here are the books in my list, filtered by category.

entries prefixed with '>' are books i am currently reading

those with an accommodating link are entries i have finished

entries prefixed with 'X' are books i chose not to finish

psychology

X thinking fast and slow - daniel kahneman

the interpretation of dreams - sigmund freud

the social animal - elliot aronson

how to change your mind - mike pollan

the shallows - nicholas carr

psych: the story of the human mind - paul bloom

the engima of reason - hugo mercier

innumeracy - john paulos

influence - robert cialdini

philosophy

reasons and persons - derek parfit

meditations - marcus aurelius

godel escher bach - douglas hofstadter

i am a strange loop - douglas hofstadter

nicomachean ethics - aristotle

groundwork for the metaphysics of morals - immanuel kant

X finite and infinite games - james p carse

bhagavad gita

plato complete works

the burnout society - byung chul han

the agony of eros - byung chul han

psychopolitics - byung chul han

the human condition - hannah arendt

the structure of everyday life - fernand braudel

capitalist realism - mark fisher

postcapitalist desire - mark fisher

sociology

the presentation of self in everyday life - erving goffman

suicide - emile durkheim

distinction - pierre bourdieu

anti-intellectualism in american life - richard hofstadter

outliers: the story of success - malcolm gladwell

sapiens: a brief history of humankind - yuval noah harari

> bowling alone - robert putnam

liquid modernity - zygmunt bauman

manufacturing consent - edward herman

the hidden dimension - edward hall

political

the republic - plato

on liberty - john stuart mill

the second sex - simone de beauvoir

the communist manifesto - karl marx

das kapital - karl marx

strong towns - charles marohn jr

the sovereign individual - james davidson

gender trouble - judith butler

undoing gender - judith butler

intersectionality - patricia collins

women race and class - angela davis

queer theory - annamarie jagose

the new jim crow - michelle alexander

the war on normal people - andrew yang

the jakarta method - vincent bevins

systems thinking

> thinking in systems - donella meadows

complexity a guided tour - melanie mitchell

economics

the origins of wealth - eric beinhocker

a random walk down wall street - buron malkiel

the wealth of nations - adam smith

the general theory of employment interest and money - john maynard keynes

> capital in the 21st century - thomas piketty

the case against education - bryan caplan

technofeudalism - yanis varoufakis

the trading game - gary stevenson

urban planning

the death and life of great american cities - jane jacobs

the image of the city - kevin lynch

> cities for people - jan gehl

order without design - alain bertuad

delirious new york - rem koolhaas

the arts

the aesthetic brain - anjan chatterjee

aesthetics: problems in the philosophy of criticism - monroe beardsley

art as experience - john dewey

make it bigger - paula scher

the creative act: a way of being - rick rubin

steal like an artist - austin kleon

thinking with type - ellen lupton

form+code in design art and architecture - LUST

interaction of color - josef albers

designing design - keyna hara

> the design of everyday things - don norman

framed ink - marcos mateu-mestre

creative illustration - andrew loomis

picture this: how pictures work - molly bang

color and composition for film - hans bacher

light for visual artists - richard yot

color and light - james gurney

perspective made easy - ernest norling

how to render - scott robertson

figure drawing - michael hampton

dream worlds - hans bacher

the art of color - johannes itten

the medium is the message - marshall mcluhan

computer science

operating systems three easy pieces - dusseau

the art of multiproccessor programming

rust atomics and locks - mara bos

designing data intensive applications - martin kleppman

architecture of open source applications 1 & 2

database internals - alex petrov

probability and computing - purdue

introductory combinatorics

high performance browser networking - ilya grigorik

randomized algorithms - motwani

> streaming systems - slava chernyak

pc assembly language - paul carter

> computer architecture - patterson hennessy

writing

> the sense of style - steven pinker

on writing well - william zinsser

the pyramid principle - barbara minto

writing with style - john trimble

thank you for arguing - jay heinrichs

the art of thinking clearly - rolf dobelli

how to write a sentence - stanley fish

several short sentences about writing - veryln klinkenborn

style: towards clarity and grace - joseph williams

draft no. 4 - john mcphee

why? my spotify is broken on my pc, so i end up listening to music mainly on youtube when im at home

reprieve

ambient mix

link

tracklist:

• a devils touch in the midwest - macabre plaza
• ascent - modest by default
• jungle - modest by default
• sabbath - saya no uta
• kanazawan - tk from ling tosite sigure
• end roll - mass of the fermenting dregs
• white silence - tk from ling tosite sigure

driving home as the night sets in

drove home from la last night. had fun listening to these

mellow indie rock

link

tracklist:

• bender - bennett coast
• striptease - carwash
• iloveyou - between friends
• saturday nights - weston estate
• down the line - beach fossils
• anytime, always - wallows
• seeds - bennett coast
• unchained memory - cafune
• sunsick - bennett coast
• love & doubt - dacelynn
• crave - paramore
• calling after me - wallows
• now i know you - bennett coast
• free love - honne
• friendship - carwash
• rockstar boyfriend - malcolm todd
• cure my boredom - beach vacation
• sober to death - car seat headrest
• talk to her - the marias

2hollis spring

girl youre giving to me morе than youre taking away dont stop it dont stop it

link

tracklist:

• too bad - 2hollis
• sister - 2hollis
• ether - the hellp
• dresidents - dres
• blackbird - dres
• undertow (damon r remix) - the hellp
• poster boy - 2hollis
• breach - saska
• crush - 2hollis
• just obliterate - damon r
• flash - 2hollis
• light - 2hollis
• tricked out - damon r
• blush - damon r
• california dream girl - the hellp
• stunn - the hellp
• whiplash - 2hollis

goals w reading

i actually came across this book online, with many people saying that they really enjoyed han's writing. as such i dont really have any specific goals in mind with reading this, especially as it is such a short work.

notes

a shift in paradigm

han argues that in the past we framed society with a immunological model of explanation. we defend from all that is foreign, representing danger and uncertainty, which in turn keeps us safe from which that exists beyond ourselves. he argues that this worldview cannot coexist with our modern way of life, evident through the globalization of our society.

furthermore, han describes a model in which we suffer from too much of the 'same'. excess positivity leads us astray, and as such, building stronger defenses against what is foreign does us no help at all.

auto-exploitation

in our modern day, we have become 'entrepreneurs of ourselves'. we live in a society of achievement, where we all strive to become the best versions of ourselves. we suffer not only from the imperative to be our truest self, but also the pressure to achieve it in its fullest glory.

auto-exploitation is much more efficient than allo-exploitation, as we internalize constraints to maximize our achievement, often aligning with the incentives of the bourgeois. it is an ideal state for a post capitalistic society, where we have become both the perpetrator and the victim in this society which prioritizes efficiency over all else.

commoditized attention

this internalized pressure to achieve has changed our disposition towards time and attention. we treat them as limited resources, leading us to avoid boredom and accept multitasking as a solution.

han explains that boredom is a crucial aspect of cultural achievements, as a 'purely hectic rush produces nothing new. it reproduces and accelerates what is already available'. he likens sleep, a physical relaxation, to boredom, a mental relaxation, which is needed to recover our minds.

lack of purpose

han critiques that modern life is devoid of a purpose in and of itself. we have largely turned away from religion as a source of purpose, and thus we seek purpose in accomplishment. this is what drives us to exploit ourselves and our time in an effort to augment our ego.

controlling impulses

it is important to control our impulses as to resist our attention being divided between insignificant stimuli. hyperactive multitasking does not enable our freedom, but actually makes us slaves to our impulses.

it is important for us to cultivate the ability to 'say no' to our stimuli, in order to enable deeper concentrated thought. this is the basis of meditation, which despite its appearance, is a quite mentally active endeavour.

the absence of the other

in our modern lives we do not have a relation to some 'Other' who commands us. this causes a crisis of gratification where we lack someone who can reward or acknowledge us meaningfully. when we are to be our own gratifiers, we do a poor job and as a result, often give into the hedonistic treadmill by setting loftier goals. han argues that this failure to achieve our goals (which happens due to our increasing standards), is due to our narcissistic selves being incapable of granting ourselves closure.

han claims that burnout is a consequence of voluntary auto-exploitation, in which an individual grows tired of the constant need for initiative and lacks the energy to be ones own master. we have adopted a worldview in which we view ourselves as projects to improve, rather than people who simply are. we exploit ourselves happily due to the feeling of freedom that comes with it, until it escalates into self destruction in the form of burnout.

takeaways

i find it difficult to take away some immediate action i can take to improve the 'project' that is myself upon reading this. i will have to reflect further on how i can incorporate the concepts in this work into my daily life in an organic manner, rather than adopting some dull, overly measured practices.

it will prove difficult to practically integrate changes, as some sense of self imposed ambition is necessary in our modern society. job markets are overly competitive, along with everything else, where without this internal drive, we fail to make ends meet. as han stated, the issue is within myself, and not some Other. if i were to liken this to cancer, our modern treatments such as chemotherapy help get rid of the problem, but simultaneously hurt the Self which we crucially need. we can take the effort to rid ourselves of our self imposed ambition, but this hurts our capability to thrive in the modern world.

remarks

the imperative to succeed in my personal life

for a long portion of my life it felt almost as a waste of energy to partake in hobbies in which i knew id never amount to much. it feels almost embarrassing to consider myself a 'runner' or a 'bodybuilder' due to my lack of accomplishments, despite the frequency of which i enjoy these hobbies.

it is a really difficult feeling to live with. a sense of inadequacy from partaking in my interests at a level "beneath my full capability".

this has manifested itself negatively in my personal life with how i choose to spend my time. i often give up on interests prematurely due to a lack of progression, even though it should hold no weight how skilled i become, just how much i enjoy it.

for some hobbies such as reading, i set such lofty goals and exert so much pressure to succeed onto myself, where i procrastinate doing the task completely. why would i set a small (yet achievable) goal for myself, when i know i CAN do more (as an ideal version of myself)

final thoughts

i ultimately found this read to be quite great. it was a concise work, which did a great job of presenting thoughts i think we have all had in a digestible, interesting way.

i would highly recommend this read to others, and am greatly looking forward to reading more from byung chul han.

why torture myself

there are a few goals i have with this project:

• improve my understanding of networking
• learn k3s (maybe helm too?)
• make deploying servers easy for myself
• learn about avoiding single points of failure in infrastructure

what did i do

• static ips per node

at first i attempted to enable this through my router admin page, but it seems to reset it everytime i open the admin page? thanks xfinity..

instead i set up the dhcp config manually in /etc/dhcpcd.conf

• tailscale on each node

this makes it easier to ssh into my devices, and i can do some from even outside my LAN.

• virtual ips with keepalived

i forward traffic from my router to a "virtual" ip. this "vip" floats between my nodes, meaning that if one node goes down, some other node will then claim the "vip", and will therefore handle traffic.

i configured it within /etc/keepalived/keepalived.conf

• bought and configured a domain

i bought the domain zyxdb.xyz off of namecheap, and then configured everything through cloudflare, in order to get nice to haves like ddos protection

• hardened the firewall

ofc, i set up the firewall to disable most incoming traffic, apart from a handful of ports i actually wanted to recieve traffic on

• router port forwarding

i set up port forwarding to allow my cluster to actually handle web traffic.

one current issue: i have it set up where it forwards it to a specific pi, rather than the VIP, as the xfinity app did not seem to let me configure the specific IP.

• k3s

i need to handle my containers somehow..

still a WIP, but ideally: ingress controller with subpath rerouting

what did i build / put on it

• hosted this website!

i moved off of vercel, and got a nicer url in the progress ^_^

• pihole

bye bye ads!

• "serverless" deployments for me and my friends

me and my friends can easily deploy containers to my servers with a CLI tool i made. each person gets their own k3s namespace, and each project gets its own service name. from there i route based on subpaths like zyxdb.xyz/namespace/project

this allows us to host small hobby projects with no worry about accidental bills

goals w reading

i want to learn more about common ways people are bad with numbers.

i hope that this can help me find flaws in how i think about and approach problems.

notes

poor culture around math

weakness in math is not as easily apparent as other weaknesses, leading to many being poor at math, yet unaware or complacent with this

a lot of people take pride in being bad at math, or simply accept that they are "not a numbers person"

this weakness in understanding math makes many more susceptible to falling for scams, pseudoscience, or the like

"back of envelope math" and large numbers

its hard for people to truly comprehend the difference in scale for large numbers. a billion and a trillion both feel insanely big, but its hard to really intuit just how large the difference is

likewise, people tend to be really bad at fermi estimates or rough calculations to figure out the general magnitude of some quantity.

why is this a problem? there are many places this actually does come up. for example with software design, it is good to have a rough idea of the throughput of your service, as well as the requirements based off expected users. this helps prevent over engineering, and back of envelope calculations are a solid first step.

this extends into doing math required for probability and permutations, which from my experience in an undergrad course, people are notoriously bad at. keep in mind, my peers were fellow college students in disciplines considered rigorous and math intensive.

likely "unlikely" events

there are specific events which are unlikely. for example if i picked letters at random, what are the odds of it spelling out "fox"? its obviously very low, but if i relax the constraints to it containing any valid word, the chances skyrocket.

this is why quacks often specify vague events. "a politician will die of a heart attack" is much more likely than me saying "the president will die of a heart attack"

takeaways

assessing the accuracy of peoples claims

with a bit of numeracy, it is much easier to assess how realistic someones claims are. if their calculations seem off by several orders of magnitude compared to a fermi estimate, they may very well by lying.

likewise, some people will claim to have the most accurate predictions of the future. whether it be stocks, politics, or anything else, its important to look at their prior predictions, and not only validate their accuracy, but to question their vagueness.

the root causes

the main reason for a poor understanding of math is a bad education in ones upbringing that fails to relate mathematical skills to their real life applications. many students hate to come across word problems, as it would require accurately assessing which of many different formulas to apply. however, in day to day life, we practically always have to determine the best tool for the job!

many teachers in school are also innumerate, how can they provide a fitting education to a young mind?

contextualizing comparisons

many people fail to accurately assess their own skills and weaknesses. for instance, it is rather common for people to aggregate the talents of others into one ideal "individual", and then make comparisons against that. it is easy to see people online who are more fit, more educated, more well off, etc and feel a lack of self worth, despite that very few people are truly better in every single category simultaneously

final thoughts

ultimately a mediocre book glossing over some interesting math concepts. not anything to note for anyone with a decent high school math education. the saving grace of this book was its short length.

goals w reading

my goal with reading this book is to understand the effects technology has had on us. us as people, as social circles, and as a society

notes

the medium itself

with tools such as google, the availability of information has increased drastically. in the past, where people had to scour passages of books for a small snippet, we can simply search it up. people get acclimatied to the usage of the internet - the new medium - and begin to think in a way suited towards it. no longer do we read long lengthy passages, even a few paragraphs is enough to make us start skimming.

the "modern" mind is no longer linear like it was with books. we now take in information in short bursts. the shorter, the better.

the computer influences us in mysterious ways. it alters HOW we work, slowly but surely. i now couldnt imagine editing text on paper, and even dislike it digitally without my beloved vim keybindings, despite having written on paper for a large part of my education as a child.

neuroplasticity

for a long time, it was believed that the human brain could not develop, or change past childhood. it was oftened compared to that of a machine, stuck in its ways. however it was later shown, that brains could change with new stimulus.

however, the plasticity, or ability to change, does diminish as we get older.

this plasticity is not always positive. these changes are not elastic, they dont "snap back" to the former shape when we want. as such, negative habits are ingrained as easily as positive ones.

means of depicting the world

as our ability to reason about the world abstractly improves in our adolescence, our drawings change. we go from simplistic depictions of what we see, to more realistic ones utilizing perspective, to abstract images of what we think.

the map as a medium changed our way of thinking, as it advanced the evolution of abstract thinking throughout society. it translated space into an artificial conception, allowing us to view it abstractly.

just as the map did, clocks changed how we viewed time, and our relation to it. before accurate timekeeping, there was less focus on "making the most of our time" and avoiding "wasting our time". once clocks and bells were used to schedule the days of many, people were more aware of their "time spent, wasted, and lost".

do we change technology, or does technology change us?

are we truly in control of what technology we use day to day? can any of us truly opt out of using things such as maps or clocks at this point?

it is hard to observe the interplay between technology and the mind, as there is no documentation of past minds. we can look at the preservations of their thought processes in documents such as notes, but we can never go back and view the internal workings.

change in language

a change in language signals a change in how we speak, listen, read, and write. because language is our primary means of thought, a change to language is a change to our intellectual lives.

aside: ive heard that billingual people sometimes prefer to think about certain topics in one language, as the language may be more naturally suited towards the task.

early writing

at first people simply inscribed writing into whatever they had lying handy. the sumerians were the first to write on specialized clay tablets, which were a consistent size. this enabled them to write longer messages.

it was harder to read originally, as there were no spaces to separate words, and word orders were not fixed. as such there was a higher cognitive load on the reader.

it was quite difficult for people to first develop the mental discipline to sit down and read for long periods of time. think about it, its unnatural for an animal to sit and stare at something unmoving with so much attention, as it would be better to be alert for changes in our environment.

eventually writing started to have punctuation and spaces, making it easier for readers to read. this was done as people wanted to read for personal instruction and improvement. this change made it easier not only for the readers, but the writers as well. no longer did authors need the help of another to transcribe their work, giving them the ability to write on their own gave them the confidence to try writing more adventurous works.

this also made it easier to review their works, allowing arguments to become longer and more complex, while simultaneously reducing redundancy.

the development of knowledge had become more and more of a personal act. no longer did we have to depend on an oral lecture, we could simply go to the library and read to our hearts contents.

however, books were still scarce, and not available to many. this would be soon to change with the printing press.

with the invention of the printing press, books became cheaper and easier to mass produce. more and more people read, increasing demand. this led to further innovations such as smaller books, making reading more accessible.

deep reading

it has been shown that readers mentally simulate the situations encountered in fiction. the same areas of the brain are used when reading these activities, showing that deep reading is not a passive activity in any way.

the english vocabulary greatly expanded with reading becoming more common. as language expanded, we were able to express more complex thoughts, allowing our conciousness to expand.

when we develop our mental capacity through reading, we can use that same "neural circuit" for other uses as well. "New thought came more easily to a brain that had already learned how to rearrange itself to read".

the versatility of computing

as demonstrated by alan turing, the creator of "turing machines", any information processing job can be done by a computer, if suitably programmed. however the time it takes may be unreasonably long, which is the constraint.

modern computers can do pretty much anything. video, text, calls, you name it, the computer can do it.

the true difference between computing and prior media is the bidirectional nature of the medium. you can write me a blog post, and i can write back to you. you can send me a text, and i can text you back.

changes in habits

people are spending more time on their phones and devices as the years pass. however this time has not detracted from the amount of time people spend in front of TV, instead its mostly pulling away from time reading written media.

people still read a lot! consider this, or a instagram caption, or a text from a friend. these all count as reading. however the reading people do is no longer really on the page.

advances in technology have affected writing as well. content is now broken up into searchable chunks, with links to help dart around. even the act of scrolling rather than turning pages changes the sensory experience for a reader, influencing the depth of attention we give and the depth of immersion in the medium.

with modern search engines, we dont see the forest while reading, we just see the trees, sometimes even just the leaves. we no longer feel the need to read a whole page or article, just small snippets of text which provide us just enough information.

since modern computers are capable of running all sorts of software, while we use them we are perpetually kept aware of the distractions at our fingertips. a text popping up, a new email, a system notification reminding you to update. even while just typing this, i got a notification on my phone! when we use these devices we are constantly "connected" to these distractions.

all this connectivity is what drives us to use the internet and computers! we like being able to switch from task to task, to listen to music and read simultaneously, to message our loved ones. with this, our consumption of our devices has grown, while other forms of media have shrivelled up.

influnces on other mediums

many other forms of media have to adjust in order to suit the shrinking attention spans of their audience, and try to compete for their attention against an unbeatable opponent, an ever connected device at their fingertips. netflix writers have admitted to writing scripts while keeping mind that the audience will likely be on their phones, and unable to follow along to more complex plot lines.

aside - attention poor and multitasking

thoughts from reading "in defense of distraction" in the new york magazine. mentioned within 'the shallows'

we have a lot of resources and information at our time. some say we lack time, while a better wording is that we lack attention.

attention can be considered time and focus.

theres no way to reasonably consume all the articles you see, or the videos u get recommended. theres not enough attention

multitasking is a poor idea. your brain has to "context switch" which introduces overhead and makes it less efficient.

however, the exception to this rule is when the tasks operate on different "channels". ex a physical task and an auditory task, like folding laundry and lstening to an ebook. however these pairings are far and few in day to day life.

internet companies

internet companies thrive off of user data. their goal is to obtain as much user data as possible, making their algorithms more accurate.

as such, more data can be mined the faster a user sweeps through a page, skipping from link to link. the entire business model is at odds with slow, careful reading.

the eternal fear

people have always had the fear of new technology stripping away something from their humanity. that books could abolish our memory. that social media will destroy our attention spans.

these fears are nothing new. how can i judge whether fear of these changes are rationale, or simply an unwillingness to adapt to change.

takeaways

what we remember

attention is the key driver to tell our brain what we should remember. this is why when i scroll reels mindlessly, i cant even recall what i had seen a few minutes ago, whereas when i watch a movie in theatres, i remember a lot of details for days to come.

remarks

are our adaptations to tech "negative"?

is it inherently worse to have a worse attention span? to need our information to come at us in a faster, quicker way? after all, as time progresses, more and more of our society will adapt to our lack of focus. does this change have any advantages?

imaginary stimuli

it has been shown that imagining to play notes on a piano, has a similar effect to actually playing the piano, in terms of brain activity. i am curious whether this also applies to subconscious thoughts, such as the ones we have while doing repetitive tasks.

for example, if i go to solve a puzzle, and take a break to do my laundry, i will still think about the puzzle subconsciously. is this enough stimulus to influence our brain activity? even slightly?

reading aloud

wow its silly to think people only read aloud at first. to the point where seeing someone read silently was a spectacle. nowadays i feel like the opposite is true

fomo

we have all felt this at some point in our lives and it is clear that the internet exacerbates it.

"If they stop sending messages, they risk becoming invisible"

working memory

the author explains working memory and its relevancy to storing long term memories. essentially, an overloaded short term memory can not effectively save information

common place books

people used to keep notebooks, filled with excerpts and notes from various books, to refer to them later and possibly memorize them

it was really cool reading about this, as this is kind of similar to what im doing with these public book notes

final thoughts

overall i found this book to be mediocre, definitely wouldnt recommend

not much interesting insights, doesnt provide many meaningful counterarguments as to how these changes are positive, and doesnt really go into depth on how it has effected people socially.

i wish he spoke more about changes in community. he wrote a solid amount on how it affected society as a whole, but not things like my local neighborhood. for example, how do online orders for goods affect my social life? i obviously end up spending less time out at stores, but get more time freed for my own activities, can we then figure out if this is a net good for most people, for certain aspects of their life.

also doesnt really cover "NEET" lifestyles that feel more enabled by the internet. for example, u can basically live ur whole life inside ur house nowadays, with remote work, food delivery, online retailers, etc.

lastly, it didnt really feel to give any actionable advice or ideas. it just kind of talks about how "the internet is ruining our attention", "we need attention for xyz", over and over. he even talks about how the internet is almost "forced on us", but doesnt provide means to alleviate this.

i cant share the experiences ive had in their full glory. i just cant. every laugh ive shared, meal ive savored, view i admired, i couldnt share the full experience with words, pictures, sounds, or any combination of those mediums.

similarly, i cannot share the pain of the negative experiences ive had in their full scope either. i can try my best to warn you, so that you can avoid the same mistakes, but i will have to hope you take heed.

this loss of information when sharing our opinions and experiences plants a seed of doubt into the minds of others. if someone were to say "money doesnt buy happiness", many people will argue against it. theyd claim that the individual didnt use the money properly, or is understating the benefits, as to avoid jealousy.

in religions with a concept of 'enlightenment' there is an interesting pattern that pops up, many of those said to have reached enlightenment come from a noble background as generals and emperors. why isnt it the case that people from poorer backgrounds were the ones to renounce their earthly desires? they might not have even been able to fulfill these desires, whereas the nobles often could. likewise, why werent the monks who visited the palaces to teach these nobles the ones to reach enlightenment?

its because no matter how hard we try to believe that we dont need something and that it wouldnt help us, there will always be a seed of doubt.

"what if i could afford that car? if i could afford to buy nicer groceries id enjoy cooking so much more! what if i could afford a nicer home?"

however for these emperors, they have already experienced it firsthand. they truly know that it isnt as meaningful as many would presume.

ok dhiraj, but how does this matter in any way in how i should approach my life? should i just try and take these types of warnings more seriously?

no, in fact, i think its a sign to try and test out your doubts firsthand. try those things you think would improve your life. improve your quality of life as high as you can! travel, eat well, splurge on yourself.

after the sinking realization that none of it truly bought you happiness hits you, you will be able to fully commit to renouncing your desires, if you so wish to.

i want to share what i think is important to get ahead of the curve, in general advice that can be applied to many domains. this post was inspired by dan luu.

but first, i want to preface this post by saying, its completely fine to not be great at things. there are plenty of hobbies of mine where im smack average or just flat out bad, and i enjoy them just fine. i dont think its worth trying to become great at everything, really try and ask yourself if you have the motivation to become above average before you start grinding.

advice

1. find the high roi activities and exploit them. often times these will be boring, time consuming things that people arent willing to do. for example in vidya games it could be grinding mechanics.

2. find other people who are good. it is a LOT easier to improve when u can just ask a friend for advice, as they can tailor it towards your personal situation, and hopefully its free. this is why people pay for VOD reviews or coaching, it can be really useful to get 1 on 1 advice.

3. actively TRY and be honest with yourself. be honest about your expectations and timeframes, this helps avoid burnout. be honest about your effort, this helps you stay in check.

most people dont do this!

THIS is why its easy to get ahead. its not because my advice is mind blowing or revolutionary, its just that most people dont really try. most people do not put a lot of research into their improvement, nor time, nor effort. realistically, just doing that easily gets you ahead of a LOT of people.

examples

cs / swe

right now the swe job market is crazy competitive, especially for entry level roles like internships. unfortunately, its to the point where getting one requires you to be ahead of the curve.

lets apply my first piece of advice, find a roadmap of what things to work on. we can do this by scouring the web, or talking to people in positions we want to be in.

once we do that, we find that for getting a swe internship, the general good advice boils down to [1]:

send hundreds of job applications

find experience at ur school to help pad ur resume (clubs / research)

make interesting projects

grind tf out of leetcode

and yet, there r countless people who dont know this! theres a lot of people who

send out relatively few applications

arent involved in clubs / school activities

dont make projects / code outside of class

dont know how to do leetcode problems

they are probably well intentioned, and simply unaware of what it takes to be a competitive applicant in this market. what really sucks, is a lot of these people will actively spend their time in things that dont provide great return! for example, grinding out certifications seems useful, but is not really seen as a qualification for jobs. getting these certifications can be time intensive, and detracts from the other activities that help someone become a competitive applicant.

even among people who do know, many might not put a decent amount of time or effort into it! a lot of people know about leetcode, and even sites like neetcode to help practice, but are unwilling to spend the hours to get better.

vidya games

lets say u want to get good at rocket league for example. from my experience playing (few years ago), you could honestly become above average just by learning how to hit the ball hard. in the bottom tiers of ranked, people routinely just completely whiff shots.

notice how i claim that you only need one fundamental skill (powershots)? people often just focus on the wrong things! its even a meme within the community that people in platinum (the average rank) are better at trickshots than people in ranks above them, because they waste time learning things that look cool.

and again, its okay to just focus on cool things and not improving in rank! its just important that you are honest with yourself about your goals.

lifting

i have a few friends of mine go from the commercial gym (which i go to), to specialized powerlifting / weightlifting gyms to be around people who are INSANELY strong. i can say firsthand, having friends who are way better than you is helpful in two ways.

1. they can give u advice, tailored to your own mistakes. for example, in my deadlift i often set my hips too low, which a friend pointed out to me. after setting them higher in my start position i was immediately stronger, and was able to get to 4 plates largely through constant feedback and tips.

2. its just motivating. seeing other people where you want to be, who you see working hard is just plain out motivating. it shows you that its possible to improve, and quite rapidly at that.

footnotes

1. you can do all of these things and still fail to get a job / internship. the job market is quite difficult, and plenty of hardworking people struggle. i dont mean to downplay these challenges at all

theres a common narrative of people being either meticulous and analytical, or spontaneous and carefree. within this dichotomy, i find that a lot of times people on the "careful" side assume that more planning leads to better results. however id argue that they would benefit from thinking less, and doing more. why?

you only get feedback from events that happen

of course, i can speculate on the outcomes of my actions, but until i have truly done them, i dont get objectively true feedback. often times this feedback is necessary to properly analyze a situation

let me give a real world example of what im talking about. a lot of people spend years thinking about what what they want to do with their career. however, u cant actually know if this career is right or not until u have tried it! (ignore the nuances of work circumstances for this example, will write abt this later)

it is much better to try something, fail, and pivot then to never try at all. u can quit at any time, much faster than what feels normal. dont be afraid to try and quit things.

fail fast.

goals w reading

reading this book i want to discover a set of principles to help guide my future studying and learning. i want to know how to approach learning, and if a conscious understanding of the mind can lead to improved performance in cognitive tasks

notes

the two systems

system one thinking, or "autopilot" is how we approach the majority of our lives. this is due to the immense amount of mental energy needed to use system two thinking, or active thinking.

it is shown that thinking is taxing, especially when intensely focused. people only have a limited amount of mental capacity they can expend at once. for example, if i asked you to repeat back five words in alphabetical order, that would be relatively easy. however let us expand the problem to contains hundreds of words, and it is no longer such an easy task, in fact is is practically undoable

law of small numbers

due to the system 2 thinking needed to properly evaluate information, we often end up relying on system 1 thinking. this is the cause for many biases that we develop.

we can explain the halo effect by this principle. it is easier to believe that someone is overall good, then to form a nuanced view of their character.

by the same token, this is why people tend to make judgements too quickly, or with too little evidence. it is easier to believe that someone who had multiple consecutive successes did so through only their sheer skill, than to believe that they may have just had a lucky streak within a random sampling.

overconfidence

it is hard to attribute things to luck or chance. it fits a narrative better if we assign outcomes to skill and expertise. who would watch a movie about a trader making it big, just through sheer luck?

our tendency to construct a coherent narrative of past events, provides us a false sense of confidence into forecasting future events. as in hindsight, "it was obvious".

the situations where expert intuition is applicable is in consistent and learnable environments. for example a chess expert's intuition is strong and is generally very useful. in contrast, an interviewers intuition into who makes a good candidate can easily be biased by non meaningful factors. in addition, they have a long feedback loop, as well as personal bias due to being the decision maker.

people often have overly optimistic estimates (ex: time to finish a project). this is because they fail to take in an outside view (how long does this type of project typically take) and use it as a base rate. this overly optimistic view is the reason people often take on risky projects

choices

the lack of accounting for human psychology in utility theory gave rise to prospect theory, where the risk adversity of people is factored into the equation.

people tend to overvalue small probabilities and certainty. for example in winning a prize. the jumps from 0% -> 1% and 99% -> 100% feel much bigger than 67% -> 68%. these biases are the possibility and certainty biases.

likewise, having 2 active shooters in your location doesnt feel 2x as scary as just having 1.

two selves

we have the experiencing self, and the remembering self.

for a given experience, there are two ways of formulaically determining how pleasurable / painful it was. the sum of ratings (area under the curve) or the average of the most intense rating and the last rating (peak-end average).

we experience as per the first metric, yet we remember as per the latter.

takeaways

reduce working memory

as we have a limited mental capacity for any given task. it is important to reduce our "working memory" load and overall the amount of things we have to consciously think about. this is a reason why people wear the same thing every day for example, it reduces decision fatigue.

improve attention span

improvements in attention span in children has been shown to improve scores on nonverbal intelligence testing. therefore it is reasonable to assume that an improvement in ones ability to focus their attention has a meaningful impact on ones ability to complete difficult work

as such, i find it important to work on improving my attention and focus. i find that it is much worse than when i was younger, as i struggle to focus on reading / writing for extended periods of time.

although, i will have to experiment with what strategies i can employ to improve my attention. i am not sure of what steps i need to take in order to complete this goal.

be hesitant to explain phenomena causally

people tend to suck at explaining the relationships between events. they fall for small sample sizes, place too much emphasis on first impressions, and see patterns or clusters in random events.

interesting examples:

smart women tend to date men who are less smart some will explain this with causal relationships. "they dont want to compete on intelligence" etc

well, if they are much smarter than average, a random pick in the dating pool will likely leave them a partner less smart than them. even if they filter for intelligence, there are likely still more acceptable partners closer to the mean. even if there is correlation it is not perfect correlation.

ideally, we measure intelligence among couples with some metric, and assess the correlation between intelligence of each partner. from there we can also factor in the normal distribution of the metric to see if it deviates extremely from our expected correlation

people tend to do better after receiving criticism people believe that criticism can help improve performance after a bad result. this is because they see it!

however, it is likely to see improvement regardless of what they do! if given feedback or not, after a poor result, they are likely to get closer to the mean with the next event! (ex, normal distribution, mean of 5, std dist of 1. first event is a 3. there is a MAJOR chance the the next event will be greater than 3)

in order to assess the change of variability of an event, we need to have a control group to assess whether the change is simply regression to the mean, or a genuine impactful change.

formulas outperform intuition alone in nonregular environments

there are times where setting up a formula to predict performance will work better than intuition alone. this is because people have inherent biases, and not lots of practice making long term predictions. many can be opposed to this style of thinking, due to peoples inherent bias towards 'natural' processes.

for example, when making an interview process, it would be advisable to

1. determine about 6 independent traits that are critical to the role

2. make a list of questions for each trait

3. score the candidates from 1-5 on each trait

4. select the candidate with the highest overall score, avoiding the use of intuition or 'broken leg' exceptions

setting good estimates

there are a few standard steps to follow in order to set good estimates (ex how long will a project take, how much will a trip cost)

1. determine what category the goal or action belongs to

2. find the data related to that category

3. take that data as a base rate. use the additional unique case information to adjust accordingly

people often overestimate how unique their case is, and fail to set a reasonable base rate. sometimes, even when shown these stats, people are reluctant to accept them.

remarks

how capable are we

to what extent can someone improve their focus, and in return their ability to use active thinking? with buiding muscle, there is a theoretical limit that people can achieve based on their build and bone structure. do similar limitations exist for the muscles of the mind?

achieving flow state

flow state is described as displaying active mental focus (system 2 thinking) without feeling the sense of exertion that is expected.

from my current understanding, flow state is accomplished when the following criteria are met:

• the task at hand is difficult, but not unreasonably difficult
• there is some interest in the activity itself
• work is being done in a low interference environment

however, this is a good topic for me to read further into, and learn how i can achieve this "flow state" more consistently on tasks i am passionate about

revisit part 4

i ended up skipping over much of part 4. it didnt capture my attention and i actively avoided reading it, as such i decided to skip it in favor of making progress with reading sections i enjoy.

does knowledge of a bias prevent the bias from occurring?

these biases covered occur due to the flaws of the type 1 system of thinking. with careful deliberation about these thoughts, through a type 2 system, we can invalidate these biases and adjust our viewpoint.

however, with enough training or deliberation, can we prevent our type 1 mind from having these biased reactions altogether?

taking pictures on vacation

as a child growing up, i never understood the point of taking so many pictures while on vacation. the act itself isnt pleasurable, and it actually detracts from the experience itself!

however taking these pictures was not for the experiencing self, it is for the remembering self. as i grow older and feel nostalgic more, looking back on good times of my life, it is much more clear how these photo sessions can be rewarding

as such we can say that my prioritization of activities went from 100/0 (experiencing/remembering) to 100-x/x.

is this a common trend as people age? will x continue to grow as i gain more experiences worth feeling nostalgic for?

dnf

ultimately i did not finish this book, found the tail end to be quite boring and called it quits. didnt feel like i got much interesting insights from it, relative to the start.