Literature, even though it shares some common ground, is a bit different than other art forms. We use music usually as a filler, visual arts for aesthetic fulfillment, but we read to learn something new, to transition ourselves.
Good writing is not a bunch of words on a page but it is what is not said, what is between the lines, and the word and punctuation choices of the writer. Maybe one day an AI will be able to write like a great writer does, but by then computers will be able to do all of our jobs.
I was in the same position. Always justifying delays to "I learned something new". Totally forgetting the goal: ship a product. Actually putting money at stake (instead of just time) finally shook me out of that.
I think the career happiness and most success comes from when sth someone would have done if nobody would have paid that person is the thing other people need and pay for. It is hard to find that sth. but when you find it, it is gold.
For me it was art, especially concept art. You have to find yours.
Because magic happens two different worlds collide, and we don't know where the magic will happen. So we put everything related and then see what happens.
Of course there are applications that simplicity works well but I believe to create the simplicity we have to understand what is possible we have to deal with complexity first.
Simplicity first doesn't work, because we don't know what will be the most interesting thing for the users.
Ex-insurance company sales manager here. I agree that the insurance premiums are a good indicator but they will stay higher than normal vehicles because of the way insurance works. Reinsurers buy the potential risks in bulk and the way it is priced is putting similar risks and assets in a basket and then comparing the data they have about event possibility of the risk. The big data usually gives a pretty good indicator of the total number of accidents, incidents that will happen.
I have been away from the insurance sector for a couple years now, but before the electric car market was evaluated as its own class. This creates a huge problem because you can't distribute the claims optimally. If I simplify it you get (electric car insurance claims/electric cars that have insurance) + operation costs + profit %. Whereas in normal cars, your premium is decided based on the drivers age, previous accidents, car's age, car's color, the horse power, where the person lives, how much they drive etc. In the company I worked for we optimized the premium with over 200 data points.
You can't use the same optimization regarding electric cars because the market is so small and the data isn't there yet. Moreover insurers increase premiums to be on the safe side.
Why can't you just calculate the premium based on 201 data points instead of 200, the 201-point being whether it's an electric car, hybrid, or regular car?
I think the "200 data point" line means "200 cars that crashed" and that there are too few electric cars around to do analysis on "electric cars with 30k miles driven, and owned by people without college degrees" or whatever- so they just look at "all electric cars" in one bucket.
Exactly, Tesla premiums are very high and I think the biggest tell is how much of a dud the "Tesla insurance" business has been.
They continue to be just a brokerage in a handful of states so they don't even underwrite policies. If the margins were actually good they would have gone national and began underwriting policies themselves by now. Insurance is literally free money when you have a risk that competitors assess incorrectly.
Are they high compared to other cars in the same price range and similar cost to repair? Remember: insurance rates aren't just based on how often cars get into accidents; those that cost more to repair after an accident will have higher rates, too.
I don't understand his obsession with FSD, it's only an icing on the cake .. he got tesla running fine, spacex .. and he cannot manage to be patient on the self driving front. Maybe some form of mania, euphoria of success..
I think it is because traditional auto manufacturers are catching up with the electric car game. No other company will bet their reputation on self driving cars, because their reputation is much more important than their electric cars' success. They can wait longer and try different variations until their electric car market grows profitable. Tesla on the other hand has to differentiate and stay ahead of the curve so it doesn't get trampled. That's why he is so obsessed with self driving.
I admire the idea of having a public currency with no ties to governments. That might create a better, more equal future. But bitcoin is failing that and it's what Taleb is talking about. I am not a working economist, but I am trained as one, and I would like to drop my two cents here.
I like the idea of having a public currency with no ties to governments because that makes our wealth safe from policies that have nothing to do with us, or our country. For example, I am Turkish and my wife is American. We are tied to the US and Turkey. Right now we earn some of our income in Turkish Liras, and some of it in US Dollars. The Turkish Lira(TRY) has been losing its value because of the incompetent financial management of the country. Basically our TRY wealth has lost half of its value in the past two years. Even though we don't feel that loss locally we feel it globally. The disturbing thing is we did nothing wrong to lose half of our wealth. A small group of people at the head of the government, with their horrendous decisions made us lose half of our wealth in just two years.
Same situation is going on with the global economy as well. We haven't felt the effects of Biden's new stimulus package yet, but as more money enter the system, all of our wealth will get a hit because of the inflation. America bets that they are going to create enough wealth with the 2b they are going to spend on infrastructure and will handle the effects of inflation. But what about rest of the world? We don't get anything, we will just lose our wealth.
When Bitcoin(BTC) was founded, the hope was to create a global currency with no ties with governments so we can preserve our wealth. But the speculative nature of Bitcoin makes it unsuitable for such a task. If BTC was stable enough, it would be preferable to gold to preserve wealth because it is easier to save and transfer. But you can't trust BTC. Anybody who understands finance will tell you it is the biggest bubble economy has ever seen. People with financial backgrounds don't trust BTC because it reminds them the previous economic bubbles that hurt global economy when the economy wasn't global. Since BTC became mainstream and started growing in an unprecedented way, I fear the effects of the burst because I know about the south sea bubble of 1720.
In BTC kind of bubbles everything looks wonderful to the public until a lot of wealth disappears in a couple of weeks. It took four weeks for the south sea bubble to burst and to lose 75% of its value. I believe when the bubble bursts and panic sets in BTC will lose most of its value in a shorter time. Moreover, in this burst there will be no government to mend the economic hurt people will suffer. That's what the economists are trying to warn people about.
When BTC people talk about BTC they usually talk from individual perspectives. They are earning a lot of money through BTC, so what's the problem with that? They say people who are against BTC doesn't get it, or are jealous because they are not earning money through BTC. Well, when the economists talk about BTC they talk about it from a global economic perspective. People can do what they deem worthy with their money, they can gamble, they can bet on BTC and try to earn more. Economists has no problem with that. Economists care about understanding the effects of the aggregate actions of people and economists don't want people to lose 75% of their wealth in a couple of weeks knowing the implications. They warn against bitcoin because when people who invest huge amounts of their money on BTC lose their wealth there will be no doors to knock to ask for help.
The BTC people almost always say that BTC is like gold. Well it's not. First, gold is tangible. You can have your gold and save it somewhere. Moreover, gold is one of the safest investments because over time gold price always increases. If you invest all of your wealth in gold, in the long term you will preserve your wealth. Can you say that with BTC? Of course not. You can't be sure that people will continue valuing BTC after the bust. You can't be sure that you will be able to sell your BTC after the bust. You can end up having some digits on some machines people are running for nostalgia. Moreover, gold is entangled in global economy and governments will interfere if the price of gold drops spectacularly. If the same happens to BTC, governments will shrug and tell that that's why people should use government backed currencies.
Another fallacy BTC people has is listening to people who are not financial experts. People might be successful experts in other areas, but economics is a different beast. I am good at marketing and sales, and people consider me as an expert in those areas. Would you accept my advice on programming a Linux kernel? That's happening with regards to BTC though. People who don't know about economics and finance, spends their days giving financial advice to people. Even people who are experts at finance would always tell that what they are telling are not financial advice whenever they talk, because it is just their opinion — and also for legal reasons. But those BTC zealots don't see a problem with suggesting people put their livelihoods and futures risk in an unstable, risky investment option.
We have to be reminded that, Newton, arguably one of the smartest human ever, and one of the most brilliant minds of his time with a great understanding of the financial events of his time, lost a huge part of his wealth when the bubble burst. You can read about it here: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsnr.2018.001...
Yet, I don't think BTC is a ponzi scheme. BTC is a risky financial instrument. NFT on the other hand is a beautiful ponzi scheme.
The article lacked substance but I am glad that we are talking about reading with ADHD here.
I don't feel guilty about not finishing books because most of the times if I force myself to finish a book that I don't find interesting enough, I don't remember the information in the book anyway.
Over time I have learned to trust my brain, and figured that it will remember the important parts I read. If the book bores me then probably there is nothing interesting in it for me.
Most of my life I read books without taking notes, and I would go through them thinking that I understand everything, but in the end I would miss deeper connections and wouldn't connect them to the information I already possess.
Now, I read non-fiction books with taking notes and taking notes makes me stop and think about what I am reading and enables me to make deeper connections with what I already know and improves retaining. Also shifting from reading to note taking and going back helps my ADD brain. I read a couple books at a time, and when I get bored of one, I shift to another one that interests me. I choose my books around one topic, and this topical similarity makes my ADHD a boon because this way I can make those books talk to each other and improve my understanding of the subject. I used to take all my notes longhand before, but now I type really fast and writing longhand feels antiquated now. I also love to be able to search my notes and use my notes as a second-brain.
I read both from kindle and paper-books. The change from kindle to paper also helps my brain. The variety increases my concentration.
When I am reading fiction, I try to visualize everything I read because if I stop visualizing, it turns into eye training, I think other things, or just read and don't remember anything. If I figure out I am eye training instead of reading, I stop reading the book and come back later.
I don't have the diagnosis but certainly recognize add elements in how I navigate the world. My conclusion was that there are actually quite a lot of books that just start out great and objectively become worse as the page count goes up (like The subtle art of not giving a F. You really start feeling "yeah, ok, I get it." There are also books that are the other way around (like Atlas shrugged) where you struggle through the first half and then almost read the second half in one go.
I'm not sure I've ever found a non-textbook science/math/philosophy book where the last chapter or two wasn't entirely skippable. There seems to be the point where the authors start stretching past what they really know and into more speculative, almost like they are planning the next book. I don't blame them, but it's not what I'm in that book for always.
This is a great example. I liked this book, but it could have been a blog article, or hell, even a single sentence: Konmari can also apply to obligations.
Sadly, publishing world is guilty of turning popular blog post series into books because the bloggers have a platform to promote. Then the bloggers turn each paragraph in their famous blog post into chapters in their book. You can understand that kind of books by reading the first few paragraphs of each chapter. As an example, Jordan Peterson's 12 Rules for Life comes to my mind. I think he turned a Quora answer to a book for that one.
I love books that make me think along, and take me a lot of time to finish. James N. Frey's How to write a damn good novel is my example for that kind of book.
I would love to hear the books you have studied thoroughly.
Studied is a big word but (on the fiction side) most things by Greg Egan keep me reading with ease. Also Harry Potter :). But also the Commonwealth Saga 1 and 2 by Peter F. Hamilton, the 3 books after that I never finished. Dune kept me going for 5 books until I stopped. On the non-fiction side, Richard Dawkins is a good writer.
Yes! I have just discovered this recently myself as well: whenever I wander off I context switch to something else I want to do instead of reforcing focus: multiple books, work, anki, side projects. Good so far.
I don't use a particular system. I am using Evernote to take all my notes because I take notes on many machines and when I started note taking Evernote was the only one I found with multi-device support.
Rarely, when I come across an interesting sentence structure or a great way to express an idea I write the exact words that is in the books.
Usually, I paraphrase what I have read, and jot down why I find it worthwhile. If the idea leads to new ones I follow those as well. I used to skip these thoughts because I thought reading the book was more important, but now I am focused on getting the most out of a book and following my thoughts, and thinking about the information is part of it.
Before, the title of the notes used to be the book's title and I would organize my notes based on titles. But for a couple years I have been taking notes around subjects. Since I also read around subjects, my note taking and my reading support each other nicely. If you consider starting to take notes while you are reading, I'd suggest going with subject based organization. If a note can be part of more than one subject, I copy the note to the other notebooks.
This subject based note taking also helps with understanding my interests, because some subjects grow dramatically while others grow marginally.
It also works as an early alert system when you are slacking off on areas you have to know but skip because you find them boring. This early alert system is extremely important for people with ADHD. I don't know about you, but I tend to over-focus on areas that I find interesting and don't touch areas that I don't. Then I try to make the areas that are important more interesting.
Not OP, but I mostly highlight and occasionally sprinkle in some text pointers. My goal is for future me to be able to pick up the book and only have to review the highlights to understand the important points.
Occasionally I’ll also use an index card as a bookmark and write page numbers with 1-2 word summaries of big ideas.
> What do you think? ... What else you want there?
My wife.
Well, I don't think a planet with no women will survive because women and sexual desire has been the biggest motivator of humanity since forever. In a world without women, either we are going to get bored and stagnate playing games or we are going to wage wars and end the world. Men don't struggle because of women, men struggle because they settle with the first woman they seduce. Settling with the first job that would want you will also make you miserable.
Strive for the most suitable woman for you, strive for the best job for you, strive for the best lifestyle for you, then you are going to be happy.
I for one, would not to live in a world without my wife, since she is a way better companion than any man can be and I am so happy to have an amazing companion.
I always argue that identity politics is important but it is not as effective as empowering working population. Improving the lives and wages of working class allows them to invest more in themselves and become more successful. It allows them to improve the condition of the next generation.
And moreover, minorities are usually from the working class, therefore improving the working class' conditions will improve the minorities' conditions as well.
I used to think education creates prosperity, and with prosperity comes self-actualization. As I learned more about the world, I started to think that economic security and extra income lets people pursue education and with education comes self-actualization. We should improve the bottom lines lives so that we decrease the inequalities in our society.
My hypothesis is that we use substances that hurt us because we are conscious about our own mortality. Using a mind-altering substance, a.k.a. poisoning yourself, is like turning on the light to see the big monster in the dark is just a pile of clothes. It gives us a sense that death won't be that bad.
Good writing is not a bunch of words on a page but it is what is not said, what is between the lines, and the word and punctuation choices of the writer. Maybe one day an AI will be able to write like a great writer does, but by then computers will be able to do all of our jobs.