moments where "a lot of pieces fall into place", like understanding that a less general version of this, is the Abstraction taught at CS classes, where it is about computational systems, and hiding implementation details, rather than the more general idea of encapsulating the understanding complex ideas, in short sentences (or words)

it's the title of an Essay I had to read in high school, when I read it, rather than the message it was supposed to convey, which is how language gave women a lesser standing in society, I got really interested in the title, in Spanish it's "La palabra crea objetos"

there are also others, like how "you don't really have to do anything, other than deal with the consequences of your decision to do, or not do something", you don't have to eat, but if you don't, you have to deal with the consequences, it gave me a more concrete feeling that that our choices shape our lives

and how everything is connected, in the way that when there was a terrorist attack in NY, thousands of miles away, in another country the price of fish and shrimp dramatically drops, in that the space station's parts were influenced by the Roman Empire, and in that war has driven a lot of the development of science and technology

The simplest version is my best choice is the one that, given your possible choice, provides me the greatest outcome or the basis of Game Theory. Everyone is working both together and against each other and taking other choices into account can educate your decisions and lead to better outcomes for all.

I don't remember where I got it, but "do the important, not the urgent" help me focus my life.

Also, the central message from (the otherwise mediocre) Coelho‘s The Alchemist novel teach me at 25 that I didn't have to conform to living the life of an unhappy low-grade employee for the rest of my life.

Understanding is a poor substitute to convexity.

There is no such thing as rationality of belief, only rationality of action.

both by NN Taleb.

For me its practical application of objectivity: Any person who touts the superiority of their proposed opinion is not somebody you should trust. Any given opinion is superior or not on its merits. That distinction is the difference between a subjective person and an objective person.

Kiichiro Toyoda was a good engineer and thinker.

I learned from him to ask 5 whys when there's a problem.

Changed my understanding about understanding, have found my self in multiverses.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_whys

That our responses and our negative relational feelings are based on out own choice - Nobody makes me feel angry, victimized, as a failure - it is always my choice to feel those feelings.

It is not always i am able to choose not to feel it, but i always know i am feeling it because of my own choosing.

Language is thought.

But like the chicken and egg paradox, how can one come before the other? I was incapable (I think) of formulating even the concept of "Gestalt" until I had heard the word for it, had it explained to me.

Now I see the concept of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts everywhere.

Try to be truthful to others. Always be truthful to yourself.

Recognizing reality is a surprisingly difficult thing. Our perceptions are clouded by bias, wishful thinking and outright deception. The truth is the only foundation from which you can faithfully apply judgement to address any situation.

Not to be afraid of taking the road less traveled by. It is not going to be easy, but needs to be done.

"Once you've understood the core of your problem, the rest is merely millions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of man-hours"

My high school physics teacher, the only one who believed in me, whom I continue to disappoint every day by not achieving a Nobel prize in physics.

"Say yes more" - from reading the book "Yes man" by Danny Wallace. It's a light and not-too-serious read, but I was much influenced by that central message.

It got me outside of my comfort zone and the resulting experiences changed my life in lots of positive ways.

We don't get a practice life. There's no "play again." Make the most of it.

Money really does buy happiness.

To a point, anyways. Vacations, homes in safe neighborhoods, the best schools for your kids, drugs, hookers, technology gadgets, early retirement, just about anything is more accessible if you are wealthy.

The day I realized this was a disappointing day.

Rust's "borrow checker" https://doc.rust-lang.org/1.8.0/book/references-and-borrowin...

There have been many. (I collect ideas.)

The single most important and far-reaching idea that changed my life is simple to state:

All are One.

Oddly enough it was Hofstadter's GEB[1] that clued me and not a religious or spiritual book. Somehow I directly intuited that the "strange loop" at the core of each being was none other than the Universal "strange loop" at the core of everything.

"Thou art That."

The thing that is both speaking and being said.

You have a body but you are not your body; you have emotions but you are not your emotions; you have thoughts but you are not your thoughts; you have will but you are not your will. You are that which is awareness: Being-Consciousness-Bliss Sat-Chit-Ananda.[2]

From this, all morality and ethics flow easily and firmly.

One can walk down the street and watch the expressions on peoples faces change as they are observed from this context or viewpoint. Toughs melt into shy little boys and old ladies smile.

On the subject of bliss: it's not an emotion. It's more like gravity or electricity, fundamental and physical. (Just something I wanted to record.)

[1] "Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gödel,_Escher,_Bach

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satcitananda

What are the most important problems in your field? If you're not working on them, why not?

From Hamming

“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.”

Decency, summarised.

The tale of the man who wanted to know what the torah meant in TL;DR form. Various rabbis chased him off for asking until he came to rabbi Hillel who told him "That which is repugnant to you do not to to others. That is the whole of the torah".

There are many forms of that[0] but for some reason this one stayed with me strongest despite being an atheist.

[0] At the other end of the scale but just as fine: "Be excellent to each other!"

No one is out there to help me (other than family). Everyone is trying to advance their own interests and wealth. Once I learned that this was true above all else, I started pushing my own life forward as opposed to waiting to be pushed.

From Buckminster Fuller, retold to me by Brandur Leach:

> Do more and more with less and less until eventually you can do everything with nothing.

[https://brandur.org/minimalism]

Giving, without expecting something in return.

I used to be very calculating, if I do this, what will I get from person X, what will person Y think of me.

Now I just do, what I want. What I think and feel is right. And I give freely, of what I have. Sharing feels good.

The concept of opportunity cost.

"Are the people I'm following going where I wanna go?" Earl Nightingale

"She who chases two rabbits catches none" - Confucius, apparently.

Keeps me on task.

I don’t know if I read this somewhere or was told it: “you can do whatever you want, as long as you accept the consequences and can pay the price.”

I find the hardest part discovering what to do, but even that has a price and consequences ;D

That you are the average of your five closest friends. In other words, if you would like to achieve or become something, surround yourself with people who are also focused on (or have already achieved) that goal.

Not sure where this originated, but I learned it from one of my martial arts teachers growing up:

You know what you know. You know what you don’t know. You don’t know what you know. You don’t know what you don’t know.

Reprap.

From Adrian Boyer's start, we all can have the means of production on our desk. I can start with some plastic spool, and have finished structural pieces to do what I wish.

It's the first major step to a replicator.

Hyper Iteration

This concept changed my life and career in a big way!

I first heard about hyper iteration (my name for it) in a story[1] about Paul MacCready, a guy who built the first human-powered airplane.

He achieved this goal by changing how he attacked the problem. Rather than focusing on the larger goal, he built a machine that enabled him to test new human-powered flight theories on a daily basis. This enabled him to run hundreds of tests. The other teams trying to achieve this goal took 6-12 months for each iteration.

With regard to startups our entire startup journey consists of a loop of asking one single question:

If I do this, will it work?

As we build we ask that one question over and over again:

- Will this new feature help me get more customers?

- Will advertising on Facebook help me make more sales?

- Etc.

The faster we can iterate each answer to that question, the faster we can achieve great things!

So basically, just always think abut any task you have to do and work out is there a faster way to get the answer?

i.e Spend 9 months building a mobile on demand platform to deliver coffee and see if people want the service? Or spend a week printing up business cards with "we deliver coffee" and hand them out in the street. See if anyone calls.

9 months vs 1 week to start learning about that particular product ;)

But really it works in many contexts, just spend some thinking time to find the absolute fastest way to iterate at all times.

[1] https://signalvnoise.com/posts/2861-how-nature-and-naivet-he...

Everything that happens to me is a consequence of decisions I have made based on decisions others have made based on decisions others have made... Everything is playing out how it should.

"Homo Economicus": that we all act out of rational self-interest, subject to mental and physical constraints (though few are conscious of the reasons they act as they do).

Differentiation of Self

https://thebowencenter.org/theory/eight-concepts/

Two sets of ideas:

1. Getting Things Done (David Allen) as a system to organize and reorganize my life, 2. How to win friends and influence people (Dale Carnegie), as a way of treating other people

"Never waste a chance to pee" -- grandpa

def changed my life for the better

"Don't become a philosopher until you become rich."

"Do what you made for" When my mind tells me this, I get energized and start to work and complete lots of things. This particular words gives me all the focus I need.

The basic function of a healthy psyche is to withstand reality and adapt to it. (don't remember the author, it's a common concept in psychotherapy circles)

Math is the eternal truth. Any physical implementation of a solution to a problem relies on the manipulation of abstract symbols. Math is truth, the rest is details.

Your external world is only a reflection of your inner state.

Here is a smart one : Being wise is better than being smart.

It is impossible to think of anything at all in the world, or indeed even beyond it, that could be taken to be good without limitation, except a good will.

The more you scare people, the more they will pay you

A few things:

Adults are just winging it. The ones who don't seem like they are pretend the hardest.

The world is only as cruel as you help make it. Be kind.

I'm distinct from the voice in my head.

You must believe to see; not see to believe.

"Starting the work is two thirds of it."

I wish I knew the source of this but my parents used to say it was a Welsh proverb.

Ego is a myth. Everything is connected and is one. Our mind creates boundaries and give names for practical reason.

Get angry, but first decide if it matters.

The idea of impermanence in Buddhism that completely changed the way I've been seeing the world and myself.

“Everything in moderation, including moderation.” -- Oscar Wilde

I've found it to be an excellent philosophy to live by.

Something I follow now, but didn’t until I was 35 or so: rise early.

A lot of very good things follow from just doing this.

You CAN have your cake and eat it too.

- I don't need to eat every day

The most important thing to know about your tasks is WHY you need to do them. Connecting my TODO list items all the way to Maslow's categories of needs has resolved all of my task motivation, categorization and prioritization struggles.

Corollary, which you hear sometimes in investors' blog posts: not all problems are worth the effort, only valuable problems are.

Clean your desk before you do work

“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” - Samuel Beckett

Not sure if "idea", but the word that comes to my mind is "meditation".

"Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution" Dobzhansky.

Good ideas are grown, not found.

Engage your core when doing any physical activity.

Might be the difference between success and injury.

Bayes Rule.

Reading Joseph Albahari's Threading in C#. Must read for .Net Developer.

That which seems very important today, will seem far less important tomorrow.

When you have finished doing konmarie externally, begin doing it internally.

That the existence of infinity and eternity is the most probable hypothesis.

The Sunk Cost fallacy, with the peripherally related Opportunity Cost.

"Be proactive, not reactive."

and

"Effectiveness is more important than intelligence."

The fast Fourier transform and related topics in stochastic processes.

The greatest strengths are almost always also the greatest weaknesses.

The past and future are memory and fantasy. There is only this now.

Side note: This is probably a good place to discover mental models.

The idea of marginal utility (among other ideas of economic theory)

"Keep your identity small." From a Paul Graham essay.

There doesn't have to be a loser. Win-win is an option.

The 9 alignments from the Baldur's Gate series.

Everything is a metaphor. Literally everything.

You don't have to believe your thoughts.

Consciousness may not come from the brain

Our thoughts are subconsciously motivated

“The internet is going to be a big deal”

Chase curiousity, don't chase money

Love how @naval answered like 600 times

A bowl is most useful when it is empty.

The boot theory of economic inequality.

Practice is not the same as execution

Love is the law. Love under will.

Iterated Prisoners' Dilemma

Time is the absence of balance

Courage Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Skepticism.

Stoicism.

Everything is a remix

Solipsism is correct.

Knowledge, by itself, isn't power. The sharing of knowledge is power.

Information theory

Pick your battles.

Every cool thing from the underground ends up mainstream in a predictable pattern.

Article: https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths

"Is."

Credit Default Swaps

good times

have a secret - peter thiel

Nofap.

Astrology.

Recursion

Why?

The idea that science education is profoundly and pervasively dysfunctional.

It was a slowly accumulating realization. There was Feynman's critique of rote memorization in Brazil[1], but ok, Brasil isn't CaTech. And Mexico high-school graduates having TIMSS scores similar to US high-school dropouts, but oh well, that's Mexico. And news media have a trope, like "Harvard MBA students don't know what causes Earth seasons", but that's merely misunderstanding the nature of expertise -- if someone last studied a topic in middle school, then a middle-school-like understanding shouldn't come as a surprise. Similarly for grad and undergrad, professors and grad school. MIT and Harvard graduates being unable to light a bulb with a battery and wire[2], that seemed more bizarre. But by the time I saw Eric Mazur's (Harvard, intro physics) "it became clear that in spite of high evaluations, and in spite of good performance, my students were not really learning very much"[3], it didn't come as a surprise. Though it could still felt odd, for a time. Talking with first-tier medical school graduate students, with no clue how big blood cells are, beyond "really really small". Asking first-tier astronomy graduate students, "a five-year old asks you 'I'm told the Sun is a big hot ball [...] what color is the ball?'"... and of the very few who didn't get it wrong, half-ish learned it as "common misconceptions in astronomy education", rather from their own, atypically extensive and successful education. A follow-up of "what color is sunlight?" repeatedly produces these cute, not "aha!", but "uh oh" moments... the "that doesn't make sense, does it..." of two conflicting bits of unintegrated knowledge colliding for the first time. I no longer find it even slightly odd when a physical sciences gradate student tells me the Sun doesn't have a color, or is rainbow color. A person's understanding very rapidly becomes ramshackle as they move beyond their active research focus. And education content is pervasively authored beyond that. Far far beyond. Chemistry education research describes chemistry education content using adjectives like "incoherent". To be fair, rote education in Brasil and elsewhere achieves... something, some societal value. And ours does too, and more of it. But now when I occasionally encounter someone who thinks of science education as working... it's become an exercise of empathy and imagination to picture how that might be a plausible description of the world.

[1] From "Surely You're Joking[...]" "In regard to education in Brazil, I had a very interesting experience." https://v.cx/2010/04/feynman-brazil-education [2] "Minds of Our Own" clip https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ng5qzH39nyg full 1997 https://www.learner.org/series/minds-of-our-own/1-can-we-bel... [3] Eric Mazur's "Confessions[...]" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwslBPj8GgI&t=920

open-source software

That free market capitalism is a good system that works. I grew up in a family that pretty much believed the opposite so I probably never would have become an entrepreneur otherwise. I mainly credit Milton Friedman's "Free to Choose" series for persuading me, as well as some of Paul Graham's essays.

open your mind

recursion.

peace

evolution

bitcoin

Toilet paper.

That doing the right thing, even when it seems unfair, even when I shouldn't have to, always works out for the best.

Doing the selfish thing, even if I'm justified, even if it makes sense, ultimately never leads to getting what I want.

All culture is a lie which only persists through re-telling.

Execution matters more than an idea.

The misguided idea that there is more than one sense of something being someone’s data, and that thus, some how, the public has eternal right to any comment I make in Hacker News.

As expressed here by Paul Graham https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6813226 and enforced with blind loyalty by Daniel Gackle who repeatedly refuses to delete my stuff instead spending his nights examining and debating the minute details of my words deciding which should or should not be deleted.

If this misguided idea never existed, HN would be like all normal web services, the user would have a delete button and my life would be better.

But, the idea and the power position it allows are here, and my life is changed for the worse.

Bitcoin.

“Nothing, absolutely nothing, happens in God's world by mistake.”

The Bitcoin whitepaper. It's the American constitution of the internet.

Compounding, growth etc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O133ppiVnWY

Taught me the logical impossibility of the stock market to go up by x% per year, forever.

Taught me that getting better today (however small) can give resources to getting better(er?) tomorrow.

Taught me that many "experts" just say whatever to get voted in or to get a budget without regards to the absurdity of their own statements, and that many people eat up this kind of absurdity without fact checking / validating it.