0kl

Another format that I find instructive:

http://tractatus-online.appspot.com/Tractatus/jonathan/index...

If anyone else is interested in research on note taking, this is a survey of the research with citations: https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/note-taking

Unfortunately it doesn’t look like there’s been as much research on specific methodologies (e.g. Cornell method), but it may also be the case that the methodology doesn’t matter at all, only that the strategies are employed.

I’m surprised it doesn’t mention the encoding and external storage paradigm, but https://www.cc-seas.columbia.edu/node/31875 has some additional context for anyone that wants some vocabulary and a very short “methods” and “strategies” document.

> the accomplishment of an aim or purpose

Not trying to be cheeky, but that you understand immediately that I’m not talking about happiness here tells you that success =/= happiness. We can argue over what we should consider successful, but in the context of what Sam Altman is saying it’s unproductive: we all know Sam is talking about professional success, and most of us also know there is more to life than professional success, but we (collectively) have been so burned out (either by not achieving it, or by missing out in our lives achieving it) chasing after professional success that have a knee jerk reaction to anyone talking about it.

I also think it’s presumptuous of us to think Sam and whoever else did pursue success ambitiously are not happy - everyone’s definition of happiness is their own.

“How to be successful” always struck me as the wrong phrasing. It suggests a guarantee, the way “how to make a pie,” suggests if you follow these steps perfectly, then you will have the pie they were trying to tell you how to make.

Maybe a better title for everyone that is responding negatively to this might be: “How to slightly increase your chances of success”

I like to think of all the things he said as stacking luck as much as you can. It will always come down to luck, but you have to be prepared to grab luck when it comes.

Some of them are very happy. Some of them are very unhappy. Success =/= happiness - I don’t see Sam saying it does.

I will try to refrain from being anecdotal here, but some of it will leak in, I’m sure.

Boot camps usually strap in their students for about 3-6 months and make them learn extremely basic coding in some modern stack with html/css.

Depending on the company, this may be a better/cheaper alternative to starting talent that was in the grinder for 4 years but may not have any other business knowledge - or sometimes lack knowledge aside from c++/java. (Not arguing the merits here, personally I prefer depth of understanding to a mechanical and superficial understanding, but business needs do differ)

So is it fair to say boot camps are stealing your money? The same way that any for-profit educational institute might. At the same time, they have a similar function to other educational institutions in that they are largely a culling mechanism and not an educational one - but that is a problem across the board.

It’s unfortunate that they market and promise what they do, as it’s just unrealistic - but that doesn’t mean that they don’t do anything. I don’t have the data anymore, but from multiple cohorts what I saw was a slightly skewed bell curve, where the top of the class (~1 out of every 10 or so) tends to do well and find a decent entry level job in 3-8 months, the bottom of the class just flatlines and really don’t learn a thing (1-4 of 10), and the remaining hustle hard to break into the industry for ~2 years or decide it’s not for them.

I haven’t run the numbers, but I know a lot of my college educated friends are not working in what they studied, so for those that ended up not in a code related role, but did not bottom out (I.e. they did learn some basics of how code works), were they scammed by the universities? (Okay, actually, as a victim of this myself, I’d say yes here, but again, I’m just pointing out this may not be isolated to boot camps)

Summary: only go to a boot camp if you have your eyes wide open and know it is a culling mechanism and that if you’re not in the top of the class or exceptionally lucky, you will not have an easy time finding employment. Even the top of the class won’t have an easy time, but it’ll be easier than you. You will probably leave knowing more about code than before regardless, but also be aware of how shallow your knowledge will be, regardless of how long or intense your boot camp is.

I’m just assuming the above is not in good faith, but for anyone else that might be persuaded:

You being killed by a criminal over an iPhone or laptop is not going to change anything. Fund your police, vote to change laws enough that they’re spending their time on things that are relevant, and if you’re honestly willing to die for the rule of law, become a police officer.

Otherwise your body will be one more on the list of “people that died for no reason.” It’s not tough, righteous, or whatever else to die for no reason - and even if it were, if you’re going to make a stand and sacrifice your life, make it over something more than a laptop.

Better opsec would have saved him some grief as well.

Before even touching on his habitual use of coffee shops near his residence to run the Silk Road...

> The connection was made by linking the username "altoid", used during Silk Road's early days to announce the website, and a forum post in which Ulbricht, posting under the nickname "altoid", asked for programming help and gave his email address, which contained his full name.

By the time the FBI was watching him and had connected his name to I don’t think there’s a lot that he could have done to avoid arrest.

> extra PSA: if you’re worried about this but somehow haven’t already required 2FA...

I’m aware - I’m pointing out that it’s extremely likely you already have a physical device you can attach to a cord/chain/braided-steel-cable and use for the “snatch and grab” scenario. And that a snatch and grab is just so unlikely compared to any other security threat imo.

> You could just have a usb thumb drive on a retractable lanyard (think RFID badges or DoD Common Access Cards), but what if that thin retractable cord just snaps–leaving the USB drive snugly in-place in the laptop?

You could also just use a thicker cord.

The project, no offense to the author, could be renamed: long USB cable with a magnetic usb attachment.

> As of yesterday, that’s [stolen laptop] a hard attack to defend against.

Which is just wrong; the author did not invent anything here - anyone I’ve known that’s ever been worried about this scenario has implemented it already with <yubikey/access card/arbitrary usb>.

* extra PSA: if you’re worried about this but somehow haven’t already required 2FA for all your accounts and admin access on your laptop, then you should re-evaluate your threat scenarios.

I definitely not trying to say that. I’m trying to say that when someone like me (general public) is looking at art _for entertainment_ my wants are different than when I’m looking at something as art.

If I’m enjoying something as art, that puts me into a different category, but when purchasing a game for fun, or music as background noise, or a decorative painting I am in a totally different mindset than when I am engaging with those same things with a mind towards their artistic qualities.

The intentionality of the viewer matters, and the author, IMO, fails to recognize that a lot of people, myself included, often come to games with the intentionality of playing a game, not necessarily judging its artistic qualities. We sometimes do, but I think it would be bad faith to argue that we all are always appreciating every “artistic quality” of a work all the time - I know I’ve enjoyed a bad game, movie, show, or song more than once.

> Problems arise when it comes time to convey to a non-artist what constitutes quality art.

The first mistake is selling art to non-artists. The general population buys games for entertainment, and similar to any art (music, movies, paintings) for entertainment, it is rarely the most artistic that is selected.

> The shoddy SFIV received a higher art score than one of the best looking games to date, and I believe it’s all due to a pixel tax.

The second mistake is believing IGN, or the general consumer, is evaluating the art when they explicitly state “graphics”.

There’s a place for pixel art - even for ascii art (<3 df), but you have to be ready to not be loved by people that aren’t interested in “art,” but entertainment.

#define PROGRAMMER

A friend of mine works only with html and client-side js.

Another only with Java.

I currently work product but have worked with a whole host of languages.

Another friend of mine is an infrastructure engineer.

Another is a lawyer who codes.

We are all “programmers.” There is a lot to be said about why ”programmers” are well compensated, but let’s first discuss what it is that is being said.

What is the specific anxiety being voiced about what group? I’m assuming it’s software engineers. But then what is “well compensated”? I can’t reply to the author because of how vague it is, but, in summary - you should always plan for lower pay regardless of industry, but as long as you provide increasing value to a business, and are much better at it than other people, you will not see lower pay.

Everything you saved is “OBE” or “overcome by events.”

That email about a product launch you’ve forgotten? OBE

That article about how to write a node.js app in es5? OBE and probably a 404

That song you wanted to listen to but never got around to adding to a playlist because you found better ones? OBE

Bookmarking, saving, noting, or whatever mechanism you use to save information for later does not mean you will ever have the information. If it’s not important enough to be actionable starting a certain date, dump it, and if it becomes important, you will find it again.

I disagree that “enmeshment” is always bad. What we do, especially when we are fortunate enough to choose and enjoy our careers, are fundamental to who we are and the narrative that work is solely there to provide income is not always true.

We spend the majority of our time, effort, and thought around our work. To say that none of this should touch on our identity would be doing a disservice to the majority of our time spent living.

It is true, that some people are not “enmeshed”, but are consumed with work, but what about the people that do find happiness and fulfillment in their “high-powered” job? Dan’s failure to recognize his own needs are not a reflection of “enmeshment” being bad, but a reminder that if you do not pay attention to your own wants and desires you will be unhappy, regardless of how successful you are. That if you do need the job and hate it, to make sure you’re making the right trade-offs to have a happy life - see the recommendations in the article for how.

I don’t know if this is fair to say. The trope exists, certainly, but I don’t know if we can pass judgement on a way someone has chosen to live their life just because it would not fulfill us.

It’s absolutely true that many people regret prioritizing their career later, but there are also quite a few people regret not investing in their career as well.

My takeaway watching many people regret, and having regrets my own - or as you put it, my “debt coming due,” is that it is up to each of us to do our best to predict what our future selves will want. That’s all there is to it, and it’s unproductive to say “careers are bad,” or, alternatively, “focusing on family is bad,” or any variation of the above.

What is your takeaway? What did you mine from really thinking about the meaning and direction you want to take with your life?

*clarification: I mean it earnestly, as I have not done anything that you have.

+1 on the “Fuzzy thinking” bit

I’d caution reading philosophy as all about hair splitting. Hairs are split because language is the tool and precision is necessary, but splitting hairs is not what it’s _about_.

What is it about? That depends on the philosopher. The heavy hitters (Plato, Nietzsche, Kant) often try to answer the oracle’s command to “know thyself,” whim ranging over multiple branches of philosophy, while others focus on anything from language to ethics to aesthetics. (And Nietzsche, for example, does not spend time splitting many hairs at all)

It may just be this creeping understanding that all you’re going to get is a frustrating surface treatment of any of the concepts contained. As someone well versed in all three, the book gives a light treatment to philosophy, zen, and riding motorcycles.

Honestly I’d have to reread the work for an in the weeds critique, but when I ask the question: “What of it?” I just never had a good answer.

* It may also be that if you approach the book looking for philosophy, wisdom, or zen, then you are doing it just as wrong as approaching the book looking for maintenance advice. That is, it may be a great book, just not of the type someone reading it from a philosophical perspective expects.

Every person has a very small set of books that may be deserving of our time for a second, third, or fourth read.

Without reference to the specific work: pick it up and see if it speaks to you still, if it doesn’t - life is short, move on.

With reference to ZAMM: if you haven’t already, you may get more out of reading the Phaedrus, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and The Birth of Tragedy (trans. Kauffman) than a re-read of ZAMM

CS is one more tool in your box; you can make it your only tool and even build a good career with that one tool, but I’d recommend looking at your education as a quest for more tools, context, and mental models for building your career, and not as a training program.

Side note: CS is the second highest ROI I’ve had for tools. The highest is clear communication due to its ability to be such a multiplier on everything else I do.

Read though the first section thoroughly (I recommend attempting all the strategies presented in it on the book itself), and then skim through the "how to read this type of book" section - it's really not necessary and much less enjoyable of a read IMO.

It is a very good summary; matches a lot of my own notes on it. One thing to note though...

> Adler’s main point in the first section of his work about how to read a book is that it’s best to gain knowledge straight from the source. Instead of going through a teacher sharing the main points of a book, he considered it better to read the book yourself. He called this concept “original communication”—the idea that information coming directly from those who first discovered an idea is the best way of gaining an understanding.

Also worth checking out is Adler's "How to Mark a Book" : http://chuma.cas.usf.edu/~pinsky/mark_a_book.htm

That does sound very similar. I know that in my interpretation Camus is one of the possible outcomes of Nietzsche's thoughts, and that his thoughts afford for many... I think that is something that resonated with me - that _my_ philosophy does not need to be yours, but that we can still find some common ground to survive with one another.

Do you have good recommendations for Zen Buddhism and systems theories?

I have touched on both, but never got deep enough to know what are the main works I should be working off of.

I heavily recommend the Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Republic, and Phaedrus (in particular) - it’s said all of philosophy is a footnote on Plato until Nietzsche. I think only a summary of Schopenhauer (like a penguin selection or something) is all that’s needed - he moves past Schopenhauer pretty quickly.

I enjoyed Camus due to it being an attempt to move beyond Nietzsche and offer something more digestible, but I never moved past the Nietzsche/Plato combo for my personal philosophies (with a heavy dash of stoicism)

Re forms: I find that Plato’s forms are one of the most used mental models I engage with - especially working with software.

Best read for me - most powerful and readable imo. I’m sure there is a better academic/true-to-source read. I’ve read about 4 different translations and Hammond always stick with me - possibly because I read it first.

Thank you - in the future I will clarify.

When I studied Nietzsche it was more or less “Read Zarathustra, then read all the ‘Viking Portable Nietzsche’ then read all of the ‘Basic Writings of Nietzche’” all translates by Hollingdale or, preferably, Kauffman.

Among the jewels you’ll find in such a reading are things like the seed of Nietzsche’s thought being placed, imo, in The Birth of Tragedy, with the line:

> It is only as an aesthetic phenomenon that existence and the world are eternally justified

Other Nietzsche related recommendations: Pre-Nietzsche: Plato, Schopenhauer Post-Nietzsche: Camus - maybe?

I plan to reread a couple core works for myself. Of that list the ones that I’d recommend for others are: Aurelius (trans. Martin Hammond) Fear and Trembling Man’s Search for Meaning Tolstoy’s Confessions Kundera’s The Art of the Novel

After doing a thorough reading of “How to Read a Book” I decided to try rereading a few books to pull more out of them.

I can’t recommend “How to Read a Book” enough - despite its anachronisms and glaring faults, it’s the only book I’ve found that has genuinely made me feel that I’ve not really read a single book in my life.

Re Aurelius: preview a couple different translations if you can - I have found there to be significant differences.

If you have the time/inclination and haven’t already I’d also suggest reading Epictetus and Seneca first.

NB: My favorite of all the available Aurelius translations so far is Martin Hammond (Penguin Classics)