Hi,
How much do you find yourself attributing to “luck” for any events, both good and not-so-good ones?
I tend to attribute to the world for anything “good” that happens with me and the opposite for myself. Most probably everything I do seems incomplete and “unsatisfying” for myself, which puts my existential angst on steroids. Nevertheless, it does provide a form of “negative motivation” to do better. Sometimes I find myself getting tangled with “why am I even doing this task?” loop. Most of the works don’t even make sense. They seem absurd.
Do you think it’s entirely up to luck? What does “luck” even mean? A point in the space-time continuum? Cause-effect connections between those points? Is it even objective? (I can only wonder what events I attribute to myself and to the world).
Recently I encountered this concept of Luck Surface Area which says that the amount of serendipity that occurs in our life is directly proportional to:
our passion for certain things
effective communication (number of people we convey our work effectively)
(Imagine each parameter along 2d axes forming a rectangle)
This added a new perspective on the things I do.
I think it is important to notice that this area is maximized when both the “parameters” are maximized. It’s of no use if you keep on producing “quality” work and no-one knows about it. (It’s inherently meta for me if you know what I mean. Not sure if they are “qualitative”).
However, there are just so many things that you can’t even control. For instance, the genes you have that render you prone to heart diseases. You can control (saying “control” is not even correct) some portion of it using your lifestyle. Other than that, nothing can be done much.
This puts us to another concept: Locus of Control. How much respect do you have for yourself? Do you feel helpless as events unfold around you? (More on to this later in the listening section).
Anyway, the week was a bit stressful because of my health. I had nose bleeds 3 times. Not sure why. Maybe it’s because of me overthinking/stress, again? Or perhaps, it’s the weather here in Kathmandu (either too hot or too depressingly rainy).
(See there’s always this pattern of attributing consequences to something…)
Nights passed by frequently listening to Carl Sagans’ Pale Blue Dot.
I spent the majority of non-work hours looking at Andy’s Evergreen notes, Nikita Voloboev’s second brain, and lurking at various Slack and Discord channels. I feel so much inspired that there are people out there who have put thoughts and effort into making their thought processes tangible (and accessible) to others.
There tends to be a lot of “digital” bits I consume that end up in my “fragments” inbox, which takes me to “crisis” mode and I procrastinate from doing other things.
Therefore, I ended up refactoring my Pocket account (not Roam) by re-tagging, deleting, and re-reading a few reads. Now I have an “Active” tag to give certain things a higher priority.
Other than that, I was mostly mindlessly browsing through Hacker News, Reddit, LessWrong, and DeviantArt.
(I should try to get my shit together to declutter more…)
By the way! After 3 months of calisthenics, I was finally able to hit 45 pushups (45 reps) in a single set… :D
~Reading~
The Economics of Writing (And Why Now Is the Best Time to Do It)
Lawrence Yeo | 12 min
This was an "inspiring" read. I really loved the concept of 1000 True Fans, that a very small niche group of audiences can provide meanings to your work.
Normally, people tend to think that "writing" is an easy task. However, being a "good" writer is a difficult one. You have a crucial responsibility to flow your thoughts into something tangible that people can connect to.
"Writing is essentially the space between what you want to say, and how you end up saying it."
In the pre-internet era, writing was very taxing. It required you to invest yourself not only in the "idea-to-paper" flow but also at the physical resources like papers, the estimate of users, geographic areas, finding publishers, and such.
Today, we live in a much frictionless era where the marginal cost of creating our work is very low. We and our works are simply one click away from being exploded to a mass. Perhaps, it's also because of social media and how [[Smiling Curve]] holds true:
Value flows to the content creators (writers) and the content discovery platforms (Facebook, Google, Twitter), and away from the content distributors (publications).
That is to say, you push your work to these media which initially gets very low traction. Eventually, it will pick up the pace with more audiences' engagement.
Overall, maximizing Luck Surface Area is easier today than it was in the past.
On top of all these, another aspect of writing is that it is also a form of signaling. If your writing is articulated, it creates value for your audience.
The Most Famous Loop
Alex Danco | 7 min
It's interesting how loops are not just seen in some inherently observable systems like that in thermodynamics (such as Carnot cycle), but also in almost all the abstract systems that take in feedback -- processes ending at the starting point -- to itself.
In an abstract way, we can consider loops to be present almost everywhere, even for our habits and works. The analogy for moving piston (expansion and contraction) can be thought of us doing work to an external system and getting the result back. In doing so we are creating more disorder (entropy).
One fragmented thought I had while reading this is:
Does this disorder in a loop create some sort of debt in life? (not quite sure how entropy/disorder relate to our more abstract reality, say doing a task X.)
Debt in a sense: if we are passive, there will not be much disorder in life. As a result, life becomes mundane without much "expansion and contraction". So, the more you move away from doing things, the harder it becomes to get back to them?
I am not sure if I really understood the concept of disorder here. Anyway, this is just my “broken” thought. Maybe I am “over-analyzing”.
The Long Shadow Of The Future
Steven Weber | 18 min
It's not "incorrect" to say that “pandemics are an iconic example of risks with a particularly challenging temporal profile.”. Climate Change is another example.
These are challenging because normally the cost-benefit models that guide most public policies don’t apply, even if we know the consequences. (How can we even cope with this high-hanging fruit?)
Also, this made me re-visit the concept of preserving future generations by finding more neglected risks.
That might be the reason why the title is metaphorical too.
This essay was a bit "difficult" to think about because of the inherent hard-to-grasp economics of the country-policies-risks chain (perhaps, I have to dig deeper).
Nevertheless, I learned about the concept of Socialization of risks where the stake of a single risk is dispersed between multiple organizations (say, public-private). I am not even sure if that's what it is. But that's my interpretation of the concept.
In all, the essay presents Taiwan as a case-study for its early-response strategy on COVID-19, and how it has managed to reduce the risks because of operational competence. For instance, vice president Chen Chien-Jen is an epidemiologist.
Biohacking Lite
Andrej Karpathy | 21 min
I found this very inspiring (yet difficult) because of my love for the concept of Biohacking - from sleep cycles to calisthenics to trying some sort of chemicals (cigarettes, weeds, alcohol). I believe that increasing your body tolerance to external entities can do a lot of "good" things. (Again, there's mental tolerance too).
I could barely understand all the chemical jargon. But it's fascinating to know that we breathe out 84% of our fat loss.
Also, to lose weight, eat less, and move more. Do intermittent fasting.
This reminded me of this article I read a long time ago on bio-hacking.
~Watching~
Atomic Habits: How to Get 1% Better Every Day - James Clear
James Clear | 8 min
It seems we tend to feel disappointed in ourselves because of a lack of motivation. However, it's the lack of clarity that's keeping us from achieving our goals successfully. But then, it's not about goals. Rather it's about the system and the process itself.
The goal is to not write more books and articles but become a better writer.
The goal is to not create more music but become a better artist.
The major takeaway is the 4 stages of transformation:
Noticing (it's about clarity, not motivation)
Wanting (our environment influences us)
Doing (optimize for the start line, not the finish line)
Liking (experience small rewards along the way)
Listening Is an Act of Love
StoryCorps | 23 min
This is so beautiful and meaningful.
All I have is one word to describe my emotions while watching this: Sonder
If only everyone stopped and listened...we all are not that different from each other than we think. We all have our own little stories locked up inside us. :)
I appreciate Bijay for sharing this.
Bret Victor - Stop Drawing Dead Fish
Bret Victor | 54 min
It's always inspiring to watch Bret's talk.
The "dead fish" metaphor couldn't be so well articulated than Bret expressing it (deeply and meaningfully) through the interactive animation with a fish — a message that digital visual art shouldn't be mundane. Magic happens when both the art and the artist commend each other.
Behaviour and responsiveness are the essence of computers as art mediums.
The fact that this very expressiveness of art is simply a refactored version of how it has always been done, in the conventional medium, is more beautiful.
The final part gave me chills and might be the epitome of the whole talk.
Animation: Travelogue Tel Aviv
Samuel Patthey | 6 min
A young art student from Switzerland arrives for six months in Tel Aviv. Through drawing, he will learn to analyze, understand, and free himself from this contrasted environment.
This is hauntingly-beautiful. The animation is so smooth.
The part around 00:02:23, where the whole world stops from an incoming ambulance, is mesmerizing.
~Listening~
How to Make Your Own Luck
Freakonomics | 1 hr
I enjoyed listening to this conversation between Stephen Dubner and Maria Konnikova. Maria is a writer and psychologist. Additionally, she is also a poker pro. So, the majority of the conversation revolves around psychology, poker, and luck.
The major takeaway for me was the concept of [[Locus of Control]] (how strongly people believe they have control over the situations and experiences that affect their lives).
Internal Locus
This is where we take credit for ourselves when good things happen to us.
Something like: "Oh yeah! It was definitely me"
External Locus
This is where we "blame" the world when something bad happens to us.
Something like: "Oh no! It wasn't me but the world. I am not to blame".
Most of us seem to have an internal locus of control. However, credit/blame could be reversed. We should aim to balance both. So, how can we optimize it?
We can have internal locus most of the time but be more open-minded to allow internal locus for bad events too.
Something like: "Oh yeah! It was because of me that things went wrong..."
However, it depends on how critically we think about our decisions. We should be able to analyze situations from different perspectives.
~Fragments~
Tweet: Intrinsically Valuable Visions
Lisa Hardy
This is such a thoughtful and inspiring thread.
Being more introspective on our goals/visions helps us to mitigate "unjustified" goals. This can be done by checkpointing our life with some timely reviews (weekly, bi-weekly, monthly...?) and asking some fundamental questions.
Why do we want to achieve that goal?
Is there any benefit after observing the outcome?
Keep asking until the answer is just something like "because it's good."
AskHN: How to improve my abstract thinking?
A few days ago I got into Mathematical Logic and learned how to reason about problems through using various branches of mathematical ideas like proof theory, model theory e.t.c.
I found this abstract way of thinking about problems clear, & organized. "Mathematical Logic" is different from the kind of Math I was taught, which was a top-down approach to solving problems.
"Mathematical Logic" seems to be able to derive solutions to problems in a ground-up fashion where a solution can sometimes elegantly present its self as long as you apply correct mathematical properties.
What other techniques do you hackers use to improve your abstract thinking?
Story: Light
7 min
Sad. Beautiful.
Video: gone with the light
Ramuna Pun | 6 min
This gave me goosebumps.
Poetry: Rape Joke
Patricia Lockwood
Powerful.
~Fascinating Things I Discovered~
commenter
This browser add-on searches for HN/Reddit threads for a particular link.
I've been using this for a week now. I didn’t have high hopes for it initially. Damn, I was wrong. I found myself, often, looking for any discussion thread tied to a link, particularly when I open something from email. I think this is a nice addition to my “HN-Reddit lurking” skills. :/
eunoia
A site to find words that don't (quite) translate to other languages.
Damn. This is cool.
One word I found is this Swedish word "fika": coffee and cake break with friends or colleagues. On digging deeper, I found that it’s more like a state of mind, to be around friends and people.
CatalyzeX
Search code for research papers.
Finds and shows links to code implementations for research papers directly on Google, Arxiv, Scholar, Twitter, Github, and more.
This is just my recent discovery (shared by Rushabh from Docsumo). So I don’t have anything to say about this. Maybe I’d write about it in the next newsletter.
~Music~
Album: What Colour Is Your Raindrop - Tajdar Junaid
Happy-Sad.
I can't stop listening to this.
Space Age Love Song - A Flock Of Seagulls
Nostalgic.
Album: So Tonight That I Might See - Mazzy Star
Back to listening to this album by Mazzy Star after a long time. Fade Into You hits me hard.
Ending Thoughts
I was listening to the talk In Praise of Boredom by Maria Konnikova while I was trying to reconcile with this newsletter. Suddenly, this quote by Joseph Brodsky hit me hard:
"When hit by boredom, let yourself be crushed by it; submerge, hit bottom. In general, with things unpleasant, the rule is: The sooner you hit bottom, the faster you surface. The idea here is to exact a full look at the worst. The reason boredom deserves such scrutiny is that it represents pure, undiluted time in all its repetitive, redundant, monotonous splendor." - Joseph Brodsky
That’s all for now. What do you think of the “fragments” section?
Have any “broken thoughts” struck you lately?
If you have anything interesting to share, do share. You can also hit me up in my email nishanpantha@gmail.com.
Cheers,
Nish
Been silently following your writing and I am totally impressed. keep it up man..
Thank you for the Bret Victor Talk! Was inspiring. And the end was epic. I froze up in awe for a good five minutes.
Also the Intrinsically Valuable Visions Thread. Things to think about...