Advait Raykar

All Posts from hallicopter.github.io

All Posts from hallicopter.github.io

This file contains a compilation of all blog posts from the _posts directory, organized chronologically.

Table of Contents

Agi trades for India.

2025-02-04

Last year, I read Daniel Gross’s essay called “AGI Trades”. The basic premise was who are the biggest losers and winners in a post AGI world? I have been working with AI for many years now. It’s clear that AI today is unlike AI in 2018. And I think that warrants people having a hard look at their lives.

First, I am concerned about India. It is true that a huge chunk of India’s GDP is GPT-4 tokens, which are getting cheaper as we breathe. For the purpose of this essay, I am going to forgo the term “AGI”, as not only adds zero value to the discourse, but also takes away from it. Instead, I am going to call it “Useful AI”.

Before I get into my assertions, I will note that these are simply my observations, and others may disagree with them. I don’t have the mandate heaven declaring what India is or isnt, but my 24 years of lived experience in urban Bangalore gives me enough perseptcive to make claims that may somewhat be rooted in reality.

Indian have a scarcity mindset, and for good reason. Historically, especially since the mid-1900s, there had not been enough of anything to go around. Things are changing now, but the mindset has stuck. It has not only stuck, it has warped into an weird gate keeper-ey culture for certain things.

Education is the prime example. We have few good institutes, and the good ones don’t have enough capacity. And the selectivity is a matter of pride. Useful AI is going to challenge this. Useful AI is digital abundance.

I don’t make the claim that Useful AI can grow crops. But it can make knowledge more accessible. Knowledge and power are keys to wealth in today’s world. Power can be built with knowledge. And knowledge can be built with Useful AI.

I think the biggest risk that India faces is that Useful AI will not be accessibly to everyone. It will be gate kept in the same way good education has been gate kept. Useful AI’s benefits will be felt only by those who know how to weild it.

Indians are a very hierarchical people. That’s a nice way of saying, they are casteist. It’s cutlurally deep rooted.

Unfortunately, the median state is failure

2024-03-30

2024 03 30 nyc sf

2024-03-30

2024 02 18 outlive

2024-02-18

title: Big Protein, and the quest to live better.
categories: [thoughts]
tags: [Musings]
layout: post

Kendrick Lamar was right in The Hillbillies.

“It’s not just a phase”

I recently finished reading the book “Outlive” by Dr Peter Attia. As a matter of fact, I just finished the last chapter and decided to pen down my thoughts. To paint a picture, as I often do, I am sitting in a café in the Upper East Side, called Inés. I am here on a rather strange quest

Rizz, money and technical brilliance.

2024-01-01

A mildly amusing framework to predict success, or justify success.

On frameworks

I think the simpler a model, the better it is. When something is that simple you are forced to acknowledge the reality that it is not perfect. If a framework or a model has something like 90 parameters, we may just actually fool ourselves that we can predict something of not from it. With that in mind, I do enjoy silly frameworks. And I think I have a silly framework that is sensible enough to entertain for the length of this essay.

The holy trinity of success

Rizz, money and technical brilliance are important parameters to success. How do you define success? For the sake of this framework, I will define success as the point at which a person can do whatever they please, whenever they want.

What a person wants varies. In the case of one Ariana Grande, it is ice on her wrist, lip gloss and her new hair, as she expresses in her piece on success:

My wrist, stop watchin’, my neck is flossy
Make big deposits, my gloss is poppin’
You like my hair? Gee, thanks, just bought it
I see it, I like it, I want it, I got it (yeah)

I want it, I got it, I want it, I got it

I think the key part here is how this ties into our definition. She wanted it, she got it. That is success for Mrs Grande. For a comedian, the definition of success might be their ability to fill Madison Square Garden for their standup special. You get the idea.

Now that we have got that out of the way, let’s focus on the holy trinity – rizz, money and technical brilliance.

Rizz (also referred to “charisma” in the more strait-laced circles) is the ability to be charming with the intention of getting things your way. Rizz is an enabler. Having rizz means:

  • People find it hard to say no to you.

  • You can paint the rainbow even when the reality maybe more akin to a dreary grey cloud.

  • People want to be around you, and they don’t know why.

If you aren’t sure if you have rizz, you don’t have rizz.

Money (also known as “The Greens”, “Paper”, “Benjamins/Gandhis” or “Dough”) is innate wealth. Money is another enabler, but this enabler is a reductive enabler. It enables by simplifying things, just the way a reductive argument often oversimplifies or diminhes the core subject. What do I mean by this in practice? You can throw money at your problems fairly thoughtlessly, and it will yeild results.

It’s too hot? Buy an air conditioner.

Teeth look bad? Buy a dentist appointment.

Kidney failed? Buy a kidney from the black market.

Committed a federal crime? Buy out the witnessess, and bribe the authorities.

The more unethical the ask, the more money you need (and the less likely it is to solve a problem too). But often times, money transcends ethical needs of the society. It is quite powerful. And another amazing thing about money is that having money enables you to get more money. It compounds. Your first million is going to be really hard. But the next five million? A fraction of the difficulty.

Technical Brilliance is the ability to solve problems that involve anything apart from humans. People in possession of technical brilliance are colloquially referred to as nerds. Technical brilliance can often be inferred from what people have built, or are building. Often times, they are building things like:

  • Rockets

  • Compilers

  • Batteries

  • Cures for cancer

  • (Unfortunately) High frequency trading algorithms

A generally reliable rule of thumb for the lack of technical brilliance is people saying they can build things but never building it. Often, these category of people are delusional or trying to game a system for social capital (especially if they are low on the rizz scale)

Weights and biases

I hypothesize that these three parameters above are the strongest indicators of success, but even within those, there is a hierarchy in terms of predicting success.

Money

The most obvious is money. And I am not just talking Ambani tier wealth – different levels of wealth contribute to success in different ways, although the common thread here is money. Breaking it down, I see it help in two ways.

Amplification of talent

There are certain levels of wealth that can exponentially amplify real talent. Let’s take an example that I think is an exemplar of this, a genuine talent, and some would say, a goat – one miss tay tay :

At a showcase in Nashville’s Bluebird Cafe in 2005, Swift caught the attention of Scott Borchetta, a record executive who was preparing to form an independent record label, Big Machine Records. She became one of Big Machine’s first signings, with her father purchasing a three percent share of the company.

Especially after the scale and ambition of the Eras tour, nobody in their right might can deny the sheer influence and talent that Ms Swift posseses. But I posit, if her millionaire father did not buy that 3% stake in the indie record label, we’d have no Eras tour.

Another example, a director with multiple Oscar nominations and winner of the Golden Globe Award for best animated feature, Travis Knight. He is also the CEO of Laika, which is in my opinion one of the best animation studios in the busienss today, especially for stop motion animation. He also happens to be the son of the billionaire founder of Nike, Phil Knight. Here is the history of Laika Studios

In the late 1990s, Will Vinton Studios, known for its stop-motion films and commercials, sought funds for more feature-length films and brought in outside investors, which included Nike, Inc. owner Phil Knight, whose son Travis Knight worked at the studio as an animator. In 1998, Knight made his initial investment.

…

Following the firing of Vinton, the Knights began to reorganize the failing studio, which was rebranded as Laika.

…

Since 2005, Travis Knight has served as Laika’s vice president of animation

…

He is the current president and CEO of Laika, along with serving on the board of directors of his father’s company, Nike, Inc., a position he assumed in 2015.

You get the idea. Money amplifies talent by giving you the channel to show it.

I also believe that talent is more common than wealth. The population of talented people far outweights the population of rich people. There are million people with Swift’s or Knight’s talent, so alpha can only be found in wealth. The rich people are amplified.

Developing Talent

Usually, people who grow up rich have more spare everything. Time, money and energy. And the best ideas stem from having excess time and means. Creativity flourshes when you know your basic needs are going to be taken of very well. I also hypothesize, on an average, rich people may be more talented. In the interest of not coming across as a contrived tool, I want to clarify my definition of talent – a learned skill that makes you better than the average person in the field. This is not innate talent I am talking about, something I don’t believe in.

Here is an example of Quadeca. He is a rapper-producer-songwriter who got his start on YouTube. His latest album, “I Didn’t Mean to Haunt You” is a pretty great album. I enjoyed a lot of his work, and he is someone I would definitely describe as talented. I was curious to learn about his background, and this is what I found:

Benjamin Lasky was born on October 2, 2000, in Los Angeles, California. His father, Mitch Lasky, is a Benchmark general partner and former entrepreneur and video game executive.

Yet another artist who is the son of a multimllionaire. It seems like art and wealth go hand in had. The logical explanation is that you are more likely to risk if you know your worst case scenario is someone else’s definition of succes.

And it’s not just artists. Let’s look at, Bill Gates. He went to a private school in Seattle, that gave him access to computers much earlier than most people. Another certified goat entrepreneur Mark Zuckerberg reportedly took $100,000 from his father in the early days of Facebook. Another thing that the both have in common is that they were Harvard dropouts, a school where a degree today costs over a quarter of a million dollars.

The gist of this is risk takers are outliers, and people are more likely to take risks if their downsides are capped. Rich peoples’ downsides are capped. So people who are rich, don’t waste this. You have an advantage.

Rizz

“Cash rules everything around me, C.R.E.A.M”, goes an old adage. But that is not entirely true. People rule everthing around you. And it just so happens that said people get extremely pliable when cash is involved. But there is another currency that makes people pliable – rizz.

Rizz is the ability to paint a picture of a beautiful world. It’s the ability to tell people how an office rental space will raise peoples conciousness.

The ability to convice people, to have your way are the amazing effects of rizz. People with rizz are extremely intelligent. Just not technically brilliant. They have the ability to push people, and often help them achieve things they didn’t think they are capable of.

Steve Jobs was the original silicon valley rizz god.

Steve Jobs' 20s: Hippie Head, Buddhist Soul, Artist Heart — Milena Nguyen

He was technically not astute, but he could convince people of amazing things. Another contemporary rizz god is Adam Neumann.

picture

A pattern I notice is that people with a lot of rizz are good looking. Or rather, people who are good looking may find it easy to up their rizz factor. They have to try lesser. There is some scientific truth to this. So if you look good, don’t waste it. You have an advantage.

Techinical Brilliance

This is also what I call, science-rizz. They can understand and manipulate numbers and patterns in the same way folks with people-rizz can do with people. But I put these at the lowest tier in the trinity. Why? In my opinion the supply for these people is the most.

I believe the supply hierarchy is something like this:

$Supply(\text{Technically Brilliant})>Supply(\text{High Rizz})>Supply(\text{Rich folk})$

The Matrix of Archetypes

image

Epilogue

Where do you lie in this framework?

Started a company in NYC, raised some money (no biggie)

2023-08-02

The unglamourous life of an NYC pre-seed entrepreneur.

The Prolificity Thesis

2022-09-25

Death, taxes and my need to be pretentious on the internet.

On this gloomy Sunday evening in NYC, all I can think of is that I want to be remembered for being prolific. Over the past year, I have been romanticizing being prolific. I have been wording the same feelings in different ways — “Quantity over quality”, “Continuous iterations”, “Keep building” — all slogans of someone putting obscene throughput on a pedestal.

The more I think about it, the more I sense tinges of hedonism in wanting to get onto the path to prolificity. But more than that, being prolific is an act of humility. A high throughput demands a person to let go of a sense of quality in their work.

In “The Picture of Dorian Grey”, Basil, an artist, paints a picture of Dorian Grey. A picture he is reluctant to share with the world, because it has too much of himself in it. While you, as the reader, may be aghast at the pretentiousness of this comparison, you can’t deny the fact that you too feel that the work you produce has a piece of you in it. Try sincerely writing a letter to someone you care for in two minutes. And then actually send it to them. That anxious uncertain feeling you have when you read out what you wrote in those two minutes, that is your lack of humility. I think now would be a good time to stop attacking the reader for their sensibilities.

As a maker of things — food, code, prose — I regularly find myself aghast at the end result. “This isn’t up to my standards”, I think to myself. But in reality, I am not upto my standards. If my goal is to be prolific, I need to have the humility to be perceived as someone who isn’t good enough.

An illustration of the prolificity thesis.

My admiration for prolific people stems from this core. They got over The humility barrier, a barrier that is hard to cross. It isn’t easy to be associated with work you think is not up to your standards. But me having standards that I am not able to meet is in itself a sign of narcissism. Arrogance some would say.

At this point, it would be worth noting that humility is not the only ingredient that goes into the Prolificity Soup. Unfortunately, I do not know the whole recipe. I know there is a good sprinkling of discipline in there. And weirdly enough, a touch of pride (like the sprinkling of sea salt on a good chocolate cookie).

When (or if?) I find the whole recipe, you shall be the first to know it. Here.

It’s fermentation season, bring out your glassware!

2022-04-01

The art of taming micro-organisms for health and debauchery.

My history with fermentation

Despite being into cooking from a very young age, I never really knew much about fermentation. It was only during the third year of my undergrad at Manipal that I really got into fermenting foods. I would credit a good chunk of my fermentation obsession to my flatmate Rahul Sathanapalli1 who equalled my enthusiasm for controlled rotting. On a trip to the hippie town of Gokarna one weekend, we tried some Kombucha, a drink that we had never heard of at the time. We loved it so much that we decided to try and make some back at our flat. Both of us decided to pool in money to buy all the equipment and ingredients to ferment our first batch of kombucha. In my head, this was the defining moment of my fermentation journey.

One of the very first batches of Kombucha we ever brewed. Yes, my handwriting hasn't improved since.

We both loved the first bottle we brewed. It tasted tart, fizzy and really refreshing. Over the next few weeks, we tweaked our proportion of tea leaves, sugar and fermentation durations to devise the recipe that we liked the most. We loved it so much so, that we decided that we had to raise awareness around this weird and wonderful fermented beverage. That led to us starting our own kombucha brewing company, TheKombuCo.

The FAQ story we put up on our page for some good old fashioned product marketing

A few months after launching, we added another fermented beverage to our roster — ginger beer. A refreshing, naturally fizzy beverage fermented using the wild yeast found in ginger.

Shout out to the amazing Siddhant Tibrewal and my brother, Atharva Raykar who designed our bottles and logo respectively

During this time, I even started exploring fermentation in the form of pickling, curing and brewing a whole host of foods. College was the time I experimented a lot with food. I went from a fermentation ignoramus to a fermentation geek.

College-me pickling eggs for my home made ramen. I was boujee like that

You may be wondering what happened TheKombuCo after college ended. Well, we shut it down right before graduating from Manipal. But if you still want to try some Kombucha, my old flatmate Rahul and his friend Twinkle have started their own (way more succesful and professional) brand of kombucha — Hydra Kombucha. Knowing Rahul and seeing his brewing ability along with his eye for flavour develop over the years, I can’t recommend trying his kombucha enough.

Uncharted territory

Off late, I have been experimenting with newer brews and fermentation strategies. The warm summers provide the ideal conditions for me to try out newer fermentation techniques and recipes. Much to my mother chagrin, I had hijacked a good chunk of the house kitchen for my fermentation jars and bottles. Even I realised my aggresive kitchen expansion was not a viable strategy, so I decided to call a truce and identified another location in the house to call my fermentation station.

I had to beef up my arsenal to keep up with my fermentation ambition

I procure all my yeasts and other fermentation and brewing paraphernalia from Aristham, a website I have been doing business with for the past many years. I highly recommend buying stuff from them if you want to get into brewing or fermentation. The owner of Arishtam has also authored a book that I bought; it is a nice guide to fermentation and home brewing in the Indian context.

The Aristham Homebrew Guide

I have been exploring this guide and trying out newer brews and recipes. As of today, I am working on the following ferments:

  1. Ginger Beer (the safe brew that I have years of experience making)
  2. Kanji (an Indian lacto-fermented beverage made traditionally from black carrots and beetroot)
  3. Rice Koji (I am not sure I am making this right though. I would classify this one as “at risk”)

A bottle of fizzy, wild ginger beer.

Why you should ferment foods

Here is my elevator pitch on why you should ferment foods

  1. Fermented foods taste great. Have you ever had crisp beer, a savoury pickle or some cool yoghurt on a sunny day? You have fermentation to thank for that.
  2. Fermentation is easy. Ask your parents — they probably have been setting curd and pickling vegetables at home since their childhood. As you get comfortable with fermenting foods, you can try expanding to more boujee ferments like Miso, Sake or a crisp dark Stout. Fermentation has a low barrier of entry, and high ceiling of expertise.
  3. Fermentation is rewarding. There is deep cultural and sociological lore behind various ferments. It’s one of the oldest cooking methods known to humankind. There is great joy in learning more about the histories, stories and science behind fermentation. Remeber that glass of wine you had? Or that side of pickle you took with your curd rice? You tasted over a thousand years of culinary experimation. Cracking open your first brew, or eating some home-made yoghurt is one of the most satisfying things in the world.

Try fermenting something this weekend. You won’t regret it. Or maybe you will, who knows.

Footnotes

Permutations and Intersections.

2022-02-27

It is indeed true that if you eat enough ghee every day, your customer acquisition cost reduces.

Safety in permutations

If you read and thought about the opener for this essay, you’d realize that it makes no sense. You’d be sensible in thinking that. In all probability, that is a sentence that has never been put to ink (or pixel) until today. Sure, it may be a stupid sentence, but it is a creative one. This (or rather, these kinds of sentences) motivate me. Being all of twenty-three, I carry within me the naive hope that I would bring value to this world by doing something different. Building something game-changing1.

I find safety in knowing all permutations are not exhausted. Anyone could have thought of my opening sentence. But nobody did. It’s because there are a trillion other (more useful) sentences that people would write. I like to think of these “brand new sentences” as an analogy for stuff; stuff ranging from startups to books to side-projects. As a builder of things, a thinker of ideas, I like to think that my current ideas are closer to gibberish sentences that nobody has ever spoken before. A potential exception could be InternetBlogCo, which is an idea that has been implemented in some forms, but for all intents and purposes, is a unique idea. And considering I have a user who truly likes the service, the idea may even be good. Now enough of this silly little analogy.

Enough TAM for us all

The world has 8 billion people. That’s an insane number of people. Whatever you make, and yourself enjoy, you will find an audience for it. It may not be a huge audience, but it will be an audience nonetheless. Nothing exemplifies this hypothesis of mine better than the website Indiehackers. Let’s take an example to illustrate my point (an example that blew me away when I first read about it last year).

OilPriceApi.com

Gareth Fuller started his career in the oil and gas industry right after graduating with a degree in mechanical engineering from his home country of Scotland. Being from the oil and gas industry, he wanted to create a Twitter bot that tweeted crude oil prices every hour to keep track of it easily. On doing some research on how he could build one, he realized that there is no easy way to programmatically find the price of oil. So he set about creating an API that scraped oil prices from multiple live sources and averaged them out. Integrating this with the Twitter API, he came up with OilPriceHourly, a Twitter bot that tweeted oil prices every hour. The bot was, for whatever reason, a hit. Seeing this, Gareth figured there’d be more people out there who would be interested in his weird little crude oil API. As a result, he came up with OilPriceAPI.com, his first-ever revenue-generating side project. Turns out, he found a whole host of other weirdos that are willing to pay to have crude oil prices in the form of an API.

Monthly revenue for OilPriceAPI.com

“Let me a build SaaS for find live crude oil prices” was, in this case, the sentence that had never been uttered before. And it was just sensible enough that he found a consistent paying user base for his service. There are thousands of projects, businesses, and startup-like these who have managed to find a niche that resonated with more people than you’d think. And the funny thing is, many times, these “niches” may not even be niches. It’s hard to think of a world without Github, Gitlab, or other online version control services, but none of these services existed just about 14 years ago. “What if we had a shared online version control server as a service” was an unheard-of sentence.

Another interesting way of thinking here is that one good idea could be really close to another, un-explored good idea. Ideas beget ideas. Paul G, aka the hackerest hacker in the game, says in his essay “Startups = Growth”2

The maxima in the space of startup ideas are not spiky and isolated. Most fairly good ideas are adjacent to even better ones.

If his heuristic is to be believed, you could start with a moderately good but fairly unique idea and end up with a really good and fairly unique idea.

The best sourdough vegan pizza in west Whitefield.

Scott Adams, the author of Dilbert wrote in his piece3 about being having a successful career that the best way to be successful is:

  1. Be the best at something.
  2. Be very good (top 25%) at two or more things.

That, he says, was his secret to success. He is “above average” skills created an intersection that he dominated. He says:

In my case, I can draw better than most people, but I’m hardly an artist. And I’m not any funnier than the average standup comedian who never makes it big, but I’m funnier than most people. The magic is that few people can draw well and write jokes. It’s the combination of the two that makes what I do so rare. And when you add in my business background, suddenly I had a topic that few cartoonists could hope to understand without living it.

Dilbert lay at the intersection of his three “top 25%” skills. He really hit that big business boi sweet spot

I like this strip, because the last panel meta-commentary on this essay

The (metaphorical) carrot at the end of my (metaphorical) stick

My personal and career goals are dictated by cultivating experiences that put me in the top 25%ile of a set of skills. There are so many skills in the world. I just need to be in the top 25%ile in two to three of them. Today, within my network of friends and peers, I like to think of myself as an above-average programmer, and an above-average writer, resulting in me being one of the best programmers who can write prose. While that distinction doesn’t mean much, it gives me hope in creating other such distinctions that would mean a lot and make me very valuable.

The world has so many possibilities. Take a bit of X and throw in a bit of Y, and you have something special all of a sudden. Peloton came from the question “What if I could attend Soul Cycle classes anytime, anywhere?”. Apple came from the question “What if I could have a computer at home?”. Cisco came from the question, “What if networks could network with other networks?”. These were, at the time, new ideas. These ideas manifested into real world entities because of talented people who were either the best in their field, or above average in many fields 4

This is the (metaphorical) carrot at the end of my (metaphorical) stick — there are so many ideas yet unexplored, and maybe one day I could be bringing one of these ideas to the real world.

Footnotes

Year in review, part 1.

2022-01-15

A retrospective, told in multiple parts.

Like in most years of my life, a lot happened this year. I grew in some ways (body fat %) and regressed in others (muscle mass %). Here, I write a brief overview of my year. I will not go in chronological order, but I may do so if I please. Primarily, though, I am going to split my experiences into two broad categories - “surprising” and “unsurprising”.

As the category labels suggest, I am going to classify my experiences on whether I found them to be surprising or unsurprising in terms of enjoyment, learning, and any other parameter I deem fit. Additionally, I will also go over some mistakes I made and what I learned along the way; all for your perusal.

I am splitting this into multiple parts because I want to write this over multiple sittings, which would allow me to come up with more ideas on how to conduct my personal retrospective.

Surprising

How easy it is to control your appetite

At the beginning of this year, I played with my diet a lot. I randomly fasted on some days, overate on others. I wrote about my reasoning in an older post. During the days I fasted, I realized how easy it is not to feel hungry. The experience is very similar to long-distance running. In the beginning, things are quite difficult; your stomach makes unglamorous noises, you think about food a lot, and you feel a strange urge to pop something down your esophagus to satisfy your conniving stomach. These wayward thoughts don’t last very long, though. It is because, in reality, you are not very hungry. At least I am not. Once my body got the memo, it didn’t bother me all too much. I learned that for me, boredom is a more significant causal agent for hunger than the lack of food.

I remember listening to an interview with an escaped North Korean defector in which she talked about the American obesity crisis. She was amazed that people could eat themselves to death. Her solution was (while a little unempathetic) very elegant - just don’t eat. You’d be surprised how easy that is once you make up your mind.

Covid is still a BIG deal.

At the beginning of 2021, I genuinely expected covid to be tamed. One venerable SARS-Cov-2 really cemented her place in the history books as a killjoy of global proportions. There was a window of about 3-4 months where I did go out once every couple of weeks or so, but I spent my time locked up at home for the most part. It’s 2022 now, and I don’t see myself leaving home anytime soon.

How much I can read

In the first quarter of 2021, I read 15 books, averaging over a book per week. Looking back, that was quite an impressive statistic. If you want a more detailed breakdown, read my post here.

How little I read

You’d imagine that I would have read at least 30 books with a start like that, but no. I read between 20 and 25 books. I even lost track of things. This mainly happened because sometime after July, I became very sloppy. Sloppy with my reading habit, sloppy with my writing habit, and sloppy with my mindfulness habit. This leads me to believe that it may be necessary for me to conduct a mid-year recalibration from next year.

How much of a difference not meditating makes.

I practiced mindfulness quite regularly from late 2020 to mid-2021. My habit got derailed when my subscription to the “Waking Up” resting App expired. It was only after I stopped my practice I realized how much meditation improved my life. A consequence of my negligence was a degraded “general happiness” during the latter half of 2021. I wasn’t sad per se, but just not as happy or satisfied as the first half of 2021.

A trip with family and friends.

With covid around, I never imagined a trip with family was on the table (let alone with friends). I wish to write a travelogue on this trip. Maybe once I start writing more regularly.

Built a side project that is actually useful.

In 2021, I built quite a few things. Most (if not all) worked functionally. That is about at par with my side project track record. I am fairly proficient at building things. As a consequence, I build things often. But much to my chagrin, things that I make end up in either of the two buckets

  • I use it (but very rarely)
  • Nobody uses it (including me)

My CLI ebook speed reader falls into the former category and everything else in the latter. This year, there was an exception - InternetBlogCo.

Even today, my brother regularly uses it to publish his writings. I view InternetBlogCo as the most useful side project I have built, and as a consequence, the most fun side project I have worked on. If you want to start writing, but don’t know how to create or maintain a blog, check it out.

{To be continued}

PS: I am running an experiment where I write down my essays instead of typing them out. Read about that here. See the original handwritten draft here.

An experiment.

2021-12-18

Is physical writing the way forward for me?

Yes, I know that my handwriting has a long way to go.

I have written about my disdain for my excess exposure to computers This is an experiment that aims at reducing my computer usage. All articles and essays I have written so far have been typed out. This meant I have been set in front of the computer for hours at a time writing down my thoughts. This article will be a little different. I am physically writing this one.

Right of the bat, I can notice a few differences. I write much slower than I type. Another difference is that the big prominent backspace key that I always fell back on while typing is missing here. I am using the old-school scratch-the-word-and-move-on method. I am hoping that the lack of a backspace key, along with my motor limitation will make me think a little more before I put my thoughts to (literally) paper.

I have also noticed that the absolute lack of distractions due to the analog nature of this process is making me feel good. I am not sure why. Maybe it is the novelty. I have written close to 3 pages in my newly opened “writing book”. My hands are in considerable pain. Feels like I am using muscles that haven’t been used in years. This first of my writings as a part of this experiment. Over the next few months, I want to further study the effects physical writing has on my thought, flows, and outputs. For now, my hand has had enough.

PS: I am planning to use OCR to scan this and convert it to text. If you are reading this it has worked.

PPS: This is me after running OCR. I am hoping one pleasant side effect of this exercise would be that my handwriting improves. I noticed some common patterns where the computer is not able to recognize my handwriting. A second pass on the output is definitely necessary, which is another bug that is actually a feature. It forces me to re-read and edit my writing, something that I rarely did.

My internet rules.

2021-11-11

Or how to have a good time on the internet.

A Personal History.

I have grown up with the internet. In a lot of ways, my thinking and personality are a product of the internet. I am sure, if I weren’t on the internet as much as I was, I would have been a very different person. I grew up playing club penguin, miniclip games and stick cricket. I used to upload videos on the YouTube back when Ray William Johnson was the biggest YouTuber on the planet. I created my first email account before I knew what I could do with it. Basically, I loved (and still love) the internet.

During my time on the internet, I rarely dabbled into the social side of things. I never made an account on Facebook. I was briefly on Google+ before it shut down. I never made accounts on those flavour-of-the-season anonymous QA social networks like Ask Fm and Yik Yak. I was very late to the Instagram train (and have recently come off it). I was just not very social on the internet. The only social media I have used religiously (and still use) is Reddit. Off late, I have also become active on Twitter.

Living on the internet, scouring through inumerous comment sections and endless threads, I have learnt a lot about the internet, and by proxy humanity. I have seen how the internet can bring out the absolute worst in people. I myself have indulged in petty arguments on the internet that not only added zero value, but also got me and the the other person invovled all riled up.

Me arguing over something petty on the internet 4 years ago

In 2021, it’s very hard to be happy on the internet. It is much more convenient and easier to be outraged or angry instead. Most of the internet is designed to be like this. Such are the unfortunate by products of the attention economy. In my opinion, twitter is one of the worst offenders. It’s a platform that thrives on people making provocative statements while preventing anyone from having a remotely meaningful conversation. Most tweets I come across rarely amount to anything more than playground insults. Or some sort of signalling. I realised that I had to set personal rules to not get sucked into this torrential boneheadedness.

Enter Improv.

What is improv? Wikipedia has a very succinct definition:

Improvisational theatre, often called improvisation or improv, is the form of theatre, often comedy, in which most or all of what is performed is unplanned or unscripted: created spontaneously by the performers. In its purest form, the dialogue, action, story, and characters are created collaboratively by the players as the improvisation unfolds in present time, without use of an already prepared, written script.

Internet, at its best, is a way for humanity to come together and collaborate. A way to synthesise amazing ideas. The problem lies in the fact that today’s internet is more divisive than collaborative. What if we followed the rules of improv on the internet? That’s the premise on which I have created my personal rules for the internet. Improv inspired rules for good times on the internet.

For improv to be worth watching, or even doing, everyone involved have to follow a few golden rules. I have adapted these rules for the internet.

Say “yes’and!”

The most popular rule of improv, everytime a player sets the scene or creates a situation, others have to “yes and” with them. Another rule to follow here is to always add information to the “yes and”. Having this kind of a yes and mindset puts you into a collaborative attitude - exactly the kind you need to be happy on the internet.

A good "yes and" response

What if you just don’t agree with the premise? The next rule is exactly for that scenario.

Don’t Block

If you want to have a good time on the internet, don’t block. Disagree with something? Move on. Either yes and, or let be. This is possibly the most important skill that I am yet to develop while browsing the internet. You think Indiranagar is a pretentious start up hell hole? Better keep that opinion to yourself instead of responding to the thread.

Focus on the here and now.

In improv, it’s important for all the actors to focus on what other actors are doing in the now. That’s what helps you remain grounded in an improv situation. On the internet too, it’s easy to get carried away. As seen earlier, I got carried away explaining why Urvashi theatre is inferior to a Digital IMAX experience. I didn’t focus on the here and now, which was me trying to know more about where I could have a good time watching Dunkirk.

Be open to change.

In improv, the scene can change very rapidly. One must never be married to the situation and must position ourselves to embrace change at any moment.

Epilogue

The world is a mean place. Let’s make it better place by improv-ing everywhere.

What is rewarding?

2021-10-31

A venn diagram didn’t help.

Background

I write more than the average person. Writing is good. I tell myself. Many times I don’t even write substantive things. But I write anyways. I find it to be rewarding.

It’s not easy to find activities that are rewarding. Writing is one of the easier “rewarding” activity that I know of. I find sharpening my knives rewarding. But there are only so many times you would sharpen your knives. I find cooking rewarding. But that can get very exhausting. I find shooting hoops rewarding. That’s a low-hanging fruit.

Rewarding activities are fulfilling. They make me feel like I have spent my time well. They put me in a good mood. What if I did more rewarding activities? I will always be in a good mood. I will be a likeable fellow.

How to do more rewarding activities? I wish there was a manual to identify such activities. I haven’t found any reliable methods of identifying such activites. What are the features of rewarding activites? It’s hard to distinguish between features and effects. Is “feeling good” a feature of a rewarding activity or an effect of it? I am sure huffing meth by the street must feel really good; after all, people are willing to sacrifice their life for it. It must be good. But I am fairly certain it’s not rewarding. It sure doesn’t sound rewarding.

I like thinking about my future. I find the act of planning about it very rewarding. I am excited by the opportunities. After all, I am going to change the world. Change the world? I wonder if that will be rewarding.

Sane defaults.

I recently wrote down some thoughts on my career so far. I think a lot about what I want to do. I am good at some things, not so good at others. Fortunately, the things I am good (or at least competent) at make me fairly employable. What I am doing at work is rewarding today, but will it be rewarding tomorrow?

The problem is that life is like a vanilla installation of Vim or Emacs. The defaults are quite unusable. We don’t come with sane defaults. It’s very easy to end up doing unrewarding things. We only find out when it’s too late. There are many ways people deal with our bad defaults. Paul Graham has a neat little set of commandments that he uses as his guiding principles.

  1. Don’t ignore your dreams
  2. Don’t work too much
  3. Say what you think
  4. Cultivate friendships
  5. Be happy

These are a nice set of defaults. Sane defaults. Not sure if they are easy to follow though. For this to be of any use, you would

  • Need to know what your dreams are
  • Need to know how to be happy

These are pretty demanding prerequisites. But I think their answers lie in what you find rewarding.

Candidates

I have noticed that certain charactersitics are common in rewarding activites.

  • Complexity
  • Depth
  • People

Complexity and depth can be inculcated by adopting a “hacker” mindset. Steven Deobald, in his paper “Vipassana for Hackers” describes it best

Not everyone associates themselves with the label “Hacker”. It comes with a few well-known negative connotations so my first task is to quickly identify what is meant by “Hacker”, since this paper is for these people.

My first exposure to the term “hacking,” outside of the late-80’s imagery which became fodder for the 1995 film, was through my cousin Jennie. She is an Ecologist, a self-described “Mud Scientist”, who most people would not associate with the term “Hacker”. She visited MIT during her PhD to find the term extended to “roof and tunnel hacking,” an idea and practice which delighted her to no end. MIT or not, Jennie is a Hacker. Every Science is about exploration and discovery, and these are the concepts at the root of “hacking.”

Carpentry, painting, gardening, the entire field of Genetics, baking bread, Philosophy, electronics, fashion, Psychology, health, writing, and bicycles. Almost any discipline can fall under the banner of “hacking” I’m using for this paper, since almost any discipline can (but does not necessarily) include the potential for two essential aspects of the Hacker Mentality: Rationality and Curiosity.

This is all that is required.

Being a hacker is rewarding. I must always be a hacker.

But what about people? Being a hacker may be rewarding enough, but sometimes it may not. People are important. I like helping people. Helping them makes me happy. It’s rewarding. I want to help people at scale. The hacker mindset can help me help people. Customer first, companies say. I agree.

The holy trinity

Like a dog being trained, I seek to maximise my reward.

Calling a cab for a confused man in a new city is rewarding. Building complex distributed systems is rewarding. But building Uber, oof, that will be quite the thrill. I want to reach peak rewarding.

What is rewarding?

That prickly question again. Even after making a venn diagram, I don’t have good answers. Maybe there exist no good answers. I really thought that venn diagram will help. Or maybe the whole thing is a curse - if we know what is rewarding, it won’t be rewarding anymore. Discovery is rewarding. Who knows. Maybe Buddha knows. But I definitely don’t.

The pursuit of physical crafts.

2021-10-24

Despite my pudgy fingers.

Japanese Star Wars "paper theatre"

The past two weekends, I have induged in physical crafts. It’s been surprisingly enjoyable. Growing up, I never was a very enthusiastic artist. It is probably because I have sausage like fingers which offer little to no dexterity. But these past two weeks have seen me being drawn to physical crafts despite my non-cooperative digits.

Last week, I went to a Friend’s place. There, we worked on putting together something called “paper theatre”. Her friend had brought back for her a Star Wars themed paper theatre craft kit from Japan, where such craft kits are quite popular. It had been gathering dust for nearly 3 years. We decided that it was time for it to see the light of the day.

Such kits comprise of laser cut pieces of paper that have to be layered in a manner that it creates a nice 3D scene.

The laser cut pieces that came with our kit

All of these layered sheets once put together with glue, clever folds and sheer will come together to form a very satisfying frame, almost a painting.

I struggled a lot while making this. The glue kept sticking to my hands. The pieces kept falling apart. And it was really hard to even remove the laser cut pieces. My Friend’s more supple female fingers were not much more useful either, since the person in charge of the said digits was outsourcing the bulk of the gluing and cutting gruntwork to me.

Something about dealing with analog articles like glue and scissors was very therapeutic. This may not seem like a big thing for a lot of people, but I rarely spend time in such pursuits. I doubt a lot of us do. We fill our free time binging shows, playing games and living in other digital worlds. This felt different, better.

This weekend too, I wanted to spend more time living in the real world. I wanted to use my uncooperative fingers to make something. I wanted to pursue a physical craft. I decided to paint my 3D print of the 2018 Ferrari that was driven by Vettel and Kimi.

The result of my paintjob.

I painted the car an iconic ferrari red, and coated it in a layer of glossy epoxy spray paint to finish it off.

It was hard painting this. The model was tiny. The paint kept rubbing off on my fingers. I could not even paint in uniform strokes. But I loved every second of it.

Therapy

The pursuit of physical crafts is therapeutic in nature. I think I have developed stockholm syndrome towards technology. It lured me in with shiny colours, bright lights and a wild promise of power, but cleverly hid its consequences in the terms and conditions.

Or, how to get into physical crafts

Indugling in these tiny art projects has made me congizant of the terms and conditions of being a tech bro™️, the ones I initially overlooked. You may also be like me. Get into pottery, carpentry, painting, drawing, anything really. I assure you, you will feel a lot more at peace.

Perspectives on value, and other pretentious early-career reflections.

2021-10-16

A snapshot of my opinions, so I can laugh at them in 1 year.

A view from my favourite office nook at my first job, 2020

It has been 650 days since I began my career as a software engineer in “the industry”. This essay is a collection of my revelations, prejudices, and disjointed thoughts on my journey so far.

On creating value

Having a fulfilling career is difficult. It is an ideal that most fail to achieve because of the practicalities of life, fraught with pecuniary levies, death, and social eccentricities.

Due to said practicalities, it’s not realistic for everyone to have a fulfilling career. Fortunately for me, a lot of these practicalities don’t apply to me. For me, the opportunity of having a fulfilling career is mine to lose. There are two main reasons for this:

  • I absolutely love computers. I write code not only for a living but also for recreation.
  • My field is (in)famous for, what they call in the streets, “the dough”.

I am set up for having a career in being paid for what I love. I am not a musician who is coding to make ends meet. Or a writer, grinding away in a day job until he makes it big. I am a tinkerer who likes tinkering with computers and gets paid to do it.

But, there is but here. These were my thoughts during the first 6-8 months of my career. They have changed a bit since. I have started contemplating about the “value” created as a factor contributing to having a “fulfilling” career. I have put value and fulfillment in quotes because I still don’t know what either of those words mean. They are just proxies for the meaning I lay upon them. These are the interpretations of a 23-year-old pretentious software engineer and wannabe brewer. Salt to taste.

(Only) Writing code and creating sophisticated software isn’t fulfilling for me anymore. It has to be in the context of creating value. But what is value? Currently, my brain is not developed enough to fully appreciate the second, third or fourth-order value-creating effects of what I do. That means I find “value” in only first-order value creation. For the purpose of this essay, first-order value is

  • Making investing easy for all (Zerodha)
  • Making payments easy for business (Stripe, Razorpay, Juspay)
  • Making knowledge accessible (Wikipedia, Coursera)

These are just a few examples of first-order value creation. I find this class of value easy to understand. There is an elegant simplicity to it. It should be noted, however, there are hidden complexities and a books’ worth of caveats in this too; Facebook has created boatloads of first-order value, but at what cost? Second and third-order side-effects of first-order value is a complexity that I decided to completely ignore, unless glaringly obvious (as in the case of Facebook).

For the purpose of this essay, second, third, or fourth-order value creation is:

  • Trading in complex financial instruments (Investment banks, independent trading)
  • Venture capital
  • Tobacco commerce
  • Think Tanks

It’s worth clarifying that I don’t look down on higher-order value creation. I believe it’s more prone to not providing enough “value”, and by extension, “fulfillment”. The sheer complexity creates an environment ripe for paper-pushing, and at worst, fraud (looking at you, credit default swaps). When it works, higher-order value creation is a thing of beauty, but when it doesn’t, it really really doesn’t. But this is not a commentary on the ills of higher-order value creation, but a commentary on how I don’t understand it enough to find fulfillment in it. My mental model of having a “customer” for my work inherently doesn’t allow for higher-order value creation.

Until I develop a better way to visualize value, my “value” will be derived from servicing a direct “customer”, whoever it may be. And transitively, a career that enables me to use my skills (specifically tech skills) in the service of creating first-order value would be fulfilling.

Pride and Naivety

Software engineers are a self-indulgent people. There is immense pride in enjoying the purity of writing elegant code. Consequently, they are also a gate-keeping people. I also used to think me writing code somehow meant that my role was somewhat better than those who didn’t. What I naive fool I was. This thinking is at odds with my mission of creating value. A part as, if not more, important than writing code is the resource management and logistics of creating software-driven value.

This realization truly set in when I heard an ex-founder and investor talk about having the ability to scale yourself. The ability to scale your technical ability is highly decoupled from your technical ability. Because I joined an early-stage startup on an exponential growth trajectory, I could see this need to scale people firsthand. A lot of these realizations around scaling my ability came from first principles aka blunders.

My theory is that if I genuinely want to pursue a fulfilling career (as defines earlier), just writing beautiful code won’t cut it. It was a sad realization because I love it so much and I thought doing it full time would be enough to lend me a “fulfilling career”. But the sadness was misplaced. There is as much beauty to be found in managing processes, marketing, and fostering an environment for innovation.

Working at an early-stage startup for much of my career has made me appreciate what really goes into making value commercially viable. Having a great product is good, but success is majorly a function of market, sales, and evangelization. This is more so when the product you build is disruptive.

I work on some really great tech. Yet, the product can’t be carried by its tech alone. The success of a product lies in the logistics that carry it. Even if you don’t like these supporting functions like sales, market, or operations, learning to manage resources is absolutely essential even as a developer. Spending time organising is one of the best uses of your time. Good tech is also a function of the environment it’s built-in. I believe that it’s almost impossible for a good product to come out of a sweatshop. Fostering this environment for innovation is a non-tech skill that is the catalyst for being a great engineer.

Let me make a simple analogy.

If your excellent tech skills are the dosa, your non-tech skills are the palya and the chutney. Even the best plain doses gets you only so far; they at least need some nice benne or ghee.

On hating big corporations.

If you know me at all, I am quite vocal about my dislike for big corporate entities. Even during my undergrad, I drew the ire of my placement department for not going through with my college Internship+PPO at GE Healthcare. My dislike for working there motivated me to seek employment elsewhere off-campus. To this day, my friends speak of how salty I was during the day of my campus placement.

My disparaging of these corporates often results in me not giving them credit where due. Big corporations like the FAANGs provide meaningful employment to thousands of people. They provide a wealth of resources and allow some of the world’s smartest people to work on interesting problems while providing job security and amazing benefits.

I dislike the idea of working in them because more often than not, you don’t get to learn a lot there. Your decisions will get bogged down by bureaucracy. For the lack of a better word, the verve is missing. The difference between working at a late-stage start-up (in my case, Traveloka) and an early-stage startup is a world of a difference. I can imagine how the downsides of working at a late-stage startup would be magnified at the scale of a giant corporation 1 Because of this, working at smaller organizations is definitely the path I would take unless of course I am struck by the aforementioned practicalities of life.

Footnotes

My swelling debts and the elusive race condition, part six.

2021-10-09

If programmers had a credit rating for their tech debt, they’d all be junk bonds.

A 3d printed bust of Marcus Aurelius, Home, Bangalore, 2021

Recap

For those new here, I aspire to write about what is happening with me on at least a weekly basis. To quote my older post

I hope I keep this up and eventually I can publish my future memoir of my wildly successful life with this a reference.

In that spirit, I had decided to rename this series to “My memoir”, and then soon later declared that I don’t like the name. I have now decided that I don’t want to restrict it to any name. Every chapter will have it’s own title followed by the chapter number. Let’s see how my titles get progressively worse. Enough with the rambling, read the rest of my “memoir” here. From this week on, I am adding a new section to my memoir - “Perusal”, where I recommend aritcles or books that I read.

Apart from this, all my chapters end with “Notes on the epigraph” where I give more context on the photograph in my frontmatter.

My debts

You may have hear about “tech debt”, a tech shop buzzword used to describe somewhat poor technical decsions made in order ship something faster or simplify some code. It’s called “tech debt” because programmers1 delude themselves into thinking they will pay back said debt. If programmers had a credit rating for their tech debt, they’d all be junk bonds. Why am I bringing up tech debt, you may ask (while stroking your chin). It’s because I am going to be clichéd and compare this to real life. Specifically my life.

Every decision is a debt in the making. All of us, knowingly or unknowingly are racking up on debts (or the rare few up us, are doing quite the opposite). But who is the debtor and who is the debtee, you make ask (while stroking your chin more vigourously). You are the debtor, and your future self is the debtee. Debt eventually catches up to you. There are a hundred ways you could rip this analogy to shreds, so I appeal to you to stop thinking about this analogy further. Let’s get back to me.

There was a strong period of 6-9 months starting September 2020 when I lived a debt free life. I exercised, I meditated and I read a lot. For the past three months, I have been racking up debt and screwing over my future self. My reading has dwindled, my meditiation is but a stream and I have gained about 5kg. A lot of this was because I never kept track of these life debts. I have now decided to keep track of said debts, and slowly start repaying them before I become the living, breathing equivalent of a junk bond. The new section “Perusal” is one step in that direction. A lifestyle change is overdue.

The art of racing in the code.

This week at work, my tech debt finally caught up to me. I had written a set of goroutines that ended up in a set of race conditions. At work, I am usually very cognisant of the tech debts I take, littering my code with TODOs and warnings. Unfortunately, this particular race condition I didn’t foresee. I took hours to find and fix it. On this journey, I also ended up learning about a Go compiler feature - the race flag.

Starting v1.1, Go has a -race flag that can be added while building, running, testing or installing go packages. I wish I knew about this sooner. Instead of explaining it with an original example, I am going to just show the one in the official go blog3

Create a race condition with this code as the example

package main

import "fmt"

func main() {
    done := make(chan bool)
    m := make(map[string]string)
    m["name"] = "world"
    go func() {
        m["name"] = "data race"
        done <- true
    }()
    fmt.Println("Hello,", m["name"])
    <-done
}

And run the code with the race flag, like so

go run -race racy.go

The go compiler will automagically catch race conditions,

Hello, world
==================
WARNING: DATA RACE
Write at 0x00c00011c180 by goroutine 7:
  runtime.mapaccess2_faststr()
      /opt/homebrew/opt/go/libexec/src/runtime/map_faststr.go:107 +0x48c
  main.main.func1()
      /Users/advait/Downloads/dumpster/racy.go:10 +0x48

Previous read at 0x00c00011c180 by main goroutine:
  runtime.evacuate_fast64()
      /opt/homebrew/opt/go/libexec/src/runtime/map_fast64.go:375 +0x3dc
  main.main()
      /Users/advait/Downloads/dumpster/racy.go:13 +0xfc

Goroutine 7 (running) created at:
  main.main()
      /Users/advait/Downloads/dumpster/racy.go:9 +0xd0
==================
==================
WARNING: DATA RACE
Write at 0x00c000142088 by goroutine 7:
  main.main.func1()
      /Users/advait/Downloads/dumpster/racy.go:10 +0x5c

Previous read at 0x00c000142088 by main goroutine:
  main.main()
      /Users/advait/Downloads/dumpster/racy.go:13 +0x10c

Goroutine 7 (running) created at:
  main.main()
      /Users/advait/Downloads/dumpster/racy.go:9 +0xd0
==================
Found 2 data race(s)
exit status 66

This only works during run time, but it’s not recommended that this flag be used in production systems. This is because the caveat here

…race-enabled binaries can use ten times the CPU and memory, so it is impractical to enable the race detector all the time. One way out of this dilemma is to run some tests with the race detector enabled…

But this is still a really useful feature to have when writing tests.

Perusal

What got me thinking about debt:

I also bought Skin In The Game this week, so next will be fun.

Notes on the epigraph.

I took this picture during my stoicism phase early this year (around the same time I was living a debt free life). I found the whole VC cult of stoicism pretty amusing so I thought it would be fun to 3d print the bust of old boy Marcus and make a snarky tweet about it. So I did it.

My snarky tweet

One of these days, I am going to go off the deep end.

Footnotes

Networking in distributed systems and humans, part five.

2021-10-03

Coastal karnataka, and the curse of networking.

Somewhere on Mattu Beach, Udupi, 2017

Recap

For those new here, I aspire to write about what is happening with me on at least a weekly basis. To quote my older post

I hope I keep this up and eventually I can publish my future memoir of my wildly successful life with this a reference.

In that spirit, I had decided to rename this series to “My memoir”, and then soon later declared that I don’t like the name. I have now decided that I don’t want to restrict it to any name. Every chapter will have it’s own title followed by the chapter number. Let’s see how my titles get progressively worse. Enough with the rambling, read the rest of my “memoir” here.

Apart from this, all my chapters end with “Notes on the epigraph” where I give more context on the photograph in my frontmatter.

Networking with people

If I were to pick up one skill that I want to level up in this year, it would be networking (with people). I feel like I can fool people into thinking I am a people person. When put in a spot dealing with people, I would like to think that I have the eloquence and charm to find my way out of said spot. Unfortunately, this eloquence (or delusion of eloquence) has never really translated into how well I network with people. My lethargy in this regard lay in the fact that I fell in love with “potential”. I wrote last week, “Ideas are worthless.” A closely related heuristic is “Never fall in love with potential.” Since I always believed that I am a good speaker and decent conversationalist, I figured I should be able to network efficiently. The problem was I never did.

I have recently started taking baby steps in this direction. I recently contacted an old colleague who was into sales to learn more about sales. There were a few reasons for this

  • Sales is the commercial application of networking.
  • Sales is arguably the most critical function to a company’s success.
  • I don’t know anything about sales.

We also recently celebrated the 5th anniversary of Skit. At the party were a few external folks, including an ex-founder who exited to Gojek and a couple of senior tech leaders. I made a weak attempt to network with them and talk about tech culture, bootstrapping, and Taleb. The problem was that I don’t think I told them my name. Also, since everyone was mildly inebriated, I doubt most will remember much of the conversation. Maybe the ex-founder will remember me as the guy who had way too many questions about startups (or the guy whom he spilled his drink on)

I did follow these folk on Twitter, so that’s one step in the right direction.

Networking with machines

So far, the most bothersome problems I have dealt with at work have had to do with networking (with machines). I work on the runtime systems at Skit. I regularly deal with microservices that are distributed across networks and geographical locations. This means that there is a whole lot of networking involved. Working with voice and telephony also means that I have to deal with networking and protocol esoterica galore. Here are some of the protocols that I end up using

  • SIP over TLS
  • MRCP over TLS
  • WebSockets for streaming
  • gRPC for streaming
  • And many combinations of the above (TLS/UDP/TCP)

Troubleshooting networking is the most complicated when deploying our solutions partially on-premise and partially on the cloud (“hybrid deployments”).

This week, an over-eager network security team for an on-premise deployment pointed out that our implementation of TLS is susceptible to Return Of Bleichenbacher’s Oracle Threat. I found the name extremely amusing and dramatic. The fix was relatively easy; we had to disable ciphers that used RSA for authentication or key generation. I ended up learning another niche and useless bit of networking trivia that I don’t think I will ever need again.

I don’t really know where I am going with this, but all I want to say is that I really hate debugging networking issues. Especially client-side networking issues.

Here is a shoutout to a few tools that have made my journey bareable

  • Wireshark
  • sngrep
  • evans
  • SIPp
  • The python simple http server

Notes on the epigraph

This was one of the first few pictures I posted on my now unused instagram account1. Me, and my flatmate Rahul went on a bicycle ride along the coast of Udupi one weekend during my second year. It was my first > 50km cycle ride. I was pretty proud of it. The ride itself was absolutely picturesque. This particular road was particularly beautiful since it was a thin patch of land surrounded by the Indian Ocean on one side, and a river on the other.

Here is a map of the strip of land we cycled along

We started our ride at around 6AM in the morning so we could avoid having to cycle in the torturous coastal karnataka humidity and heat. Our ride started from Manipal, our college town. Manipal is situated at a higher elevation compared to the rest of Udupi. This means that all cycle rides begin really fun because it’s mostly downhill. It is when we are coming back to Manipal that the leg muscles really get tested. On the whole, the elevation of the ride was 363m, which is quite respectable.

The route we took

Coastal Karnataka is aboslutely stunning with its beautiful beaches and tiny shanties. On the ride along this strip of land, we came across one house that stuck out like a sore thumb. It was very modern and isolated. I, being the creep I am took a picture of it.

This house looked too chic to be here in the middle of nowhere

I found the whole thing very amusing. Whoever it belongs to is really lucky. This part of India is one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen. I am so thankful to spend my undergrad years here in coastal Karnataka.

Footnotes

Ideas are worthless and semaphores are not, part four.

2021-09-26

Mountains, semaphores and ideas.

Kudremukh, Chikkamagaluru, 2017

Recap

For those new here, I aspire to write about what is happening with me on at least a weekly basis. To quote my older post

I hope I keep this up and eventually I can publish my future memoir of my wildly successful life with this a reference.

In that spirit, I had decided to rename this series to “My memoir”, and then soon later declared that I don’t like the name. I have now decided that I don’t want to restrict it to any name. Every chapter will have it’s own title followed by the chapter number. Let’s see how my titles get progressively worse. Enough with the rambling, read the rest of my “memoir” here.

Apart from this, all my chapters end with “Notes on the epigraph” where I give more context on the photograph in my frontmatter.

An elegant solution.

I recently got to use a very elegant technique to keep track and limit the number of concurrent connections to a websocket server I am building at work. Luckily for me, I have written the server in Go which has excellent primitves for dealing with synchronisation and concurrency.

The problem statement was quite simple

Keep track of the number of concurrent websocket connections to the server.

For anyone who is new to Go, every time a new connection is made to the server, a new thread (goroutine) is spawned to handle the connection. Knowing this, the best way to keep track of the concurrency was using a semaphore to control access to the handler function for the websocket endpoint. Adapting the method I found here, I was able to keep track of my concurrent connections by simply using a buffered go channel as a semaphore.

func Handler(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {

	// As soon as we get a new socket connection, add it the counting semaphore buffer.
	semaphore <- 1

	// Right before we leave this function, remove it from the semaphore buffer.
	defer func() { <-semaphore }()

	....
}

This way at any given point, I can create access and expose the number of concurrent connections by finding the size of the channel buffer, like so

// Find the number of concurrent connections by seeing how much of the buffer is used
// As a reminder, everytime we accept a connection, we are adding an empty struct to the go channel semaphore
// The len of this buffer will thus give us the number of connections
concurrentConnections := len(semaphore)

I can even limit the number of connections and make the other clients to wait using a channel select. I found this to be an extremely simple and elegant solution, all thanks to Go.

Ideas are worthless

I love heuristics1. “Ideas are worthless” is one such heuristic that I have grown to love over the past two years. Of course, but the nature of it being a heuristic, it need not be right all the time. But it is right very often. I have a tendency to delude myself into thinking I am onto an amazing idea. This heuristic helps me fight this delusion.

The truth is, ideas are worth their weight in gold, ie., worthless. Everyone has great ideas. I have hundreds of them 3. True value lies in their execution.

While I have a lot of thoughts around ideas and their execution, their essence can be distilled down into the following aphorism

  1. Ideas are worthless.
  2. Perfection is the enemy of good.
  3. A great product is one that is shipped.

Notes on the epigraph

This picture was taken in July 2017 on my way up Kudremukh. Kudremukh is the 2nd highest peak in Karnataka, and my first proper trek. This was also the first and last trip with my friends from school 4.

We went as a part of the Bangalore Trekking Club group that conducts these treks. We stayed at a very tiny homestay near the foothill of Kudremukh. All of us stayed in the attic of the house in suspect sleeping bags. They were suspect because one night we discovered that there was blood in one of them, but that was probably because my friend bled in it while sleeping. To be fair, seeing blood was very common due to leeches being absolutely everywhere. I had never seen these many leeches in my life before. The weird thing about leeches is that they don’t hurt at all. But they are disgusting. One of the most useful things I learnt on this trek is that leeches hate sanitisers. This was why I carried a pomegranate flavoured sanitiser2 wherever I went.

Another memorable incident that occured on the trek was that I smashed by OnePlus One. I want to say that I smashed it on the trek, but I actually smashed it on the way to the shared shower. It was an inelegant end to an elegant device.

There was also this guy on the trek who just couldn’t go five minutes without telling everyone that he was from IIT Madras and how he graduated a year early5. He was quite the hoot.

This was a really fun trip. It taught me which of my friends hate treks, how to deal with leeches, and gave me my website profile picture. I would have written a lot more about it, but it’s late in the night as I write this and I am too sleepy to articulate my thoughts any better than this. Maybe I will do a redux of this trek in future chapters with a nicer narrative. But for now, I am going to remember how perfection is the enemy of good and end this chapter.

Footnotes

My memoir, part three.

2021-09-21

Toddy, tools and end sems.

A toddy shop, Hoode Beach, Udupi, 2019

Recap

For those new here, I aspire to write about what is happening with me on at least a weekly basis. To quote my older post

I hope I keep this up and eventually I can publish my future memoir of my wildly successful life with this a reference.

In that spirit, I had decided to rename this series to “My memoir”, but I don’t think I like the name anymore. Unfortunately, I don’t have a better name right now. I hope to retitle this in the coming weeks. But for now, read the rest of my memoir here.

Apart from this, all my chapters end with “Notes on the epigraph” where I give more context on the photograph in my frontmatter.

Shaped by tools.

Structure determines everything. For me, the most fascinating result of this is the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, the idea that the language that we speak and think in changes our cognition and world view. Language is the most primitive structure of thinking. I strongly believe that we are cognitively limited by language, and conversely, cognitively augmented by language. This, I suspect, is part of the reason why some of the smartest people1 are prolific writers. While I can go on and on about the incredible implication of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, I am going to curtail myself to draw parallel to this - we can only be as productive (or unproductive) as our tools. For anyone who expected profundity, I am sorry, you landed on the wrong blog.

The implications of this mundane observation are something I experienced only in the past few weeks. Spending time learning about the tools I use has boosted my productivity. There is true joy in using the right tool properly. Being tied to a computer for both money and leisure, I end up using lots of tools. I am fortunate3 enough to have a huge chunk of my life ruled by ones and zeroes. This means that most of my life and habits are open to being augmented by said tools. Despite this massive opportunity, I end up misusing most of the tools I use. Tools get in my way. This is because I have rarely ever spent time in really learning the tools. One could say, most of my life I have been a bigger tool than said tools.

I have decided to make a more conscious effort to learn how to use tools - to read about them, understand them. I can confidently say, so far, there is not one tool that I have mastered. But here are some tools that I have recently got better at using which have changed, for the lack of a better word, the game.

IDEs

I have said it before and I will say it again, anything Jetbrains touches turns into gold. My daily driver is Goland, Jetbrain’s IDE for Go. Learning it’s shortcuts and features makes development a truly pleasurable experience. I have tried VS Code, Doom Emacs, Vim and even Sublime. Nothing has come close the the Jetbrains experience. Everything just works, right out of the box. The only thing I had to tweak was to add IdeaVim support for Vim key bindings. I can confidently say, nobody at work can fly4 through the code base like I can, all thanks to the good folk over at Jetbrains. I am a customer for life.

Git

Okay, this is an embarrasing one. Only in the past few months I have really been using git properly. Git patch has become my favourite command. The motivation to make meaningful, atomic commits has improved my code quality and the way I think about a feature. It has also help me cleanly revert particular features and bits of code. For everyone who codes - please learn good git hygiene.

Jira

I loved hating on Jira, until I learnt how to use it. It’s beautiful for getting work done. The ability to make tasks, create epics, logging hours, creating branches and a whole lot more is incredible. When it all works, it’s beautiful.

Kanban Boards

This is something I started recently using to manage parts of my personal life. The simplicity and elegance of using these boards are what I love about them the most. Using a kanban board is forcing me to think of tasks and their state on my board. It’s truly helping me structure my thoughts in translating them into actionable tasks. My current tool of choice is Trello, only because it was the first tool in the DuckDuckGo search results that I recognized. I think everyone should try using kanban boards for it’s extremely low barrier of entry and extreme customizability. My current kanban board has the following states

  • Todo: Have to do
  • Doing: Am doing
  • Recently Done: Things I just completed, but don’t want to move on from until their results really solidify.
  • Done: An archive of tasks I have done.

Notes on the epigraph

November 2019 was the last month I lived in Manipal. It was during this month that I was giving the last series of examinations for my bachelors degree. They say that Manipal has two kinds of climates, hot and dry, and hot and wet. November was hot and dry and suffused with nostalgia. We all knew this was it - our time living in this small student town was coming to an end.

This picture was taken during the thick of our end semester examinations, one day before my “ML with Big Data” finals. It was not the hardest subject we had, and more importantly, we were nearing the end of our Manipal life. We had to make the most of our final days here. It was with this mindset that we decided that it was a good idea for us to go a quick road trip to Toddy Shop in Hoode, a small fishing village near Manipal. Also, I didn’t miss an article there; we didn’t make a trip to a toddy shop, or the toddy shop. It’s just Toddy Shop, a very avant garde name name for a gentlemanly establishment.

My two flatmates, Rahul and Vishnu along with Jetin, another of my college mates 2 made our pilgrimage to Toddy Shop to experience fresh toddy. It would be an abomination if we never tried fresh today despite spending our college years surrounded by coconut and palm trees.

Toddy Shop was absolutely picturesque, tables strewn by the beach with coconut trees everywhere. There was a tiny shanty that hosted the two men who ran the joint. All the toddy was freshly brewed and harvested from the trees on the property. It was all very organic, and dare I say, rustic.

The beach, coconut trees and a shanty aka 7th semester nostalgia in a picture

For those who aren’t toddy connoisseurs, toddy is palm wine. It is prepared by fermenting the sap from palm trees. The sap starts getting fermented naturally due to the presence of yeasts soon after it’s extracted. Little containers are hung atop these trees which keep collecting the sap and letting it ferment in-situ. In about 2 hours, the drink gets mildly alcoholic (about 4-5%) and by early evening, it gets really boozy. By the end of the day, it becomes a vinegar of sorts.

The toddy we got must have been 5-6 hours old, freshly harvested from trees. It was fruity, yeasty and quite refreshing. We paired our toddy with a couple of fish and some calamari. We stayed till the sunset.

PS: I still got an A grade in the ML for Big Data end sem.

Footnotes

My memoir, part two.

2021-09-16

On memoirs, epigraphs and barbecues.

Prepping the barbeque in our college apartment, Manipal, 2019

Recap

For those new here, I aspire to write about what is happening with me on at least a weekly basis. To quote my older post

I hope I keep this up and eventually I can publish my future memoir of my wildly successful life with this a reference.

In that spirit, I have decided to rename this series to “My memoir”. To read the rest of my memoir, see this.

Apart from this here are some more meta updates - each part of My memoir will now consist of a new section, “Notes on the epigraph” where I will give more context on the photograph in my frontmatter.

There, I called it a memoir.

So here is the deal, over my my decades of experience1 living on this planet, I have learnt that it is much easier to not leave the grunt work for the end. While I was once the idiot who lived by the deadline, I have grown a lot since then. I don’t want to begin writing my memoir when I am 80 and dealing with finger arthritis. I will just hire an editor to go through this and edit together something cohesive. I am going to kaizen my memoir.

Working at the office.

I worked from the office for the first time this week. I have been to the office before, sure, but never worked from it. This was my first day working at a space other than my bedroom in well over a year.

A picture I took on my last day in an office in May 2020, right before my internship at Traveloka ended

Working in office was different. I didn’t have a designated space because I haven’t been there enough to block out a space for myself. But now, I think I know which spot is mine.

Productivity was pretty good, but I did miss my external monitor. It is also nice to be able to walk over to co-workers when things got slow. I would say though, working at home isn’t that much worse. For actual focused, productive work, both are about the same. But meetings are so much better - it’s just so much easier to draw and talk.

Another nice (or not nice) thing is that you can overhear your coworkers discussing things. I feel like that may lead to more serendipidous ideas. But then again, I do feel having a daily written standup can offer somewhat similar experiences, albeit in a more curtailed form.

I would add one thing though, the commute (as much as it is a waste of time) was a nice ritualistic shutdown 6

I think the ideal future for someone who writes code for a living like me is a hybrid approach to work. The best of both worlds.

Notes on the epigraph

All my friends in college new that me and my flatmates got really lucky with our cook Rajkumar. He was extremely soft-spoken, or more colloquially speaking, a paavam fellow3. His speciality was that he required zero management. We used to come back from our classes during the lunch break and lo, there was hot food in the flat. The food system in our flat was an extremely well oiled machine. Rajkumar used to take care of things end to end, he brought the vegetables, ingredients, decided what to cook and left after cleaning up the kitchen.

One thing that was fishy about him was how he managed to pay for all our monthly groceries. Many a times, the bills were larger that the salary that we paid him. Me and my flatmates had no clue how he managed that. At the end of every month, he used to give us a the total value of a stash of collected bills, and some months the total was a lot. In my head there are only two explanations for his ability to pay for our groceries up front:

  • The guy is a cashflow genius 4.
  • The guy is moron who keeps borrowing from friends and family to pay for our stuff.

Sometimes, he also used to mess up the calculation and even ask lesser than the actual total. After some time, we even stopped cross verifying his grocery reimbursement. Maybe that was a little careless of us, but he never scammed us. We also used to trust him with the keys to our house. He was a very trust worthy lad.

Now that I have set up Mr Rajkumar, let me get to the actual epigraph. This is a picture I took when Rajkumar was setting up the barbeque for a little soiree we were throwing at our flat one Sunday. It was his idea too - he said his friend rents out these grills and asked if we were interested. We said yes immediately. To this day I have never met anyone else in Manipal who has thrown such a barbeque soiree. We were a cut above the rest.

There were a few things about barbequing I learnt that day.

  • It’s a right pain to get the grill up to temperature.
  • It takes forever to cook meat.
  • It’s really cool.

Me and Vishnu, my one of my flatmate at the time went out to buy meat for our barbeque. He was very particular about seeing our birds alive before taking them home. He said he wanted it to be fresh. We went to our local butcher to see chicken clucking in wild abandon. I am glad that these chicken didn’t seem to be trapped in those horrible cages. It was also the first time I saw how they kill a chicken, the details of which I would rather not get into here. We took our chicken back home and marinated them.

My flatmate Vishnu, marinating the chicken.

The actual day of the barbeque was amazing. We had loads of friends over and at some point, the house was on fire 2.

I will always be thankful for Rajkumar being an exceptionally autonomous cook and throwing us this barbeque 5.

Footnotes

My memoir, part one.

2021-09-12

I will tell you what’s up.

My grandfathers home garden, Pune, 2021

What’s this?

A lot has been going on and because of that, the part of my life that took the biggest hit was this website. I am trying to revive my activity here by talking about updates and thoughts I have every week. I had attempted something similar in the form of my weekly “newsletter” 1. It was fun, and intellectually pretty stimulating, but it outlived its utility after some time. This is very different. My goals with The Letter were very different from what I am going to attempt here. The Letter was me challenging myself to learn something new every week and articulate my thoughts around it. This is me reflecting and writing about what’s up. It’s me responding to an imaginary text, from an imaginary friend saying “Hey man, what’s up?”

What’s up?

Hello ARM

I recently had my primary work machine switched from the old Intel based Macs to the M1 mac. I have been using it for about a month or so and the experience as a developer has been pretty good so far. It’s a really fast processor and Rosetta has given me adequate support when needed, but things haven’t been faultless. Things worked really great when coding with Go, which is fortunately my primary language at work. As soon as I needed to do some python development everything started falling apart. I think the biggest reason here is that native support was only for python 3.8.x+. This meant my pip3 installs failed a lot and I couldn’t get it to work properly using a rosetta terminal either. Luckily for me, I had the option to bail on the whole python thing which is what I promptly did. I hope this doesn’t mess things up in the future for me though and I find some work around. I know for a fact certain microservices at work break beyond 3.6.0.

Another thing I learnt was to keep in mind the binaries I make when building in Go are architecturally correct. I made this mistake when deploying a new microservice on the cloud, only to find out that it won’t build on amd64. If anyone of you follow me on Github, you may have noticed that I went wild with some very poor quality releases on one of the projects that was a dependency for the microservice. I eventually figured out the whole deal was due to a duplicate symbol generated by the Go compiler that clashed with some pre-existing assembly code. I did a quick and dirty fix for that, and I was good for the launch. Moral of the story - be aware of architectures.

The nudge

The nudge, or rather the idea of this whole “write about whatever every week” came out of a discussion with a colleague who intended to revive his blog. I was also really inspired by the now page on Abhinav Sarkar’s blog. I hope I keep this up and eventually I can publish my future memoir of my wildly successful life with this a reference 3

Danny Ricc

This year I have really got into Formula 1. I have never been much into sports, but Formula 1 has really grabbed my attention. It’s this amazing blend of athletic skill, strategy and engineering prowess. Me finding out that a lot of my friends and collegues are into Formula 1 was a cherry on top.

I write this update just after the Honey Badger, Daniel Ricciardo one his first Grand Prix after years. Nobody can hate Danny Ricc and it was a great race to watch. I felt like it was one of those races that everyone (except Alpha Tauri) will be okay with.

  • Hamilton retired, but he was going to lose to max anyways. He would be okay knowing Max didn’t make it either.
  • Max retired, but at least he wouldn’t lose to Hamilton because of a horrible pitstop.
  • Bottas P3 from P20, great for him after his transfer news.
  • McLaren 1-2, you can’t hate them for it.

I found the race agreeable, and I am just happy for Mr Ricc.

Ganpati Bappa Morya

Ganesh Chaturthi is my favourite festival (with Diwali being a close second). Being Marathi, I have to rep this festival hard and give it it’s due cultural respect. And cultural respect means making Modak and eating great food. Really a win-win situation for me.

Writing code and meeting folks

Work wise, I really enjoyed writing code this week. It was the first time in a long time that I got large swathes of uninterrupted time to write code. And I really enjoyed the actual task of creating a microservice involving streaming websockets and some digital signal processing 4. Go is truly a joy to write code in.

I also met a lot of my collegues for the first time this week. They had flown into Bangalore from all over the country (actually, some drove here). It’s always nice to put a body to the face2.

Footnotes

The Art of Reading the News

2021-08-11

You shouldn’t be reading the news. But if you really have to, this is how to do it.

Garbage in, garbage out.

Most news is garbage. I’d argue, almost all news in garbage. The 24 hour news cycle has ruined the way see and perceive the world around us. If social media is the construct that is going to destroy the world, news is its primary source of fuel.

The definition of being “well informed” has changed over the years. Today, the most popular definition constitutes being a vessel of decontextualised information mixed in with a few opinions. While I was never alive in the early days of news, I am sure that knowing about the deadly storm in Brazil while being a software engineer in Bangalore did not constitute as being “well informed”.

It’s widely accepted that the modern barrage of decontextualised trivia we call news today was a result of the invention of the telegraph. This allowed us to move information around the globe at a pace that wasn’t possible. This condition of modern news was exacerbated by the invention of a 24 hour news cycle due to advent of cable television. I was not alive for the first two phases of the catastrophic deterioration of “news”. Regrettably, I am alive to experience the traumas of the third cycle of extreme “news” decay - social media.

An artistic rendition of what happens when you consume too much news.

Classifying garbage.

Since most of us are not inclined to blocking out news from our lives, we need to have some simple heuristics in place to block out the worst parts of the news.

The simplest heuristic that can be used to eliminate garbage news from relevant news is the “action information ratio” 1.

In very simple terms, the action information ratio is the likelihood of your day to day actions being affected by a certain piece of information. In an ideal world, when it comes to “news”, your action information ratio should be extremely high. Assuming that the purpose of news is to be useful, news can be defined as information that affect your actions.

Here are some examples of news that is not garbage

  • The weather report; Affects my immediate decision of whether I should pack my umbrella with me or not.
  • Fuel prices/inflation; Affects the way I should budget my quarter.
  • Local laws; determines what I should not do so I don’t get sent to jail 3

Some examples of garbage

  • The war in the middle east; unless you are a politician, activist or otherwise.
  • Capitol hill breach; are you affected by US politics? If not, you have your answer.
  • Scams happening in a some state X ; if you aren’t voting, this shouldn’t matter to you.

These are pieces of “news” that elicit zero change in your actions, short or long term, ipso facto, its not news.

News, Entertainment and Lies.

While the heuristic above provides the easiest way to master the The Art of Reading News®, many of us find it hard to escape news due to our various internet addictions. What this usually results is us seething in rage over some headline that outraged our sanguine sensibilities.

Firstly, we must acknowledge when we read news to be well informed, and when we read news to be entertained. As described earlier, if a piece of information (“news”) has zero effect on your actions and you are still reading it, you are reading it for entertainment. As sick as it sounds, yes, you are reading about the brutal war and barbaric murders happening in Afghanistan for your entertainment. You are indeed a psycho. An easy way to overcome this psychotic behaviour is by developing a conscience 4 .

Now that we have fixed a part of the problem, lets fix the next issue on our hand - lies, deceit and subterfuge. Fortunately our good friends from ancient Greece have done a lot of the heavy lifting for us by giving us a set of logical fallacies that we can apply to determine when we are being hoodwinked by the press. The list is a long one, but here I shall go over, in my opinion, some of the most important fallacies that can help you master The Art of Reading the News®

False Cause

This is a classic, which tells us that two things that are correlated may not share a causal relation.

Ex: “Ever since the new MLA has come into power, the number of power outages has decreased by 33%”

This headline talks about a correlation, but also is subtly suggesting a causation. This is a logical fallacy, since the power outages could have also reduced due to a 100 other reasons (new electricity board, replaced powered generators, cheaper fuel prices etc.)

Composition/Division

Things that are true for a part, need not hold true for the whole. One rule doesn’t apply to all (and vice versa)

Ex: “India is has one of the lowest happiness index scores”

This does not mean you are sad because you are India

“I am happy, therefore Indians are a happy people”

The opposite of the above fallacy.

Ad hominem

Personal attacks don’t invalidate facts, they only serve to distract from the argument. This is a favourite of Indian politicians, something to be vary of.

Ex: “Disgraced Indian banker Ramu critcises the Economic reforms bill”

Doesn’t matter if he is disgraced or not - if he has a point, it has to be considered. Mentioning him being disgraced is not relevant.

No True Scotsman

Using post rationalization to make an argument unfalsifiable, aka, moving the goalposts.

Ex: “Indian economy will be its best by 2020: Politician” - 2018

“Indian economy will be its best by 2020 if the opposition party support us: Politcian” - 2019, Dec 31

Burden of proof

The burden of proof should be borne by maker of the claim

Ex: “Bertrand declares that a teapot is, at this very moment, in orbit around the Sun between the Earth and Mars, and that because no one can prove him wrong, his claim is therefore a valid one.” 2

Genetic

Judging something is good or bad based on where or from whom it came from. This is wrong.

Ex: “The corruption report is not true, it comes from anti-national media: Corrupt politician”

“Be wary of his criticism of India, his grandparents are from Israel.”

Appeal to emotion

Never let news appeal to emotion, especially when the appeal is in place of a valid argument.

Ex: “Real nationalists will support the citizenship reform bill: Minister of Nationalism”

Appeal to nature

Just because something is “natural”, it may not always be good, ideal , justified or inevitable.

Ex: “Eat apricot seeds instead of these meds, they will help better. It’s natural.”

Apricot seeds cause cyanide poisoning.

The fallacy fallacy

If a claim is poorly argued, then the claim itself must be wrong.

Ex: “Global warming is very real - it was hotter than usual in yesterday’s bus ride.” That’s a bad argument, but folks, global warming is indeed real.

These are just some of the fallacies that I found makes reading the news more useful for me. It also makes it more fun to read news.

For more on fallacies, see this amazing resource.

Enjoying the Newspaper

I enjoy reading the newspaper. I dislike the news. This puts me in an extremely unfortunate position that does not allow me to peacefully live the romantic notions of reading a crisp morning broadsheet on a pleasant Sunday sunrise. Seeing our prime minister and chief ministers bragging about their success or reading about the murder in Bihar hardly counts for news, let alone pleasant news. But such is the state of the media and all we can do is control our intake using the filters of utility, and being clear about what we read as “news” and what we read as “entertainment”.

Classifying information as news or entertainment is the first filter to change our outlook on news. Reading information with a high action information ratio (aka news) with a critical mindset is the next filter to protect ourselves from misinformation and general malice.

Such is the Art of Reading the News®

A young gentleman who has mastered the Art of Reading the News®

Footnotes

The Cheddar Cheese

2021-06-27

My loops are all messed up.

Stationary

Today I felt like the block of the cheddar cheese in my fridge. Cheddar cheese is by far my favourite type of cheese, but this particular block of cheese just didn’t do it for me. I love the funky flavour of a nicely aged chunk of cheddar, but this block lacked the complexity of the cheddar I am used to eating. It’s not that I am much of a cheese connoisseur either, I usually buy relatively inexpensive cheddar from Milky Mist 2, which isn’t known to be a high brow brand. The worst part about this was that I had paid almost double my usual rate for this particular block of cheddar since this was from a more premium brand, and was organic. It tasted flavourless, almost like a mildly funky gouda. As a result, the cheese did not get consumed at the usual pace it does. What this also meant that it was mostly lying stationary in a corner of the fridge. And, what this also meant was, there was fungus on my cheese. It’s rare that I relate to food, but today, I really related to that block of fungal organic cheddar cheese.

Tightening the loops

If there is anything I have learnt from programming computers, it is that the tighter the feedback loop, the easier it is to make progress. In programming, there is the concept of having a REPL driven development. REPL stands for read, evaluate,print, loop. In this approach, the programmer makes changes to the code, runs the code, sees the output, and based on the output makes further changes to the code - all until we have the desired result. This form of development is popular for allowing developers to make complex applications quickly due to a very tight feedback loop. It also encourages developers to experiment and try out edge cases since they can immediately get feedback for their changes due to tight loops.

This is not the only place where I have realised the importance of feedback loops. In the agile method of delivering software, this is emphasised too. Here is an excerpt from their manifesto:

At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behaviour accordingly.

This is essentially baking in a feedback loop in the delivery process. It’s funny how much thought I put in programming or project management, and stress on feedback loops but then forget about their existence in my day to day.

What I have realised after the cheddar cheese incident is that I don’t have any feedback loop, and my future doesn’t look much brighter than that block of cheese if I don’t put some into place.

Loops, everywhere

The more I think about these loops, the more I see them. I feel like I always knew about these loops, but never really sat and thought about them, never appreciated them. Oscillators, flip-flops, the weather, all our body processes, even the weather 1 - all just cycles going through the various feedback loops. Of course, these feedback loops are not limited to natural phenomena, but also our decision making processes. This in itself wasn’t much of an epiphany for me, but their sheer omnipresence and importance in shaping me was.

Recently, I read a wonderful essay by Tim Urban on Wait But Why on what, according to Tim, makes Elon Musk successful, or as he puts it, finding Musk’s “Secret Sauce”. While the essay itself is chock full of interesting perspectives and great advice, the part about feedback loops especially grabbed my attention as it visualised beautifully what I had been thinking in bits and pieces. Here, with all credits to Wait But Why, I have linked the diagram that affirmed my recent reverence for feedback loops

High level feedback loop of life

Taking a 10,000 feet view of life goals, this diagram is the most succinct representation of reaching your goal. You have a “WANT” pool and a “REALITY” pool. Your “GOAL” pool stands at the intersection of the two, this is what your goals should be. And finally, your “STRATEGY” pool is devised from these pools. But there is a catch - all the pools keep changing their contents.

Reflecting on your ambitions and priorities causes you to modify your “WANT” pool. Learning new things about the world makes you modify your “REALITY” pool. Experimenting and testing out your strategy teaches you what works and what fails, forcing you to revise your “STRATEGY” pool.

The beauty of this is the sheer simplicity of this model, this is quite literally life 5. The scale of this model is macro, but the idea of such loops sticks with us every day - at a micro-level. I am not a product of my habits, I am a product of my feedback loops (and I as I have recently discovered, the lack thereof).

Micro loops

I have decided to make some changes in the way I conduct myself. If there is one way to prevent me from becoming that rotting block of cheddar cheese, it introducing more feedback loops in my life. There are days when I feel like the living representation of the clocks in “The Persistence of Memory” by Salvador Dali and my hope is breaking this with feedback loops would make me feel less like those clocks.

I particularly relate to the clock on the emaciated tree

The plan is to start small and create feedback loops for things that truly satisfy me - cooking, reading, writing, learning and art 3. These micro feedback loops are important, but they would all fail without having the monitor feedback loop. My monitor feedback loop would decide which loops are worth keeping and which are not.

Every Saturday morning, the monitor loop would assess the fitness and relevance of my other micro-loops. The other loops would be tasked at making me happier and more satisfied. The feedback mechanism would vary from loop to loop but can be range from being as simple as a question or as complex as some test of ability or competence. The micro-loops can also be for things as simple as how happy I am with my sleep, to as complex as how happy I am. It’s worth noting that the most important part of the feedback loop is the feedback, something that changes the behaviour of the system.

This loop oriented thinking can, I believe, take me far. If it doesn’t work, I will change my approach 4

Being a human.

Of course, being a human means I will mess up some loops - but that does not mean I will give up on loop oriented thinking. Feedback loops, in my opinion, are perfectly suited to being human - they assume you will never get it right the first time around.

The system is so stupidly simple, and that’s where its beauty lies.

Feedback loops took us from slimy fish to this.

If a simple feedback loop could take us from being critters in the ocean to thinking humans, there can’t be anything it can’t do.

Footnotes and References

A Series of (mostly) Unfortunate Events.

2021-06-02

I got vaccinated. Then I got covid. Then I got dengue.

The Trials.

This story begins late-December 2020, when I came across this

This headline catches my eye and I skim to see what kind of a volunteer shortage there existed. It turned the company hired for the trials for the then-controversial Covaxin was short by well over 50% of the required volunteers. Being a sucker for trying out things and giving myself a false sense of moral superiority, I signed up for the trials immediately. Actually, there was no such thing as “signing up”. I just walked to the center, which was conveniently a few kilometers from house and asked to be injected with their virular concoction.

The rules of a clinical trial are fairly simple. They are conducted in what is called a “double blind” fashion. What this means is that neither the doctors, nor me know what I have been injected with. In case of my trials, the split up was something like this

  • 50% volunteers get the real vaccine.
  • 50% volunteers get nothing, just a inert liquid (placebo/control)

After my first dose, I had to return mid-Jan for another dose of my vaccine/placebo as usual.

The trials are over when about ~140 people (out of about 27000) get infected with covid. To get the final efficacy of the vaccine, out of the 140ish infected people, it is revealed how many got the real vaccine, and how many got the fake.

For example:

If out of the 140 infected,

No. of people who got real vaccine = 70

No. of people who got fake vaccine = 70

Efficacy = 50% (as good as random, the vaccine is useless)

The Wait I.

Fast forward to April, the government has opened vaccination for everyone over the the age of 45. As a result of this, the covaxin authorities are forced to un-blind the trials for my parents on ethical grounds. My mother has already got covid once, and it is revealed that she had received the placebo, and my father received the real deal. He was unaffected by covid when my mother got it, which I credit the vaccine. My results are still blinded.

The Wait II.

Fast forward to May, the trials seem to have concluded, with the efficacy data shipped away for peer review. It is revealed that I have received the real vaccine, whereas my brother has received the placebo. This was a very fortunate event for me. Luckily for my brother, right around the time it was revealed he got the placebo, our apartment had a vaccination drive, which he promptly participated in and got a shot.

Up until now, the series of events have been quite fortunate for me. I was, generally speaking, having a good time in the month of May (despite working on a project at work with a really tight deadline). I was set to have a perfectly enjoyable May, but it all started going downhill on my birthday, May 23rd.

The Birthday.

The plan for my birthday was pretty straight forward, see the Monaco GP and work on some personal projects. At around 3 PM on the afternoon of my birthday, I started feeling cold, uncharacteristically cold. I took a long hot water shower and then I started feeling worse. Basically, through the course of that afternoon, I went from a nice 98.6F to an extra toasty 103F. My birthday plans were ruined, I couldn’t see the Grand Prix (though I am really happy Vettel scored some points) or even work on any side project. Instead, I was really sick and couldn’t even enjoy the nice dinner prepared.

That night was no good. I didn’t know you could feel so cold and hot at the same time. There was this chill that went up my spine every 5 mins for no good reason. I was pinging and ponging between feeling very hot and way too cold.

The next day, I took an RT-PCR test, but because of my vaccination I was convinced it was not covid, so I also took a Dengue test. Turns out I got both.

The Double Whammy.

I was very annoyed that I got sick. Even at work, I was at a really important part of a project that I had the most context on and I didn’t want to bail on it last moment due to bad health. Unfortunately, I was in no position to work so I called in sick.

Dengue is one of those diseases that I can never say right. I have never said dengee, it just sounds comic. Anyways, having dengue and covid at the same time is not as bad as it seems. I think I got off particularly easy since I had been vaccinated against covid, so it was mostly dengue with a touch of covid. Both of these diseases are mostly a set of symptoms that have to be treated. After munching on paracetamols and multivitamins after a week or so, the fever was under control and platelet count was also back to the normal range.

One of the most annoying things that I had to do during my main recovery was drink lots of water, which is vastly inconvenient. Having to pee every 45 minutes is like having a phone that discharges every 45 mins and needs a quick charge - it’s something I hope nobody has to go through.

Aftermath.

It’s been a week and a half since I got diagnosed. I have mostly recovered apart from a still mildly inflamed liver marker and the feeling of being a little more sleepy than usual.

One thing I noticed during this whole thing, this is the longest I have gone without working since I started working. Thanks to covid, I had never taken a leave of more than a day. I had decided that I would take a week off work during May end, just as a break. Unfortunately, I got Monkey’s paw’d.

If there is a takeaway here, it would be

  • Get the vaccine.
  • Mosquitos, no good.
  • Death to covid and dengue

Another thing I noticed through this, there is no such thing as a Dengue vaccine. There are trials, but nothing I can get today right now. I guess the economics don’t add up.

The slump.

2021-05-15

Going from consumer to producer to nothing.

Addressing the slump.

It’s been about 3 weeks since my last post here, and well over a month since my last book review. My website domain expired this week. It’s clear that my consumption of good content (which can be proxied by my book reviews, though I don’t review every book I read), and production of thoughts and ideas has gone down. It’s not to say that I have been doing nothing - there are a few side projects I have been working on but they don’t make up for my general lack of output (and quality input). Here is a recap of my side projects.

The Tech Startups Space

This project is a work in progress. With this, I intend to create a small, high trust community of people. A social network, but smaller. Here, my approach is slow but continuous progress - the kaizen approach.

You can check it out here. I will write a more detailed post about the mission and vision of this in a later post.

The Tech Startups Bookclub

This is a spin off of the social network. It’s a federated goodreads alternative. You can read more about it here. Since I have quit goodreads, you can see what I am reading right now on my profile here

Telegram Reading Habit bot.

This is a project that I would declare dead now. I built this with the intention of getting people into the habit of reading daily by feeding them bite sized portions from classics via telegram DMs on a daily basis. I created a gamified system that allots points for every “part” you read and set reminders so that you maintain a streak and eventually fall in love with reading.

The idea seemed pretty solid on paper, but somehow didn’t stick. I created an MVP which you can check out on telegram @DailyReadingHabitBot or by clicking here. I felt the downfall of the idea was that I couldn’t breakdown a book into small chunks in a fun why using my convoluted algorithm. None of my initial users continued using it. If you are curious, do check it out, and tell me why you didn’t like it.

Women Founders India Shorts

This was something I picked up to get a little better at django. To skip the boiler plate, I forked Woid, another django based aggregator and integrated it with Newspaper3k, a brilliant and easy to use web-scraping tool for articles.

You can check out the project here.

I built this as sister utility to the great platform Women Founders India created by Namratha Vasu.

The aggregator is designed to scrape women related news in startups and provide a succinct summary of it on a daily basis. It’s simple, clean and minimal - something I admire about it (even if I do say so myself).

I wouldn’t call this project dead, but completed. I think it has, and will continue to fulfill its intended purpose with little to no future upgrades.

Habits HQ

I don’t want to call this project dead yet - I’d rather refer to it being temporarily suspended till I clarify the vision for it myself. Right now, it’s pretty bare bones as you can see here.

The idea is to either create a resource or a community of people who want to change or shape their lives using habits. I even experimented with this:

I posted this on r/habits

People did join my discord server, though I myself didn’t prioritise putting effotr into organising it properly, so at the moment it’s dead.

If you like the idea, you can help revive it by joining the server here.

Maybe some day in the future, Habits HQ will become something that can add value to people but at the moment, the project is stalled.

Shunning etiology.

Yes, I had a slump. I worked on things, but they don’t justify my lack of reading, writing and tangible creation. In times like this when I am having a general slump, I find that not looking for an etiological explanation for myself helps me. What is etiology?

Etiology (pronounced /iːtiˈɒlədʒi/; alternatively: aetiology or ætiology) is the study of causation or origination.

Me finding a cause for my slump (lots of work, not enough time, being tired, burnout, etc. ) would be the etiological way of looking at my slump and justifying it. In my view, this fixes my future based on my past, and it’s not something that can help me reach where I want to be.

There is no need to know how I got here; that’s irrelevant. I need to see how to get out of this slump.

My domain name expiring was the straw that broke the camel’s back for me. Me writing this essay on my slump is my first step towards getting out of it.

Peace, and death to covid.

Why I left Goodreads.

2021-04-25

Quitting goodreads… to join my own platform.

Making the jump

I finally made the plunge, I have cut out Goodreads from my life. For the uninitiated, Goodreads is a massive (the only one I know) social reading platform with over 90 million users. It is owned by Amazon, the same company that runs the majority of internet and e-commerce. I had even read somewhere that amazon servers don’t run on electricity, but the souls of their customer base, which is an interesting bit of trivia.

I had joined Goodreads long time ago, pre-amazon-acquisition. I was a mildly active user for most of my time on Goodreads, though in the past 6 months, my activity had exploded due to my sudden reading upsurge post-pandemic. The upsurge occurred around the same time as my anti Big Tech transformation after learning about the harmful effects of this extreme asymmetry and centralisation1. This made me feel a little uneasy about being on Goodreads, though it wasn’t all that bad. I really had no other choice - that is until I came across the Fediverse, which we will come to in a bit.

Before I get into why I made the jump, it’s worth noting why I joined Goodreads in the first place.

  • Cataloging what and when I read books.
  • Seeing book reviews.
  • Social reading, seeing what my friends were reading, discussing books, etc.

Apart from that, I loved idea of having Goodreads API available to me so I could extend and build upon Goodreads - that is until December 2020, when they deprecated it.

Goodreads cutting off my access to my own content

In 2 out of those 3 categories I mentioned earlier, Goodreads failed me. Here is why.

Seeing book reviews.

This may seem relatively unpopular, but over the course of the 30+ books I have read in the past 6 odd months, I have learn’t that the Goodreads rating is not a good metric of how much I would like a book. In fact, it has more often than not disappointed me. The reason for this is that the mean of thousands of ratings has no meaning or nuance left in it. None whatsoever. At the beginning of my reading, I used to rely a lot on Goodreads for book discovery. Very soon, I realised that this approach was giving me duds. I discovered a way more effective strategy was getting recommendations from real people. I found myself wandering subreddits and discussing book recommendations with strangers, and somehow these recommendations were far superior to me going off of Goodreads ratings.

Liking a book is very subjective in nature. I had given Antifragile a 10/10; you’d find thousands of folk calling the book unreadable. On the other end of the spectrum, I thought A Brief History of Time was practically unreadable. There a thousands of people who would call the book a modern classic.

Going off book reviews has caused me more harm than good, it made me avoid giving books a chance because their average score was a little below a 4 or some reviews were too scathing. I avoided most classics only because they hovered around the sub-four point mark. The Odyssey is a 3.78, sitting firmly below the Fifty Shades Freed and Fifty Shades Darker (with about the same number of ratings).

The point I am trying to bring across here is that I started obsessing over the score to the point where I was missing out on some excellent literature and books just because of a few scathing reviews, or a “sub par” score. On the other end of the spectrum, I wasted a lot of time reading books that I deemed okay or slightly above average at best only because they have super high Goodreads scores (Think like a rocket scientist, Volume Control, etc.

Organic recommendations based on your interests, and people you know are exponentially superior than average ratings. In hindsight, this is painfully obvious, but Goodreads had trapped me into this narrow minded 5 point scale up until recently.

Social Reading.

Yeah, this was a clean failure for me. At no point on my presence on Goodreads did I have or felt any social interactions with other users. Nobody I knew was hugely active on Goodreads, and those who were rarely did anything outside of putting books on their “to-read” shelves. This was pretty much dead on arrival. From my point of view, the community only played a part in rating the books, the stupid number I used to go by while picking books. Now since I don’t look at that number either, the Goodreads community is meaningless to me.

Book Cataloging

I shall give credit where due, Goodreads was and is great for this. I could make lists of books I want to read, I could categorise lists, I could keep track of all the books I read, and when I read them. But, recently I had an epiphany; why should I let the corporate snakes over at Amazon lock up all my data -my ratings, reviews and reading preferences - all just for this cataloging feature? They had the gall of sucking me dry of my data, only to lock away easy access to it by deprecating their API. The ratings mislead me, the platform is run by vampires3, and I am contributing to another data silo (creating extreme centralisation) which is against the core ethos of the free internet. I had to find a better way, and I did.

Introducing the Tech Startup Book Club.

Check it out here right now. It’s a decentralised federated social reading platform that I host!

Let’s break down why this is better.

It’s open source.

The platform is possible due to the excellent work by Mouse Reeve on Bookwyrm. The code is completely out in the open, and anyone including you and me, can extend upon it and build whatever we feel like. There is no proprietary software here.

The maintainer of the project, Mouse Reeve is extremely friendly, and is extremely active in the development of new features.

It’s federated.

The fediverse is an interconnected set of platforms that can talk to each other. An easy way to think about it is if you imagine that that there was no Goodreads, but many small Goodreads communities, each owned, hosted and run by separate owners. Despite being completely separate, they can all talk and communicate with each other. That is basically what federation is, a set of platforms that all speak the same protocol, yet are independent.

This allows every community to have it’s own rules and identities, while being able to communicate with millions of other communities using the same account. If you want to know more, you can read about it here.

My instance on the list of instances

It’s small.

I intend to build a community of like minded people on my instance. The idea here is to have a high trust, close knit community of people. My particular instance is themed predominantly around non-fiction books (the kind I read a lot).

I hope to have people who share similar interests to join the platform so that the social aspect that I had missed in Goodreads is achieved. Also, since the number of people on the platform are fewer and closer, the ratings and reviews are much more valuable since they can be interpreted with the context of who is writing the review which is as important as the review itself.

It’s got all I need!

It’s got great cataloging features, the ability make lists like in goodreads, and books can be imported from goodreads. I exported my goodreads library and moved it all to my platform.

The Dreaded Plug.

If you love reading and discussing non-fiction books like I do, sign at bookclub.techstartups.space. I am the owner and maintainer, will be easily accessible and active there. If this is not your kind of a thing, I urge you to drop goodreads and try out other platforms like OpenLibrary.

As I have mentioned in earlier essays, Big Tech and corporates are going to be the death of us. Decentralisation will help us become more resilient, and allow for a more free and open internet.

Footnotes

In praise of writing.

2021-04-10

Writing is the most undervalued tool we all have access to.

The Swiss army knife.

Sometime during the pandemic, my life changed profoundly for the better. This was because I started undertaking three new activities in my routine which have massively improved the quality of my life - reading books, meditation and writing1. This essay is going to be about how writing, one of these life-changing activities, is in my opinion, the most underrated of the lot.

Now, broadly speaking, writing can be viewed to be revolutionary using two lenses:

  • An epistemological3 lens.
  • A curation and introspection lens.

I am not going to get into how writing is revolutionary from an epistemological standpoint since I am neither an epistemologist nor a historian. If, though, you are inclined to read about how writing was revolutionary in the progress of humanity and knowledge, I recommend reading Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari. Whichever lens you view writing from, writing as a tool is a swiss army knife of sorts.

The hidden panacea

There have been no problems that I have faced that I could not fix, or at least alleviate by writing. Writing is not only curative but also preventative. I think of writing as a hidden panacea because almost everyone can write - you don’t need anything more than a pen and some paper - yet most rarely do. This is because I don’t think most know the true power of writing; the pitches in praise of writing are few and far in between, with most pitches extolling the virtues of the various forms of journaling 4. While I don’t journal (for reasons mentioned in the previous footnote), I do write more than the average person. It’s something that I started doing after I began reading more, with my first many pieces being book summaries and reviews. This was my gateway into more standalone writing like this essay.

There are many reasons why I write.

Feedback mechanism for consumption.

We live in a time of content overload, with excess consumption of (unfortunately) mostly garbage. The little valuable information consumption that we may chance upon is also often forgotten. The biggest reason for this is the lack of any feedback mechanism in place. The best way to make anything stick is by having a tight feedback loop. This is something that Anders Ericsson, an expert in human performance, stresses in his book Peak. Writing is that very tight feedback loop.

I never used to take many notes while reading in the past. This changed after reading about Zettelkasten in How to Take Smart Notes. Now, I use a form of Zettelkasten and take notes for every book I read. While taking them, I make sure to never copy anything word for word and try to avoid highlighting interesting passages. Instead, I rewrite the ideas that I find interesting in a tiny book that I keep close to me.

My ₹5 book of thoughts

This allows me to easily and quickly jot down ideas that captured my fancy, something that I can later transfer into my digital Zettelkasten 5. This approach of using writing as an integral component of my consumption has greatly improved the absorption and even generation of newer ideas. I regret not doing this sooner.

Organising ideas and thoughts.

My essays on my blog are a manifestation of me using writing to clearly organise my thoughts and ideas. Most people know this, but don’t appreciate in full the power of forcing yourself to articulate your ideas in the written word. It is another form of a tight feedback loop, where you are not only forced to express your thoughts clearly but also forced to listen to your own thoughts (and sometimes conclude that they are absolute manure). Ideas have zero value. Thoughts have zero value. It’s just potential. Writing is the first step towards realising that potential. It’s the litmus test for any idea, a simple, accessible litmus test. Clear thinking is truly clear writing.

As a mental crutch.

From a day to day practical standpoint, this is probably the most useful of all the uses of writing. At the risk of sounding like a VC techbro 7, I want to bring up the Zen idea of having a “mind like water” - the state of mind in which you are unencumbered and highly perceptive, like water. Pour water in a glass, the water takes its shape. Throw a rock at a still pond, the water reacts commensurately. My interpretation of this analogy is keeping the mind stateless. The brain was never a tool specialised in keeping state. It’s a tool specialised in making sense of data and noise. What is the perfect tool for keeping state? A pen and a piece of paper.

Whenever I am in thought, I have made it a habit to keep multiple scratchpads within an arms reach. I found that this has greatly helped me in thinking my way out of icky problems. It was during one of these thinking sessions, when I thought I was absolutely stuck but writing helped me find a way out, I appreciated the power of my little scratch pads. My favourite tools for my scribbling around are the Pilot Frixion, a jet flame torch and my cheapo scratchpad. This has greatly encouraged my doodling and thinking in writing because it has a great pay off at the end of it all:

Using my blowtorch to clean up my heat sensitive scribbles.

I enjoy using my blowtorch for clearing away my scribbles so much that it has prompted me to write more while thinking, which has moved the needle in keeping my brain as stateless as possible - just like water.

Becoming a producer.

This is a more subjective opinion. For the majority of my life, I have been primarily a consumer 2, but now I want to transition into becoming a producer as well as a consumer. Creating value is only possible when you start shifting to the role of being a producer. I want to create value. Writing is only a tiny part of my transition into being a producer, but it allows me to have some form a consistent output. Being a producer gives you not only the reigns of value creation but a certain power and control over any venture. I want to build something that offers value to the world, and writing is just one small step in the direction of building a producer first mindset.

Because it’s fun.

I have been writing for a long time now. It has been very consistent over the past 6 months because I have grown to enjoy it. It’s a fun activity, and I am glad that I have taken a liking to it.

Pick up the pen. Or keyboard. Or pencil.

Writing is arguably the greatest invention of humanity. It would be a shame if you don’t use it to the fullest. This concludes my sales pitch.

Footnotes

The 2021 Q1 book retrospective.

2021-03-27

A tweet-sized review of all 15 books I read this quarter.

A quarter in numbers.

I am going to divide this section into two parts - “Noise” and “Signal”. Noise is just meaningless data that I have access to, and will have no bearing on what and how I read. The Signal section is data that will actually affect what I read next quarter.

Noise

  • Books read: 15
  • Pages read: 4532
  • Average book length: 302 pages.
  • Average Year of Publication: 1999

Signal

  • Median Year of Publication: 2010 (not good, skewed towards modern work.)
  • Standard Deviation of Year of Publication: 25 years (very bad, need more variation in the publication of work.)

The reviews

Okay here are the rules - 15 books, 240 characters and a score out of 10 to express my opinion of the book. Perfect for us attention emaciated folk of the 2020s. This is written in the order that I read the books. Complete review in the title link.

Pragmatic Thinking and Learning.

  • Published: 2008
  • Rating: Strong 7/10

This book offers few original insights, its value lies in it compiling various methods of learning and thinking into one entertaining package. If you haven’t read a lot of books on the topic, this book is a great starting point.

On Writing Well.

  • Published: 1976
  • Rating: Light 8/10

This is a no-nonsense guide to writing non-fiction - all the way from humour to sports to memoirs. There are many examples that illustrate the principles of writing. The examples and references are too USA centric though.

Peak.

  • Published: 2016
  • Rating: 8/10

Written by a leading expert in the field, if there is one book on mastery you want to read, this should be the one. Extremely actionable step for attaining mastery and debunking the talent myth. Gets a little repetitive at times.

Antifragile.

  • Published: 2012
  • Rating: 10/10

If there is one book that I urge you to read out of this list, it’s this one. To me, this is a life-changing book. Sprawling, intelligent and salty, you may sometimes disagree with this book, but Taleb does make excellent points.

Volume Control.

  • Published: 2019
  • Rating: 6/10

This book is about the science of hearing, its importance in society and how we mistreat our ears. It is an easy, entertaining and informative read. It was less a science book, and more a book-length magazine article.

Optionality

  • Published: 2020
  • Rating: 8/10

This is a slightly more practical, and less philosophical take on the idea of “Optionality” that is introduced in Antifragile. The author writes from experience, has a great writer’s voice and has some good wisdom to share.

Wallbanger

  • Published: 2012
  • Rating: 3/10

This book was garbage. It was about 40% longer than it should have been. It has all the tropes of the hate-to-love genre. Avoid. I recommend reading “The Hating Game” instead, a novel that hits the same narrative notes.

Built To Sell.

  • Published: 2010
  • Rating: 8/10

Written in the form of a parable, this book is short and impactful. Owing to its short length and highly actionable insights, I feel like anyone interested in building a business should read this, whether they want to sell it or not.

How to Take Smart Notes.

  • Published: 2017
  • Rating: 8/10

Introduced the Zettelkasten method of note-taking. Has completely changed the way I research, take notes and generate ideas. The implementation details could have been a little better. Must read for non-fiction writers and researchers.

The Pragmatic Programmer

  • Published: 1999
  • Rating: 8/10

A programming classic. Timeless principles that every coder should know. Must read for young programmers. More experienced folk may already know most of these principles.

Chaos.

  • Published: 1987
  • Rating: 9/10

The history and mathematics of Chaos theory from first principles. Will change the way you look at the world. Written beautifully. Chaos theory is extremely interdisciplinary and applies to most aspects of life.

Amusing Ourselves to Death.

  • Published: 1985
  • Rating: 7/10

Extremely relevant to today’s social media age. Great critique of the role that the medium of public discourse plays in the discourse itself. Sometimes too America and religion-focused, but recommended for some excellent ideas.

Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

  • Published: 2011
  • Rating: 4/10

This unfocused vomit of thoughts is a memoir by Mindy Kaling of “The Office”. It is in parts funny, entertaining, and random in a boring way. Read if you are a Mindy Kaling fan or into gossip magazines.

Siddhartha

  • Published: 1922
  • Rating: Strong 8/10

This classic is about the life of Siddhartha, a Brahmin boy during the time of Buddha. It’s written beautifully and makes you think about life. This could be a life-changing book for the right reader. It’s short, so give it a read.

Fooled by Randomness

  • Published: 2001
  • Rating: 8/10

Book 1 of the Incerto, Taleb shows how we are all fools of randomness. Excellent meditations on probability, biases and the role of luck in our lives. Typical Taleb ego, albeit a little subdued compared to later works.

My picks

These are books that stuck with me. This list need not align with the numeric score I have given and is in no particular order.

  • Antifragile
  • Peak
  • Fooled by Randomness
  • Build to Sell
  • Chaos
  • How to Write Smart Notes
  • Optionality
  • The Pragmatic Programmer

Learning for next quarter

  • Books should be from more varied periods of history.
  • More varied non-fiction topics. I am currently skewed towards productivity and entrepreneurship. Very VC bubble.
  • More classic fiction.
  • More eastern work. I am disproportionately exposed to western thoughts.

Amusing Ourselves to Death.

2021-03-21

The most prescient book I have read. And also the best title on any book I have read.

Cover

Postman is probably glad he is dead.

Neil Postman wrote this critique of the television back in the 1980s. His primary thesis was that, we, as a society are slowly killing coherent dialogue due to the propagation of mass media. In a lot of senses, the stance that Postman is taking maybe agreeable at face value, but Postman takes an extremist stance on the matter - he really hates the medium of TV. I can’t even imagine what Postman will think about the world we live in today.

Postman starts off building his argument by describing the times before visual media. Here he talks about how public discourse took place in the 1700s and 1800s - the public debates, the nuance is discussions and the public enthusiasm for long form exposition. To be completely honest, this is the part of the book that I found a little too long winded. It is very USA-centric, exalting the various public figures prominent in American history. This portion went on for way too long, especially for someone like me who does not share the same enthusiasm for Americana that Postman shares. Despite all this, there are a few good points he brings up on the history of public discourse before the visual era. The major idea that I took away is that the medium of discourse shapes the discourse itself.

The book really picks up after Postman starts talking about the advent of the printing press and the television era. The typography era popularised books as the primary medium for sharing information and public discourse. Postman argues that only after the invention of the telegraph, public discourse slowly started shifting towards the meaningless.

Irrelevance, incoherence and impotence.

The telegraph meant that the world became a smaller place. Information traveled much faster, and as a consequence, the noise in the information increased exponentially. The word “knowledge” itself started to become redefined. What is knowledge? Knowledge used to be something that you had a deep contextual understanding in. Post the telegraph era, knowledge and information started to become more decontextualised. It became more irrelevant. We stopped letting the news and the information that we consume affect our daily actions in any relevant way.

In many ways I found Twitter to be something of a parallel to the telegraph. Each tweet is this bit of decontextualised information - irrelevant, incoherent and impotent. I found this critique on the meaning of knowledge, and the importance of meaning itself, very interesting.

Soon after this, Postman gets to the meat of his thesis - we as a society are amusing ourselves to death. Television has changes the path of public discourse. As mentioned earlier, Postman truly believes that the medium of discourse shapes the discourse. With this idea as his foundation, Postman breaks down the medium of the television to be ill suited for any meaningful discourse. One of the most contrarian stands that Postman takes is how shows like “Sesame Street”, which made education fun for children, are actually more harmful than say, some reality TV show. He posits that television for education builds its programming on a few basic tenets:

  1. The content should not perplex the audience
  2. The content should have no prerequisites.
  3. The content should avoid long expositions.

What is education devoid of perplexity, prerequisites and exposition? Entertainment. We are fooling ourselves into thinking we are educating ourselves. Postman also says that the reason why television is so harmful is that it is competing against typographic media, not complementing it. I couldn’t agree with Postman more on this point. He is a very eloquent writer, and the way he builds up his almost luddite sounding arguments is really fun to read.

Closing thoughts.

There is this whole portion on religion and television that I found mostly uninteresting. That, and the excessive America-centrism in the opening chapters are things that I didn’t enjoy too much in this book. But, there are a lot of excellent ideas in this book that are very applicable even today. This book has aged really well. It makes you think about where we are going as a society, the way various media are shaping how and, more importantly, what we talk about. One could always argue that the television became hugely popular, and yet, here we are as a people. This is something that even I thought of, but one cannot deny that we have set ourselves back in many ways by allowing our contemporary public discourse to degrade to memes and 5 second sound bytes. This ties in really well with Tristan Harris’ thesis on how we are effectively reducing the public IQ by allowing social media to shape public discourse. I highly recommend watching this interview with him on the Joe Rogan podcast - it will change the way you look at today’s mediums of communication:

Neil Postman was way ahead of his time. He knew the value of the medium of public discourse, and he perfectly recognized what we are doing to ourselves - we are amusing ourselves to death.

I give this book a strong 7/10.

Udon Deal.

2021-03-20

The story of my handmade noodles and a journey towards disgust.

My handmade noodles.

I write this with sore wrists, flour sullied clothes and an almost-disgust for udon noodles. Yesterday, I had a sudden craving for Udon noodles, a kind of Japanese Noodle made of whole wheat. The noodle has a bite to it, it’s springy, chewy and beautiful. I had to have it. This flash of motivation to make my own Udon came to me at about 9:30 PM on a Saturday night - kind of late for cooking, but I figured it would be good to capitalise on my motivation before I run out of it. I had the 3 basic ingredients that went into it - salt, flour and water 1, so I thought I could quickly knead me some dough and let it rest for the night, allowing the gluten form overnight. This in itself turned out to be a huge pain - I didn’t know dough (about 30 odd per cent hydration) can get this hard. My knuckles got red, and my wrists sore, but I kneaded till I had my shaggy dough. Mind you, this was dough worth at least 6 portions 3

I woke up today morning, to see how my dough had fared overnight. It had become a brick, which resulted in me starting my day by increasing the hydration in my Udon dough.

Kneading is very important to Udon preparation. Kneading allows the formation of gluten, the structure that lends the noodle its springy, chewy texture. The Japanese traditionally use their feet to do the kneading. My wrists thanked me for this discovery and proceeded to stomp away on my dough (much to my mother’s horror.)

Feet kneading

I bagged my dough and stomped away. I did this in small batches.

After the intense kneading session, I let the dough rest again for a bit and proceeded to start rolling out the noodle. Here is where I started hating myself.

Let me tell you something I discovered about cooking. Cooking is the most human thing you can. My grandfather always says that the meaning of life lies in cooking - humans would have been nowhere if not for the urge of having good food 4. I love cooking 2. I have been cooking all sorts of thing as a hobby for years. It has been a source of great joy and learning. But nothing is as much a pain as cooking in large quantities.

The satisfaction (or feeling of being rewarded) by cooking depends on two opposing functions - The Joy function, and The Effort function. This can be modelled to look something like this, assuming you are cooking for $n$ people

[\text{Joy}(n) \propto n] [\text{Effort}(n) \propto \frac{1}{k-n}]

To maximise satisfaction, you would have to maximise the joy per effort expended. This would look something like this:

[\text{Peak Satisfaction} = \text{maxima}({\frac{\text{Joy(n)}}{\text{Effort(n)}}})]

satisfaction_graph.png

Assuming appropriate constants, I have modelled my satisfaction function5 as $\text{Satisfaction}(n) = n(5-n)$

Plotting it makes it clear, I am quite a bit past the peak satisfaction (which occurs at $n=2.5$, which translates to me as main course + starters for two.)

Here are a couple of illustrative examples of what output from peak satisfaction cooking looks like, as opposed to output from suboptimal satisfaction cooking (albeit net fun cooking)

drawing

Optimal Satisfaction Udon

Suboptimal Satisfaction Udon

Suboptimal Satisfaction Udon

I also have this habit of eating while cooking. I have eaten enough Udon (raw+cooked), to be sick of Udon for the rest of the day.

All said Udon 7, the joy still outweighed the effort to make a kilo of handmade Udon for my whole family (I made enough to have leftovers for dinner tonight). I am just glad I don’t live in a family that is $n\geq5$

Footnotes

NOTE: This first appeared in Letter 7, but I have spun it off into its own post because I liked it.

The art of being Verbund.

2021-03-15

A lesson from a company, that I would otherwise loathe.

Back at it with those cross-functional principles®

BASF is a German chemical manufacturing company. It’s the kind of company that, if you are like me, you would have scarcely heard of. I had fleetingly heard of the name when they briefly ran an ad campaign on TV (back when I had cable, so over 5 years ago). They hold the distinction of being the largest chemical manufacturer in the world. A distinction which, while I respect, couldn’t care lesser for. BASF is exactly the kind of giant corporation that I loathe 1. But I am the kind of guy who would give someone credit where it’s due - in this case, their idea of being verbund is something that has captured my thought. It’s an idea that I really admire.

So, “What does being verbund even mean?” you may wonder whilst stroking your chin. Let’s hear it straight from the horse’s mouth:

Our unique Verbund concept is one of BASF’s greatest strengths. The driving principle of the Verbund concept is to add value through the efficient use of resources. At our Verbund sites, production plants, energy and material flows, logistics, and site infrastructure are all integrated. BASF currently operates six Verbund sites worldwide: two in Europe, two in North America and two in Asia. The Verbund system creates efficient value chains that extend from basic chemicals all the way to consumer products. In this system, chemical processes make use of energy more efficiently, achieve higher product yields and conserve resources. By-products of one process are used as starting materials for another process.

Maybe I am blinded by my prejudice, but I felt icky reading their corporate press releases to find this. Despite my extreme aversion to this hackneyed prose, I can’t help but think about this one line:

By-products of one process are used as starting materials for another process.

This seems like a pretty simple idea, yet it’s not something that I usually think about. Can the product, or even a by-product of a certain action be a resource for another? It’s an elegant way to thinking about outputs.

A prioritisation and optimisation framework

I am a fan of collecting mental models. I would like to think of “Verbundity” as yet another mental model 2. A mental model to minimise wastage, and maximise output. It’s not just the output-as-an-input-type relationship that can be considered, but also the by-product-as-a-reagent for another action.

To apply this, we would have to think of projects and goals as a set of processes, which have inputs, outputs and reagents (things that accelerate the process). Now, once we have done this, we should see if the processes can be arranged such that the by-product of one cane be the resource for another (input or reagent).

Let me take a few practical examples:

  • Project 1: Reading 52 books this year.
    • Input: Reading books.
    • Output: 52 finished books.
    • Reagent: Some form of motivation.

  • Project 2: Having constant creative output.
    • Input: Ideas
    • Output: Creative output.
    • Reagent: Enthusiasm for ideas - exciting ideas

  • Project 3: Becoming a better writer.
    • Input: Ideas to write about.
    • Output: Written pieces.
    • Reagent: Urge to write.

  • Project 4: Create/contribute to an opensource project.
    • Input: Programming, idea.
    • Output: Library, project.
    • Reagent: Motivation, programming skills.


Project 1 output can be used as a reagent for Project 2. Project 1 output can be input for Project 3. Project 4 output can serve as an input for Project 2. Project 3 output can serve as an input for Project 2 too.

The basic idea here is that when embarking on a project, try to minimise loss by associating the by-product of that project to another project beforehand. Creating a network of interlinked projects leads to a value that is greater than the sum of its parts.

But this sounds kinda trite.

To be honest, this principle is neither new nor original. It’s a plain and simple optimisation of projects 4. Repackaging this idea to “Verbundity” makes things more fun. And when things are fun, they are much easier to apply. Just because I like the idea of being Verbund and how that sounds, I will end up thinking more “Verbundly”.

Whenever I have a set of tasks, I will think of them in a manner such that even when tasks fail, I can use their by-product as a resource for another task or goal. I may even plan tasks, projects and goals around the idea of verbundity.

I like the word verbund so much, I will be verbund in earnestness - and therein lies the value for me.

Footnotes

Chaos.

2021-03-13

Universality, mathematics and chaos. This book changed the way I view the world. Everything is a non linear dynamic system.

cover

Strange attractors, everywhere

Chaos, by Jame Gleick is the most beautiful introduction to a field of Mathematics I have ever read. First, let’s get this out of the way - Chaos is not a very “technical” book. It’s first a historical account of the creation of a new field of maths, and then a science book. But that, in my opinion, is where the strength of Chaos lies.

The book chronicles the observation of a strange phenomena by rogue set of scientists, in fields that were traditionally thought to be completely unrelated to each other. Along the journey, Gleick explains us what are these strange phenomena, how the scientists and mathematicians discovered them, and their journey towards making sense of their strange and unexplainable observations. What this means for us, as the reader, is that we get to tag along for the journey, making us feel like we are discovering chaos with these early pioneers. It feels very first principles, which is something I loved about this book.

The common phenomenon that was observered in these traditionally disparate fields was the appearance of something called “strange attractors”. The idea of a strange attractor can be described simply, without dwelling on what exactly is an attractor, and the idea of a phase space (which Gleick has done an excellent job introducing in the book). Strange attractors are diagrams that describe systems showing sensitive dependence to initial conditions. In simple terms, in a non-linear dynamic system, if the initial conditions are very simillar, but not exactly the same then their behaviour over time will become exponentially erratic. Here is an example of such a system. Notice, how quickly things become chaotic:

You may have heard of “The Butterfly Effect”, and may have seen a butterfly looking shape that accompanies it. That is the Lorenz Attractor, the first strange attractor discovered by Edward Lornez, a metoerologist who was trying to create models for weather simulation back in the 60s.

The Lorenz Attractor - the first Strange Attractor.

Now, what’s amazing about these strange attractors is that they show up everywhere. Their universality is what is truly awe-inspiring.

What does a biologist, economist and mathematician have in common?

You guessed it, Chaos. Gleick not only goes over the various fields where chaos reigns, but also how it does, and what are the practical implications.

The misbehaviour of the markets? Chaos.

Heart Fibrillation? Chaos.

The shape of leaves and trees? Chaos.

The dripping of a faucet? Chaos.

Population growth? Chaos.

I could go on forever. All these systems are extremely complex, dynamic systems, yet they have one thing in common - chaos. What do I mean by that? Traditionally, it was thought that most complex systems eventually reach some sort of an equillibrium. This equillibrium maybe in the form of some constant periodicity - for example, summers then winters, then summers, then winters. But this is not true. These systems cannot be modelled accurately due to the non-linearities present in them. Over time, these equillibriums change, and break, and become all weird. We can’t predict them. But, there is one contant that rules these systems, the Feigenbaum constant. I won’t get into what this means, because neither am I good enough a science writer to explain it, nor is it within the scope for this review. Here is an exceedingly digestible introduction to Chaos, and the Feigenbaum constant by the excellent Veritasium:

Closing thoughts, and tip of an iceberg

This book is such a great, passionate introduction to the field of Chaos and complexity. Its a history of science, people and culture. Gleick is a talented writer painting rich vignettes of heros like Mandelbrot, May, Lorenz and so many more. Don’t let the lack of equations and intense mathematics deter you. I love hard science as much as the next guy, but this is mind expanding enough to be the first read for anyone enthusiastic about universality, mathematics and chaos. This book is just the tip of the iceberg. Also, shoutout to Taleb who introduced me to the idea of unpredictibility in non linear systems in his book Antifragile.

I give this a strong 9/10.

My most popular side project.

2021-03-12

A look back at what I like, and dislike about my most popular project being a terminal speed reader.

Breaking down relative success.

Shirah reader is a terminal reader I wrote in 2020 when I was at the peak of my RSVP speed reading phase. I really wanted a speed reading tool that I could use on my computer to read ebooks; unfortunately, the best I could find was some terminal readers. This is when I decided to write my own tool based on my needs, and figured someone else also may find it useful.

First, here is an introduction to what I made. I have reproduced a portion of the README file in my repository:

Shirah

A curses-based terminal RSVP speed reader.

Note: Poor colour representation in gif, looks way better irl.

What is an RSVP reader?

RSVP stands for Rapid Serial Visual presentiation

Its a controversial method to enable speedreading. I have been using this on my devices, and it has given me great results. I wanted to have an option to do this in the terminal too.

Alt text

Ignore the haters, and try it for yourself. Also, I don’t like that the best options on a computer are paid softwares.

At the time of me writing this, my project has 129 stars, making it by far my most popular side project.
This, in my eyes, was a pretty huge success for me because it helped me achieve one of my personal OKRs for last quarter:

OKRs

Screencap of my public personal OKRs at work

Having dabbled in lots of side projects in the past with none having gained more than 10-15 stars, I learnt a lot about what kind of projects do really get stars. So, here I have outlined my theory for GitHub stars based on my $\text{sample size}$ of $n=1$

  1. People love end-user projects. It has a low barrier to adoption. Nobody has the time to install and try out your low-level memory management library.
  2. Gifs are everything.
  3. Hit a niche that can be easily understood by lay-people.
  4. Promote fancy gif on Reddit.
  5. People like the idea of a technical project, as opposed to a real technical implementation. It’s all aesthetics. This is why “awesome lists” have so many stars.

Almost overnight, I had 100+ stars on my repository because it met a lot of these guidelines, and got picked up by the folks at r/linux and r/commandline for a total of over 900 upvotes. I doubt many people really use my utility. Even I don’t RSVP speed-read anymore.

The fortunes of being undiscovered

In the grand scheme of things, 130 odd stars is not a big deal. And I am glad this didn’t blow up too much. Personally, between 100 and 300 stars is the sweet spot for this kind of a project. I am quite happy with how this little side project turned out and the general reception towards it, but on the whole, this is far from my best work. Here are some reasons I don’t like this project:

  1. I didn’t write most of it. I merely extended and repackaged another project. I did however credit the original author, who was nice enough to approve of my work. So what I have written amounts to an elaborate plugin, as opposed to a 0-1 project.
  2. Its a fairly non-technical project. For the most part, its run of the mill curses programming. I didn’t get to flex any technical expertise here.
  3. The interface for speed reading is piss poor. It’s confusing and counter-intuitive to most people. I didn’t put much thought into it, since I figured I’d be the only one using it.
  4. I made this in one evening on a weekend. I have spent way more time on my other projects.

Becoming famous

For the past 5+ months, I have been constantly putting out my work. This was in the form of my (short-lived) newletter, book reviews, articles and side projects. I realise that at any point, there always is the chance that some of my content may blow up. Shirah is probably the closest I have come to blowing up in the past 5 months. It’s far from blowing up, but its close enough for me to make me think about the implications of such a scenario.

Think about it like this, Da Vinci will always be the “Mona Lisa” person. Cal Newport will always be the “Deep Work” person. Seinfeld will always be the “Seinfeld” person. JK Rowling will always be the “Harry Potter” person.

I doubt any of these people got to choose “X”, in their “X” person explicitly. It just happened, and now they are stuck with it forever. Jani Lane was a famous musician who tragically died of alcoholism. He got very popular for his single “Cherry Pie”, a song that the label executives asked him to compose last moment as something “single-worthy” for his album. He considered it as one of his inferior works and was famously quoted saying

“hate that song … my legacy is “Cherry Pie” … I could shoot myself in the head for writing that song,”

He did later disown that statement, saying the interviewer caught him on a bad day and that he is actually glad that he wrote the song 1.

While I am glad Jani changed his mind on his legacy, there must be so many other people who would be unhappy about it. I don’t want to be unhappy about blowing up for something that I didn’t expect to blow up. The way I think about everything I put out has changed a little, knowing this could happen at any moment. My work hasn’t changed much in terms of what I put out but I think a little more about the implications of what I put out going viral. And as optimistic as it sounds, if I ever blow up, I want to be prepared for its implications.

Footnotes

A programmer’s life manifesto.

2021-03-07

I always find cross functional principles amusing.

Cross functional Principles.

Cross functional principles are principles that were designed to be guidelines for a particular field, but somehow apply to another field. This is not a technical term for such principles, just something I use to describe such principles. I find the idea of cross functional principles really satisfying. It feels like two (seemingly) different worlds having a cross-over.

Recently, I finished reading “The Pragmatic Programmer” 1, a book about the craft of writing good code and building great software. I learnt a lot of great principles on the art of making good software, but also felt like most (if not all) of these principles can be applied to life.

The action manifesto.

I figured the most pragmatic way of applying these principles would be to break them down into short, easy-to-apply tests for the actions/decisions you take. If you want a cringier way of thinking about these tests, they are the CI/CD build pipeline to your life 3

I have derived these tests by adapting (quite loosely sometimes) the hallmarks of a great codebase.

DRY - Don’t repeat yourself.

In my head, this translates to the adage “Don’t solve the problem, solve the family of problems”. A very simple example of this is how I used to always forget passwords. I kept repeating the “Forgot my password” routine. I decided to stop repeating myself, and finally got a solid password manager workflow set up. Been over an year since I hit the forgot password button.

Orthogonality

If an action I take fails spectacularly, how many aspects of my life would be adversely affected? If the action is orthogonal, then it would be only one. This metric can be quite simply applied by splitting your actions into a number of axes. I like to think that all of life’s decisions fall under two axes:

  1. Work
  2. Leisure

The test derived from this principle is simply asking whether an action is orthogonal. An example of this would be this - I am on twitter, and I want to tweet about something spicy. This is an action on the “Leisure” axis. In a worst case that my tweet is grossly misinterpreted (or worse, I am wrong), will my “Work” axis be affected? If the answer there is yes, I shouldn’t do it. The action isn’t orthogonal.

Single Responsiblity

My interpretation of this is very important for me in today’s attention economy world. Every now and then, I want to assess the action that I am performing to make sure that it is towards the output I have decided. The action that I perform must have a single responsibility.

Suppose my intended output for an action is finish writing an article on “Hearing loss”. Ever so often I should poll myself to make sure the actions I am taking do indeed contribute to that very goal, and no other one. I have to keep things single responsibility. More responsibilities may cause tight coupling which, down the line , would cause great pain and unintended second or third order consequences. 4

Avoid tech debt like the plague.

This is a simple principle. Every action you take is either a debt from your future self, or a favour you are doing to your future self. Any debt that you take must be thought of as a high interest, loan shark debt. You will be forced to pay it back at a much worse time and place, with a ridiculous interest fees.

Before performing an action, run the following “life debt” test. Am I taking a life debt? If the answer is yes, avoid the action like the plague.

ETC - Easier to change.

My interpretation of this is a bit of a stretch from the original principle. Here is my adaption - the thought you put into a decision should be directly proportional to how easy that decision is to change (or how easy it is to reverse). Examples:

  • I want to get botox -> Is it easy to reverse? -> Not that much ->Think deeper if I really want to get botox. Sleep on it, put it off for a while.

  • I want to change my hair color -> Is it easy to change/reverse? -> Yes -> Go for it, don’t think too much.

Caveats

These are my interpretations of these principles. I am not sure what kind of adverse consequences they can have long term (second, third order effects?). A lot of these principles do seem quite obvious, but I think the power in them lies in treating them like tests for actions and decision. My personal checklist (“build pipeline”) for my decision would involve the following:

  • Is is orthogonal?
  • Am I taking a life debt?
  • Is my action single responsible?
  • Is it easy to change or reverse?
  • Is this something I have been doing over and over? (am I repeating myself?)

I am hoping that this checklist would help improve my decision making abilities; something I can verify only after my future self’s success (or failure). This is just another one of my Bad Heuristics 2

Footnotes

Barbelling my knowledge portfolio.

2021-03-01

Exposing myself to extreme success. Or maybe not.

Knawlidge.

Staying at home for over a year with no expenditure of my own 1 meant that I had accumulated a nice pile of cash for myself from my job. Since I don’t like being a chump, I decided that it was time to start building an investment portfolio with my money. I read and heard many books, articles and podcasts 4 on how to manage my money and transition it to “wealth”. I am sure everyone reading this would agree that having a well thought out investment portfolio is the fiscally prudent thing to do in my situation. Its probably what all of us would do (unless you are the fiscally irresponsible kind. Or like gambling).

After deciding to attain pecuniary perfection, I started dilligently doting over my portfolio of passive funds, torridly tracking multiple international indices and rabidly reading online thesauri to sound smarter 2. Despite having a thourough investment plan to build wealth, I faultered in planning a portfolio of the most important asset you can have, Knowledge (or as guru extrordinaire Tai Lopez would say - “Knawlidge”). It was time I treated my knowledge capital the same way I treated my financial capital.

My Investment strategy.

Starting this month, I have planned out a strategy for investing in my knowlege capital. I have decided to follow the “Barbell strategy” to my investment. Self proclaimed flaneur, mathematical philosopher and pretentiousista7 Nassim Nicholas Taleb popularised this method in his book Anitfragile.

Before we get to why this strategy is so great, let’s understand the problem we are trying to solve for by adopting this strategy. Taleb famously coined the phrase, a “Black Swan”, an event or happening that is unpredictible and has a massive impact. The 2008 financial crisis is a famous example of a Black Swan. We are currently living in the shadow of the Covid 19 Black Swan. Black Swans can be both positive, and negative. The Bitcoin rally is an example of a positive Black Swan. The core characteristic of a Black Swan is that is its unpredictible, and high impact.

The barbell strategy aims to curb negative Black Swans, and expose yourself to positive Black Swans. This is done by never staying in the middle, only in the extremes. One end of the barbell is extremely safe, the other end of the barbell is extremely unsafe, and high risk. The high risk part of the barbell in a best case scenario exposes you to positive Black Swans. In the worst case, you lose your whole high risk portion due to a negative Black Swan, but you have your super safe end of the barbell to protect you.

An example of a financial barbel, courtesy Jean Galea

This strategy applies to all facets of life. In fact, more so in the non financial aspects of life. There are many ways that a barbell can be applied, here are a few examples from a career point of view:

  1. Have a super stable, boring, government job. And write on the side. Franz Kafka, legendary surrealist author worked as an Insurance agent, and wrote on the side. A similar approach could be used for working on side projects, while on the job.
  2. Work in a stable job for some years, and then leave it all to start your on high risk venture. If all fails, get back the stability of a job.

These are two forms of the barbell, there can be several other variants, in the different facets of life. I am going to apply the barbell strategy to my technical knowledge capital.

Garbage in, garbage out.

I program computers for a living. Things move fast in my field, and things that are cutting edge today, would be garbage tomorrow. Ask any programmer when was the last time they wrote a Java applet, once considered the defacto way to create an internet application 5 . Today, browsers don’t even support them. The whole thing is garbage. And as a believer in the adage of “Garbage in, garbage out”, we know what my knowledge portfolio will look like over time.

To get over this, I am going to barbell my investment. To do this, first, I must determine what are my “safe assets”. In a field with technologies and knowledge being as transient as they are, how do I find out what is a “safe” investment? The answer to this is the Lindy effect:

“A technology, or anything nonperishable, increases in life expectancy with every day of its life.”

A similar metric can be used to find extremely high risk, high reward investments too. I have proposed the following two simple heuristics 6 define my assets:

  1. Safe asset heuristic: Technologies/concepts that have had a lifespan of a minimum of 25 years. Example: Concurrency, Virtualisation, Compilers.
  2. Risky asset heuristic: Technology/concepts that have a maximum age of 5 years. Eg: HTTP/3, Web3 technologies.

My risk appetite is high, so I want to split my time investment in these assets in a ratio of 70:30.

That’s the distribution of knowledge, now for implementing this strategy, I would create a knowledge SIP, or a systematic investment plan. Methods of investment for me would include, but not be limited to:

  • Read one technical book per month.
  • Create projects in a rolling manner on the side.
  • Writing about newer concepts.

Another thing to remember is that I should diversify my safe assets. I have to be a generalist. This is my techical knowledge barbell.

The non-technical portfolio.

My approach to general non-fiction, or fiction is different from my approach towards my technical portfolio. Here, I am going to disrespect Mr Taleb, and follow the golden mean, extremely diversified approach. I am going to index fund it.

For the purpose of this discussion, I am going to consider two axes of diversification - time, and subject. I am in diversifying both.

In practice, this would look something like this:

  • Read book from all parts of our history, 1200s, 1800s, 1700s, 2020s - you get the idea. An even distribution. Right now, I am skewed tightly towards the 2000s (specifically the 2010s). This would of course have to be normalised for the actual books published during the era.
  • Read from as many fields as possible - maths, art, philosophy, biology, self help - I shouldn’t stick to one genre. Keep rolling genres, no back to back same subject.

This would equally expose me to both positive Black Swans, and negative Black Swans. Fortunately, I don’t have anything to lose here, since I love reading enough for the reading to be the reward for the investment itself. I am technically in a position of symmetry, but I would like to think I have optionality. This is for pleasure.

Next steps.

Here, I have outlined my strategy for investments in my knowledge portfolio. This is but a plan on paper. Applying it effectively is going to be hard, and its something I am going to explore in future articles based on the (hopefully extreme) success (or failure) of this plan.

Footnotes

Letter Nine

2021-02-27

The death of The Letter.

Knowing when to retire The Letter.

Its been 2 months since I started writing my weekly letters. Its time to retire them in their current form. To get to how I reached this conclusion, it makes sense to revisit the very first edition of “The Letter” where I outlined the reasons for why I started this weekly “newsletter” in the first place.

I want to reinforce what I learn, on a weekly basis. This letter will be a form of reinforcement.

I wanted to write as a means of reinforcing my learnings. The Letter started exactly as that and, until recently, fulfilled that purpose completely and thoroughly. Today, my way of reinforcing my learnings has grown beyond The Letter. The Letter can be credited as a electric starter motor to my ancient combustion engine. The engine seems to be roaring now, and The Letter can rest till my engine dies again.

It creates some motivation to be consistent in learning new things. I found that I avoided longer books, since it would prevent me from doing my one book post/week schedule. Here, I can write about longer books, and thus be motivated to pick up longer texts (Like Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid )

Starting last quarter, I decided to rekindle my reading habit. The last time I read a book before 2020, was in 2018. That’s a 2+ year stretch of literary barreness. I knew it was high time that I picked up a book, and finish it cover to cover. I had to get the ball rolling. To achieve this, I promised myself that I would read one book everyweek. What this meant was that I had to choose books in a manner that afforded me the assurance of their completion in one week. This translated to an average word count of 120,000 words. What this also translated to, was that my reading habits were dictated by some arbitrary rules, and not solely my interests. This was fine when the motivation to read was finishing the book, like it was for the first four weeks or so. But now, after over 30 books, I don’t care for the numbers. I have finally started reading in earnestness. I don’t need to write about a book every week for me to be motivated to pursue it.

My old mindest viewed knowledge from a book-wise hierarchy. But, I have now realised that the atomic unit of knowledge isn’t really a book, its an idea. A book consists of many ideas, and these ideas intermingling give rise to newer ideas. A book is a great proxy for being exposed to ideas, but I must not get bogged down by the limitations of my proxy. I have decided to write lesser about books themselves, and keep my writing idea centric. This would be a theme in my thoughts section moving forward.

I want to improve my writing, and I feel somewhere along the way, I may just become better at it.

Well, retiring The Letter doens’t mean I am going to retire writing. The Letter forced me to write every week - becuase I needed to. I promised a weekly letter. Now, I sometimes even find myself wanting to write more than once every week. I want to be able to write weekly, fortnightly or even many times a week. The Letter, initallly a strong vehicle for creating a routine, is now restraining. Its purpose has been fulfilled in this regard.

I like creating stuff. Stuff can be anything - food, code, art. This letter is going to be my weekly stuff. The stuff I can count on myself to do in a predictable manner. The stuff that can’t hide behind guise of needing inspiration.

I don’t need inspiration to write any more. I don’t even need a scheduled newsletter anymore.

What next?

The Letter is going to be retired in its current form. This means from now on, the articles in the “thoughts” section will be articles based on the ideas that I am exposed to. I am still going to probably end up sticking to my “VC Chic” 1 niche, but it will not be limited to it. Its hard to describe what I want to write about. I want to write about the joy of making handmade noodles, the character building nature of doing C development in a terminal, and the silly mathematical proxies I use to quantify the human condition. In short, I don’t want to limit myself by topics. I want to be a generalist.

Maybe somtime in the future, I may start an acutal newsletter under “The Letter” moniker, but that would only be a compilation of my writing for the week, delivered to an inbox. It would be a convenience for my as yet non-existent audience.

I want to end “The Letter” with one of my favourite quotes, a standard that I aspire to in terms of my writing, work and ideas:

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

Footnotes

How to Take Smart Notes.

2021-02-27

This book has the potential to change my life. Its all in the execution now.

cover

Stupid, stupid heirarchies.

Ever so often, you come across ideas that, if implemented properly, can change your life. This book has presented to me an idea - Zettelkasten - that I believe has this potential.

At its core, this book is a sales pitch for the virtues of Zettelkasten, a method for personal knowledge management popularised by German polymath Niklas Luhmann. Luhmann was a prolific writer, having written over 70 books, and 400 articles in his academic career. He wrote on a wide variety of subjects, and attributed his massive bibliography to his note taking system - Zettelkasten. Zettelkast in, which loosely translates to “Slip Box”, is a system for curating ideas from various notes. Over his lifetime, Luhmann amassed over 90,000 notes in his slipbox, each note taken on an A6 card. The notes formed a web of knowledge that allowed him to synthesize new ideas by intermingling of the many ideas he was exposed to. The beauty of his approach was the ideas were captured in a bottoms up, associative manner. In a normal note taking system, a top down heirarchy is followed. Something like

  • Concept 1
    • Concept 1a
    • Concept 1b
    • …

Luhmann approached things in a different manner, he let the ideas themselves decide their relationship with other ideas. The various notes linked to each other, in a manner that flowed from idea to idea. He turned the heirarchy upside down.

The art of the Zettelkasten

Zettelkasten as a system is extremely simply. I can break it down into a few simple steps:

  1. Collecting “Fleeting notes”: These can be highlights, or scribblings about things that you find interesting.
  2. Collecting “Literature Notes”: These are notes of points that piqued your interest in books. These have to be re-written in your language, and its references must be noted down for posterity. Fleeting notes can be converted to this, if you have just some highlights, or dirty scribbles at hand.
  3. Recontextualising “Literature Notes” for your slip-box: This is the core of Zettelkasten. The idea here is to create something called a “Permanent Note” from the “Literature Note”. This “Permanent Note” is a polished form of the idea that recontextualises the idea you found in the literature, with respect to your slipbox. For example, you read the idea of being “verbund”, a term used in the chemical industry for processes in which the by product can be used as a resource for another process. This will be your “Literature Note”. You can recontextualise this idea, and based on some other Permanent note, create a Permanent Note on how all our initiatives should be “verbund”. A permanent note should be written in such a manner such that it has a unique identifier, and also connects to other Permanent notes that you would want to read that are related to this note.

Step number 3 is tricky, and needs some trial and error to get right. Converting Literature notes to Permanent notes is somthing that would come with practice, something that I haven’t yet mastered.

The idea is over time, the slipbox will attain a critical mass that allows for continous idea generation.

The short comings.

While the idea presented in the book is great, and the tips in general are really good, this book has quite a few shortcomings. For one, this explains the idea of the system very nicely, but faulters in explaining the implementation aspect. How to apply Zettelkasten in your daily workflow? I feel like this book doesn’t get into the practical aspects adequately. I am working on implementing Zettelkasten within Logseq, my knowledge management system of choice. I have moved away from my legacy system, and will report back here on my after a few months to let you know how its going.

For now, I give this book a light 8.

Letter Eight

2021-02-20

The mathematics of social media mind control (and the antidote?). What Hebbs figured out in the 1950s, Zuckerberg is abusing today.

Banana Vomit

When you read the title of the paragraph, what struck you? There may have been a mild feeling of disgust. The temporal sequence of the words may have made you think of a situation wherein the bananas may have caused the said vomit, which may lead to a temporary aversion to bananas. You may have even thought about yellow fruits, or other disgust inducing words like “nauseous”, or “sick”. All this happened in a fraction of a second.

The above example is used by Kahneman to describe the associative nature of System I of our brain. “What is System I?”, you may ask - Kahneman proposed that our cognitive abilities are shaped by what he calls the two systems:

  • System I: This is responsible, in a gist, for the quick decisions that our mind makes. These decisions are prone to be irrational, biased, and generally give more importance to prejudice, than fact. Despite this, this is a very important part of our mind, and do give us a lot of advantages.

  • System II: This is the smarter, more rational part of our brain. It helps us make better decisions, but unfortunately, its a very lazy system.

Our System I is an associative machine. This is great for us in many ways, but bad for us in others, especially when our attention has been commodified.

An Association Analogy

Back when I was in FIITJEE 1, we used to play a game called “Chain reaction” in our downtime. It was a fun game that could run on everyone’s mobile and allowed for 2-8 players on a single device. The rules were simple, you had to capture a grid with the orbs of your colour.

A grid with orbs at different growth activations.

Here, when you touch an orb, it grows in size. Once it hits a size beyond what it can grow, it “explodes”, and infects the other orbs around it so they become the same colour.

Usually, as a game progress, a single explosion triggers a series of explosions that can completely change the face of the grid. This occurs when a lot of orbs are in their final form, just one touch away from an explosion. This causes a “Chain Reaction”. Below is an example of such a chain reaction.

An uncontrolled associative burst.

I like to think of our ideas to be like these orbs. When we are adequately primed the right way, and have collected many ideas, one idea leads to us thinking of the next associated idea, which leads to the next. Social media is an über effective catalyst for uncontrolled bursts of associative thinking. These bursts are physically rewiring our brain, and disincentivising us to use our rational System II

Enter Hebb

Editor’s note: This section is poorly written. This was my first attempt at science writing, and I have realised my shortcomings, and the future letters would have much higher quality science writing. For now, if something is unclear (which it will), please skim. Sorry, and thanks.

Donald Hebb was a neuropsychologist who introduced the Hebbian Theory of learning in 1949. Here, Hebbs attempted to codify the conditioning behaviour of synapses, which are the structures that permits a neuron (or nerve cell) to pass an electrical or chemical signal to another neuron. The most popular (and somewhat over-simplified) form of this theory is described below

Neurons that fire together wire together

A more nuanced take on this is the theory of Spike-timing-dependent plasticity. In simple terms, this theory builds on what old Hebbs said, by stating that synapses increase their efficiency if the synapse persistently takes part in firing the postsynaptic target neuron. Similarly, the efficiency of synapses decreases when the firing of their presynaptic targets is persistently independent of firing their postsynaptic ones. This could again be (over)simplified to say

Those who fire together, wire together; and those who fire out of sync, lose their link

Here though, it’s very important to remember that a temporal causal relationship must be established between the firing. What that means is that if A occurs, and B occurs immediately after (not at the same time, immediately after), then only this strengthening takes place. Sounds somewhat familiar? This is classical conditioning behaviour, also made famous by the Pavlov’s dog experiment. Only this time around, you are the dog, and Zuckerberg is Pavlov.

The calculus of social media.

Yep, here is the secret to make us the drooling dogs social media has made us.

[ w_{ij}={\frac {1}{p}}\sum_{k=1}^{p}x_{i}^{k}x_{j}^{k} ]

where $w_{ij}$ is the weight (or strength), between two neurons $i$ and $j$, $p$ is the number of training patterns that are stored in the memory and and $x_{i}^{k}$ the $kth$ input for neuron $i$. This is used to define, and determining the strength between two neurons.

This learning rule popularly called the “Hebb’s learning rule”, can be used as the rule to “learn” patterns, create memories, or association in artificial neural networks. An example of practically using this would be in the form of a Hopfield Network.

A Hopfield network is an ingenious little neural network. Imagine your brain as a grid of 1s and -1s. Imagine this grid having an “Energy”. The energy can be represented using an equation like [ e_{ij}=-w_{ij}x_ix_j ] This is used to define, and determining the strength between two neurons for some inputs.

Now one cool thing about this equation is that negative sign. This means, that for two similar neurons, the energy would decrease ($1 \times 1$ and $-1 \times -1$ are both positive.). Similarly, two dissimilar neurons firing would increase the energy of the grid. Hopfield networks work on the principal that the remembered pattern in the grid (that is your brain) is found at places where the energy is minimised.

Obviously, this comes with a lot of constraints (how many patterns you can learn, reaching the wrong minima etc.), but the general concept of memory and practical application of Hebb’s rule makes this a great example of the application of biological theories in computer science.

If I butchered mathematical explanation (I realised that this is harder to explain that I thought), here is a real, practical demo of the Hopfield Network in action (bad luck if you are on mobile):

But what’s the antidote you promised?!

Social media is making us stupider by disincentivizing the use of our System II (“rational”) brain. Its quite literally rewiring the way we think by promoting uncontrolled bursts of chain reaction like associative thinking. The one cure for this? Mindfulness 3.

True mindfulness is not reaching a trance like state, but rather being aware of everything, and training your mind to think and acknowledge its inputs. Remember that chain reaction gif from earlier? That’s how a brain that isn’t mindful would react to external stimuli. Uncontrolled associative bursts. Mindfulness would allow you to control these bursts better.

Creativity, and inventiveness is the result of bursts of associativity. I thought of writing this piece after reading Thinking Fast and Slow, Livewired, taking a machine learning class at college, playing lots of chain reaction and practicing mindfulness. This article is a product of ground up association of many things, and that’s what association should be used for. Not for finding yourself lost in an algorithm jungle of cat video recommendation, with no idea of how you arrived there. 4

Footnotes

Built To Sell.

2021-02-20

An insightful parable on the process of making a business that can live without you, and what it means for it to be sell-able.

cover

Make something that outlives you.

This book is a quaint book. The characters are fleshed out, and their stories endearing. It follows the journey of Alex, a business owner of an advertising firm. The first chapter establishes him as the guy who is doing all the heavy lifting, with his firm consisting of average-at-best generalist employees, and most of the business coming from a few clients. The revenue is not bad, and the business allows him to live a comfortable life with his family. Unfortunately, the stress and the pain of running this business has far outweighed the initial enthusiasm he had for having his own creative agency. He makes the decision to cash out.

Enter Ted, a serial entrepreneur and mentor to Alex. He has sold many businesses and is living a wealthy retired life. Alex goes to Ted to understand how, and for how much should he sell his business. Ted reveals to him that its current state is unsellable, despite being profitable and having good revenues. What follows is the two-year journey that Alex follows (with Ted’s mentorship) to transform his business into something that can be sold.

The principles of this book sound solid on paper. Ted’s advice is very convincing and is presented in a way that doesn’t even come off as heavy-handed (which is tough for parables like these.)

Here are the primary takeaways from this book (although owing to the short length of the book, I recommend every business owner to read it in full)

  1. Teachable: focus on products and services that you can teach employees to deliver.
  2. Valuable: avoid price wars by specializing in doing one thing better than anyone else.
  3. Repeatable: generate recurring revenue by engineering products that customers have to repurchase often.

Build to Sell

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. Whether I want to sell my business, or not, I shall remember to always build a sellable business. Only when something can run without me, I will have something that’s valuable. Alex started off hating his business, and over the transformation, he actually started enjoying running the business way more (to the point where he considered not selling it off). The book is full of actionable practical tips, and the last 40 odd pages are pure non-narrative tips that generalise the lessons from the parable.

This book doesn’t overstay its welcome and is sufficiently engaging. I recommend all business owners to read this. There is something here for everyone. This is a strong 8/10.

Letter Seven

2021-02-14

Algebra of Udon Satisfaction, and a Bad Heuristic™.

Udon Deal

I write this with sore wrists, flour sullied clothes and an almost-disgust for udon noodles. Yesterday, I had a sudden craving for Udon noodles, a kind of Japanese Noodle made of whole wheat. The noodle has a bite to it, it’s springy, chewy and beautiful. I had to have it. This flash of motivation to make my own Udon came to me at about 9:30 PM on a Saturday night - kind of late for cooking, but I figured it would be good to capitalise on my motivation before I run out of it. I had the 3 basic ingredients that went into it - salt, flour and water 1, so I thought I could quickly knead me some dough and let it rest for the night, allowing the gluten form overnight. This in itself turned out to be a huge pain - I didn’t know dough (about 30 odd per cent hydration) can get this hard. My knuckles got red, and my wrists sore, but I kneaded till I had my shaggy dough. Mind you, this was dough worth at least 6 portions 3

I woke up today morning, to see how my dough had fared overnight. It had become a brick, which resulted in me starting my day by increasing the hydration in my Udon dough.

Kneading is very important to Udon preparation. Kneading allows the formation of gluten, the structure that lends the noodle its springy, chewy texture. The Japanese traditionally use their feet to do the kneading. My wrists thanked me for this discovery and proceeded to stomp away on my dough (much to my mother’s horror.)

Feet kneading

I bagged my dough and stomped away. I did this in small batches.

After the intense kneading session, I let the dough rest again for a bit and proceeded to start rolling out the noodle. Here is where I started hating myself.

Let me tell you something I discovered about cooking. Cooking is the most human thing you can. My grandfather always says that the meaning of life lies in cooking - humans would have been nowhere if not for the urge of having good food 4. I love cooking 2. I have been cooking all sorts of thing as a hobby for years. It has been a source of great joy and learning. But nothing is as much a pain as cooking in large quantities.

The satisfaction (or feeling of being rewarded) by cooking depends on two opposing functions - The Joy function, and The Effort function. This can be modelled to look something like this, assuming you are cooking for $n$ people

[\text{Joy}(n) \propto n] [\text{Effort}(n) \propto \frac{1}{k-n}]

To maximise satisfaction, you would have to maximise the joy per effort expended. This would look something like this:

[\text{Peak Satisfaction} = \text{maxima}({\frac{\text{Joy(n)}}{\text{Effort(n)}}})]

satisfaction_graph.png

Assuming appropriate constants, I have modelled my satisfaction function5 as $\text{Satisfaction}(n) = n(5-n)$

Plotting it makes it clear, I am quite a bit past the peak satisfaction (which occurs at $n=2.5$, which translates to me as main course + starters for two.)

Here are a couple of illustrative examples of what output from peak satisfaction cooking looks like, as opposed to output from suboptimal satisfaction cooking (albeit net fun cooking)

drawing

Optimal Satisfaction Udon

Suboptimal Satisfaction Udon

Suboptimal Satisfaction Udon

I also have this habit of eating while cooking. I have eaten enough Udon (raw+cooked), to be sick of Udon for the rest of the day.

All said Udon 7, the joy still outweighed the effort to make a kilo of handmade Udon for my whole family (I made enough to have leftovers for dinner tonight). I am just glad I don’t live in a family that is $n\geq5$

A bad heuristic.

I love heuristics. I think of them as older people giving me advice - it may not be right all the time, but sometimes they have a point. Whenever I find myself in a place where the decisions get a little hard, or I don’t trust my choice much, I like to employ a bad heuristic.

A bad heuristic is, in this context, a formalisation of the various factors affecting a decision into a formula. I especially like bad heuristics because they are what the title say - bad. By bad, I mean that the heuristic is chock-full caveats and drawbacks. This means, I would never completely rely on the heuristic, quite like the advice given by the aforementioned older folk.

Off late, I have been in a bind to pick my next side coding project. To solve this conundrum, I have employed the following analysis resulting in a Bad Heuristic®

Broadly, coding projects can be divided into two categories

End User Projects

These are projects that can be used by the end user without caring for underlying implementation level details. Examples

  • Ethereum
  • IPFS
  • Calibre
  • Docker

Pros

  • Project is not dependent on the success of the language it was built using, only the idea.
  • Further reach, since its not constrained by the users of a particular language.

Cons

  • Harder to come up with ideas for standalone full fledged end user tools, as opposed to libraries.
  • High probability that something you have made would be done elsewhere, but better. This would mean, lesser people using your project.

Library Projects

These are projects that live and die with the popularity of the language framework, or the ecosystem they reside in. Example

  • Django
  • Scikitlearn
  • GORM

    Pros

  • The idea can be recycled from another library. Example, you notice that Python has a nice library for audio manipulation, but Racket doesn’t. The idea is to recreate a library in another language.
  • Low probability of someone doing what you did if you pick the right $P(Library Niche, Language)$

    Cons

  • The library can only be as popular as the language it’s implemented in.

The function to pick project.

Taking into account these factors, and my love for making niche projects, I have derived the following Bad Heuristic™:

[ ProjectScore(Lang, Niche, Cat) = \begin{cases} Niche^3, & \text{for Cat = End-User}
\newline Lang \times Niche^2, & \text{for Cat = Library}
\end{cases} ]

Where

[NicheScore(Project) =max \left(0, \frac{\text{75k - (# of Stars for Most Popular Project on the same topic)}}{75k} \times 2 \right)] (Niche Score is proportional to how niche your project topic/subject is.)

And

[LangScore(Project) = max\left(\frac{\text{# of Stars for Most Popular Project in the Language}}{75k} \times 2, 2 \right)] (Lang Score is proportional to the popularity of the language.)

Here, I have some applied examples

Making a static site generator (Cat = End-User)

$Niche Score = \frac{(75k-50k)}{75k} \times 2= 0.\overline{6}$

$Project Score = 0.\overline{6}^3 = 0.\overline{296}$

Here, the most popular static site generator is Hugo, with 50k stars.

Making a homomorphic cryptography library in Racket (Cat = Library)

$NicheScore = \frac{(75k-2.6k)}{75k} \times 2= 1.930\overline{6}$

$LangScore = \frac{3k}{75k} \times 2= 0.08$

$ProjectScore = 1.930\overline{6}^2 \times 0.08 ≈ 0.298 $

Here, most popular homomorphic encryption library is HElib with 2.6k stars Here, most popular Racket repository is Racket with 3k stars

A finite state machine in Haskell. (Cat = Library)

$Niche Score = \frac{(75k-7.6k)}{75k} \times 2= 1.7973$

$LangScore = \frac{23k}{75k} \times 2 = 0.61$

$ProjectScore = 1.7973^2 \times 0.61 ≈ 1.97 $

A homomorphic cryptography library in Haskell (Cat = Library)

$NicheScore = \frac{(75k-2.6k)}{75k} \times 2= 1.930\overline{6}$

$LangScore = \frac{23k}{75k} \times 2 = 0.61$

$ProjectScore = 1.9306^2 \times 0.61 ≈ 2.2736 $

Creating a terminal RSVP speed reader (Cat=End-User)

Picking this as an example, because the $NicheScore$ is affected by me ( ☆ ͜ʖ ☆) $NicheScore = \frac{(75k-0.125k)}{75k} \times 2= 1.9967$

$Project Score = 1.9967^3 = 7.9604$

Cons of Heuristic

Biased towards making more niche things, so does not account for the ceiling created by the niche itself.

Pros of Bad Heuristic

Keeps you away from ordinary projects.

A visual representation of the heuristic.

Red axis is LangScore, green axis is NicheScore. Blue is the project score.

drawing

You can see my niche bias here.

Bad heuristics forever

Bad heuristics are great, they give you a direction, make you question that direction, and best of all, keep changing taking into account newer circumstances. This heuristic is only the first iteration. Being reliant on bad heuristics is itself a bad heurisitic that may one day change for me 6.

Footnotes

Letter Six

2021-02-06

A case for homeopathy, and the pain of tinnitus. I am not as obtuse as the title suggests.

A case for good homoeopaths.

Let’s preface this piece with a huge warning label, this is not medical advice. If you die, it’s on you.

Most of my life, I have been an active hater of homoeopathy. Whenever I saw someone having homoeopathic medicine, I scoffed at them, judging them for their ignorance of the sciences. In hindsight, it was a very mean spirited approach to educating them. Derision has never bought two peoples together. (That is a rant for another day). Over the past few weeks, my opinion has been changing. I hate that we have so many homoeopaths selling way too much homoeopathic medicine. The best way to alleviate their medical hazard and quackery is, in my opinion, to increase the quality of homoeopaths.

To understand why I came to this conclusion, you must know where I come from. For the past many weeks, I have been mulling over the idea of iatrogenics, a term which I learnt in Antifragile. What is iatrogenics? Here is the dictionary definition:

iatrogenic /aɪˌæt.rəˈdʒen.ɪk/: (of a disease or problem) caused by medical treatment or by a doctor

Almost all systems in India is highly unregulated (even the ones that are regulated, are poorly so). It would be fair to say, the average complex system in India is highly prone to corruption, inefficiency, and optimising for the wrong metrics 1. Medicine, in my opinion, is no exception to this. In developing countries, for every 100 patients admitted to the hospital, 7-10 get Hospital Acquired Infections (HAIs) 3. Even if I put aside the incompetencies of our medical system and poor optimisations, we are a nation that doesn’t respect regulation. Pretty much any medicine (I assume illegitimately) is an over the counter (OTC) medicine in India. We are a nation of self medicators 4. Now, here is the problem with most OTC medicine, it’s a short term solution, to a problem that we mostly don’t have. Here is what I mean by it - the human body is a beautifully complex system that has evolved over millions of years to deal with most common illnesses. A cold rarely kills people. Swellings have not done many harm. Here, I have become a believer of applying the barbell strategy, minimise the risks by clipping my downsides.

Medication is, in my opinion 2, only worth taking in case of a real possibility of long term harm to your body. Whenever we have a cold or fever, most of us pop a pill to make us feel better in the short term. We rarely wonder why the body has reacted the way it has to the viruses. In a sense, we are disrespecting evolution 5 by taking it for a fool.

A lot of OTC meds are no different than fishing for likes on Instagram, or eating a whole tub of Häagen-Dazs. It’s all about the short term gains 7. Let’s have a look at the upsides and downsides of OTC cold meds:

  1. Upside: I feel good, the headache is finally down. My body is feeling good.
  2. Downside: The meds can mess with me, and cause much worse bodily harm to me 6

What if you don’t take that OTC?

  1. Upside: You can definitely not get side effects. You will be safe, and maybe your immunity would improve.
  2. Downside: You will have to suffer through the cold, and soreness.

Now, in the second case, what you have done, is capped your downside. In the first case, you have capped nothing. Would you want to introduce unnecessary risk for immediate gratification? Hopefully. Another classic example of unnecessary intervention is icing an injury to reduce your swelling. Why do you want to reduce your swelling? It helps your body heal, and unless you have chronic swelling, you’d be stupid to get in the way of the body. 8

This poorly regulated, and downright stupid habit of people (my mother has this habit) of popping a med at the sight of the most non-harmful ailment (think mild fever, cold, sore throat, stomach upsets, etc.) is effectively exposing yourself to Black Swans 9. This brings me back to homoeopathy 10 - the cure against iatrogenics in our flawed society.

First, let’s see what is the basis of homoeopathy -

Homeopathy involves a process known by practitioners as “dynamisation” or “potentisation” whereby a substance is diluted with alcohol or distilled water and then vigorously shaken in a process called “succession”.

The results of this are Homoeopathic medicines that amount to nothing more than solutions containing one or two stray molecules of the active ingredients. A good homoeopath would prescribe good homoeopathic meds. And this would amount to nothing more than drinking inert substances like distilled water. In effect, what you are doing is not getting in the way of the body’s healing process; this is the same as not having the OTC drug. This way, you are resilient to black swans. Let’s look at the most popular Homeopathic cold medicine, Arsenicum Album -

For homoeopathic use, Arsenicum album is prepared by separating arsenic from iron (as in arsenopyrite), cobalt, or nickel by baking at high temperatures. The powder is then ground and diluted with lactose. In the final dilution, statistically, most pills will contain zero molecules of the original arsenic used; some might contain a single molecule.

Following good homoeopathic practices would make you resilient to common illnesses.

Why suggest homoeopathic remedies as opposed to promoting doing nothing? We love doing something to fix our issues to get immediate gratification. Anything. On top of that, Indians are not exactly the most science believing people when it comes to alternative medical systems. We will trust homoeopathy 11. Let’s not allow kids to play with fire. Let’s promote good quality homoeopathy to our imperfect society. It’s easier to convince people to agree with their belief than to change them altogether.

The ethics of this, you may think, are questionable. I defend this approach claiming that homeopathy in its harmful form will die over time. At worst, it would remain an opaque heuristic 12.

In any case, your takeaway from this should be as follows: Homoeopathy is bad. Treating yourself for mild illneses with real meds is bad, as it exposes you to uncapped risks, with capped benefits. If you can get someone to not take meds for such things, that’s ideal. That’s peaceful. Thats where you want to be. If that’s not an option, homoeopathy is your next best bet. Real homoeopathy is nothing. Water. Nothing. It has no effect on you. Its like no meds + lack of education. Its a tradeoff between the two evils, misinformation and harmful intervention. I think in this circumstance, harmful intervention is the greater evil. The literature on harmful intervention by real medicine is vast. Your way to health and recuperation, while using real science, is by capping your downsides. Don’t expose yourself to Black Swans. Its not worth it.

Coming to terms with my tinnitus. Or not.

If you are an ardent follower of “The Letter”, then you would know that early last year I had begun practising meditation. It was during this time, I started noticing the high-frequency tone ringing relentlessly in my ear. My first reaction was that of panic, concluding that I have been struck with the dreaded tinnitus 13. Me, being the connoisseur of rational thinking I am, decided to stop my panicked frenzy, and do some research before jumping to conclusions. On cursory readings of resources on the web 14, I decided that I may only have temporary ringing of the ears caused by a cold, or some loud music. To be on the safe side, I stopped listening to music while coding and greatly cut down on my earphone usage.

Fast forward to last month, I could hear the ringing clearer than ever. It followed me around the house. It was especially loud in my study room - the room where I meditated and worked. It bothered me a lot when I thought about it. Whenever I didn’t think about it though, it managed to disappear into the background noise. It was still bothersome while reading, or meditating. I was not too happy that I did this to my ears. It was at this juncture, I decided to read Volume Control, a book about hearing, the ears and the science of hearing loss. I wanted to better take care of my ears. I learnt about how we abuse our ears in modern society, and how we may be on the verge of a tinnitus epidemic. I also read about how tinnitus can grow into something worse, partial hearing loss, unbearable pain, the like. The worst part about it, there is no cure. In fact, we have no idea why it happens. A Harvard doctor once recommended wearing very small shoes as a cure for sharp tinnitus. It would take your mind away from the high pitch screech, and direct it to the pain in your feet 15. I was freaked

The ears are very delicate organs. We hear due to tiny “hair” that sense vibrations and convert them into electrical signals that our brain perceives as sounds. We don’t have too many of these hair cells - about 15000 of them. In comparison, we have 50-100 million rods and cones, cells that help us perceive light. Even when it comes to the number of nerve cells, our ears have been dealt the short end of the stick - they have about 30,000 nerve cells in the cochlear nerve as opposed to millions in our retina. So, it’s easy to understand why most of us get poorer at listening as we age. Its easier to go deaf, we got lesser redundancy there.

I was deeply saddened by the state of affairs in my inner ears. The ringing indicated that I had failed my cochlea. I decided that from that point on I will take great care of my ears, and prevent further damage. I talked to my brother about my tinnitus situation. He told me, he also has been having the issue of late. That prompted me to investigate why the tinnitus was so loud in my guest bedroom (I previously thought it was because that’s when I was in the most amount of silence, making me notice it the most.). Turns out the stupid inverter connected to the router had been making the high-frequency sound that I perceived as my loud tinnitus. I felt relieved that I hadn’t massacred my inner ear. This joy was short-lived though because on doing more thorough testing, it did turn out that I have mild tinnitus. This was, fortunately, something I had hardened myself to deal with over the many months of accepting I have a bad case of tinnitus.

This whole episode has changed my view towards my ears. Things are not as bad as I first thought, but they are still not ideal. I hadn’t been respecting my ears, and early signs of hearing damage is showing in the form of mild tinnitus. I will definitely take these organs way more seriously from now. Kids, take care of your ears. You will love yourself for it.

Footnotes:

Volume Control.

2021-02-03

A guide to the science of hearing (with lesser science than I’d like)

Cover

More pop, less science.

Volume control is a book about hearing, deafness, and effects of the noisy world on our ear. Very early on, it’s revealed that this book initially started as a New Yorker article, and it shows. Let’s just say, the science in this book wasn’t particularly hardcore. It’s one of those pop-sci books that you can instantly tell is written by a journalist. Its got an easy, conversational tone throughout, with lots of anecdotes, with author David Owen interviewing and delving into the lives of those of afflicted with hearing problems.

The book covers a broad spectrum of hearing-related topics. These included how hearing works, the history of ear research, deafness and its causes, noise and its effects, tinnitus, hearing aids, the stigma surrounds deafness and many more. At the beginning of the book, David attempts describing the functionality of the ear, and how we can hear. It’s a good attempt, but a few diagrams could have made the experience much more pleasant, and the presentation much more lucid. I was kind of amazed at the lack of any diagrams throughout the book; their addition would have been very very useful since some of the descriptions, though written beautifully, don’t give the nice visual that a diagram would have.

As the book progresses, the science gets progressively scant, with the book becoming more about the lives of people with hearing issues than the scientific reasoning behind issues. There is fun trivia dispensed along with cute anecdotes, which made me feel like I was reading a neat article in a Sunday magazine, as opposed to a science book.

The chapters that I was most interested in, Tinnitus and ear care didn’t disappoint though. They delved into the history and the curiosity that is tinnitus. It was informative, and fun to read.

Deafness, begone.

While I was disappointed by how shallow the book felt from a scientific point of view, one can’t deny David’s knack for storytelling. The prose is breezy, the characters in the stories are endearing and the idiosyncrasies of the small town, the people and their histories jump off the pages. David Owen is a great non-fiction writer, and his writing and storytelling are the real stars of the book.

For that, I give this a light 6/10.

Letter Five

2021-01-31

Opaque Heuristics, Generative Art and going Interplanetary on Web3. Also, My grandparents would be proud of me.

Fasting as an opaque heuristic.

I recently finished reading Antifragile by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. It truly feels like a life-changing book. For those who want to know my thoughts on it, and my (very) detailed takeaways check out Antifragile

Its really easy to read books that give you great advice, and present to you a new way of looking at a problem. What is hard, is applying this to your life in a meaningful way. Now that I know that antifragility is the ideal that I am striving for, I have to identify the things that I want to change in my life - have to make small 1% changes 1. A simple change that I am first trying is the introduction of stressors in my diet. I am, in this case, relying on the opaque heuristic 3 of the Hindu fasting calendar. I have decided to give a sincere attempt at fasting on every Chaturti 4 and Ekadashi 2. These are traditionally considered auspicious days in Hinduism, and many devotees have been observing forms of fasting on these days for thousands of years. The days depend on the various phases of the moon since the Hindu calendar is a lunar calendar.

I have marked out my schedule for this month 5:

calendar

While I don’t care much for the underlying vedic reasoning for the fasting (venerating a god, accumulating virtue, etc.), I do think that the stressor of introducing variation in my caloric intake would do my body good. The basis for this idea has already caught steam in the form of intermittent fasting 7, so may as well try it out in a form that has survived thousands of years of practice. The absence of evidence of harm is not the evidence of absence of harm. But if a practice has survived that long, without major side effects, I can rest a bit more assured that it won’t do me much harm. I have clipped the downsides and kept the possible upsides. As Fat Tony from Antifragile would say, “I am playing a non-suckers game”

You are my host now.

Google’s authentication servers went down last month. Millions were affected; I couldn’t log into Gmail, Google Drive, and even Google Docs. A few weeks ago Slack servers went down, again affecting thousands of businesses. Today, most of our data is stored in centralised data stores, owned by the top 4-5 corporate giants. Its too much power and responsibility for them. Even what you are reading now, is being served to you from a Microsoft server somewhere (the non-ipfs version of this blog is hosted on GitHub sites.) Just think about this whole setup - its just too fragile

Being a huge supporter of Web3, or the decentralised web, I decided to put my money where my mouth is. I am now hosting my website on IPFS, or the InterPlanetary File System. It’s a decentralised peer to peer file storage and distribution network, which has combined the best of the past technologies into one neat stack. For more on IPFS, the website has excellent resources on how to get started.

If you go visit ipfs.advait.live, you will be served this blog by nodes in the decentralised web. It may be quite slow for now, since adoption is not very widespread, resulting in very slow serving of pieces of content that aren’t particularly popular (like this); but its a resilient and antifragile piece of technology that is rapidly gaining popularity. If you are using Brave, which is a browser that natively supports IPFS, and are running a local node, you will be served the website straight off of your node. You would be contributing to the decentralised web. Currently, I am serving the website off a proxy, or a gateway. This basically acts as an interface between the IPFS world of peers and nodes, and our good old centralised internet. It’s not ideal, since the gateway becomes the bottleneck in this case, but till adoption is widespread, it’s a compromise that has to be made.

DApps, and the decentralised web is the future. There is lots more I can write about the advantages, nuances, and shortcomings of IPFS, but I think the best way to learn about them would be to try it out yourself. Let’s make the internet Antifragile.

Generative art, and processing.

For the longest time, my website has been very functional in design 6. I wanted a bit more oomph, but not too much. Inspired by my brothers (temporarily defunct) blog, I decided to incorporate some generative art into my website. For this, I used Processing, particularly the js library, p5 js.

P5 Js is a neat little library that allows you to create visual media. Its popularly used for creating generative art. If you are interested in giving it a go, I recommend Daniel Shiffman’s playlist here.

I, being unimaginative and lazy, adapted the beautiful work by Kjetil Midtgarden Golid to subtly spice up my website. I have modified his map trace art to create cartographic patterns that grow over time on the sides of my website. If you stare at the website for a minute or so, you would see beautiful patterns forming along the edges of the blog post. So far, I am loving it. 8

My website and its code is available publicly over at my Github.

Footnotes

Antifragile.

2021-01-30

Taleb is crass, pretentious, and cantankerously contrarian. But you can’t deny he has a point.

cover

Don’t be a Fragillista

This book is, in a sense, the culmination of the all the prior works of the famed iconoclast and self-proclaimed flaneur, Nassim Nicholas Taleb. This is book number four in the Incerto series, a group of philosophical essays on uncertainty. This book ties together and generalises the work presented in Fooled by Randomness, The Black Swan, and the offshoot compilation of aphorisms, The Bed of Procrustes. Taleb himself recommends beginning the Incerto series from this book, and further reading the other books in the series for more depth and insights on the things covered here.

The premise of this book is simple - using the “The Triad” of Fragility, Robustness and Antifragility as a means of classifying complex systems, as opposed to predictive modelling and statistics.

What follows is a sprawling, passionate and sometimes unfocused application of this philosophy to pretty much everything. The book is broken down into 7 sub-books, each covering a different aspect of his philosophy on probability and its applications. Here, I am going to briefly go over the contents, but trying to summarize this work would not only be a fruitless exercise, but also a disservice to the actual book.

Book I - The Antifragile: An Introduction

This goes over the concepts of the Triad. What is the opposite of Fragile? Taleb floats the idea that English doesn’t have a word for it. Robust comes to mind, but it’s not really the opposite. Fragile things break under pressure. Robust things remain the same under pressure. Antifragile things are those that grow under pressure. Taleb introduces these ideas by the myths of Damocles, the Phoenix, and the Hydra.

  • Damocles is a character who appears in a (likely apocryphal) anecdote commonly referred to as “the Sword of Damocles”, an allusion to the imminent and ever-present peril faced by those in positions of power.

  • The Phoenix is a mythical birdie, which can never die. If you burn it, it will rise again from its ashes. Its a symbol of robustness.

  • Hydra, the mythical beast. If you cut its head, two more will grow in sites place. Hydra is antifragile.

We should all strive to be antifragile, ie., position ourselves to leverage positive black swans - positive asymmetries. He presents the idea that most major systems like the banking system, or giant corporates - all are extremely fragile; they expose themselves to negative black swans or negative asymmetries. Robust systems are equally exposed to asymmetry and are protected from variation.

He also extols the virtues of entrepreneurs, which obviously appealed to my sensibilities.

Book II - Modernity and the Denial of Antifragility

Here introduced, is the idea of the Procrustean Bed; overly stabilising systems by enforcing uniformity. Procrustes was a Greek mythic character who used to terrorise people by forcing them onto an iron bed. This involved stretching out shorter people and dismembering the taller folk - all to fit Procrustes’ bed. The guy was obviously a psycho, but this serves as a metaphor for this sub-book. Taleb’s thesis is that complex systems inherently love randomness. He espouses a bottom-up approach to complex systems, as opposed to a top-down enforced way of management. Here he presents the example of Switzerland, which has a very decentralised form of government based on smaller units called cantonments.

Along with this, he introduces the idea of iatrogenics (harm done due to the healer), and naive interventionism (interventionism while disregarding iatrogenics).

Taleb finally ends the book talking about how our obsession with prediction is a modern disease.

Book III - Nonpredictive view of the world

Here, Taleb introduces the world of Fragillistas - someone who causes fragility because they think they understand what is going on. Along with this, he introduces the ideas of the the fundamental asymmetry. Taleb uses the tale of Seneca the Younger, famous stoic and roman statesman, to elaborate on how to be antifragile by pushing asymmetry to be more favourable to you. Stoicism was traditionally about emotional robustness, not exactly antifragility. Seneca applied the principle of stoicism, but kept the upsides, thereby leveraging positive asymmetry, and becoming antifragile. Antifragility occurs to a source of volatility when the potential gains exceed the losses. This would mean that stressors lead to your advantage.

To convert your position to that of antifragility, he recommends the “Barbell strategy” . Wikipedia defines it as follows - “a barbell strategy is formed when a trader invests in long- and short-duration bonds, but does not invest in intermediate-duration bonds.” Taleb advocates this strategy in all of life. The basic idea is that you should never be in the middle. He illustrates this using many examples. The simplest one (To Taleb’s disgust) is the financial example - take say 90% of your investment and put it into very safe, inflation-proof assets (robust assets) and the other 10% should be dropped into maximally risky securities. What this does is exposes only 10% of your value to a miscalculation of risks (Black Swans). You are, for the most part, only exposed to the upsides, a positive asymmetry. This barbell technique remedies the problem that risks of rare events are incomputable and fragile to estimation error; here the financial barbell has a maximum known loss. This is quite the opposite of the golden mean strategy that advocates being in the middle, instead of extremes.

“For antifragility is the combination aggressiveness plus paranoia — clip your downside, protect yourself from extreme harm, and let the upside, the positive Black Swans, take care of itself. We saw Seneca’s asymmetry: more upside than downside can come simply from the reduction of extreme downside (emotional harm) rather than improving things in the middle. A barbell can be any dual strategy composed of extremes, without the corruption of the middle — somehow they all result in favorable asymmetries.”

Taleb applies this to not only finance but day to day life. He asks to practice being 90% accountant, and 10% rockstar.

Book IV - Optionality, Technology and the Intelligence of Antifragility

Here, the idea of optionality is introduced. The idea is simple - one must have options. Never be locked into something; the more the options, the easier you can avoid negative black swans. He also proposes the notion of optionality as a substitute for intelligence. Optionality can be coupled with randomness, and some selection filter to produce intelligence. He gives the example of the work by François Jacob on optionality in nature; the body spontaneously aborts half of all embryos - its easier to leverage options than to create the perfect baby blueprint.

[ Option = asymmetry + rationality ]

The fragile has no options. Tinkering in a rational manner under the right conditions can outperform knowledge by exposing oneself to positive asymmetries.

In this sub-book, Taleb also makes his contempt for academia very clear. He hates them. He blames the for inverting the arrow of knowledge to read “academia -> practice”, and thinks that they make it look like we owe more to knowledge than practice. He calls this an epiphenomena - “a secondary mental phenomenon that is caused by and accompanies a physical phenomenon but has no causal influence itself”. He claims that the academics have fooled us into thinking they are the reason for humanity’s progress. There is of course more nuance to this argument, but the general gist is the academics are the fools, and the doers are the heroes.

Here, the very important idea of “The Green Lumber Fallacy” is presented - “mistaking the source of important or even necessary knowledge, for another less visible from the outside, less tractable one… how many things we call ‘relevant knowledge’ aren’t so much so”. Another, more mathematical way of looking at is confusing a function $f(x)$ for another function $g(x)$, a one that has a different non-linearity. This conflation is the root of many problems. As Fat Tony (a character representing anitfragility) would say, “They are not the same ting”

Another important point that is present here is the idea that things that are unintelligible are not necessarily unintelligent. He says that in real life, knowledge is no match for exposure; the decision effects supersede the logic. Taleb says the study of the payoff has been largely missed by intellectual history. Socrates, as Fat Tony would put it, was playing a sucker game.

Philosophers talk about truth and falsehood. People in life talk about payoff, exposure, and consequences (risks and rewards), hence fragility and antifragility. And sometimes philosophers and thinkers and those who study conflate Truth with risks and rewards.

Never play the sucker’s game, be a non-sucker.

Book V - The Nonlinear and the Nonlinear

Here, Taleb presents a mathematical basis for Antifragility. Here, there are a few things that are introduced, non-linear functions ($f(x)$ changes in a manner not proportional to x). Taleb’s talks about how the failure of most economic models are linked to the effects of the convexity effects (second-order effects).

Fragility is linked to concavity (negative convexity) which equals dislike of randomness. Taleb posits that having a larger corporation only exacerbates the effects of a negative black swan. The Agency problem - the divergence between the agent and her client - aggravates the non-linearities (convexities and asymmetries). Doubt is cast on the effectiveness of these giant corporate mergers.

The final important concept here is the Jensen’s Inequality - the basis of Antifragility and its effects. It is generally stated in the following form:

if I have a convex function $f(x)$ and there is a spread of possible x’s, then [ avg(f(x)) >= f(avg(x)) ]

The difference between the two is what’s called the Jensen Gap, this is what gives us the edge in positive convexity offered by antifragility. The convexity bias allows us to be wrong more often in a random setting. Someone with a linear payoff would have to be right way more often to get the same payoff as compared to having convexity bias on your side. On the other hand, the mirror of this is fragility, caused by negative convex bias (or concavity bias).

Book VI - Via Negative

Via Negative, in theology is defining something indirectly by figuring out what it’s not. Taleb uses this methodology in lots of fields, and further illustrate the pitfalls of modern iatorgenics (harm due to intervention).

Taleb is against neomania - the love of modernity, for the sake of it. This, he claims is a fragilistic view. A better way to see the future is by employing the lindy effect. It states that “A technology, or anything nonperishable, increases in life expectancy with every day of its life.” Taleb goes onto use many examples, from architecture to cooking, to illustrate his point.

Another major focus of this sub-book is effects of convexity and opaque heuristics in medicine. It’s unfair to say he hates medicine, but he really disliked most of medicine (He clarifies that he hates alternative medicine even more). He argues that most of our medical intervention is unnecessary, and is built on a foundation of addition of things. More drugs, more surgeries, more everything. He defines a couple of principles for medical iatrogenics:

  • The first principle of iatrogenics is that we do not need evidence of harm to claim that a drug, or an unnatural via positiva procedure is dangerous.
  • The second principle is that we should not take risks with near-healthy people; but we should take a lot more risk with those deemed in danger. This is an application of the barbell strategy to hedge the convexity effects.

Taleb takes many examples from medicine to drive his point home, and how jensen’s inequality also applies to medicine.

Taleb is in love with the ancients, and here too, he extols the virtues of ancient traditions and ways of life, or opaque heuristics - heuristics performed by society for a long time, for reasons not fully understood, yet they have stuck. He talks about the convexity effects of varied nutrition, along with the advantage of fasting being an opaque heuristic passed on from thousands of years. There is much more discussion about medicine and health, and how it benefits from stressors, much like hormesis (“Hormesis is defined by toxicologists to describe a biphasic dose response to an environmental agent with a low-dose stimulation showing beneficial effects and a high-dose stimulation showing inhibitory or toxic effects.”)

Book VII - The Ethics of Fragility and Antifragility.

The final sub-book covers the concept of having skin in the game and all the ethical ramifications of antifragility. Taleb considers having skin in the game to be extremely important as those who don’t have any skin the game (nothing to lose) attain optionality and antifragility at the expense of others. This transfer of symmetry is unethical in Taleb’s view (and I can’t really disagree.) A major problem that leads to unethical optionality is the Agency problem as described earlier - it absolves one from having skin in the game.

There are some more thoughts on the ethics of various professions and how they can exercise optionality at the cost of others. An example of this is an academic, who can keep churning out papers until they have arrived at the desired results. Taleb also says that big data is heightening the issue of bad research due to spurious correlations leading to increased cherry-picking. The main point Taleb is putting forth is that Science must not be a competition, and knowledge should not too have an Agency problem.

Take the ten with a grain of salt - my real review

So, this is the first 10 I have ever given out. I was wavering between a 9 and 10 for this one but finally settled on a 10. This book was a joy to read, even though I didn’t feel fully convinced by some of his arguments, one can’t deny that Taleb is a smart man who definitely has a point to make.

The reason I gave this a 10 was that its definitely changed the way I look at things. It made me think, and it will continue to make me think. I am going to change my lifestyle, and strive to be more antifragile. While, I am definitely going to verify Mr Taleb’s medical advice, its something that has opened up my mind to the other side - iatrogenics and jensen’s inequality in medicine. It makes sense, but I am still going to verify.

This is a book I am definitely going to reread, the first that I think I would. Its dense, and enjoyable. The 300th page is as entertaining and insightful (if not more) as the 100th.

Nobody loves Taleb like Taleb loves Taleb.

The books writing style is a dichotomy between the thoughts of an erudite man and the tweets of a salty internet dweller. Taleb hates economists. He names and shames so many people. Fragillista Friedman, Uberfragilitsa Greenspan, unethical Alan Blinder - the list goes on and on. While he comes off as salty, reading his tirades against the “Harvard-Soviet” folk, and the world of fragilistas is very entertaining. I actually laughed out loud on multiple occasions while reading this book. I can see how this can get a bit much for some, but drama spices up everything.

Taleb being so pompous in a sense adds to the character of the book. There is not an ounce of humility, unlike in his friend Kahneman’s magnum opus, “Thinking, Fast and Slow”. He is definitely one of the most interesting thinkers I have read. He has a way with words and can repackage, distil and build upon great ideas of past mathematicians and philosophers while presenting it in a wildly entertaining package. For challenging my mindset, and entertaining me so much in the process, this book deserves a 10.

Letter Four

2021-01-24

Taleb, Failure, and the Notion Aesthetic 🤢

Failing successfully

For the last quarter of 2020, I read a book a week. I was diligent and finished a book no matter what. This is the first week that I failed to finish a book, but this is a step in the right direction.

The metric of reading a book a week was a great motivator for me to become a regular reader, but over time I realised that it affected my reading choices and habits. I started tailoring my books to those I could fit under a week. I started skipping out on books that were too long for me. I mostly ended up reading books that fell firmly within the 300-400 page, or the 100,000 to 120,000 word range.

When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.

At the beginning of this year, I resolved to not care about such arbitrary targets in the hope that it would free me from this stupid burden. I feel like my habit has been bootstrapped and I have become a reader. I love reading - in earnestness. This week is the first week where I didn’t finish a book - and I don’t feel bad about it at all. I have failed successfully.

Taleb, that pompous ass.

As a part of my failing successfully™ goal, I picked up Antifragile. I had been putting off this book for a while because the 180,000-word tome would break my streak of weeks. I regret not picking this book earlier; Taleb is a genius - a salty, caustic genius. The book is broken into 7 “books”. I have finished about 4 books so far, and I love the way he thinks.He has an excellent way of presenting the ideas of randomness, forecasting, and planning in an extremely entertaining, albeit vulgar way.

He has created what he calls The Triad - Fragile, Robust and Antifragile. The Triad is a way of classification of complex systems, such as countries, industries or businesses. The core thesis of Taleb is that we must all strive for antifragility, and avoid being what he calls “fragillistas”. Using this system, he (very aggressively) attacks everything wrong with our current mindset and environment, and how we can correct it.

Taleb is clearly a man of erudition, bringing together concepts from philosophy, maths and the sciences to back all his claims. It’s a joy to read. All you have to do is get past that pompous ass Taleb.

The notion aesthetic 🤢 🤮

NOTE: I am no internet historian, and this is a phrase coined by me.

The notion aesthetic is a broad visual style developed across the internet during the late 2010s across blogs, internal wikis, and productivity crazed internet consumables. This visual style was pioneered by the popular note-taking app Notion, and was soon introduced into the mainstream by its many loyal users (mostly productivity hogs).

example

The (ab)use of emojis

The most iconic, and recognisable feature of this visual style is its nauseating use of emojis. This is the aesthetic used throughout the Notion marketing materials and documentation.

2021_01_24_image.png

Over the many years since Notion launched, it has transformed into a powerhouse for not only simple note-taking, but also more complex commercial use cases like internal wikis, agile workflows and product management. Notion has incorporated their aesthetic even into its commercial features, still maintaining the offensive onslaught of unnecessary emojis.

My hate for this aesthetic does not stem only from the egregious use of emojis, but also my theory on why this has caught on so much. I think the aesthetic has been appropriated by the larger organisations to defang the corporate nastiness and make their landscape look baby-proofed, and appealing to its workers. Its everyone fooling themselves.

It just looks bad

This is probably my least rational reason to hate on this aesthetic. It feels uninspired and unimpressive. It feels like a fad that has somehow lived past its date of expiry. It feels like that one pop song that you thought you have heard before but just released a day ago. It feels like the 7th film of a horror movie franchise. It feels like these “It feels like” comparisons - amusing at first, but seeing it over and over leaves you 😰

Letter Three

2021-01-17

Five hundred minutes, and rabid development. January effect in full swing.

Five hundred minutes.

At the beginning of this year, I hit 500 minutes of meditation. I only discovered this last week, when I found the statistics tab on my meditation app. Knowing this vanity number really didn’t make a difference to me or my practice in any way, but it did feel like it marked a good time to look back at how far I have come.

I started meditating around the time I restarted writing here, on my online journal. At that point, I was a little stressed because of work, and generally did not have much clarity of thought. I had just finished reading [[Deep Work]], and the idea of single minded focus with minimal context switches appealed to me. Seeing The Social Dilemma cemented the idea that I need to be in control of my monkey mind, or I don’t stand a chance of winning the war for my attention.

“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” - Blaise Pascal

While the quote above is definitely hyperbole, I agree with Mr Pascal in spirit. The twitching of our thumbs in a rabid rage to the next app, the next story and the next “news” article is paving the way to our downfall. And all of this is because of our inability to be at peace, and have control over our mind - the only thing we can control. Due to my VC-chic indoctrination, I knew it was time I adopt mindfulness in my lifestyle.

Initial Attempts

I first tried meditation by cold turkeying it. Just jumping into the deep end, and trying to think of nothing. That failed, not very surprising. I dropped the pride, and found myself a crutch in the form of playlists on spotify. They were not that great either; they felt unstructured and incomplete. Around this time, Calm and Headspace were making news due to unicorn valuations, and massive funding rounds. This prompted me to consider meditating apps to assist me. I wanted an app that was not a content farm, something that felt less commercial. This is how I stumbled onto Waking Up.

Waking Up

I downloaded and signed up on waking up, mid last quarter. I started with the 28 day introductory course. It was an excellent blend of theory, and practice. The primary focus was Vipasana, a popular form of meditation that involves noticing all sensory inputs and acknowledging their existence. By the end of a month, I started enjoying the sessions and started developing the habit. I credit this app to my meditation habit.

So, what has changed after? The unsatisfactory answer is that its hard to tell. I have not felt negatively overwhelmed by emotion or stress ever since my I started my practice, but correlation is not causation. I can tell you what has definitely changed - I have better control over my mind, or at least better than before. I have incorporated the practice into my day to day. The goal is not to reach a meditative state or reach enlightenment, but rather to train my mind to have the ability to focus, and de-focus at my wish. This will be a continuous process, with no destination. There are definite benefits, and I feel them - but don’t look for a life changing experience. Before you know it, your life will be better. Mine is.

Rabid Personal Development.

Maybe its the January effect, but I have been on a self development spree. I read only three books this year, and all with the same common theme, improving myself

All target a slightly different part of what I want myself to be better in. Rather than regurgitating what’s in my reviews, I would urge you to click the links to see my notes and reviews of the book.

Now though, theory time is over - its up to me to actualize my learning into something tangible.

Peak.

2021-01-16

I too was hoodwinked by the 10,000 hour rule.

Cover

Don’t achieve your potential, develop it.

This is a book by Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool, based on years of research on expertise by Anders. Let’s just start off by saying that whole 10,000 hour rule made popular by Malcolm Gladwell in Outliers is incorrect. While it is incorrect, its not entirely accurate. This books dwells into the nuances beyond the 10,000 hour rule for reaching the level of an expert.

The core of this book lies in the concept of “deliberate practice”, which is considered the gold standard for effective training and mastery. He compares deliberate practice, with what he calls “purposeful practice”, which is slightly less effective, but still a good way to obtain mastery in a skill. There is also the third category, the naive way, where you keep repeating an activity for hours on end like a tool - suffice to say this method is least recommended.

Purposeful Practice

Here are some features of this kind of practice:

  • Purposeful practice is that it has well-defined, specified goals.
  • It is a focused practice. You can’t be distracted, are have other things in your mind while doing purposeful practice. Think of this like solving a maths puzzle, your mind is engaged towards finding a solution the whole while.
  • Requires getting out of one’s comfort zone. There has to be a gradual increase in the difficulty of whatever skill you are trying to obtain. The author takes the analogy of homeostasis, the tendency of our body to be internally stable. We only build muscle, or improve our stamina by constantly disrupting our state of homeostasis. The disruption causes our body to develop in a way to overcome the disruption. This applies too all forms a practice. If you never push yourself beyond your comfort zone, you will never improve.
  • It involves feedback. The constant feedback is what results in a constant improvement. Solving puzzles, without knowing whether you are wrong or right will scarcely result in better skills.

Deliberate Practice

The whole goal of deliberate practice is the creation of “mental representations”. If I ate a roadside pani puri for everytime I read this phrase, I would be on my commode cursing my bowels. This really is the core thesis of the book - everyone must strive to create efficient mental representations for a particular skill.

What are mental representations exactly? An example of this would be the use of mnemonics but world memory champions. Or how chess grandmasters can think 10 steps ahead of an amateur.

Deliberate practice tries to optimise the creation of these mental models. The core difference between purposeful practice, and deliberate practice is to take on shortcut on learning this mental representation by taking the help of a coach, or a an expert teacher who already have these mental models. This leverage can result in much faster learning as compared to purposeful learning. There are other ways that we can improve mental models without coaches too, like what Benjamin Franklin did to improve his writing; he referred to a write he respected, and created a framework to imitate his style without actually seeing it. Over time, he got much better. To effectively practice a skill without a teacher, it helps to keep in mind three Fs: Focus. Feedback. Fix it.

There are lots of great examples of using deliberate practice in our lives to get better, and how it has worked for the experts in a field. The general principals are rooted in finding the most efficient ways to develop a good mental representation.

Talent is a lie.

Another major focus of this book is how talent is a lie. Having talent is a false concept that has no bearing to success. He takes many examples of alleged prodigies like Mozart and breaking down why they were really not prodigies with natural talent.

“Learning isn’t a way of reaching one’s potential but rather a way of developing it.”

Taking examples of many experts, he shows how IQ is not related to success in say being a chess grandmaster, or a go champion. Most Nobel laureates would have been rejected by Mensa for not meeting the IQ requirement.

Being good at something is hard work. Its rarely fun. No expert really enjoyed the hours of practice they put in.

At the end, attaining mastery is about putting a the right kind of effort, in a planned manner. One must be engaged, never give up when you regress or plateau, and most of all, maintain motivation.

Verdict

This book was very insightful, and I do plan on using many of the tips in the book in my life. The one thing I disliked about the book was that it was a bit bloated, there were too many examples, and at some points it felt the the message was being repeated a bit too much. Despite all this, the core message of the book is strong enough to merit a recommendation. I give this a light 8/10.

On Writing Well.

2021-01-12

I am nervous writing this review.

cover

The ultimate non-fiction writer’s guide.

If you think that the way I write this review will be a reflection on how good this book is, you’d be wrong. Writing is hard work, and I don’t intend on putting that kind of effort into this piece.

The core idea of the book is to strip writing down to its core. Its a fairly simple idea, but there is a lot of nuance to this. Zinsser spends most of the book breaking down the various styles of writing with lots of examples. The one thing I disliked about the book was that the majority of examples in this book are America centric, which made it harder for me to appreciate certain parts.

I am not going to attempt summarizing this book, since a lot of the books concepts can effectively only be taught in examples. Rather, I would go over the parts of the book that I enjoyed the most.

The hard thing about writing.

Writing is hard, and Zinsser illustrates the struggles of a writer succinctly, bringing to attention the many moving parts in a piece - the audience, styles, themes and motivations.

Writing is a deeply personal thing, and this book makes a great case for why the best writing comes out when the writer is writing in earnestness. This earnestness shows even in the way this book is written.

Zinsser even goes over the various forms of non-fiction writing. He goes over The Interview, The Travel Article, The Memoir, Science and Technology writing, sports writing, Criticism, Humour and writing in your job. There is something for everyone here. I especially loved the chapters on Science and Technology, and Memoir writing.

In the last part of the book, he goes over aspects of writing that are more personal to the writer. This includes the motivations, the decisions and the vulnerabilities of the writer.

This book is truly comprehensive when it comes to non fiction writing. I can see why its subtitled as the “Classic Guide to Non-fiction”

Everyone should write.

This book makes a case for why everyone should be a writer. It shows you the general principals of writing and help you develop a style. This book made me look at non-fiction writing in a very different light. Everyone should write, and write in earnestness. This book is the perfect start. I give this a 8/10.

Letter Two

2021-01-09

Pair programming, writing, and mental models. Sometimes, you are just worse than you think. Way worse.

Illusory Superiority.

I always thought that I was a better than the average writer. This egocentric belief lent me a sense of satisfaction, without any tangible output. It was a satisfaction that came from my alleged potential, as opposed to my work. Only recently have I recognized how wrong I was.

In the past year, I ended up reading many books on our thinkng, psychology and biases. I have come across mentions of Kahneman more than I care to remember. Yet, I never could connect these biases to my assessment of my writing prowess. I am not a good writer, let along above average.

This revelation came as a result of me reading On Writing Well. William Zinsser makes a very good case on stripping writing to its core, and why a lot of writing is about rewriting. I have never once proof read any of my writing. Me putting out my work has always been the equivalent of me regurgitating my thoughts online, with all its septic structure and putrid grammar. Sometimes I read my work, and find sentences that bring to mind a visual of the bits of undigested carrots that are scattered in a bucket of puke.

I need to rewrite better

On Pair programming.

Some notes.

On the surface, taking a systematic approach to pair programming seems like an erudite practice, but we often overlook that we naturally tend to do this in a haphazard manner when solving a particularly hard or new problem. Here, I want to list down certain pointers, and ideas that have come from prior pair programming experiences. These ideas are guidelines informed only by mild experience, which should be kept in mind while incorporating them in practice.

Why you should pair program.

Doing some back of the tissue math yields unfavorable results on slapping two programmers on a single task, one sitting with his hands on his lap, while the other codes (goes without saying, this is only figurative, nobody has any hands on any laps, but if they do, they are not doing things right).

This is a fallacy, and I want to present some simple arguments for pair programming to further motivate a systematic practice:

  • Pair programming has a certain basis in psychology, especially when using the driver-navigator approach. The navigator (the one not coding, but seeing the screen) is activating the part of the brain which allows for more higher level, connect the dots kind of thought, while the driver, the one coding, primarily activates the more verbal linear mode. This allows for a tiered approach to the same problem. [src]

  • Pair programming saves on the code review process to a great degree, since the code has undergone scrutiny by two people.

  • Lower bus factor.

  • Higher productivity in tasks that are more challenging/unfamiliar.

When you should pair program.

  • When either one, or both members of the pair are unfamiliar with a part of the code base.

  • While on boarding someone.

  • While solving a particularly tough problem.

When should you not pair program.

While writing things that are not hard, but time consuming. Here, the gains diminish rapidly to the point where its not worth putting two folk on one problem. Things like writing simple CRUD APIs fall into this category.

  • Navigator should be the one who is really quick at navigating code (should know her/his shortcuts well). Also, it is preferred that the navigator having some prior experience with the code base.

  • Block out at least 2 hours, recommend 3-4 hours. Time flies fast.

  • Before the session begins
    • Decide roles.
    • Identify an outcome for the session. (Notes must be taken at this stage)
    • Identify roughly, the parts of the code base that would need the changes to achieve the outcome. (This should ideally be done by the navigator, while sharing the screen)
  • Finally, both participants can share screens (my preferred platform for this is discord, but anything works). The driver concentrates on their own screen, while the navigator has the codebase open on monitor, and the shared screen on another.

The navigators main job here is to be several steps ahead on things like where to find parts definitions, which file to make changes, and other such project level details. Its is extremely essential that the navigator knows all the shortcuts, so s/he is in a position to respond adequately to the driver’s question at all times. This setup isn’t unlike that of a rally car racer, and her navigator.

Occasionally switch roles, to break the monotony. But avoid if a rhythm is established, and both parties are working well in their roles, with no saturation.

That’s it. Remember, a bad navigator greatly slows thing down. A driver codify ideas quickly, and act on them. The driver’s main responsibility is to write legible, runnable code quickly, which can be scrutinized by the navigator.

Pair programming is about teamwork. Establish a rhythm or else you would end up something like this:

IMAGE ALT TEXT HERE

Caveats

The guide here is a highly opinionated guide. For a more complete guide, on best general practices, see the the first article in the references.

References

Martin Fowler / Pair Programming Pragmatic Thinking and Learning

Mental Models.

Every mental read is a write.

Off late, I have been conscientiously writing down thoughts and ideas in a systematic way. The tool of my choice is logseq. I am not going crow about the greatness of the tool, but it combines the best of Roam Research and org/markdown flows.

There is a sense of peace when things are off your head, and onto a tool explicitly designed to hold data - some place that is yours; a personal wiki.

“The palest ink is better than the best memory.” - one of those proverbs.

An advantage, apart from permanence of thought, is that putting things down helps me rewrite a thought and better make mental connections. Associations are the brainchild of great ideas, in the same sense that a good analogy can really cement a concept in your head. It is well known that having a very basic heuristic in place of “experts” yields better result in a majority of scenarios. Writing down ideas, is, in my opinion, a rough parallel to such a heuristic.

Don’t be stupid.

Another concerted effort I have been making is to apply inversion as a mental model to decision making and inferences. This is something I picked up from Pragmatic Thinking and Learning and internal objectives planning at the company I work at. Examples of practical ways this could be applied would be:

  • If don’t start an initiative, what am I losing out on? (As opposed to what am I gaining if I start it.)
  • I want to live a happy life. Instead of thinking of the ways that I could lead a happy life, think of the way that could lead to a sad life.

The core idea of inversion is to you avoid stupid decisions.

“It is remarkable how much long-term advantage people like us have gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid, instead of trying to be very intelligent.” - Charlie Munger

I want to seek brilliance, but not at risk of going down stupidly.

Its wise to remember that a public toilet is as smelly as its smelliest stool. (To clarify the bad analogy, you are the public toilet, and your decisions are the stools.)

I hope you enjoyed this weeks letter. The first 100 are going to be bad, so might as well get them out of the way as soon as I can.

Pragmatic Thinking and Learning.

2021-01-06

A “best of” compilation of thinking and learning models - good if you haven’t read a lot of books on thinking and learning techniques.

Cover

Pragmatic processes for powerful percipience

Don’t be fooled by the book, and its programming textbook lingo - this is a proper self development book which introduces lots of mental models to improve the learning, absorption and assimilation of information. It aims to serve as a handbook for going from journeyman to mastery, quite like the other popular (almost legendary) book in the series, The Pragmatic Programmer. First off, this book shows its age. Its written in 2008, over a decade ago. A lot of the techniques in this book aren’t really new or groundbreaking - they are known techniques, but this book does a good job of compiling them into a very entertaining and well written package. It does a good job of motivating you to stick to these techniques by providing exercises to actually follow these techniques. The actionable are fun and effective.

If there was one part of this book that I truly disliked, was the chapter where he brings up the Myers Briggs Test, and tries to codify and classify people based on types and generations. I thought it was garbage, and added no value either.

This books is a pretty quick read, so its hard not to recommend especially for those just beginning with mental models for improving oneself. Below, I am going to attempt to summarise some of the key points and takeaways that I had.

Takeaways

Here are the thing that stood out particularly by me, which I may actually try to apply in my day to day life:

  • I like the idea of SMART goals, which is a framework for setting and achieving your goals. SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound
  • Something that I can absolutely attest to working is maintaining your own personal wiki. I use logseq as my personal knowledge base, and also my personal journal.
  • Another intriguing concept was the idea of morning pages - forcing yourself to write 3 pages early in the morning right after you wake up. He makes some interesting arguments for it.
  • A lot of the stuff on time boxing, deliberate learning, GTD style workflows were good.

For the most part, this book reinforced concepts that I had vaguely brushed with. This is a nice way of refreshing, and reinforcing them The book has a list of “Recipes” which sum up the core essence of the main points in the book. I have reproduced them pretty much verbatim below:

  • Always consider the context. Everything is a part of a system, and you can get into trouble by only considering things in isolation.
  • Use rules for novices, intuition for experts. This is one of the core principles of the Dreyfus skill model.
  • Know what you don’t know, be humble about your understanding and assume you don’t have a complete understanding or the full picture.
  • Learn by watching and imitating, not by being lectured at.
  • Keep practicing in order to remain an expert.
  • Avoid formal methods if you need creativity, intuition, or inventiveness.
  • Learn the skill of learning.
  • Capture all of your ideas, such as in a notebook, to get more of them.
  • Strive for good design, it really works better.
  • The more senses you engage in a task, the more involved and focused your brain will be. Fiddling, music, walking, etc.
  • Step away from the keyboard from time to time to solve hard problems, you need the space to let your background processes figure out the problems you’re encountering.
  • Change your viewpoint to solve the problem: look at it in reverse, exaggerate it to the extreme, change your point of reference.
  • Watch for outliers: rarely doesn’t mean never.
  • Be comfortable with uncertainty.
  • Trust ink over memory, every mental read is a write.
  • Hedge your bets with diversity.
  • Allow for different bugs in different people.
  • Act like you’ve evolved, breathe, don’t hiss.
  • Trust intuition, but verify.
  • Create SMART objectives to reach your goals.
  • Plan your investment in learning deliberately and developing your mind.
  • Discover how you learn best, it might not be like other people.
  • Form study groups to learn and teach.
  • Read deliberately.
  • To learn better: see it, do it, and teach it.
  • Play more in order to learn more.
  • Learn from similarities, unlearn from differences.
  • Explore, invent, and apply in your environment—safely.
  • See without judging and then act.
  • Give yourself permission to fail; it’s the path to success.
  • Groove your mind for success through envisioning it.
  • Learn to pay attention.
  • Make thinking time.
  • Use a personal wiki to organize your knowledge and learning.
  • Establish rules of engagement to manage interruptions.
  • Send less email and you’ll receive less.
  • Choose your own tempo for an email conversation, you can slow it down.
  • Hide interruptions to maintain focus.
  • Use multiple monitors to avoid context switching.
  • Optimize your personal workflow to maximize context.
  • Grab the wheel, you can’t steer on autopilot.

Conclusion

This book was pretty good. The information here isn’t new, the value more lies in the way that the information is presented, with the exercises and some general pop psychology. I give this a light 7/10

Letter One

2021-01-04

I won’t call a spade a spade.

Why?

So this is my first weekly letter. I intend to write a letter a week, every week. I am doing this for these main reasons:

  1. I want to reinforce what I learn, on a weekly basis. This letter will be a form of reinforcement.
  2. It creates some motivation to be consistent in learning new things. I found that I avoided longer books, since it would prevent me from doing my one book post/week schedule. Here, I can write about longer books, and thus be motivated to pick up longer texts (Like Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid )
  3. I want to improve my writing, and I feel somewhere along the way, I may just become better at it.
  4. I like creating stuff. Stuff can be anything - food, code, art. This letter is going to be my weekly stuff. The stuff I can count on myself to do in a predictable manner. The stuff that can’t hide behind guise of needing inspiration.

What?

The what is a pretty clear extension of the whys. The letter will be my weekly chronicle, and I will split it into these broad categories:

  1. Read: I am going to write about what I am either reading or have read the week before. Going from my history, this will broadly fall into the category I like to call VC Chic. So, what, you may ask, is VC Chic? Since I coined the term, I get to define it. Its a very vague category of things that usually resonate with the VC kind. Things like startups, new technology, the sciences, big ideas. Paint a picture with these words as a seed: Sapiens, Blockchain, Series A Deep- tech startup, Leveraging compounding. Your are visualing VC-chic.
  2. Learnt: This will be stuff I learnt over the past week. For the most part, it will be relatively computer scienc-y, and am hoping it will have the occasional maths or music.
  3. Thoughts: This will be my optional - if I have a thought that I have, it will go here.

When?

Every Monday.

Call a spade a spade, this is a newsletter.

Well, yeah. But here is the thing, I hate newsletters. I think the concept of a newsletter is fundamentally broken - it gives content creators unwarranted access to a consumer inbox. The power is not with the consumer, but with the publisher. I can impose whatever crap I want onto you. Its time to revive the original newsletter - RSS/Atom feeds. They shift the power from the creators, to the users. I can’t impose my nonsense onto you without your permission, you get to pull it. I don’t store your email ids, and details, you store mine. This is what the internet was about.

So yeah, right now, I am acting against my ideology. I am considering making this a newsletter, since that’s in vogue. But that’s if I am able to develop a reasonable system on a static website that is not intrusive in any other way.

Anyways, thanks for reading the first edition of The Letter. Let’s hope I keep this up, and tangentially end up creating value for someone else too.

My favourite reads in 2020.

2021-01-01

I am that guy now.

The OND quarter of books.

At the end of October this year, I resolved to read a book per week. I am glad that I have exceeded my expectations, having read 18 books since then. In this journey so far, I have discovered a couple of things

  • I love reading, more than I thought.
  • Number of books per unit time is a bad metric, if it gets in the way of me picking up heavier books. I should just make sure, I always have something to read.

The stats roundup.

Year end list (in no particular order)

I am going to read fiction, and non-fiction. But considering I mostly read non-fiction, the list will be biased towards it. I am adding an arbitrary number of books, that have stuck with me.

Books I particularly disliked, and will actively hate on.

Sum, Forty Tales from the Afterlives.

2020-12-31

Sum, a set excellent thought experiments.

Cover

40/∞ possibilities.

This book is a collection of 40 tales, involving Gods, nameless entities, and you. These 40 tales, in my opinion, could be better described as thought experiments on what happens in our afterlives, lives that we lead after we have “passed away” - or whatever that could mean to us.

How do I review all of them? Some of these are excellent, they will stick with me for a long, long time. Some of them are so so. Most of them are a great read. There are tales that are a 10, and there are tales that are a 4 at best. Fortunately, most of the tales are in the 7-10 range.

If I where to point out an overarching theme in these tales, it would be that of introspection, existentialism and mindfulness. Many question what it is to be alive, what it means to be human, and what is the purpose of our life on earth.

The book opens with the titular tale, “Sum”. It imagines an afterlfe, where we relive our whole life, being replayed in a grouped manner - think two hundred days showering, fifty one days deciding what to wear, seven hours of vomiting; you get the idea. Its a beautiful thought experiment, executed brilliantly. It truly makes you appreciate the shuffled order of our life. The rest of the collection is a set of many such tales, some that leave a lasting impact on life and its meaning. Many show the scientific prowess, and the philosophical insights that a celebrated neuroscientist has. Things get technical sometimes, in the juiciest sense of the word.

Closing thoughts.

I think you should read this book. The tales are short, and can be consumed easily, and make you think. I loved that about this book. Having known and read his other non-fiction book Livewired, I was pleasantly surprised by the fiction writing prowess of David Eagleman. This is a very strong 8/10 for me.

The Millionaire Fastlane.

2020-12-28

The name is crap, but the content is not that bad.

Cover

Get on the Fastlane.

This book strongly espouses the “Fastlane”. It is the definitive manifesto for why, and what is this fastlane. Let’s break down what the author, MJ DeMarco defines are the various lanes that one can take:

The Slowlane

This is the lane that MJ considers as the dogma preached by almost all major financial gurus or experts. This approach involves saving 10% a year of your monthly cheque, investing in mutual funds, and 401ks, and finally retiring at at 65 with a decent balance in the bank account. Its made amply clear that MJ despises this way of life, since he believes that this way of life leads you to lose out on the best years of your life, slogging away only to leave you “settled” after you have arthritis in both your knees, and are too tired to enjoy your life. He makes some excellent, although condescending points on why this way of life is no good, with examples on why even compounding your investment will be no good. The only issue I have with his explanation is the fact that he assumes that pretty much everyone has the saving rate of 10%, which is not entirely true, especially if you look at the financial plans of the FIRE communities, which espouse a more “middle” lane if you will.

The Sidewalk

This is the one that most people will never experience, and he considers the default for most “rich” people. I wrote rich because think of this way as the one taken by celebs gone bankrupt, or famous/lucky people living lavish lifestyles on a line of credit. This is pretty unanimous in being a stupid way of life, yet many fall into this trap.

The Fastlane

This is the meat of the book. The fastlane is how one can get build wealth, which can last, and let you retire, or live life comfortable. The basic tenets of this lane are things that you may probably already know, or have heard about, but MJ does a good job in codifying it for us (although in a very fratboy-esque manner.) Of the top of my head a few tenets of this are:

  • Owning a business.
  • Making a business that can scale, and can utilise leverage.
  • Leveraging the power of compound investing only once the initial capital is raised to live a comfortable life.

Now, how to build such a business? MJ nicely outlines the why, when, what and how of starting one. He uses something he calls the “NECST” (pronounced next as per MJ) method for picking and running a business. Here I have outlined briefly what he means:

Needs

What is the need for your business? What problem are you trying to solve? He says, the need should be measure in a manner that is unbiased (no friends or family.) Apart from that, we should not worry whether the product already exists - we should make a better version if we think the need exists.

Entry

He says that the higher the barrier of entry to a business, the harder it is to make it. For example, today, starting a blog as a business has become so easy (low barrier of entry), its not a good business idea. Where as, if you decided to start a company that was on the cutting edge of something, or doing something harder to enter as a market, it is more likely you would succeed. Nobody should be able to get into your business overnight.

Control

We must have control over the business. We must never be at the mercy of another business, for ours. For example, I start a massively profitable affiliate marketing business for Amazon. The day Amazon shuts their affiliate program, I am done, so is my business.

Scale

This is the most important, the business should have no ceiling to scale. It should be something that is not limited by customers, or the ability to reach them. Think, having a bookstore in your town vs selling books online.

Time

This is the most important rule if you want to comfortably run your business, and be wealthy long term. This tenet is your ability to separate your time from the business. How much of the business can be automated? How much of your effort is needed? Usually, businesses that require too many human resources are no good. We must be able to use our leverage, and disconnect your input from your output in a very strong way.

Good books, bad books.

What makes a good entrepreneurship book? I feel any book that sufficiently inspires you, and gives good advice along the road makes the cut to be a good book. This book does that in my opinion.

Yes, MJ sounds like a douche. Yes, MJ is being ignorant of the middle lane. Yes, trash talking other financial choices is a pretty stupid thing that initially put me of this book. But this book makes some good points. His lifestyle is not for everyone, but the advice here for those who want the fastlane is great. Its a perspective that I am glad I read about. A strong 7/10.

Basically, a love letter to Bill.

2020-12-28

My history with comics.

As a kid, I always loved comics. Ever since I was little, we always had comics in some form or the other. My earliest memory of reading a comic was in the children’s magazine Magic Pot - my mother had a brief stint as a distributor for the magazine when I was in kindergarten. Even 15 years after never having opened a Magic Pot, I still remember the comic strips about the escapades of the mischievous devil, Lutappi and how he always failed in his devilry. It was so whimsical, and little me loved it.

As I grew older, I lost interest in these tiny little strips which got boring beyond a point. I started reading Tinkle , a magazine which every Indian kid had read at some point. The stories were longer, and had more interesting themes; adventure, mystery, comedy - they had it all. I also really got into a series called Captain Underpants - yes I know, and its exactly what it sounds like. I particularly remember this series because of how much it inspired me to create my own comics strip series (the plot of Captain Underpants follows a couple of kids who get popular writing and distributing comic strips about the titular super hero). Flimsy on originality, me and my brother made and distributed a series called “Slipyman and Stickyman” (yes, the typo was a regular feature of the series). It chronicled the adventures of the two titular heroes against the evil mastermind Don Bosco, and his band of goons. Just to clarify, I have nothing against the priest Don Bosco, 4th grade me just thought it was a funny name for a villain.

Around this time, I got a subscription to a local library, JustBooks, which I feel like is a rite of passage for a lot of kids in Bangalore. These JustBooks libraries were everywhere at one point, and I loved visiting them every weekend. This was the first time I was exposed to proper comics, from faraway lands. I devoured the whole of Tintin, Asterix and even dabbled in some Lucky Luke. The Europeans really did know their comics, the tales were funny, with memorable characters, and had this sense of adventure I loved. I did always see Calvin and Hobbes lying on the library shelf from the corner of my eyes, but I was so engrossed in these characters, that I never picked it up.

The first time I picked up Calvin and Hobbes was when I took home “Homicidal Psycho Jungle Cat”. And then I couldn’t stop. I read and read and reread all the books in the series, I loved Calvin - he was whimsical, curious and fun. Little did I know, he may have shaped a lot of my beliefs without me even realizing it.

The artwork was so beautiful, the flowing abstract pages with Calvin and Hobbes just dancing, the imaginative dream sequences, the idle backyards.

Calvin and Hobbes dancing

As a 6th grader, I was attracted to Calvin and Hobbes for the simple stories, and beautiful art work. Calvin was everything I wanted to be back then, and funnily enough, a decade later, I still want to be Calvin. I never appreciated the comic strip enough, its profundity was something I was equipped to handle back then. Only now do I appreciate the the simple, but powerful truths that were Calvin’s philosophy

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Calvin and Hobbes taught me so many things, that today make me happy. That remind me what life is about. That make mindful, and re-align myself. Calvin and Hobbes has made me contemplate, and not be swept away by the mundane. He was a mirror to our hedonism.

Calvin was a stoic. Calvin was an existentialist. Calvin was happy.

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Bill Waterson elevated the comic strip to a high art form, he never let anyone license or sell his work or property. He was an artist, philosopher and a genius.

Calvin and Hobbes will always remind me that Its A Magical World, and There’s a Treasure Everywhere.

A Brief History of Time.

2020-12-25

This ain’t it chief.

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Gibberish all the way down

Okay, maybe I am being a little harsh on this book - but I have good reason. This book is probably the most famous pop-sci book ever written, but somehow, its the most disappointing one I have ever read. Before getting into the specifics, let me just say, Hawking is a legend, an I have immense respect for him as a physicist and a science communicator, he made science cool for many, and as a kid, he really got me into physics for a bit (I remember loving his other book, “The Grand Design”, which I found accessible, even when I was in 8th or 9th grade!)

I picked up this book for its reputation of introducing the wonders of cosmology to your average layman, all by building up to in a nice graduated manner. It even delivers on this promise, but only for about halfway through the length of the book. Somewhere along my reading of this work, I felt like I was reading gibberish. There were leaps of logic that were unexplained. It made reading this book an absolute chore.

Imagine reading a book on programming. The author start with the basics, arithmetic, printing text, a quiz program - and the next thing you know, the author is neck deep in explaining why homoiconicity in a language makes for superior metaprogramming easier since reflection is easier when you have one data structure constituting the language. Now, for a programmer, the concept is not too hard to grasp, these terms are not completely unfamiliar, and with a little bit of a nudge, she can grasp it, but if you are a layman, you are screwed. Too many new terms being thrown as if its common knowledge. This is what Hawking did to my brain. I was confused, with some sentences making practically no sense. (And I would like to think, I am not very stupid. I did study a lot of this stuff because of my school and college physics classes.)

The wrong medium

This book should not have been a book. This books is confused. It assumes too much from the reader after the first half.

This book should have been a comic book, or a heavily illustrated guide. It should been written in a more lucid manner, with the assumption the reader is stupid. The point of this book is to inspire awe in our cosmos, and the magic of science. This didn’t. I had to think, hard, and then only did I feel awe. Hawking got in between me and awe.

I was so taken aback that I disliked this book, I looked online, desperately finding smart people echoing what I felt, because I can’t be the only dumb one who found this book so devoid of meaning. Fortunately I found one guy, who echoed my belief, Pulitzer winning, Harvard educated Charles Krauthammer, who said this

I can report that, having devoured Hawking’s original book not once but twice, it leaves no trace. That is because it is entirely incomprehensible. Illustrating the book seems to me akin to tarting up hieroglyphics with Etruscan annotation. Want an invigorating scientific experience? I have a better idea: the new Hayden Planetarium in New York.

Maybe I am not that stupid after all?

Summary

The 4/10 is for the first half. Its interesting, and well written. The conclusion was also nice. But readers are better of going elsewhere for cosmos related to science writing. This just ain’t it chief.

The Almanack of Naval Ravikant.

2020-12-23

Thoughts and musings of silicon valley’s favourite internet philosopher.

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The cult of Naval

The first time I heard of Naval Ravikant, was because of his appearance of the Joe Rogan Experience. I was quite impressed by his overall clarity in thought, and his lucidity in expressing himself - the man is sure charismatic in his own Silicon Valley VC way. Over his celebrated career as an angel investor, he has developed something of a reputation for giving great advice on happiness and entrepreneurship, by the means of his numerous podcast appearances, interviews and his famous “tweetstorms”. This book is a collation of all these thoughts, with excerpts that flesh them out appropriately. The result is this, “The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A guide to wealth and happiness”, which is being given away for free, over at the authors website.

I went in with tempered expectations, mostly because of the subtitle, but I was pleasantly surprised by the contents. Yes, it contains the silicon valley starter pack - stoicism, rational thinking and sapiens, don’t be put off. Some of the ideas here are excellent, even though they may have been expressed elsewhere. The strength of the book is in how direct a lot the ideas here are presented. The books is split into three broad parts. The section on wealth was absolutely excellent, and the sections on Happiness and Philosophy where good, but nothing to write home about.

Wealth

This was by far my favourite part. I loved reading it, and all the thoughts Naval has around wealth building. The idea of having leverage, and disconnecting your output from your input was something that I found very impressive, because its put so succinctly here.

Give me a lever long enough and I shall move the world.

He also talks about how we must value our times appropriately, and other great tips on building businesses, and being wealthy. For me, this portion was a 10/10, very inspiring, and gave me something to think about.

Happiness

This part talks about happiness, and how to think of happiness. He talks about what is peace, and how it relates to happiness. A lot of the stuff he talks about isn’t really original content, but it motivates you to seek more. There are some very good points here, with references to buddhism and stoicism sprinkled here and there. I thought this was a good chapter, but there is much better work out there on this topic. This can be a good, accessible jumping off point, he has some great recommendations.

Philosophy

This was the weakest, and the shortest chapter in the book. Again, serves as a good jumping off point into other philosophical texts.

Recommendations

The book ends with Naval’s reading list, which I thought was pretty great. I will surely be picking up stuff from there.

First Principles

I strongly agree with his stance on thinking from first principles, and have a strong foundation. As a result, a lot of this book gives very good advice on how to get there. I like that at no point this book claims to be a definitive guide on anything, but rather a primer, and next steps on how to achieve something. There is bound to be something here for everyone, and I would definitely recommend this book, if only for the amazing first chapter.

The Psychology of Money.

2020-12-22

A didactic book on our indelible relationship with money.

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Fiscal Wisdom

This book isn’t about investment strategies, or life hacks to be smarter with your money. Rather, this books is sound advice, on not only be better with your money, but how to think of money. The advice is told in the form of 20 digestible chapters, each a lesson, covering the various aspects of money, and how we think about it.

I really enjoyed reading this book, the writing is very lucid, and engaging. Morgan references history, human behaviour, and some philosophy to frame how we should think of money. Concepts like risks, saving and wealth are explored and elaborated by engaging examples of people, and events that reflect the lesson. I have seen this sort of format in some other books, and have criticised it, but here, it just works.

The actual lessons themselves are very insightful, and have many beautiful takeaways that will actually impact your personal finance in many ways. I won’t list out all of them, but the way he looks at things is very interesting, for instance, what is the value of money? Why do we want so much of it? Morgan says:

“Controlling your time is the highest dividend money pays.”

I loved this interpretation a lot, and made me rethink how much money I need, and want. I liked how he talked about how investing is not all about algorithms, because, in reality optimising for a number in the bank mindlessly isn’t what makes us happy. His take on investing is very nuanced. And it helps that Morgan is an excellent writer, and has this ability to very succinctly bring across his points in a very humble, and witty way.

Practical Advice

Not only does this book have some great lessons on the psychological aspects of money, and happiness, it has some very sound financial advice too. The lessons here are a great mix of practical advice, and our mindset. Morgan explores risk, and planning. How to decide how much we should target to save, how to create wealth, and how to invest in way that gives you great returns, but let you sleep at night (and this is something he considers a very important part of investing.)

He stresses on how wealth creation, and investing is a game of patience, and persistence. Beating the market is hard, very hard. Over 85% of funds did worse than the S&P 500 as of 2019. And this has always been the case. Its not to say beating the market is impossible, and there have been people who have done so, but there is this element of luck associated with most great investors. Sticking to a strategy is easier, when you are earnest. And usually, most safe strategies pay off long term - losses or crashes are fees that we pay to be allowed on the long term ride.

Another important lesson that I took away was that is that everyone investing are playing different games, and looking for different outcomes. We must never make decisions based since the rules for one game, can never be applied to the other,

“And short-term traders operate in an area where the rules governing long-term investing—particularly around valuation—are ignored, because they’re irrelevant to the game being played.”

There are many such great lessons, with some really nice quotables throughout this book.

Conclusion

The more I think about this book, the more I love it. I think everyone should read this book, it will help re-frame your relationship with money, wealth and happiness. This is not the only book I would read on finance, far from it (I love money, and I do want to be rich) - but I am glad I read this one first. It gave me more to think about money, than any high return strategy, or alpha trading tricks could, and that’s what is important.

Good Economics for Hard Times.

2020-12-19

A well researched and genuine work, accounting for those the markets have left behind.

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Hard questions

This books covers a vast spectrum of problems that are the primary part of contemporary economic (and political) discourse. The way the book is laid out, the initial chapters tackle problems, to which the solutions are more concrete, with well known case studies to the pros, and cons of various policies, but as the book progresses, the answers to a lot of our hardest questions are not clear. There is a lot of nuance, and the best we can do is make informed decisions based on certain experiments. Economics is not an exact science, and the Nobel prize winning authors, Esther and Abhijit acknowledge this early on on the book.

The books approaches most of the problems by the lens of Randomised Controlled Trials, or RTCs, which formed a majority of the authors’ work. Here is a very brief overview of the topics that are covered.

Immigration, and its impact.

This is very pertinent today, with a general international trend being more anit immigration. Even in our country, things like the CAA are clear indicators the government stance on this issue. It is very clear, based on years of short, and long term research, that immigration of low skilled labour has never hurt the region, but rather had positive impacts. This is a very important thing to note for all the bureaucrats that make the law, but its quite clear that these decisions are not driven solely based on economics or general altruism.

Trade Wars

This is a very interesting chapter, where trade wars, and their impact on local small and medium size enterprises are explored. The findings are very insightful, and should definitely be something anyone in the position of power must read while creating such policies.

People’s preferences, and likes

This is a nice chapter, and explores parts of our behaviour from the lens of behavorial economics. If you have read Daniel Kanheman’s works, a lot of this part should be familiar, but the authors do a good job on sufficiently tying it with their source material, with some very interesting experiments.

Growth

This is where things start getting hazy, and honestly, I found this chapter as a bit of a drag. It was slow, and extremely nuance. It was, of course, very well researched, but man was it a bore at times. There are so many perspectives, with no clear answers. It felt like pages on pages of “So maybe this causes that, but then, there is this other thing that affects this third thing, so we can’t really be sure how this first hing is affected, and whether any conclusion is reasonably definitive”. But this is the sad reality of inexact sciences like economics, there are rarely right answers, and that’s just the nature of this discourse.

Global Warming

They tackle the question of climate change, and how it affects both rich and poor economies. There are some rather unfortunate conclusions in this chapter, regarding why people don’t adopt environmentally conscious means of development. There is also sufficiently detailed discussion on responsibility on climate, and why big polluters like India and China, don’t (and shouldn’t) foot a majority of the blame.

Automation

This was a very interesting chapter, especially for me, since I work at a place that is using AI for automation. The authors have very nuanced take on the matter, and look at both the “luddite” view, and the more pro automation view. There are interesting concepts explored, like the automation tax, for companies wanting to automate tasks, thereby reducing employment of people. The questions posed here are very tough, and gave me a lot more to think about when it comes to using AI for good, and how automation is obviously the way forward, be must be done in a responsible manner.

Taxes, and cash transfer schemes.

And this is the final topic covered in this book. This has some truly spicy takes on taxation, and the current hot topic of universal basic income. It is clear that the authors or more left leaning in their recommendations, but all their reasoning seems to be quite solid, and its clear they really care for the society.

Let’s just be nice

The core arguments are grounded firmly on treating the poor with dignity, and respect. The pervasive classism (and all the other -isms) in our society, trickle their way down to public policy, which leads to increased inequality, and unhappier people.

“It is easy to forget, especially in a crisis, the need to protect as far as possible the dignity of those being helped.”

Its made abundantly clear that our rabid obsession with growth, and numbers have overshadowed the needs of our people.

Conclusion

This book was very interesting, and well researched. The problem is that people who need to read this book, will never read this book. This book isn’t for everybody, its dry sometimes, and very wordy during other times. But it contains some very important ideas.

for anyone interested in such topics, this is an essential read. But for me, its a 3.5/5. Its a drag sometimes, but the more interesting chapters more than make for the shortcomings.

“The call to action is not just for academic economists—it is for all of us who want a better, saner, more humane world. Economics is too important to be left to economists.”

Heidi’s Guide to Four Letter Words.

2020-12-18

Feel good, almost to a fault.

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The premise

The story follows the titular Heidi, and her journey of self discovery. She is the stereotypical shy, cute and awkward girl, who recently got laid of from her school teacher job. She also has a crush on her next door neighbour, and her overcoming her fears and getting together with her neighbour Brent make the crux of the arc. The way she overcomes her fears is by putting her out there in the form of a podcast called “Heidi’s Discount Erotica”. Overall, there is a little bit of a twist to your usual premise, but nothing groundbreaking.

Saccharine to a fault?

There is barely any conflict in the book. At least I didn’t find any. Things just happen, and they are not bad. The writing is not the worst, and if you like the usual tropes of the genre, there are some funny bits in here.

I give this a 3/5.

Livewired.

2020-12-11

Every human is born as many and dies as one.

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Your brain is physically changing as you read this.

This books explores the concept of neural plasticity, or what the author refers to as the property of being “livewired”. The idea of the brain being livewired is that it keeps changing throughout or lives, in all sorts of ways. This idea may sound simple enough, but its consequences and subsequent revelations on the nature of our brain are very far reaching.

It is proposed that the wet blob in our skull is born half baked, with little skill pre-programmed (in the form of genetic memories, due to millions of years of darwinian evolution). Over the course of our lives, the brain learns everything, from how to use our eyes, to how to interact with the world. This is a very profound thing to think about. Our brain is the greatest general computational machine ever created, its sole strength lies in the fact it has a rabid need to find meaning in noise.

The profundity in this revelation lies in the fact that everything we see, hear, feel are just a bunch on electrical noises hitting our brain. This means we are only limited by the kind of signals we can plug into our brains. David Eagleman explores this concept thoroughly, with portions of the book revealing how close we are to the sci-fi sounding concepts of sensory substations and enhancing our body in various ways.

He covers a lot of the amazing behaviour of our brains, and the strange strategies we have developed as a species to keep, memories, habits and knowledge that we accrue in our lives. The hopfield and hebbian learning models inspired by our brain were also covered, which I found interesting, since I had learnt about them in the past from a purely computational point of view.

Another pleasant side effect of reading this book, is that it helped me with my meditation practice, since it better helped me absorb the idea that all the thoughts, noise, touch and sight are all just noise in my consciousness.

Final Thoughts

This book is excellent pop-sci, and really helps you appreciate the brain. It has me fascinated in the field of neuroscience, and its intersection with computation and engineering. I only wish, this book had covered in greater detail how the humans today have managed to game our mind in the form of today’s unethical attention economy. I find this topic to be of great social importance in today’s day and age. Here is an interesting excerpt of this topic being covered by another neuroscientist Andrew Huberman on the Joe Rogan podcast.

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This book is fascinating read, I give this a book, a 4/5.

Spotify.

2020-12-09

That joe rogan money was hella well spent by the Spots.

I downloaded my data, and visualised it, because the spotify recap was not good enough.

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Bad Blood.

2020-12-05

True crime meets TechCrunch meets Investigative journalism.

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A House of Cards

Pulitzer prize winning journalist John Carreyrou writes about his years long investigation of the “revolutionary” biotech startup, Theranos, and their legally, and ethically questionable practices.

This book primarily follows Elizabeth Holmes, the CEO and founder of Theranos, a company that she founded at 19 after dropping out of Stanford. Her mission was to create revolutionary blood testing technology to make all sorts of blood tests accessible to the world. What starts as a noble intention soon devolves into a game of false pitches, lies, and criminal and ethical breaches.

Holmes, and the second in command Sunny Balwani somehow manages to raise 100s of millions of dollars at decacorn valuations, without having the product they promised, which is the most amazing part of the story.

During the third act of the book, the author inserts himself into the narrative, which offers a very interesting look into how investigative journalists follow a story, from a tip, to publishing.

The book is written like a thriller, and its hard to believe a lot of these things really happened. I have always been interested in the startup ecosystem, having only worked in startups in my very short career so far, so this book proved to be even more interesting, since it shows the inside story of how a startup reaches high valuations, and woo investors. It shows the duct tape, and glue holding together everything behind the shiny exterior of startups (which I am sure is even more accurate of a description of Indian startups. On more than once occasion, I had friends working in other startups tell me of their appalling codebases.)

Verdict

If you interested in quality investigative journalism, or the startup eco system, this book has to be on your must read list. Its entertaining, and I didn’t even realize how quickly the book got over. I give this a very strong 4/5.

Sapiens.

2020-11-28

Entertaining, and thought provoking - in that order.

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A new perspective

Sapiens made history fun for me. Calling sapiens a book about human history sort of undersells it. It would be more appropriate to call sapiens a book about how, and (possibly why?) we as a people ended up here.

What I loved about the book, is the simple, matter of fact way that the author adopts why describing the various concepts in our society, be it religion, economic forces, or human’s scientific evolution.

The way the books is structured makes the story of humankind feel like a grand adventure, that is mind expanding in multiple ways. My favourite part of the book was that it showed me new perspectives, making me think of certain anthropological concepts in a completely new light.

It should be noted though, while this makes you think about things you don’t give a second thought about on a normal day, you may not find yourself agreeing with everything the author says. But, in a sense, that’s what I loved about the book, it gets you thinking.

Yuval Noah Harari clearly has an amazing talent for explaining big concepts in lucid language, that is engaging, and entertaining. It never slows down, and is something of a page turner.

Final thoughts

I get silicon valley’s obsession over this book. It asks the big questions about humankind, and makes you wonder about where we are headed, while appreciating, how we reached here. Its a big ideas book. And the VC lads love the big questions. I would give this a 4.5/5

Why we sleep?

2020-11-21

Now, I don’t want to “sleep, when I die”.

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In this book, “sleep scientist”, Matthew Walker gives the history, physiological reasons, evolution, and impact of sleep in our lives. The book is written is a very accessible, and engaging manner. Its something of a page turner for the most part.

The book is split into 4 fairly independent parts

  • Part 1: What is even sleep? Does it affect all living creatures, of all ages? Here, he sets up the premise, giving a quick primer on sleep.
  • Part 2: In this part, her makes a case for why you should sleep, and how its important for us. This chapter has some very interesting ideas, and some really good advice.
  • Part 3: This chapter is all about dreams. I found this chapter super interesting, as it gives a primer on dreams - a historical perspective, and today’s modern view on it.
  • Part 4: This chapter is the least scientific part of the book. Its basically matthew urging for a change in the society, and talking about good practices, and practical advice for sleep hygiene, and sleep disorders.

I enjoyed reading this book more than I thought I would. Its worth noting that this book has faced criticism for some scientific “inaccuracies”. I have put up the criticism, and the author’s rebuttals to them here for posterity

On the whole, after reading both of the above, its still worth reading this book (it should also be noted, Walker has pretty good credentials himself, and isn’t a hack), and honestly, most issues would be addressed in the second edition. After reading the book, its fair to say, this book is still an excellent read.

I would give this book a 4/5.

The Hating Game.

2020-11-21

By the numbers.

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This is going to super short. Read if you match the following criteria

  • Like chick lit
  • Like a hate to love storyline
  • Just want something feel good
  • Don’t mind the cliches and streotypes

The book is fairly decently written, and a breeze to read. Genre aficionados would love it. I give it a 3/5

Thinking, fast and slow.

2020-11-15

An excellent book on how, and why we make the decisions we make

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This is quite a dense book that covers the work done over the career of the Daniel Kanheman’s long career. Daniel, and his research partner Amos, spent decades researching and experimenting on why our mind makes certain decisions, and how they affect us. They propose the dual system structure (System 1, and System 2) of our mind, in which each system is responsible for a certain kind of decision making.

System 1

This is responsible, in a gist, for the the quick decisions that our mind makes. These decisions are prone to be irrational, biased, and generally give more importance to prejudice, than fact. Despite this, this is a very important part of our mind, and do possess a lot of advantages to us.

“System one executes skilled responses and generates skilled intuitions, after adequate training. System one creates a coherent pattern of activated ideas in associative memory. It also links a sense of cognitive ease to illusions of truth, pleasant feelings, and reduced vigilance.”

System 2

This is the smarter, more rational part of our brain. It helps us make better decisions, but unfortunately, its a very lazy system.

Other thoughts

This book goes over the various natural biases, and the errors (and some of these are truly mind blowing) that our mind makes, without a second thought. The statistical treatment of some our decisions is also very interesting, and exposed huge swathes of fraudulence that we readily accept in our society.

I am not going to summarise this whole book, but suffice to say, reading this would change the way you’d make many day to day (and maybe even life changing) decisions.

If I were to criticize this book in some way, it would be the length of certain chapters. The last 70 odd pages tend to drag on, and don’t produce that same sense of awe that the first 75% of the book has.

Summary

I think this book is a very excellent read for those who want to be more conscious in their decision making approach. Don’t get fooled by simplistic descriptions of the two system thing, its way more complex, and interesting. The books could have lost a bit of its wordiness, especially towards the end, but its worth sitting though the ride. I’d give it a strong 4/5

The Hard Thing about hard things.

2020-11-07

An excellent book, primarily about the hard things about running a business.

The hard things about hard things

This is a book that is interesting because two reasons

  1. Ben Horowitz talks about his story, about how he started his company, and how he grew it. Its an interesting tale, because we come to know about hard its is really, to run a company, that too during the dot com bubble. The perspective from the inside of tech company that few had faith in, and how he steered it to a successful acquisition.
  2. The various tough decisions that a leader has to take during the course of growth of a company, and various tips that Ben gives, based on his brutal experience a CEO. These are things that I never wholly appreciated, since they aren’t commonly addressed in popular media. We only see the bright side, and the successes of these giant companies, so this is a very refreshing take.

This book was given to me by the company I work for, since it is a favorite of the CTO. I can see why he wants everyone to read the book.

The nice thing about this book is that in some ways, this advice is valid for a lot of people who aren’t CEOs, but just find themselves in a position of leadership, or difficult decision making.

My takeaways

  • One does not simply start a company, the sacrifices are real.
  • Don’t give up, if things get tough. They always do, and that’s what you signed up for.
  • I think I will not make a great wartime CEO.

Stillness is the key.

2020-11-01

This is third book in the Ryan Holiday’s stoicism (inspired?) trilogy of books.

Stillness is the key

This book is divided into three parts

  1. Mind
  2. Soul
  3. Body

These parts broadly talk about the virtues, and how to think about these aspects of one’s life. Personally, I was not the biggest fan of this book. Here are the reasons where I think the book faulters

  • There is a formulaic template to all the mini chapters in the book. It goes something like this - a historic figure faces a problem in his life, and how there is a virtue that helps him/her overcome it. This general template gets a little old over time.
  • The advice he gives throughout this book is without doubt good advice, but, many times, feels very anecdotal. It sometimes feels like he doesn’t back it up adequately, or appropriately build to it.
  • And finally, this is not a very philosophical feeling book. This felt more like an inspirational self help book . I am sure that this would inspire people, but maybe this was not what I was looking for.

Despite being a little critical of this book, I do feel like this book has a lot of good advice, and may help people realign their thoughts in certain aspects of their life, but it isn’t something that I found super engaging or useful. I aspire to be still, and I agree with pretty much everything written in the book, but this just didn’t do it for me. For me, this was a 3/5.

Atomic Habits.

2020-10-25

I bought this book because I was greatly taken by the promises made by it, and the internet swearing by it. I got lucky, because I really liked this book, the main reason being its a very effective, and practical guide to building and enforcing habits. I’d highly recommend this to anyone who wants to form new habits, or try to get rid of bad ones.

Atomic Habits

The strategies here are pretty straightforward once bought to the fore, but James has done a really nice job of building a narrative argument around the techniques themselves. There is a cheatsheet which summarises the whole book on his website, which is nice, but given the time, I’d prefer reading the book. It really sells the idea of a good habits, and how important they are.

Personal Takeaways

  • Started my own habit tracker.
  • Making habits satisfying.
  • Have to apply the other things too.
  • Identify my current habits, so that I can stack, or leverage them to have other better habits.

Deep Work.

2020-10-25

I had randomly ended up buying this book off flipkart, because I got a very good deal if I bought this book, along with Atomic Habits. Atomic Habits was the book that I originally wanted to buy, but I am super glad I did indeed end up buying this one too.

Deep Work

Overview

Deep work, is about the titular concept of Deep Work, defined as

“Professional activity performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit. These efforts create new value, improve your skill, and are hard to replicate.”

This concept seems pretty easy to understand, and it being more effective that shallow work isn’t really the biggest revelation anyone would have in their life. The reason that makes this book so good is not the content, but how he systematically builds this idea over the course of the book. This book is as much a commentary on the war for our attention, as it is about how to be more productive.

I think this book is an essential reading for anyone, whether or not they intend to increase their productivity. It will make you reconsider how you spend your time, and lead your life.

Takeaways for me

  • Spend my hours more consciously.
  • Get off Reddit. Its a time sink.
  • Endeavor to have more depth in my personal, and professional work hours.

    Actionables for me

  • Get off Reddit asap.
  • Think of goals that I want to achieve.
  • Account for my daily hours.

I’d give this a 4.5/5, an essential reading, especially for a tool like me who needed a newer perspective on things.

My disapointment with Emacs.

2020-07-10

I have been trying to use emacs for a while now. I really like the idea of the editor being something of an extendable IDE. Despite my eagerness to give it a shot, I have significantly been disappointed so far.

I love IDEs

I am a massive fan of IDEs, I am an enormous shill for JetBrains, and I believe anything they make is nothing short of gold. As a result of this, I have never seriously considered emacs as an environment for proper development, and never bothered configuring it. The defaults from the various ‘python-modes’ and the ‘go-modes’ coupled with doom emacs are pretty good, but I know I can never beat a JetBrains product’s brilliance.

What I need is a pain to set up.

At the end of the day, emacs is a text editor and not an IDE. So, if I were to use it for writing, I would want it to have prose linting, grammar checks, and the whole lot, but, unfortunately, having a sane setup for this was a pain. The productivity boost while using something like a Grammarly or a Hemmingway seems like a far more efficient way of writing prose.

Epilogue

I have not yet given up on emacs. I am excited by the extensibility of emacs due to it being a big old lisp IDE. It’s just that I have yet to feel any of the profits of switching to it. Maybe one day, I shall subscribe to the teachings of Saint Ignutius.

PS: Vim was never in the picture. I don’t get Vim’s philosophy.

How I lost my job, and other short stories.

2020-05-03

Tales of layoffs, job search and redemption in the covid era.

Part one: Guys, I am gainfully employed!

I got placed. Yay?

My hunt for the the daily grind began back in the penultimate semester of college. I partook in the usual vetting process, involving copious amounts competitive coding, tests, interviews, the whole nine yards. Fast forward to me burning through way more formal shirts than I care to admit, I land a job (the name of the company sounded eerily similar to the phrase “generally eclectic wealthcare”). I wasn’t unhappy with the job, but I wasn’t really satisfied with it either. This was a giant company, which had been consistently losing money for the last many years. The business unit I was hired for was in the healthcare sector, and was one of their few profitable ventures. It was a software dev role, but I knew this was not the environment I wanted to work in - a flailing corporate giant, that was but a shadow of its glorious past. Also, its interesting to note that this was what we call in the placement business a “P+I” offer, which meant that, they were offering a full time role, after my internship ended.

Hunt for the elusive off campus placement

By the beginning of early November, I started looking for jobs over at the greener pastures of the internets. The problem here is nobody replies on the internets, and this resulted in me hounding a lot of good HR folk into giving me a chance to work at their company. This paid off, and after many an online tests, and interviews, I ended up getting picked by two companies. One was an open source giant, which seemed weirdly obsessed with red fedoras, and the other company was an Indonesian travel unicorn (little did I know the fate of this industry at the time). I really wanted to work in a fast growing company, and ended up joining the travel tech company. They offered me the good ol’ ‘P+I’ deal, and I took it.
I genuinely loved my work, and enjoyed working there. I was learning a lot, pushing production code, and coordinating with teams. I was finally gainfully employed.

Part Two: Covid cucked me.

How it went down

We all knew every ship in the industry was sinking, so it wasn’t much of a surprise when the HR called me and told me that they would be rescinding the offer, and would be glad to let me go per my convenience. It was also kind of funny that I lost my first job, before technically even joining.

Hounding the HRs

Well, here is where I wanted to breakdown my covid job hunt. On the whole, I had applied to over a 100 jobs, mainly on AngelList, LinkedIn and company websites.

Here is how that went: enter image description here I seriously started my job hunt around mid March of 2020, when the lock-down was in place here in India, and layoffs were abound. It was a tough time lose a job, and not many companies were hiring. By April end, I was fortunate enough to have a new job, without compromising on work quality, and compensation.

Here was my general process:

  • Look for, and apply to companies that have recently closed a funding round (see websites like inc42 for this).
  • Apply to companies on AngelList, even if you don’t meet the experience requirement for it.
  • Connect with HRs, managers, and founders on LinkedIn (esp those who have “Hiring!” written in their bio) and kindly, but firmly pursue them. You would be surprised how useful LinkedIn’s advance search is for finding posts with important keywords.
  • This one is important - you got to have regular sleepless nights, thinking of your impending unemployment.

The truth here is, its a lot about luck. I have been consecutively lucky for close to a year now. But ngl, I lowkey got hella talent to back it up

Here is a rough split up of the industries these companies where in:

enter image description here

Just in case you were wondering, yeah, I made a spreadsheet. Note that, I have tried to split up companies based on their market rather than tech, for example instead of classifying Locale.ai, and Observe.ai as the same “AI” companies, they are classified as analytics, and automation companies, that happen to use machine learning to achieve a solution.

It is interesting to note that the fintech slice of the pie is the largest, indicating that a lot of companies are sprouting to cater towards out generally underbanked population, but with an impending recession, I am not sure how these companies will do in the future. The ed tech space should be seeing a major growth due to the covid crisis. Safe to say any logistics, or travel company is a dumpster fire at the moment. Also, I stupidly applied to a couple too, just out of curiosity.

Fortunately for me, the company that I am expected to join soon is anticipating massive growth as a result of the covid crisis.

Part Three: Cucked by covid, but I liked it?

To make things clear, I don’t like the idea of getting cucked in any way, shape or form. What I meant to say, on the whole, losing my job, and then subsequently getting a new (arguably better one), taught me a lot of things. I still hate the whole interview process, the meaningless amounts of competitive coding, and being seen-zoned by recruiters on LinkedIn.

What this experience taught me is determination, hard work , and all related gobbledygook. I would argue, it made me a better programmer too. And I fulfilled my life long dream of making a meaning full sankey diagram.

Epilogue

Billionaires don’t deserve bailouts.

Peace, and death to covid.

Analysing Times Now and Republic TV twitter feeds.

2017-12-28

Or how I scraped the web and did some amateur analysis.

As I have said in the past, I am no pro. I do all this for fun, and my methodologies can definitely questionable. Please question them by commenting below.

Step 1: Getting the data.

I quite obviously got this data of the official Twitter handles of RepublicTV and Times Now. I was actually kind of surprised that Republic TV got the handle @republic. Heavy investments.

All in all, I was able to scrape 13000 to 14000 tweets off each of their feeds. This corpus, I thought was enough. Also, this process was kind of time consuming, and I got bored.

Each tweet object contained the following data:

  1. A timestamp for when the tweet took fruition.
  2. The number of retweets.
  3. The number of likes.
  4. The actual text of the tweet (Obviously).
  5. And a few other details I did not use.

I used python for this. There a lot of libraries that you can scrape twitter with. I usually use tweepy. For this project I tried something called twitterscraper. It is a very good library. You can read their readme to know more about the library.

The data I have ranges from week 40ish of this calendar year to week 51. There are 13819 tweets from Republic TV and 11503 tweets from Times Now.

Step 2: Mucking around.

Hashtags and wordclouds.

Indian news is obsessed with hashtags. Atleast these two channels are, with these hashtags flying around the screen like there is no tomorrow.

So, I thought looking at these would be a good start. I started by extracting the hashtags from the tweets. This was done easily by the power of regular expressions.

At first glance, I noticed that Republic tends to keep using one hashtag multiple times, whereas, Times Now uses a more varied array of hashtags. A good way to visualise this, I thought would be using a wordcloud. In a wordcloud, the size of each word is proportional to its frequency in a corpus. These are the results I got:

 

Times Now wordcloud

It is very clear from the wordcloud of Times Now that they do use a lot of varied hashtags. #Dec18WithTimesNow is one that stands out. Another one that stands out is #ModiUnstoppable.

These were their most used hastags:

  1. Dec18WithTimesNow, 869
  2. BREAKING, 446
  3. ModiUnstoppable, 333
  4. UPANotGuilty, 247
  5. TNExclusive, 207
  6. ModiInvincible, 153
  7. CongPFIBhakt, 112
  8. TamilNaduDiaryGate, 112
  9. StandWithAnthem, 109
  10. VadraJawaabDo, 103

For those interested, the next 30. Unformatted because lazy.

(‘ModiMidTermPoll’, 103), (‘AarushiWantsJustice’, 99), (‘RahulNeechPolitics’, 96), (‘VadraTape’, 87), (‘NDABacksDialogue’, 84), (‘SriSriMandirMove’, 84), (‘HafizSaeedConfessions’, 83), (‘TarmacTerrorTape’, 83), (‘WATCH’, 81), (‘StandForAnthem’, 81), (‘RahulEraDawns’, 80), (‘GujaratModiVerdict’, 79), (‘AAPKiAag’, 79), (‘CongBetrayedRam’, 77), (‘RahulSeparatistBhakt’, 77), (‘RaGaSomnathSelfGoal’, 77), (‘AreYouSeriousRahul’, 76), (‘MersalVendetta’, 75), (‘HadiyaConversionTwist’, 74), (‘HumanityTowedAway’, 73), (‘DeepikaThreatened’, 72), (‘CongVsMandir’, 71), (‘KoiBaatNahiCops‘,69), (‘RagaRiggedPollTape’, 67), (‘SoniaTejpalQuidProQuo’, 65), (‘DeepikaVsSena’, 63), (‘VadraTicketGate’, 62), (‘ZakirBackOnTV’, 61), (‘RaGaShortCircuit’, 61), (‘ShahDaresLeft’, 60), (‘SabkaSardar’, 59), (‘CondomCurfew’, 59), (‘DeMoTaxRats’, 59), (‘Modinomics’, 58), (‘CMOnlyForMuslims’, 58), (‘RKNagarCashForVotes’, 57), (‘TripleTalaqBill’, 57), (‘CowSlaughterCruelty’, 57), (‘HeadScarfDebate’, 57), (‘KnowYourCandidates’, 57)

Clearly, unlike Republic, they have not tried creating a cult around their main anchor. After Arnab left Times Now, they probably learnt that a brand is bigger than a person. Also the clear tilt towards our glorious leader Modi is apparent with the frequent appearances of hastags like ModiInvincible, Modinomics and ModiUnstoppable. Also they are clearly not huge fans of Rahul Gandhi and congress too, with the use of hastags like CongBetrayedRam and RahulNeechPolitics and PappuCensored. Keen readers would also notice disproportiante appearances of Congress as a party in the hastags. We will quantify this later in the article. Frankly, this is a great wordcloud, and I recommend everyone to take a magnifying glass and observe it.

Republic TV wordcloud

Republic TV, the new kid on the block. The “Independent” media we have all dreamt of and yearned for. The true messiah saving us from the clutches of the “Lutyens” circles.

Their hashtags are way less varied than Times Now. Arnab is very prominent in their most tweeted hashtag (Not surprising considering the fact that the whole channel is where it is because of his popularity.)

When Republic starts using a hashtags, they truly beat it to death. These are their top 10 most used hastags with their frequency:

  1. BREAKING, 820
  2. Dec18WithArnab, 506
  3. RepublicAppLaunch, 223
  4. ScamOfScams, 211
  5. CorruptionHighOrLow, 191
  6. AreHindusSoftTarget, 186
  7. WontForgetScams, 185
  8. MallyaTicketgate, 180
  9. ChurchVsNationalists, 176
  10. CongNeechPolitics, 161

These are next 30 for those who are interested. I was too lazy to format.

(‘PadmavatiFight’, 157), (‘NetasForVIPs’, 157), (‘Shocker2GVerdict’, 156), (‘RamMandirDebate’, 154), (‘ModiBigChanges’, 143), (‘AnthemFirstNoCompromise’, 140), (‘GujaratVotes’, 132), (‘AmitShahSpeaksToArnab’, 130), (‘SoniaLetterLeaked’, 130), (‘JaitleySpeaksToArnab’, 129), (‘CongChaiwalaAttack’, 126), (‘LutyensAyodhyaFormula’, 120), (‘ClericsBackChildMarriage’, 120), (‘WhoKilledAarushi’, 119), (‘GujaratHinduCard’, 118), (‘AreHindusTargeted’, 117), (‘WhoCommunalisedPolitics’, 117), (‘OneNationOnePoll’, 117), (‘WhoDumpedVikas’, 116), (‘IndiaWillGetSaeed’, 114), (‘BiggestBoforsInterview’, 112), (‘HrithikSpeaksToArnab’, 112), (‘SmritiVsRahul’, 107), (‘BoforsPakistanLink’, 106), (‘SunandaMailTrail’, 103), (‘NationalAnthemDebate’, 100), (‘CashForJustice’, 100), (‘NewIndiaPlan’, 99), (‘IndiaAgainstVVIPNetas’, 99), (‘MallyaNamesPawar’, 97), (‘PoliticsOverVeterans’, 94), (‘IndiaBacksVinodRai’, 94), (‘FringeVsPadmavati’, 92), (‘PiyushSpeaksToArnab’, 88), (‘SackSangeetSom’, 88), (‘ModiFaithAttacked’, 86), (‘RahulBotAttack’, 85), (‘RahulMughalEmperor’, 84), (‘SriSriMandirMeet’, 83), (‘BoforsOpened’, 83)

Republic shoehorns BREAKING into a lot of their tweets, hence the top spot. Here also the tilt against Congress and Rahul is very apparent. There absolutely no negative hashtags about Modi in the top 50. Also, when it comes to the nation, our man does not muck about one bit.

Who is more popular a topic, Modi or Rahul?

Honestly, with all this coverage, it seems that these new channels are the ones keeping Rahul Gandhi and the Congress relevant. I made these graphs that support my findings.

https://i.imgur.com/2s9jvyR.png https://i.imgur.com/eUeUUP9.png

From these charts it is clear that Rahul is way more of person of interest as compared to Modi.

Week 42 and Week 46 are clear anomalies as Modi far outshine Rahul in those weeks. This can be justified by looking at what happened during those weeks.

Week 42: That was when PM Modi visited his home state of Gujarat and made some charectristically fiery speeches that captured quite a few headlines.

Week 46: This was when Moody bumped up our scores, which was widely covered. A lot of credit was given to Modi, hence he trended.

I was not able to figure out why week 45 was also a light spot. Week 47 owards was the election hype, with Rahul Gandhi given way more coverage. Republic practically used no Modi hastags during that period.

Overall, some mildly interesting facts were unearthed.

Common words and phrases.

N-grams are just sets of n continuous words. So, in “My name is Advait”, the bigrams would be “My name”, “name is”, “is Advait”. That’s what they basically are.

I figure that finding the most common unigrams (ie., the most common words) and the most common bigrams in the data would be interesting. I went one step ahead and plotted them for viewing pleasure of y’all folk. Please not that I removed all stop words (words like ‘is’, ‘a’. ‘an’ etc. They don’t convey much meaning.) and punctuations to make the data more clear.

Times Now - Most common words

Times Now most common bigrams.

As far as most common singular word goes, BJP scores high with them, blazing past the likes of Congress and PM. Honestly, I did not find the unigrams to interesting as a single word does not convey too much meaning.

The bigrams are far more interesting. It is not very surprising that their most popular phrase is ‘TIMES NOW’, since everyone self promotes. Now here is the interesting bit, a close runners up is held by ‘Rahul Gandhi’, which is much much more than PM Modi. This just backs the fact that it is the new channels that give way too much attention to him.

Now lets replicate this for Republic TV.

Republic TV most common words

Here again, I think the unigrams don’t convey much, but I put it up anyway to fill in the pages. Here is the good stuff:

This is quite a bit more interesting than the previous graph. We can see many variations of ‘send us your views’, with the most popular one being “fire views”?

Also Sambit Patra seems to be super popular with this channel. Not surprising since he is a panel regular at the debates, and he and Arnab seem to know each other from his Times Now days.

Also unsurprising is the fact that Rahul Gandhi is the first non-promotional bigram that appears on the list. From all this it is easy to conclude that Rahul generates many clicks and TRP. In hindsight, I should have put his name in the title of this blog for more views.

F-scores and Stunning charts.

This is an interesting corpus. It would be nice to see what words make this corpus truly what it is, or more simply put what words and phrases are more characteristic of a category than others.

For finding terms of importance, a scaled F-score is being utilised. It basically is a method of finding out terms that are statistically significant as compared to other terms. After attaining all the F-scores, and finding term freequencies, this can be plotted:

Don’t be intimidated by the beauty of this chart. It is very interesting, and not too hard to understand. At first glance though, I do admit it looks like one of those fancy meaningless ones you’d find in the annals of r/dataisbeautiful.

The y-axis is the frequency of a term as used by Times Now, and in the x-axis lies the term frequency of Republic TV.

For Republic TV, the most frequent, but characteristic term would be arnab. Wow, what a surprise. For more of these terms look at the bottom right of the chart to find other such terms.

On the flip side, we can see such terms used by Times Now on the top left corner of the chart. Here the theme of not deifying an anchor continues with the use of tnexlcusive over the name of a primetime anchor.

The top right of the chart is very interesting. These are the terms that are characteristic to both the Times Now dataset and the Republic TV data set. The most prominent terms in that region are debate (duh, because who does not like a good shout fest.) , Rahul (that theme continues) and bjp.

You can find more such interesting tidbits by actually interacting with the chart. I do have an interactive version, where you can find term occurences and search terms right here.

On the right side, we find characteristic terms listed out for both Times Now and Republic TV.

We can see which new anchors are given priority over the other here in the Times Now list. Also, Dr Sambit is high on the characteristic-city of Republic, featuring prominently everywhere.

The “Characteristic” list are the characteristic terms of the both the datasets combined. There more Republic related terms here because of the simple fact that Republic tweets way more that Times Now. Also, they repeat themselves a lot. The usuals, ‘rahul’, ‘modi’, ‘mallya’ and ‘patra’ feature on this list. This is a fun graph, and if you actually download it from the link, note that it can take some time to load on your browser as it is a relatively large file (4.9 MB).

Retweets and Likes.

In this section I could not figure out how to present the data in any fancy way. Honestly, there isn’t much in the data either. Here are some boring facts:

Republic TV

Total likes : 704150 Average likes : 50.955206599609234

Total retweets : 283275 Average retweets : 20.498950720023156

Tweets analyzed : 13819

Times Now

Total likes : 765255 Average likes : 66.52655828914196

Total retweets : 318855 Average retweets : 27.719290619838304

Tweets analyzed : 11503

From this it is evident that the social media outreach on twitter far exceeds that of Republic TV. Despite having over 2000 fewer tweets, Times now have many more likes and retweets than Republic TV. But we should not forget the fact that Times Now have many more followers on twitter as compared to Republic. There is quite the follower burn that is to be expected of an account that tweets so often. Also, most of their likes and retweets come from their top 150ish tweets. This is evident in these completely unecessary charts:

Times Now

Let us have a look at their top five most like tweets:

  1. Rahul Gandhi could not even win municipal elections in his own constituency Amethi, says BJP president @AmitShah speaking with @navikakumar #FranklySpeakingWithShah 3293 likes
  2. "This protocol that PM cannot sit with a foreign pilot but can have a foreign wife, this, I don't understand: Sambit Patra, Spokesperson, BJP #Dec18WithTimesNow", 3086 likes
  3. '6 hours after Gujarat loss, Rahul Gandhi was watching ‘Star Wars’ at a cinema hall in Delhi. #AreYouSeriousRahul Watch @thenewshour with @navikakumar, 2506 likes
  4. "HARD FACT: 87% Christians in Mizoram have been given minority status despite Hindu's being at 2.75% #HinduRightsBoost", 2245 likes
  5. 'I would like PM to take lesson from this and set up a warlike council for fighting corruption: @Swamy39, BJP #UPANotGuilty', 2192 likes

3 out of the 5 tweets have a very clear anti-congress tilt, which makes sense as they are not a particularly popular party and have countless flaws. But we as a people are huge fans of whatboutisms.

These are their most retweeted tweets:

  1. "HARD FACT: 87% Christians in Mizoram have been given minority status despite Hindu's being at 2.75% #HinduRightsBoost", 2463
  2. 'Big step to conflict resolution. ‘Positive of outcome soon’ #SriSriMandirMove, 1604
  3. "This is how AAP responded to TIMES NOW's expose on #AAPHallOfShame", 1583
  4. "Congress ally Jignesh Mewani tries wooing Muslim voters, asks crowd to chant Allah-Uh-Akbar but the crowd hits back with Modi Chants #AllahRamRaGa', 1334
  5. 'Hard Facts: 19:00 PM Modi conducted post-mortem on Gujarat election results; at 19:40, Rahul Gandhi watched Star Wars at a cinema hall #AreYouSeriousRahul', 1210

I don’t know what to make of this. Very pro incumbent government.

Republic TV

Most liked :

  1. "#AmitShahSpeaksToArnab | A significant portion of Gujarat was a dark zone. Now, it isn't. Narmada's waters are reaching many parts: Amit Shah", 2835
  2. "#AmitShahSpeaksToArnab |I don't dismiss anybody. Every politician has their own standing in an election. But our track record speaks for itself and the Gujarat public will vote for us based on the work we have done: Amit Shah", 2812
  3. "#AmitShahSpeaksToArnab | WATCH: Amit Shah on the Congress' 'Chaiwala' meme attack at the Prime Minister ", 2344
  4. '#CongNeechPolitics | Arnab: I want Rahul Gandhi to see this video and comment on it right now. How proud does this make you? @OfficeOfRG', 2336
  5. 'WATCH the full #AmitShahSpeaksToArnab here [link]', 2134

Most Retweeted:

  1. '#CongNeechPolitics | Arnab: I want Rahul Gandhi to see this video and comment on it right now. How proud does this make you? @OfficeOfRG', 1660
  2. 'Where do you stand on the #FirecrackerDebate?', 1289
  3. "#RepublicWatchesPadmavati | We've watched Padmavati. Get the real story here", 1229
  4. '#SoniaLetterLeaked | Proven: Sonia Gandhi interfered directly in the Tehelka investigation [link]', 1119
  5. '#BiggestBoforsInterview | Watch how GujaratCongress Chief Bharatsinh Solanki manhandled Republic TV crew for asking questions on Bofors', 1088

I always was of the opinion that the duty of the media was to keep the incumbent government on its toes, and bring to the forefront important stories that would bring a positive change to the citizens. These media houses don’t seem to share my opinion.

Tweet frequencies and heatmaps

These are a few heatmaps I generated to find tweeting patterns of these channels.

First, I wanted to look at what days they tweeted the most. Here is a heatmap of their tweet frequencies over the days of the week for all twelve weeks of data:

Week 51 Monday and Thursday were on fire for obvious reasons - Gujarat Elections. Other than that, it can be seen that on an average, their tweet frequency reduces as the week passes by.

Here are individual heatmaps. Note that week 40 Mon and Tue data is missing for republic.

We can notice that Republic TV tries to keep its tweet frequency constant (Also, they just tweet more), but the waning of tweet frequency is very evident in the Times now heat map. What would you do with this information? Nothing. This is very, I repeat very, useless information.

A nicer heatmap would be their distribution throughout the day over the week. Here is what I got:

They really up their tweet game in the 8PM to 12AM slot, because my man Arnab is on screen. There is a very steady increase in the number of tweets throughout the day. Their sunday afternoon slot is also pretty loaded because of their strong weekend programming game (like that Anupam Kher show).

 

Their tweeting pattern is also extremely similar to that of Republic TV. Their lack of debates at weekend primetime slots is also evident. They do have a bright spot during the 12-2 slot on saturday which I am guessing is because they want to promote their show India Upfront.

The Grand Conclusion.

So what? What is so surprising?

Frankly, there is not much new here. The graphs look nice. I did try some sentiment analyses, but it was quite inaccurate and I had to toss that.

Why did I select Times Now and Republic?

They are loud channels who claim to be the best. They are what I would call the pioneers of the new age of crass journalism. Very peurile debates and little to no subtlety. Honestly, I hate these channels and their brand of journalism, so please do consider my biases in the article. Maybe I will do NDTV in the future.

If you liked what you read, please share this. Also, if you disliked or disagree with what you read, feel free to tell me why. I invite all sorts of constructive criticism.

 

 

Analysis of the r/India subeddit

2017-07-13

Disclaimer: I am no expert. My methodologies might be completely wrong and the inferences wronger. But I try

Now since I have that out of the way, welcome to my first blog post. This is going to be about r/India because there is nothing as good as pandering for views. The r/India community seemed niche, but large enought to pander to, so here is what I have to offer.

The data gathering

So, first things first, I had to get the data required for tha analysis. For this I whipped a script using a python wrapper for the Reddit API called PRAW. Using this script I packaged the top 1000 links this year on r/India sub into a csv file. Why only a thousand links you ask, because reddit API limitations coupled with laziness to work around that limit. Also, I felt 1000 links should be good enough since post the top 1000, the upvotes where under 300. Also, I love trashy science. Nothing like the unscientific method masquerading as scientific method. Here is the template for the csv file:

Title Upvotes Flair
If you still throw garbage on street. 5041 Non-Political

Making fun graphs

The motivation behind this blog is fun graphs and charts. All charts were generated using the good old matplotlib. First I read the csv file using pandas. All the data manipulation was done using pandas.

Share of flairs

First thing I tried was to find out what flair occured the most in the top 1000. I plotted a couple charts tp give you an idea of the flair distribution.

The Pie chart

_config.yml

Unsurprisingly, non-political has the lions share with over 40% of the links falling into this category. It might just be my perception, but I imagined that there would be a few more political links, given the politcal atmosphere of the sub.

To get a better understanding of the ‘others’ category, which consists of flairs with less than 10 appearances, I made this chart. _config.yml

Is it me or Politics+non-political should equal 100%

Our favourite flairs

So I figured I want to make more charts and graphs to compensate the lack of real intellect. Here is a barchart for flair-wise upvotes.

_config.yml

Here we can see some shifting in the ranks. Some flair have higher upvootes despite having lesser frequencies. These flairs must be our favourite ones. For the sake of more graphs, here is a bar chart of our favourite flairs, judged by average upvotes for a flair submission.:

_config.yml

Turns out we are huge Policy Economy nerds. Specifically Economic policy, which is wierd since other policy flairs are way lower on our favourites list.

Also, we love us a good AMA. The Shashi Tharoor AMA leads the pack with 1581 upvotes. Also the memorably cringy AMA with the best in the business, Arnab Goswami comes second with 778 upvotes.

Unqualified analysis of submission titles

Since I put the effort to scrape the titles of the submissions, I have to make it look like I put it to good use. I tried using spacy for nlp analysis but the result were supper iffy, so I went all out manual scavenging (they should enforce that ban properly).

By my intense research, here is what I found to be the most mentioned people in the link submissions:

  1. Narendra Modi (OMG what a surprise!) wih 39 appearances
  2. Yogi Adityanath (Again, what a surpirse!) with 7 appearances
  3. Salman Khan (Bhaaaiiii!!!!!!!) with 7 appearnces

So lets see which places pique our interest:

  1. India (Duh, we are the true nationalist sub) with 150 appearances
  2. Kerala (Actually, I am kinda surprised, maybe the diaspora?) with 24 appearances
  3. Delhi (Joint runner up) with 24 appearances
  4. Mumbai (Fairly close 4th) with 20 appearances (Mumbai+Bombay=25)

No love for Bengaluru(15) :(

I guess that will be all for this post. Constructive criticism is appreciated, but I don’t have a comments system in place, since I don’t have an audience. One day maybe I’ll put that in place. For now, you can email me crticism if you have no life.

  1. A la Atomic Habits ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9 ↩10 ↩11 ↩12 ↩13 ↩14 ↩15 ↩16 ↩17 ↩18 ↩19 ↩20 ↩21 ↩22 ↩23

  2. Ekadashi (“Eleventh”), is the eleventh lunar day (tithi) of each of the two lunar phases which occur in a Vedic calendar month - the Shukla Pakṣa (the period of the brightening moon also known as the waxing phase) and the Kṛṣṇa Pakṣa (the period of the fading moon also known as the waning phase). In Nepal and India, Ekādaśī is considered a day to cleanse the body, aid repair and rejuvenation and is usually observed by partial or complete fast. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9 ↩10 ↩11 ↩12 ↩13 ↩14 ↩15

  3. These are heuristics performed by society for a long time, for reasons not fully understood, yet they have stuck ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9 ↩10 ↩11 ↩12 ↩13 ↩14 ↩15 ↩16

  4. Chaturthi (Kannada: ಚತುರ್ಥಿ or ಚೌತಿ; Telugu: చతుర్థి or చవితి), is the fourth day (Tithi) of any lunar month in the Hindu calendar. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9 ↩10 ↩11 ↩12 ↩13 ↩14 ↩15 ↩16

  5. Shoutout to Kalnirnay, the Marathi household essential. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9

  6. Code for devoid of imagination. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5

  7. The VC bois love this. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6

  8. Though I absolutely hate that I have massacred the performance of my website in the process. Over time, I wish to better optimise the abysmal code that I have added to the original codebase. ↩ ↩2

  9. A black swan is an unpredictable event that is beyond what is normally expected of a situation and has potentially severe consequences. Black swan events are characterized by their extreme rarity, severe impact, and the widespread insistence they were obvious in hindsight. ↩

  10. Which I want to state in clear terms, is quackery and fraud. ↩

  11. We are stupid like that. I am sorry, I will stop the derision. It has helped nobody bring peoples together. ↩

  12. These are heuristics performed by society for a long time, for reasons not fully understood, yet they have stuck. Bad things usually die out over time. Doctors used to blood-let all the time. The process died, it was dangerous. Same with lobotomies. Toxic homeopathy will die, or the whole of homeopathy will die. We don’t have to worry about it. Time will fix everything. ↩

  13. My dread for tinnitus developed over time because of Archer. He made it sound like hell. Reading about how high suicide rates amongst people with a special form of tonal tinnitus certainly didn’t help my mindset. ↩

  14. Repeat after me, never self diagnose using the internet. ↩

  15. A funny anecdote I read in the book. See my review for it here ↩