flâneur

Joshua Muthu

17 followers · 23 following · 780 views

on the atlas — 115

highlights — 53

  • declaring he was instructed by the sea goddess Mazu in a dream to contest the election.
    Terry_Gou
  • What should you do if you're young and ambitious but don't know what to work on? What you should not do is drift along passively, assuming the problem will solve itself. You need to take action. But there is no systematic procedure you can follow. When you read biographies of people who've done great work, it's remarkable how much luck is involved. They discover what to work on as a result of a chance meeting, or by reading a book they happen to pick up. So you need to make yourself a big target for luck, and the way to do that is to be curious. Try lots of things, meet lots of people, read lo…
    How to Do Great Work
  • There’s a 12-year-old kid who had the same dreams as I did. Too bad he was born in Gaza and was blown up last week for reasons he could never comprehend. Why is it fair that I can chase my dreams and he can’t? I didn’t do anything special to be born in a first world country. I just got lucky. I think I want to do work that would help everyone on earth.
    Siddharth Kambli
  • Also, note that the FEP is unfalsifiable since it is mathematically true. It is a principle, not a theory. The right question is not to ask “is the FEP true?”. Because the answer to this question is yes, it is tautologically true in math-land, like all theorems, if you include all the assumptions. The right question is to ask “do the assumptions of the FEP apply to the system I am modeling?”. If the assumptions do in fact hold true, you can then construct falsifiable theories about the system by making specific modeling choices (i.e. picking a specific generative model – this sentence will mak…
    Explaining the Free Energy Principle to my past self
  • Formal processes are mostly beneficial and they’re not going anywhere. Any complex modern society would collapse without them. Not every formal process is an accountability sink. A process you design and impose upon yourself doesn’t absolve you of responsibility when things go wrong. You remain accountable. On the other hand, a process imposed upon you from above often incentivizes blind adherence, even when it’s hurting the stated goals. Not every accountability sink leads to rigidity and cover-ups. A process can be designed in such a way as to shield those affected from the accountability, b…
    Accountability Sinks - by Martin Sustrik - 250bpm
  • And if the result of Washer giving a honest report about the incident is that a second ground radar is purchased, that the interfering lights are relocated, or that various less important auxiliary tasks are not performed by the flight controller in charge, the effect on air traffic safety is a much bigger than what could be achieved by firing Wascher. Quite the opposite: Punishing her would have a chilling effect on other experienced controllers. At least some of them would be unwilling to take responsibility for things beyond their control and would eventually leave just to be replaced by le…
    Accountability Sinks - by Martin Sustrik - 250bpm
  • And if that was the case, then the true cause of the disaster lay somewhere higher, with the way air traffic control was handled at LAX on a systemic level.
    Accountability Sinks - by Martin Sustrik - 250bpm
  • First, as already mentioned, formal processes are, more often than not, good and useful. They increase efficiency and safety. They act as a store of tacit organizational knowledge. Getting rid of them would make the society collapse.
    Accountability Sinks - by Martin Sustrik - 250bpm
  • Formal processes may be great for improving efficiency. The decision is made once and then applied over and over again, getting the economies of scale. Formal processes may improve safety, as when a pilot goes over a check list before the take-off. Are flight controls free and correct? Are all the doors and windows locked? And so further and so on. Processes also serve as repositories of institutional memory. They carry lessons from countless past cases, often unknown to the person following the process. Problems once encountered, solutions once devised, all of that is encoded into a set of st…
    Accountability Sinks - by Martin Sustrik - 250bpm
  • In any organization, incentives to replace human judgement by process are strong. Decisions may be controversial. More often than not someone's interests are at play and any decision is going to cause at least some bitterness, resentment and pushback. Introducing a non-personal process allows the decision to be made in automated manner, without anyone being responsible, without anyone having to feel guilty for hurting other people.
    Accountability Sinks - by Martin Sustrik - 250bpm
  • Something that used to be a matter of human judgement gets replaced by a formal process. Suddenly, nobody makes any deliberate decisions. Instead, a formal process is followed. In fact, the process may be executed on a computer, with no human involvement at all. There's nobody to blame for anything. There’s nobody to complain to when the process goes awry. Everybody’s ass is safely covered.
    Accountability Sinks - by Martin Sustrik - 250bpm
  • what jumps out at me is the implication that you're not working on something important that you'll endorse in retrospect.
    Prioritizing Work
  • Writing about your emotions necessitates and encourages a tendency to ascribe a lot of significance to your emotions.
    The pleasures and pitfalls of writing about yourself
  • We sleep, we watch Netflix, we smoke, we have sex, we laugh at cat memes and lie tangled in the sheets on a Saturday morning. On other days, we get out of bed, we comb our hair, we make witty comments in work meetings, we form mental models and test them out, we try to figure out what the world is all about, and - if we’re lucky - leave a legacy. This is what it means to be both animal and God: that particular human ability to hold both lowbrow and highbrow in a single state and, depending on the moment, dissemble and disavow knowledge of either one.
    Nadia Asparouhova | Between animal and God
  • My life philosophy is simple: hard work in the service of something greater than myself is what makes me happy. I am deeply grateful for all the amazing mentors that I have had throughout my life and I am keen to help others reach their potential. Do not hesitate to contact me if you are an enthusiastic undergraduate/PhD student and feel like you would benefit from some advice! I was lost for a long time: not knowing what to study, what research topics to choose, what is the meaning of all of this and at each step having people that guided me proved to be essential, so I am happy to return the…
    About — Ruxandra Tesloianu
  • God only knows whether they ever asked themselves for what purpose life had been given them. Did they, at all events, return themselves any answer to that question? No, no answer at all, since the whole thing seemed to them at once simple and clear. Had they, then, never heard of a hard life wherein people walk with anxious hearts, and roam the face of the earth, and devote their existence to everlasting toil? No, the good folk of Oblomovka had no belief in disturbing the mind; they never adopted as their mode of life a round of ceaseless aspirations somewhither, and towards an indefinite end.…
    The Project Gutenberg eBook of Oblomov, by Ivan Goncharov
  • “How happy I am!” was her frequent reflection. Yet, no sooner had she passed her life in admiring review than she would find herself relapsing into a meditative mood. What a curious person she was!—a person who, in proportion as her felicity became more, complete, plunged ever deeper and deeper into a brooding over the past! Delving mto the recesses of her own mind, she began to realize that this peaceful existence, this halting at various stages of felicity, annoyed her. However, with an effort of will she shook her soul clear of this despondency, and quickened her steps through life in a fev…
    The Project Gutenberg eBook of Oblomov, by Ivan Goncharov
  • More than anyone I know, I want you to see your innate worth, which is so completely obvious from the outside, but apparently concealed to you by habitual mental distortion.
    An open letter to 56 people I know - by Sasha Chapin
  • How much “value” is derived from the time you put in? is only a valid question relative to a value system, and I value artistry and attentiveness more than innovation or impact. I want to be an artist. I don’t necessarily want to constantly push myself. I don’t want unconventional success. Or maybe I do? Maybe I don’t know, and that’s okay too. I’m not too averse to impact and emerging tech, but I don’t want it to be totalizing. Maybe I’ll go back to it in the future, I don’t know. Both are okay!
    i was half myself without you, now i feel so complete
  • Don’t be so uptight about spending your time in the most efficient way. Who cares, you’re 16.
    i was half myself without you, now i feel so complete
  • Sit with your feelings; let them mellow. You cannot speedrun growth. Nuance.
    i was half myself without you, now i feel so complete
  • You will encounter some powerful memes. People will tell you that you have to do interesting, innovative, and impactful things, and this is the way you have to do that. It is not true. There are many paths to God.
    i was half myself without you, now i feel so complete
  • I needed friends to tell me these feelings were valid: it was the only thread keeping me sane.
    i was half myself without you, now i feel so complete
  • They say they are open-minded and open to criticism, so when you tell them that something feels off, they ask you to point to it, to justify it, but you can’t quite, so you shut your mouth and convince yourself that nothing is wrong. (You’re just a teenager!)
    i was half myself without you, now i feel so complete
  • …I would feel a rush of vertigo, a feeling that yes yes yes this is happening and I should want to capitalize and … wow they are colonizing Mars this century, I can be part of that … the world is exciting…
    i was half myself without you, now i feel so complete
  • I’d love to eventually impact the world. I just read a sixty-thousand word article on SpaceX, they’re trying to make humanity multiplanetary and everything, that’s so cool, yes, I’d love to found something like that one day, and TKS is the best training ground for that.
    i was half myself without you, now i feel so complete
  • I was that worked-up kid with big dreams and no direction
    i was half myself without you, now i feel so complete
  • When you let your mind wander, it wanders to whatever you care about most at that moment. So avoid the kind of distraction that pushes your work out of the top spot, or you'll waste this valuable type of thinking on the distraction instead.
    How to Do Great Work
  • The reason we're surprised is that we underestimate the cumulative effect of work. Writing a page a day doesn't sound like much, but if you do it every day you'll write a book a year. That's the key: consistency. People who do great things don't get a lot done every day. They get something done, rather than nothing.
    How to Do Great Work
  • [9] You can't usually get paid for doing exactly what you want, especially early on. There are two options: get paid for doing work close to what you want and hope to push it closer, or get paid for doing something else entirely and do your own projects on the side. Both can work, but both have drawbacks: in the first approach your work is compromised by default, and in the second you have to fight to get time to do it.
    How to Do Great Work
  • One reason per-project procrastination is so dangerous is that it usually camouflages itself as work. You're not just sitting around doing nothing; you're working industriously on something else. So per-project procrastination doesn't set off the alarms that per-day procrastination does. You're too busy to notice it. The way to beat it is to stop occasionally and ask yourself: Am I working on what I most want to work on? When you're young it's ok if the answer is sometimes no, but this gets increasingly dangerous as you get older. [9]
    How to Do Great Work
  • [8] Just as we overestimate what we can do in a day and underestimate what we can do over several years, we overestimate the damage done by procrastinating for a day and underestimate the damage done by procrastinating for several years.
    How to Do Great Work
  • It will probably be harder to start working than to keep working. You'll often have to trick yourself to get over that initial threshold. Don't worry about this; it's the nature of work, not a flaw in your character. Work has a sort of activation energy, both per day and per project. And since this threshold is fake in the sense that it's higher than the energy required to keep going, it's ok to tell yourself a lie of corresponding magnitude to get over it.
    How to Do Great Work
  • I think for most people who want to do great work, the right strategy is not to plan too much. At each stage do whatever seems most interesting and gives you the best options for the future. I call this approach "staying upwind." This is how most people who've done great work seem to have done it.
    How to Do Great Work
  • This should follow from the excitingness rule. Obviously the most exciting story to write will be the one you want to read. The reason I mention this case explicitly is that so many people get it wrong. Instead of making what they want, they try to make what some imaginary, more sophisticated audience wants. And once you go down that route, you're lost. [6]
    How to Do Great Work
  • When in doubt, optimize for interestingness. Fields change as you learn more about them. What mathematicians do, for example, is very different from what you do in high school math classes. So you need to give different types of work a chance to show you what they're like. But a field should become increasingly interesting as you learn more about it. If it doesn't, it's probably not for you.
    How to Do Great Work
  • [5] There are many reasons curious people are more likely to do great work, but one of the more subtle is that, by casting a wide net, they're more likely to find the right thing to work on in the first place.
    How to Do Great Work
  • Laugh at perfection. It’s boring and keeps you from being done.
    Bre Pettis and Kio Stark (2009) The Cult of Done Manifesto – design manifestos .org
  • The way to figure out what to work on is by working. If you're not sure what to work on, guess. But pick something and get going. You'll probably guess wrong some of the time, but that's fine. It's good to know about multiple things; some of the biggest discoveries come from noticing connections between different fields.
    How to Do Great Work
  • I personally have had the pleasure of studying advanced level physics at both Sydney University (ranked about 180 in the world) and Caltech (ranked about 1 in the world). The difficulty and rigor of the course material was about the same. The performance of the students was, on the whole, marginally better at Caltech, but not by very much. Both places had a substantial tail of befuddled and sleep deprived students. Both schools continue to produce world class science and academics. And, having met numerous academics trained at schools across the spectrum from Caltech or Oxford, all the way to …
    Grad School Survival Guide Kindle
  • There are various ways to actively improve your resilience. Part of it is social contagion, like ambition. Spend time around people who get bruised for fun (physically active sports, etc) and you can start to enjoy Type 2 fun in the moment. Work in a job that involves endless rejection (a phone bank, for example). Whatever it takes to get over the part of your ego that presupposes that the universe owes you anything for existing. Everything in our world was built by someone, who had a vision for what the world could be and worked tirelessly until it was so. Another way to improve resilience is…
    Stuff you should have been taught in college but weren’t – Casey Handmer's blog
  • Both types postpone their dreams and undertake choices that they think will enable their dreams. But they fail to understand that all of these intervening choices will change them fundamentally—and they are, in fact, the sum total of those choices. The shortest distance between two points is reliably a straight line. If your dreams are apparent to you, pursue them. Creating optionality and buying lottery tickets are not way stations on the road to pursuing your dreamy outcomes. They are dangerous diversions that will change you.
    The Trouble with Optionality | Opinion | The Harvard Crimson
  • My parents have given me so much advice over the years, but I don’t think I ever fully truly internalized them until I’ve lived it and lived the consequences, be it good or bad. In this way, words only go so far, and you have to let someone make mistakes and live through them.
    boundaries (of others) - by Claire Wang - cold brew blog
  • But the world is a weighing, not a counting, machine: small groups of people can have disproportionate impact through sheer force of will and ambition
    What is def/acc anyway? - by Matt Clifford - def/acc
  • Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player, That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more. It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
    Speech: “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow” | The Poetry Foundation
  • When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state, And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries, And look upon myself and curse my fate, Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, Featured like him, like him with friends possessed, Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope, With what I most enjoy contented least; Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising, Haply I think on thee, and then my state, (Like to the lark at break of day arising From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven’s gate; For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings That then I scorn t…
    Sonnet 29: When, in disgrace with fortune and… | The Poetry Foundation
  • following the logic of our model, we directly measure the uncertainty associated with identifying the optimum. Following Enke and Graeber (2023), we measure the DM’s cognitive uncertainty : the DM’s poste- rior uncertainty over the optimal action a ∗ ( θ ) . Letting P ( a ∗ ( θ ) | S = s ( θ )) denote the DM’s posterior distribution, we define CU as C U ( θ )= P ( | a ∗ ( θ ) − a ( θ ) | >κ | S = s ( θ )) This quantity is increasing in σ a ( θ ) , and therefore serves as a measurable proxy for the level of the DM’s cognitive noise at θ . Our mechanism directly predicts that people who are more…
    Behavioural attenuation
  • (b) If ∂ ∂δ σ a ( θ ) > 0 and ∂ 2 ∂δ 2 σ 2 a ( θ ) ≤ 0 in a neighborhood around θ , then ∂ ∂θ E [ a ( θ )] is decreasing in δ ( θ ) in a neighborhood around θ . An analogous logic applies to θ . To illustrate, reconsider the example of assessing certainty equivalents. Prediction 2(b) states that ⁶ if cognitive noise is increasing away from the simple boundary points of θ = 0 and θ = 1 , valuations will exhibit diminishing sensitivity away from the bound- aries. The general idea that heteroscedastic noise can generate diminishing sensitivity is well-known in the literature (e.g. Khaw et al., 20…
    Behavioural attenuation
  • Prediction 1 describes a setting in which the difficulty of inferring the optimum is relatively invariant to the parameter. In many settings, however, there are some points in the parameter space at which the optimal action is transparent, reducing complexity- derived uncertainty. This occurs at what we call simple points , which often arise at the boundary of parameter spaces. ⁵ For instance, we might expect the task of assessing the certainty equivalent of a lottery that pays out $18 with probability θ to contain the simple boundary points θ = 0 and θ = 1 , since at both parameter values it …
    Behavioural attenuation
  • Throughout this paper, we call the behavior described by Prediction 1 “behavioral attenuation”: as a result of information-processing constraints, the elasticity of people’s decisions is smaller than it would be if people were able to maximize (whatever objective function they in fact have).
    Behavioural attenuation